Washington, DC has been doing some good things in smart growth and transportation terms in recent years. The lead agency doing progressive work in this field has normally been the planning department rather than the Department of Transportation. Back in July, DC transportation chief Emeka Moneme resigned and David Alpert launched a position urging the Fenty administration to appoint a bold reformer to fill the job, someone along the lines of the picks Fenty has already made for the Department of Education and the Department of Planning or Jeannette Sadik-Khan in the Department of Transportation in NYC.

One of the people who signed the petition was Gabe Klein, a former executive with Zipcar — a firm that has a strong interest in transportation reform. And now comes the news that Fenty has tapped Klein to head the Department of Transportation. The Fenty administration’s transportation policy instincts have mostly been in the right direction, and Klein seems to me like a guy who may be ready to shift things into a higher gear.

Helen Suzman, one of the leading white South African opponents of apartheid, has died:

After entering politics in 1953, Suzman became a lawmaker for the United Party, which split six years later over disagreements on racial issues. Suzman and 11 other MPs left to form the Progressive Party, which rejected the white-minority Nationalist government’s racist policies and supported equal rights. [...]

From 1961 until 1974, Suzman was “the only MP who consistently and unequivocally opposed discriminatory legislation and the spate of security laws that left the rule of law in tatters,” according to the HSF Web site.

Suzman’s criticism of Pieter Willem Botha, who served as prime minister and president from 1978 to 1989, led him to describe her as “a vicious little cat,” HSF said. Botha was the last hard-line apartheid leader who upheld strict policies of racial desegregation. Suzman described him as “an obnoxious bully.”

Once in parliament, a minister accused her of asking questions that embarrassed the country and she replied “It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa, it is your answers.” A worthy motto for dissidents and question-askers everywhere. Meanwhile, it doesn’t really make a ton of sense but I’m always heartened by the fact that Jewish South Africans such as Suzman were disproportionately represented in the anti-apartheid movement.

To return to the unpleasant question of Gaza, Jon Chait had a post the other day explaining that the kind of bloodshed and suffering the Israelis are afflicting is okay because of the asymetric subjective desires of the parties to the conflict:

Israel has a problem with Hamas because Hamas believes Israel has no right to exist. If Hamas lay down all its weapons, Israel would lift its blockade. If Israel lay down all its weapons, Hamas would kill as many Israelis as it could.

One way to reply to this is à la Ezra Klein who observes that at some point you need to judge based on what’s actually happening. And what’s been happening is that whatever Hamas’ ambitions may or may not have been, they were scattering short-range inaccurate rocket fire on Israel that was causing little damage. Israel struck back with actions that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and pushed over a million more closer to the brink of starvation. And in general this is an important aspect of the conflict — irrespective of intentions, over the years you have many more dead Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.

But another piece of the puzzle is that though American Jewish liberals tend to take a lot of comfort in the idea of Israel’s good intentions and good faith throughout this whole process, there’s a reason approximately no Arabs anywhere in the world see it that way. All throughout the “peace process” years — through the good ones and through the bad ones — Israel continued expanding both the geographical footprint of its settlements and the population living upon them. For most of this time, Israel has often appeared unwilling to enforce domestic Israeli law on the settler population, to say nothing of abiding by international law or agreements made. And while Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the “disengagement” from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation. Israel’s policy objectives in the West Bank appear to be first seizing the choice bits of it, and then withdrawing behind a wall with the residual West Bank treating like post-”disengagement” Gaza.

I’m not a believer in violence, and so I certainly don’t think that Hamas’ rocket attacks have been an appropriate, morally defensible, or effective means of protesting this one-sided bargain. But it’s important to understand that it’s simply not the case that Hamas is the only party to this conflict that’s working toward unreasonable goals.

Looks like David Patterson may just kick the can down the road:

Sen. Bill Clinton? Sen. Mario Cuomo? Don’t completely rule it out. The former president and the former New York governor are among several boldface names being touted as possible “caretakers” for New York’s Senate seat — people who would serve until the 2010 elections but wouldn’t be interested in running to keep the job.

That’s probably a decent idea. But I have to say that in my view both the Illinois situation, the Delaware situation, and the New York situation all basically serve to illustrate the over-arching point that states would be well-advised to adopt a rule whereby Senate vacancies will be filled by special election. The constitution lets them do this, they just need to walk through the open door. Meanwhile, as a pure tactic matter I’m baffled that Patterson didn’t just act quickly to designate NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. That would have been the obvious thing to do, and nobody would have serious second-guessed it had it been done swiftly. Instead, dawdling created this Caroline Kennedy opening and how Patterson’s put himself in an awkward position that he could have easily avoided.

I don’t always actually manage to follow Neil Sinhababu’s sound advice on hangover avoidance, but it’s still true. Interestingly, I was first taught this tip by my high school physics teacher. Some would say it was an inappropriate subject, but honestly I think it’s a smart idea for science instructors to show that their expertise can be practical.

James Fallows travels to Indonesia:

“Where you from? Australians?” one of the policemen asks. It is the most likely guess for people who look like us in this part of the world. Amerika Syarikat, I reply – “the United States.” We used to live in Malaysia, and after our struggles with Mandarin the Malaysian/Indonesian language feels practically like our native tongue.

The officer pulls himself up to attention and with a huge smile gives us a snappy military salute. “America – very good!” he said. He lowers the salute and says “Barack Obama!!” with a big thumbs up.

Obviously Indonesia’s a bit of a special case here since Obama’s lived in Indonesia. But still it’s a nice reminder that we have a real opportunity to re-enchant the world with the United States. It’s an opportunity that’ll be swiftly squandered if we don’t get the policy right, but it’s an opportunity we should seize.