Iran Into a Civics Lesson

Desultory Eclecticism will elucidate his Eastern European observations once the jet lag wears off.  For now, its time to catch up on last week's developments.

At Foreign Policy, Gary Sick reveals the machinations behind the Obama Administration's quiet political coup on Iran policy.  By granting exclusive interviews to The Washington Post and The New York Times, the administration was able to divert media coverage towards old successes at a time when the punditocracy was set to pounce on diplomacy's failure to meet an arbitrary deadline.  The ploy is Judith Miller-esque, although Desultory Eclecticism feels less prone to moral outrage when prominent media shills shill for the right side.  The article would be a helpful addition to any high school--or university--civics curriculum.

Elsewhere, legal architect John Yoo grants an interview to The New York Times Magazine.  Some fun:

"Which president would you say most violated laws enacted by Congress?
I would say Lincoln. He sent the Army into offensive operations to try to stop the South from seceding. He didn’t call Congress into special session until July 4, 1861, well after this had all happened. He basically acted on his own for three months.
Are you implicitly comparing the Civil War with the war in Iraq, in order to justify President Bush’s expansion of executive power? 
The idea is that the president’s power grows and changes based on circumstances, and that’s what the framers of the Constitution wanted. They wanted it to exist so the president could react to crises immediately."   


Lincoln certainly outstepped formal Constitutional bounds during the Civil War, and Yoo is likely correct that most framers would have approved.  Conversely, liberal scholar Juan Cole sums up the Bush-era Constitutional infractions and its former henchmen's response to Obama, hyperbole in-kind:

"Cheney wanted to use the nonsensically phrased 'war on terror' as a wedge to destroy the Bill of Rights and permanently undermine the US constitution, and is annoyed that all the groundwork he laid for the return of rightwing monarchy has been sensibly tossed aside by the constitutional lawyer who succeeded him." 


Lincoln's benevolent dictatorship earned him a national monument, portraits on the penny and $5 bill, and everlasting regard in human history occurring outside of the postbellum South.  George W. Bush's proposed lecture tour was called off when it became evident that the former leader of the free world would not be able to fill a moderately-sized auditorium at $15 a ticket.  Not all abuses of power are created equal.