Think Tanked

Sunday Talk Shows: 10/31/10

No think tankers on the Sunday talk shows this week, but here's the full line-up:

NBC’s Meet the Press: Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) Chairman, Republican Governors Association; Fmr. Gov. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chairman, Democratic National Committee; Tom Brokaw, NBC News; Charlie Cook, National Journal; Mark Halperin, MSNBC and TIME; Michele Norris, NPR; Chuck Todd, NBC News.

CBS’ Face the Nation: Representative Pete King (R-New York); Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-Minnesota); Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota); Governor Ed Rendell (D-Pennsylvania).

ABC’s This Week: Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) Chairman, National Republican Senatorial Committee; Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) Chairman, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; Dick Armey, Former House Majority Leader; Donna Brazile, Democratic Political Strategist; Cokie Roberts, ABC News; George Will, ABC News.

CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria: Lou Gerstner, former chairman of the board & CEO for IBM Corporation; Muhtar Kent, chairman of the board & CEO for The Coca-Cola Company; Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board & CEO for Google, Inc.; and Klaus Kleinfeld, chairman & CEO for Alcoa, Inc.

CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Michael Steele, RNC chairman; Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Majority Whip; William Bennett, CNN political contributor; national talk radio host; Bob Kerrey (D), former U.S. Senator; former Nebraska Governor.

Fox News Sunday: Sarah Palin, Former Vice Presidential Candidate (R); Segment 2: Rep. Chris Van Hollen, (D) Maryland, Chairman, DCCC

CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz: Arianna Huffington, co-founder, HuffingtonPost.com; Paul Farhi, Washington Post; Michael Medved, Radio talk show host; John Avlon, TheDailyBeast.com; Jim Geraghty, National Review; Julie Mason, Washington Examiner; President Jimmy Carter.

Washington Week with Gwen Ifill and National Journal: Dan Balz, The Washington Post; Major Garrett, National Journal; Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times; Jeanne Cummings, POLITICO.

Bloomberg’s Political Capital with Al Hunt: Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show: John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent; Howard Fineman, Huffington Post Senior Political Analyst; Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent; Helene Cooper, New York Times White House Correspondent.

Coming Soon to AEI: Brooks, Ryan, Brooks

Jonah Goldberg is Disappointed the U.S. Hasn't Tried to Assassinate WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online and visiting fellow at AEI, has a piece up today starting with a question:

Why isn't Julian Assange dead?

It's not an exploratory question; it's a contemptuous one, adding that "Assange’s shrimp-on-the-barbie should have had Strontium-90 in it years before anyone heard his name." 

And that no one did is lamentable:

...Assange is essentially hiding behind his celebrity and the fact that it wouldn’t do any good to kill him, given the nature of the Web. Even if the CIA wanted to take him out, they couldn’t without massive controversy.

That’s because assassinating a hipster Australian Web guru as opposed to a Muslim terrorist is the kind of controversy no official dares invite.

That’s fine. And it’s the law. Ultimately, I don’t expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him. Alas, as of now, the plan seems to be to do nothing at all.

AM Briefing: 10/29/10

Try KSM in federal and military courts (Washington Post)

Hating Soros (Politico)

The new guys (AEI)

The irony manifesto (LA Times)

Julian Assange is still alive? (National Review)

On the new ballot (New York Daily News)

Our continually failing war on drugs (Washington Examiner)

Chavez and nuclear power (New York Post)

Strobe Talbott: Boy, I Really Thought Like Shit Today

Brookings Institution's president, Strobe Talbott, seems to be struggling a bit and is quite self-flagellant in his newest op-ed.

When you lead America's No. 1 political think tank, you've got to always be thinking, and thinking hard. Each day, I go to the office, catch up on my correspondence, and then to set to work: fresh insights and ideas, bold new paradigms, groundbreaking ways of looking at things. That's my job. And most days I think up two or three solid public-policy initiatives before I've even finished my morning coffee.

Not today. No, today I didn't think for shit.

What do I have to show for eight hours of work? A notebook filled with doodles and some tic-tac-toe games I played against myself. You call that thinking, Strobe? You get paid to think of innovative, practical recommendations that strengthen democracy and foster social welfare, and you're sitting here playing your fifth consecutive hand of solitaire?

Fucking idiot.

Read the rest at The Onion. Yes, The Onion.

The Only Thing Thwarting a Chinese Cyber Attack on the U.S. Is That They Own Us

Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker piece this week on cybersecurity, talked to CSIS senior fellow James Lewis, who relayed to Hersh why Chinese officials are in no rush to wage a cyber attack on the U.S. (and it's the economy).

James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who worked for the Departments of State and Commerce in the Clinton Administration, has written extensively on the huge economic costs due to cyber espionage from China and other countries, like Russia, whose hackers are closely linked to organized crime. Lewis, too, made a distinction between this and cyber war: “Current Chinese officials have told me that we’re not going to attack Wall Street, because we basically own it”—a reference to China’s holdings of nearly a trillion dollars in American securities—“and a cyber-war attack would do as much economic harm to us as to you.”

Nonetheless, China “is in full economic attack” inside the United States, Lewis says. “Some of it is economic espionage that we know and understand. Some of it is like the Wild West. Everybody is pirating from everybody else. The U.S.’s problem is what to do about it. I believe we have to begin by thinking about it”—the Chinese cyber threat—“as a trade issue that we have not dealt with.”

CAP: The Founding Fathers Were Progressive

Cato: Conservatism Swings & Libertarian Resurgence

David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president, posts today about the generally understood trend toward conservatism. But it may be a generally misunderstood trend, Boaz contends, because it doesn't take into consideration that there is also a trend toward social tolerance. These two things put together, for Boaz, means a swing toward libertarianism.

California voters are getting ready to vote on a marijuana legalization initiative, and polls show rising support. The New York Times points to other signs of change on the marijuana front: Pot has already become essentially legal for anyone in California who can tell a medical marijuana clinic that it would make him feel better. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the federal government would back off its attempt to enforce the federal laws against medical marijuana in the 13 states that have legalized medical use. The threats to prosecute Michael Phelps for a bong hit were widely ridiculed. Those developments have led Andrew Sullivan, Jacob Weisberg, and CBS News to speculate about a “tipping point” for change — at last — in marijuana prohibition.

Meanwhile, TPM and AOL’s PoliticsDaily also see a tipping point for marriage equality. A majority of New Yorkers now join Gov. David Paterson in supporting same-sex marriage. That same ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that “in 2004, just 32 percent of Americans favored gay marriage, with 62 percent opposed. Now 49 percent support it versus 46 percent opposed — the first time in ABC/Post polls that supporters have outnumbered opponents.” Since the passage of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, several states and the District of Columbia have granted marriage rights to same-sex couples.

And there are some pretty interesting comparisons to be made in pictures.

CAP's Larry Korb: It's Time to Free Jonathan Pollard

Over the course of the last month, Jonathan Pollard's name has been showing up in the media with some regularity in conjunction with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The idea is that Pollard should be released from prison and sent to Israel (where he was granted citizenship in the late 90's) in exchange for some sort of Israeli flexibility in negotiations--probably on the settlement issue.

In the LA Times today, Center for American Progress senior fellow Larry Korb argues it's time to let Pollard go--not because of any reason other than he's done his time. Korb points out that for similar cases, the average sentence is seven years with four years typically served.

So why, after 25 years, is Jonathan Pollard still in prison?

The reasons for keeping Pollard put were solid, according to Korb:

First is the victim impact statement of my former boss, Caspar Weinberger, the secretary of Defense at the time of Pollard's arrest. The statement, much of which remains classified, implied that some of the information that Pollard had supplied to Israel made its way to the Soviet Union. Weinberger argued that Pollard was no different from spies who provided information to the Soviets and was guilty of treason.

Second, at the time of his arrest, the Israeli government refused to acknowledge that Pollard was one of its agents, claiming that he was part of a rogue operation. Not surprisingly, the Israelis also steadfastly refused to return the reams of documents that Pollard had delivered to them or debrief the U.S. about their contents. This added fuel to the notion that Pollard was working for the Soviets or another U.S. enemy rather than for an American ally.

Third, Pollard was an unsympathetic character. He not only took about $45,000 from the Israelis in exchange for the information he handed over, he gave two highly publicized interviews from jail before his sentencing, one with Wolf Blitzer and another with Mike Wallace. In these interviews, which the government claimed were not authorized, he didn't express remorse but instead attempted to rationalize his behavior.

And now? Now, Korb asserts that none of those conditions currently exist. The intelligence didn't make it to the Soviet Union, Israel finally admitted Pollard was an Israeli spy (although, I don't understand how that works in Pollard's favor, exactly) and has since expressed remorse.

AM Briefing: 10/28/10

Midterm tunnel vision (Washington Post)

About the Cato survey on the Tea Party (Politico)

Larry Korb says it's time to release Jonathan Pollard (LA Times)

Who's "damn happy" to be spending big this election? (National Review)

O'Donnell in Pennsylvania (Washington Post)

How to get a FDNY job (New York Post)

Victor Davis Hanson's list of things to keep your mouth shut about (National Review)

Bank Bailout 2 (Politico)