After his heathcare win, Obama's trip to Afghanistan and the Moscow bombings are reminders of the global challenges ahead

After a number of long, bruising political battles that put his own presidency on the line, Barack Obama has clinched some of the biggest achievements of his career in a single week. His healthcare win in hand, the president got a bounce in his step and set his sights back on the mountain of international challenges that he had placed on the back burner for months. In a one-two punch, he managed to sign his landmark health insurance reform bill into law and reach another long-awaited agreement with Russia to reduce the two cold war foes' nuclear stockpile.

A strong president at home does make a strong president abroad – as Jimmy Carter learned when all-too-familiar economic ills killed his second-term ambitions and dimmed his international successes. But is the healthcare legislation, with all its lukewarm public support and backroom dealings, enough to strengthen Obama's hand on the world stage?

Obama's first presidential visit to Afghanistan this weekend and the Moscow subway bombings on Monday served as stark reminders that his presidency will be riddled with even more difficult and significant problems ahead.

At Guantánamo Bay, 183 "war on terror" detainees still linger as the US administration struggles to close the prison camp and prepares to try the accused 9/11 plotters in military tribunals, following public outcry over plans for their trials to take place in civilian federal court in New York City. The political landscape remains uncertain in Iraq, the scene of renewed bombings in the wake of close elections that could dramatically change the government's makeup. In Afghanistan, US troop deaths have almost doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to a year before as Obama nearly triples the US military presence there in a bid to "defeat and destroy" al-Qaida and an emboldened Taliban insurgency. Iran has yet to unclench its fist despite Obama's outstretched hand, continuing instead to defy international demands on its controversial nuclear programme.

US-Israel relations have hit a new low as Obama repeats his initial demand over a full freeze of settlement activity after grudgingly dropping it last year. But Binyamin Netanyahu shows no sign of budging on the heels of a major dressing-down in Washington with no press, no photo opportunity and no statement from either side following a tense Oval Office meeting.

The US-Russia agreement to replace the 1991 strategic arms reduction treaty (Start) bore some parallels to the healthcare fight – what with contentious negotiations, multiple setbacks, an 11th-hour push from Obama and a final result both sides can claim as victory. The deal to reduce the two countries' nuclear arsenals by about a third from previously allowed limits could also help secure more Russian support to slap a fourth round of UN sanctions on Iran as US-Russia ties emerge from a deep freeze. Yet the new Start must be ratified by two-thirds of the US Senate, and if Obama has learned anything from healthcare reform, it's that garnering enough votes becomes more challenging as elections draw near.

The frustration Obama has vented on Israel's latest plans for settlement building in East Jerusalem may amount to pure political theatre. It comes after he made an about-face in September, welcoming Israel's partial, 10-month halt to settlement construction in the West Bank that excludes mostly Arab East Jerusalem – dropping his initial demands for a complete freeze. That was a far cry from when secretary of state Hillary Clinton said back in May that Obama wanted a stop to "not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions".

The head of US military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, Centcom commander General David Petraeus, and Pentagon chief Robert Gates have now both said the lack of progress in the peace process is endangering US troops deployed in Muslim-majority nations like Iraq and Afghanistan. But even if a peace deal materialises, Obama would still have to contend with continued Muslim and Arab anger over what Clinton last week called Washington's "rock solid, unwavering, enduring and forever" support for Israel.

The Israeli premier has warned that continued demands for a full settlement freeze could postpone long-stalled peace talks for another year. Such a delay would be fraught with risk for Obama just months before his Democratic party stands to suffer in the midterm elections. Instead, the president will work to stymie any possible losses in November. He is a political animal seeking a win akin to healthcare: a messy result reached through an ugly fight but that achieves enough for someone like Biden to call it a "big fucking deal".

Meanwhile, the healthcare battle shows no signs of abating, with Republicans vowing to run on repealing and replacing it as the Obama administration continues selling the plan to the American people. The president could well face the political fight of his life as he tries to convince increasingly sceptical Americans that they can afford near-universal health insurance coverage just as the nation emerges from tough economic times with near-double digit unemployment, a ballooning deficit and two costly wars fought in distant lands.

Mohamedou Slahi is responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans. He was a core member of the 9/11 conspiracy -- the recruiter of Mohamed Atta and the other ringleaders. If he’d had his druthers, even more Americans would have been killed: He is almost certainly the al-Qaeda middle manager who activated the Canadian cell that attempted to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. On the scale of war criminals, he edges toward the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed range, as bad as it gets.

A federal judge has ordered that he be released.

Cassandra did not like being Cassandra. It is not enjoyable to foresee avoidable catastrophes again and again (and again and again and again) only to watch as no remedial measures are taken and disaster strikes. To repeat: The courts are institutionally incompetent when it comes to matters of national security, particularly the prosecution of war.

The Framers intended it that way. National-security decisions are the most important ones a political community makes, so our system of government was designed to have them made by the political branches -- by those who answer to the voters, to the people whose lives are at stake. When the political branches abdicate this first responsibility of government, sitting by as it is usurped by politically insulated judges, they deny us the freedom to decide for ourselves what our security requires. We are then the subjects of judges rather than masters of our own destiny.

The courts, moreover, are the worst institution to which we could surrender this authority. Not only are we powerless to vote them out if they get national-defense matters wrong, they are guaranteed to get them wrong. This is not because judges are bad people; it is because they have no responsibility for protecting the country. They are generally good people whose job is to ensure that the parties before the court are given due process. When a judge does that job conscientiously, due-process rights are inevitably inflated. That judges do not run completely out of control in maximizing due-process rights owes not to judicial temperance but to the powers of the political branches.

This genius of separation of powers is on display in the civilian justice system. We know that judges are hardwired to maximize the rights of accused criminals. So we don’t give them free reign. It is Congress that writes the statutes that courts must apply and  prescribes the rules of procedure. It is Congress that tells the judges what the punishment for a crime must be and whether an offender may be released -- it doesn’t matter whether the judge thinks the criminal is unlikely to threaten society.

But the same Congress that performs these duties exactingly in the civilian justice system, where judges have institutional competence, has abdicated its responsibility in the conduct of war, in which judges have no expertise. In the 2008 Boumediene v. Bush decision, the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc turned its back on precedent and empowered America’s enemies to use our courts against us -- inviting alien enemy combatants into federal court to challenge the military’s determination that they are, in fact, enemy combatants. The Supremes further exacerbated the problem by giving no guidance to the lower courts as to how these cases should proceed: What rights to discovery and confrontation do our enemies have? What rules of evidence obtain? Who bears the burden of proof that a detainee is or is not an enemy combatant? What is the standard of proof to be applied? We don’t know. The Court left it up to the district judges to make it up as they go along.



As they continue making it up, here is the most important point to consider: Judges are inherently hostile to the concept of detention without trial. That we have been permitted for centuries to hold enemy combatants through the conclusion of hostilities, and that we have in fact done this to millions of prisoners, is irrelevant to them. They figure that we just weren’t enlightened enough before 2004 to involve the courts in this core aspect of warfare. But the fact is that we didn’t involve courts because it wasn’t the courts’ affair; fighting war is the military’s job, under the direction of the commander in chief and the authorization of Congress.

Now, we’ve somehow made it the job of Judge James Robertson, a progressive civil-rights activist appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1994. Robertson is the district judge who started it all, the first to rule -- back in 2003 -- that Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s personal bodyguard and driver, had Geneva Convention rights and could not be subjected to a military-commission trial. He later quit the FISA court in apparent protest over the president’s wartime effort to penetrate our enemies’ international communications without asking permission from federal judges. Now, he is ready to spring Slahi, the terrorist who set 9/11 in motion.

Bear this in mind: Because Slahi is still at Guantanamo Bay, Judge Robertson only has the authority to review his status as an enemy combatant. That means the judge could do nothing more than order Slahi’s release; if the Justice Department does not successfully appeal the decision, we will find another country to take Slahi. But if Gitmo had been closed, as the Obama administration and Sen. Lindsey Graham want, Slahi would have been physically inside the United States. Judge Robertson then would have claimed that his physical presence in our country entitled Slahi to all of the Constitution’s protections (not just habeas corpus). He would have ordered that Slahi be released in the United States if no suitable alternative could be found.

Who is still at Gitmo? The worst of the terrorists, including scores who are known to be dangerous but cannot be tried because, as in Slahi’s case, there is not sufficient admissible evidence to convict them of war crimes: There is only intelligence and coerced admissions -- useful information but inadmissible in a trial court, civilian or military.

Scores of detainees fall into the detention category to which judges are most hostile: indefinite imprisonment without trial. If that imprisonment is happening here rather than in Cuba, judges will be free to order the terrorists released here.

And if they’d release Mohamedou Slahi, who wouldn’t they release?

— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

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As the journey to healthcare reform has shown, Barack Obama knows how to pace himself better than the politicians around him

Pacing, in politics, as in sports, is oftentimes everything.

As a politician, President Obama has always been a long-distance runner. When early supporters panicked in the autumn of 2007, a few months before the Iowa caucus, and convened meetings with the candidate to urge a more aggressive stance versus Clinton, Obama told them he was going to adhere to the script created by Axelrod, Plouffe and himself. He did, and a couple weeks before the caucus, he pulled ahead in the polls. When the pundits opined that he was being too passive after the Democratic party's August 2008 convention and was giving an opening to McCain and Palin, he urged his team to stay calm, to stay focused … and sure enough, his poll numbers rebounded. Numerous of Obama's friends told me, while I was reporting my book Inside Obama's Brain, that he is congenitally even-keeled, a man who revels in staying calm under pressure and in remaining consistent despite the shifting sands around him.

When President Obama was being pilloried by pundits from all sides – and by much of the general public – for spending too long on forging a Congressional majority to pass healthcare and then lampooned after Scott Brown's upset victory as being a lame duck president who promised much and delivered nothing, he stayed focused.

And when Democrats in Congress threatened to stampede away from healthcare reform in the dog days of winter he came out fighting. Over the past two months, Obama time and again urged legislators to show spine; and, in refusing to back down, he ultimately convinced them of the historical urgency of the moment. Late Sunday night, he was rewarded with a truly extraordinary legislative accomplishment, one that brings America in from the cold in the realm of healthcare and dramatically reshapes the American social compact.

To put this in perspective: Franklin Roosevelt, the 20th century's most accomplished progressive institution-builder, didn't manage to expand the social safety net to include healthcare. Lyndon Johnson, the century's second-most accomplished reinventor of government, and one of the most manipulative and coercive of presidents when it came to bending Congress to his will, failed to create universal healthcare. And Bill Clinton, the century's last president and one who came into office committed to overhauling the healthcare system, was virtually broken on the wheel over it during his first two years in the White House.

The old adage that a year's a long time in politics is proving hopelessly inadequate to describe the country's and the media's relationship to Barack Obama. When Obama was elected, it was heralded as a breakthrough moment for America. Almost all commentators, across the political spectrum, reveled in at least part of the Obama-drama and the 44th president's approval ratings skyrocketed into the mid-seventies. A few months later, the gloss fading, Obama began to be pilloried – he was a fallen messiah, a doomed false prophet. By the summer, the Tea Parties were mobilising and the tenor of the political debate was becoming nastier and more bitter by the minute. By the late autumn, Obama was being castigated by his own supporters as a sell-out, as someone who was sacrificing a once-in-a-century opportunity for transformative progressive political change on the altar of "bipartisanship". He was a stooge of Wall Street, a fake radical, a man more concerned with his image than with substantive governing accomplishments. By February, he was being compared to Carter; ineffective, pontificating, destined to be a one-term failure.

And Sunday night, suddenly, he was reborn. Peruse the liberal blogosphere this week and one sees a celebration of Obama-dom again, a pride in his accomplishments, a desire to be a part of a movement once more. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the charismatic, sure-footed, candidate Obama has arisen once more to shunt aside the technocrat who has been living in the White House these many months.

Did Obama himself really go through all of these incarnations over the past year? Obviously not. Instead, he hued to a course that he laid down early in his presidency; worked hard to build coalitions; showed both courage and tenacity in not giving up on healthcare reform after the Massachusetts election debacle; and demonstrated confidence – that innate confidence that has guided Obama throughout his extraordinary political career – that in the end his political tactics, his methodology, would generate results.

In interviewing scores of people around Obama for my book, I came to think that what made Obama peculiarly fascinating was not so much his idealism but that the veneer of idealism provided camouflage for an extremely effective, wily, player of the game of politics. While in some ways he is intensely idealistic – and clearly many of his supporters during the election campaign were desperate to believe he was all idealism and no Machiavelli – he has never been a purist for purism's sake. He knows how and when to compromise, and he knows how and when to draw lines in the sand. And, as the long, slow, march toward Sunday's healthcare reform vote shows, above all he knows how to pace himself better than the other politicians around him.

The United States has announced an assistance of $ 125 million to Pakistan for power projects, some military supplies and several social sector programmes but there was no word on Islamabad's demand for a civil nuclear energy deal like the one the US has inked with India.

"We are working together to ensure that Pakistanis have access to affordable and reliable power, which is essential to funding economic development," Ms Clinton said at a joint media interaction with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi after the first ever Strategic Dialogue between the two countries at the ministerial level here on Wednesday.

"When I was in Islamabad in October, we announced a signature energy program, and tomorrow, USAID Administrator (Rajiv) Shah and Secretary of Water and Power (Shahid) Rafi will sign implementation agreements for three thermal power station rehabilitation projects that will provide more electricity to more people," she said.

Asked specifically whether the US was prepared to discuss a civil nuclear deal with Pakistan such as the one it has with India, Ms Clinton skirted the issue.

"We have a broad agenda with many complicated issues like the one you referred to. Discussions are continuing through tomorrow. And while I will not go into details of our bilateral conversations, we’ve said that we will listen to and engage with our Pakistani partners on whatever issues the delegation raises. We’re committed to helping Pakistan meet its real energy needs.

"I’m particularly pleased that we are moving forward with $125 million to Pakistan for energy sector projects. That’s an assistance programme I announced when I was there in October. And as the foreign minister said, we have followed through. We don’t just make announcements and then forget about them and get the headlines and move on," she said.

"So this dialogue that we’re engaged in is helping us build the kind of partnership that can make progress over time on the most complicated of issues," she said.

At the outset of the press conference, Ms Clinton said the Dialogue, along with the unprecedented participation of senior leaders across both the governments, reflected the importance the two countries placed on the relationship.

"These meetings are an opportunity to engage directly on the full range of issues that are matters of both common concern and shared responsibility, and to produce concrete results," she said.

"Today, we discussed our shared goals: to protect our citizens and our countries from the violent extremism that threatens us both, to see Pakistan prosper as a strong democracy in a stable region, to cooperate on issues that improve the daily lives of the Pakistani people, and so much else. We have made it very clear that this Strategic Dialogue is in Pakistan’s interests and in the United States’ interests. And that is why what we’re doing here today is so critical," she said.

Ms Clinton said the meeting had discussed Pakistan's national security priorities, ongoing counter-insurgency operations and long-term military modernisation and recapitalisation efforts.

"Pakistan is on the front line of confronting the violent extremism that threatens us all. And Pakistan’s civilians and security forces continue to bear the brunt of that fight," she said.

Ms Clinton underscored the commitment of the US to stand with Pakistan as it confronted its challenges. The two countries also reaffirmed their support for the people and Government of Afghanistan as they continue to rebuild their country after decades of war and to overcome violence and insurgency.

"But our relationship extends far beyond security, as does the scope of this dialogue. As demonstrated by the landmark Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation, which supports Pakistan’s economic and social development goals with $7.5 billion in assistance over five years, the United States is committed to advancing the long-term aspirations of the Pakistani people for a more peaceful and prosperous future," she said.

She said the two sides were cooperating to boost economic development on a number of tracks. The US will sign a letter of intent to upgrade significat road infrastructure in the North-West of Pakistan. It is also taking steps to help Pakistan boost exports of agricultural products and to improve agricultural infrastructure.

Ms Clinton said the two sides were working for greater market access to US markets for Pakistani products and collaborating on plans for new water projects. They are also looking forward to the completion of a transit trade agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan that would benefit both countries.

She said the two sides discussed the importance of working on a multi-year basis with regard to resource planning. The US side told the meeting that its goal was a multi-yar security assistance package, including foreign military financing, based upon identified mutual strategic objectives, which wuld further strengthen the long-term partnership between the two countries. "We, of course, will work closely with Congress to further develop this commitment," she said.

Ms Clinton said the US also remained committed to social protection efforts, such as the Benazir Bhutto Income Support Program for families in vulnerable areas. "And we will launch a women in development agenda in our next round of dialogues in Islamabad," she said.

She also announced the approval of flight access for Pakistan International Airlines to Chicago, via Barcelona, making it easier for business travellers and families to strengthen the ties between the two countries.

Sh said the sectoral tracks of the dialogue would meet again on Thursday and then over the next months in Islamabad. The two sides were also working on people-to-people contacts and programmes, she said.

Mr Qureshi said he was a "happy man and a satisfied man" after the meeting. "I’m satisfied because you’ve finally agreed to many of the things that we’ve been sharing over our discussions in the last two years," he said.

He said the two sides had agreed to expand their dialogue from the original four to ten tracks to make it a more people-to-people relationship.

"And when I say I’m happy today, I’m happy because I feel I’ve contributed in redirecting this relationship in line with the aspirations of the people of Pakistan," he remarked.

Mr Qureshi said that he was at the US Congress on Tuesday and saw a qualitative difference in the engagement.

In reply to a question, he listed the steps Pakistan has taken to improve the situation on its border with Afghanistan. "Successful operations in Pakistan against the Taliban have had a significant impact in Afghanistan, and they acknowledge that," he said.

He said Afghan President Hamid Karzai, during his recent visit to Islamabad, had acknowledged the contribution that the democratic government in Pakistan had made in improving bilateral relations with Afghanistan.

He said the US and Pakistan had discussed military hardware during their dialogue. "We’ve talked about military hardware. You have to realize that we are operating in a completely different theatre. The western border, the terrain is completely different. And I’m glad to share with you we’ve agreed to fast-track – to fast-track our requests that have (been) pending for months and years on the transfer of military equipment to Pakistan. So all these steps, I think, will make a qualitative difference to border management."

Ms Clinton said the two sides wanted their private sectors to work together much more closely and look at joint ventures and investments.

"We want our universities and academic institutions working together. We want to spend time on improving agriculture and healthcare and so much else," she said, mentioning possibilities in the information technology sector, among others.

Mr Qureshi was excited with the reception he got at the Congress. "I was at the Hill yesterday – the mood was completely different. I’ll say it publicly. It was different. I was at the Senate. I was at the House. It’s 180 degree difference. We’ve turned the corner. And today, there was confidence. There were no question marks. There was no suspicion. There was no “do more.” There was recognition of what we already had done. There was appreciation of what we had already done. That’s one."

"The other thing, the civil-military relations today in Pakistan are excellent. The fact that the army chief is part of the delegation that is here, the fact that we were sitting on the same table arguing, articulating Pakistan case, is unheard of in the past," he said, referring to the presence of Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani at the meeting.

To a question about the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, Mr Qureshi said Pakistan had discussed it with Mr Karzai.

"Pakistan is very clear: We want this to be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process. Now, it’s their choice. If they feel we can contribute, if we can help, we will be more than willing to help. But we leave it to them. We’ve had discussions when they were in Islamabad. I’ve invited the Afghan foreign minister to come to Islamabad for a detailed discussion on the reintegration/reconciliation process. He’s accepted my invitation and we’ll talk about it. Our aim is very simple: We want a peaceful, stable, friendly Afghanistan, period," he said.

In response to a question, Ms Clinton said it was important to recognise that the US had positive relationships with both Pakistan and India. "And we certainly encourage the dialogue between India and Pakistan. The issues that are part of that dialogue need to be addressed, and resolution of them between the two countries would certainly be in everyone’s best interest," she said.

"But I want to just underscore that our goal in the Obama Administration is to make clear that we are going to be a partner with Pakistan going forward on a full range of matters. Now, we can’t dictate Pakistani foreign policy or Indian foreign policy. But we can encourage, as we do, the in-depth discussion between both countries that we think would benefit each of them with respect to security and development," she said.

Mr Qureshi said India was a sovereign country and had bilateral relations which Pakistan respected. "But all we are saying that those relations should not be at the cost of Pakistan. And we are very clear and I think you are very clear on that. I’m of the view that Pakistan has been willing to engage. And I’m confident, as two years down the line, I’m confident of this relationship. I’m confident that India will have to revisit its policy and very soon," he said.

Photos: US State Department Photos by Michael Gross.

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[1]Military police in Ciudad Juarez (Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife) Yesterday, Hillary Clinton was in Mexico for a summit about the country's out-of-control drug violence. While there, the U.S. Secretary of State received an earful about the U.S. role in supplying the guns and the money that are helping to fuel this problem (via the sale of cocaine, weed, and meth to deep-pocketed U.S. consumers). In the days before she arrived, Mexican telecom and media billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego urged [2] that the two governments consider legalization and regulation of illegal drugs as one way to stem the violence. So did U.S.-based drug policy watchdog groups. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based drug policy alliance, said: "The best gift that Secretary Clinton Could deliver to the Mexicans would be to break the taboo open on honest consideration of all drug policy options." Of course an end to prohibition, even of marijuana (which accounts for a good amount of the cartels' cash flow), wasn't really discussed. Clinton instead promised to throw more cash at the problem, more surveillance hardware, etc. Though she did make a point of saying that "institution-building" had to be part of it, and that the United States and Mexico should work with civilian groups to shore up the rule of law. At least she didn't lash out against narcocorridos. Everyone else has. This musical genre popular first in northern Mexico but now elsewhere too consists of ballads popularizing the exploits of cartels and their enforcers. Earlier this year, Mexico governing conservative party suggested that musicians who pen ballads celebrating drug violence should get jail time [3]. And radio stations have been slapped with a law banning narcocorridos from the airwaves. Though it seems like a draconian idea, the censorship of narcocorridos and the bands that play them [4] has become an accepted fact in Mexico. Earlier this month wire service Ansa carried a story based on a book by prominent Mexican journalist Diego Osorno, in which he describes [5] how the cartels use narcocorridos for propaganda purposes, to legitimize the cartels' role in Mexican society and recruit impressionable youth into their networks. Even the iconic and widely admired Los Tigres del Norte [6]have been pulled into the fray over narcocorridos. I feel tremendously for what Mexico has been going through. But I am skeptical of efforts to "Jail the Messenger" as blog The Mex Files [7] puts it. Popular music has always been tied up with underworlds of one sort or another, from the tango's early days as brothel music, to Colombia's countrified vallenato genre beloved by drug bosses, to jazz's associations with Prohibition-era speakeasies. Not to mention hip-hop and inner city gangs. Censorship of criminal inroads into pop culture doesn't get at the root of the problem. Neither does waging "wars" against a basic problem of supply, demand and an inevitable criminal black market. This market and its attendant violence that rots at the rule of law will exist, somewhere, for as long as wealthy consumers create a huge market for illegal narcotics. Journalist Elijah Wald, a music expert who wrote a book on narcocorridos, maintains a website [8] with a helpful time-line of efforts to censor the music. [1] http://www.daylife.com/image/08nn3DOae6bPG?utm_source=zemanta&utm_medium=p&utm_content=08nn3DOae6bPG&utm_campaign=z1 [2] http://www.latamdaily.com/2010/03/23/good-point/ [3] http://mexfiles.net/2010/01/22/jail-the-messenger/ [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/arts/music/07narcocorrido.html [5] http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/mundo/ult94u706463.shtml [6] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/1029/los-tigres-del-norte-sing-of-censorship-bail-on-mexican-award [7] http://mexfiles.net/2010/01/22/jail-the-messenger/ [8] http://www.elijahwald.com/corrido.html

Pakistan today said it would continue to seek a peaceful resolution of all outstanding disputes in South Asia, including Kashmir, and hoped the United States would maintain its "constructive engagement to encourage this process."

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the opening session of the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue that Pakistan was committed to doing its part to facilitate the world's community effort for peace and stability in Afghanistan.

"We hope the world community will be equally responsive to our legitimate concerns and help advance common interests," he said.

Mr Qureshi also sought non-discriminatory access to vital energy resources for Pakistan so that it could pursue its economic and industrial development plans, an apparent reference to the civil nuclear cooperation deal that the country is seeking with the US on the lines of the Indo-US nuclear accord.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that today's meeting was the first Strategic Dialogue between the two countries at the level of the Foreign Ministers.

"So during the next two days, we will determine concrete steps that our countries will take to advance our work in key areas, including addressing Pakistan’s urgent energy needs and helping communities damaged by violence to rebuild. More broadly, we will discuss our goals and vision for our partnership’s long-term future and set forth a schedule for that future," she said.

"Pakistan and the United States have come together at critical moments throughout our history. We have provided aid and support to each other at trying times. We have faced wars and responded to natural disasters together. Over the years, our relationship has been tested, but it has always endured. And I am pleased we have come together again – at this critical moment – to reinforce our ties and recommit to building a partnership that will last," she said.

Ms Clinton said the US recognised the central role that Pakistan plays in promoting security and prosperity.

"And that is not only for itself but throughout South Asia. Pakistan’s stability and prosperity is in the best interests of people everywhere. Its struggles are our struggles. Its future and ours are entwined. And its people and our people share many of the same dreams, dreams we are more likely to achieve working together," she said.

Acknowledging the presence of Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani at the meeting, Ms Clinton said Pakistan stood at the front line of a struggle against violent extremism, which had inflicted terrible costs on its people.

"For months, the Taliban has waged war against the Government of Pakistan. Thousands of soldiers have given their lives to protect their country. Innocent men, women, and children have been killed in markets and schools, at police stations, and even in mosques. This violence is both senseless and part of a larger perverse strategy to destabilize Pakistan and allow extremist groups the freedom to consolidate power and plot further violence in Pakistan and beyond," she said.

According to her, the people and the Government of Pakistan had responded to these attacks with courage and resolve.

"The Pakistani authorities have recently arrested key leaders of the Taliban. The Pakistani Army continues to fight the extremists. And the democratically elected Government of Pakistan and the Pakistani people have shown extraordinary strength in their determination to rebuild their communities and rid their country of those who seek to destroy it," she said.

"So to the people and Government of Pakistan, the United States pledges our full support. You are fighting a war whose outcome is critical; first and foremost, of course, for the people of Pakistan, but it will also have regional and global repercussions. And so strengthening and advancing your security remains a key priority of our relationship," she said.

Ms Clinton said that, with this Dialogue, the US wanted to think about security in the broadest possible terms – "the full range of political, economic, and social issues that shape the daily life of people everywhere".

She noted that the US had, in addition to its humanitarian assistance to citizens displaced by violence, had significantly increased its overall non-military assistance through the Kerry-Lugar-Berman initiative, the legislation passed last year. T

"hat was a landmark, long-term investment in Pakistan’s economy and its civilian institutions. Now, we are redirecting our assistance to priorities identified by Pakistan’s democratically elected civilian government, including energy and water initiatives. And under the leadership of the United States Agency for International Development, we are increasing our efforts to promote sustainable development and broad prosperity," she said.

She stressed that today's Dialogue was the first in a series of continuing, substantive discussions that will continue in the months ahead. The next round of the Dialogue will be held later this year in Islamabad.

Ms Clinton used the opportunity to speak directly to the people of Pakistan. "Pakistan is no longer unaided, marching toward your destiny. The United States is proud to stand and march with you. But now we are called, all of us, to work, work, and more work, today, tomorrow, and the months ahead for the citizens of our countries and many others whose futures will be influenced by our partnership," she said.

In his response, Mr Qureshi spoke about the US- Pakistan partnership, especially in the fight against extremism and terrorism.

"As we recall these shining examples, we must also remember that many of these brooked sacrifices from the people of Pakistan. Red marks were placed on Pakistani cities, thousands of our innocent citizens became victims of foreign-sponsored sabotage, our society was exposed to massive refugee influx, as well as the devastating effects of illicit weapons and drugs, which continue to afflict us to this day," he said.

Mr Qureshi said Pakistan's resolute fight against militancy was evoking a stiff backlash manifested in repeated attacks and suicide bombings targeting its security personnel and innocent civilians.

"Our economy continues to incur losses to the tune of billions of dollars, yet our resolve remains undiminished because it is a matter of standing up for your principles and facing the consequences that come in its wake," he said.

Like Ms Clinton, he too referred to ups and downs in the relationship. "Whenever the relationship between the United States and Pakistan has frayed, the interests of both our nations have suffered. Whenever we have worked together, both our nations and the world have benefited," he remarked.

He said the Dialogue offered an opportunity to craft the vision of a broad-based, long-term, and enduring partnership for the 21st century.

"Such a partnership we are convinced is good for Pakistan, good for America, and good for international peace, security, and prosperity. Such a partnership is important because Pakistan is a pivotal state with over 170 million people, rich in human and national endowment, full of huge untapped natural and energy resources awaiting extraction, strategically located at the crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and representing a democratic and moderate voice in the Islamic world. Such a partnership is necessary because Pakistan and the United States have a whole range of convergent interests, including fighting the twin menace of extremism and terrorism, stabilizing Afghanistan, promoting peace and stability in South Asia, linking the economic potential of South and Central Asia, curbing nuclear proliferation, and advancing progress and prosperity in the region and beyond," he said.

"Pakistan remains engaged in a consequential effort to turn the tide against extremism and build a future of promise and hope for its people. For us, this is and will remain a strategic and moral imperative," he said.

Mr Qureshi hoped the upgraded Dialogue would help both sides take the relationship to a strategic plane. "In this regard, our point of departure must remain that positive and robust engagement between Pakistan and the U.S. is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the region and beyond," he said.

He stressed the need for close people-to-people contacts and strong public support for the initiative to succeed.

"There are great expectations from the enterprise we are launching today. I’m conscious that it will not be without its challenges or complications either. There could be doubt from within, there will be smear from without, and there may be setbacks on the way. But I am confident that we have the requisite political will on both sides to pursue it successfully and to achieve concrete results because at the end of the day, it is in the mutual interest of our two nations to work together to advance our shared objectives. I assure you, that in the worthy cause of building an enduring partnership of mutual benefit between our two countries, we will meet you more than half the way," he added.

NNN

US State Department Photos by Michael Gross.

Pemex Should Focus on Chicontepec Productivity, Commission Says

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s Hydrocarbons Commission will recommend that Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, focus on improving productivity in its $11.1 billion Chicontepec project before drilling new wells, according to a commission member.

Pemex slowed down Chicontepec drilling this year “and we won’t recommend any other cuts,” Commission Member Edgar Rangel said yesterday in an interview in Mexico City.

The Mexico City-based oil company’s board is reevaluating the Chicontepec project after it missed output targets and drilling delays last year. Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission may present as soon as this week its Chicontepec recommendations for Pemex, Rangel said.

Steve LeVine: Alaska: Confronting the Prospect of 6 Billion Barrels of Stranded Gas

Alaska -- and the so-called Sarah Palin pipeline -- are in the crosshairs of the abrupt surge of natural gas supplies in the continental United States. Leading the charge against a much-promoted pipeline to ship Alaskan natural gas into the currently glutted Lower 48 is former Sen. Ted Stevens. The locally influential Republican says the gas should be rerouted to Asia, and that if Alaska doesn't move fast, this fuel -- the equivalent of 6 billion barrels of oil -- could end up effectively stranded at home.

As the Oil Age Ends, A Return of the Canal and Rail Age?

As the Oil Age is now set to end, and as the world transitions back to Coal and other forms of electrical power generation, a key concept to think about is the matter of rolling resistance. Those CSX Railroad (CSX) commercials you may have seen on television (opens to wmv video file), for example, are essentially highlighting the greater efficiency trains have, over trucks. But of course, in the taxonomy of efficient conveyance, water transportation is close to the top. For a quick and general comparison, the standard mileage per gallon of gasoline to move one ton of freight is often cited as follows: Trucks: 155; Railroads: 413; Ships/Barges: 576.

ConocoPhillips to half stake in LUKOIL

NEW YORK (AFP) – US oil group ConocoPhillips said Wednesday it planned to sell halve its stake in Russian oil producer LUKOIL as part of its move to sell 10 billion dollars of assets.

The US company currently owns 20 percent of equity in Russia's second-biggest oil producer.

China imports 300 times more Russian electricity in 2009 than in 2008

The electricity China imported from Russia saw a surge in 2009, up more than 316 times than in 2008 to reach 738 million kilowatt-hours, according to the latest statistics from north China's Harbin Customs.

Urban development author: ‘Skyscrapers are over’

Skyscrapers are old news, green spaces are useless and building parking lots is a waste of time — that was just part of a message the keynote speaker delivered to a roomful of businesspeople for Tuesday morning’s release of the annual State of Downtown Baltimore report.

But urban development author James Howard Kunstler also said that Baltimore is one of the “lucky” cities poised to adapt to the urban future. That’s good news for a crowd that had just finished flipping through a report commissioned by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore showing that jobs, population and commercial real estate rentals and development were all down in 2009.

Cities emerging as epicentres of sustainability

It is no coincidence that RICS uses the concept of the 'city' as a vehicle for furthering the sustainability debate – just look around you. The Middle East is using the city as a way of housing growing populations and demonstrating growing economic influence in the world; China is doing the same, more aggressively, as it moves populations from the countryside into the city; and the west is using the city concept to test new ways of living, as San Francisco's sustainable and man-made Treasure Island shows.

Building a denser world

I imagine that as we see the price of fossil fuels continue to rise we will see more and more dense urban areas built out of necessity. It would be nice if we could work to reform zoning laws to anticipate this need, perhaps through a country-wide ‘open-source new urbanism’ project. Such a project would provide local communities with the sort of strong, minimalist zoning laws needed to build more densely while preserving a natural aesthetic (and not succumbing to the Disneyfication of neighborhoods which so many upper-crust new urbanism projects fall prey to – though this is often a result of over-zoning our new urban areas rather than the type of minimalist planning that an organic community requires).

We will consider Pakistan's request for nuclear deal: Hillary

In the clearest sign yet from Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said the U.S. would “consider” Pakistan's request for a civil nuclear deal as Islamabad sought atomic cooperation and military hardware to bring itself on par with India.

However, her remarks were tempered with the rider that the civil nuclear deal with India did not happen “easily or quickly” and was the result of “many, many” years of strategic dialogue.

Nuclear power without radioactivity

Radiation-free nuclear fusion could be possible in the future claim a team of international scientists. This could lead to development of clean and sustainable electricity production.

Despite the myriad of solutions to the energy crisis being developed, nuclear fusion remains the ultimate goal as it has the potential to provide vast quantities of sustainable and clean electricity. But nuclear energy currently comes with a serious environmental and health hazard side effect - radiation. For fusion to gain widespread acceptance, it must be able to produce radiation-free energy but the key to this has so far remained elusive, explains Heinrich Hora at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

U.K. Failed to Secure Reactor Guarantee From EDF, Lawmakers Say

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. government, which last year divested its stake in British Energy when the utility was bought by Electricite de France SA, should have ensured the deal included guarantees on building nuclear plants, lawmakers said.

Exclusive Excerpt: Hack the Planet

The battle lines on geoengineering have begun to take shape. On one side are modern-day romantics, who consider geoengineering an a priori violation of humans’ role as planetary citizens to let nature be natural and take a humble place within it. Better to solve the climate problem by reducing our impact on the planet, they say. Prominent among their antecedents is American forestry ecologist and writer Aldo Leopold, who asserted in A Sand County Almanac in 1949 that environmental problems demanded that man change his role from “conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it.”

Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter

(AP) -- The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while a new study shows honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides.

Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market.

Disputed isle in Bay of Bengal disappears into sea

(AP) -- For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island's gone.

New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.

Housewives in China encouraged to live low-carbon life

The event suggests citizens have 15 energy-saving habits, such as saving on water, using recyclable bags for shopping, and not drinking bottled drinks.

Peter Foster: The church of Peak Oil

The problem with Peak Oil the theory isn’t that it’s wrong in noting that industry depletes resources, and that oil may, sooner or later, reach a production plateau, it’s that it sees those facts through a moralistically-charged and economically-challenged lens. It also embodies extraordinary faith in Big Government and grass roots activism.

PO Theorists fail — or more precisely refuse — to grasp that the best method of dealing with any form of commercial scarcity is market-based ingenuity, not some weird combination of Big Brother and Hippie co-ops.

The United Kingdom's Energy Security Debate

The ITPOES report is broad in scope but focuses on several issue areas that, if corrections are made, can have a positive impact on UK energy security. Among these issue areas are: transport and mobility, the impact of oil in the agricultural sector on food and food prices (and incidentally on water usage and clean water availability), and the changing nature of power generation and distribution. Their report’s recommendations support a number of policy responses that will reduce the demand for oil in an attempt to bring demand into equilibrium with the physical rate at which oil can be extracted (as opposed to predicting a terminal decline in oil availability itself). The ITPOES report is pessimistic on this last point, given the long lead time it will take to move off an oil economy.

Peak oil coming soon? Let’s see what it might look like

The words “peak oil” are being heard more often these days, and in increasingly exalted corridors, but what do they actually mean? Mere inconvenience and higher prices at the pump? Or TEOTWAWKI (for “the end of the world as we know it”)?

Let’s look at some of the scenarios various experts have have imagined:

Oil Falls for First Time in Three Days on U.S. Supplies, Dollar

(Bloomberg) -- Crude oil declined for the first time in three days after an industry report showed U.S. stockpiles at an eight-month high, indicating demand may be slow to recover in the world’s biggest fuel market.

Oil pared yesterday’s advance after the American Petroleum Institute reported that U.S. crude inventories increased by 7.51 million barrels to 351.5 million. An Energy Department report today may show supplies rose 1.65 million barrels, the eighth weekly gain, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. The dollar jumped to a 10-month high against the euro, damping the investment appeal of commodities.

“Demand is improving in line with the gradual recovery of the economy, but it’s still weak and behind more normal levels for this time of year,” said Thina Saltvedt, a commodities analyst at Nordea Bank AB in Oslo.

'Kurdistan ready for oil exports'

Iraq's Kurdistan region is ready to start exporting oil at a rate of 100,000 barrels per day as soon as a new Iraq government is formed, its Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami said today.

Aramco, Total to Raise Refinery Financing in ‘Months’

(Bloomberg) -- Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest state-owned oil company, and Total SA expect to raise $8 billion in debt financing for a joint refinery and petrochemical project in the “coming months,” the venture’s chief said.

The 400,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Jubail on Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf coast will cost more than $12 billion, Salem Shaheen, chief executive officer of Saudi Aramco Total Refining and Petrochemical Co., said at a World Refining Association conference in Abu Dhabi today.

China's oil-refining capacity to grow by 30 million tons

Based on the 30 million tons added to the oil-refining capacity last year, China's petroleum sector will add an additional 30 million-ton oil refining capacity in 2010, reporters learned from the 15th China International LPG Seminar currently underway in Qingdao.

According to industry experts, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corporation completed the construction of oil-refining facilities in Huizhou, Guangdong province, Fujian province and Dushanzi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in 2009. This increased the oil refining capacity by 30 million tons.

O’Malley, Undeterred by Refiners’ Problems, Considers Buying

(Bloomberg) -- Thomas O’Malley, the chairman of European refiner Petroplus Holdings AG, is on the hunt for U.S. refining assets as he seeks to take advantage of plants hurt by depressed prices and shrinking profits.

“I’m interested in refining assets across the U.S.,” he said in an interview at the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association conference in Phoenix. He expects more companies will be putting plants up for sale as they wrestle with diminished demand for gasoline and diesel.

BG Group, China Sign Australia’s Biggest LNG Deal

(Bloomberg) -- China National Offshore Oil Corp. will buy liquefied natural gas from BG Group Plc’s Queensland Curtis venture in Australia’s largest export deal for the fuel.

The companies signed an agreement in Beijing today to supply 3.6 million metric tons of LNG annually over 20 years starting 2014, Australian Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said in a statement. The value of the deal would fluctuate with the price of crude oil, and be $40 billion at $70 a barrel, BG Chief Executive Officer Frank Chapman said.

Chevron unit says Russian law ‘may impede' exploration

Russia's law on foreign investment in strategic sectors “may impede” oil exploration because of the security procedure for license winners, the head of Chevron Corp.'s Russian unit said.

Lukoil Swings to Fourth-Quarter Profit, Misses Estimates

(Bloomberg) -- OAO Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, posted a fourth-quarter profit following a loss a year earlier after crude prices rose.

Russia's gas transit surges

The volume of Russian gas transit through Ukraine to Europe rose 70.3% to 18.9 billion cubic metres in the first two months of the year, Ukraine's Fuel & Energy Ministry said today.

BP Says Devon’s Brazil Assets Will Yield 100,000 Barrels a Day

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc’s Brazil assets, purchased from Devon Energy Corp. this month, will produce at least 100,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of the decade, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of exploration and production.

“The long-term view is that Brazil needs to be a multi- 100,000 barrel a day business,” Suttles said in an interview in Utrecht, Netherlands yesterday. “If we didn’t believe that that potential was there, we wouldn’t have done the deal.”

Venezuela Asks Electricity Heads to Resign, Noticias24 Reports

(Bloomberg) -- Venezuela’s Electricity Minister Ali Rodriguez asked the heads of seven public energy companies to resign, Noticias24 reported, after President Hugo Chavez declared a national electricity crisis last month.

NTPC Can’t Sell Power at Market Rates, Economic Times Reports

State-controlled NTPC should focus on generating power from wind and solar energy sources rather than making profit by selling power at market prices, the newspaper said citing Brahma.

Pakistan to Increase Fuel, Electricity Prices Next Month: Dawn

(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s government will increase prices of domestic fuel and electricity from next month, the Dawn newspaper said, without saying where it got the information.

Decision on wildflower protection expected soon

DENVER — A federal judge said he'll decide quickly whether the government erred in not giving protection to a wildflower that grows only in one place in the world — oil shale outcroppings in northeast Utah and northwest Colorado.

Peak Oil Investments I'm Putting My Money On: Part III, Natural Gas Vehicles

To understand why we should not expect too much from NGVs, I find it useful to start with the reasons proponents expect that NGVs should be able to displace oil. T. Boone Pickens is the leading proponent of this strategy, so let's take the main points from his Pickens Plan.

Norwegian Automaker Peddles Its Runabout

With the Bay Area expected to be an early proving ground for the electric car economy, an executive from Think, the Norwegian automaker, rolled into town in the company’s battery-powered City urban runabout.

Higher-profile electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt will go on sale here later this year, and Think wants to make sure its car gets space in municipal and corporate garages.

Shadow cast on 'free' energy saving light bulbs

Energy suppliers with more than 50,000 customers (currently only the ‘big six’ of British Gas, EDF, Eon, Npower, Scottish & Southern, and Scottish Power) have to help their customers pay for energy efficiency measures, such as cavity wall insulation and loft insulation. According to the government’s own figures, sending four free bulbs to 345 households (1,377 bulbs in total) saves 68.83 tonnes of CO2 over the lifetime of the bulbs (provided they’re used in high-use fittings), saves each household £14 a year, and costs the supplier £1,886.

For the same money, an energy supplier could make a 20% contribution (the amount the government assumes suppliers will put in) towards the cost of solid wall insulation for one of Britain’s 6.6m old and poorly-insulated solid-wall properties. This would cut a typical household’s gas bill by £420 a year, and save the same amount of CO2 as all those bulbs put together – assuming that all of them do actually get used.

Energy-efficient homes make householders complacent

SURVEYS of hundreds of UK households reveal that people who have made their houses more energy efficient are more likely to indulge in small excesses - turning up the heating, for example, or keeping it on for longer.

Small excesses add up to large costs. The results of the studies - seven of them in total - suggest that such energy creep could wipe out as much as half of the anticipated savings from making homes more energy efficient.

Dry rivers cut power supply in south-west China

Beijing - Low water levels at hydropower plants have caused electricity shortages in parts of south-western China, adding to the devastation brought by the worst drought for 60 years, state media said on Wednesday.

The drought 'paralyzed 90 per cent of hydropower stations' in the Guangxi region, which relies heavily on hydroelectric power, the China Daily newspaper reported.

The water level above Guangxi's key Baise dam had fallen to a record low of less than 190 metres, forcing officials to suspend outflow to the Pearl River in the neighbouring province of Guangdong, the newspaper said.

Ships Can Cut Third From Emissions by Slowing, Lobby Group Says

(Bloomberg) -- The global shipping industry can cut a third off its emissions by better utilizing an oversupply of vessels competing for cargoes, a lobby group said.

How and Why the Northeastern US States' Cap and Trade is Working

Around this time last year, as talks in Congress about how to curb carbon and give clean energy and jobs a boost were intensifying, I briefly exhorted Obama to take a gander at the cap and trade system already up and running in the United States. Called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, it's a system enacted between 10 northeastern states to curb carbon via the familiar cap and trade mechanism. It's been up and running for six years now--and it's working.

Senate climate bill details still unfinished

(Reuters) - Senators negotiating a bill to address global warming fears and encourage the use of more alternative energy in the United States struggled over details on Tuesday as lawmakers approached a two-week break without a full legislative proposal yet in hand.

E.P.A. to Seek More Data on Emissions

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed adding the oil and gas sector and facilities that inject carbon dioxide into the ground to the greenhouse gas sources that are required to report their annual emissions to the government.

Rising waters threaten Nile Delta

As the sea on Egypt's coastline rises, (Hamza says by 20cm during the last century, a statistic that leading Egyptian government scientists concur with) salt-water infiltrates the Delta's soil from below, and destroys the farming land.

The consequences of this are very serious for Egypt, which relies on the Delta for food production.

Today, as Egypt's population continues to grow, and as it spends more and more money on food imports, the country cannot afford to lose any more productive land. Gesturing to the salty wastes around me, Hamza says: "It is a human disaster, an economic disaster, an agricultural disaster, and it will lead not only to poverty but also to hunger".

Greenland ice sheet losing mass on northwest coast

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet, which has been increasing during the past decade over its southern region, is now moving up its northwest coast, according to a new international study.

Population growth should be curbed: conservationist Goodall

LONDON (AFP) – Humans should have fewer babies to help the global battle against climate change, according to the renowned British primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall.

Goodall, whose 1960s research on chimpanzees changed perceptions of relations between humans and animals, fears the controversial issue has slipped down the agenda in the debate about man's impact on the environment.

"It's very frustrating as people don't want to address this topic," said the 75-year-old English scientist. "It's our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we've inflicted on the planet."

This afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to conduct its confirmation hearing for Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu. Liu, who was nominated by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, presents a volatile mix of aggressive left-wing ideology and raw inexperience. It’s the rare nominee who could threaten to make the Ninth Circuit -- long the laughingstock of the federal appellate courts -- even worse, but that’s exactly the threat that Liu embodies.

Let me first acknowledge what is not at issue: Liu is clearly very bright and talented, and he has compiled an impressive list of achievements, including a Rhodes Scholarship and a clerkship with Justice Ginsburg. As the son of Taiwanese immigrants, he has an inspiring life story. And he possesses a pleasing demeanor.

But as Liu himself stated in his testimony against the confirmation of Justice Alito, “Intellect, however, is a necessary but not sufficient credential.” Nor, of course, do an inspiring life story and a pleasing demeanor go to the core of the judicial role. Rather, what ought to be of central concern, as Liu rightly put it, is “the nominee’s ‘judicial philosophy,’ a somewhat amorphous term that encompasses his perspective on the role of the courts in a constitutional democracy.”

The record of the typical nominee reveals only indirect -- though often highly probative -- clues about the nominee’s judicial philosophy. But in Liu’s case, we are not limited to the broad set of inferences that can reasonably be drawn from, say, his longtime membership on (and current chairmanship of) the board of directors of the American Constitution Society -- which calls itself “one of the nation’s leading progressive legal organizations” -- or from his service on the boards of directors of such organizations as the ACLU of Northern California, the National Women’s Law Center, the Public Welfare Foundation, and Chinese for Affirmative Action.

Beyond such indirect evidence, we have the nominee’s own lengthy confession of his views -- his self-indictment. Take, for example, the book, pleadingly titled Keeping Faith with the Constitution, in which Liu and his two fellow-lefty co-authors try to slap the deceptive label “constitutional fidelity” on the shoddy “living Constitution” gambit that proponents of liberal judicial activism have used to redefine the Constitution to mean whatever they want it to mean. In malleable terms that would make Bill Clinton a model of marital fidelity, Liu explains, “What we mean by fidelity is that the Constitution should be interpreted in ways that adapt its principles and its text to the challenges and conditions of our society in every succeeding generation.” Liu is able to attack originalism -- the genuinely faithful method of constitutional interpretation -- only by misrepresentations and distortions.



Wonder of wonders, Liu’s freewheeling constitutional approach yields a plethora of extreme left-wing results, including his support for the invention of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Also noteworthy is his denunciation of the traditional American principles of “free enterprise,” “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” as “code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections” (see point 3 here).

Perhaps most striking, in part because Liu presents his position as so modest, is his law-review article “Rethinking Constitutional Welfare Rights,” which argues that judges (usually in an “interstitial” role) may legitimately invent constitutional rights to a broad range of social “welfare” goods, including education, shelter, subsistence, and health care. To be sure, it’s easy to be numbed by Liu’s soporific rhetoric in passages like this one:

My thesis is that the legitimacy of judicial recognition of welfare rights depends on socially situated modes of reasoning that appeal not to transcendent moral principles for an ideal society, but to the culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society.#...#I argue that judicial recognition of welfare rights is best conceived as an act of interpreting the shared understandings of particular welfare goods as they are manifested in our institutions, laws, and evolving social practices.

Or this one:

The problem for courts is to determine, at the moment of decision, whether our collective values on a given issue have converged to a degree that they can be persuasively crystallized and credibly absorbed into legal doctrine. This difficult task requires keen attention to the trajectory of social norms reflected in public policies, institutions, and practices, as well as predictive judgment as to how a judicial decision may help forge or frustrate a social consensus.

But the vast discretionary judicial role that Liu urges -- one that reduces Congress and the state legislatures to quasi-administrative bodies -- fundamentally misunderstands (to restate Liu’s test of judicial philosophy) “the role of the courts in a constitutional democracy.” And the recklessness Liu would show in wielding judicial power is evident from his breezy conclusion that his proposed approach to constitutional welfare rights would invalidate Congress’s method for allocating federal funds to states for the education of low-income children and would also strike down California’s system of school finance.



It gets even worse. Some folks have evidently misconstrued Liu’s position on school choice as an exception to his hard-Left record on constitutional issues. But Liu supports only those school-choice programs that advance his goal of racial quotas in schools, and he views even those programs as a second-best alternative to his preferred means of direct judicial imposition of interdistrict racial-balancing orders. (Busing, anyone? Ah, yes, that’s the cure to our educational ills. Just make those four-year-olds spend three hours a day on the bus.) It’s highly doubtful that Liu considers any other sort of school-choice program to be constitutionally permissible.

Liu is pressing to revive “the idea of remedying societal discrimination as a justification for affirmative action,” an idea that, as Justice Powell warned in 1986, would result in forever “imposing discriminatory legal remedies that work against innocent people.” To Liu, the innocent victims of racial preferences count for nothing. As he bluntly puts it, “if it seems like the cumulative effects of societal discrimination will take a long time to remedy, that is because it will.” For Liu, concerns that “remedying societal discrimination#...#has no foreseeable endpoint” are nothing more than (as he quotes Justice Brennan) “a fear of too much justice.” Hence also his call for all Americans to make sacrifices as reparations for slavery.

Liu’s woeful inexperience compounds his deficiencies of judicial philosophy. He is only 39, and he has even less experience than his age might suggest. He has been a member of the bar for less than eleven years, and he practiced law for less than two years. Under a neutral application of the ABA’s rules -- i.e., “a prospective nominee to the federal bench ordinarily should have at least twelve years’ experience in the practice of law,” and “substantial courtroom and trial experience as a lawyer or trial judge is important” -- Liu would presumptively receive a “not qualified” rating and be very fortunate to eke out a “qualified.” But somehow the ABA’s process was jiggered to give Liu the ridiculous rating of “well qualified.”

To top it all off, Liu made a wildly distorted and incompetent, if not deliberately dishonest, attack on John Roberts’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and he offered demagogic testimony against Samuel Alito’s nomination. Those facts alone ought to be enough to disqualify a nominee, yet they haven’t kept Liu from eagerly plotting his path to a Ninth Circuit seat as a stepping-stone to his goal of a Supreme Court nomination.

Goodwin Liu has amply shown that he has an unsound judicial philosophy and that he cannot be trusted with judicial power. His nomination should be vigorously contested and defeated.

— Edward Whelan is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and is a regular contributor to NRO’s “Bench Memos” blog, where he has written extensively about the Liu nomination.

---

Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama

U.S. officials are finally acknowledging what the governments of Mexico, Columbia and other drug exporting nations have been saying for years: your domestic drug problem is of your own making.

Starting in earnest with the 1980's "Just Say No to Drugs" campaign under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to stem the flow of illegal drugs in to America.

But foreign governments have replied that the most effective way to decrease the flow of drugs would be to cut the demand for drugs here. That has proved mission impossible for the government as domestic drug use has fallen off in some categories but, overall, remains a problem.

And in Mexico, the flow of drugs in to the United States is coupled with a flow of weapons in to Mexico, which has sent violence rates in cities there soaring as powerful drug cartels battle for supremacy.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signaled a new spirit of cooperation with Mexican officials (pictured above with a Mexican official), saying the U.S. government will now accept its share of responsibility for drug use here and violence there.

Clinton added that the United States would soon release a new policy designed to reduce drug demand.

To me, this is where the good words of the administration will fall flat after smacking in to the realities of life in America.

How will the government stop people from using recreational drugs? Unless it is willing to at least discuss the possibility of some drug decriminalization (Clinton said decriminalizing narcotics was not under consideration), I don't see it happening in our lifetimes.

For far too many people, the use of drugs is a regular part of life. They may be illegal drugs, such as marijuana, or legal intoxicants, such as alcohol, but they now have a permanent role in the lives of millions.

The problem is that we are getting mixed messages on drugs in this country.

Look at how medical marijuana initiatives are spreading through the country. If so many state governments are acknowledging the benefits of marijuana use for some, why is it still treated as a dangerous drug.

U.S. policy on drugs is a confused mess. We know the current system of drug enforcement doesn't work.

I think it's time to think about a new policy of limited decriminalization to see some different results.

　

 

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This week Sam Sifton at the Times pens a muted love letter to Chin Chin, an upscale Chinese restaurant on East 49th Street that's been in business since 1987. And although "a certain roughness to the plating of the food makes the place a little more casual than perhaps was the idea in the original business plan," Sifton says the old dowager's still got it: "Order a dry martini and allow the pressures of the city to recede in its glow. Chin Chin is as American as pork dumplings and sticky spareribs, cold noodles with sesame sauce, three-glass chicken and fried rice." In the Times's $25 and Under column, Ligaya Mishan enjoys "an all-star lineup of soups" at Pilar, a tiny Cuban restaurant on the border of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy.

"The world has never known a more perfect meatball hero," declares Robert Sietsema at the Village Voice, in his review of The Meatball Shop on the Lower East Side. "While the $9 price tag may seem excessive, especially with a similar-size hero available at every pizza parlor in town for $5 or $6, note that this one comes with a baby spinach salad topped with lemon vinaigrette and thinly sliced apples, transforming your hero into a balanced meal." His Voice colleague Sarah DiGregorio files from Jackson Heights, where she reports, "There's only one place I know where you can get Bangladeshi trotter stew and Tibetan spiced tripe in the same room, and that's Merit Kabob and Dumpling Palace, an accurately named compound restaurant in Jackson Heights."

The New Yorker's Lauren Collins finally gets around to A Voce Columbus in the Time Warner Center, which just isn't punk enough for her. "As corporate as it gets... A Voce has its pleasures: light, space, cheery if scripted service—'I’m sorry to be inhospitable,' a host said, before refusing to seat an incomplete party, and, then, hospitably, thinking the better of it. It’s a Fresh Air Fund of a restaurant, inducing in New Yorkers the comfort and boredom they would feel in Scottsdale or Charlotte."

New York features a glowing twofer review of Saltie and Cheeky, which "may sound like the headliners of some downtown burlesque show, or maybe Snow White’s eighth and ninth dwarves. In fact, they’re two new sandwich shops, a category that’s experiencing almost unchecked growth in these recessionary times. These two, though, stand out from the pack, mostly because they deliver something distinctive and delicious, in modest surroundings that are still imbued with their owners’ personality and passion."

"Mile End, a two-month-old restaurant in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, may be the first restaurant to bring the Montreal deli tradition to New York City," declares Time Out's Gabriella Gershenson, herself a onetime Montreal resident. "Mile End showcases some of the country’s most beloved regional specialties—smoked meat, Montreal-style bagels and yes, poutine—with Brooklyn flavor: The coffee is Stumptown, the cream cheese is Ben’s, and the brisket is from Pat LaFrieda. The subway-tiled space, with its few picnic-style tables and sparse counter seating, is in line with the borough’s DIY aesthetic, and the waitresses are dressed in subdued librarian tones. The restaurant does for Canadian cuisine what Frankies did for Italian—it’s hipsterfying it."

And GQ's Alan Richman luxuriates in Francophilia at midtown east bistro La Mangeoire, an "ever-so-unassuming establishment" which "has been in business since 1976, but never with anybody like Christian Delouvrier in the kitchen...For a chef as talented as Delouvrier (Parker Meridien, Alain Ducasse’s Les Celebrities, Lespinasse) a geographic adjustment is hardly a problem, particularly on the bistro level, which is where La Mangeoire operates. The challenge is the obvious downscale in grandeur—to be honest, La Mangeoire has none. And yet there you will find Delouvrier, not simply cooking but in the kitchen at lunch and dinner almost every day."

COMMENT
SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS
by David Remnick
MARCH 29, 2010

For decades, mainstream Israeli politicians have taken pride in their fingertip feel for the subtleties of American life and politics. Israeli diplomats know the meeting halls of the Midwest almost as well as they do the breakfast room at the Regency Hotel. So it has been disturbing to see, during the 2008 Presidential race and after, that some right-wing members of the Israeli political élite, along with some ordinary Israelis, often seem to derive their most acute sense of Barack Obama from Fox News and the creepier nooks of the blogosphere.

Polls and conversations with right-leaning Israelis have long reflected a distrust of Obama and a free-floating anxiety about what they imagine to be his view of the world—specifically, his indifference to Israel. At the margins, and sometimes within them, one even hears the familiar aspersions about the President’s middle name, his childhood interlude in Indonesia, and his marination in a South Side milieu supposedly composed of incendiary preachers, black nationalists, fading Weathermen, and (Oy! Vey ist mir!) Palestinian intellectuals.

Most Israelis were convinced of Bill Clinton’s capacity to reconcile a deep admiration for Israel with a desire to end the occupation of the conquered territories and the suffering of the Palestinians. The Israeli right certainly appreciated George W. Bush for his unquestioning embrace, though most Israeli politicians say they would have preferred that more attention had been paid to the nuclear plants in Iran than to the phantom weapons in Baghdad. In Obama, however, many Israelis think that they are dealing with an American leader who, as one official put it, “has no special feeling for us.” Obama’s customary cool feels icy.

This month’s diplomatic drama, which was set off during Vice-President Biden’s visit by the announcement of sixteen hundred housing units planned for Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, reached its sad nadir last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Hagai Ben-Artzi, declared on Israeli radio that Obama was an “anti-Semite.” No one, not even Netanyahu, should be denied his right to an idiot relation, but the remark is less readily dismissed when one recalls reports (later denied) that the Prime Minister himself has referred to David Axelrod (whose West Wing office featured an “Obama for President” sign in Hebrew) and Rahm Emanuel (a civilian volunteer in the Israeli Army during the first Gulf War) as “self-hating Jews.”

The Netanyahu government suffers from a troubling degree of instability, thanks to its far-right coalition partners (including its bigoted foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman) and its ineptitude. The insult to Biden, an ardent Zionist, was just the most recent blunder, following the humiliation of a resident diplomat from Turkey (Israel’s closest friend in the Muslim world) and of the Brazilian President, to say nothing of its presumed role in the assassination of a Hamas military leader on the soil of one of the few open-minded countries in the region. The professionals in Washington and Jerusalem share sufficient diplomatic agility to paper over this latest unpleasantness, but the memory of the trivial-seeming aspects of the dispute—the affronts, the lacerating phone calls—obscures a more unsettling pattern: a deep Israeli misreading of the President and an ignorance of the diversity of opinion among American Jews and in the United States in general.

Take Obama’s supposed indifference to Jews and the State of Israel. Among the many Chicagoans who are apt to find this idea hilarious is the one politician who has beaten him, Bobby Rush. In 2000, Obama, a bored member of the Illinois state senate, challenged Rush, a popular incumbent, for the seat in the state’s First Congressional District, on the South Side. Rush, a former leader of the Black Panthers, viewed Obama as the creation of cynical white liberals—particularly Jewish liberals, who constituted, in his term, a “cabal.”

As a rising politician with Ivy League connections, Obama had financial backing from all over, including from a class of young black entrepreneurs. But he has had Jewish mentors throughout his career. Philanthropists like Bettylu Saltzman, Penny Pritzker, and Lester Crown were crucial to his campaigns. His friend and neighbor the late Arnold Jacob Wolf was a rabbi. Michelle Obama’s cousin Capers C. Funnye, Jr., is the first African-American member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and the spiritual leader of Beth Shalom, a congregation on the South Side. One of Obama’s closest colleagues in Springfield was Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew, with whom he shared an office suite in the Capitol building; Obama acted as Silverstein’s shabbos goy, turning on lights and pushing elevator buttons for him on Saturdays.


Obama’s Jewish friends and supporters report that they were convinced of his ease among Jews and of his advocacy for a two-state solution, with an emphasis on justice for the Palestinians and on real security for the Israelis. Obama also listened carefully to the arguments of Palestinian friends, such as the historian Rashid Khalidi. And why not? Obama told fund-raising audiences that it was entirely possible to support Israel, even passionately, without endorsing the platform of Likud and the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. One of his mentors in Chicago, Abner Mikva, a former congressman, federal judge, and counsel to Bill Clinton, jokingly told the Chicago Jewish News during the campaign, “I think when this is all over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.” O.K., not quite, but he did win seventy-eight per cent of the Jewish vote. Only African-Americans voted for him in higher numbers.

In Israel, however, Netanyahu’s Likud-led government strangely misperceives the currents of American opinion. Netanyahu and his ministers are in the habit of speaking directly to adoring audiences at AIPAC and other groups led by older, conservative philanthropists; they largely overlook younger, more liberal constituencies, which for years have been more questioning of Israel policy. They have shown distinctly less affection for J Street, the newly formed lobbying group intended as a counterweight to AIPAC.

In fairness, many Americans see Israeli politics in atavistic terms, too, yearning for a Labor Party that shattered long ago. Even as they rightly deplore the injustice of the occupation and last year’s war in Gaza, they fail to recognize the complexity of trying to reach a final resolution when the Palestinians are so deeply and ruinously divided and when so many Israeli supporters of a two-state solution have, after Oslo, Camp David, and Taba, despaired of getting a workable deal.

The essential question for Israel is not whether it has the friendship of the White House—it does—but whether Netanyahu remains the arrogant rejectionist that he was in the nineteen-nineties, the loyal son of a radical believer in Greater Israel, forever settling scores with the old Labor élites and making minimal concessions to ward off criticism from Washington and retain the affections of his far-right coalition partners. Is he capable of engaging with the moderate and constructive West Bank leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, and making history? Does there exist a Netanyahu 2.0, a Nixon Goes to China figure who will act with an awareness that demographic realities—the growth not only of the Palestinian population in the territories but also of the Arab and right-wing Jewish populations in Israel proper—make the status quo untenable as well as unjust?

Without the creation of a viable contiguous Palestinian state, comprised of a land area equivalent to all of the West Bank and Gaza (allowing for land swaps), and with East Jerusalem as its capital, it is impossible to imagine a Jewish and democratic future for Israel. There is nothing the Israeli leadership could do to make the current fantasy of an indifferent American leadership become a reality faster than to get lost in the stubborn fantasy of sustaining the status quo. ♦

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/03/29/100329taco_talk_remnick?printable=true#ixzz0j6Z6MPIi

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Search for more information about Big Bad Bibi at 4torah.com.

There was a piece in Politico last week that did an impressive job of simultaneously capturing and embodying why so much of America thinks our political system sucks. The headline read “Elite Donors Dodge the DNC,” and the gist was that the Obama administration has so badly bungled the care and feeding of big-money contributors that fat cat Dems aren’t flocking to write their party big checks at the same rate rich Republicans did when the Bushies ran this town. Oh, sure, Politico acknowledges, “the DNC’s fundraising is humming along at a record pace,” but last year’s haul was nowhere near the level of money-grubbing achieved by the RNC under similar one-party rule. And a prime reason, Politico posits, is that only 10 percent of the president’s biggest fundraisers, many of whom are “chafing at not getting enough love from the administration,” have ponied up the max.

A special raspberry went out to the recently kicked-to-the-curb Desiree Rogers for, among other sins, failing to make sure important supporters got their White House Christmas cards. Another notable outrage was not inviting enough big donors to the state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. One dissed contributor huffed that the event was treated more like “a big staff party” than an opportunity to smooch the backsides of those who’d worked long and hard to fund Obama’s campaign. (Admittedly, the contributor didn’t put it in those exact terms.) More broadly, according to Politico’s interviews and its perusal of White House visitor logs, the Obamas have thus far failed to invite major funders to nearly as many private White House tours, holiday parties, Camp David sleepovers, and private legislative briefings as did their predecessors.

But all is not lost, Politico assures us. Among other signs that lessons are being learned in Obamaland, Rogers’s replacement will be Julianna Smoot, who “brings a variety of strengths to the job: She’s detail-oriented, she’s a strong manager, and she knows both the political and the donor worlds.” “A lot of things need to be fixed,” one White House insider confided.

Well, color me happy. How nice to hear that this administration will at last begin showing big donors the proper degree of pucker. By all means, screw change we can believe in. Let’s stick with the tried-and-true model of giving the most attention, access, and deference to those who fork over the most cash. Financially aiding a presidential candidate who shares your progressive governing vision is all well and good, but, honestly, what’s the point if the guy doesn’t invite you over for movie night from time to time?

I realize all the rich Dems who tirelessly squeezed checks out of their rich friends for the campaign just want to feel appreciated. Fat cats need love too. But wasn’t part of Obama’s explicit appeal his vow to move politics away from the business-as-usual, pay-for-access mentality? For big-money Dems to jump on that bandwagon and then get their panties in a bunch when Obama tries to stick with that whole “change” mantra suggests a pathological arrogance: I knew he’d keep all those other losers at arm’s length, but I assumed he’d make an exception for me.

Besides, didn’t much of America—including establishment Washington and high-minded liberals—spend several years loudly and self-righteously denouncing the oh-so-vulgar Clintons for taking donor maintenance to new and creative lows? I can remember the tut-tutting over the White House kaffeeklatsches like it was yesterday. And with all the finger-wagging about how Bill and Hill violated the sanctity of the Lincoln bedroom, you’d have thought the First Couple was running hookers out of the joint.

Today, it seems, we are supposed to be amazed at the way the Obama White House has dropped the ball on something so basic as sucking up. This, at least, is the breathless storyline being pedaled by Politico: If this president doesn’t climb down off his high horse and get busy “reenergizing major donors”—which the piece points out is “one of the quickest ways to fill the Democrats’ war chest”—slights like the forgotten holiday cards could result in “major repercussions in a year when the Democratic National Committee is going to need every possible resource to help the party’s congressional committees stave off major losses in the midterm elections.”

Indeed, to some degree, it’s hard to tell precisely how exercised big donors are versus how hard Politico is trying to generate buzz. Despite its alarmist frame, the piece is sprinkled with caveats—including that the DNC is, in fact, raising piles of cash, that it’s enjoying a rare funding edge over the RNC, that it is contending with other challenges (like the Obama-imposed prohibition on donations from lobbyists and PACs), and that most of the donors contacted say they do not feel neglected by the White House (although, what self-respecting liberal would admit to being miffed that his contribution hadn’t bought more ass-kissing?). So maybe, hopefully, this is at least partially a case of journalistic overreach. Plenty of donors surely wish Obama would pitch a little more woo their way, but the idea that a significant number would sit on their checkbooks out of pique is too depressing. With pathetic, self-important friends like that, who needs political enemies?

Michelle Cottle is a senior editor of The New Republic.

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