WaPo:
Amid the backlash over the controversial religious-liberties law in Indiana, Gov. Mike Pence and other state officials insisted the measure was never intended to permit business owners to deny service to gays and lesbians.
But that is not entirely true.
For the socially conservative organizations that proposed the measure, protecting the right of Christians to opt out of any involvement in gay marriage ceremonies was a primary goal. And they underscored that fact two weeks ago, immediately after Pence (R) signed the measure into law.
NY Times:
Religious conservatives and some Republican political operatives now describe what occurred here as a major setback. For years now, they have been using “religious freedom” as a slogan and the legal answer to the growing gay rights movement. With same-sex marriage racking up one win after another in the courts and in public opinion, the conservatives say they believed their strategy of passing religious rights laws seemed like a consensus solution as American as Abe Lincoln.
But now, many Christian conservatives say that what happened over the last week in Indiana — and in Arkansas, where lawmakers backed away from a similar law — has been a terrible blow to their movement. They are left with a law at war with itself, with language that seems to cancel out what it had been designed to accomplish.
The NY Times version, especially, makes it clear that conservatives were lying about what they were trying to do. But it's also clear that they've failed, and badly enough to stop the passage of RFRA in other states.
Nice going.
More policy and politics below the fold.
WaPo:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pledged Friday that his country would honor what he called a historic agreement to curb its nuclear program, provided that world powers uphold their end of the deal to ease economic pressures.
“We don’t cheat. We are not two-faced,” Rouhani declared in an upbeat televised address to the nation a day after negotiators reached a framework on the nuclear deal. He added: “If we’ve given a promise . . . we will take action based on that promise. Of course, that depends on the other side taking action on their promises, too.”
But a range of other views across the Middle East — including cautious hope in Saudi Arabia, internal dissent in Iran and open hostility in Israel — underscored the potentially difficult diplomatic and security challenges facing Washington among even some of its strongest allies, and how the region’s political dimensions could be reordered by the possibility that the United States and Iran might move beyond an estrangement that reaches back more than 35 years.
WaPo:
Iran hawks are already out in force denouncing the announced nuclear deal between the United States and Iran. They worry that it takes the military option off the table. But the reality is just the opposite – anyone who supports the United States bombing Iran are well advised to jump on this deal.
I have spent a large portion of the past decade assessing military options against Iran’s program and the costs, benefits and likely consequences of the use of force. I have previously argued that any attack must answer the question of the end game: what is the long-term outcome of military force? Taking this deal, if it is implemented as currently outlined, not only increases the benefits and reduces the costs of military action should Iran attempt breakout, it also helps answer the end game question.
NY Times:
“The dilemma that Netanyahu faces today is not an easy one. He can push the leaders of the Republican majority in the two houses of Congress to try to torpedo the agreement,” Mr. Barnea said. “It is doubtful whether doing this would achieve its purpose.”
But Emily Landau, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Israel’s campaign in recent months had succeeded, at least, in preventing critics of the deal from being marginalized as “warmongers or idiots.” Ms. Landau was one of many in Israel who opposed Mr. Netanyahu’s speech in Congress last month against White House wishes, but she said that it helped reframe the debate in newspaper editorials and foreign-policy institutes.
National Journal:
The most consistent note in the new Quinnipiac surveys was Clinton's strength among college-educated white women. Those women—most of them liberal on cultural issues and many more open than most other whites to an activist role for government—have provided Democratic presidential candidates the most reliable support in the white community since Bill Clinton's first election. The Democratic presidential nominee carried them in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008, and essentially split them in 2004. But in 2012, Obama lost ground with them, falling back to 46 percent nationally, the weakest performance for any Democratic nominee since Michael Dukakis in 1988.
According to detailed results provided by Quinnipiac to Next America, the new surveys show Clinton notably improving on Obama's performance among those well-educated white women in each of these three key states. The Quinnipiac polls were conducted via landline and cell phone in each state from January 22 through February 1.