Don't tell Ted Cruz

Not that this should surprise anyone, but when my CLE seminar got to the Affordable Care Act, the speaker opened by saying "I don't care what you see politicians saying in the news, the Affordable Care Act will not be stopped by Congress and will go into effect next week."

It's worth noting that both the speakers and the crowd at this two day employment law conference are extremely Republican. At lunch the same speaker told me that the EEOC won't "go back to normal until Hillary loses in 2016."

Why don't more developing countries go waive the visa requirements for tourist from developed countries?

I don't understand why countries like Kazakhstan don't make travel from all richer countries visa free. Why just extend visa-free travel to EU members? Why not make it easier for tourists from the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, etc? If the Kazakhstanis are afraid of foreigners coming distort their job market, they can limit the visa-waivers to short-term tourism-related stays (which is what the U.S. does), but I don't think they are particularly worried about Americans coming to Kazakhstan to take jobs from their nationals. That concern is reserved for Uzbekistanis and Kyrgyzstanis, who ironically do not need a visa to enter Kazakhstan.

(I realize I am biased from my experience. The fact that our visas expired every 3-6 months during our year in Kazakhstan was a major pain in the ass for both Mrs. Noz and I during our Kazakhstan year. See e.g. these posts from those days of yore.)

Sochi

So why exactly is Russia holding the winter Olympics in Sochi? I mean, as opposed to somewhere else in its country. Russia his huge, almost all of it has winter weather, and Sochi is actually pretty far South--at least for Russia. It also happens to be next to the Caucasus, where Chechnya, Dagestan, Ossetia, and Ingushetia, all of which have had violent insurgencies and/or terrorism issues. So why not put the Olympics somewhere else? I guess you need mountains, and Sochi has the Caucasus Mountains. But Russia has other mountains. Surely there are resorts in the Urals, the Altai, or all those others I have never heard of before. If they don't have a resort yet, surely the Russians could have built one. Sochi was awarded the 2014 Olympics in 2007, and the city must have applied some point before that. Russia had plenty of time to build a world-class facility somewhere else that didn't pose such a security risk.

The only reason for choosing Sochi instead of another Russian city is to show off how well Russia as pacified the Caucasus rebellions.  But that has a real danger of backfiring. A lot can happen in the years between the announcement of an Olympic site and the games themselves. But I guess if you're overconfident of your own victory that means you're overconfident.

Trends

I've been going to employment-law related CLE classes for more than a decade. This year, for the first time, the lecturer paid significant attention to issues related to the Fair Labor Standards Act and volunteers/interns. Actually, I believe this is the first time the issue was raised at all. I guess all the recent press about unpaid internships is starting to pay off.

The Answer is September 23, 2013

The question is here.

I am spending all day today and tomorrow piling up continuing legal education credits. Yes, I am very proud of the fact that I will finish my annual CLE requirement 99 days before the deadline. This really is unprecedented for me.

Yoots

It's interesting to see the contrasting spin about the Nairobi Westgate Mall attack: does it show al-Shabab's resilience or its desperation? I tend to see it as the latter. I guess it could be both.

Brendan's Upworthy Rant

It went up a few days ago, but I didn't have a chance to watch it until now. Yay Brendan!

It's a scam

Jonathan Bernstein has the best explanation for that creepy gynecological anti-ObamaCare video. You can't explain it except as a scam on conservatives. Watch the ad:



It's a sure-fire candidate for a viral video. It's got a ton of stuff that would lead to viralness (virility?): It's creepy, but tongue-in-cheek. It's about women's sexual organs. It's a clear twist on the Democrat's war on women and those state laws requiring a vaginal ultra-sound. Let's fact it, it seems designed to push a bunch of buttons and outrage liberal groups. So then the video will get passed around the internet with people commenting about how outrageous the ad is. Conservatives are sure to notice that reaction, so they will conclude that the video pisses off liberals, which they will assume means that they are effective. So then some of those conservatives will send a check to Generation Opportunity, the mysterious group that produced the ad and is behind the "opt out" campaign.

So it works really well as a scam on conservatives. What it doesn't work as is a campaign against the Affordable Care Act. The patient in the video has "signed up for ObamaCare" except there is no insurance policy called "ObamaCare." By advocating that people "opt out of ObamaCare" after telling them that there is an insurance policy called "ObamaCare," the video is giving the viewer the wrong information needed to actually opt out.

For example, let's imagine a viewer sees the video and is totally sold by its message. When the Affordable Care Act goes into effect, she may go and buy a policy through the health insurance exchange that covers her state. If her income is low enough, maybe she will qualify for a tax break that subsidizes the amount she pays. The policy isn't called "ObamaCare" or "Government Insurance", it's called "Blue Cross/Blue Shield" or some other private health insurance company. And under the policy she gets to go to a private doctor, not a government worker. I can imagine her telling her friends "I didn't get ObamaCare, I bought my own private insurance policy on the exchange and got a tax credit that covered most of the costs too! Thank God, I didn't end up with government health care!!!"

Except she didn't opt out of ObamaCare at all. Buying a private insurance policy from the exchanges are what the Affordable Care Act is all about. Because the ads mislead the viewers about the nature of ObamaCare, they can't possibly be intended to actually get people to opt out of getting health insurance offered under the ACA.

As a strategy to undermine the ACA, the ads make no sense. As a strategy to make it seem like Generation Opportunity is effectively fighting the implementation of ObamaCare to get conservatives to send it money, it makes perfect sense.

(post expanded from a comment left here)

Can't... avert... my... eyes

As near as I can tell, the current House GOP train wreck is about making sure that Ted Cruz, Republican up-and-comer and possible-2016-presidential candidate, rather than House Republicans take the blame when their badly-thought-out strategy of threatening to ruin the U.S. economy unless the President defunds his own signature accomplishment inevitably fails. "Cruz should have banged his staff and thundered 'let my people go!'" they'll say when this bullshit finally all comes crashing down.

It's either that of the House GOPers are too stupid to realize that their strategy has no chance of succeeding. I guess I still can't rule that one out. But I still find it hard to believe they are that dumb and/or crazy. I mean, if you've lost Bill O'Reilly...

The GOP just isn't capable of pulling something off like that

It's been pretty obvious that comprehensive immigration reform is effectively dead and will stay on the back-burner until the next time that the GOP gets its ass kicked on election day because Hispanics hate them. Which means we can all go back to ignoring this issue until possibly late 2014, but more likely late 2016. The Republicans just have more important stuff to do, like endlessly passing meaningless repeals of Obamacare and attacking each other in pursuit of a doomed self-destructive legislative strategy.

Related: I'm beginning to agree that even if the ACA does not "work" in the sense of improving the health care system, it still will have been worth it just by giving the Republican Party the opportunity to completely lose their shit and tear themselves apart.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

In the past month or so there has been a noticeable increase in comment spam here. It's not that big of a deal. But just about every morning, I wake up to one or two spam comments that I have to clear out. Not that long ago, I almost never got comment spam. That's why I never have turned on the CAPCHA feature. I find those things to be pretty annoying, and I didn't seem to need it because comment spam was so rare.

Until recently, that is. The other day I tried to look into it. I started tracing back the referring links for the IP addresses for my comment spammers. Yesterday, I found this (pdf). It's basically a manual for comment spammers. On page 21, it suggests leaving spam comments on this site. It also says this blog is "page rank 6", whatever the fuck that means. How the hell did I get on that list? Anyway, not that I would have been fooled by it anyway, but any comment I find that was inspired by that manual is an automatic flagged as spam deleted comment. The whole thing is so stupid. I mean, does any legitimate commenter here ever use a signature file? Having an unrelated link like that at the bottom is like having a sign saying "spammer."

I also found this. The forum is in Indonesian. Google translate makes it almost comprehensible. But again, the question is: how the fuck did I get on that list?

I invite any spammer to leave a comment to this post explaining why they are wasting their time leaving comments on a blog with so few readers, none of whom are stupid enough to click on their spam link. Leave out your "signature line" or link to whatever url you are trying to hawk. But if you're willing to take a break from spammitude and have a real conversation about this, you are welcome to comment. Otherwise just leave me the fuck alone.

The Suits Pull Out the Big Guns

U.S. Chamber of Commerce tells House Republicans: no shut down, no government default.

What the CoC wants, the CoC usually gets, especially with Republican-controlled chambers in Congress. Can the Teatards top that?

To iOS 7 or Not to iOS 7

The Noz household has an iPhone 5, an iPhone 4S, and an iPad 2. Although they don't get all the new features, all can handle the new operating system. Should we upgrade or not?

I'm the decider for the iPad and iPhone 5, and I'm inclined to upgrade... eventually at least. The fact that the iPad 2 just barely makes the system requirements (the original iPad does not) makes me a little concerned that my iPad will get slow and annoying if I upgrade. So I might just do it on my phone until I read other iPad 2 user's experience. And I'll probably wait a week or so to do the iPhone, just to see if there are any major gripes. I'd be more adventuresome if I was sure that downgrading back to iOS 6 were possible. but I'm not sure that it is.

As for Mrs. Noz and her iPhone 4S, she's still running iOS 5 and will probably stick with it unless her favorite apps stop working.

Leverage

Here's the thing: it's only really "leverage" if the President doesn't want the U.S. to default and the Republicans don't mind if it happens. That difference is what gives one side leverage over the other.

If, on the other hand, both the President and the Republicans don't want default, then neither side has more leverage over the other. In that case it's just a game of chicken, with both sides bluffing and then trying to see who blinks first.

Except that the President is not bluffing. He's saying straight up, that he doesn't want a default, neither do the Republicans and so he won't negotiate over it. The President has caved before, but if he manages to stick to his guns now (like he did on the last debt limit showdown, but not the one before that), then the Republicans will ultimately crumble because they really are bluffing. They don't really want a default. They are just betting that the President will prove to be as weak kneed as he was prior to his reelection.

Which means that really the leverage is all on the President's side. All he has to do to exercise it is to not be Captain Caveman anymore.

Teatards vs. the Suits

The current crackup in the house GOP is really a symptom of the larger civil war between the Tea Party people and the business people. The two used to be closely allied. In fact, much of the Tea Party "movement" was bankrolled by business front groups. Rhetorically at least, the Tea Partiers had a bit of an anti-corporate thread. Even as they  pushed for policies and tax schemes that favored the interests over large corporations, they still were supposedly for regular people and anti-bailout. Still the corporate base didn't care that much because they were calling the shots.

Until recently. Now it seems that Dr. Frankenstein can't control his monster anymore. After years of screaming that Obamacare is the destruction of America as we know it, they are pushing their representatives to do everything possible to try to stop it, even if pushes the U.S. into default and ruins the economy. But ruining the economy makes Corporate America sad (it should make everyone sad, even the Teatards, but they're not thinking straight enough to see it). So Corporate America is starting to yank on the leash.

I'm not sure if it will work. Just last year, I was convinced that that Suits were still really calling the shots and would pull their strings to make sure a default would not happen. But now I really don't know. I guess if I had to bet, I would still say the Suits will find a way to avoid default no matter how much the Teatards scream. But it has also become clear that Tea Party reps in the house are the real deal. They're not just empty suits adopting tea party rhetoric to get elected while bathing in corporate cash. Some of those Congress Critters themselves are true believers. Zealotry like that can't be counted on to cut a pragmatic deal.

categorical imperative

I don't think you can make it work in this case.

I pick A

Jonathan Cohn lists three theories why GOP House members are forcing a strategy that can't possibly work and is highly likely to backfire. I'm going with the first one ("They are delusional") because it fits right into my pet theory that the primary victims of the right-wing media bubble are right-wingers.

Because in the end we're all just looking for validation of our own preexisting theories.

(via Memeorandum)

Benghazi is the worstest worst that ever worsted!

Posted by friend on Facebook:

But actually...

Military Force Isn't That Effective Either

It doesn't really bother me that the Russian plan for Syria probably won't work. The plan to bomb Syria to punish it for chemical weapon use almost certainly won't work either. Neither option will solve the problem of Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles.

Because of our over-optimistic estimation of what military force is able to accomplish, we don't seem to evaluate American strikes on those terms. When we must DO SOMETHING, it is presumed that SOMETHING means military force and that military force by definition gets the job done. All other options other than military force have the burden of proving that will solve the entire problem. For military strikes, that is just presumed to be the case.

Story time

Either in my first or second year of law school the U.S. News law school rankings came out and my school had fallen significantly in the rankings from the prior year. The student body was outraged. Many people had chosen the law school based, at least in part, on the school's rankings. The fact that the school was suddenly "less prestigious" meant that their choice may have been a mistake. Chronic fears that most law students have, that they will emerge with their law degree deep in debt but unable to get a high paying job, took over. Certain students all but accused the administration of pulling a bait and switch (as if the administrators had personally pumped up the rankings the year before and then sunk them after we signed on to be students).

The school's administration sprung into action. We all got a letter explaining why that year's rankings were flawed and that the school *really* had a better reputation than the rankings reflected. The dean of the law school and other high-ranking administrators flew to Washington D.C. to speak with the U.S. News staff and to lobby for a better ranking the next year.

It worked. The next year our rankings improved. The outrage abated. But from my perspective all that showed was that the school rankings themselves were a total crock. There was little noticeable difference between the education offered by the school from one year to the next. And yet, we had a significant improvement in the rankings (after a significant decrease). If the rankings could be affected by lobbying, then they really had no meaning at all.

That's why I thought that the U.S. News and World Report rankings (as well as all other school rankings) are just a load of horseshit, even before I read this.

Chemical weapons and the U.S.

George Monbiot:

In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention – five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Perhaps it should press the US to do the same.

Ever since I first hear about the fact that the U.S. has a chemical weapons stockpile, I've wondered why it keeps them. I mean, it costs money to maintain them. They are also a huge security risk--they can be stolen or just blown up where they are, spreading a deadly gas over whatever unlucky part of the country they happen to be hidden in. Which means there also has to be a some significant costs to guard them. They are also essentially unusable as weapons. Any benefit to be gained on the battlefield will be vastly outweighed by the adverse affects on American interests if it uses a weapon like that. The U.S. has a massive nuclear arsenal, which unlike chemical weapons, it can legally keep under international law (provided that the U.S. is officially committed to disarmament at some later date in the hazy future). And maintaining chemical weapons also undermines American credibility when it confronts other regimes which have them.

What's the point? Why keep asking for an extension? Why not just decommission them now, save us all some money and the fears that they could fall into the wrong hands? Why not neutralize the hypocrisy argument (at least that one small particular hypocrisy argument. There are still plenty of others)?

Not wanting to blow shit up in other countries is not "Isolationism"!!!!

Hulk Smash!

Part of a continuing series.

The piano guys now control my life

Does Compulsory Voting Deliver More Substantive Elections?

I've long been curious about how the political dynamics in a democracy that requires every qualified voter to vote, like Australia, work. So much of American electoral strategy is about turnout. And I'm not just talking about the various thinly-disguised efforts to suppress the votes of the other side, or the GOTV efforts for the supporters on your own side. What politicians say during a campaign and the news coverage itself is slanted because of turnout.

There is little point in doing things like ranting about how the president is a socialist secret Muslim pretender unless you're trying to energize the people that don't like the president to be enthusiastic enough to show up on election day. Those type of things are not going to change any minds. Unless you already hate the subject of the rants, they aren't all that convincing. It's just preaching to the choir. But that's still useful because of the choir is riled up enough, they will be motivated to show up at the polls. That's the whole point of talk radio. That also is the primary media strategy of a certain former Australian media mogul.

But if everyone is going to vote and turn out is no longer a factor, then, in theory, the campaigns should be more about changing minds than bringing out the minds that already agree with you. So much of American political analysis assumes that people's minds are basically fixed. You get the minorities or young people to vote, the Dems get a boost. If you get "white working class" people to vote, the Repubs get a boost. If all those groups must vote, then the campaign and its allies in the punditry world would have to focus on convincing people who would not otherwise vote for X to change their mind and do it anyway.

At least that's the theory. I wonder if that is how things actually work in Australia. I haven't seen anyone look at the recent Australian election through the lense of its compulsory voting rules.

Buzzfeed's Lame Gotcha

This is pretty stupid.

I mean, I was and am against both the Iraq war and intervention in Syria. But they are different. With Syria, no one is talking about an invasion with ground forces to occupy the country and impose a new government, as they were in Iraq. The differences between the proposal to intervene in Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, and the proposed intervention in Syria are pretty significant. There's no inconsistency to being against the Iraq war but for bombing Syria. You can try to glaze over those differences by describing them both as "a war of choice in the Middle East," but that doesn't make them exactly the same.

(via Memeorandum)

Israel's take on the Syrian debate in the U.S.

Link:

Israeli officials have consistently made the case that enforcing Mr. Obama’s narrow “red line” on Syria is essential to halting the nuclear ambitions of Israel’s archenemy, Iran.

I just don't see how that makes sense at all. I mean, chemical weapons are not the same as nuclear weapons. The Iranians are a strong supporters of the ban on CWs, having been a country that was the victim of Saddam's chemical weapon attack in the 1980s (Just as the Japanese are strongly in favor of global nuclear disarmament, having been the one country to be nuked).

I guess the logic is that if the U.S. enforces this "red line" by force, then it is more likely to strike Iran if it crosses that other "red line" of gaining nuclear weapons. But does anyone actually believe that? Whether a country gets attacked depends on a whole lot of factors. North Korea crossed the nuclear finish line without an attack, largely because a strike on NoKo could trigger a nuclear response. In fact, Israel constantly beating the anti-Iranian drum is the biggest incentive to Iran to get the bomb as fast as it can. Any country in Iran's situation, with both the regional power and the world's superpower openly debating an attack in the world media, would be seeking some way to deter such a strike.

The fact that Israel wants the U.S. to attack Syria should be another reason to oppose the plan. One of the criticisms of a strike is that it might drag Iran into a conflict with the U.S. But that's something that Israel wants. I don't actually think that a Syrian strike would lead to a U.S.-Iranian war, but I could be wrong. And the fact that Israel is itching for the U.S. to hit Syria makes me think that they think a widened conflict is more of a possibility.

NLRB iOS App

I felt that I had to download the new National Labor Relations Board app that lunched 6 days ago (in time for Labor Day, I guess). As someone who deals with that agency just about every day I have to say that the app is really disappointing.

The NLRB web site is actually quite good. There are a lot of useful things on the site both for someone who isn't familiar with the agency and someone like me who has regularly practiced before the agency for more than a decade. I was hoping some of the statutes, regulations, or case handling manuals that are on that site would be in the app. But they are not. Instead of the actual law there is a general summary employers', employees', and unions' rights, so general that it's hard to imagine it would be useful for any of the people who might be inclined to download the app. Most people don't know anything about the NLRB. The people who are going to bother to get the app are the rare folks who already know a bit about what the NLRB is and want to be able to carry around some of its resources on their phone. None of the kind of people who would install a NLRB app need the introductory summary the app offers. The people who do not know that stuff are never going to search out and install an NLRB app on their device. It looks like the NLRB didn't think through who its likely audience will be for the app.

The only useful feature on the app is a regional office locator, that gives you the contact information for the closest regional office. That isn't all that useful for me because I am in pretty regular contact with those offices. But at least it might be handy for some people.

The one thing I did learn was the three closest NLRB offices to my office are Region 4 (Philadelphia, no surprise there, it's 2.5 blocks from here), Region 22 (Newark), and Region 29 (Brooklyn). I would have thought that Region 5 (Baltimore) or Region 2 (Manhattan) would have been closer than the Brooklyn office. Okay, now I've learned it. So why do I still need this app on my phone?

Not enough war for McCain

Here's a military intervention that Bloody John opposes: military intervention that isn't bloody enough.

This is news?

Do you blame them? I mean what would any organization do if drones were periodically zooming out of the sky and blowing up your leaders?

I'm not defending al-Qaeda here (nor am I applauding the use of drones). It's just kinda obvious that if your organization was plagued with death from above you would try to find some way to make it stop.

ASIDE: Why do so many articles about drones use a photo of a B-2 bomber which is not a drone? I'm not one of those bloggers who pretends to be a military expert. The B-2 is probably the only military aircraft I can identify by sight just because it looks so odd. And they definitely look different than drones, which look more like this.

Baby's first ethnic slur

Thanks to MatthewB and a children's book about the life of Ronald Reagan that he gave our son a few months ago, Noz Jr. has started calling people "fat little dutchman."

The book is by Susan Allen, former first lady of Virginia and wife of George "Macaca" Allen. Which is strangely appropriate.

Short attention span theater

Pokerappgate is not really the kind of thing I would ordinarily post about here. But McCain's excuse that it was a three hour hearing is too ridiculous for me to bear. I'm looking at you too, Andrea Mitchell!

A three hour hearing!!! Take it from someone who does hearings for a living, a three hour hearing is short. In my racket, most hearings run from between a couple of hours to the entire work day (i.e. 2-9 hours), often with no break for lunch, because no one wants to have to come back for the dreaded second day. And every once in a while I have a case which involves a multi-day hearing (I second chaired a three day trial in January). I realize that I don't have the same kind of hearings that other lawyers and lawmakers have, but from what I can tell a three hour congressional hearing isn't all that unusual. Quite a few of the hearings that make the news are multi-day affairs.

I'm a pretty avid iPhone game player (not poker, but still games), but I don't ever play when I'm in a hearing. That's because it's my fucking job to pay attention to what is going on at those things. If I were unable to resist playing a game on my phone during a hearing, I would not be able to do my job competently. In my hearings the biggest thing that might be at stake is someone's job. They are not over whether a whole bunch of people are going to be incinerated in a bomb attack, like they are in Senator McCain's. Even with my comparatively low stakes, it is patently offensive for me to even consider goofing around when there is a serious matter like someone's livelihood is at issue. If McCain doesn't think the issue whether to launch a military strike on a foreign nation is important enough to get his undivided attention, maybe he should get another job.

Suddenly it's all about Kanye

It's remarkable how a little thing like this can totally overwhelm my google news feed, rendering my Kazakhstan news alerts almost unreadable.

Tit-for-Tat

I'm kind of curious how Putin will retaliate for this. I predict Obama's meeting with LGBT activists will piss off Putin and he will want retaliate the next time he visits our country. He seems to be a retaliatin' kinda guy. Who will Putin meet when he's next in the U.S. to try to piss off Obama?

Does anyone have a guess? I can't come up with any group that Putin would see as comparable.

Bloody John

Since he entered Congress, has John McCain ever not been in favor of American military intervention any time it has been proposed anywhere in the world?

I'm not just being rhetorical. I'm seriously trying to find a scenario where McCain would not be in favor of the U.S. going into a situation with guns blazing. Does anyone have a single example of an American military intervention that he opposed?

He has jumped on board with every military adventure in recent years (even stuff that other members of his party were leery of, like Kosovo, Libya, and Syria). And whenever a president does not want to consider military force, McCain gets on the teevee and demands that that president start killing foreigners to avoid making some terrible mistake. The dude seems to think that the answer to every foreign policy question is to kill someone. Can anyone think of a counter-example?

The Daily Mail Thinks This Matters

This picture will matter about as much as this picture did in 2003, or this picture did when McCain was beating the war drums in 2011.

I realize the Daily Mail isn't exactly catering to a thinking audience, but these "gotcha" photos don't work, and frankly, shouldn't work. I was against American military involvement in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria and I still don't think those picture should matter. I believe U.S. officials should meet with pretty much any foreign leader who is willing to talk to them. And the fact that they have dinner with someone or shake their hand shouldn't make them unable to have a different relationship later on. Things change. Politicians should be allowed to alter their judgments when new shit comes to light. That's not hypocrisy, that's being a thinking individual.

You can argue that the politician's change of heart isn't justified by the new shit, or that the new shit is actually pretty similar to old shit we already knew about. On that basis, you might be able to prove the charge of hypocrisy. But that's an argument. It's not a photo. The photo itself doesn't mean much at all. You need to make the argument. I don't think the fine folks at the Daily Mail are capable of doing that.

(via Memeorandum)

"history defying"

It has always seemed pretty evident to me that the original idea behind Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 was that while the President gets to command the armed forces, Congress decides the countries in which the U.S. initiates hostilities. So while all modern Presidents (including Obama himself when he ordered interventions in Libya) have endorsed a more expansive "The President Can Order the Slaughter of People in Any Foreign Nation Whenever He Wants, So Fuck You Congress" theory of presidential power, asking Congress to endorse a military adventure in Syria seems much more consistent with the history and language of the Constitution than people are giving him credit for now.

It's not about the legal justification for bombing Syria, Obama's decision is more about providing political cover for what is increasingly looking like an unpopular choice. Which is a good thing. Congress should be asked to endorse every new military adventure, no matter how limited. Presidents have avoided doing so because they don't want to have their hands tied on the international stage, and Congress has largely let presidents get away with it because they don't want to take on the responsibility. But it is supposed to be Congresses responsibility. Whatever selfish reasons Obama has for throwing this to Congress, I'm glad he's doing it.

I also hope it creates a real precedent. Maybe just maybe the Iraq debacle has changed the politics of this country enough so that presidents will be wary of the blame for things that go wrong and not just anxious to hog the credit for what they assume will be a glorious victory. Or maybe not. But it would be nice if at least one good thing could come out of that disaster.

(via Memeorandum)