This reminds me of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, the congressional ethics reform legislation passed a few months back. I'm reminded because this is the sort of thing never included in ethics reform. We read about who pays for meals, drinks, airfare, golf trips, etc. We don't read how these are mere pennies relative to federal dollars for hurricane recovery (which always seem to end up in the pockets of only the well-connected) and lobbying dollars spent to direct "earmarks."

And the next time Republican candidates for office thunder about the need for tort reform, will they mention as evidence the labors of trial lawyers such as Lott's brother-in-law? Probably not--they'll be too focused on implementing the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

On the bright side, if Giuliani's elected he's promised to reduce the size of government: "By imposing targets for budget cuts on agencies, you have to make a commitment that you're not going to rehire half of the federal employees who retire over the next four years." The implications are clear: smaller government means less misbehavior. Fewer agencies, obscure and otherwise, means fewer places to park the sort of expenses associated with certain secretive behaviors. In this instance, at least, smaller government has an obvious attraction.

The rampant bribery and corruption cited by Cave in the NY Times punctuates the glass-half-empty success of the surge thus far. The emptiness of the glass's other half, the accommodation/reconciliation that the surge was supposed to enable (in Bush's own words), is what has encouraged the corruption to begin with, since the Iraqi government is loath to allocate funds to the unconnected. It's painfully familiar to any American --we simply call our version lobbying.

The Administration has spent almost seven years taking back powers it believes belong to it and not Congress. Waxman knows this. So is this request merely an attempt to emphasize this? If it's an offer to Mukasey to demonstrate that he intends to lead the Justice Dept. independent of the White House, we should consider Mukasey's words regarding executive disregard of the law in wartime (inclusive of FISA, for example): "The president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law."

With someone who uses language this opaque while affirming expansive executive authority, he'll probably decline the offer and cite White House internal deliberations in a wartime environment. Still, it'd be something to see were he to defer to the law and not the president.

The US has been flat-footed on this from the beginning. Iran's selective responses to the IAEA ("the Agency is not in a position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran without full [Iranian] implementation of the Additional Protocol") have produced an NIE report that offers general uncertainty about future, potential weapons development. Meanwhile, the Administration warns with ever diminishing effectiveness about those weapons which don't-as-yet exist (but might soon). Iran appears, in certain significant parts of the world, as an unjustly threatened, put-upon victim. The US plays its part with the usual bellicosity. Someone's played this well and it isn't George.

Podhoretz comments on the the intelligence community "having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." But their job isn't to support universal belief. It's to analyze and assess actual intelligence. Universal belief and a wing-and-a-prayer is no way to conduct foreign policy or warfare. It's that kind of thing that got us into this mess.

With respect to Sen. Biden's foreign policy doctrine, engagement trumps prevention as a more effective long-term approach. Had we such a standing policy, the proliferation problems we currently face, the ones that make this an issue of such gravity now, would be minor by comparison. Southwest Asian nuclear proliferation is a concern today, in part, because the US hasn't been terribly interested in helping address regional tensions such as Kashmir or Waziristan.

Full engagement of the sort that goes beyond weapons development (including not only WTO entry but technical economic assistance, cultural and academic exchanges from the university to the primary school instructional levels, and encouraging longer-term election transparency, for example) can preclude the eventual need to address a problem in prevention terms.

Some will see this as pollyanish. Yet it's worth noting that one of the reasons why we have uncertain intelligence on Iran is that the country's policy mechanisms remain largely opaque to outsiders. Engagement might not produce immediate transparency but it's more likely to do so than no engagement at all.

It's been said that the Republican base cannot abide foreign policy realists and prefer policies based on idealism. Perhaps this is why Huckabee's numbers are steadily rising among those folks--they don't ask and he doesn't tell. It's no wonder the party beats the Islamocfascist drum at their debates.

Offering security guarantees to Iran is obviously preferable to yet another war but, as in the case of China, does this imply that the US cease pushing for political reform? It's been some time since I've heard any official statements encouraging such reforms in that country. The talk is almost exclusively about trade relations, currency reevaluation, deficits, etc. Genuine engagement in place of conflict is a sound and worthy diplomatic premise but it isn't sufficient in and of itself. Diplomacy is a tool, a critical one to be sure, but a tool nevertheless. It ought to have a purpose beyond conflict avoidance.