Negotiating With Iran Isn’t Working, But Biden Has a Better Option
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/18/biden-threat-conflict-iran-nuclear-bomb-diplomacy-00010162
Joe Biden’s Secret Constitutional Weapon
“Constitutional scholars generally agree that the Ninth Amendment originated in a dispute between the two rival political factions that dominated the early republic: the federalists and the anti-federalists. The anti-federalists, anxious to limit the power of the new federal government, demanded a list of explicitly enumerated rights that the government would be constitutionally obligated to respect, but some framers worried that such a list could be construed to mean that citizens surrendered the rights that were not enumerated. The amendment was engineered by James Madison, whom many consider the father of the Constitution, as a means of appeasing both factions.
Although legal scholars generally agree on the amendment’s origins, they agree much less on its meaning and legal function. What, for instance, are the “other rights” that the people supposedly retained? Are they the collective rights of the people, as recognized by the English common law tradition, or are they the inviolable natural rights to life, liberty and happiness laid out in the Declaration of Independence — or something else entirely?
For much of the country’s history, these questions remained unanswered — or, more accurately, they remained unasked. Before 1965, the Supreme Court discussed the Ninth Amendment in fewer than ten cases, during which time the amendment “hid like a neglected child among its more popular sibling amendments in the Bill of Rights,” as the legal scholar Chase J. Sanders has described it.
Then, in 1965, the Supreme Court cited it in the landmark case of Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Court struck down a Connecticut law that banned the use of medical contraception. In the majority opinion, Associate Justice William O. Douglas cited the Ninth Amendment as one of the amendments that, together with the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, collectively implied a right to privacy that protected couples’ right to use contraception. The amendment received even more extensive treatment, though, in a concurring opinion authored by Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg and co-signed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justice William J. Brennan. In the concurrence, Goldberg argued that the right to privacy was among the unenumerated rights referred to in the Ninth Amendment. “The fact that no particular provision of the Constitution explicitly forbids the State from disrupting the traditional relation of the family… surely does not show that the Government was meant to have the power to do so,” Goldberg wrote. “Rather, as the Ninth Amendment expressly recognizes, there are fundamental personal rights such as this one, which are protected from abridgment by the Government, though not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.””
NATO On The Line: The Views of Four Former SACEURs
Polls Show the Public Is Willing to Sacrifice for Ukraine. History Suggests Biden Shouldn’t Count On It.
“On Jan. 18, 1943, a ban on sliced bread was imposed by Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard, who held the position of Food Administrator. According to the New York Times, officials explained that “the ready-sliced loaf must have a heavier wrapping than an unsliced one if it is not to dry out.” The outcry among homemakers was loud enough for Wickard to discover that there was enough wrapping paper to rescind the ban — giving permanent life to the compliment, “the greatest thing since sliced bread.””
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“You can understand why the White House would welcome a new Reuters poll finding more than three in five Americans say they’d “willingly” pay more at the gas pump to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Of course, Americans also say they plan to exercise more, eat more vegetables and watch more documentaries on television.”
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“In the absence of a direct attack, the patience of Americans fades. The shocks at the gas pumps in 1973 and 1979 were inflicted by OPEC, but Richard Nixon and later Jimmy Carter bore the political cost. Today, Republicans may stand and cheer during the State of the Union address when Biden assails Russia, but they are already blaming the president’s environmental and energy policies as the cost of gasoline rises, and that blame is likely to have political resonance.
All of which suggests that Biden and the Democrats may be wise not to put much stock in those encouraging poll numbers. History suggests they will have a half-life that will fade well before November.”
Assassinating Putin Won’t Work. It Never Has for America.
“We’ve tried it repeatedly. Often we have failed, but even when we seem to have succeeded, the long-term consequences have been terrible. An order from the Oval Office to assassinate a foreign leader would not break a taboo. It would only be
Putin Isn’t Just an Autocrat. He’s Something Worse.
“Putin’s trajectory increasingly resembles that of Hitler. Both men came to power after their countries experienced imperial dismemberment and economic collapse. Both promised to revive their nation’s glory and enjoyed enormous popularity. Both militarized and pursued state capitalism. Both relied on the army and secret police. Both identified their nations with themselves. Both promoted reactionary ideologies that identified one nation — Jews for Hitler, Ukrainians for Putin — as the enemy. And both used their national minorities living in neighboring states as pretexts for expansion. Both were also consummate liars and had deranged personalities. In this scheme of things, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is equivalent to Hitler’s attack on Austria, Czechoslovakia or Poland. And we all know what happened afterward — a Vernichtungskrieg.”
NATO’s not ready for World War III
“To set up a no-fly zone, the United States would have to move hundreds of planes from bases around the world. It would take weeks to set up and couldn’t be done under cloak of darkness. The Russians would know NATO was coming, and if you knew NATO was coming, wouldn’t you take countermeasures? Wouldn’t you see an act of war on the horizon?
Even if NATO got around Russia’s plans, enforcing the NFZ would mean shooting down Russian planes. It would also mean taking out Russian anti-aircraft defenses so NATO warplanes could fly safely, according to experts who spoke with The Week. Those, of course, are on the ground, many of them inside Russian and Belarusian borders. Taking them out would involve NATO in a ground war, and the West is even less ready for that.
There are 74,000 U.S. military personnel in Europe, including the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Spain, with the largest number (36,000) in Germany. Not all these people are front-line fighters. Many are involved in logistics, maintenance, and other tasks. There is a broader, 40,000-strong NATO response force, too, and some thousands of these troops are in the front-line Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. All told, fewer than 100,000 NATO forces in Europe are even close to being ready to fight.
The Russian force brought together for the Ukraine invasion is double that, about 190,000, and total Russian forces number 900,000.
Could NATO bring a larger force to bear? You bet. But it would take months, according to Shlapak.
For NATO to truly be ready to face down Russia, at least 100,000 more troops would have to be transported to Europe from the United States, Mark Cancian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Week. Weapons, equipment, and logistics would all have to be scaled up accordingly.
Once preparations were made on the U.S. side of the Atlantic, ships would have to make the 3,000-mile trip to bases in Europe like Bremerhaven, Germany, and from there they would have to be deployed wherever they were needed most.
All of this would take between two and three months, Cancian and Shlapak agreed. All of it would be visible by satellite and in every other way imaginable. Getting ready for war is loud.
When the coalition of the willing went into Iraq in 2003, it took months to build up forces on Iraq’s borders. It was obvious — everyone knew the war was coming — but the foe was so inferior, all they could do was dig in and hope the U.S. would lose interest in fighting.
That is not the case with Russia. As NATO planes approach Ukrainian borders with hostile intent, Russia’s forces can meet them, and what are the chances Russia wouldn’t strike first? If you were Russian President Vladimir Putin, would you wait for warplanes to attack you before you attacked them?
Similarly, ships crossing the Atlantic have been sunk before, and all parties have spent 80 years since World War II improving their technique. Russia and NATO regularly patrol each other’s shores, ready for war — waiting for provocation. It’s fair to say hundreds of ships steaming toward Europe for a fight might be considered a provocation.”
Can you believe the price of gas? States move quickly to help drivers
“Tymon said there’s no guarantee that savings from cutting gas taxes would be passed on to consumers, whereas other relief mechanisms would have more control.
“If you do suspend the gas tax, you’re stopping a critical source of revenue that’s used to invest in transportation infrastructure,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s a good precedent to set.”
Environmentalists are worried that a tax rebate could be a perverse incentive for gasoline-guzzling cars to hit the road more in an age of worsening climate change.”
5 reasons war in Ukraine is a gut punch to the global food system
“Guess from where the U.N. World Food Programme sourced more than half of its supplies for the hungry across the globe in 2021? Yes, Ukraine.
When this “breadbasket of Europe” is knocked out of supply chains and aid networks, the world is going to feel it.
The war between Russia and Ukraine, both food-producing powerhouses, has already sent prices for cereals like wheat soaring and European governments scrambling to stabilize markets.”
China’s Intervention Sends Stocks Soaring. Powell’s Unlikely to Make That Big a Splash.
“China promised to keep its stock markets stable and implement measures to boost its economy, according to a state-run media report of a meeting of the country’s financial stability and development committee. The committee also stressed that regulators should “actively introduce market-friendly policies.
Significantly for U.S. investors, the committee said China continues to support companies’ listing of shares overseas and has maintained “good communications” with U.S. regulators, with a cooperation plan in the works. That’s quite the development – just last week the Securities and Exchange Commission named five Chinese companies that could face delisting.
So what’s changed? The pressure on Chinese stocks had ramped up in the past week as regulatory concerns returned and surging Covid cases led Beijing to lock down millions of people. The country’s links to Russia also spooked investors as U.S. officials said the Russian government has asked China for military aid. If it did help Russia, sanctions would surely follow.”