Pejman Yousefzadeh

Iran’s constitutional watchdog on Tuesday banned former president and opposition-backed Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from next month’s elections, a move expected to undermine the credibility of the poll.

The Guardian Council, which vets all potential candidates for loyalty to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, and the regime, also banned Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, an ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, from participating in the poll.

The move leaves eight candidates for the presidency, with Saeed Jalili, the chief nuclear negotiator, seen as a leading contender. While the disqualification of Mr Mashaei had been expected, that of Mr Rafsanjani will come as a shock to many Iranians.

A pillar of the Islamic revolution, Mr Rafsanjani is seen by hardliners as a threat because he backed the 2009 opposition Green Movement, which alleged that the presidential elections that year were stolen. But he was reappointed by the Supreme Leader last year as head of an important unelected body called the Expediency Council.

As another BBC Persian correspondent, Bahman Kalbasi, observed, the disqualification of a once-powerful figure like Mr. Rafsanjani, a 78-year-old cleric who was close to the Islamic republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stunned many Iranians and seemed to confirm that the authorities are determined to avoid the popular uprising that followed the disputed vote in 2009.

[…]

Mr. Kalbasi added that sources in Iran reported that even text messages with the former president’s name appeared to be blocked inside the country on Tuesday.

Be sure to check out the tweets by Karim Sadjadpour as well, which are on point and revealing. It is safe to say that any pretense of democracy in Iran has officially disappeared.

So yesterday, a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, killing “at least 91 people,” with “20 of them children.” To say that this is horrifying is to understate matters.

The calamity led blogger and public policy professor Michael O’Hare to write this post at the “Reality-Based Community” (try not to laugh). In its entirety, the original post read as follows:

Oklahoma is an oil state. Oklahomans vote for people like senators Inhofe and Coburn, who rail at the ‘myth’ of climate change.  After all, there are millions and millions of dollars still to earn selling oil to burn: what more evidence does a reasonable Sooner need?

People who think science is more than a political flag one can choose to wave or not, depending on whether there’s profit in it, are pretty sure that one of the effects of global warming is increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather.

I wish I believed that a just Providence sent things like today’s tornado upon people who vote for oil-whore Oklahoma Republicans.  I don’t, but could the devastation in Moore possibly give the survivors something to think about along these lines?

(Emphasis mine.) Actual “reality-based” commenters expressed a strong sense of shock and disgust that O’Hare would (a) seek to politicize the tragedy while the bodies are still warm, (b) tell us that he “wish[ed] [he] believed that a just Providence” sent the tornado “upon people who vote for oil-whore Oklahoma Republicans,” and (c) said that while he didn’t believe it, he wouldn’t mind if “the devastation in Moore” could “possibly give the survivors something to think about along these lines.” Because, of course, what the survivors really need right now is to be haunted by the thought that they might have brought this calamity upon themselves and their community thanks to the fact that they prefer to vote for Republican senators, and because there is apparently a straight line that can be drawn from voting for a Republican senator to dying/being injured/losing your home and possessions in a tornado.

Recognizing that he might have gone way too far, O’Hare then wrote an update in which he told us that the “reference to Providence” was a “pointer” to the claim “trotted out (for example) after Katrina,” that natural disasters happen to people who deserve to be punished.” O’Hare then tells us that if he “wished” he believed that natural disasters happen to people who deserve to be punished, “I would feel OK about the consequences, I guess even the children whose school was shredded around them” (and who died as well, one might add). O’Hare then assures us that he doesn’t believe that “natural disasters happen to people who deserve to be punished” (thank Providence for small mercies), but

… actions like putting carbon back in the air from underground as fast as possible have consequences, consequences that fall most heavily on the least deserving: the poor people who will not have enough to eat as floods and droughts deepen and come more often, and all the children still unborn around the world who didn’t get to dance at the fossil fuel party but will still have to figure out how to live in a toasted planet – yes, and children in tornado alley who never voted for anyone.

I also believe that the time to talk about politics and how we engage with that amoral reality is while the manifestations of foolishness, especially their injustice, are salient, and that doing so shows respect and sympathy for those who suffered and died for no good reason other than the cupidity of their leadership and its wilful ignorance (or worse, putative ignorance)

To which, my reply to O’Hare is “okay, but you still could have made that point without making comments that struck reasonable readers—including longtime fans of the blog you write for—as being utterly repulsive. You could have written ‘guys, this pattern of extreme weather will continue until we get climate change under control, and until we do, more people will die. Let’s please do something.’ You could have written ‘I am really outraged that our environmental policies are leading to more extreme weather, and more deaths.’ But you didn’t. You wrote instead ‘I wish I believed that a just Providence sent things like today’s tornado upon people who vote for oil-whore Oklahoma Republicans. I don’t, but could the devastation in Moore possibly give the survivors something to think about along these lines?’ Standing on its own, and even after the explanation you gave in your update, that’s repulsive. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell called, and they want their disgusting schtick back.”

As one of the commenters to O’Hare’s post noted, his post was in line with a tweet from Lizz Winstead, who is a co-creator of the Daily Show and who tweeted that “[t]his tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives.” Unlike O’Hare, Winstead apologized for her tweet once the scope of the devastation became clear. Belated class is better than no class at all.

Once again, I want to mention that I am really sick of writing about this issue. But it deserves the maximum amount of attention possible.

First off, it would appear that the Obama administration knew that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny back in the 2012 campaign:

There were new questions Saturday night concerning if anyone in the White House was aware of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

Inspector General Russell George said he informed a deputy at the Treasury Department in June of 2012 about the probe into the IRS.

The Treasury Department confirmed the timeline but said they did not know the details of the investigation until last week.

It’s the first evidence that someone within the Obama administration knew about the practice during the presidential campaign.

It is unknown whether anyone in the White House was told of the federal investigation.

I can only hope that someone will be allowed to ask questions regarding this issue without hearing complaints that such questions are “offensive.” Speaking of the issue of what certain people knew and when they knew it …

The White House’s chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.

That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time.

Can we ask questions about this as well?

A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

(Emphasis in the original.) Meanwhile, I am pleased to note that Glenn Kessler has eaten his wheaties:

In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.

The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue, as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone, were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged.

“But between 2010 and 2012, we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving, and many of these organizations applying more than doubled, about 1500 in 2010 and over 3400 in 2012.”

Lerner made this comment while issuing a seemingly impromptu apology at an American Bar Association panel. (It was later learned that this was a planted question — more on that below.) In her telling, the tax-exempt branch was simply overwhelmed by applications, and so unfortunate shortcuts were taken.

But this claim of “more than doubled” appears to be a red herring. The targeting of groups began in early 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC was announced on Jan. 21. The ruling led to increased interest in a tax-exempt status known as 501(c)(4). Most charities apply under 501(c)(3), but under 501(c)(4), nonprofit groups that engage in “social welfare” can also perform a limited amount of election activity.

At first glance, the inspector general’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applications actually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735.

But it turns out that these are federal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the Supreme Court decision was announced.

Astonishingly, despite Lerner’s public claim, an IRS spokeswoman was not able to provide the actual calendar year numbers. By allocating one-quarter of the fiscal year numbers to the prior year, we can get a very rough sense of the increase on a calendar-year basis. (Figures are rounded to avoid false precision; 2012 is not possible to calculate.)

2009: 1745

2010: 1865

2011: 2540

In other words, while there was an increase in 2010, it was relatively small. The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented. Also, it appears Lerner significantly understated the number of applications in 2010 (“1500”) in order to make her claim of “more than doubled.”

Four Pinocchios are given to Lerner for her misstatements, though Kessler notes in the title of his post that she deserves “a bushel.” I couldn’t agree more.

Finally, let it be noted that the best satire has the ring of truth about it.

If this story doesn’t end up impacting the 2016 presidential election, then I am going to call shenanigans on the political process. And you should too:

The State Department, under Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, created an arrangement for her longtime aide and confidante Huma Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while serving as a top adviser in the department.

Ms. Abedin did not disclose the arrangement — or how much income she earned — on her financial report. It requires officials to make public any significant sources of income. An adviser to Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said that Ms. Abedin was not obligated to do so.

The disclosure of the agreement that Ms. Abedin made with the State Department comes as her husband, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, a Democrat, prepares for a mayoral run in New York City. Politico reported the arrangement on Thursday afternoon.

Ms. Abedin declined a request for an interview, but the picture that emerges from interviews and records suggests a situation where the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin’s work in the high echelons of one of the government’s most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider.

While continuing her work at the State Department, in the latter half of 2012, she also worked for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. Teneo has advised corporate clients like Coca-Cola and MF Global, the collapsed brokerage firm run by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey.

At the same time, Ms. Abedin served as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and worked in a personal capacity for Mrs. Clinton as she prepared to transition out of her job as secretary of state.

It is not clear what role Mrs. Clinton played in approving the arrangement. Some good-government groups have been critical of such situations, saying public employees’ loyalty should be solely to the public and their government work, rather than private firms and figures.

I’ve gotten used to the notion of a revolving door between the public and the private sectors. I don’t much have a problem with the presence of that revolving door; after years in government, it makes sense that people who serve the country may eventually have to go into the private sector to make the money they weren’t making as public servants. Many of those people have families to take care of and kids’ college tuitions to worry about, after all. But I never thought that we would do away with even the pretense of a revolving door by allowing public servants to make money on the side from the private sector while they are ostensibly supposed to be devoting their waking hours to serving the American people.

Hillary Clinton appears to be up to her neck on this issue, as does the Clinton Foundation. Both she and the people who run the foundation ought to answer questions regarding Huma Abedin’s special arrangement. And if Hillary Clinton cannot answer those questions, then in the event that she runs for president, we ought to wonder whether she has the judgment and the ethics to serve honorably in the White House. Oh, and if Anthony Weiner really does end up running for mayor of New York, he might well have more than just some errant tweets to haunt his campaign.

Just when you think you have seen it all …

We’ll start by noting yet more evidence that the IRS’s audits of political groups was entirely inequitable in nature:

When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.

The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.

The 34 days the IRS’s Cincinnati office took to process the foundation’s application stands in contrast to the waits of several months — and sometimes longer than a year — that several conservative groups say they experienced with the same office. Obama has apologized, saying Americans have a right to be angry that the office improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

And more:

The Internal Revenue Service scandal involving the apparently unjustified targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups has also hit home with the Hispanic community.

George Rodriguez, former president of the San Antonio Tea Party, said that when the organization applied for non-profit status, leaders were intimidated by IRS workers with excessive paperwork and meddling questions.

“They asked us all sorts of things that were out of the norm,” Rodriguez, now head of the conservative South Texas Alliance, told Fox News Latino. “We knew these questions were not the norm and we had our suspicions about them.”

Because now, even more information has come out.

Start with the fact that we have yet another resignation:

President Obama on Thursday appointed senior budget adviser Daniel Werfel as the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, as that agency manages a scandal stemming from its targeting of conservative groups. The appointment is effective May 22.

More changes in the IRS leadership team were announced Thursday as well, with Joseph Grant, Commissioner of Tax Exempt/Government Entities Division, planning to retire on June 3, according to an IRS statement.

Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting IRS commissioner, Steven Miller. The president said it is important to have a new leader for the organization while it attempts to put in safeguards to ensure the special screening of political advocacy groups does not happen again. Werfel has agreed to remain in the new job through Sept. 30.

Anyone who thinks that Grant’s resignation is just coincidental likely would be a good target for those seeking to unload subprime mortgage packages. Also, this is yet another nail in the coffin of the claim that responsibility for bad behavior was confined to low-level employees.

It’s also worth noting that the latest incredibly ridiculous excuse for the IRS scandal—courtesy of incredibly ridiculous people—is that the IRS abuses were justified by a “doubling” of claims from tea party groups for tax exempt status since the Citizens United ruling. The problem is that this excuse is utterly shredded by, you know, facts:

Applications for tax exemption from advocacy nonprofits had not yet spiked when the Internal Revenue Service began using what it admits was inappropriate scrutiny of conservative groups in 2010.

In fact, applications were declining, data show.

Top IRS officials have been saying that a “significant increase” in applications from advocacy groups seeking tax-exempt status spurred its Cincinnati office in 2010 to filter those requests by using such politically loaded phrases as “Tea Party,” “patriots,” and “9/12.”

Both Steven Miller, the agency’s acting commissioner until he stepped down Wednesday, and Lois Lerner, director of the agency’s exempt-organization division, have said over the past week that IRS officials started the scrutiny after observing a surge in applications for status as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups. Both officials cited an increase from about 1,500 applications in 2010 and to nearly 3,500 in 2012. President Obama ask Mr. Miller to resign on Wednesday.

The scrutiny began, however, in March 2010, before an uptick could have been observed, according to data contained in the audit released Tuesday from the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

The number of 501(c)(4) applications for all of 2010 was actually less than in 2009.

“It doesn’t bear out the statement that there was a surge in 2010,” said Bruce Hopkins, a tax attorney specializing in nonprofits. “That’s inconsistent with what Lois said last week.”

Facts don’t matter to liars, of course. But they should and do matter to those of us who are morally decent and intellectually honest.

The New Yorker is not generally known as a right-wing rag—it is very much an Obamaphile publication, in fact—but even it can’t deny that there was something very wrong with the Obama administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi:

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now… .

Read the whole thing. And recall that from the very outset, Obamaphiles have assured us that criticism of the administration on this issue was misguided and partisan, without any real credibility. So much for that claim. (The talking points are linked in the excerpt, but I am going to provide another link to them here.)

Ron Fournier sums up matters rather well:

“These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building’s leadership.” With that sentence, one in a series of emails and draft “talking points” leaked to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, the Obama administration was caught playing politics with Benghazi.

Summaries of White House and State Department emails — some of which were first published by Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard — also contradict the White House version of events that led to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice misleading the public about the cause of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. installation in Libya.

Where does this all lead?

Politics: It would be naïve to expect any White House to ignore the political implications of a foreign policy crisis occurring two months before a presidential election. But there is a reason why no White House admits to finessing a tragedy: It’s unseemly. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland injected politics into the U.S. response to Benghazi when she raised objections to draft “talking points” being prepared for Rice’s television appearances.

One paragraph, drafted by the CIA, referenced the agency’s warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months prior to the attack, as well as extremists linked to the al-Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Sharia. In an email to officials at the White House and intelligence agencies, Nuland said the information “could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”

The paragraph was deleted. The truth was scrubbed.

How much more has to be revealed before the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack gets seriously investigated?

Seriously:

After an unseemly brawl broke out in Venezuela’s national assembly this week, one of the bloodied opposition parliamentarians recounted how Diosdado Cabello, the assembly’s pro-government head, had looked down on the rowdy scene with a gleeful smile.

The punch-up, which followed Mr Cabello’s refusal to allow opposition deputies the floor unless they recognised Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president, has highlighted the stark political tensions that have wracked the Opec country since the disputed April 14 election.

Following Mr Maduro’s narrow victory, many observers had expected the former union leader to become more radical politically, in order to keep the disparate ranks of “chavismo” together, while becoming necessarily more pragmatic in economics. So far, though, the 50-year-old socialist is only showing real signs of political radicalisation.

[…]

Prison minister Iris Varela has already threatened Henrique Capriles, the opposition leader, saying that she had prepared a jail cell for him and that he is responsible for the nine deaths that took place in street protests following the presidential elections.

The government has also arrested Timothy Tracy, a US documentary film-maker, for allegedly attempting to foment a “civil war”, and a retired general, Antonio Rivero, for inciting post-election violence. The opposition describes General Rivero as Mr Maduro’s first political prisoner.

And there’s also this:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday said Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe was plotting to kill him, adding to a deluge of accusations by the former bus driver in recent months.

“Uribe is behind a plot to kill me,” Maduro said in a televised speech. “Uribe is a killer. I have enough evidence of who is conspiring, and there are sectors of the Venezuelan right that are involved.”

He did not provide details.

The Venezuelan president, who was elected in April by a narrow margin, earlier this year accused the United States of seeking to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles to stir chaos and spark a coup.

He later said he himself was the target of an assassination plot by mercenaries from El Salvador who had entered Venezuela.

The leftist, former President Hugo Chavez frequently clashed with Uribe while the two were both in office over issues ranging from border security to free trade agreements and military cooperation with the United States.

Chavez died in March after a two-year battle with cancer

Just hours before his death, Maduro alleged “imperialist” conspirators had infected the former president with the disease.

It should be noted, of course, that Chavez/Maduro supporters are strangely silent about the fact that their political idols are showing classic signs of insanity, and dragging an entire country down with them.

Keith Hennessey has high praise for the intelligence of George W. Bush, and having worked closely with the 43rd president, Keith Hennessey is probably in a position to speak authoritatively on Bush’s strengths, weaknesses and character. I have no doubt that Bush is smarter than he let on, but I have to wonder why he didn’t let on. It is one thing to cause your opponents to underestimate you—or misunderestimate you (I guess making the joke here is obligatory, or something)—but it is another to allow your opponents to openly disrespect you without any pushback, thus ensuring that your public persona is reduced to joke-level status. I appreciate that in addition to wanting to be underestimated, Bush also wanted to be seen as a good ol’ boy—the better public image to win votes with, my dear—but Bill Clinton managed to show that you can be both publicly whip smart and a good ol’ boy. I am sure that it was within Bush’s skill set to manage the same feat, which makes it all the more strange that he chose an alternative path.

Hennessey’s post is also interesting because of all of the scorn and scoffing that it engendered on the left. Ezra Klein informs us that he believes that George W. Bush was smart too, but that he was also a bad president; historians say so, after all! The fact that the historians in question are a politically biased bunch goes unmentioned by young Ezra. Also unmentioned by young Ezra—and by all of the other port-side commentators that I have seen who have weighed in on Hennessey’s post—is the glaring contradiction between (a) the assertion that Bush was a terrible president and Barack Obama is a vast improvement; and (b) the incontrovertible fact that on a host of very important issues, Barack Obama is serving out George W. Bush’s third and fourth terms.

It is a mystery. Anyway, in the aftermath of the gun control defeat and Dowd’s hilariously bad column on the same, here is Megan McArdle trying desperately to explain Politcs 101 to a hopelessly confused student in Dowd:

… The American President and The West Wing are not searing portrayals of effective political management. They’re drama. The first question a dramatist asks is not “Is this how it really works?” but “Is it entertaining?” And the second is “Can the audience understand this in less than thirty seconds?” Veracity is way, way down the list. If you want a clue to how realistic it all is, consider that Aaron Sorkin awarded Jed Bartlett the Nobel Prize in Economics. Then go interview some Nobel Prizewinning Economists and ask yourself whether a single one of them would have the desire, or the ability, to run for president.

Jed Bartlett doesn’t win policy debates because of his amazing tactical skills, his overpowering arguments, or the sheer persuasiveness of his granite-faced brand of urbane folksomeness. He wins them because Aaron Sorkin is a liberal and he wants Republicans to lose on the major issues. Unfortunately for liberals, Tom Coburn and John Boehner don’t have their lines faxed over from Hollywood every morning.

And Megan McArdle points us to Walter Russell Mead, whose scorn for Dowd is magnificent to behold:

Column writing is dangerous work and long success in the game can lead to the stifling of that Editor Within who keeps you from looking too stupid in print. A rich self esteem, fortifed by decades of op-ed tenure and dinner party table talk dominance, has apparently given Ms. Dowd the confidence to believe that she is a maestro of political infighting, a Clausewitz of strategic insight and a Machiavelli of political cunning rolled up into one stylish and elegant piece of work. From the heights of insight on which she dwells, it is easy to see what that poor schmuck Barry Obama can’t: those 60 votes on gun control were his for the taking, if he was only as shrewd a politician as Maureen Dowd

The President needs to get his hands dirty, our genteel and accomplished op-ed writer advises the ex-community organizer and Chicago pol. He needs to get real, get down in the dirt, muck around with the senators and exercise raw power. Don’t make empty gestures and don’t give up, she advises him: fight! fight! fight!

[…]

If only Lyndon Johnson had understood the art of political pressure as well as Maureen Dowd. “You work with us, we’ll work with you.” It’s… brilliant! Reminding her about her six year term… if that doesn’t swing her around, nothing will. “You’re a mother…” This is a set of brass knuckles no one could resist. The NRA must be thanking its lucky stars that a bumbling amateur like Barack Obama is in the White House instead of the arch-politician Maureen Dowd; Heidi Heitkamp would have been putty in her elegantly manicured hands.

It goes on like that for quite a while, so be sure not to miss the entire blog post. I’d like to think that McArdle’s patient and desperate attempt to explain the facts on the ground—added to Mead’s entirely justified contempt for Dowd’s political instincts—would alert the New York Times to the fact that its columnist is simply not on the ball. But I have my doubts that the Times will take note. It seems content to have Dowd perpetually on its payroll, perpetually writing as though she is fourteen years old.

Nota Bene: To be fair to Dowd, she does seem to get the usual gaggle of suckers to approve of her drivel. I suppose she deserves some form of congratulations for that.

I have a hard time believing that Jon Huntsman will ever be president of the United States; the memory of his last campaign lingers, and not in a good way. But as this story points out, Huntsman’s policy platform is increasingly getting adopted as the GOP’s platform.

This ought to come as little surprise given the Republican defeat of last year. The party needs to re-examine its policy positions, and whether those positions are causing it to lose at the polls. To be sure, the policy examination is incomplete—it has hardly even started, in fact. But what’s certain is that things can’t keep going the way they have been for the Republican party when it comes to policy stances.

So while Huntsman may be lampooned for the way in which he ran his 2012 campaign for the presidency, and while he might never reach 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue himself, he can be thanked for having started—however inadvertently, perhaps—a conversation on what the Republican party ought to stand for. Hopefully, more people will join that conversation, start an intellectually and philosophically vibrant debate, and figure out how to make the GOP more appealing to voters.

Nota Bene: I endorsed Huntsman for president, and interviewed him as well.

It’s not often that I agree with Charles Schumer, but in this case, I do. And let’s face it; for opponents of immigration reform, there will never be a good time to try to change the system for the better.

Those are the words now associated with the implementation of Obamacare:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday he fears a “train wreck” as the Obama administration implements its signature healthcare law.

Baucus, the chairman of the chamber’s powerful Finance Committee and a key architect of the healthcare reform law, said he fears people do not understand how the law will work.

“I just see a huge train wreck coming down,” he told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Wednesday hearing. “You and I have discussed this many times, and I don’t see any results yet.”

Baucus pressed Sebelius for details about how the Health Department will explain the law and raise awareness of its provisions, which are supposed to take effect in just a matter of months.

“I’m very concerned that not enough is being done so far — very concerned,” Baucus said.

Baucus is a red state Democrat facing a tough re-election, so it’s somewhat unsurprising that he would take the Obama administration to task in advance of his re-election fight. Still, it is notable that he would make the comments he has made. And hey, it’s not as though concerns about the implementation of Obamacare are misplaced.

It won’t.

Usually, at the end of blog posts discussing a nasty Obamacare-related surprise, I put up a certain video featuring Nancy Pelosi telling us that it was preferable to legislate health care reform before actually finding out what that reform entailed. But I see that Megan McArdle made the appropriately acid Pelosi-related observation in the last paragraph of her blog post, so no video this time.