Reid Cherlin, GQ
"I'm going up to Jersey tomorrow, to try to escape." John O. Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor and his soon-to-be new CIA director, leans back in his chair. Brennan is a proud son of Hudson County, a baseball player at his Catholic high school, a commuter student at Fordham. It's a common-touch backstory that, a tad predictably, Brennan's fans bring up all the time, and that he himself seems to cling to. He points to a photograph on the wall behind my head, a black and white shot of George H.W. Bush, surrounded by aides."The guy walking...

Joan Walsh, Salon
Sarah Palin is back! Not only did she get another Fox News contract, she was the star of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Conference this past weekend for her slashing attacks not only on President Obama and Democrats but on Republican sellouts (and 2016 hopefuls) like Jeb Bush. Watching Palin gleefully take on Bush, who made a dumb comment about needing immigration reform because immigrants are “more fertile” than native-born Americans, I realized that Palin’s star really is rising again, at a time of heightened racial insecurity on the white far-right....

Talk about 'Beyond Right & Left' -- when Franken-Rove clash with Scahill-Beck over the NSA program, knee-jerkers are confused. So Huffington & Matalin debate domestic snooping not by Hoover against protestors in the '60s but by Obama after 9/11 and Boston. Is Snowden an Ellsberg or Manning?

LISTEN HERE:

True, Bush's cherry-picked intelligence on WMD was abusive, Cheney's "unitary government" philosophy extreme and Rudy [Mr. 9/11] Giuliani a near-parody on terrorism...but it's also true that our intelligence agencies failed to "connect the dots" before September 11th. Seven years after USA Today and the NYT first revealed this NSA program, how can we now better enhance safety without shredding privacy? Then: women at work (again!); what's wrong with the HPV vaccine; what's wrong with the case against Zimmerman.

On the NSA & Snowden. We listen to Edward Snowden grandiosely assert he had the clearance to tap anybody and Obama respond, in effect, that our dangerous world means Ben Franklin was wrong to conclude that we couldn't sacrifice a little privacy for more safety. That right?

Not to Arianna, who highlights the HuffPo headline "George W. Obama" about our growing national surveillance state. "For Democrats to trust blithe assurances from a Democrat in the White House is meaningless...Of course we can't have 100% security no matter what we do and obviously Obama didn't want this debate since we're having it [only because of Snowden]. I don't trust Bush-Cheney or Obama-Biden."

Mary concurs that there's now "a major mistrust of major institutions...because of the surveillance state and the myriad scandals like the IRS and Benghazi. In the Bush White House, we tried to protect civil liberties as much as possible." While the NSA program is "a useful tool," she goes on to worry that a) aggregating all phone calls plus a FISA warrants system "is a hammer to kill a mosquito" and b) it would be preferable "to better target likely suspects and collect more human intelligence instead of just killing them."

Host: "Better targeting suspects would be nice but the whole point of meta-data analytics and algorithms is to look for calls or patterns that can 'connect the dots.' Sounds like you're against the Bush-Obama NSA program." Mary pushes backs that there's no simple yes-no answer as both women warn about potential abuses in the wrong hands.

Since the Supreme Court concluded in 1979 that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy when you merely send a letter (or make a call) & since we ok public cameras and TSA pat-downs for enhanced security & since we consent to Google, Facebook using private data to place ads, why not comparable information to stop bombs? Is this debate ultimately about disrupting or thwarting real threats against abstract, slippery slope, sky-if-falling rhetoric "Big Brother...1984...Nixonian...King George...Cointelpro...police state?" (Joked Bill Maher: "the only time Republicans complained about Big Brother was after we elected a 'Big Brother.'")

Which raises the issue of partisan trust. No D or R should give a blank check to a White House merely because of party label. But it seems rational to, say, trust an Obama over a Bush if the former runs as a "against-dumb-wars" constitutional law professor who's well-known as a deliberate decision-maker and twice handily beats GOP warriors associating with the Giuliani School. Don't we have elections to choose the person we trust with our lives and then live or die with the results (JFK-Cuba), with congressional, judicial and Fourth Estate oversight, of course?

Many ardent critics of Obama on Big Data are either a) liberals who conveniently refuse to acknowledge that there are plotting terrorists (I for one am happy my last subway ride with family didn't blow up) or b) conservatives who want it both ways depending on the event - robustly chiding 44 as weak-on-terror after say the Boston Marathon or as "over-reaching" if he continues a Bush program that appears to work (see 'Hannity' every night).

Arianna objects to comparisons between private use of data and public use "which can get you thrown in jail" (after a jury verdict). And she complains more generally about a national surveillance system that earns private contractors multi-billions and allows them to actually issue security clearances. Mary notes that "profits alone aren't a bad thing" and the reason for this privatization is because government has failed to follow the law previously. "And what's the penalty for violating the current law? Apparently not enough."

When asked how they'd ratify or change the current process - "what's your cost-benefit analysis?" -- each lauded the new debate and urged that we allow the process to play out.

Ok, is Snowden an Ellsberg or Manning - will he end up being lionized or imprisoned? Mary says he should be prosecuted for "treason". Arianna seems to agree with Ellsberg that Ellsberg is more like Snowden than Manning. (The Pentagon Papers leaker was indicted and his case later thrown out after a hung jury and disclosures that the government had engaged in illegal wiretapping and break-ins.) His 1971 disclosure was a classified history of the Vietnam conflict that revealed numerous examples of government lies; so far, authorities don't know much about the accuracy of Snowden's claims of "abuse...and criminality.")

On Working Women and on Rape: when will GOP Learn? PEW released a survey showing that women are the primary bread-winner in 40 % of all families (including single-moms) with children under 18, and a quarter of all married couples with young children. And we listen to Erick Erickson (founder of RedState.com and occasional BSN panelist) and Lew Dobbs maintain that it violates the laws of nature and is "anti-science" for liberals to urge women to work because two-income families supposedly are more likely to lead to more broken families.

Consensus alert! "This is such a ridiculous, retro argument," argues Mary. "It's a false choice to say it's either, neither, or both." Each family has to decide and balance work and child-rearing for themselves. "It's wrong to say a wife working reveals a bad man while a wife not working means a bad feminist. "

Arianna agrees that this is a wrong and "antediluvian debate" both because of course women should be able to choose their work and home life but also because "there's a third women's revolution beyond Friedan and Steinem about women in the workplace accepting men's definition of success and stress. It's not sustainable for anyone to work 12 hours a day -- change in the workplace is in everyone's interest."

Also this past week, the House Judiciary Committee voted out a bill to prohibit abortions after 20-22 weeks of conception, with its author, Rep. Trent Franks (R - AZ) saying that "the incidence of rapes resulting in pregnancy are very low" (30,000 a year). Mary is asked whether elected Republicans should take a class on how to avoid using words like "rape" and "abortion" in proximity which serve largely to continue the record 2012 gender gap. She objects to any implication that the GOP is "Cromagnan" here rather than taking a principled stand for human life after viability. Arianna disagrees with the Judiciary abortion bill (unpassable and "grandstanding") and thinks that comments about rape are foolish but marginal.

Quick Takes: HPV, Zimmerman, Turkey. Increasing number of parents don't vaccinate children against the sexually transmitted HPV virus because of concerns about promiscuity and safety. Mary stresses that parents, especially moms, have to make the final gut decisions since the shot is too new to be able to know conclusively that there aren't problems -- Arianna too worries about too little generational testing.

They both worry that Prime Minister Erdogan moved too quickly and militantly to clear out protestors from Taksim Square concerned about the growing Islamic state in Turkey and both express concern about the racial aspects of the Zimmerman trial since there are no eyewitnesses and one of the parties is dead. Arianna deplores how, at the least, the defendant appears to have "been trained from youth how to look at black people with suspicion." From a different perspective, Mary urges that "we have to move past the vitriolic hurling of racism in these situations." Whatever the verdict, should "stand your ground" state laws be reconsidered in light of this tragedy. Mary thinks not.

Mark Green is the creator and host of Both Sides Now.

Send all comments to Bothsidesradio.com, where you can also listen to prior shows.

Both Sides Now is available
Sat. 5-6 PM EST From Lifestyle TalkRadio Network
& Sun. 8-9 AM EST from Business RadioTalk Network.

This week brought several reminders of the virtues of skepticism. On Thursday, the Obama administration announced it would "dramatically" increase U.S. aid to the Syrian rebels, citing an upgrade from "varying degrees of confidence" in April to "high confidence" this week that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons. So the U.S. inches down the road of mission creep in a civil war featuring one side backed by Hezbollah and the other by "al-Qaeda-linked extremists." With the White House citing "high confidence" about WMD, what could possibly go wrong? Skepticism also greeted NSA head General Keith Alexander, who claimed that the agency's electronic surveillance had helped stop dozens of terror attacks, and that revelations about the program have done "great harm" to our security. Meanwhile, President Obama said he "welcomed" a public debate on the issue (Really? So why'd he keep the program hidden for years?). Once again, Einstein had it right: "Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

Since 2001 Americans have experienced two wars, including the longest in the nation's history. The public is weary of conflict and wary of another engagement in the Middle East, as are countries in the region and our allies. President Obama's move to participate in another conflict there by providing military support for Syrian rebels after a determination that the regime of Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons during the yearlong civil war presents a difficult communications challenge.

Convincing the American public that this is the right thing to do will not be easy, yet that is only part of the challenge. Other audiences around the world including allies, neighboring countries and Assad himself must be considered. And it must always be remembered that the communications strategy should support, not limit, the ability to fulfill the strategic results the action seeks to achieve. President Obama must make sure that his political communications strategy is executed flawlessly in order to convince a skeptical public that supplying weapons to anti-Assad rebels is worth the risk and to sustain that support through the duration of America's engagement.

The president and his team would be wise to keep these points in mind as they formulate their plan:

• Make the case: With polls showing that the public is opposed to U.S. military involvement in Syria, the White House should make the case for why the action is being taken. To sustain public support, the president must be willing to respond to criticism as action commences and to keep making the case over and over again. Not doing so will be detrimental to both strategic and communication efforts.

• Be as explicit as possible: Be as clear as possible on the goals the United States wants to achieve. Recognizing that best laid plans never survive when confronted by reality and that successful military engagements often require flexibility, be as clear as possible about the criteria for determining what America will and will not do to support the rebels. Leaving parts of a plan to supply weapons to loosely connected militia groups in the Middle East to the American public's imagination will not help build support. It is all too easy for people to imagine a worst-case scenario. So the plan should set out clear benchmarks, and explain how each step builds upon the previous move to bring about the end goal of a stable, inclusive Syria without President Bashar al-Assad. Such statements should include if and under what conditions, the president would consider putting American boots on the ground.

• Acknowledge previous shortcomings: Those who do not learn from mistakes are bound to repeat them. A successful plan will outline how to avoid previous missteps and prevent harmful unintended consequences. Defining what lessons have been learned from the prior wars would be constructive and lend credibility to the effort.

• Assuage terrorism fears: As a result of the disorganized nature of the force opposing Assad, some rebel groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda to gain military and financial support. Any strategy must be able to show the public exactly how American military might is staying out of the hands of terrorists. It must also make clear that extremist elements will have no place in a post-Assad Syria. This is a case where the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

• Promise cooperation: Resolving the civil war in Syria has the potential to bring more stability to the region. The possibility of a win-win outcome should be a key selling point for Obama as he tries to gather more allies for the cause. The administration should be clear on the level of international authorization and participation sought and the actions taken to obtain such support.

• Get Republican support: At home, several Republican senators have called on the administration to step up its support for the Syrian rebels for months and applauded Obama's change of course. Perhaps this is a moment for the president to show some humility and say that folks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham were right about what needs to be done with Assad. Doing so could help bolster bipartisan support for the effort.

• Outline the exit strategy: The endgame in Syria will be even more important than any initial steps. Setting realistic expectations for how long America can expect to be involved without setting hard dates for Assad supporters to leverage and defining America's options for withdrawing from any conflict will pay dividends. Unrealistic expectations will diminish future support, and attempting to achieve the mission without sufficient resources will hinder the likelihood of success and invite harsh judgment by history (supporting the charge from critics that the administration watched and waited while 90,000 people died).

Finally, make sure everyone that speaks for the White House knows the plan and is consistent in their public statements. Sending military weaponry into a failed state to assist unproven military groups is already difficult and risky enough. Mixed signals and communication mistakes should not make it harder. A well-executed communications effort could increase the likelihood that this deadly conflict is brought to a much-needed resolution.

Hon. Mark R. Kennedy leads George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management and is Chairman of the Economic Club of Minnesota. He previously served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Federated Department Stores (now Macy's).

Bill Scher, The Week
Let's say you're a liberal. Your inclination is to ward against authoritarian government invading personal privacy. You grew up appalled by the actions of Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy. You raged against the PATRIOT Act when it was proposed by President George W. Bush.And yet today, after seeing all the recent leaks about Presidenet Obama's high-tech surveillance, and absorbing all the anger from various civil libertarians, try as you might to shake your fist and pound your keyboard, you're just not feeling the outrage.Does this mean you're a giant hypocrite?No.

Alexis Simendinger, RCP
The United States is confident the brutal regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people multiple times “in the last year,” contributing to President Obama’s latest decision to dispatch direct military support to the rebels while continuing to pursue a negotiated political settlement in consultation with allies, the United Nations and Congress, the White House announced Thursday evening.A White House official declined to confirm that Obama explicitly authorized sending U.S. arms to the rebels, as reported by the Wall...

Julian Zelizer, CNN

James Bovard, Wall Street Journal
The government-supported service organization AmeriCorps got a boost from President Obama in April, when he announced a new program to "connect more professional scientists and engineers to young students who might follow in their footsteps." According to a news release, the goal is to place hundreds of AmeriCorps members in nonprofits across the country to mobilize professionals in science, technology, engineering and math "to inspire young people to excel in STEM education."A lofty goal, to be sure, but not one AmeriCorps is likely to serve well. Judging by the...

Michael Gerson, Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- President Obama's newly designated national security adviser, Susan Rice, and his proposed United Nations ambassador, Samantha Power, are political loyalists. They are also known as liberal interventionists -- emotionally seared by American passivity during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and advocates for military action to prevent a Libyan bloodbath in 2011. So the question arises in Washington and foreign capitals (say, Moscow, Tehran and Damascus): Is the president repaying his debts or making a foreign policy statement?To Rice, a debt is clearly owed. Following the...

Tim Carney, Examiner
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in 2009, "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."This line was creepy enough coming from one of President Obama's confidants and fundraisers. It takes on added weight now that the Washington Post and the Guardian have reported that the National Security Agency's Prism program, in the days before Obama was sworn in, tapped into Google's servers, gaining access to every message sent or received over Gmail.

Robert Redford, USA Today
Like a lot of people, I felt reassured earlier this year when President Obama spoke of the need to combat climate change for the sake of our children.The president demonstrated leadership that night in that State of the Union address by making it clear that he doesn't see extreme heat waves, powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy, the most severe drought in decades and the worst wildfires ever in some states as just weird coincidences.

Sen. Rand Paul, Wall Street Journal
When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach...

Carl Schramm, Forbes
It’s been a long time, as in years, since we’ve had a certain sense that the economy is or might be set to enjoy sustained growth.  We are so eager for good news that any upward pointing indicator gets celebrated in the media, in part because it confirms the political biases of many people in the press about the worth of President Obama’s stimulus policies.

Show trials and screw-ups do not make for true "scandals." But what about GOP efforts to in effect deny the original intent of Article II when it comes Obama's constitutional power to name judges? Spitzer & Matalin debate this as well as the NSA, Rice-Power appointments and Alter's #1 best-seller on 2012.

LISTEN HERE:

It's a month of law what with Bolger, Manning and Zimmerman going on trial and an activist Supreme Court primed to issue 5-4 rulings on meta-issues like Affirmative Action and Voting Rights (again?). But between these coming developments and recent 'scandals,' Spitzer and Matalin focus on a "Scandal Without Headlines" -- since Article II is in the revered Constitution but the Filibuster for judicial picks is not -- as well as Rice-Power, the NSA and an "after-report" on Obama-Romney. There's some surprising consensus.

On the Rice-Power Nominations. The two agree that these were nominations of two capable, experienced people who reflected Obama's priorities about humanitarian intervention, just as Bush43's choice of John Bolton to the UN reflected his very different values about the UN. Mary cheekily lauds Obama "for showing who he really is rather than who he isn't, which is a centrist." While it's hard to ignore the contretemps around Rice's Benghazi "talking points," neither considers that now material after the White House email dump revealed that they were thought up by and drafted by Gen. Petraeus and the CIA, not Rice.

Mary notes that while Rice will be more an assertive advocate than her predecessor Tom Donilan, "but she may be disappointed since [the slot usually goes to one who is] a synthesizer and buffer who implements the president's orders." Eliot concludes that the new team may indicate a new assertiveness for President Obama's foreign policy team, especially on such big, pending decisions as whether to intervene in the Syrian civil war.

Host: As for these appointments revealing any shift in administration policy abroad, let's remember that Obama, even with a strong Secretary of State like Hillary Clinton, has largely been his own secretary of state when he overruled advisors on establishing a deadline for troops in Afghanistan, sending in seals rather than bombers to take out bin Laden, and jumping into Syria early and hard.

The stunning photo of Obama exiting his announcement press conference arm-in-arm with two brilliant, tough, professional women will be iconic and self-explanatory. After picking Hillary and now Rice & Power, it's doubtful we'll hear much more about Obama not appointing enough ranking women or doing so merely to be "defiant" (Rove) or "malicious" (Tantaros). Talking about patronizing and a gender gap!

On Filibustering Obama's Judicial Nominations. Frustrated by months and years of delays on his judicial nominations and the threat of filibusters on new ones, President Obama did throw down the gauntlet by naming three ABA-approved people to vacancies to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Is this "Constitution-Gate" since Article II obviously intends that Obama has the power to nominate jurists or does it constitute "court-packing" of a bench that doesn't have a busy docket?

Eliot pounces: "This is clearly abuse of the advise-and-consent power. It's ridiculous to call this 'court-packing' which refers to FDR's attempt to add additional seats to the Supreme Court rather than filling those that exist. It's like saying that when my kids take their seats at Thanksgiving I'm packing the dinner table!" Mary doesn't agree with Senators McConnell and Lee on the "packing" meme but pushes the argument made by Senator Grassley that the workload on this docket doesn't need three more judges. "We need more judges in other districts but not the District."

Adids Eliot: "Chief Justice Roberts [who is the head administrator of federal courts] disagrees with you" since he wants all seats filled given national caseloads.

Fact: Of the federal judges named by Reagan, it took about 10 days from nomination choice to Senate confirmation; W, 30 days; Obama, 130 days. Time for Reid to get a majority Senate vote to bar judicial filibusters? Yes says Eliot, especially if he dared do it when the next Supreme Court openings occur. Mary doesn't disagree but blames Democrats for attacks on and delays of the Bork and Thomas nominations.

Neither Bork nor Thomas were filibustered and got up-or-down votes in the Senate -- Bork failed 58-42 in an up-or-down majority vote and Thomas was confirmed 52-48.

So is slow-walking all of Obama's nominations a worse scandal than, say, the IRS issue?

On Alter's "After-Report" on 2012.

Reporter and historian Jonathan Alter -- a critical admirer of Obama's -- this week published The Center Holds about why he won by five million votes and 332 to 206 in the electoral college. In the spirit not of relitigating but objectively weighing the various factors that produced this result, we go through several variables discussed by Alter on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being very significant:

*Obama won the core economic argument of middle-class versus Richie Rich, especially once the 47 percent video came out. Eliot ranks this a 7 as best captured at the two conventions which contrasted a "we built that" with an "I built that" view of community, government and economics. While Mary agrees with a 7 rating, she adds that Obama sounded better than his policies and Romney, though a brilliant and "great man," failed to make any effective counter-argument enabling Obama to play offense against no defense.

*Obama's campaign apparatus and analytics -- fours years in the making -- was superior to Romney's. Eliot ranks this a 10 and Mary agrees. "We were in the dark ages. It'll take us forever to catch up." Consensus... but was this because Democrats are more open-minded and scientific and so better attracted the geeks of Silicon Valley and Alley? No one bit.

*Did it matter that Obama win the "have-a-beer test" because he was more personable and hip? Though not disagreeing with the premise, the two agreed that, in a year of such clashing views and values, this Jay Leno-test (especially since the Mormon couldn't drink a beer!) was of little consequence.

*Were social trends like young people on gay marriage and the rising numbers of Latinos a big deal? Eliot regards this a 10 and the biggest reason for Obama's victory... and is still astonished that Romney didn't pivot after the primary season to be more welcoming to immigration rather than his "severely conservative" language about "self-deportation." Mary doesn't disagree about the political impact but explains that "the Romney campaign had the faulty strategy "of just depending on the failure of your opponent [on the economy]" and so they didn't adequately deal with these issues. "Our campaign sucked!"

*Others: Obama killed bin Laden. Eliot rates this an 8 because it mooted the standard argument by Republicans that Democrats were soft on defense -- while Mary thinks this not influential since the public "gave credit rightly to the military." Hurricane Sandy? Mary gives this a 10 because it obliterated all other issues for a while - Eliot agrees it was important because it showed the contrast "between a party which believes we need an effective government bringing Americans together and how Bush performed during Hurricane Katrina." The "Clown Car" of 22 GOP debates with fringe candidates and comments tainting Romney? The two for different reasons rate this a 7.

It was fun trying to quantify reasons Obama won but this device may have confused trees for forests. Money, debates, particular issues and sound bites aside, it could all have come down to two dominant factors: a) there are more registered Democrats than registered Republicans ad b) Obama better understood and reflected the diversity and economy of a 21st century America - i.e., Obama is a modern man while Romney seemed to embody nostalgia.

On the NSA meta-data collection. The story is breaking as we tape the program. Again, both fret the potential civil liberties abuse of government having such data as phone calls and emails. Should the Patriot Act be re-authorized to limit government here? Mary thinks not while Eliot leans yes, citing associates in the NSA who have told him that government indeed does listen in to calls though President Obama denied that later in the day.

On the Supreme Court and DNA Testing. Was it ok for the Supreme Court -- with Breyer in the majority with the conservatives and Scalia in the minority writing for the liberals -- to allow police taking to a swab to get DNA of those accused of serious crimes? What about the Fourth Amendment requirement of probable cause to use as evidence in past crimes?

Mary worries about big government data banks but ends up with the majority while Eliot agrees "so long as the data is not kept if the person is found innocent."

Mark Green is the creator and host of Both Sides Now.

Send all comments to Bothsidesradio.com, where you can also listen to prior shows.

Both Sides Now is available
Sat. 5-6 PM EST From Lifestyle TalkRadio Network
& Sun. 8-9 AM EST from Business RadioTalk Network.

This week, in the midst of revelations that the NSA has been secretly collecting vast amounts of information on us, and just before yet another middling jobs report was released, President Obama visited North Carolina as part of a "Middle Class Jobs and Opportunities Tour." Though the middle class continues to get pummeled -- with family wealth declining almost 30 percent in the last decade -- the White House brings up the issue only sporadically. It pops up, gets a few lines in a speech, then disappears again. The administration's meandering approach is like when an old person wanders into the kitchen and can't remember why: "Now what did I come in here for? Oh yeah, that's right -- some yogurt... and the middle class!" Maybe the president would be motivated to bring some sustained urgency to this crisis if the conversations the NSA is busy collecting were between America's 22 million unemployed and underemployed.

David Rhode, Reuters

Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal
Perhaps the only useful part of the inspector general's audit of the IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS issued its first "Be On the Lookout" list, flagging applications containing key conservative words and issues. The criteria would expand in the months to come.What else was happening in the summer and fall of 2010? The Obama administration and its allies continue to suggest the IRS was working in some political vacuum. What they'd rather everyone forget is that the IRS's first BOLO list coincided with their own attack against...

Frank Schell, Am Spectator
The Obama Administration has presented such an array of botched domestic and foreign policies that an observer can become disoriented. Seeing a blur of so many negative events is like watching a Jason Bourne movie, with the camera on high speed. Each alleged malfeasance or scandal is worthy in itself of deliberate scrutiny, yet as we start to examine each one, others suddenly compete for our attention. It is a dazzling tapestry of mismanagement at best. But there is one theme that connects it all: contempt.

K.T. McFarland, FOX News
President Obama tapped UN Ambassador Susan Rice Tuesday to serve as our nation's next national security adviser.Tuesday morning my reaction was why appoint Susan Rice as national security adviser? She will be a DISASTER.Here's why: I spent seven years working for the most successful NSC adviser in history, Henry Kissinger.

Amy Davidson, New Yorker
One of Obama’s angrier public moments came last November, when he defended Susan Rice, the Ambassador to the United Nations, from shabby Republican attacks after the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi. He was glad to talk about what happened in Libya, he said, “but when they go after the U.N. Ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me. And should I choose—if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity—the State Department, then I will...

David Graham, The Atlantic

President Obama should really stop fighting against the idea of making the morning-after pill available to anyone who needs to buy it. He really should instruct Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder to admit defeat on the issue, and to just move on. Because what he's fighting for, ultimately, is his own political hypocrisy. Politically, this should be reason enough to throw in the towel on this fight.

The reason this is in the news today is that an appellate court just ruled on a motion in the court case over "Plan B" (and all the other brands of the morning-after pill). Previously, a federal judge had ruled that all such pills would be available over-the-counter, with no age limits. The Obama administration is in the process of appealing this ruling, and had filed a motion to continue the current restrictions until the appeal makes its way through the courts. The appellate court ruled against them, which will mean the two-pill version of the morning-after pill (which was referenced in the original lawsuit) will soon be available without any restrictions, across the land. They also ruled that the one-pill version can continue to have restrictions, since it wasn't technically a part of the lawsuit.

This is a rather momentous ruling, because in many cases appellate courts rule in favor of such "stays" (to continue whatever law currently exists) while the appeal is heard. Courts tend to defer to the status quo, knowing that if they change the current legal conditions before the appeal is ruled on, they may undermine any eventual ruling which returns conditions to some previous state. They tend to shy away from "letting the cat out of the bag," to put it another way. This time they refused to do so. They ruled that while the appeal grinds its way forward, the status quo will change.

It's hard to come up with a clearer case (outside of the national security realm, perhaps) of President Obama fighting against the ideals Candidate Obama once stood for. A little over one month before the 2008 election, the Obama campaign released a policy paper on science, while touting the support of 61 Nobel winners for Obama's views on science and politics. This paper stated:

As president, Barack Obama will lead a new era of scientific innovation in America. We need to end the Bush administration's war on science, where ideology trumps scientific inquiry and politics replaces expert opinion.

Two months after he was elected, I wrote about the Plan B legal situation, and urged Obama to follow through on his promise, saying:

The morning after pill ("Plan B") was in the news because a federal judge just told the Food and Drug Administration to start selling it over the counter without a prescription to women under the age of 18. In a scathing opinion from the bench, the judge made it clear he believed that the decision to limit the over-the-counter status of the drug to adult women was made for political reasons, not scientific ones. Which the FDA is just not supposed to do. The FDA, under Bush, didn't even want to change the status of Plan B in the first place, they would have been much happier to leave it as a prescription-only drug. But they were forced to act, so they did what they could to continue limiting access to the drug to only the women they deemed fit to buy it without seeing a doctor first. The judge found this improper, and sent it back to the FDA drawing boards, telling them to get it right the second time around.

One would fully expect the FDA, under Obama, to reverse this decision and give all women access to the drug without a prescription. Politically, Obama doesn't have a whole lot to lose by doing so, and (theoretically) the FDA is supposed to be independent of political influence anyway, so Obama can even take a hands-off approach to the issue, which only further limits any political liability from reversing this decision. But instead of doing so, Obama should get out in front of the issue and declare strongly:

"This is exactly what I was talking about when I said I wanted to 'restore scientific integrity to government' and ensure that scientific data are 'never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda.' I meant what I said, and we will listen to scientific opinion on this issue, and decide accordingly. The only questions worth asking about Plan B are 'Is it safe?' and 'Is it effective?' and those are the only things which will influence our decision."

Obama, needless to say, did not take my advice. Instead -- in an unprecedented move -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled a panel of FDA scientists who had recommended no restrictions, which had the result of forcing women under the age of 18 to get a prescription in order to gain access to Plan B.

We now jump forward to 2013. A few months ago, in an absolutely scathing ruling, the federal judge in the case ruled that Sebelius' position was "a strong showing of bad faith and improper political influence," calling it "arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable." This ruling concluded:

More than twelve years have passed since the Citizen Petition was filed and eight years since this lawsuit commenced. The FDA has engaged in intolerable delays in processing the petition. Indeed, it could accurately be described as an administrative agency filibuster. Moreover, one of the devices the FDA has employed to stall proceedings was to seek public comment on whether or not it needed to engage in rulemaking in order to adopt an age-restricted marketing regime. After eating up eleven months, 47,000 public comments, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, it decided that it did not need rulemaking after all. The plaintiffs should not be forced to endure, nor should the agency's misconduct be rewarded by, an exercise that permits the FDA to engage in further delay and obstruction.

This is the ruling which will now be allowed to be implemented. In denying the Obama administration the stay it was asking for, the court agreed with this judge's original ruling that Obama, Sebelius, and Holder are doing nothing more than engaging in "further delay and obstruction."

This is a victory for science. It is a victory over the same sort of thing Candidate Obama slammed Bush for doing: "where ideology trumps scientific inquiry and politics replaces expert opinion." Plan B is medically safer than many other over-the-counter drugs sold to anyone of any age. There is simply no scientific or medical reason not to put it on the shelves next to the aspirin, to put this another way. As for the moral argument, how many people who are against Plan B being sold to anyone of any age feel the same way about condoms? To be morally consistent, you'd have to make the same argument -- which, I notice, nobody seems to be making. In fact, even some intelligent Republicans are now making the argument for wider access to Plan B. This extraordinary article, written by a physician/politician chastising his own party's views, begins:

All of the new Oklahoma laws aimed at limiting abortion and contraception are great for the Republican family that lives in a gingerbread house with a two-car garage, two planned kids and a dog. In the real world, they are less than perfect.

As a practicing physician (who never has or will perform an abortion), I deal with the real world. In the real world, 15- and 16-year-olds get pregnant (sadly, 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds do also). In the real world, 62 percent of women ages 20 to 24 who give birth are unmarried. And in the world I work and live in, an unplanned pregnancy can throw up a real roadblock on a woman's path to escaping the shackles of poverty.

It's tough when even some Republicans are making more sense on an issue than the president. This is a losing battle for Obama, because the harder he fights it the more he's fighting against his own stated views on science and politics. Oh, sure, Obama can fight this battle all the way up to the Supreme Court, if he really wants to. But the position he has staked out is exactly what he denounced George W. Bush for doing -- putting politics ahead of science. Obama should really go back and read that position paper he released while he was still Candidate Obama. And then he should gracefully admit defeat, and move on to some more effective use of the Justice Department's time.

 

[Note: I retrieved the language from the Obama campaign position paper from a database with a paywall, so I apologize for not providing a link. And I heartily encourage everyone to read the full article that last link points to (which is nothing short of amazing), written by an Oklahoma state-level Republican who is a doctor who has delivered more than 800 babies.]

 

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