Omar al-Bashir (wikimedia)

For many years, Sudan had a vicious civil war between the northern-dominated central government and rebel movements based in the south. More recently the situation has calmed down thanks to peace agreements that, among other things, promise a referendum on independence. But as John Norris writes, there’s likely to be serious trouble ahead in the near future:

In 2011, Sudan is scheduled to hold a referendum that will allow South Sudan to vote on severing its ties with the North and declaring independence. Almost every observer has concluded that if this referendum happens, the South will vote overwhelmingly for independence, sundering in half the largest country in Africa (that’s why the road ahead could not be clearer). But it’s the actions taken now, by the Barack Obama administration, that may well determine if Sudan’s breakup occurs peacefully or is steeped in blood and a return to full-blown civil war.

The early signs are discouraging. There has been a sharp uptick in violent clashes in South Sudan of the same sort that have already killed hundreds this year. So dramatic is the escalation that the United Nations recently noted that the violence there is now worse than that in Darfur. There have been abundant allegations that the Sudanese government, headed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir (who is still wanted on outstanding war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court), has been rapidly rearming proxy militias in the South to do Khartoum’s bidding. The use of proxy militias has long been a favorite tactic of the ruling party — both in Darfur and South Sudan. Officials from the South accuse Khartoum of distributing “thousands” of AK-47s in recent months. The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan has also noted the presence of more modern and powerful weaponry in recent clashes than has traditionally been the case.

The notorious Lord’s Resistance Army from Uganda has also stepped up its level of activity in southern Sudan. It would make a lot more sense for the international community to try to intercede with the Sudanese government now before any gigantic humanitarian catastrophe emerges rather than doing the normal thing and ignoring a basically back-burner situation until calamity is already under way and extremely difficult to stop.

Another one form the annals of “Mike Pence isn’t very bright” comes to us courtesy of my colleague Igor Volsky who observes this to-and-fro in which Rep. Pence says people should buy health insurance the way members of congress do, and then proceeds to condemn “government-run” health insurance exchanges:

Republicans believe that in addition to tort reform what we should allow Americans to do is to purchase health insurance the way members of Congress can, the way all federal employees can and that is to buy health insurance across state lines to get out there and allow new insurance products to be created in a new competitive marketplace…even the private insurance elements in the Exchanges, you know, are essentially government controlled and government dictated.

This is not—at all—an accurate description of how members of congress get their health insurance. Members of congress purchase health insurance via the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program which we had occasion to discuss yesterday. This operates, essentially, the way the Health Insurance Exchange works in the major reform proposals. A large potential pool of customers is assembled that’s very attractive to insurers. But in order to get at the customers, you have to play by certain rules. As Volsky says “private insurers participating in FEHBP cannot deny coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions, charge exorbitant out of pocket fees, rescind coverage or discriminate based on gender or age.” In other words, they’re subject to similar regulatory mandates as would be put in place in the Exchange.

If federal employees were simply invited to buy health insurance across state lines, they would presumably just all be stranded on the dysfunctional individual insurance market. Pence doesn’t sit on any of the committees relevant to health care or to federal personnel management, which perhaps explains why he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. At the same time, that only raises the question of why he’s talking about this on television at all.

I’ve been remiss in not discussing the revelations about Virginia Gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell’s outrageously right-wing master’s thesis:

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

McDonnell is, obviously, trying to dismiss this as irrelevant old news. But by the same token, stuff you do when you’re 34 can’t just be written off as youthful indiscretion. I’m six years younger than McDonnell was when he wrote that stuff, and I certainly expect people to take what I write as a serious expression of my views. Now that’s not to say that I can promise I’ll still believe all the things I believe today twenty years from now. The idea that McDonnell’s views have evolved is certainly plausible. That said, this was only two years before his first election—there’s not some big mysterious gap in which he could have had a wholesale change of opinion hidden from public view.

Which leaves the issue of the public record. It would be one thing if McDonnell entered electoral politics as the kind of fire-breathing bigot suggested by his thesis and then moderated, in public view, over the years. But instead we have no real indication of what he thought at any given time or what kind of agenda he may really have. Obviously, lots of politicians may have extreme views that they don’t articulate on the campaign trail out of political pragmatism. But voters are legitimately interested in that kind of subject. Ultimately, though, we’ll never know what he “really” thinks and this kind of thing can’t outweigh one’s actual record in office. Still, as the Washington Post notes that’s a pretty conservative record: “During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family.”

Speaking of Moby Dick, the bad reasoning in the most recent Richard Cohen column is outpaced by the bad morals, and the bad morals are outpaced by the bad writing:

Call him Ishmael.

Call him a terrorist or a suicide bomber or anything else you want, but understand that he is willing — no, anxious — to give his life for his cause. Call him also a captive, and know that he works with others as part of a team, like the Sept. 11 hijackers, all of whom died, willingly. Ishmael is someone I invented, but he is not a far-fetched creation. You and I know he exists, has existed and will exist again. He is the enemy.

Cohen thinks we should torture him. Or, I guess, we shouldn’t torture him but if he just so happens to be tortured then we should applaud the torturer. Or something. But why on earth are we beginning this column with “call me Ishmael”? Because it’s a famous line from a book, I guess? Richard Cohen wants us to know that he’s familiar with very famous books. Or something. Maybe the idea is that the Biblical Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arab people, so he served well as a stand-in for a generic would-be mass murderer? Either way, it’s a reminder that we don’t have merit pay for major newspaper columnists?

For the record, Melville’s wonderful opening paragraph:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Read the whole thing!