Dr. Shakeel Afridi

After Capitol HIll collectively expressed considerable outrage, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to cut $33 million from Pakistan’s foreign aid package — $1 million for each year of the sentence against the doctor, Shakeel Afridi. The reduction comes on top of the more than 50 percent of the aid a Senate panel cut earlier this week.

But the U.S. State Department didn’t ramp up its rhetoric so dramatically, maintaining its position that Afridi is detained without basis. A spokesperson said the U.S. will continue to let the Pakistani government know about that position. The softer line might reflect the possibility that Afridi’s verdict could easily be overturned.

Afridi, who ran a vaccination drive to collect data that the U.S. has credited with helping to find Bin Laden, was tried under a British colonial-era law that does not carry a death penalty, according to the New York Times. (The L.A. Times reported that “Afridi could have been given the death penalty.”) Having never approved of his detention, however, the U.S. still objected to the sentence. Asked about the issue yesterday, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said:

We will – we continue to see no basis for Dr. Afridi to be held….

I think we’ve said that we don’t see any basis for what’s happened here, and so we will continue to make those representations to the Government of Pakistan.

Watch the video:

In February, Clinton said of Afridi: “His work on behalf of the effort to take down Bin Laden was in Pakistan’s interests as well as in America’s.” On CBS’s 60 Minutes in January, Panetta was more outspoken on the matter, calling actions against Afridi a “real mistake on their part” and crediting his help and making a case similar to Clinton’s:

This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation. He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan, he was not in any way doing anything that would have undermined Pakistan. As a matter of fact, Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism.

A Pakistani lawyer speaking to CNN said it was likely the case could be overturned — something Nuland subtly alluded to in the briefing when she said the legal process wasn’t necessarily complete. The lawyer, Shahzad Akbar, said that the tribal court is not based in Abbottabad, the site of the bin Laden raid. He told CNN: “If this punishment is challenged by Dr. Afridi’s family in the Superior Court of Pakistan, there is a good possibility that the sentence will be turned around.“

Mariela Castro Espín, daughter of Cuban president Raúl Casto

“The State Department needs to wake up from its delusional love fest with the dictators in Havana,” said right-wing House Foreign Affairs chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Republican Members of Congress released web videos and organized conference calls denouncing the visa as “outrageous.”

Even presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney got in on the action, releasing a statement accusing the Obama administration of “a slap in the face to all those brave individuals in Cuba who are enduring relentless persecution.”

Ros-Lehtinen and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), David Rivera (R-FL) and Albio Sires (R-NJ) wrote a strongly-worded letter to the State Department saying:

The administration’s appalling decision to allow regime agents into the U.S. directly contradicts Congressional intent and longstanding U.S. foreign policy.

If it’s “longstanding U.S. foreign policy” to deny Mariela Castro a visa to enter the U.S., someone forgot to tell President George W. Bush. The Bush administration granted Castro not one but three visas to enter the U.S. in 2001 and 2002. State Department spokesman william Ostick told the Miami Herald:

Mariela Castro visited once in 2001 and twice in 2002. I can’t discuss her visas specifically, but you can assume she needed one to travel.

An Obama surrogate, Freddy Balsera, told the Herald:

In fact, the top State Department Official in charge of Latin America at the time was a Cuban American. Where was their criticism then? Nowhere, because ultimately this is all about politics for them.

A ThinkProgress search of the Lexis Nexis news database for Mariela Castro’s name during 2001 and 2002 returned no results relevant to her trips to the U.S.

Former attendees at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) said that Cuba has long been a presence at LASA conferences. This year, the State Department accepted 60 visas, denied 11, and is still processing 6. A State spokesman said visas couldn’t be rejected simply because “we don’t like you.”

LASA’s president told the Associated Press that Castro’s appearance at the conference was “an academic issue, not a political issue,” and that she’d answered a call for papers like any other conference speaker.

Graham offered his curious take on what it means to negotiate — demanding that Iran accept all U.S. demands prior to negotiation — in a conversation with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who indicated that his negotiating tactic was probably a non starter. Graham first emphasized his hawkish bent by noting that the “only way” for an agreement to be reached between the sides was for the U.S. to threaten “a strike by the United States.” He went on:

GRAHAM: Here’s what we should do. We should tell the Iranians, no negotiations, stop enriching, open up the site on the bottom of the mountain, a secret site. Then we will talk about lifting sanctions. You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.

VAN SUSTEREN: I think they will probably stay “go fish” on that one.

Watch the video:

Leave aside that the Fordow site is not “secret” (it’s under U.N. inspections and monitored by camera) and that reports on U.S. and Israeli estimates state that these intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons (Graham doubts the intelligence), Graham’s position prompts one to ask: What’s the alternative to negotiations, since Graham is proposing pre-conditions that Iran would never meet? The Senator from South Carolina’s been busy on that front, too — and falsely citing the Obama administration to back himself up. The House yesterday passed a resolution that seeks to shift U.S. “red line” for an attack to an Iranian “nuclear capability” — something Graham mentioned on Fox News — from an Iranian push for nuclear weapons.

While the CIA has laid out a specific definition, the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Sentae’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.”

Before the House version passed, co-sponsor Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) clarified what he meant by “capability,” defining it as Iran mastering all elements of a weapon and kicking out U.N. inspectors. (The move allayed the fears of some critics that the measure could be interpreted as taking Graham’s hard-line on “no enrichment.”) House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) forthrightly noted that the “capability” language was a shift in U.S. policy that stood in contrast to “decision to develop nuclear weapons.” But Graham was most circumspect in defending his version of the bill on the Senate floor yesterday, conflating “capability” with the Obama administration red line of “weaponization.”

But Graham is wrong that blocking an Iranian nuclear “capability” is, as he said, an “echo (of) a policy statement made by President Obama.” In March, Obama committed (again) to “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and that it was “unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon” — not a “capability.” He added, “I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said: “The United States… does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

While a potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

Ehud Olmert, who left office in 2009 under a corruption scandal, told a conference in New York on Sunday:

There is enough time to try different avenues of pressure to change the balance of power with Iran without the need for a direct military confrontation with Iran.

He went even further in interviews with news media, warning off an Israeli attack. Olmert told Israel’s Channel 10:

There is no reason at this time not to talk about a military effort, but definitely not to initiate an Israeli military strike.

In an interview with the New York Times, he echoed concerns of Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, retired Israeli brigadier general Shlomo Brom, and his successor atop the Kadima opposition party Tzipi Livni that the Israeli government’s rhetoric on Iran was getting too heated. Olmert, who eschewed comparisons between Iran and Nazi Germany, said:

They talk too much, they talk too loud. They are creating an atmosphere and a momentum that may go out of their control.

At the conference in New York, the former top military officer in Israel, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, said the Israelis “still have time” before they need to launch an attack and called for “crippling sanctions and much more severe sanctions.” His successor at the top military post Gen. Benny Gantz last week echoed reported Israeli and American intelligence estimates and said Iran “hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile” and build a bomb.

While a potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime, those estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Like their Israeli counterparts, American officials including President Obama vow to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, but questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to end the West’s crisis with Iran.

The letter (PDF) defending the so-called international affairs budget that covers non-military spending went on:

Development and diplomacy keep us safer by addressing threats in the most dangerous corners of the world and by preventing conflicts before they occur. The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other civilian-led programs are especially critical at a time when we are asking them to take on greater responsibilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Addressing today’s challenges with civilian tools costs far less than it does to send in the military in dollars and, more importantly, in terms of the risks to the lives of our men and women in uniform. At just over one percent of federal spending, the International Affairs Budget is a strong return on our investment.

The letter comes just a week after Republican Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a budget that called for the international affairs spending to be slashed by 11 percent, or $6 billion, while boosting military spending by at least $8 billion. Ryan’s budget document took shots at the administration, noting in one section that Obama “has chosen to subordinate national security strategy to his other spending priorities.” Speaking to U.S. News and World Report, Russell Rumbaugh, a former senior Senate Budget Committee aide now with the Stimson Center, said:

This reflects more an ideological statement than any real discussion about what the international budget levels should be.

An Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran summed up the Republican plan: “They cut every tool in the president’s toolbox that isn’t a gun,” said Michael Breen, who works with the Truman National Security Project, recounting how it was a foreign language-enabled diplomat — not their own weapons — that once helped him and fellow soliders get out a jam.

The ostensible aspirations of the Ryan plan, meanwhile, are shared by the USGLC letter signatories, who wrote that they “recognize that we must reduce our nation’s debt.” Yet, with non-military spending such a relatively small piece of the pie and capable of a “strong return” on the investment, the ex-military leaders urged Congress to “support a strong and effective International Affairs Budget and oppose disproportionate cuts to this vital account.”

To the right is a chart of two of the report’s key findings, American support for diplomacy and working Iran issues through international fora at the United Nations.

As part of the Obama administration’s dual-track policy toward Iran — crippling pressure and negotiations aimed at attaining the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff with a diplomatic deal — the U.S. garnered support at the U.N. Security council for sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program and at the U.N. Human Rights Council for a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran that has condemned Iranian abuses.

While poll respondents took a pessimistic view of Iran’s nuclear program and Western efforts to block it — a vast majority thought Iran will eventually develop a nuclear weapon — their views on the matter, at times, diverged from conclusions drawn from publicly available evidence and statements by top American security officials. For instance, 58 percent of respondents thought Iran has decided on producing a weapon and is actually working toward that aim. But, despite “serious concerns,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent report contains no such assertions.

Furthermore, reports about American intelligence estimates — as well as statements by top U.S. military and intelligence officials — indicate that they don’t think Iran has chosen to produce a bomb.

However, majorities of Americans think the U.S. should discourage allies from militarily attacking Iran. This may be due to perceived negative consequences of an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. More than half of poll respondents thought bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would either strengthen the position of the Iranian regime among the country’s population, or have no effect at all on its popularity. Responding to a question about the effects of a strike on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, 42 percent of those surveyed said Iran’s program would be delayed for less than five years. Only 18 percent thought Iran’s program would be delayed longer than that, and 22 percent thought Iran’s nuclear program would be accelerated as a result of an attack.

However, Obama administration’s policy still deems Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon unacceptable — an Iranian bomb would pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies and interests — and keeps all options on the table to avert it. But as Obama has said, “a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better.”

Along with allies such as France, Rice was skeptical talks can work:

RICE: You don’t trust them [Iran]. But we test the proposition, which is very much in our interest, that with this mounting and crippling economic pressure, the extraordinary sanctions that we have put in place internationally and on a national basis, that Iran is really starting to feel the heat. …

Let me be very be clear and repeat what the president said this week: We have a clear cut policy of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, not containing a nuclear Iran. We think the best and most permanent way of accomplishing that is through a combined policy of intensified sanctions and pressure, which we are mounting, with the opportunity for Iran to resolve these issues diplomatically. If they take that opportunity and give up their program through a negotiated solution, that’s the best case scenario. …

if they don’t accomplish that through a negotiating process in short order, then of course as the president said, all options remain on the table.

Watch Rice concisely lay out the Obama administration’s policy:

The repudiation of “containing a nuclear Iran” tracks with Obama’s speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee this weekend, where he said a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a threat to the U.S. and its allies, and the international non-proliferation regime:

A nuclear-armed Iran would thoroughly undermine the nonproliferation regime that we’ve done so much to build. There are risks that an Iranian nuclear weapon could fall into the hands of a terrorist organization. It is almost certain that others in the region would feel compelled to get their own nuclear weapon, triggering an arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

Rice added that the Iranian regime has engaged in “crazy behavior” like calling for Israel’s destruction, but echoed Obama and the top U.S. military officer by noting that “we have seen Iran make decisions based on their calculation of their interest.” Faced with pressure, she said, the regime has “changed course,” raising hopes of a “real possibility that with mounting and crippling economic pressure, that Iran may change course and come to the table seriously.”

The IAEA and U.S. intelligence officials have said that Iran is on a path toward a nuclear weapons program. Indeed, the AP reported yesterday that the U.N. nuclear agency is concerned that Iran may have tried to cleanse traces of nuclear material from a site suspected of focusing on alleged weaponization aspects of its nuclear program. But the IAEA and U.S. intelligence have also said that so far, Iran has not yet decided on whether to build nuclear weapons.

With the New Year approaching, it’s a good time to take stock of the U.S. government’s response to the political upheaval throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Government officials continue to grapple with how best to balance American security interests with support for expanding democratic rights in the region. In recent important speeches, however, Hillary Clinton layed out the U.S. intention to support these transitioning countries and their citizens.

Notably absent from the conversation, though, is how the State Department and other key U.S. foreign affairs agencies can do a better job detecting –- and responding to –- crisis and conflict writ large. Such tools are essential given the increasing regularity with which political instability can emerge anywhere in the world.

As the first-ever Quadrennial Defense and Development Review noted, “With the right tools, training, and leadership, our diplomats and development experts can defuse crises before they explode.” Indeed, as political dynamics around the globe continue to shift unexpectedly, preventing and responding to expensive and destructive global crises will need to be incorporated as a cornerstone of our foreign policy — not an afterthought. If the United States wants to become a more effective international player and avoid costly engagements, our diplomats and development experts need to possess the right skill set. And let the price of the just concluded Iraq war underscore the huge price to be paid when we get our analysis wrong.

While the bulk of Americans probably assume their diplomats and development experts are the best trained, they would be shocked to learn how little training these officials actually received, especially compared to those who serve in the military. In fact, former Secretary of State Colin Powell noted that he spent 6 out of his 30 years of service in the classroom. With better and more regularized training, diplomats and development experts can help advance democracy, galvanize economic growth, and strengthen the rule of law before a conflict emerges — not after. Without it, they are left making ad-hoc and reactive decisions that end up costing a whole lot more.

The newly upgraded Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations is a tremendously important first step in the State Department’s effort to “get ahead of change” -– particularly with Rick Barton as its inaugural Assistant Secretary. But if the bureau is going help ensure crisis prevention is a core consideration of policy making, it must be underpinned by a more broad-based comprehensive training initiative.

A new joint report from the Center for American Progress’ Sustainable Security Program and Humanity United — entitled “It All Starts with Training” — delineates the profound need for improved training courses and professional development opportunities at core U.S. foreign affairs agencies. As the paper makes painfully clear, the current state of conflict prevention training at both State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) remains shockingly limited, ad hoc, and uncoordinated. In fact, training has little or no link to career advancement, as opposed to our military branches, and is often seen as an inconvenience rather than an asset.

Expanded and mainstreamed crisis prevention training is certainly no foreign policy panacea, but with such a high number of countries around the globe at risk of unrest and wholesale violence, it’s high time we ensure American diplomats and development experts at least have the right tools to respond. Unless the United States can get ahead of this curve and does a better job in crisis prevention and mitigation, the costs to America — and its national interests — will remain untenable.

[SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE NOVELS TO FOLLOW]

I think the biggest question for me will be how the second season of the show handles the themes of governance that are so important to A Clash of Kings. Other than Jon Snow’s attempts to reform the Wall, the struggle between Joffrey and Cersei on one side and Tyrion on the other over how to run King’s Landing — and by extension, the realm — is one of the few experiments in and debates over governing philosophies we ever see in action. Cersei’s devoted all of her efforts to bolstering the hard power of King’s Landing, recruiting new men into the City Watch, spending coin on wildfire, displaying heads on walls, and paying for it all with a tax that’s throttled already constricted trade. Tyrion comes in and shifts the balance, opening up trade, making a deal with the city’s armorers that both bolsters their trade and lets him prepare to wage unconventional warfare, and takes the heads off the walls in an effort to make the regime less savage. He institutes actual diplomatic relations with Dorne, which you think someone else might have considered at some point earlier, given their utterly badass reputation.

He’s not perfect, of course. The riot that sweeps the city is an augury that neither Tyrion or Cersei read fully (much to the latter’s dismay later) — it always surprises me that Cersei and her advisers are caught off-guard by an upswing in religious fervor during times of insecurity. The fact that even the Lannister who loves learning, who actually has the intellectual curiosity to want to see the end of the world, can’t accept what Ser Allister Thorne is telling him about the White Walkers on the border suggests something powerful about the limitations of our collective ability to grapple with the monstrous and unthinkable. And Tyrion is too personal when it comes to reforming the Small Council, failing to appreciate Maester Pycelle’s abilities and connections (and given the scene the show gave us of his secret vigor, I wonder if he might not resist Tyrion more strongly than in the novels).

All in all, it’s a parable for the dangers of allowing your governance to become personal. Tyrion is doomed to failure when his rule becomes as much about discipling Joffrey and proving his father wrong about his abilities. Both are futile tasks. Joffrey’s already a hopeless sadist with an elevated sense of his own wisdom by the time Tyrion gets anywhere close to him. Tywin ultimately turns out to be flexible, but not in ways that lend him strength or reason. King’s Landing might have turned out to be genuinely salvageable, the unbreakable link in a chain of Lannister defenses. But disciplining these three generations of Lannisters or restoring them to decency isn’t a project worth Tyrion’s considerable talents.

In the absence of photography, painting played a critical role in documenting everything from gift-giving rituals to assessing military positioning. Surveyor Robert Mabon made jewel-like portraits of the presents that were part of diplomatic exchanges like the one to the right here and of techniques for saddling horses complete with painstakingly detailed notes. Warren Hastings, the British governor of Bengal, commissioned William Hodges to paint the fortresses controlled by Raja Chait Singh so he could assess the strength of the forces behind a rebellion — the results included both military useful information and an impressionistic sense of Indian landscapes. And art even became part of British and Indian diplomatic traditions. To both meet the requirements of their budgeteers and to avoid the perception that they were being corrupted by establishing the lavish, jeweled gifts that were traditionally exchanged in the Mughal court, British diplomats created a new tradition of exchanging portraits, creating a new Indian market for British painters.

And even when they weren’t creating art for the purpose of cultural exchange in Indian, British artists constantly wrote themselves into the images of India — and some of those portraits may have been more revealing than they were intended to be. In Thomas Danielle’s painting of Sir Charles Ware signing a treaty in 1770 with the Maratha Empire, British officers are seated on the floor of a palace in the style of their hosts, displaying attitudes that range from ease, to extreme dignity, to wondrous excitement at the circumstances. Painter James Wales wrote that Charles Warre Malet told him of his 40-day journey to see the Taj Mahal that “at first sight how well his journey was justified.” It makes sense that the British would want to see their efforts, even a more than a month-long site-seeing schlep, as worth the work, no matter how strenuous. Bathazar Solvyns, a Belgian who wrote a dubious anthropological survey of India, revealed as much about himself and his gaze as he did about his subjects when he wrote of dancing girls he observed that “their movements are confined, being either extremely rapid or solemnly slow, and their attitudes or gestures, which are sometimes graceful, are almost always indecent, there therefore disgusting; their general object is to excite desire, and where they succeed, there are not to be found much to envy.” In Arthur William Devis’ “Portrait of a Gentleman,” lawyer William Hickey both smokes a hookah and handles a letter of business — has he corrupted himself by going native? Or are the temptations of India no match for England’s energy in commerce?

And in Samuel Howitt’s 1807 “The Tiger at Bay,” British men load, aim, and fire at a tiger, while Indian men control the elephants that let the British get close to their quarry, an interesting if unintentional foreshadowing of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, made possible in part by tensions in the military forces made up of Indian soldiers and commanded by British officers. There was only so much that British self-portraits in India, especially those sponsored by British government and commercial organizations, could capture — and only so much that they could see into the future.

But neither will anyone else in Congress.

Greenwire reports today that only one Congressional staffer and zero members — yes zero — have plans to attend the COP 17 climate conference in South Africa next week. With the press prematurely declaring the talks all but dead, members of Congress seem to have latched onto that storyline:

This year’s talks did not even appear to be on members’ radar as they prepared to leave for Thanksgiving recess last week.

“It’s awful to say, but I haven’t focused on them at all because first of all we’ve hit a wall here for now on climate change,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), adding that Congress’ focus is now on debt and economic issues.

International climate issues are “basically happening through the administration now,” he said, “although I think Congress has to stay involved.”

Waxman, who sponsored a cap-and-trade bill that cleared the House in 2009, said he “hoped for the best” from Durban.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“It hasn’t been brought to my attention,” said Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Asked whether she planned to go, Boxer said she could not. “I’m too busy here,” she said.

The Durban conference starts on Monday. Many journalists and pundits have already written off the conference, believing that nothing will happen. If past experience is any indication, the chances of a comprehensive deal of carbon emissions are next to zero. But there has been a lot of progress in putting together packages for helping fund mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries — an important piece that will be central to the negotiations.

Andrew Light, coordinator of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, says that the absence of Congress may be a good thing, as it will make it less likely to bring politics into play:

Two things make it appropriate that we’ll see a smaller congressional delegation at Durban than in previous years at the UN climate summit.  First, gridlock in Washington has made it virtually impossible for congress to take a meaningful role in shaping national climate policy so there are fewer messages for staffers to bring to the negotiations by way of representing U.S. efforts and fewer parts of the process that will be of concern to their members.

Second, and more important from the perspective of the negotiations, there are good reasons to believe that success in Durban will mean a continuation of the step-wise approach started in Cancun last year with slow but steady progress on the building blocks of a new international climate regime.  Like Cancun I hope to see a quieter productive meeting rather than a loud and contentious one.  This is the best hope for getting a future climate agreement rather than putting all our bets down on a big win in one meeting as we did in Copenhagen in 2009.  This meeting should be a venue for diplomats, and increasingly finance and treasury ministers.  It will likely make more progress if it’s not used as soap box for anyone’s political agenda

Members did said they would consider sending staffers if the negotiations started taking off. But it’s likely that the politicking won’t be very intense. We hope.

Spoiler alert: Greenwire reports that Inhofe may actually go if there is progress during the talks.

Chairperson Ros-Lehtinen

The restriction in the amendment basically criminalizes U.S. diplomacy. At Democracy Arsenal, Heather Hurlburt lists a few very recent contacts with Iran that would be considered illegal under Ros-Lehtinen’s restrictions:

U.S. and Iranian diplomats have been sharing a conference room discussing the political future of Iran’s neighbor Afghanistan this week. The New York Times reported that the Administration had quietly reached out to Iran to attempt to bring it into a political discussion around Afghanistan’s future stability. No more of that.

And the number three official at the State Department, Bill Burns, had a meeting with an Iranian counterpart that, among other topics, proved important in releasing the first of the three American hikers from Iranian custody.

So those contacts — banned, as far as the House Foreign Affairs committee is concerned. What, after all, “vital national security interests” are served by ending the imprisonment of one of the U.S. hikers?

Furthermore, Georgetown professor and former top intelligence analyst Paul Pillar points out that the restrictions could prevent progress on the most contentious issue between Iran and the West, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, potentially heightening the likelihood of war:

It would prevent any exploration of ways to resolve disagreement over that Iranian nuclear program that we are supposedly so intensely concerned about… And it would prevent any diplomacy to keep U.S.-Iranian incidents or crises—the kind that retired joint chiefs chairman Admiral Mullen expressed concern about—from spinning out of control, unless the crisis conveniently stretched out beyond the fifteen-day notification period.

And the 15-day notification seems outrageously long. The National Iranian American Council’s Jamal Abdi wonders, “What if Kennedy had to wait 15 days for Congress’ permission to meet with the Soviets to prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis – which lasted 13 days – from ending in nuclear war?” Indeed, Jim Lobe adds that the bill “eliminate(s) any doubt that its proponents want to involve the U.S. in yet another war in the Middle East.”

The Good Wife takes on issues of diplomatic immunity as two college-age sons of diplomats – one Dutch, one Taiwanese – are accused of raping and murdering a young woman at a stoplight party on a booze cruise. (Quick term definition for those as old and out-of-touch as I am: on the booze cruise, passengers paid $50 for unlimited beer, and the “stoplight party” means that passengers choose cup colors based on their relationship status: red means “in a relationship,” yellow means “choosy,” and green means “open.”) Diplomatic immunity is often portrayed as something all-encompassing and very cut-and-dry, but Cary, in his zeal to prosecute, manages to find a variety of loopholes. He surprises everyone by taking the young men into custody, arguing that he’s allowed to investigate the crime, just not to prosecute them. Presumably the technicality here is that if they were cleared, Cary would know to look for other suspects, but he never seriously looks at anyone else. Once he’s forced to let the Dutch suspect go, he points out that he can prosecute the other suspect because Taiwan is the one country that doesn’t enjoy diplomatic immunity, because of the One-China policy. As happens so often on this show, what first appears to be a philosophical question ends up being decided based on who has more influence and connections: Eli first uses his ex-wife’s connections at the State Department to have them push for dismissal, but then one of Cary’s colleagues uses her own family connections to have this position reversed. And Cary finally discovers that the Dutch suspect is no longer a full-time student, so he doesn’t actually have immunity through his father in the first place.

The cases of the week are becoming still less central on the show, though, and this week, we don’t even see the final courtroom showdown – Cary just mentions in a throwaway line that he won. Instead, the cases are designed to illuminate things about the characters and their relationships, and one of the focuses this week was on jockeying for position, especially among the newer attorneys at both the State’s Attorney’s office and at Lockhart/Gardner. Cary thinks his supervisor is out to get him – but at the end of the episode he instead gets a promotion from Peter. Meanwhile, Alicia is dealing with Caitlin, the new associate she was forced to hire last week. Caitlin is pretty naive, and doesn’t know what she’s doing, but Alicia seems to like her more than expected. Caitlin also seems to be flirting with Will – or maybe she’s acting as a spy for her uncle? Either way, Alicia is a bit territorial, but she shouldn’t worry, because Will’s not biting. And when Caitlin blithely comments that everyone at Lockhart/Gardner is just so nice, Will deadpans: “Yeah. Lawyers. Nicest people in the world.”

One way this show has always impressed me is with its dedication to showing how often and to what ends people actually use technology, especially cell phones. Shots are often framed by people staring at their phones as they walk or wait for elevators. This episode, they got things exactly right with the ubiquity of cell phone pictures of events popping up on social networking sites, but they missed slightly with the “Rape App.” The witness’s friend said they “had the app installed” on their phones, but obviously it would have been something they just downloaded themselves. And I’m a little suspicious that the app would have been approved with that title, though the concept – friends can track each other via their phones’ GPS and send distress calls if necessary – seems realistic enough. The ongoing technology issue of “What’s going on with the computers?” had some progress this week – I guess – as Zach showed Alicia how to transfer files to her work laptop, which promptly bluescreened. An IT consultant yells at her for trying to do unauthorized things herself, but Zach says the IT guy himself is corrupt – charging the firm extra for their own data storage, somehow – and causing the problem. And then Eli’s computer bluescreens, so…again, I keep suspecting that someone, maybe Grace’s tutor, installed some sort of spy software that’s now spreading between the computers, in an effort to bring Peter down, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. But if that is what’s going on, then this plotline is redefining “slow-burning.”

Over on the spinoff-within-a-show, as James Poniewozik calls it, Eli’s ex-wife Vanessa tells him that she’s considering running for state Senate and asks him to check out a campaign manager who approached her. The guy is obviously a complete buffoon, full of jargon and buzzwords, and as soon as he says he’ll rely on “micropockets of committed citizen online journalist bloggers,” I realize what Vanessa’s actually doing: She’s not serious about the campaign manager, and is just using him to manipulate Eli into helping with her campaign himself. Eli has Kalinda vet Vanessa, and discovers that while she was married to Eli, Vanessa had an affair with one of Osama Bin Laden’s cousins. Eli is furious but insists he doesn’t even know why he cares, and he’s not so furious that he stops peppering his political dialogue with references to Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel, thank goodness. He finally confesses to Vanessa that he’d “just thought [he'd] done two years of [his] life well.” Poor Eli. He’s like Kalinda and Will: Behind all his bluster about not caring, he actually cares about everything too much.

Will runs into that issue himself as he meets Alicia’s son Zach and has a realistically awkward conversation with him. Will obviously cares deeply that he made a bad first impression, and offers to formally meet the kids, but Alicia keeps telling him it’s not necessary. Will pretends that he’s happy he doesn’t have to do it, but once Alicia leaves, the audience can clearly see that he’s disappointed. By this point, I think Will is pretty aware of his own feelings, but does Alicia really know what she wants? If she honestly just wants a temporary rebound relationship, using someone who has loved her for years just seems cruel. But if she’s saying she wants to keep things casual because she thinks that’s what she should want or what Will wants, then there’s an even better chance of all of this exploding in someone’s face – probably Peter’s, once the next campaign gets going, and Alicia’s own, if she’s actually considering that political career Eli suggested. It’s not coincidence that an affair is ultimately what’s disqualifying Vanessa from running for office, after all.

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

SANTORUM: That’s not — Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization, number one.

[...] They’re — they’re — they’re a sovereign country…

PAUL: He negotiated for hostages.

SANTORUM: There’s — there’s a role — we negotiated for hostages with the Soviet Union. We’ve negotiated with hostages, depending on the scale. But there’s a difference between releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in response to a terrorist demand… then — then negotiating with other countries, where we may have an interest, and that is certainly a proper role for the United States, too.

But just the following night on Fox News, Santorum was singing a different tune. Asked by Bret Baier what President Santorum’s Iran policy would be, the former senator concluded:

This government will not and cannot be negotiated with. They are radical Islamists. They are theocrats. They are mullahs who believe it is their destiny to fulfill the prophets and the 12th Imam’s vision of having global control of the world for radical Shia Islam.

Watch the video:

In the past, Santorum has called Iran “evil” and “Islamic fascists,” and in the same speech celebrated Reagan calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire.” At the debate Tuesday, he supported talking to both Iran and the Soviet Union as “proper” when there was a U.S. “interest” at stake. But when he wasn’t put in a position to defend Reagan’s actions, he leaned toward a more ideological position that precludes any talking irrespective of national interests.