Troy already posted on the revelation that Verizon is required by  FISA court order to turn over to the Obama Administration all data on all telephone calls made via their service. My husband joked that for the first time in his adult life he was happy to be an AT&T customer, but I think we all know that Verizon is not alone.

So this means that all of our phone call records are in the hands of the federal government, a notion straight out of the most dystopic fiction.

Member KC Mulville writes in the comments to the aforementioned post that the government is just collecting metadata. He says it's just public information and that the danger is only with what the government does with that data (other than identify you in about four seconds flat).

Benjamin Wittes over at Brookings picks up this point, trying to make sense of the FISA Court order that required Verizon Business Network Services, under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, to turn over all the goods.

He notes that the order began the day of the Boston bombings and will end in mid-July. He says he has a really hard time imagining the application that produced it. He writes:

To acquire such an order, the government does not have to do much—just as it doesn’t have to do much in a criminal investigation: It merely has to offer, in pertinent part, “a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation . . . to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

So I’m trying to imagine what conceivable [set] of facts would render all telephony metadata generated in the United States “relevant” to an investigation, presumably of the bombing. This would include, of course, all telephony metadata that, as matters turned out, postdates the killing of one bomber and the capture of the other—though there’s no way the government could have known that when the application was submitted. And it would also include all telephony metadata that postdates the government’s conclusion that the Tsarnaev brothers were apparently not agents of any foreign terrorist group. But even if this were not the case, how is it possible that all calls to, say, Dominos Pizza in Peoria, Illinois or all calls over a three month period between two small businesses in Juno [sic], Alaska would be “relevant” to an investigation of events in Boston—even if we assume that the FBI did not know whom it was investigating in the Boston area and did not know whom that unknown person was communicating with?

I think the only possible answer to this question is that a dataset of this size could be “relevant” because there are ways of analyzing big datasets algorithmically to yield all kinds of interesting things—but only if the dataset is known to include all of the possibly-relevant material. The data may not be relevant, but the dataset is relevant because it is complete—and therefore is sure to include any communications by whomever the bombers turn out to be.

The trouble is that if that constitutes relevance for purposes of Section 215—or for purposes of grand jury subpoena, for that matter—then isn’t all data relevant to all investigations?

I'm not saying I'm completely surprised, although it is worth remembering how much of a bloody hypocrite Barack Obama is. But isn't this terrifying? Or are you in the "our all-powerful federal government, IRS included, would never do anything bad with data" camp?

We've talked here before about the Syrian crisis being a proxy battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for regional supremacy. On the one side, we have Shiite Iran, aligned with its sole ally, the Alawite Syrian regime, and aided by its Lebanese enforcers, Hezbollah. On the other side, we have  the Sunni Saudis, aligned with Turkey and Qatar.

Viewed solely within this context, the stakes are very high indeed, since an Assad victory would constitute a victory for Iran. Where Iran might have been completely isolated in the region (with implications for the pressure that might have been brought to bear on her nuclear ambitions), Iran would be strengthened by an Assad win. Iran and Hezbollah would be emboldened rather than weakened. To use Lee Smith's (actually bin Laden's) term, Iran would become the region's strong horse.

President Obama recognizes, quite correctly, that there are no good sides to either the wider conflict or the proxy battle itself. Assad and Hezbollah are vile, but the rebels, with their internal-organ-chewing commanders and rape-all-non-Sunni-women fatwas, are hardly paragons themselves. On the wider level, as appalling as the Iranian regime is, the Sunni axis, with its rabid jihadist threads, is scarcely creditable as an American ally. It's not difficult to understand the President's instinct to recoil from the whole mess, particularly since so many Americans agree with him.

But there's yet another layer to the conflict, one the President will ignore at the country's peril: Russia versus the United States. Vali Nasr has an excellent piece in today's Bloomberg in which he addresses a critical miscalculation made early on by the Americans about the Syrian morass:

Part of the U.S. calculation in declining to intervene has been the assumption that Assad would inevitably fall. The U.S., apparently, did not consider the implications of leaving the door open to a comeback by Assad. Reinforced by Hezbollah fighters and armed with Iranian and Russian weapons, the Syrian army broke through rebel lines in the central city of al-Qusair last week. The symbolic victory has dashed hopes for a quick end to the regime or a diplomatic resolution to the fighting...

Russia has assumed all along Assad could win, and thanks to Iran’s support, that now looks like a realistic outcome. Having already absorbed the wrath of Arab public opinion for supporting the ruthless leader, Russia has little reason to switch sides. By sticking with Assad, Russia projects the image of a steadfast ally that doesn’t bend to international pressure, in contrast to the U.S., which appears to want to wash its hands of the region and pivot away to Asia.

Considering the President's apparent outlook -- that American influence in the world ought properly to be diminished, if not outright apologized for -- it makes perfect sense for the Russians to pounce on the Syrian crisis. From the Russian perspective, the moment could hardly be more propitious for an energetic attempt to knock the US down to size.

That's according to Glen Greenwald at the Guardian:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

There will be unsurprising, but deserved criticism of President Obama for appointing Susan Rice to be his next National Security Adviser. The Administration has chosen damaged goods. Rice’s exact role in, and level of knowledge about, the Benghazi scandal has still to be determined by congressional investigators, but her main claim to fame was to venture onto national television to sell a story about the death of a U.S. ambassador and other American officials that was false.

But the more important story is that Rice’s appointment is part of a broader theme to Obama’s second term. Once again, the president has chosen a mediocre political devotee as either a reward for past service or to help defend the castle walls during a combative second term. Past presidents had more confidence to choose significant thinkers on foreign policy for the job. JFK chose McGeorge Bundy; LBJ had W. W. Rostow, Nixon had Kissinger, Ford had Scowcroft, Carter had Brzezinski, and Reagan started with Allen and Clark, then got into trouble with McFarlane and Poindexter, but then chose Powell and Carlucci. Clinton had Berger and Lake, Bush had Rice and Hadley. These officials had thought about foreign affairs and national security for decades and had contributed to important and valuable schools of thought on the future of American national security.

Place Rice next to those figures. Putting aside her flawed service as U.N. ambassador, Rice has done, said, and written almost nothing to distinguish her as an influential voice in foreign policy, either within the Democratic party or outside of it. The highest profile act of her career in the Clinton State Department was to support standing by during the Rwandan genocide — one of the great tragedies of the Clinton years — because of concern over the effect of an intervention on the 1994 midterm elections.

Choosing a committed loyalist despite her role in one of the administration’s biggest scandals shows that the president has little interest in cooperating with the opposition party on the issues where bipartisanship is most important: national security and foreign affairs. Obama has given Republicans the separation-of-powers equivalent of flipping the bird. But it also shows that Obama has no hopes for a second-term agenda in national security other than playing partisan defense and reacting to events abroad. Obama may well get his oft-invoked change, but it will be dictated by the decisions of others.

Earlier today, President Obama nominated Samantha Power, his former Special Assistant and NSC Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, to replace the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. Rice is moving into the coveted position of National Security Adviser. 

Power's pedigree as an academic is stellar. A graduate of Yale and Harvard, she went on to teach at the latter. As a journalist, she did a stint at Time magazine, and made numerous contributions to journals and magazines from conflict zones like Bosnia, Sudan, Kosovo, and East Timor. She penned a seminal article for The Atlantic in September 2001, called Bystanders to Genocide. A year later she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her boo,k A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

For a quarter of a century, Power built a fan base in the anti-genocide and human rights community that was unparalleled. It was never a secret she was a loyal Democrat, but she always persuaded detractors it was the "policy" that mattered. People who did nothing were the problem. She articulated concerns with a State Department staffer, Susan Rice, eloquently in The Atlantic article: 

At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. "We could believe that people would wonder that," he says, "but not that they would actually voice it." Rice does not recall the incident but concedes, "If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant."

Tough talk. Rightly so. More than 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Rice was dismissive -- and yet she is still lauded by her partisan friends in the human rights think-tank universe. Never mind her record, we are all supposed to trust that her feelings about genocide trump the policies she has been -- and will be -- responsible for. 

The same is true for Samantha Power. She wrote a book,  she stood in a foxhole, she taught at Harvard, she won a Pulitzer, she married Cass Sunstein, and now she's a mother, for goodness' sake. Don't tread on Miss Power, you human rights and foreign policy-oriented folks. Just don't.

She is among the most loyal advisers to President Obama. She worked in his Senate office, then joined his campaign, where she famously referred to his rival Senator Hillary Clinton as a "monster." She was dismissed from the campaign but joined the National Security Council before the Oval Office rugs could be switched out. Her husband, Cass Sunstein, served as the head of Obama's White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. (Remember the Czars? Yeah, he's that guy.)  Her domestic politics were never in question. She is the president's devotee and confidant. 

Her status as a partisan was solidified in two steps. First, she launched into global prominence by leveraging her academic prowess and friendships with Clinton-era State Department staff to attack President George W. Bush for not moving quickly enough to call the crisis in Darfur, Sudan a genocide. She railed against him and his policies, and inspired thousands of activists across the country. Her Pulitzer-winning book came out and became gospel for many in the human rights movement. 

The second step? Every moment of every day for the last five years. Sudan policy was marked by negligence, and a pending invitation to Nafie al Nafie, a loyalist to the Omar al-Bashir regime. Bashir has two outstanding arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for (you guessed it) genocide. Policy towards ending the worst sexual and gender-based violence in recorded human history in Congo has been virtually non-existent. The Administration even stalled SEC rules over conflict minerals coming from the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Burma/Myanmar? The Obama Administration fetes alleged architects of atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims facing ethnic cleansing.  

The Nuba Mountains of Sudan? Today marks two years since the Sudanese government began a campaign of aerial bombardment, forced starvation, razing of villages and the use of proxy militias to ethnically cleanse the Nuba people - who have lived a self-sustaining and peaceful existence for more than 6,000 years before this current conflict. The list is long. 

President Obama joked today about Power winning a Nobel Peace Prize by the time she was a teenager. I guess, since he won his for doing nothing, that we shouldn't be surprised he nominated Power to be by his side in a Cabinet-level post where they can pursue inaction together.  

I don't support unilateral intervention. Quite the contrary. But I believe that preventative measures and strong U.S. involvement across every foreign policy sector is critical to our future.

Samantha Power's domestic partisan affiliation trumps everything, including genocide. The marrow-level hypocrisy astonishes. To build a career and accept accolades for championing an end to genocide and impunity, then turn your back on the survivors and victims because of a fancy title says a lot about her character. It says the first Tuesday in November matters more than anything. 

Yes, yes, shameful and all that, and more literally wasteful than most taxpayer-funded extravagance but I’ll admit it, this story made me laugh.

The Age reports:

Difficult territory is a cornerstone of the visual arts - so artist Mikala Dwyer knew it would be confronting last night when she invited Balletlab dancers to empty their bowels as part of a performance at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The two-hour act saw the six dancers, masked but naked beneath sheer garments, move around a room in the gallery before sitting on transparent stools and performing - only if they were moved to do so - what is usually one of our most private and rarely discussed daily acts.

Dwyer said the one-off performance was not designed as a mere shock tactic. Rather, she hoped ACCA visitors would think and talk about something we have been socialised to consider dirty and shameful, and have historically hidden from view, even though it is perfectly natural. In turn, they might transform other institutionalised ideas about the world…

 'When Mikala brought this idea of a performance and film dealing with material transformation and ritual to us, we evaluated it as a key and bold move in her practice, one that links to a long artistic legacy looking at alchemical transformation and magical performance. The work, while challenging taboos, never becomes sensational or gratuitous. It's wonderful, powerful work.''

But magical performances have to deal with the realities of our more mundane age:

 ACCA did extensive public and occupational health and safety risk assessments....

Mind you, even with such precautions, I'm not sure that that I could have been persuaded to (bad word) go....

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank provides Exhibit A of New Normal thinking:

Now, after a long economic winter, green shoots are everywhere: The stock market is booming, housing prices are rebounding and mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, long demonized by Republicans, are returning profits to the Treasury. Job growth has accelerated and consumer confidence has reached its highest level in almost six years. Health-care cost increases are slowing, Medicare’s prospects are improving — in part because of President Obama’s health-care reforms — and gasoline prices are forecast to decline. Long-term fiscal problems remain, but the federal deficit is shrinking, putting off Washington’s debt-ceiling standoff until late fall .

And thus, Milbank concludes, 2013 Republicans are in the same pickle at those in 1999, complaining about White House scandals (Lewinsky them, IRS now) as the economy booms. Except the economy is nowhere near booming, not even at Bush levels much less Clinton levels. At National Review Online, I ticked over a slew of reasons why as we begin the fifth year of the economic recovery, things should be much better:

1. Annual US GDP growth, adjusted for inflation, has averaged an anemic 2.1% for the 15 full quarters of recovery, versus 5.1% during the same span after the severe 1981–82 recession.

2. As a result, the economy has yet to return to anywhere near its pre–Great Recession growth trend. If it had, the economy would be $1 trillion bigger today.

3. This recovery has seen the weakest increase in real disposable income of any of the seven most recent recoveries, according to ITG Market Research.

4. The average US household has recovered a mere 45% of the wealth lost during the Great Recession, according to the St. Louis Fed.

5. The economy has 2 million fewer private-sector jobs than it did at the January 2008 peak.

6. Of course, if average monthly job gains remain close to the last twelve months’ average of 180,000, then private-sector payrolls will hit an all-time high in just under one year. But even then, job levels will still be far below where they would be if the trend from 1990 through 2007 had continued, a shortfall equaling nearly 12 million missing workers.

7. If not for a collapse in the labor-force participation rate — mostly due to weak labor demand rather than demographics, according to Goldman Sachs — the unemployment rate would be at least 9%, not 7.5%.

8. The broader U-6 jobless rate, which includes some discouraged workers and part-timers who would prefer full-time gigs — is just shy of 14% vs. 8% pre-recession.

9. There are  4.4 million Americans — a whopping 37% of the total unemployed population — who’ve been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer. This group, given skill erosion and hiring bias, could become a large permanent pool of jobless Americans.

But hey, we’re better than Europe.

Our gallery of contributors here at Ricochet is a varied bunch. We all write about politics and culture, but some of us also write television comedies, some write presidential speeches, some write novels ... and some write flat out, unapologetic rock & roll.

Our own Nathan Harden, frontman of the Nashville-based Band of Love, falls into that last category. The group's new album, Ballad of Dani Girl, is now available for free download at Noisetrade. You can also make a donation when you download, with the proceeds going to Love 146, an organization devoted to ending child trafficking and exploitation. Here's the video for "The Road," one of the tracks from the project.

While you're in the market for Ricochet-related jams, you should also consider checking out Bite the Bullet, the most recent release from Black Hi-Lighter, fronted by our own James Poulos. Here's a track from that album, "Chinese Gong":

In answer to Troy's question below, I don't know what Rubio's political calculations on immigration are, but I do have an idea of what he's doing.

The basic problem with the Schumer-Rubio bill is that it legalizes the illegal population (the amnesty) before any of the enforcement goals are met. The problem with this amnesty-first-enforcement-later approach is that the promised enforcement won't materialize. We saw that with the 1986 amnesty, which legalized nearly 3 million people but whose enforcement promises were abandoned.

We've seen the same dynamic in other areas. For instance, every time Republicans accept a Democratic offer of future spending cuts in exchange for tax increases today, the tax hikes happen and the spending cuts don't. As Wimpy used to say on the Popeye cartoons, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." After the big 1986 amnesty (and several smaller ones over the next decade), it's time to demand payment before providing any more hamburgers.

Anyway, Rubio's recent threats to walk away from his bill unless the border provisions are tightened up is phony -- there's no real chance he'll walk away. It's just political theater. I assume he consulted with Sen. Cornyn of Texas, who today released something he's calling the RESULTS amendment to the bill (which is set to be considered by the full Senate next week). That amendment is nothing but tough-sounding posturing that leaves the basic structure of the bill in place. If I had to guess, I'd say the Cornyn amendment or something like it could pass, allowing Rubio to claim victory and say that he's now comfortable with the bill -- even though nothing meaningful had changed.

The basic question really is this: do you trust the Obama administration, and the political class generally, to keep their enforcement promises if they get amnesty up front? I don't, which is why the enforcement benchmarks have to be met before there's any talk of legalizing any illegals. That's a discussion worth having. As distasteful and expensive as it would be, clearing the decks and starting fresh by amnestying long-term, non-violent illegal aliens has much to recommend it -- but only if it's the last amnesty.

The Schumer-Rubio bill, in contrast, virtually ensures that we're going to have this same discussion a decade from now, with some of the same people saying that the poor illegal aliens who've lived here since 2015 have to be allowed to stay. A vote for this bill isn't just a vote for amnesty of today's illegal aliens but also amnesty for tomorrow's illegal aliens.

The only responsible course is Enforcement First: universal E-Verify, exit-tracking of foreign visitors (to catch overstays), and explicit authorization for local cops to enforce civil immigration violations. Once those are in place, functioning, and have overcome the legal jihad which the ACLU will launch against them, them we can -- and should -- debate amnesty. But not before.

By the looks of things, he's preparing to abandon what was supposed to be his signal legislative accomplishment and, one assumes, a predicate for a future presidential run. Our friend Byron York writes at the Washington Examiner:

Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican behind the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill, says he will not vote for the legislation he helped write and has staked his political future on, unless substantial changes are made before final Senate consideration.

Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday, Rubio said the Senate should “strengthen the border security parts of this bill so that they’re stronger, so that they don’t give overwhelming discretion to the Department of Homeland Security.” He said he was working with other senators on amendments to do just that.

Then Hewitt asked: “If those amendments don’t pass, will you yourself support the bill that emerged from Judiciary, Senator Rubio?”

Rubio answered, “Well, I think if those amendments don’t pass, then I think we’ve got a bill that isn’t going to become law, and I think we’re wasting our time. So the answer is no.”

As Byron points out, the security provisions of the bill have actually gotten marginally stronger in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which means the only coherent reading of Rubio's position is that he finds the original version of the bill unpalatable -- an original version that he helped draft (ok, maybe "coherent" isn't the right word).

In one sense, I feel bad for Rubio, who I've always admired. If he was trying to replicate Barack Obama's meteoric rise from freshman senator to the White House, the sad truth is that he may have been better off replicating Obama's "Don't just do something, stand there!" approach. Work the talk show circuit, give some floor speeches -- inertia is not a professional liability in the United States Senate. The electorate seems to prefer its slates blank. We tend to scrutinize the professional track record of governors, but no one seemed to give a fig about the fact that neither John Kerry nor Barack Obama had any major legislative accomplishments during their tenure in the upper chamber.

What really stands out is that Rubio seemed to be working this whole thing out on the fly. He may have felt as if Republican travails with Hispanic voters had softened the ground for immigration reform (side note: Byron's done an exquisite job of separating rhetoric from reality where the influence of the Hispanic vote is concerned), but it didn't follow that the base of the party (read: the people who nominate presidential candidates) were going to abandon their concerns about border security overnight. The pushback should have been predictable. Maybe he did see it coming and just underestimated it, calculating that he'd come out the other side looking like a profile in courage. Whatever the thought process, he now seems uncertain and a little panicked.

If the bill goes down (and I can't see how it gets out of the House without an overhaul that drains Democratic support), Rubio ends up in the worst of all possible worlds: He gets the blame for the legislation and fails to rack up a major accomplishment. Given the reservoir of conservative goodwill towards the Senator, I can't seem becoming a pariah (you have to cultivate a potpourri of heresies, ala John McCain, to earn ideological exile), but I doubt there are many conservatives out there who feel better about his prospects as a presidential candidate now than they did six months ago.

Yesterday, thanks to Troy Senik, devotees of Ricochet were offered an opportunity to watch Jim McDermott (D-Washington) deny vociferously that the Internal Revenue Service scandal involved anything more than low-level bureaucrats going a slight bit overboard.

There is here nothing to see, he suggested, nothing to be the slightest bit worried about. The IRS, he and other administration apologists argue, is an executive agency so distant from Barack Obama and so free from his influence that no one could conceivably imagine that the President had anything to do with its targeting of the Tea Party Movement.

For some time now, we have been aware that Douglas Shulman, then the commissioner of this supposedly independent agency, repeatedly visited the White House in the run-up to the 2012 elections. This, too, we are told, is insignificant. The implementation of Obamacare, a matter of profound concern to the President, deeply involved the IRS.

Yesterday, however, thanks to Investor's Business Daily, however, we learned something new. Those "Obamacare implementation meetings" were attended by Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. "I was in there with him," Cutter acknowledged. "There was nothing nefarious going on."

You can believe Ms. Cutter if you wish. But I am inclined to echo the IBD: the lady in question cannot have been "there to discuss the Easter Egg Roll."

Congressman Issa should call in Ms. Cutter and recall Mr. Shulman to testify under oath about these meetings. I, for one, would like to watch them squirm as they commit perjury.

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Good morning. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon is resigning, to be replaced by Susan "Benghazi was about nothing but a YouTube" Rice. Samantha "Hillary Clinton is a monster who will stoop to anything" Power will replace Rice at the United Nations.

Obviously I don't have terribly high regard for Rice or her talking points, but she was really just sent out to those Sunday morning talk shows so that Hillary "What difference, at this point, does it make" Clinton wouldn't have to lie as much. The real blame for those performances lies with higher-ups in the Obama administration.

But now I'm worried that we're going to war. Rice and Power favor going to war for humanitarian reasons. And obviously Obama could use some distraction. And Syria is a humanitarian nightmare. Here's Time on how both Rice and Power think we should use U.S. money and soldiers to intervene when there are humanitarian problems.

Rice doesn't require Senate confirmation but Power will. So Keith Urbahn points out some items that might be of interest during her confirmation hearings, namely this piece she wrote in 2003 for The New Republic. It's worth reading in full but here's a passage:

U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States. This would entail restoring FOIA to its pre- Bush stature, opening the files, and acknowledging the force of a mantra we have spent the last decade promoting in Guatemala, South Africa, and Yugoslavia: A country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Willie Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?

Don't be distracted by the hypocrisy of an Obama official calling for "restoring FOIA" or "opening files." Notice the part where she advocates "instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa" as U.S. foreign policy. Notice the part where she compares the actions of U.S. leaders to what the Nazis did in the Warsaw ghetto.

As Urbahn writes:

There's been a lot of mostly bogus talk about "apology tours" but Power actually has written about apologizing being the heart of US foreign policy.

I don't know about you, but it might be helpful to have someone rep'ing America at UN who doesn't think we are the source of world's ills.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick is turning in her grave right now. Amazing that such different women might hold the same position.

When Kirkpatrick talked about the "blame America first" crowd, it's stuff like this she was talking about.

So which is your favorite part of today's news: that we'll likely get embroiled in yet another war or that we may get to have an even more full-throated apology tour from our leaders?

Very few people, even those who support an American intervention of some kind in Syria, cotton to the idea of American boots on the ground in Aleppo. Accompanying this understandable reluctance is a perception, aired very frequently, that a no-fly zone would be a terrific alternative -- a neat, clean means of hampering Assad's ability to decimate his rebel opponents.

This is not as easy-peasy as it sounds. Assad has considerable air defenses, built up over many years in response to Israel's offensive air capability. Still, Israel has had little difficulty penetrating those defenses when necessary. Assad's defenses should not prove an insuperable obstacle to the imposition of an American or Western no-fly zone -- provided they are not drastically improved anytime soon.

Well. In a smack direct to the faces of John Kerry and Barack Obama, Russia has said it will proceed with delivery of the S-300 advanced missile system to Syria, and that changes everything.

Before we get to why, let's dispense with the canard that the Russians are merely honoring a contract. As Yaakov Katz points out at The Daily Beast, Russia didn't have any trouble tearing up a signed-and-paid-for contract to deliver the S-300 system to Iran in 2010 in exchange for a quid pro quo from Israel. (Israel sold Russia $400 million worth of drones -- and when one considers the possibility, considering Russia's relationships, that that technology will ultimately be used against Israel, one can sense the urgency that was at work of stopping that transfer of the S-300 system to Iran.) The Russians are going ahead with the Syria transfer because they've been paid, sure, but also because it's a delightful way of sticking it to the confused, supine Americans, and because nobody's given them a good reason not to.

Back to the system itself. The S-300 system is a lot like the American Patriot surface-to-air missile system, but the missiles are highly mobile, carried about on all-terrain trucks. 

The Guardian provides some detail:

The S-300s supplied by Russia are designed to shoot down planes and ballistic missiles. They have a range of up to 125 miles. Once up and running, this will enable them to destroy not only civilian and military aircraft in Syrian airspace, but also inside Israel. The S-300s can also track and strike multiple targets simultaneously.

Katz points out that the range of the S-300 would enable it to be deployed from Syrian territory against aircraft at Ben Gurion International Airport outside of Tel Aviv.

Israel has tried mightily to stop the transfer, with Prime Minister Netanyahu even traveling to Moscow last month to pay obeisance directly to Putin. When that proved fruitless, Israel changed her tune, openly threatening military action if the S-300 system is delivered. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Likud MK Tzachi Hanegbi (a former head of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee), and National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror have all said, either obliquely or outright, that Israel will not tolerate an operational S-300 system in Syria.

The timeline of bringing this thing online is very unclear, ranging from operational within weeks to offline until 2014. There are unconfirmed reports that parts of the system are already in Syria. Assad's people will have to be trained how to use it, which will take a little time and give Israel an opportunity. But if she doesn't manage to knock the system out, the game will be well and truly changed. Israel will have a much bigger problem on her hands, and the Western powers can kiss their no-fly zone goodbye.

The Writer's Guild of America has released its list of the best-written television shows ever. The guild evaluated talk shows, daytime dramas, primetime fixtures, cartoons, and variety shows to compile the list.

“At their core, all of these wonderful series began with the words of the writers who created them and were sustained by the writers who joined their staffs or worked on individual episodes,” WGAW President Chris Keyser and WGAE President Michael Winship said in a joint statement. “This list is not only a tribute to great TV, it is a dedication to all writers who devote their hearts and minds to advancing their craft."

The top 10 are

1. "The Sopranos"
2. "Seinfeld"
3. "The Twilight Zone" (1959)
4. "All in the Family"
5. "M*A*S*H"
6. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
7. "Mad Men"
8. "Cheers"
9. "The Wire"
10. "The West Wing"

For the full list, go here.

So, Ricochetti, do you agree with the Writer's Guild? What would your list look like?

Earlier today, Washington Democrat Jim McDermott invited a Hulk smash from Congressman Paul Ryan in a House hearing on the IRS scandal (notice Ryan's headdesk moment just before he takes the mic):

Earlier today, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that the Garden State will hold a special election later this year to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Frank Lautenberg. A primary election will be held on August 13, with a general election to be held October 16, just three weeks prior to the election in which Christie will be on the ballot. Christie will appoint an interim Senator, but has yet to name the individual.

This announcement means that Christie will not exercise his right to appoint a Senator to fill the seat through the end of Lautenberg's term in 2014, avoiding a decision that could put him on the wrong side of either conservatives or the New Jersey electorate. Christie will be open to criticism from some quarters for imposing the extra cost of a special election on the state, as well as allegations that he didn't want the election in November, as Newark Mayor (and senate candidate) Cory Booker is expected to inspire increased democratic turnout. 

What do you think of the governor's decision?

We recorded an interview with Senator Rand Paul this morning at his office in Washington D.C. And yes, he'll be on the podcast soon too. 

That's the question I ask in my newest piece for Hoover's Defining Ideas. The libertarian position, I suggest, is not quite as simple as one may think:

The basic principle of libertarian thought is its blanket prohibition against the use of force (including the threat of force) and fraud to achieve personal gain at the expense of others. That principle translates easily into the international context to say that one nation cannot wage war against another.

However easy it is to state that basic principle, it is just that hard to implement it, especially in a world of self-help where there is no common sovereign to stop the use of force. It is easy to allow the use of force in self-defense, but difficult to prevent that excuse from being used by scoundrels for their own ends.

It is even harder to get to the bottom of the simple question of when and where one person (or nation) should come to the assistance of another. The basic legal rule is that such intervention is permissible but not obligatory, and only on behalf of the victim of the attack. The general private law rule that there is no duty to rescue a stranger in a condition of imminent peril from natural forces, even though there is an obvious right to do so, carries over to the matter of self-defense.

The great tragedy then is that the clear moral principle can easily become overwhelmed by a series of subsidiary conflicts that extend from difficult factual disputes about the past to uncertain predictions about the future, all set against a background that allows for the exercise of good faith judgment without clear guidelines on how it is best exercised. I do hope that I am wrong, and that the President is doing the right thing. But all things considered, I think that there is a serious risk that his policy of studied disengagement may well turn out, down the road, to drag us into some larger conflict against our will.

Last night, Patrick Ruffini Tweeted out the results of the new study by College Republicans, measuring political attitudes and values of young voters, both liberal and conservative.  The results are interesting.

You can sign up for the full study here.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting slide:

Okay, part bromide, yes. But there's room in there to win, isn't there?  

Well, we should have seen this coming. Last night, the Rolling Stones -- THE Rolling Stones -- invited country girlie pop superstar Taylor Swift on stage to sing with them during their Chicago tour stop.

Just look at that picture. Looks like a snapshot from a Broadway stage show. Looks like they're singing "Satisfaction"--as interpreted by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

What could this mean other than the end of the end for rock's original rebel band?

Nothing against Taylor Swift, who can't be blamed for taking up such an offer. Good for her. But the Stones--this is really a sign that it's time for retirement. The last bit of edginess has been dulled out.

Admittedly, it must have been an enjoyable experience for Mick and Keith to share the stage with the young and gorgeous Swift. But what could be more odd for the boys who saw the world and wanted to "paint it black" than to go preening about on stage with the sunniest and brightest hero of pre-teen girls the world over? What could be a more unmistakable signal that they don't mean any of the words they're singing, or any of the notes they're playing?

It's starting to make sense now that the Stones had to slash ticket prices in order to fill up the stadiums on their current tour. It's starting to makes sense that earlier this year Chris Robinson, frontman of The Black Crowes, blasted Jagger for his lack of "sincerity" on stage, calling today's Stones concert goers "Rock 'n Roll tourists."

Enough with the back-slapping nostalgia tours, I guess, was Robinson's point. Better to let your legacy live on untarnished than to wear it out.

For mega stars like the Stones, having lived a lifetime under the spotlight, it must be hard to even notice when the seats start to empty and you're pushing 70 and you still feel like you're 19. It must be hard to let go.

Famously, Monet destroyed paintings he made in his latter years when he came to believe they didn't match up in quality to the work he did in his prime. On the other hand, I'd sure pay a lot for one of those destroyed paintings. I'd hang one in my living room, no doubt about it. Not so sure about the Stones though. Not sure what I would pay to see them now -- now that they don't seem to mean anything anymore.

Rock 'n Roll is like that. Music is like that. It's a moment, captured on tape, captured on stage. You can't go on singing the same songs forever, even as you couldn't go on painting the same picture forever. You have to move on, take it somewhere new, or else--retire.

We've all heard the old adage: It's better to go out on top.

Do you all agree? Should this be the Stones' final tour? Do they risk diminishing their prior achievements? Why or why not?

While conservatives are understandably concerned about the IRS targeting Tea Party organizations, there’s another group that has faced the same kind of stonewalling in their quest for tax-exempt status—nonprofit media.

Kathy Kiely, managing editor at the Sunlight Foundation, and Diana Jean Schemo of 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative journalism center, wrote in the Washington Post,

This spring, a consortium of respected philanthropic groups, headed by the Council on Foundations and the Knight Foundation, found that the IRS appears to be slow-walking the applications for tax-exempt status by journalism groups emerging to fill the void left by the dramatic contraction of the news media.

Until 2007, approval of applications for nonprofit investigative news centers took an average of three months, the typical wait for any application for tax-exempt status. But since 2008, the report found, the process has slowed, “in some cases taking as long as three years” for news organizations. Among examples the report cited, the Lens, an investigative online publication started in New Orleans, waited more than two years for approval of its tax-exempt status, the report noted. The San Francisco Public Press, which provides news for low-income communities, waited 32 months.

According to Kiely and Schemo, IRS delays affect nonprofit news organizations even more than political groups:

Donors to political groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax law cannot deduct contributions from their taxes.

The bar is higher for start-up news organizations seeking tax-deductible 501(c)(3) status, which is essential for soliciting the kinds of major gifts that sustain organizations. During the long delay between formation and tax-status designation, potential donors tend to limit out-of-pocket support, our colleagues building news operations have told us.

Investigative reporting is expensive. Without IRS approval, many journalism start-ups are forced to divert as much as 15 percent of reporting grants to outside fiscal sponsors, adding layers of paperwork and bureaucracy to their operations.

No one knows how many nonprofit news organizations are being held in tax limbo, because the IRS refuses to make the information public. Worse, the agency appears to be urging reporters not to speak about it. Kevin Davis of the Investigative News Network, an umbrella group for 82 news nonprofits (including the ones for which we work) said at a Washington conference in March that IRS employees have told news organizations with pending 501(c)(3) applications not to discuss their cases.

One of the reasons given by the IRS for the delays is that there has been a surge of applications for nonprofit journalism groups. As Kiely and Schemo say, “Sound familiar?” The same excuse was made about Tea Party and conservative groups.

A local news site, San Diego Newsroom, endured a 26-month delay in its application for a 501(c)(3):

Throughout this delay the IRS appeared to be writing new rules as it went along, altered its explanation for the holdup, misrepresented facts, made unreasonable requests, refused to provide any estimate of a decision date and stonewalled us in other ways.

The IRS requested and reviewed a list of all our members prior to granting the exemption, and it also devoted a single part-time staff person to manage all the incoming news applications, most of which apparently received heightened scrutiny.

Similar delays have brought about the demise of other nonprofit news organizations. SDNR has been denied incalculable funding, all of which would have gone to additional content and improvements to our website, allowing us to reach more readers and draw more support. This obstruction has severely hampered our ability to contribute to the supply of news in our city.

As Forbes has pointed out, the IRS has facilitated the tax-exempt status of journalism groups for more than 50 years. Some of those include National Geographic, PBS, NPR, Consumer Reports, and Mother Jones. More recent are ProPublica and Voice of San Diego, which received IRS approval before the agency’s clamp-down began. It's worth noting that it was ProPublica that received leaked information from the IRS about Tea Party groups and conservative political donors.

The stifling of non-profit news cannot come at a worse time. Journalism is in decline. There are fewer reporters on the ground creating original content than ever before. Regional news is barely covered. Investigative reporting that starts at the local level and works it way up is all but non-existent because news organizations don’t have the money to pay staff reporters.

Non-profits, while no silver lining, have been part of an effort to inject life into a dying industry, and the need is great. As an FCC report on the decline of journalism stated in 2011,

A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little. [The] independent watchdog function that the Founding Fathers envisioned for journalism—going so far as to call it crucial to a healthy democracy—in some cases is at risk.

I’ll never forget my first reporting job. The hustle and bustle of the newsroom as reporters streamed in and out from school board meetings, courtrooms, and PTA charity events. I can still hear the roar of the presses, smell newspaper ink in the air, and feel lines of glue as I cut and pasted copy onto the layout board with my X-acto knife.

I remember the late nights at the city planning commission where residents protested zoning plans for the newest strip mall, and Christmas mornings at the local police station scanning blotter. Mostly, I remember being in touch with my local community, understanding the real needs of real people, of how policy affected them and their families, and not just aggregating information and statistics from distant sources that carry no sense of personal association or accountability.

While those days are long gone, the First Amendment isn’t. Methods of news reporting change; paper has turned to digital, the X-acto knife has been replaced with a word-processing program, and local newspapers are being replaced or supplemented by non-profit groups -- but the essence of the free press cannot be lost. If we lose it, then we truly lose our country and our freedom.

The Washington Post has a story about "a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people." Highest increases were for men in their 50s and women in their early 60s:

There are no large-scale studies yet fleshing out the reasons behind the increase in boomer suicides. Part of it is likely tied to the recent economic downturn — financial recessions are in general associated with an uptick in suicides. But the trend started a decade before the 2008 recession, and psychologists and academics say it likely stems from a complex matrix of issues particular to a generation that vowed not to trust anyone older than 30 and who rocked out to lyrics such as, “I hope I die before I get old.”

Amazing that this thoughtful philosophy didn't yield long-term happiness. More:

To those growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, America seemed to promise a limitless array of possibilities. The Great Depression and World War II were over; medical innovations such as the polio vaccine and antibiotics appeared to wipe out disease and disability; the birth-control pill sparked a sexual revolution. The economy was thriving, and as they came of age, boomers embraced new ways of living — as civil rights activists, as hippies, as feminists, as war protesters.

“There was a sense of rebelliousness, of ‘I don’t want to live the way my parents did or their parents did,’ ” said Patrick Arbore, director and founder of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention at San Francisco’s Institute on Aging. “There was a lot of movement to different parts of the country. With that came a lot of freedom, but there also came a loss of connections. It was not uncommon to see people married three or four times.”

How did a generation that started out with so much going for it end up so despondent in midlife? It could be that those very advantages made it harder to cope with setbacks, said Barry Jacobs, director of behavioral sciences at the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Pennsylvania.

“There was an illusion of choice — where people thought they’d be able to re-create themselves again and again,” he said. “These people feel a greater sense of disappointment because their expectations of leading glorious lives didn’t come to fruition.”

Turns out that boomers have higher rates of obesity, prescription drug abuse, illicit drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, depression and mental disorders. And their own family dissolutions mean they're stretched thinner then other generations.

One scholar says that boomers' lack of adversity in youth might have kept them from preparing for the difficulties of aging (a problem, I imagine, that later generations will face as well).

Earlier generations, the article says, didn't have the concept of being stressed out and they had actual tangible successes (winning the Great War) instead of imagined ones (defeating one's fertility):

Baby boomers, on the other hand, have struggled more with existential questions of purpose and meaning. Growing up in a post-Freudian society, they were raised with a new vocabulary of emotional awareness and an emphasis on self-actualization. But that did not necessarily translate into an increased ability to cope with difficult emotions — especially among men. Women tend to be better connected socially and share their feelings more freely — protective factors when looking at their risk for suicide.

The economic downturn -- which has been particularly tough on older men -- is particularly burdensome on men. And women are not immune:

Believers from an early age in the power of medicine, boomers are more likely than their elders to turn to drugs, alcohol or even plastic surgery to mask their problems. “Boomers do not want to suffer,” Arbore said.

The country being under attack and threat from radical Islam is also hard for boomers, we're told.

So interesting. And yet how many people will turn away from wallowing in existential questions of purpose and meaning, finding fathers (or mothers) fungible, or any other lesson from the boomer era?

Folks, several of you have mentioned that you would welcome Claire Berlinski's insights into the violence in Turkey. She will be appearing on more than one Ricochet podcast within the next few days, and she has a piece in today's City Journal in which she offers a riveting first-hand account of the events:

Riot police blocked the roads leading to Taksim, the city’s central square, as well as those leading to Istanbul’s famous Istiklal Avenue. They fired gas bombs at everything that moved, including the city’s bewildered stray dogs. Helicopters circled the skies. Wi-Fi in the city center was jammed. The hospitals quickly filled with the injured. So far, reports of deaths have been hard to confirm, with some exceptions. Human-rights activist Ethem Sarısülük is now brain dead, having “come under fire” from police—what kind of fire, we don’t know. Mehmet Ayvalitas, reportedly a member of a banned group of left-wing hackers, is also dead...

It is confirmed that rubber bullets have knocked out the eyes of at least six people. Gas has covered the city like a volcanic cloud. Everyone, even those who stayed indoors, has been weeping and coughing. Adding insult to injury—and injury to injury—the cops fired gas into the accident and emergency ward of two hospitals close to Taksim Square. The police now seem to have moved from pepper spray to a more noxious lachrymatory agent—probably CS gas—causing panic among the public, which believes itself to be under attack by some terrifying species of chemical weapon....

The three largest Turkish football teams, usually mortal rivals (in some cases literally), announced that they would unite to join the protests. Istanbullus poured out on the streets, some in their pajamas, banging pots and pans, whistling, clapping, and shouting “Erdoğan, resign!” Elderly women handed out lemons from their windows (people here erroneously believe these mitigate the effects of tear gas), and shouted at passersby to “keep resisting!” Taxi, bus, and minivan drivers honked their horns in support. Massive crowds crossed the Bosphorus bridge from the Asian side of the city, all marching to Taksim Square. I have never seen such a spontaneous outpouring of public rage—coupled, of course, with the hysterical joy of the mob....

Police threw gas bombs at the capital’s famous Swan Park, injuring (yes) the swans. Last night a friend, an MP from the main opposition party and a tireless campaigner for Internet freedom in Turkey, told me that his daughter, a junior in law school, had been wounded. She had sent him an SMS: “Police gassed the infirmary.” He asked if I would let the American media know. Police in Izmir called female protestors “sluts” and assaulted them; people there were begging to be let into buildings to escape. A journalist whom I trust, based in Izmir, wrote: “I’m telling you. No one threw one single stone this evening where I am. They are still gassing peaceful people.”

Read the whole thing.

Several months ago, when the temperatures dipped into the single digits, I was driving north on US Highway 61, through Mark Twain's home town of Hannibal, Missouri, and on into Iowa. I remarked at the time that I had discovered the temperature at which cow flatulence becomes visible and used the general topic of bovine emissions to segue into a New York Times article, I believe (not nearly as artfully as our James Lileks, of course, but we do what we can with what we have).  

Today I made the same trip, only in the opposite direction. The temperature was in the 40s this morning at sunrise, so no cow poots were visible. However, a large group of them (cows, not poots, …though,…never mind) were gathered in the lush greenery, under a clump of trees, some relaxing, some eating, while others were, …well,… I guess you could say they were engaged in a process of elimination. The only thing was, they were "eliminating" right where the others were resting and eating.  The idea that one could not take meals or even a moment's leisure without another one literally dumping on the proceedings was so ridiculous, so stupendously absurd and revolting that, naturally, I began checking the news to see what the government has been up to lately.

Speaking of execrable emanations, the new head guy in charge at the IRS, Dan Wurfel, explained to Congress today the corrective actions he would implement at his agency, which is now famous for targeting people on the basis of their affinity for such ideas as are found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As friend of Ricochet and superb writer Mona Charen reported today via Facebook, here is what "passes" for solutions in that majestic bullpen inside the beltway:  

The solution here in this situation is to understand what controls need to be put in place, what oversight, what getting the right leadership in place, the right processes in a collective way. The right starting point has to be what is the optimal footprint or framework for doing this right, then we sit down and figure out what the resource allocation is.

Need a drink yet? You do realize, don't you, that an army of 20-somethings texting around the clock, ignoring the endless auto-correct doo-hickies and tapping on their little iPhones, Androids, Astroids, iPads, MaxiPads and MiniPads, whatever … and ignoring all typos, couldn't produce as much Grade-A rubbish as the IRS honcho managed to stuff into that one pathetic example of bureaucratese?  The only "optimal footprint," would be the one left on the backside of the IRS as we kick it out of business, taking with it the intimidation and thuggery that have come to epitomize the ever-growing arrogance of ever-growing government.

There are limits, of course, to thuggery and arrogance. Even the dumbest beast in the pasture might hesitate before taking a load off, so to speak, on the noggin of the lead bull. And so it follows, as Mark Steyn recently detailed, that if your name is Malik Obama, and you're the brother of the US President, your application for non-profit tax exemption might be greeted rather differently from, say, that of a law-abiding citizen. You see, Malik heads up the Barack H. Obama Foundation (named after the President's father) in Kenya, from which his application to the IRS originated.  

Granted, the Foundation has ties to Sudan, one of four countries the US has designated as a "terrorist state." And granted, also, that Malik did attend an Islamic Da'wa Organization shindig in Sudan back in 2010, one of the objectives of which was to help spread a rather extremist blend of Islam throughout the African Continent. But at least the Barack H. Obama Foundation didn't quote Madison or Jefferson, right?  

It didn't cite the Constitution nor did it oppose centralized authoritarian management of the nation's health care like those dangerous Tea Party types, and so it didn't excite the curiosity of the IRS, or anyone else in the federal government for that matter. As a matter of fact, the application for the Barack H. Obama Foundation, submitted on May 30, 2011, was approved less than a month later, on June 26, 2011. Additionally, the approval was retroactive all the way back to April 30, 2008, over three years earlier, thus encompassing all the donations it had taken in without benefit of legality. And you'll never guess who signed the letter of approval (see photo).  

Meanwhile, three years after submitting their applications, some conservative groups still await word on their approval or disapproval. The cows are starting to look better all the time. In a fascinating piece at the American Thinker yesterday, Jack Curtis compares the definition of the word "Integrity" as it appeared in the 1943 Merriam-Webster with that of the 2013 definition.  The results:

1943:  "Moral soundness, honesty, purity, freedom from corrupting influences or practices."

2013:  "Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility."

Note please the relationship to fixed and shared concepts of "honesty," and "purity," and "moral soundness," found in the earlier definition, and how that differs from the weakened and comparatively unfocused definition currently applied. In his book Ameritopia, Mark Levin hypothesized, correctly in my opinion, that we now live in a post-Constitutional nation. To that predicament, I would add another, namely, a lack of virtue. Benjamin Franklin noted that, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."  

And masters we have aplenty, dropping tens of thousands of new regulations on our heads each year, spending money yet unearned by people yet unborn, pushing us around on matters large and small, and sending the tax man to torment any who dare to contradict the prevailing wisdom of the state and its cheerleaders at MSNBC. At least cows have the convenience of being ignorant. Taking advantage of a populace increasingly given to dependence and complacency, our governmental puppet masters make the Founders' point by default.  

Without a return to shared concepts of virtue and integrity, and without the requisite courage to take a stand, we will be in no better place than cattle, stuck on the government's pasture and forced to survive on the droppings of the state while our rulers plan their vacations on Martha's Vineyard and send the bill to our grandchildren.