I think Bill Richardson is asking good questions:

In the most recent debate, he asked the other major candidates a clear question: how many troops would you leave behind and for how long? We have yet to hear an answer.

All the major Democratic candidates say they are eager to end this war, and they all say they don’t believe there is a military solution in Iraq. Why, then, do they maintain that we must leave an indefinite number of troops behind for an indeterminate amount of time to work hopelessly towards a military solution everyone says doesn’t exist?

Richardson, as he points out, stands for a complete withdrawal from Iraq — the only policy that can reasonably follow from the premises that Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have all joined him in endorsing and the only one that lives up to the promises all three have made to end the war. I’m not sure many liberals have really grasped how absurd it is that we seem destined to witness a 2008 campaign in which both major party nominees support continuing the war. Nor do the Clinton/Obama/Edwards camps seem to have given serious consideration to the fact that their general election adversary will probably find it relatively easy to ridicule this “end the war, but keep fighting it” stance the Democrats have all adopted.

Scott Lemieux on dog fighting versus factory farming:

There are, I think, some colorable substantive distinctions; in particular, Vick’s actions (not just the dogfighting but the additional torture-killing of the dogs) represents a sadism for its own sake that factory farming doesn’t, and hence it’s reasonable for the law to treat them differently. But is this distinction enough to justify significant federal jail time for Vick in a country where factory farming is not only legal but subsidized? Seems like a hard case to make. Can eaters of mass-produced meat (or, even more so, people who see nothing wrong with mass-produced meat) justify intense outrage at Vick? It’s hard to rationally justify, I think. A little humility is on order for those of us with bad faith eating practices.

But let’s try this enough way. Speaking as liberals, as Scott and I are, we can (and, I think, should) simply embrace some hypocrisy on this front. It seems to me that I should probably only eat “cruelty free” meat. And it’s actually the case that I eat more of such meat than I would were I totally indifferent to this issue. But I’m far, far, far away from actually living in compliance with this idea. But this is actually a common liberal phenomenon. I believe the country should adopt policies related to health care that would almost certainly represent a net transfer of resources away from a person like me toward others in greater need. I don’t, however, personally transfer any resources in this direction.

Which is just to say that Michael Vick has violated some laws against animal cruelty. To observe that other kinds of cruel treatment of animals related to the industrial food process should be subjected to more stringent regulation isn’t a reason for Vick to be let off the hook. That in the absence of such regulation, a lot of people who think there should be stricter ones find it difficult to live up to our own ethical ideas arguably just strengthens the case for regulation. I’m not, in general, a big believer in the idea that not living in accordance with hypothetical regulatory frameworks while still believing such frameworks should be constructed (supporting a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme while still having a large carbon footprint, for example) constitutes hypocrisy in a meaningful way.

Here’s some stuff I agree with and don’t have anything to add to:

• ONE Campaign poll of Iowa caucus goers shows that people think we should be doing more to fight developing world poverty.
• The National Security Network rounds up the considerable evidence that the alleged drop in violence in Iraq isn’t actually happening.
• Sam Boyd is appropriate skeptical of designer accessory makers’ claims that buying counterfeit bags and wallets is causing terrorism.
• Brad DeLong on late 19th century shipping trends.
• Moira Whelan is puzzled as Iyad Allawi picks up the endorsement of the exiled leadership of the Iraqi Baath Party.

Have fun!

It appears that some ambiguous phrasing on my part has sparked some outrage about my ill-informed views from Jonah Goldberg and Yuval Levin and led to a bunch more interesting posts on the subject of farm subsidies. At issue was a post I wrote a couple of days ago, referring to the 2002 Farm Bill where I said “he was all for it” back then. I’d intended “he” to refer to President Bush, but the NRO crew has taken me to have been referring to Levin who, in fact, like most conservative intellectuals and policy types has been consistently and rightly against farm subsidies forever and ever.

What the subject of farm subsidies mostly shows, however, is that at the end of the day nobody in politics really seems to care what intellectuals and policy people think. If some big ideas or serious policy research or principled ideological stance can help advance important priorities of key interest groups, then suddenly ideology and policy analysis begin to appear very important. But when all the interest group pressure is for farm subsidies, it doesn’t matter that all the policy analysis is on the other side.

It looks like the Iranian nuclear program is only advancing sluggishly and that some Iranian elites are wondering if it really makes sense to continue down this path. Of course, one way to convince them to do so would be to start bombing their country. But I guess since they’re “already at war with us” we have no choice, right?