News Nuggets 582

A petrified tree floats off of Palmyra Atoll in Polynesia.  From National Geographic.

Gaddafi's Entourage Sends Out Secret Peace Feelers from Reuters
"Members of Muammar Gaddafi's entourage are putting out feelers to seek a ceasefire or safe passage from Libya, according to U.S. and European officials and a businessman close to the Libyan leadership."

Where Will It End? The Americans, the Europeans and the Arabs Must All Hold Their Nerve from the Editorial Board of the Economist [of London]
"The sceptics’ third complaint is that the West has entered this campaign without defining the mission. That is both unfair and true. It is unfair because dictators do not work to a diplomatic timetable. Colonel Qaddafi’s rapid advance to Benghazi meant that the outside world had to intervene within days or not at all."

The Libya Calculation from the Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times
"Conservatives have criticized 'war by committee,' but in this conflict, consensus is the best course."
To me, this speaks to the inherent weaknesses of coalitions formed by democracies -- particularly when those coalitions are formed "on the fly" as they were here.  I've been reading Rick Atkinson's excellent book on the Italian campaign in World War II Day of Battle and one of the issues that Atkinson looks at is the key role played by Eisenhower's temperament, that one of his best abilities was soothing things between American and British military and elected officials.  Many wondered at the time if these two democracies could effectively wage war against the centralized power of Hitler's Germany.  For Atkinson, Eisenhower was an indispensable figure in having it work.  There has been a plethora of interesting books on Eisenhower recently (See Eisenhower: 1956) and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Obama hasn't been checking out one or two of them.  This is a good segue into the next nugget.

Obama: Like Ike (Ronald Brownstein) from the National Journal
"Barack Obama consistently takes an offstage approach to presidential leadership. Is it serving him well?"

Necessary and Sufficient: The Case Against Libyan Intervention is Philosophically Flawed (William Galston) from the New Republic
"Our massive, ongoing investment in military capacity has a range of consequences for defense and diplomacy. It also has moral consequences. Because we can act in ways that others can’t, we are not as free as they are to ignore threats that we have the power to abate."
A very interesting (if still flawed) observation with implications for those who have never said "no" to increases in our defense spending.

Is Libya Like Kosovo?: Let's Hope So (Fred Kaplan) from Slate
"On cable news, four days seems an eternity. Hence the vein-popping impatience for Qaddafi to crumble, the outrage that Obama isn't doing something more quickly (just what isn't quite clear), the heaving sighs over the coalition's failure (after hours of meetings) to work out the precise procedures of command and control. Yet as several Pentagon officials cautioned at the outset of this crisis, these things are complicated; they require coordination, which takes time. This fact of course inspired some of the more enthusiastic hawks to urge Obama to take action unilaterally—which might have been speedier in the short run but a disaster in the end."

In Yemen, See Ya, Saleh (Gregory Johnsen) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Yemen's embattled president struggles on the brink of collapse."

High Anxiety in Saudi Arabia (Toby Jones) from Foreign Policy Magazine
"Saudi Arabia's nervous leaders might not have a creative way to quell dissent, but at least they're consistent. ... The Saudi royal family is nervous. They should be."

Unrest in Jordan from Le Monde diplomatique [of France in English]
"Like Yemen and Bahrain, Jordan recently has been shaken by popular protests stemming from rising food prices and high unemployment, especially among the young. But the upheaval also reflects a factor peculiar to Jordan – its delicate demographic balance between indigenous tribes, known as East Bankers, and Palestinians who have emigrated or fled to Jordan in the past six decades and received Jordanian citizenship."

Worldwide Approval of U.S. Leadership Tops Major Powers: U.S. Also Remains Top Desired Destination for Potential Migrants from Gallup
"The United States continues to achieve higher global approval ratings than China, Russia, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany."

Gates' Moscow Mission Highlights U.S.-Russia Thaw from World Politics Review
"Robert Gates has just completed his first and perhaps his last trip to Russia as secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. Although the two-day visit produced little of substance, some of Gates' public reflections help us understand how much the Russian-U.S. military relationship has improved during the last few years." 

Reactor Core At Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant May Have Been Breached from the Associated Press via Huffington Post
"Japanese nuclear safety officials said Friday that they suspect that the reactor core at one unit of the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant may have breached, raising the possibility of more severe contamination to the environment."

The Awesome Unpredictability of Tsunamis from the Wall Street Journal
"Until we can forecast earthquakes, scientists can only give so much warning to threatened coastal residents."

Race and the 2012 Election (Ezra Klein) from the Washington Post
"Far from marking the end of us-vs.-them elections associated with Richard Nixon's infamous Southern strategy, the 2008 election was arguably the beginning of its inverse: an electoral campaign where race, because of the skin color of the Democratic nominee, was a central issue, but this time, the 'racially progressive" coalition proved larger than the racially conservative coalition. Call it the Northern strategy."
An interesting hypothesis.

A Surprising Snapshot of the US Supreme Court (Linda Greenhouse) from the New York Times
"Among common impressions of the current Supreme Court are that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are joined at the hip and that the majority tilts reflexively in favor of corporations and employers. As the court heads into the current term’s final three months, I looked at the statistics. What I found surprised me."

Liberal Bias at NPR? (Steve Inskeep) from the Wall Street Journal
"Surveys show that millions of conservatives choose NPR, even with powerful conservative alternatives on the radio."

Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes from ThinkProgress
"Much of the bill is based upon verifying that those who receive food stamps benefits are meeting the federal requirements for doing so. However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer:"

Scott Walker's Proposed Budget Cuts To Schools Raise Doubts Among Some GOP Voters from the Associated Press via Huffington Post
"Almost five months after the election, Feest and some other Republican voters are having doubts about their choices at the ballot box. Although they consider themselves fiscal conservatives, many of the same people who put Walker and other GOP leaders into office are now having second thoughts, largely because the cuts they are seeking could put the quality of their cherished local schools at risk."
Some buyers' remorse?  Too late now.

'Have You No Sense of Decency?' The Wm. Cronon Story (James Fallows) from the Atlantic
This is based on Cronon's editorial published the other day in the NY Times and that we posted two days ago.
"The Wisconsin Republican Party is launching a legal effort to look through his email archives to see if he has been involved in the recent protests in the state. The putative rationale is that Cronon's messages were sent on the University of Wisconsin's email system and therefore are covered by the state's open-records law. Cronon gives a very, very detailed description of the case here, with an impassioned and, to me, convincing argument about why this should be seen as a flat-out effort at personal intimidation"
As I said the other day, Cronon is a TOP-FLIGHT historian. I seriously doubt if his critics will get very far with these tactics.

What Wisconsin Says About Labor Unions' Clout in America from the Christian Science Monitor
"The clash that led Wisconsin to limit the collective-bargaining rights of public-sector unions was fed by a mix of a tea-party-backed Republican resurgence, the fiscal crisis facing state governments, and the unions’ fight to preserve power. Here are seven questions the Wisconsin union protest raised about the role of unions in the US."

Indiana Prosecutor Resigns Over Walker Email Suggesting Violence from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
"An Indiana deputy prosecutor and Republican activist resigned Thursday after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism uncovered an email to Gov. Scott Walker in which he suggested a fake attack on the governor to discredit union protesters."
It's like something out of the pre-Wagner Act 1920s!  It speaks volumes about the kind of people Walker hangs with that this guy felt so free to suggest this through an e-mail.

The GOP’s Ever-shifting Stance on Obama’s Leadership (E.J. Dionne) from the Washington Post
"They’re criticizing him not for the decisions he’s made but for the ones he hasn’t, and the ones he delayed. They are attacking him not as a liberal ideologue but as a man in full flight from any ideological definition. If they once said his plans were too big, they are now asking if he has any plans at all."

ANIMAL RESCUE NUGGET!!
Tsunami Dolphin Rescued from Rice Paddy 1 Mile Inland from the Christian Science Monitor
"Taira and some friends wrapped the dolphin in wet towels and drove it back to the sea, where they set it free. The dolphin appeared to perk up when it was back in the Pacific, he said."