Tag Archives: responsibilities

Toward an Iranian Nuclear Weapons Deal

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There is debate brewing in DC regarding the value of a deal with Iran vs the risks of such a deal, or its lack.

There should be no debate; its outcome is clear.

Some former officials say a restored deal could keep the Iranians a safe distance from having sufficient weapons-grade uranium for a bomb for another eight years or so, but that without a deal they could soon be weeks or even days away.

That, to coin a phrase, is a distinction without a difference. Either way, Iran gets nuclear weapons. The difference between weeks and a few years matters only to those hiding under their beds avoiding uncomfortable facts and to some in the Iranian government who are being—or pretending to be—impatient.

That clarity should drive our response, the responses of the nations of Europe who are second in line for Iran’s weapons, and the responses of Israel, which is first on Iran’s list. So far, Israel is the only one who’s clear on what it must do. We, on the other hand, cannot afford to wait on some sort of consensus with a timid Europe; we need overtly to support Israel in its response—support by being alongside them, not sitting on the sidelines shouting, “Rah, rah.”

If an effective effort to put an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons drive requires cyber and kinetic moves, then so be it.

Invasion

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In Monday’s joint press conference that President Joe Biden (D) and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) following their meeting, a German journalist asked Biden, point blank (because no one in the American press has the courage or the integrity to ask such questions), to say specifically what would constitute a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Biden said without hesitation, “tanks or troops crossing the—the border of Ukraine again” crossing the border into Ukraine.

Because it’s not actually an invasion if Russia penetrates with its “green men” forces. It’s not actually an invasion if Russia shuts down Ukraine’s energy and water distribution networks with cyber attacks. It’s not actually an invasion if Russia wipes away Ukraine’s financial underpinnings with cyber attacks against its financial networks or corruption of its financial databases or both.

Biden keeps making it easier for Russia to invade.

On top of that, as late as today, Biden’s donation to Putin remains unremarked by the American press. Shameful.

Character and—and in—Sports

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I don’t often write about professional sports, but here goes.

Former Major League Baseball Commissioner .Fay Vincent has decried the role character plays in the selection of players to MLB’s Hall of Fame.

By trying to inject nobility into its election standards the Hall of Fame aimed to maintain the old-fashioned view that honors should accrue to the honorable.

Because honor is so 18th century. Never mind what Benjamin Franklin and John Adams thought was necessary to preserve our republic, then or now.

A letter writer in last Friday’s Letters section of The Wall Street Journal agrees with the commissioner.

I agree with Mr Vincent. Character should not be the overriding factor, which it recently seems to be. Voting should be based on merit.

Merit must also, and always, include character. If not, then why are the members of the Black Sox baseball team not in baseball’s Hall of Fame? After all, they had the skills and talent required for Hall of Fame membership; they had to be bought off in order for another team to win a World Series.

It’s Appropriate

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Senate Majority Whip and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D, IL) says it’s entirely appropriate to select a Supreme Court Justice first on the basis of her race and gender. He then says,

If they have achieved the level of success in the practice of law and jurisprudence, they’ve done it against great odds.

We’ll never know whether that’s true of President Joe Biden’s (D) nominee, though, since he’s made plain he’ll nominate on the basis of race and sex, and not on the basis of any level of success in the practice of law and jurisprudence.

But this degree of racism, much less of sexism, shouldn’t be a surprise from a party with a history of racist bigotry stretching back into the pre-Civil War years and today whose racist and sexist bigotry is demonstrated through Party’s insistence on proselytizing its identity politics.

As a side note, Durbin also justifies his President’s racist and sexist choice criteria on the claim that other Presidents did it, too. There’s the concept of morality with which we’re so familiar in the Progressive-Democratic Party and its predecessor, the Democratic Party: the morality of a behavior isn’t at all intrinsic in the behavior; on the contrary, morality is rooted in whether somebody else behaved that way, too; morality is a matter of situation, of what’s personally convenient to the behaver.

A Misunderstanding

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board had a piece about Justice Stephen Breyer’s impending retirement last Wednesday. One bit in it caught my eye.

Like many liberals of his generation, he [Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer] is an institutionalist who believes in the promise of the Constitution and incremental social improvement.

And herein lies the fundamental misunderstanding of liberal judges regarding their role as judges. A judge cannot both believe in the promise of the Constitution and act on the premise of incremental social improvement.

Acting on social improvement, incremental or otherwise, is a strictly political matter and is solely the province of the political actors—Congress and We the People who hire those actors.

If a judge believes in the promise, he must adhere solely to his duty to apply the statute(s) and Constitution that are before him in any case. If he acts on those views of social improvement—which views are inherently his personal views—he is violating both Article I, Section 1, of our Constitution and his oath as a judge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.