From Texas Star:

"..law requires:

An enforcement mechanism

A perceived equitable and evenhanded application

If those conditions are not met as elementary civics class tells us we do not have the rule of law, we have the rule of men (or in this case, nations)."

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Actually, law requires neither of those things. Rule of law might, but the existence of law doesn't at all necessitate fair enforcement. Hell, some would argue (not without merit) the United States has never equitably enforced the law; does that mean our laws don't exist?

If that seems like semantics - What's the point of respecting international boundaries if not reasonably enforced? - I would argue that's the whole point, actually. Let's all start by answering what we think should happen at the least. If we don't have that ideal, then we have nothing. I really can't stand legal subjectivism - you're basically making the argument that since law has been imperfectly applied in the past, we should discard the concept entirely.

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"Now I did find scotjohn's question ("When should a minority ethnic group be allowed to secede and form their own nation-state") to be very interesting, even central if we are going to have "a consistent moral argument" which I think is very important for supporters of peaceful conflict resolution."

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It is the heart of this debate. Let's start by discrediting a dangerously false assumption: that S.Ossetia is a cohesive ethnic whole (present since the Mongol hordes, no less! How consistent!) whose people unreservedly have and will want Russian rule. It's a mix of people who identify as Georgian and those who identify as Russian, although yes, majority Russian.

I don't have the answers to scot's question. But what I would caution against is this business of third parties proposing to carve up nations, no matter the perceived validity of their boundaries, based on the "legitimacy" of the political will or demographics of the time. Again: it was a bad idea for the U.S./Albania in Kosovo, it was a bad idea for the British in Ireland, it was a bad idea for Europe in Africa and it was a bad idea for the South U.S. during the Civil War.

@ derbig: interesting take, but have to disagree - I don't think the Bush administration has much to gain by looking even more incompetent/impotent. (Although, at this late in the game, admittedly there's a limit to how much political will there will be within the administration to solve this. They can't, so why not just go to the Olympics?)

Texas, not going to quibble over semantics - I'll give you international law has never been consistently applied if you'll give me that it should exist, and there is value in the theoretical application thereof.

"I gather from another comment you feel that the current global map of nation-states is inviolable and frozen in it's current configuration"

Nope, I have no problem with the nations themselves redefining their own map, which has sometimes happened by force if necessary. What I caution against is the role of the third party actor in doing so.

First, I don't think it's necessarily helpful to take shots at Karen Tumulty at this point - she gave a thoughtful reply, and Glenn gave a thoughtful reply to her. Good. That's a good thing. I'm assuming Glenn is not necessarily looking to score debate points; what he's looking for is to make the media reconsider their assumptions. Sometimes that's done by shaming them, and sometimes, if they're willing, engaging them.

More generally, there's a lot of them in the bloggers v. msm back and forth. I think the msm, with their phrase "original reporting" makes two very critical mistakes: one, assuming that primary sources are necessarily more valuable (or factual) than secondary sources. Anyone who's written a history thesis (I'm guessing there are a lot of you here!) can tell you primary sources are valuable but often biased and need to be considered carefully, which obviously the msm (see Judy Miller, but not only her) has not always done. Their "lionization" of the perceived primary source difference between themselves and bloggers is part of the problem.

Two, bloggers quite frequently do make better use of primary sources than reporters. Not the least of which because primary sources means far more than just people from the government. Sometimes it might mean reading the actual text of a law or the wording of a poll, unlike what Joe Klein would argue. Or sifting through e-mails in a document dump.

In short - anyone who reads an actual msm article today knows how much of it is recycled crap from bad secondary sources. To say nothing of the received wisdom reprinted with no source at all, like Tom Raum's AP article. Good bloggers routinely do better than that, if one bothered to compare apples to apples.

Good article, but why no mention of the Keating Five every time McCain talks about fiscal responsibility? Or, for that matter, no mention of Keating Five, period?

Unless I'm mistaken about the details - and feel free to correct if I am - McCain actively interfered in the regulation of an savings and loan that later failed and cost taxpayers in the hundreds of billions of dollars. On behalf of a guy who was a campaign supporter, close personal friend and a business partner of Cindy's.

I think he's in no position to say who deserves a bailout and who doesn't. I need no lectures on financial responsibility from him. I think we should see an ad about this subject from the DNC.