Dear Mr. Churchill, maybe you don't understand how our democracy works, but...
Jonathan Capehart looks at what a former general has to say about #47Mutineers.
The open letter to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran signed by 47 senators and instigated by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was a stunning breach of protocol. One so outrageous that my former colleagues at the New York Daily News dubbed the signers “traitors.” While it is indeed a slap in the face of President Obama and an affront to the presidency, I’m not sure I would go that far, especially since Cotton is an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. So, I turned to retired Major Gen. Paul D. Eaton for perspective. He wouldn't say Cotton and Co. were “traitors,” either. He had a better word.
“I would use the word mutinous,” said Eaton, whose long career includes training Iraqi forces from 2003 to 2004. He is now a senior adviser to VoteVets.org. “I do not believe these senators were trying to sell out America. I do believe they defied the chain of command in what could be construed as an illegal act.” ...
“What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better,” Eaton told me. “I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed.”
Mutiny, rebellion, toe-may-toh, toe-mah-toh, Republicans love them all. Except possibly tomatoes.
Come on in for more opinions...
Colbert King takes his turn at the #47.
“To the President of the United States,” intoned the master of ceremonies. Members of an Army advocacy group and active-duty soldiers stationed in the Buffalo area rose to their feet for the toast. The year was 1962, John F. Kennedy was president, and I was among the active-duty commissioned officers in the dining hall.
Some of the attendees no doubt had supported Republican Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. But that was not an issue. All of us stood in honor of the elected head of state of the U.S. government.
Later, on Oct. 22, 1962, Kennedy spoke to the nation about the Cuban missile crisis, which had the potential to spark a nuclear war. Over 13 days, Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev worked out a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle their missile sites in Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States would not invade Cuba.
Now imagine that, in the midst of those negotiations, a band of Republican senators had sent an open letter to Khrushchev informing him that Kennedy lacked the authority to deliver on any negotiated deal. That would have been preposterous.
Not today. We have reached a bad place in America.
Dear Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, I know that Benjamin Franklin has been making promises to you about friendship between the United States and France, but maybe you don't understand how our new democracy works. See, Mr. Franklin won't be in office forever, so everything he says is worthless.
Dear Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, before you sign that instrument of surrender, realize that everybody who is anybody hates Harry Truman, so as soon as we hold our next election he'll be out and then we can rip that paper up and just bomb hell out of you. So don't bother signing.
You can play this game forever, and every example you want to give is fair.
Doyle McManus doesn't think the letter is illegal... just dumb.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a rising conservative star, persuaded 46 fellow Republicans to sign a letter to Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei et al warning that Congress could revoke any nuclear deal that President Obama makes.
But as one of Napoleon's ministers said of a decision that went awry, it was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.
Notwithstanding yelps from overwrought Democrats, the senators' letter to Khamenei wasn't against the law, much less treasonous. ...
Still, writing letters to the enemy — and Cotton emphatically views Iran as the enemy — is bad form. When Democrats communicate with U.S. adversaries, Republicans complain too. And writing the enemy with the avowed aim of disrupting sensitive negotiations is even worse.
And more weak tea both sides do it isms.
Carl Hiaasen on the crime that must not be named... by Rick Scott.
Rough draft of Gov. Rick Scott’s urgent message to all employees of the state of Florida:
Please pay no attention to recent news reports about my administration banning the use of the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in official documents, letters or emails.
There is no official ban. ...
The crisis poses an undeniable threat to the tourism and real-estate industries, and I've acted swiftly. At my direction, the state Department of Environmental Protection will henceforth define the situation in Miami Beach as a “permanent high tide.”
This isn't censorship. It’s creative editing.
Well, Rick Scott is kind of a permanent low tide. Maybe it will all balance out.
Kevin Kruse on the business of being a Christian.
America may be a nation of believers, but when it comes to this country’s identity as a “Christian nation,” our beliefs are all over the map.
... For all our talk about separation of church and state, religious language has been written into our political culture in countless ways. It is inscribed in our pledge of patriotism, marked on our money, carved into the walls of our courts and our Capitol. Perhaps because it is everywhere, we assume it has been from the beginning.
But the founding fathers didn't create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.
Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity.
Want to know how a religion that had its origins in communities that were distinctly socialistic became the champion of grab-what-you-can? It's the result of a 80 year public relations campaign by those doing the grabbing. A fascinating bit of overlooked history.
Ross Douthat is one of those doing the overlooking.
Some arguments are hard to settle but are too important to avoid. Here is one: whether the social crisis among America’s poor and working class — the collapse of the two-parent family, the weakening of communal ties — is best understood as a problem of economics or of culture.
This argument recurs whenever there’s a compelling depiction of that crisis. In 2012, the catalyst was Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart,” with its portrait of the post-1960s divide between two fictional communities — upper-class “Belmont” and blue-collar “Fishtown.” Now it’s Robert Putnam’s “Our Kids,” which uses the author’s Ohio hometown to trace the divergent fortunes of its better-educated and less-educated families.
If you're wondering where this is going, it's going where 95.67% of all Douthat columns go—poor people are poor because of their sinful culture.
... for all these disturbances and shifts, lower-income Americans have more money, experience less poverty, and receive far more safety-net support than their grandparents ever did. Over all, material conditions have improved, not worsened, across the period when their communities have come apart.
Between 1979 and 2010, for instance, the average after-tax income for the poorest quintile of American households rose from $14,800 to $19,200; for the second-poorest quintile, it rose from $29,900 to $39,100.
Hmm, first off, one has to wonder where Douthat is getting his numbers. Trundling off to the Census Bureau reveals that income for the bottom quintile in 1979 was... $20,211. In 2011... $20,262. Poor families aren't doing better. Considering the rise in many expenses—including "fees" that have been put in place so that taxes on the top fraction of the top quintile could be reduced— they are doing much worse. Oh, and Douthat's later statement that "antipoverty spending has increased sixfold" since 1968, means that spending on poverty programs
has not even kept up with inflation. Even for Douthat, these are pathetic arguments. (Despite my better judgement, I peeked into George Will's column today and found it to be a near duplicate of Douthat's. Not exactly a shocker. If you're wondering if I ever get tempted to peek to see what Maureen Dowd, the other member of my Banned from Sunday APR pair, is writing... no, not really.)
And while Douthat and Will are wringing their hands over the decline of marriage among the poor, remember that some states are doing something about that.
Sparked by controversy over same-sex marriages, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would abolish government-issued Oklahoma marriage licenses. ...
Under House Bill 1125, marriage licenses would be replaced by marriage certificates issued by clergy and others authorized to perform marriage ceremonies. The bill passed the House 67-24 and will now go to the Senate for consideration.
There. Culture fixed.