Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) is “sick” of the “insider baseball crap” dominating the Senate debate over global warming and energy reform. In an interview with Grist, the first-term congressman stated in no uncertain terms that the country is at risk from global warming and our economy is at risk of losing the clean energy race. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Perriello has not one lick of sympathy for those in the Senate who deny these threats:

That’s more insider baseball crap. I don’t really care. I’m sick of starting with what can we get through the Senate; let’s start with what solves the damn problem. Until the Senate gets its head out of its rear end and starts to see the crisis we’re in, our country is literally at risk. Our economy is at risk, because these jobs are being created overseas. It should have the same urgency with this problem that it had bailing out Wall Street. We are swearing an oath to do what’s necessary to protect this country, not do what’s necessary to get a bill through the Senate.

Perriello repeatedly expressed his belief that Congressional inaction on jobs, national security, and scientific “challenge of our era” is due to a lack of courage and responsibility:

– This is the challenge of our time—the jobs opportunity, the national security challenge, the scientific challenge of our era. Any plan that uses market forces to signal a carbon-constrained environment is going to move us in the right direction. People who don’t support this kind of aggressive energy independence are just selling Americans short.

– We’re so far behind China, Europe, and other areas in the energy jobs of the future because neither party has had the guts to take this on. There are so many spineless people in D.C.

– Every week the Senate doesn’t act, it either freezes that investment and innovation or it sends it overseas. We’re giving up jobs. The Senate—the ridiculous tactics of the Republicans and the timidity of the Democrats—is standing in the way of the kind of job creation we need.

– Unfortunately, good ideas, ideas that could save our country, sometimes take 30 minutes to explain and only 30 seconds to demagogue. In between those two things is leadership, and we haven’t had the moral courage to take this on.

Perriello’s principled support for cap-and-trade legislation has made him a target of Republicans and polluters, who have mocked him with ads about snowstorms and flooded his office with forged letters of opposition.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified forcefully that the blocking of crucial State Department nominees more than a year after President Obama was inaugurated was endangering the security of the United States.

We’re now more than a year into a new administration and whether you agree or disagree with a particular policy, a president deserves to have the people that he nominates serving him.

Following the revelation that Senator Shelby was holding up all nominees, almost 30 of the President’s appointments have now cleared the Senate. However, one key State Department nominee remains stuck due to an anonymous hold – Laura Kennedy the nominee for the Conference on Disarmament. This is a post that the President wants to elevate to an Ambassador-level position. The conference is the forum for negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, a vital treaty that would ban further production of nuclear weapons. As a result of this hold, the United States does not have a negotiator participating in this major international – a fact that greatly undercuts security of the United States and the President’s nuclear agenda.

So what mysterious Senator, is holding up this nominee, hamstringing US foreign policy, and undermining American security? Well none other than Arizona Senator Jon Kyl.

Josh Rogin of the Cable confirmed this today and asked Kyl about his obstruction. Demonstrating the heart of a lion, Kyl told Rogin “I’m not sure if I have a hold on her.” Kyl’s staff however rushed to clarify, telling Rogin that the White House hasn’t let them in on the ins-and-outs of all the START negotiations. Kyl’s aide told Rogin:

For some reason they’ve [the Administration] been reluctant to respond. Consequently, Senator Kyl is reluctant to consider their nominees.

While not surprising, Kyl’s aide’s statement is revealing. It essentially admits that the reason Kyl is just crassly obstructing Kennedy has nothing to do with Kennedy’s qualifications, but everything to do with Kyl being a nuclear extremist. An Administration official told Rogin, “Kennedy’s position has nothing to do with those items [START or CTBT] … He will have every chance to scrutinize START when it is submitted for ratification. His pleas for info now are a transparent effort to kill the negotiations.”

Kyl’s foreign policy radicalism is pretty well-known, just yesterday I noted that Kyl associates with a tin-foil hat right wing extremist who believes that Obama is pushing America’s “submission to Shariah.” Kyl after all wants more, not fewer nuclear weapons, and he wants to conduct new explosive nuclear tests in the backyards of citizens from Utah, Nevada, and perhaps even Arizona.

This is also not the first time Kyl has obstructed nominees relating to nuclear weapons. Kyl infamously blocked Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher and slowed lead START negotiator Rose Gottemoeller’s confirmation – both of whom are crucial figures in the negotiations with Russia. Then just a few months later – in an act of stone-cold hypocrisy – attacked the Administration for not getting a new START deal done by the December 5th deadline.

John Isaacs smartly notes that Kyl has not officially come out against a new START treaty and has softened some of his “red lines.” But a Senator does not have to explicitly state his opposition to the treaty to gum up the process and block the President’s nuclear agenda, as Kyl is so clearly demonstrating.

A long-awaited Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report released last week found that lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee “had committed professional misconduct in writing legal opinions that authorized torture.” The OPR report revealed that many of Yoo’s emails had vanished:

[W]e were told that most of Yoo’s records had been deleted and were not recoverable. [Former Deputy AAG] Philbin’s email records from July 2002 through August 5, 2002 — the time period in which the Bybee Memo was completed and the Classified Bybee Memo (discussed below) was created — had also been deleted and were reportedly not recoverable.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) “called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the destruction of emails” and reported that “he destruction of these emails represents a blatant violation of the Federal Records Act (FRA) and may break criminal laws.”

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said the deleted records pose “very serious concerns about government transparency and whether the [OPR] had access to all of the information relevant to the inquiries.”

Leahy then asked whether the DOJ has initiated an investigation into the circumstances behind the destruction of the emails. Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler said the DOJ is in the process of trying to establish the facts for why the emails disappeared. Grindler also studiously avoided suggesting that any foul play was behind the disappearance of the emails, stating that there was “nothing nefarious” about the deletions. Leahy then drew a parallel between the Yoo emails and the emails that the Bush White House previously claimed had disappeared:

I recall when millions of emails mysteriously disappeared during the Bush administration, and I had [said] they don’t just disappear. They must be there. And I recall them sending their press secretary Ms. Perino out to say, ‘what is he some kind of IT expert? That’s foolish, they’ve been deleted. They’ve disappeared. We all know they’ve disappeared. Why would anyone suggest otherwise.’ And then we found 22 million emails. [...]

During the firing of the U.S. Attorneys…there were a number of emails by Mr. Karl Rove and others in the White House that were missing. Now, two months ago, we finally find those emails of course after the investigation was over and after the time when the U.S. Attorneys might have been reinstated. I hope we don’t have to wait that long this time.

Watch it:

Newsweek reports that the National Archives is pressing the Justice Department to investigate the “possible unauthorized destruction of e-mail and other records” within the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy’s the Cable has two recent stories doubting the ability of the President to get a new START deal through the Senate. The Rogin stories points to the real political fight that confronts a new START treaty – something that I pointed to before and something that the White House and treaty advocates have been slow to realize. In that sense, Rogin’s articles should serve as a real wake-up call, especially his latest piece on START that points out the potential process problems that could delay START in the Senate.

Rogin presents these process challenges as purely technical procedural problems inherent in Senate protocol that seem to guarantee that START ratification will be drawn out for months upon months.

The huge demand for time it would take for the Senate to scrutinize and then ratify the agreement makes a ratification on the U.S. side unlikely in 2010.

Now there maybe some technical aspects of the Senate ratification process that take up some time. But these are challenges that a functioning legislative body should be able to handle. After all, this is one of the top foreign policy priorities of the White House and it is not as if this is an entirely new treaty, as the basic tenets of any new START treaty will not differ dramatically from the previous START treaty that has enjoyed nearly two decades of bipartisan support. With a functioning Senate, this treaty gets done, and relatively rapidly. Of course, we know that the Senate is not really functioning all that well right now. But that is not a technical process issue, as Rogin presents. That is a political issue.

Rogin’s piece in fact just tips the hand of those seeking to defeat START. Opponents will seek to make the START process dysfunctional. Rogin revealed as much when he speculated that, “It’s not clear whether leading GOP senators like Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ, will complicate the timeline further by moving to stall the new treaty or jam it up altogether.” In other words, the same obstruction techniques and complaints that have been used over health care – the endless filibusters, the claims the bill is too long, that things are moving too fast, that more time is needed, or the latest talking point, that the Administration should just start over – will allow be used against a new START treaty.

These process complaints may be used to try to mask opposition. For instance, Kyl may now try to avoid outwardly opposing START, using instead Senate processes to covertly gum up ratification. Kyl knows that delaying START by even a year would be a significant setback to the entire arms-control agenda. Delaying may not ultimately defeat START, but it would effectively kill all the momentum behind Obama’s global zero vision, something that Kyl is very much opposed to.

Fortunately, Rogin’s other claim that the treaty maybe “dead on arrival,” with Democratic Senators shirking from the fight, does not appear accurate. Rogin quoted Carl Levin, saying ratifying the treaty is “going to be hard.” Indeed, it will be and if the White House and pro-treaty Senators don’t tool up it certainly will be dead on arrival. But fortunately there are significant signs of life. Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) this week gave a powerful floor speech in support of START, the Vice President has preempted conservative claims on a deteriorating nuclear stockpile, and other Senators like Dick Durbin (D-IL), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and notably Richard Lugar (R-IN) all look like key advocates in for ratification.

Make no mistake, ratifying START will take considerable effort on behalf of the White House, pro-treaty Senators, and the advocacy community. But the notion that ratification is just doomed is the sort of nonsense that Senators like Jon Kyl want everyone to believe.

Earlier this week, the anti-immigrant group, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), endorsed senatorial candidate and former U.S. representative, J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ). While Hayworth proudly touts ALIPAC’s endorsement on his website, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign claims that it’s nothing to be proud of. James King of the Phoenix News Times reports:

“J.D. Hayworth’s lavish praise for the social theories of noted anti-Semite and xenophobe Henry Ford sparked a major controversy during his losing 2006 campaign, causing many Arizonans to question Mr. Hayworth’s judgment. It is astounding that Mr. Hayworth would today accept the endorsement of a group that the Anti-Defamation League reports is backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. Mr. Hayworth should immediately disavow this group’s support,” says Brian Rogers, the McCain campaign’s Communications Director…

Rogers claims some of the country’s most notorious hate-mongers support the group, including members of the National Socialist Movement and David Duke, a former “Grand Wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and one-time presidential candidate from Louisiana.

ALIPAC was quick to jump on Rogers and dismiss his comments as “offensive false information.” However, Rogers was simply citing public facts. The Center for New Community has extensively documented ALIPAC’s nativist ties, describing the group as being “characterized by hysterical fear-mongering and xenophobic, anti-Latino conspiracy theories.” The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that ALIPAC “is supported by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, recently designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, and allied with various Minuteman factions.” ADL accuses ALIPAC of promoting “virulent anti- Hispanic and anti-immigrant rhetoric” and “adopting the tactics and rhetoric of racist groups and moving it into the mainstream.” Members of Hayworth’s own Party have pointed out that his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy platform cost him his House seat in 2006.

While the McCain campaign is wise to highlight Hayworth’s nativist ties, McCain has allowed himself to be intimidated by Hayworth’s hard line immigration views and has moved his own platform further to the right.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is one of Congress’ biggest Israel hawks, opposing “any attempt to pressure Israel” and worrying that President Obama doesn’t have “the right stuff to bomb Iran.” But in a recent interview with the Jewish Ledger, Lieberman offered a harmful understanding about the situation in the Middle East, rejecting the fact that the expansion of Israeli settlements is impairing the peace process:

Q: There’s been a great deal of pressure on Israel to stop building in the “settlements.” Some in the Administration and in Congress believe it is a major impediment to peace. Do you agree?

A: No, I really don’t think that the “community building,” as it is now called, is the obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Respectfully, I think the President made a mistake when, earlier in the year, as an attempt to try to engage the Arab world, he specifically called on Israel to freeze the settlements, because that had not been a specific request of the Palestinians themselves, and it led others in the Middle East to think that they could continue to pressure us. … We can’t – and in my opinion, we shouldn’t – push both peoples to do something that they don’t want to do.

The Israeli government may call it “community building,” but the U.S. government and the international community refer to it as “settlement expansion.” Settlements are one of the chief Palestinian grievances, so regardless of how Lieberman feels about them, claiming that settlements are not a major “obstacle” to peace is naive or willfully ignorant. By opposing a settlement freeze, Lieberman is disagreeing not only with Obama, but with every U.S. administration since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

The settlements stoke extremism and violence on both sides of the conflict, making reconciliation more difficult. As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss notes, “by entrenching Israel within the Palestinian territories, the settlements also make a two-state solution — which both Presidents Bush and Obama have recognized as a central U.S. national security interest — far more difficult to achieve.”

Under the 2003 road map, Israel is obligated to freeze settlements, including “natural growth.” After resisting calls from the Obama administration to honor its commitments, the Israeli government announced a partial freeze late last year. But thanks to plenty of loopholes in the pronouncement, 10,000 new homes could be built this year.

By whitewashing the settlement issue, Lieberman — like Sarah Palin — endangers the Middle East peace process by attempting to push U.S. foreign policy in the wrong direction.

Maybe we should show former Bush administration speechwriter/current torture advocate Marc Thiessen a little sympathy. The last few weeks have been extraordinarily unkind to his various shifting arguments about how President Obama is making America less safe.

In late January, Thiessen went on CNN and insisted that, not only is waterboarding “not torture,” but it doesn’t involve any “extreme pain” — clumsily contradicting his other claims that jihadist prisoners require extreme pain in order to fulfill their obligation to Allah, after which they can tell interrogators about all of their jihadist plans.

Then John Kiriakou, a key CIA source for claims that waterboarding got good intelligence out of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, retracted his previous claims, admitting that he “wasn’t there when the interrogation took place” and had only “relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time.” Kiriakou said that the fact that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month “rais[ed] questions about how much useful information he actually supplied.” It also raises questions about whether Thiessen himself was being played by CIA sources seeking to create the false impression that torture works.

Then Thiessen’s argument that, by relinquishing “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Obama administration was leaving our defenders without tools to defend us was refuted by the revelation that the failed Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, had been giving up intelligence, and that this had been facilitated through the cooperation of Abdulmuttalab’s family, who had been flown in from Nigeria. According to a federal official, “the intelligence gained has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community,” and “the best way to get him to talk was working with his family.” Another official said that the family was willing to help “because they had complete trust in the US system of justice and believed that Umar Farouq would be treated fairly and appropriately.”

As it’s highly unlikely that the family would have cooperated if they suspected that Umar Farouk was in any danger of being tortured, this offered a clear example of how President Obama’s bringing U.S. counter-terrorism practices back within the rule of law is making Americans safer.

Then Thiessen’s claim that the Obama administration had irresponsibly bungled the interrogation of Abdulmuttalab and squandered precious intelligence by allowing him to receive medical treatment was tripped up by the fact — recounted in Thiessen’s own book! — that the questioning of Zubaydah (which Thiessen hails as a triumph of Bush administration intelligence-gathering) had been delayed so that he could receive medical treatment.

Then Thiessen published an article arguing that the Obama administration was killing too many terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan without capturing and interrogating them. Days later, top Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was captured in a joint U.S.-Pakistani raid.

Then Spencer Ackerman found this story, in the memoir of one of Thiessen’s former White House colleagues, of Thiessen pressuring a CIA analyst into giving him conclusions he wanted:

When Marc was writing remarks on the war in Iraq, he tried to browbeat a CIA analyst who was unwilling to state unequivocally that America was winning in the war on terror. “The president wants to say we’re winning!” Marc thundered. Just what we needed — another accusation that the Bush White House wanted to politicize intelligence.

…Which, to say the least, raises questions about the manner in which Thiessen conducted the CIA “interviews” upon which he bases his book’s claim that torture works.

Today in National Review, Thiessen claims triumphantly that “Declassified Documents This Week Confirm Library Tower Plot.” As Timothy Noah noted, the Library Tower plot was, for a time, a favorite talking point of the Bush administration, offered as evidence of their having successfully stopped another terrorist attack by waterboarding Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Unfortunately, it was subsequently revealed that the Library Tower plot was actually broken up before Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was captured.

What’s got Thiessen so excited now? Declassified testimony from former CIA chief Michael Hayden:

HAYDEN: In the early planning stage of the attacks of 11 September, al-Qa’ida leaders considered an ambitious plot that called for striking both coasts of the United States with as many as ten planes in one operation. Usama bin Laden (UBL) reportedly scaled back that plan to the US East Coast only — saving the West Coast for a follow-on attack — and UBL specifically mentioned California as a target to be attacked in the weeks following 11 September, according to detainee reporting. Operatives assigned to this plot were detained in 2002 and 2003, including KSM. Evidence suggests — as I noted earlier — that Hambali was considering pursuing this plot, and his efforts were disrupted by his detention [REDACTED] and his cell of operatives.

“Evidence suggests” that “Hambali was considering pursuing this plot.” That’s it. That’s the extent of “the plot to destroy the Library Tower.” That’s the thin reed upon which Thiessen hangs his argument that torture averted a second 9/11. As former staff director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council Roger Cressey told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, the Library Tower plot belongs in the “What if?” category — along with “What If Superman Had Worked For The Nazis?”

So yes, perhaps a little sympathy for Thiessen. He may once have had a shot at a straight-cable-movie deal for his book. After the last few weeks, it’s looking more like it’ll be available exclusively on Hannity.com, which he’ll be able to hawk from his new perch as a Washington Post columnist.

Frank Gaffney, a protégé of Richard Perle and an influential figure in right wing national security circles, has firmly entered the world of right wing tin-foil hat paranoia.

Media Matters documents the development of a new right wing conspiracy theory, claiming that the Obama administration manipulated the redesign of the Missile Defense Agency to look like his campaign logo. This theory then evolved to claims that the new logo incorporates the Islamic crescent as well:

This nutty conspiracy theory was escalated by Frank Gaffney, who sees it as explaining Obama’s rationale behind his cuts to missile defense. How so? Well because he is a secret Muslim of course, which since all Muslims are out to destroy America, means Obama is out to do the same:

A just-unveiled symbolic action suggests, however, that something even more nefarious is afoot… Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah… the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo… Watch this space as we identify and consider various, ominous and far more clear-cut acts of submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team.

So according to Gaffney, Obama hates missile defense so much that he wants to change the Missile Defense Agency’s logo to reflect his campaign symbol, as well as his secret Muslim identity? While this makes no sense, as Brendan Nyhan explains this is part of a strategy to spread fear-mongering “smears against Obama’s loyalty and false claims about Obama’s religion. As laughable as ‘Logo-gate’ may be, the underlying strategy is deeply disturbing.” As Matt Duss has noted:

Gaffney’s own past work strongly argues against taking him seriously as an analyst. As someone willing to cast deeply irresponsible and transparently bigoted accusations against the president, however, he should be taken very seriously.

Yet Gaffney is a prominent member of the right wing security establishment. He writes a regular column for the Washington Times, is a frequent commentator on cable television, and runs his own right-wing defense organization. Just this past October, at Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy “Keeper of the Flame” annual award dinner, Vice President Cheney was the featured speaker and recipient of the reward. Other guest speakers included Sen. Jon Kyl and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

By spreading this crazy paranoid conspiracy, Gaffney not only is defaming the President, he is also defaming the people who work and lead the Missile Defense Agency. The idea that the President would pay attention to an agency logo redesign or that the design in anyway reflected some secret Muslim agenda, as Richard Lehner of the Missile Defense Agency noted, “is ridiculous.” Lehner told Fox that “it isn’t a new logo to replace the official logo. It’s a logo developed for recruiting materials and for our public Web site. Also, it was used prior to the 2008 election and it has no link to any political campaign.”

Additionally, the one to approve the new logo is likely the head of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. General Patrick O’Reilly, someone the right wing must now presumably believe is complicit with Obama’s secret plan to further the United States’ “submission to Islam.”

Throughout the economic recession, anti-immigrant groups have been eager to blame California’s budget woes on the state’s undocumented immigrants. However, yesterday, in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) denied these accusations. While recognizing that undocumented immigration does pose some costs to the state, Schwarzenegger reiterated that the recession that California is experiencing is the result of a larger economic downturn, not immigration. And while the anti-immigrant crowd is quick to cite California’s economic troubles as a reason to clamp down on immigration, Schwarzenegger supports a more open policy that gives immigrants an opportunity to contribute to the state of California:

SCHWARZENEGGER: The fact of the matter is yes, it does create an extra burden on our economy and also on our budget situation. But, at the same time, that is not the reason why we have an economic downturn. This just was a crash that happened world-wide, it happened in all different countries all over the world. [...]

VAN SUSTEREN: Is immigration a factor in this state — I mean, what would you do about illegal immigration?

SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, I’ve said many times we need immigration reform…we’ve got to go and make a decision so that people can come to this country legitimately, rather than having quotas there. Because we need the farm workers, we need the construction workers, we need people to do certain jobs that maybe we cannot fill otherwise. So I think we ought to provide that.

Schwarzenegger also appeared critical of those who are holding back immigration reform:

SCHWARZENEGGER: So, there are kinds of things like this that we ought to do in immigration reform and it ought to be done now. We should not every two years say: “this is not the right time,” “it is an election year,” “I think we should postpone it until next year.” It will never get done this way and we will always live in this kind of chaos. It’s living in denial basically, like ignoring that we have this major problem and people are coming across the border.

Watch it:

Schwarzenegger also pointed out that it’s “irresponsible” to welcome foreign students to study in the U.S. and then require them to leave once they are finished with their education. “I think they should stay here, they should work here, and they should take that knowledge that they have gained in California and put it to good use for California,” said Schwarzenegger.

A study by Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California found that immigration reform would increase California’s “state and local tax base by about $350 million in the short run.” A separate study by Raul Hinojosa of the University of California, Los Angeles similarly found that immigration reform which includes a path legalization could generate at least $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years.

There have been consistent assertions from conservatives and from the mainstream media that the Administration’s strategy of engagement was “naïve” and had “failed.” A new meme is now emerging that the Administration is shifting to Hillary Clinton’s hard nosed pressure approach. All of this overlooks the fact that the engagement policy is playing out just as Obama described. There are in fact increasing signs that UN security council sanctions, once seen as improbable, are becoming increasingly possible.

What naysayers don’t seem to understand is that sanctions are a byproduct of engagement. For engagement to work, Iran and the US did not have to become best buddies. While constructive talks that led to Iran renouncing nukes would have been ideal, engagement was just as much about building an international consensus and demonstrating to our allies and the world that Iran was the problem not America’s refusal to talk. During the first 2008 presidential debate against Senator McCain, Obama argued this point:

I do not agree with Senator McCain that we’re going to be able to execute the kind of sanctions we need without some cooperation with some countries like Russia and China that are, I think Senator McCain would agree, not democracies, but have extensive trade with Iran but potentially have an interest in making sure Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon. But we are also going to have to, I believe, engage in tough direct diplomacy with Iran. … Again, it may not work, but if it doesn’t work, then we have strengthened our ability to form alliances to impose the tough sanctions that Senator McCain just mentioned.

This is playing out just Obama said it would. The Administration appears to be closing in on the votes at the UN. European powers, France, Germany, and the UK, after clashing and working off different playbooks during the Bush administration are firmly supportive of UN sanctions. The Administration’s effort to reset relations with Russia is paying dividends, as Russia is now seemingly in near lockstep with the Administration on Iran. If Russia does end up supporting security sanctions, this will be quite a feat for the Administration given that some experienced Iran hands dismissed the notion that Russia would support sanctions.

China has been a much trickier case. Despite extensive US outreach to China last year, China pushed back against the move toward sanctions earlier this year. However, China has now gone silent – a sign that it may be recalibrating. The Israeli Ambassador has said that it is a “mystery” what China will do. US-Sino relations have gotten a bit pricklier and China has tremendous economic interests in its relations with Iran, as it has overtaken Europe as Iran’s largest trading partner and is dependent on Iranian oil. However, as Roger Cohen noted, “I expect China, averse to conspicuous isolation, will eventually abstain on a new round of U.N. sanctions on Iran.” The International Crisis Group similarly concluded in a recent report, “if Russia finally supports sanctions, China will likely come on board to avoid diplomatic isolation.”

UN security sanctions would put significant additional pressure on the Iranian regime, as it would highlight their international isolation and would clear the way for coordinated targeted sanctions against the regime. It would also be a big win for the Administration and would vindicate, not contradict, their strategy of engagement. As General Petraeus said on Meet the Press on Sunday engagement has laid the groundwork for greater pressure.

Watch it:

Transcript:

PETRAEUS: We have over the last year of course pursued the engagement track, I think no one over the course of this time can say that the United States has not given Iran every opportunity to resolve the issues diplomatically, that puts us on a solid foundation to go on what is termed the pressure track.

This morning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) chastised Democrats for not doing anything about language in the jobs bill which he claims will allow employers of “illegal workers” and the “illegal workers” themselves to receive “benefits of a payroll tax holiday.” Grassley remarked:

The bill as currently written would allow employers of illegal workers to benefit from a payroll tax holiday. Now, for sure we should correct that mistake with an amendment. But under this parliamentary setup, you can only offer an amendment if not a single Senator objects to setting aside the existing business and replacing it with a new idea.

So, the leadership put posture on this bill now prohibits this correction of giving illegal workers the benefits of this payroll tax holiday — or the employer who employs him. Either the Democratic leaders are playing partisan politics with tax extenders or they don’t understand the worth of the provisions to the economy as a whole and most importantly, job retention and job creation.

Watch it:

However, if anyone is playing partisan politics, it’s Grassley. An article in the Hill points out that the current jobs bill contains the exact same language that was first introduced in the tax rebate bill by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) which raised few, if any immigration-related objections. Along these lines, Democrats claim that Grassley’s concerns are nothing more than a transparent excuse to oppose a bill along partisan lines.

Either that, or Grassley himself is ignorant of the implications of his own argument in terms of job retention and job creation. Grassley’s concerns are reportedly ripped straight off the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) — an immigration restrictionist organization that has also been designated a hate group. According to FAIR, the bill “disappointed immigration reformers” like themselves because it left “out any mandate that jobs created by the bill go to U.S. workers” and doesn’t require employers to use E-Verify — a controversial electronic verification system that many claim is simply “not ready for prime time.” According to a human resources association, E-Verify has a 4.1% error rate which could deny as many as 6 million Americans employment due to a bureaucratic error.

Ultimately, the current law dictates that it is illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers, so spending valuable floor time on an amendment that reiterates a law that is already on the books seems unnecessary. While unauthorized workers are certainly part of the reality of the nation’s broken immigration system, the jobs bill certainly doesn’t provide the proper time or setting for that debate to take place. However, despite his concerns relating to foreign workers, Grassley has already asserted that he isn’t interested in working towards a productive solution that involves even touching a “general immigration reform bill” with a ten-foot pole.

The plea copped by Najibullah Zazi is another vindication of the Obama administration’s belief that the threat of terrorism does not necessitate the abandoning of the U.S. legal system, and its discarding of a militaristic “war on terror” frame generally. But the Washington Post’s story on Zazi’s plea deal contains a couple of other interesting “new details about the path that led the suburban Denver man into terrorism” that further demonstrate the stupidity of the Iraq war specifically:

Zazi, an Afghan immigrant residing legally in the United States, traveled to an al-Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan in August 2008 to receive weapons training so he could fight alongside the Taliban, according to Justice Department and FBI officials. But jihadists redirected him and two confederates to focus their energies on a suicide attack on the U.S. mainland.

Zazi returned to Colorado in January 2009 with notes on how to mix explosive chemicals. He procured large volumes of beauty supplies that contained hydrogen peroxide to make TATP, the explosive involved in the 2005 bombings of London’s transit system, authorities said.

There are two points to be made here. The first is that, had the Bush administration stayed to finish the job in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not diverted resources, expertise, and attention to Iraq, it’s very possible that there would not have been an al-Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan for Zazi to travel to in August 2008 to receive weapons training, and no remaining Taliban insurgency for Zazi to hope to fight alongside. The Obama administration has, through focused and painstaking diplomacy, recently had some success in encouraging the Pakistani government to move against Taliban elements on its own territory. What if, instead of being distracted by Iraq for the last seven years of his presidency, President Bush had actually applied his administration’s efforts to this problem?

Second, the Zazi case destroys (yet again) the “flypaper theory” of the Iraq war that was popular among pro-war types in 2003. The idea was that the war would attract radical Islamic jihadists from around the region and distract them from attacks on the American homeland. In addition to being just basically stupid — it was premised on the assumption that there was some finite number of extremists who, upon arriving in Iraq, would obligingly die — it was morally indefensible, as it involved using the Iraqi people as bait for a jihadist flytrap. Not only did the Iraq war not deter Zazi from pursuing a career as a terrorist, it’s very possible that in Pakistan he was exposed to hardened jihadists who, having been initially radicalized by the Iraq war, brought tactics and bomb-making methods learned in Iraq to Pakistan, just as they have done to Yemen and North Africa.

A predictable response to these points will be that “we shouldn’t re-litigate the Iraq war,” but that’s silly. It’s not “re-litigating” anything to take the measure of the continuing consequences of a strategic blunder.

Arizona’s state superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne is facing heat from local Latinos for referring to venerated civil rights leader Dolores Huerta as a “former girlfriend” of Mexican American labor leader Cesar Chávez. The fact that Horne’s remarks were made while testifying on behalf of a bill that would outlaw ethnic studies in public schools only adds insult to injury. Horne, a Republican who is also running for attorney general, refuses to apologize and calls criticism of his comments “a contrived diversion.” Horne told Phoenix’s KTVK 3TV that “the real outrage is that Dolores Huerta told a mandatory high school assembly that Republicans hate Latinos.”

Watch the KTVK 3TV report:

According to Horne, ethnic studies are “harmful and dysfunctional” and promote “ethnic chauvinism.” However, some teachers argue that the course study connects Native American, Mexican, Asian and African American students to “their cultural past and their roles in American history.” In the past, Horne has also irrationally worried that “one who belongs to a governmentally favored race or gender could refuse to pay his bills and dare the other party to sue because decisions governed by sympathy would disregard the facts and legal obligations.”

KTBK affirms that there is no credible evidence of a romantic relationship between Huerta and Chávez and the Arizona Republic points out Huerta is actually Chavez’s sister-in-law. Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, now known as the United Farm Workers, with Chávez.

On Thursday, a man flew a plane into a Texas federal building in an apparent domestic terrorist attack. The suicide bomber, identified as Joseph Andrew Stack, was allegedly a right wing extremist who wrote on a website that violence “is the only answer” and expressed anger at the IRS, the federal government, and health care reform. Some on the fringe right have declared Stack a hero.

ThinkProgress caught up with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at CPAC to talk about the attack in Texas. Asked if the right-wing anti-tax rhetoric might have motivated the attack, King implicitly agreed, noting that he had been a leading opponent of the IRS for some time. He noted that although the attack was “sad,” “by the same token,” it was justified because once the the right succeeds at abolishing the IRS, “it’s going to be a happy day for America.” He sidestepped the question of the legitimacy of the terrorists’ grievances, but sympathized by saying that “I’ve had a sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back”:

TP: Do you think this attack, this terrorist attack, was motivated at all by a lot of the anti-tax rhetoric that’s popular in America right now?

KING: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax. [...] It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.

Watch it:

Last week, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), despite his long history of inflamed rhetoric about terrorism and domestic security, essentially disregarded the attack. As ThinkProgress’ Max Bergmann observed, “It is naive for Brown to think the dangers of right wing terrorism aren’t real. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security released a report warning of the dangers of rising right wing extremism, as was evidenced by the shooting at the Holocaust museum in D.C. and by a Pittsburgh killer who was partially inspired by Glenn Beck.”

Indeed, it’s not only hate radio personalities encouraging violence against the government. Far right members of Congress, like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), have called for people to get “armed and dangerous” against the administration’s clean energy policies. King’s quasi-embrace of the Texas terrorist’s grievances is similarly dangerous.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that some “high-profile Republicans are adopting a softer vocabulary on immigration” in an effort to woo alienated Latino voters. However, in his bid for reelection, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) hasn’t just toughened up his immigration platform, he’s also adopted a strategy which seems to consist of feigning ignorance of the troublesome civil rights issues that Latinos in his state are facing. In a weekend interview with a local Arizona news station, McCain presented himself as naively optimistic, at best:

HOST: Arizona is getting a national reputation as a latter-day Alabama or Mississippi when it comes to civil rights for Hispanics. Have J.D. Hayworth and his supports gone too far?

MCCAIN: Nah. Look, I don’t think Arizona has that reputation. I think Arizona has a reputation of being the one of the most wonderful places to live, work, and retire –

HOST: If you’re Hispanic?

MCCAIN: Yeah, I think if you’re in this country legally, you are happy to be here. We have a growing Hispanic citizen population here in Arizona. I just do not accept the premise.

Watch it:

McCain is understandably proud and defensive of his home state, however, his oblivious dismissal of the plight of Arizona Latinos demonstrates just how out of touch McCain is with a Latino electorate which used to constitute a large part of his base.

What McCain fails to recognize is that the immigration issue doesn’t draw a neat line between citizens and non-citizens — particularly in Arizona. To begin with, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has admitted on national television that his officers use “speech, the clothes, the environment, the erratic behavior” to determine if an individual is an undocumented immigrant. That might explain why there are 2,700 lawsuits collecting dust on Arpaio’s desk — many, if not most, filed by Arizona Latino citizens who were mistakenly identified as undocumented immigrants by Arpaio’s deputies before being arrested and denied their most basic civil rights. Even former Arizona Police Chief George Gascon stated that Arpaio’s immigration policing program has brought the “police profession back to the 1950s and 60s.” Arpaio isn’t the only problem facing Latinos. Hate groups and hate crimes are on the rise in Arizona, with 19 hate groups that call the state home. A report by the Arizona Latino Research Enterprise entitled “The State of Latino Arizona” points out:

An increase in hate crimes against Latinos, legislative efforts by ultra-conservative politicians and other public officials, and stepped-up and sometimes abusive law enforcement activities targeting immigrants— including federal legislation that grants local police the authority to enforce immigration law—have added up to a widespread and increasingly institutionalized assault on the rights of Latinos…

“It’s more subtle than it used to be,” said Daniel Ortega, a leading civil rights attorney and community activist in Phoenix. “We find ourselves, as Latinos, whether documented or not, in a social situation in which our civil rights are not being respected.”

In his 2004 Senate re-election, McCain earned more than 70 percent of the Latino vote. However, during the 2008 presidential elections, McCain was unable to even carry the Latino vote of his own state. McCain is right that Arizona is home to a growing population of Latino voters. And if the former maverick doesn’t stand up to his state’s radical right to defend them, McCain runs the risk of being voted out of office and sent back home where he might end up learning firsthand how Latinos are really faring in his state.

I won’t waste any time with Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz’s assertions about the efficacy of gas sanctions, as I’ve already dealt with the issue in some detail. The authors trot out the usual claims, along with the usual absence of actual evidence to support them.

But I do want to take issue with Gerecht and Dubowitz’s claims about Iranian dissidents’ supposed support for gas sanctions. Responding to the view (held by the overwhelming majority of Iran analysts and Iranian opposition figures) that gas sanctions would actually weaken the opposition while strengthening the Revolutionary Guards, the authors insist that events since the June 12 presidential elections have “changed the entire political dynamic“:

If sanctions are waged in the name of the Iranian people, we are much more likely to see Western opinion remain solidly behind them. These sentiments will likely be reinforced by prominent Iranian dissidents who’ve moved from adamant opposition to severe sanctions to hesitant acceptance of the idea (Nobel Prize winner Shireen Ebadi, for instance).

As you may have gathered from the fact that the authors couldn’t find a single Iranian dissident to quote in support of their argument, the idea that Iranian dissidents would be interested in providing political cover for measures that would severely impact the same Iranian masses who they’re trying to recruit for their struggling movement is simply daft.

As for Shirin Ebadi’s “hesitant acceptance” of gas sanctions, here’s what Ebadi said earlier this month:

“I am against economic sanctions and military attacks. However, if the Iranian government continues to violate human rights and ignore people’s demands, then I start thinking about political sanctions,” Ebadi told a human rights forum on Iran. [...]

“Wider economic sanctions only hurt innocent people and we are against that,” she said.

Ebadi’s view tracks with what I’ve heard from other Iranian activists — sanctions that target the regime can be good and helpful, but sanctions targeting the population, such as gas sanctions, will hurt the pro-democracy movement.

I’m trying to come up with a way in which Ebadi’s statement “I am against economic sanctions” could be plausibly interpreted as “I hesitantly accept economic sanctions,” but I can’t. So I’m left with the conclusion that Gerecht and Dubowitz are simply being dishonest. Which is entirely consistent with the rest of the arguments we’ve been seeing in favor of gas sanctions.

Today on Face the Nation, former Secretary of Sate Colin Powell dismissed former Vice President Cheney’s claim that President Obama has made the nation less safe. Saying, “I don’t know where the claim comes [from],” Powell ticked off Obama’s national security accomplishments, gave a full-throated defense of using civilian courts to process terrorists, and said Cheney’s attacks “are not borne out by the facts”:

SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about national security. The former vice president, you just saw him there, he has almost on a weekly basis, it says something about the president is putting the nation’s security at risk. … Has Barack Obama made this country less safe?

POWELL: Well, let me lay out a few positions and facts. … I don’t know where the claim comes that we are less safe. … In eight years the military commissions have put three people on trial. Two of them served relatively short sentences and are free. One guy is in jail. Meanwhile the federal courts, our Article 3 regular legal court system has put dozens of terrorists in jail. They’re fully capable of doing it. So the suggestion that somehow a military commission is the way to go isn’t borne out by the history of the military commission. [...]

SCHIEFFER: Your bottom line answer is no?

POWELL: The bottom line answer is the nation is still at risk. Terrorists are out there. They’re trying to get through. But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don’t think that’s borne out by the facts.

Watch it:

For weeks, Republicans have been hammering Obama over his handling of the Christmas Day terror attempt, especially the decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court rather than a military commission. Many whined that Abdulmutallab had not been properly interrogated because he was read his Miranda rights. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even tried to score political points by insulting counterterrorism field agents. Of course, they ignored that President Bush treated shoe bomber Richard Reid in almost exactly the same way in 2001. And Obama’s rejection of torture has actually aided Abdulmutallab’s cooperation, not hurt it.

Later in the interview, Powell said that he has “no problem” with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being tried in federal court, though he would prefer the trial to be held some place other than New York City. Powell also reaffirmed his commitment to closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, saying it “has cost us a lot over the years in terms of our standing in the world and the way in which despots have hidden behind what we have done at Guantanamo to justify their own positions.”

Cheney and Powell have frequently been in heated disagreement with each other. After Powell warned last year that the GOP was in “deep trouble” because it was being led by far-right figures like hate radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cheney retaliated by saying that Limbaugh is a better Republican than Powell. Powell responded by saying that Cheney and Limbaugh have their own “version” of the party.

The New York Times runs a profile of former prosecutor, current National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy, presenting the NRO wackjob as a brave dissenter against using the U.S. legal system to deal with terrorism cases.

While the Times profile does touch on some of McCarthy’s extremist views, such as that lawyers who offer legal assistance to alleged terrorists detained by the United States are “volunteering their services to the enemy,” the article barely skims the surface of the conspiracy-mongering and anti-Muslim prejudice that characterizes McCarthy’s writing.

In October 2008, McCarthy asked “Did Obama write “Dreams from My Father”… or did [Bill] Ayers?”

I’ve finally read Jack Cashill’s lengthy analysis in The American Thinker. It is thorough, thoughtful, and alarming — particularly his deconstruction of the text in Obama’s memoir and comparison to the themes, sophistication and signature phraseology of Bill Ayers’ memoir.

There is nothing in Obama’s scant paper trail prior to 1995 that would suggest something as stylish and penetrating as, at times, Dreams from My Father is.

McCarthy has often found himself to the right even of National Review’s editors. Last July, he protested the magazine’s attempt to put the birther conspiracy to rest, insisting that questions still remained about where the president was born:

What Obama has made available is a Hawaiian “certification of live birth” (emphasis added), not a birth certificate (or what the state calls a “certificate of live birth”)… This certification is not the same thing as the certificate, which is what I believe we were referring to in the editorial as “the state records that are used to generate birth certificates [sic] when they are requested.” [...]

Regardless of why people may want to see the vault copy, what’s been requested is a primary document that is materially more detailed than what Obama has thus far provided.

McCarthy also challenged the president’s version of his own upbringing, accusing the president of having “airbrushed his personal history on the fly“:

It’s now apparent, however, not only that [Obama] was raised as a Muslim while living for four years in the world’s most populous Islamic country, but that he very likely became a naturalized citizen of Indonesia. [...]

There’s speculation out there from the former CIA officer Larry Johnson — who is no right-winger and is convinced the president was born in Hawaii — that the full state records would probably show Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro and became formally known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama may have wanted that suppressed for a host of reasons: issues about his citizenship, questions about his name (it’s been claimed that Obama represented in his application to the Illinois bar that he had never been known by any name other than Barack Obama), and the undermining of his (false) claim of remoteness from Islam. Is that true? I don’t know and neither do you.

Reacting angrily to National Review’s admission last Augusts that Sarah Palin’s “death panels” claim was false, McCarthy claimed that “death panels” was a useful lie because “Obama is not a normal politician. He’s a visionary, and using health care to radically expand the scope of government happens to be central to his vision”:

The editorial’s contention was that there wouldn’t “literally” be death panels. To me, that’s not much different from quibbling over “what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” The stakes here couldn’t be higher, time is short, and “death panel” cuts to the chase… They are what we’re sure to get if Obamacare isn’t killed first.

In January 2009, defended Israel’s bombing of Gaza — which killed some 1300 people, including 300 children — as an attempt to “educate” the Palestinians, McCarthy suggested that the real “question is whether the Palestinian people are educable.”

The most important thing to understand about Andrew McCarthy is that he has parlayed his long-ago success as a prosecutor in a high-profile terrorism case into a second career as an “expert” on Islam, peddling various conspiracy theories combined with a comically biased and bigoted view of the Muslim peril that threatens America’s vital essence, and of the role of President Obama and The Left in exposing America to that peril. For some reason the New York Times left that part out.

During a recent deposition as part of a racial profiling lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Arpaio’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott came to his boss’ defense and claimed that the racial profiling allegations being waged against him are false. According to Hendershott, the lawsuit is part of a conspiracy theory that goes all the way up from the attorney questioning him, David Bodney, to the Obama administration:

BODNEY: Do you believe there is an organized conspiracy to muzzle Sheriff Joe Arpaio?

HENDERSHOTT: Yes.

BODENY: Who is leading this conspiracy?

HENDERSHOTT: Well, I don’t know…it has become clear that you, Bill Straus, Phil Gordon, members of the Anti-Defamation League, and your firm is extremely political. And you have a political agenda. And the association with the Obama administration. And so that is uh, we have caught the federal government…

BODNEY: Whose association with the Obama administration?

HENDERSHOTT: Janet Napolitano.

Watch it:

This isn’t the first rumor of a conspiracy theory to come out of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Arpaio has often stated that his federally-granted power to enforce immigration law on the streets of Phoenix was stripped because the Obama administration is out to get him and has “a political axe to grind over immigration policy.” However, back in November, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano explained that Arpaio was simply “unwilling to accept” the new standards that the administration was implementing in an attempt to prioritize the removal of dangerous undocumented immigrants.

During his own deposition testimony, Arpaio admitted to not reading his own book and blamed the references to the wingnut reconquista conspiracy theory contained in it on his co-author.

In an important speech yesterday Vice President Biden pushed for rapid action on the President’s nuclear agenda. Biden spoke at the National Defense University and was introduced by Secretary of Defense Gates, sending a strong message that the military is firmly in support of moving full speed ahead on the President’s nuclear agenda. As Biden put it, “we are all on the same page” and that “even with deep nuclear reductions, we will remain undeniably strong.”

Biden laid out an ambitious agenda, which notably called for the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Vice President also emphasized that there is clear bipartisan support among foreign policy experts for this agenda:

Our goal of a world without nuclear weapons has been endorsed by leading voices in both parties. These include two former Secretaries of State from Republican administrations, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz…During the 2008 Presidential campaign, both the President and Senator McCain supported the same objective. We will continue to build support for this emerging bipartisan consensus like the one around containment of Soviet expansionism that George Kennan inspired. Toward that end, we have worked tirelessly to implement the President’s Prague agenda.

On CTBT, Biden explained that “explosive testing damaged our health, disrupted our environment and set back our non-proliferation goals” and he affirmed that the past concerns that prevented ratification of the treaty in 1999 have been addressed, as technological advances make testing unnecessary. Biden explained:

Our labs know more about our arsenal today than when we used to explode our weapons on a regular basis. With our support, the labs can anticipate potential problems and reduce their impact on our arsenal. Unfortunately, during the last decade, our nuclear complex and experts were neglected and underfunded… That’s why earlier this month we announced a new budget that reverses the last decade’s dangerous decline. It devotes $7 billion to maintaining our nuclear stockpile and modernizing our nuclear infrastructure.

Watch it:

The speech presents a clear challenge to conservatives in the Senate. There is steadfast support from the military and widespread bipartisan support among serious foreign policy officials and experts (including Secretary of States for Reagan, Nixon, and George W. Bush) in support of eliminating nuclear weapons. Yet conservatives in the Senate, led by Senator Jon Kyl, appear determined to torpedo this effort, with Kyl even advocating for nuclear testing and building more nuclear weapons.

The key question is whether conservatives in the Senate motivated by an obstructionist political strategy and an extremist foreign policy vision are able to unite their party around blocking this agenda. In other words, this will demonstrate if they are the party of Powell or Palin.