The moon, the sun, and the sky:

— Greece’s protest dog.

— Keynes on the Liberal Party.

— Self-described progressives don’t know much about supply restrictions.

— The stimulus created plenty of private sector jobs.

— Ezra Klein thinks newsweeklies have a future; my impression is they were already in decline when my mom worked at Newsweek in the 80s.

Silversun Pickups “Lazy Eye”

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aronoth has done some digging into Richard Goldstone’s past as a judge in apartheid-era South Africa and found him in some bad-looking situations as an enforcer of the country’s then-extant immoral laws. Given that an awful lot of people were in morally compromising situations at that point, and that the leadership of the African National Congress has always seemed to regard Goldstone as a credible jurist I’m inclined to give him a pass. But I see that defenders of the rights of black South Africans as Jonathan Chait and Jeffrey Goldberg are inclined to take a darker view of things than am I or Nelson Mandela.

At some point, though, critics of Goldstone’s work on the Gaza War are going to have to face the fact that whether or not they like what he’s said on this subject it’s just not the case that Israel’s been the victim of a frameup by white supremacists. For example, I take it that nobody is going to question the anti-apartheid credentials of Desmond Tutu and I don’t think Chait is going to endorse this or this or much anything else he’s had to say on the subject.

I posit that people who don’t like the Goldstone Report ought to actually think harder about international humanitarian law. The American right has a longstanding complaint on this score that international humanitarian law’s even-handed nature constitutes de facto unfair treatment of “the good guys.” Their point of view is that, in essence, you ought to look at a conflict, identify who the bad guys is (the Taliban rather than the US, Hamas rather than Israel), and focus your ire on the bad guy instead of nitpicking at the good guy’s conduct. Hawkish Arabs also join in this critique, though of course in their view it’s Israel who’s in the “bad guy” role. Personally, I don’t find this critique persuasive and I believe in international humanitarian law—just like Human Rights Watch does and Desmond Tutu does and Richard Goldstone does, which is why these organizations find themselves in the position of criticizing both Israeli and Palestinian conduct.

If you ask me, it would be much more plausible if people with liberal views on domestic policy and conservative ones on foreign policy would just join in the overall conservative critique. Instead, a lot of these people have tried to work out a not-so-plausible alternative view in which international humanitarian law is a good thing, but Israel just so happens to continually be victimized by sundry biased and/or unsavory figures. The simple fact of the matter is that adhering to international humanitarian law makes it very difficult to wage war, which I think is a good thing but many people disagree with that. This is an important debate, but it actually has nothing to do with anti-Israel bias or Goldstone’s alleged status as an amoral comformist.

Here’s a smart take on the “Audit the Fed” compromise from FDL’s David Dayen. He notes that Dean Baker thinks it’s a pretty good deal, and that the one-time audit though unfortunately limited manages to achieve the core purpose of auditing the Fed and to do so in a more open and transparent way than the House version of the legislation. He also posts an effective rebuttal to the idea of citing Ron Paul as an authority on the question of whether or not the deal constitutes a sellout:

Now I know Ron Paul and some libertarians are angered by this deal. But understand that Ron Paul doesn’t want an audit of the Federal Reserve. He wants to end the Federal Reserve. The best-selling book “End the Fed” that he wrote tipped me off to this. He wants to go back to hard-money policies and a return to the gold standard. Now, you can argue that this would end the cartel of central bankers scheming with their monetary policy, or that it would turn US monetary policy into the inflation-uber-alles laissez-faire mess we’re seeing in Europe that is threatening a global depression. The consequences for Paul’s favored end-state would be catastrophic if implemented in real time. This Fed is failing in different ways – and their actions should draw more scrutiny – but eliminating it would return us to the Stone Age.

Right on. Trying to forge left-right populist alliances has some promise, but also some peril. It’s important to keep your eyes open about what’s going on and recognize that you may work together for a while only to find that ultimately your interests diverge. For someone like Paul who’s just trying to build as much anti-Fed sentiment as possible, there’s no reason to ever say yes to a deal—what he wants is for the Fed to stay secretive and illegitimate-seeming.