I'm surprised that no one's posted this yet, but here's a link to the Mearsheimer and Walt paper (I hope it's the right one, I don't claim to have gone beyond the title page):

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011

Source is always better than critiques and summaries, all of which carry their own interpretive bias. The page contains a link to a PDF version of the report.

Because if he called out the Madhi Army and the Badr Brigade on a regular basis, Americans would begin to wonder why we support a Prime Minister who relies on the militias and their leaders to stay in power.

I'm amazed that you don't see it, Junior can't beat on al-Maliki for relying on the the militias to stay in power when he himself relies on al-Qaeda and the "insurgents" (AKA Badr Brigades and Mahdi Army). It's a little thing called "professional courtesy"

Junior will be asking for another "emergency" infusion of money for this fiasco, brining the total (so far) to $110Bn for this fiscal year. This gives the Dems a chance to put their money where their mouth is and put the brakes on.

The emergency appropriations bill provides a perfect opportunity to put limits on George and Dick's Totally Bogus Adventure. They can also roll back some of the more egregious tax cuts and point out that they're being done to help supply that $110Bn.

I'd also like to suggest that this emergency appropriation be put on the agenda to be taken up after the normal budget appropriations bills get passed. Let's face it, it's not really an emergency if you could have predicted it. The Administration knew they didn't have the funds for this cluster fuck and prefer to continue funding it off-book. That way they don't need to have a plan that can be evaluated for success or failure later. It's time to put an end to that.

I don't think I'll hold my breath.

It seems that Saintzak is an SP! He's now called the wrath of Bill O'Reilly on us all.

It was during his terms that the trend towards the deinstitutionalizing, i.e. "booting them out, ready or not", the mentally ill began.

If that hadn't started, Ann could be comfortably tucked away where people would look after her, rather than out on the streets trying to earn a living by writing columns that are the journalistic (and boy, do I use that term loosely) equivalent of Tourette's Syndrome.

The Dems absolutely need to put forward a set of rules that ensures that the minority party is not shut out of the process. There are two basic reasons for this. First, a future majority status change is inevitable and second, it's just the right thing to do.

Fair rules are also a way to rub the Republican minority's face in the fact that the Democrats intend to govern, not rule as the Republicans tried to do, and thereby short-circuit future complaints. While, as Terry pointed out, they don't need to put those rules in place as a first priority they shouldn't drag their feet on it either. Saint Augustine's prayer comes to mind here.

That said, when the majority party changes next time, if the Republicans do not leave the agreement in place I would think that the Democrats would be well within their rights to use whatever rules still exist to slow the House to a crawl.

That's OK Keef, if it doesn't work out in LA you can always move back to Medford.

I would have found the calls for bipartisanship much more convincing if he made them in January of 2001. Unfortunately, over the last six years we've seen what Junior means when he says "bipartisan", it means "I tell you what I want and you give it to me.".

This Op-Ed piece is little more than a foundation being laid for his official excuse for a disaterous administration. That excuse will be that Junior wasn't able to get anything done because of obstrucion by the "Democrat Party", who for some reason didn't see the world through his distorted lens. Don't mind that his record as the Chief Executive of the federal government was essentially the same as his record as a CEO in the private sector, a start-to-finish exhibition of felonious incompetence.

If Junior wants to ignore a law, that's just what he'll do. If Congress attaches a "No Signing Statements Allowed" clause, he'll just produce a signing statement that says that he interprets the law so as to allow him to ignore any unconstitutional (read: "I don't like it") portion of the act, which would certainly include the clause limiting the signing statements. Finding the point where this practice can be derailed is like trying to find the beginning of a Mobius strip.

I fear that the signing statement genie is out of the bottle and it can only be pushed back in by the Supreme Court. Given that the makeup of that august body includes at least two people who actively subscribe to the "unitary executive" theory and two others do so at least in practice, I don't see this happening anytime soon. We're condemned to having the Supreme Court's interpretation function taken over by a petulant child.

CBS is reporting that the military has told Junior that they only have 9,000 troops available for the surge. Guess it's time for Babs, Jenna, George P., and the rest of the Bush kids to saddle up.

Oh, and joe might want to enlist as well. After all, it's civilization that we're defending here.