News Nuggets 541

The moon and Venus and a sunrise over the Swiss Alps.  From National Geographic.

Al Qaeda's Odd Silence on Egypt (Bruce Riedel) from the Daily Beast
"Ayman al Zawahiri, the voice of the terror cell, has not spoken out since the unrest in Cairo began. Bruce Riedel on why democracy’s gain is bin Laden’s worst nightmare."

A Republic Called Tahrir (Roger Cohen) from the New York Times
"Beyond politics there is culture. You don’t live on the same patch of land for millennia without acquiring a deep form of it. If, for Flaubert, style was “the discharge from a deeper wound,” Egyptian culture is also the product of this nation’s scars. … Tahrir Square — the locus of a great national awakening from almost six decades of dictatorship, … has become a reflection of that culture. Its spontaneous development into a tolerant mini-republic is a riposte to President Hosni Mubarak’s warnings of chaos."

Clinic Near Baden-Baden Considered For Mubarak from Der Spiegel [of Germany in English]
"Will Hosni Mubarak travel to Germany as a patient as part of a graceful exit strategy for the Egyptian president? Plans for a possible hospital stay here appear to be more concrete than previously believed. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that a luxury clinic near Baden-Baden is being favored."

Egypt's Race Problem (Sunni Khalid) from The Root
"For too many Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africa is a stereotypical exotic land of thick jungles and masses of poor, starving and black-skinned savages."

Obama the Realist (Ross Douthat) from the New York Times
"From the war on terror to the current unrest in Egypt, his foreign policy has owed far more to conservative realpolitik than to any left-wing vision of international affairs. Many Republicans have been loath to admit this.
I think Douthat is largely on-the-money here.

US Drones Trump China Theatrics (David Axe) from The Diplomat
"Despite the fanfare surrounding China’s J-20 stealth prototype, the real game-changer in the Pacific will be US spy planes, argues David Axe."

Africa Will Not Put Up with a Colonialist China (Asane Mbaye) from the Guardian [of the UK]
"A strategy of striking deals with corrupt leaders and seizing control of African industries will ultimately backfire."

Doing the Judicial Math on Health Care (Adam Liptak) from the New York Times
"It is entirely plausible that when the Supreme Court decides the ultimate fate of the health care law, it will do so along partisan lines, with the five justices appointed by Republicans voting to strike it down and the four appointed by Democrats in dissent. … Some scholars are already wondering how much damage, if any, a party-line ruling striking down the law would do to the court’s prestige, authority and legitimacy."
Make no mistake; such a decision would represent the equivalent of the Dred Scott case of the 21st century.  It would become one of the most ignominious decisions in Supreme Court history.  It will be interesting to see if Chief Justice Roberts would actually settle for that.  If he does, he will have earned a place beside Chief Justice Roger Taney as someone who did more than anyone in his age to damage the court's reputation as a place where something other than partisan politics reigns.

How President Obama Plays Media like a Fiddle from Politico
"In early February, Obama is master of the moment—his polls on the upswing, his political dexterity applauded by pundits, his status as Washington’s dominant figure unchallenged even by Republicans. This three-month metamorphosis says something about Obama’s survival skills, but the turnabout says even more about the mainstream media: Obama is playing the press like a fiddle."

How Rumsfeld Abandoned the Peacemakers (Mark Benjamin) from the Daily Beast
"They had day jobs as judges, carpenters, and clerks—and the former defense secretary sent them into Iraq and Afghanistan as citizen soldiers, to spread goodwill. Then they paid the ultimate price, victims of bureaucratic confusion and Rumsfeld’s sporadic interest."
The report cited in this article is HERE.

A Crowded (but Empty) 2012 Republican Presidential Field (Chris Cillizza) from the Washington Post
"There's little consensus on why things are slow to form or who the first candidate to break the silence will be.  In conversations with a number of Republican operatives - those working for would-be candidates and those staying on the sidelines (for now) - a few major reasons emerge for the slow start."

Now Comes Hard Part for Boehner as Run of GOP Unity Nears End from The Hill
"Boehner faces a defining moment in his Speakership as he and his lieutenants navigate a trio of major bills: a short-term measure to fund the government, the longer-term budget blueprint, and legislation raising the federal debt ceiling beyond its present $14.3 trillion limit."

Reagan's Myth has Grown Over Time from CNN
"Said Douglas Brinkley: "Today's Republicans created this fantasy role of Reagan as anti-government. He was really Reagan of government efficiency... He was never talking about doing away with Medicaid, Medicare, or abolishing HUD. It had more to do with trimming the federal budget.""
I agree with Brinkley.  I'm finding the real Reagan to be FAR more interesting than the cartoon character the GOP has turned him into.

OBAMA BOOK NUGGET!!
Peter Firstbrook's account of Obama's roots, The Obamas from the Washington Post
"In "The Obamas," Peter Firstbrook, a British documentary filmmaker turned writer, all but ignores the American side of the Obama story and plows into the Kenyan landscape, and family genealogy, of the Obama clan. …  Firstbrook has written a strange and well-meaning hybrid of a book."

US HISTORY BOOK NUGGET [of a sort]!!
The Thirty-One Words: A Review of The Pledge: A History of the Pledge of Allegiance by Jeffrey Owen Jones and Peter Meyer from the New Republic
"The Political, Mercenary, Xenophobic, and Downright Gruesome Story of the Pledge of Allegiance."