Greg Mankiw has some advice for the GOP:

My advice: Amend your line in the sand to NO INCREASES IN TAX RATES. Be willing to give up on tax expenditures if we simultaneously make current tax rates permanent–or, better yet, if we lower rates, as the Bowles-Simpson commission suggested.

Ross Douthat on abortion being used to end the lives of female babies in the developing world:

For one thing, it presents a policy problem: If the right to abortion is a fundamental human liberty, how do you address sex selection without infringing dramatically on the right to privacy? (A similar problem would obtain in the Yglesian hypothetical: How far would liberals be willing to go to restrict access to the boy-producing contraception? What would a liberal court have to say about efforts to ban it? Etc.)

Douthat links to a new book by Mara Hvistendahl which alleges that selective abortions in developing nations like China and India are largely responsible for the huge disparity—160 million women—between the number of men and women in these countries.

Abortions absolutely are used for this purpose in China and India, but I haven’t read the book nor seen her evidence, so I won’t comment on the validity of her claim that selective abortions are largely responsible for the disparity, but using abortion for this purpose should be troubling regardless for those who believe it should be legal and those who don’t. In these cases, a child (or fetus, if you’d rather use a sterilized term) is killed not because the mother and father cannot care for it, but because of its gender. That’s horrifying.

If Hvistendahl’s argument is true, how do those in favor of abortion deal with it? There’s a dilemma here; a large disparity between men and women is incredibly damaging for society, but addressing it would require restricting abortion—which they’ve argued is fundamental to a woman’s privacy and autonomy.

President Obama will announce today the withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Afghanistan, nearly one-third of our current military deployment. This will effectively end the “surge” Obama ordered in 2009.

The military is furious, apparently, because they believe they need the full number of combat troops available to maintain advances made against the Taliban last winter.

This effectively is capitulating the Afghan war. Obama’s policy on Afghanistan is, to put it nicely, puzzling. After 3 months of thinking in 2009, Obama increased our forces in Afghanistan by 30,000—a middle-ground between administration and military officials. That measure was already half-hearted, but rather than see it through, he’s apparently given up on it.

The Afghan war was always going to be almost impossible to win, so it’s easy to say he’s making the right decision now. But if that’s true, and it’s a hard truth that he’s recognized, why did he order the half-surge in 2009 to begin with? If it’s because it’s a truth he only recognizes now, after two years of war, why not announce a full withdrawal? If the reason is because we’re in the middle of negotiations with the Taliban and announcing a withdrawal would undermine our position, doesn’t announcing the withdrawal of nearly one-third of our troops do exactly that?

The only answer that makes any sense is that he’s given up on the war and he thinks announcing the withdrawal of troops will help in the 2012 election. Even then, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; withdrawing one-third of our troops will feel like a half-hearted political measure to independents who want to see our troops come home, and for those independents who want to see us win the Afghan war, it will just anger them even more.

I don’t see any other answer, though. The best end-game in Afghanistan now is a negotiated settlement with the Taliban that allows them into the government but limits the extent to which they can re-implement Shariah law and militants are allowed to train and organize. That’s a terrible outcome, but even that requires us to negotiate from a strong position, and beginning to withdraw our forces while we’re negotiating almost assuredly undercuts our chance.

The Pakistanis, the Afghans and the Taliban all know that we have no will to stay and are leaving. This announcement will confirm it. Our best end game now—and what Obama’s seeking, I’m sure—is saving a little face when the Taliban march through and re-claim Afghanistan. It’s unfair to blame Obama, or any president, for “losing” a war in a region that cannot be tamed, but it’s certainly valid to criticize him for undermining our position for negotiation.

Georgia passed a tough anti-illegal immigration law that, among other things, makes using fake identification to get a job punishable by up to 15-years in prison, and here are the results:

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.

So, the state passes a bill to push illegal immigrants out of the state to reduce their use of government services, and torpedoes their agricultural industry. I’m just shocked.

Smart move, there. I suppose this settles the “if we just get rid of illegal immigrants our problems are solved” myth that’s so prevalent on the right. (Or, more likely, not.)

The War Powers Resolution forbids American forces to stay in a war zone for more than 60 days without authorization from Congress. May 20th was the 60th day of U.S. involvement in the war in Libya.

The Office of Legal Counsel and the Pentagon’s general counsel both advised President Obama that the U.S.’s involvement in NATO operations against Qaddafi amounted to hostilities, and thus the administration would need to end American involvement or receive approval from Congress. Obama overruled them, and insisted our involvement doesn’t amount to hostilities:

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

We are providing surveillance and refueling for NATO planes, two things that are absolutely required to continue operations, and we continue to use unmanned drones to fire missiles at targets on the ground. It is the President’s contention that those three things do not amount to “hostilities”?

The executive branch routinely has disagreements with Congress, but what’s ridiculous about this is just how quiet the left has been about it. This sounds remarkably similar to what Democrats rightly criticized the Bush administration for doing, but we’ve heard little more than silence. Apparently, an “imperial presidency” is only a concern if it isn’t their guy in the White House.

Reihan Salam enters an ongoing debate about raising marginal tax rates between Kevin Drum and Megan McArdle:

I don’t think that small increases in MTRs are in themselves “a disaster,” and I’ve never suggested otherwise. Rather, I think that high MTRs create work disincentives that dampen labor supply and reduce the overall level of economic activity. If these revenue gains can be achieved through less costly measures, which is to say measures that create less in the way of deadweight loss, I’d much prefer that we pursue those measures. And I’d also argue that the public sector is sufficiently inefficient that I’d much rather see structural reform designed to increase public sector productivity than a bias towards raising revenue to pay for the existing public sector.

Jon Huntsman, when asked if he would serve again if asked by President Obama:

I’d do it again. Of course. I’ve always been … trained, and I hope to train my own family that when your country needs you, particularly in a critical and sensitive bipartisan position, which is the U.S. ambassador to China, that you — if there is the prospect that you can get in there and bring about change in a way that helps your country through public service, I’m there.

Ross Douthat:

Certainly telling seniors to buy all their own health care is a complete political (and ethical) non-starter. But telling seniors to pay for more of their own health care — well, it’s hard to see how else we can hope to reduce Medicare’s fiscal burden. Maybe the premium support/voucher model that the Ryan budget proposes isn’t the optimal way to do it. But every other mechanism for serious cost containment leads inexorably to a similar place.

All solutions to making Medicare solvent involve reducing how much Medicare will cover (which thus shifts costs onto seniors), dramatically reducing what treatments are covered, or dramatically reducing the number of doctors who will accept Medicare patients. Unless, of course, your plan is to significantly increase taxes on the middle class and wealthy. And that solution has even less a chance of ever seeing a president’s signature than Paul Ryan’s plan does.

Douthat’s point is important because whenever someone tries to propose a solution to Medicare’s insolvency, their political opposition immediately rushes to the microphone to make clear how it will destroy America’s elderly. The Republicans did it when Democrats proposed using savings from Medicare and the IPAB to eliminate “wasteful” treatments, and the Democrats did it with equal gusto when Paul Ryan made his budget proposal.

We don’t seem to be capable, as a nation, of serious, honest dialogue on this topic. Instead, we squander beneficial discussion for short-term political gain. If we are so tied to our factions, so unwilling to even entertain the idea that the “other side” might be just as genuine and honest in their intent as us that we will not even give them the benefit of the doubt for a few moments to have an actual discussion free of sound byte and rhetoric and posturing, then there isn’t much we can do. We’re finished.

In the post-Soviet haze of the 1990s, we lulled ourselves into believing that everything would work itself out, that we don’t need to worry much about what’s going on, because we’re America—we’re a successful nation, we’re meant to be successful, and it will all be right in the end. That’s comforting, because it allows us to talk about these issues like they’re just conversation topics at a dinner party—only valuable insofar as they provide lively conversation, forgotten by the time people drift out the door to their cars.

That’s an illusion. We aren’t the world’s preeminent power because we are pre-ordained to be. History is dotted with empires, convinced of their own immortality, that are now all but forgotten. We don’t have the luxury of staying where we are without any real effort. If we are going to retain our current success, and continue growing, we need to figure out how to solve these issues, and it starts with meaningful discussion. Until we can have it—until Republicans don’t wince with distaste when someone mentions they’re a Democrat, and vice versa—there’s very little we can do.

Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee, is charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act for taking and storing five classified documents at his home for the purpose of releasing them. He could face thirty-five years in prison.

He released information to a Baltimore Sun journalist on two NSA projects for collecting and classifying signals intelligence. One project was a disaster, wasting tens of millions of dollars, while the other—which incorporated privacy controls so the privacy of American citizens caught within it was projected—was rejected.

Federal agents found the classified documents in question after they raided his home in connection with a separate leak to the New York Times about the NSA’s warrantless-wiretapping, which Drake was not involved with. Drake had the documents at home because he had made copies of them for a Pentagon Inspector General’s report he signed on the wasteful signals intelligence program.

He didn’t release sensitive information to enemies of the United States; he released information to the press that made clear the NSA was being poorly managed and had violated the privacy of American citizens. He embarrassed the NSA and the government, and now he is being charged under the Espionage Act.

The three others who signed the Inspector General’s report also had their homes raided by the federal government. One of them, Diane Drake—who was a staff member providing Congressional oversight of the NSA—believes the raids and charges against Drake are retribution for embarrassing the agency:

Roark, who always considered herself “a law-and-order person,” said of the raid, “This changed my faith.” Eventually, the prosecution offered her a plea bargain, under which she would plead guilty to perjury, for ostensibly lying to the F.B.I. about press leaks. The prosecutors also wanted her to testify against Drake. Roark refused. “I’m not going to plead guilty to deliberately doing anything wrong,” she told them. “And I can’t testify against Tom because I don’t know that he did anything wrong. Whatever Tom revealed, I am sure that he did not think it was classified.” She says, “I didn’t think the system was perfect, but I thought they’d play fair with me. They didn’t. I felt it was retribution.”

A Senate bill would give the Department of Justice the power to seek a court order to effectively make web sites they deem as intellectual property violators inaccessible on the web:

The U.S. Department of Justice would receive the power to seek a court order against an allegedly infringing Web site, and then serve that order on search engines, certain Domain Name System providers, and Internet advertising firms–which would in turn be required to “expeditiously” make the target Web site invisible.

…

Leahy said in a statement that his proposal permits law enforcement to “crack down on rogue Web sites dedicated to the sale of infringing or counterfeit goods.” The actual bill text, however, doesn’t require that the piratical Web site sell anything–meaning, for example, if WikiLeaks were accused of primarily distributing copyrighted internal bank documents, access from the United States could be curbed.

No trial, just a court order, and a web site is gone. That’s a rather convenient power to have when most communication works through the web.

I don’t have much sympathy for pirated content repositories, but this is a terrible precedent to allow happen. It’s a small jump to go from allowing this for sites that infringe on intellectual property to sites that the government finds threatening.

Donald Boudreaux wonders what it’d be like if supermarkets were handled like our public school system:

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—”for free”—from its neighborhood public supermarket.

Some have taken to arguing that bin Laden was somehow victorious.

Ross Douthat explains why this isn’t so:

Keep in mind that for Bin Laden, increased American military involvement in the Muslim world wasn’t an end unto itself. Rather, it was a means to a larger goal: The spread of global jihad, the empowerment of a particular strain of Salafi Islam at the expense of more moderate alternatives, and ultimately the restoration of a pan-Islamic caliphate. Are those goals any closer to fruition today than they were on September 10, 2001? I don’t think they are.

He’s absolutely right. Bin Laden’s goal with September 11th was to embroil the U.S. in an intractable war in the Middle East, in order to (1) cause the collapse of Arab regimes across the Middle East and (2) to both inspire Muslims with an attack on the U.S. and to infuriate them with the U.S.’s invasion, so they would rise up and support his cause.

That plan failed. Miserably. People across the Middle East turned against al Qaeda after September 11th and is now an after-thought in people’s minds. The people are not supporting Islamist causes; indeed, Arabs have risen up against their regimes not on Islamist grounds, but rather on secular grounds—because they have been repressed.

He absolutely failed. He had his opportunity—our bungling of the Iraq war, and the ensuing chaos from the sectarian war that resulted, provided an opening to take over one of the region’s most strategically important countries, but bin Laden and Zarqawi failed. Their strategy of turning the Shiites and Sunnis against each other to create chaos initially worked, but then they turned against fellow Sunnis, too. This broke them from the greater Sunni insurgency and the Sunni community, and the U.S. was able to gather the support of Sunnis and Sunni insurgents against al Qaeda in Iraq.

If they had succeeded in Iraq, and took over the country, things may very well have turned out quite different. Iraq would have been an ideal base to begin building the caliphate; it is rich in Islamic history, has oil supplies and sits between Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. But they failed.

Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are certainly still a threat, but they are not the threat they were before and immediately after September 11th. They can still do significant damage, but that’s all we should fear. We should no longer be afraid of anything more than that. They failed.

That doesn’t mean that we should withdraw from Afghanistan immediately, however. The situation there is almost identical to when the Soviets began withdrawing from Afghanistan in the 1980s, and our failure to deal with it then allowed the Taliban to take over and the militant movement to grow in Afghanistan and Pakistan, giving birth to al Qaeda. If we fail to deal with it now, we may be facing the same threat in the future.

Ezra Klein:

If you’re not in New York City tonight, the short version of what I’m going to say is that the question is based on a category error, and capitalism is neither moral nor immoral, much as a wrench is neither happy nor sad, and the scientific method neither purple not green, and a baseball bat neither your friend nor your enemy. Capitalism is a tool, just as regulation is, and the difficult questions we face are about how and when to use them.

That merely sidesteps the question, because whether capitalism is a “tool” or not, we still must have a moral framework to operate within to decide whether to use it or any other “tool.” Ezra’s framework appears to be that whatever policy works best in achieving his ideal society. By setting this up as a question of what tool to use, rather than what moral principles we should begin with, Ezra skews the discussion toward what is effective in achieving some end state, which is certainly a preferable situation for someone who advocates an end state in society.

That ignores what principles we should base our society and decisions on, and that is a terribly poor framework to operate under.

Ross Douthat:

And the existence of a largely-powerless royal family can be a useful hedge against the perpetual temptation to invest ordinary politicians with quasi-royal powers, and then (almost inevitably) watch them run amok. (The experience of post-Franco Spain suggests that the restoration of a hereditary monarchy after a long period of dictatorship can play a similar stabilizing role.) Having a monarch as the symbolic head of state keeps elected officials in their place, provides an apolitical outlet for popular hero worship and the cults of celebrity, and satisfies the human hunger for ceremonial authority.

Interesting argument, but granting that we might need some ceremonial head of state to satisfy our need for powerful, royal leaders means we have already failed our revolution. The point of the American revolution was not just to throw off the king’s control of the colonies, but to reject the idea that we need powerful political leaders at all. The inherent basis of the revolution was that we, as individuals and as communities, can lead and manage ourselves.

There’s a fantastic video about Keynes versus Hayek. Very well done and very well written.

Here’s the first one if you haven’t seen it. Highly recommended.