NOT QUITE FULL...YET...:

Account Balance: Hamas's victory actually presents an opportunity for Israel. (Gadi Taub, 6/19/07, TNR Online)

For the second time in less than two years, Hamas may be experiencing too much success for its own good. Hamas did well as an opposition group, maintaining the purity of its extreme positions while steering clear of political accountability. Hamas leaders were well aware of this and avoided taking part in government for a long time.

Their decision, therefore, to run for the Palestinian Authority elections last year and evolve into an institutionalized opposition party was not taken lightly. Then came the sweeping success which took it by surprise. Not only did Hamas become an official party, it found itself heading the government. This put Hamas in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand it remained faithful to its ideology and continued its refusal to abide by the terms to which Israel and the Quartet insisted: acknowledging Israel's right to exist, accepting the agreements the PLO signed with Israel, and renouncing terrorism. But, on the other hand, its sweeping electoral victory made it accountable in the eyes of its own people for whatever consequence this uncompromising stance would bring.

The solution to this conundrum was to form a coalition government with Fatah, in which Fatah stood for compromise, Hamas for extremism. Fatah was supposed to relieve international and Israeli pressure, and Hamas to somehow continue the Holy War. But what worked under Yassir Arafat, when Hamas was given much leeway as an underground organization, became more difficult to manage with Hamas heading a government. The result was a series of short-term, fragile ceasefires, which periodically broke down, along with a steady deterioration in the well-being of Gaza's citizens. The coalition government actually put Hamas and Fatah on a collision course. It was an unworkable partnership: Hamas didn't let Fatah deliver on its promises to Israel, and Fatah couldn't restrain Hamas's attacks. Policy--if that is the word for it--was not so much a compromise between the two as it was a random median of two mutually exclusive strategies. It was only a matter of time until clashes between the two factions turned into civil war.

That civil war has now given Hamas its second too-spectacular success. It did not simply subdue Fatah in Gaza, it annihilated it. But, as a result, Hamas is now being pushed into the position of full accountability.

The basic insight is correct: the responsibility of governing is fatal to Hamas as a terror organization and will render it a normal political party. But it doesn't have full responsibility until there's a unified nation of Palestine.

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NO ONE'S EVER ACCUSED THE LEFT OF GRASPING BASIC ECONOMICS, BUT...

US Congress set to battle over gas-price 'gouging': The Senate and House make a controversial move to control alleged profiteering. (Peter Grier, 6/20/07, The Christian Science Monitor)

Many Democrats think price gouging should be a federal crime. They've included a provision in the energy bill that would make it illegal to reap "excessive" profits at the pump in times of a national energy emergency.
...you'd think even they could grasp that the more gouging the less gas will be consumed. If anything, they should be adding to the gouge via taxes. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that they're just reacting to the fact that W and Dick Cheney come from the oil biz.

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JUST ANOTHER STALL TACTIC:

'West Bank First': It Won't Work (Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, June 19, 2007, Washington Post)

Having embraced one illusion -- that it could help isolate and defeat Hamas -- the Bush administration is dangerously close to embracing another: Gaza is dead, long live the West Bank. This approach appears compelling. Flood the West Bank with money, boost Fatah security forces and create a meaningful negotiating process. The Palestinian people, drawn to a recovering West Bank and repelled by the nightmare of an impoverished Gaza, will rally around the more pragmatic of the Palestinians.

The theory is a few years late and several steps removed from reality. If the United States wanted to help President Mahmoud Abbas, the time to do so was in 2005, when he won office in a landslide, emerged as the Palestinians' uncontested leader and was in a position to sell difficult compromises to his people. Today, Abbas is challenged by far more Palestinians and is far less capable of securing a consensus on any important decision.

But the more fundamental problem with this theory is its lack of grounding. It is premised on the notion that Fatah controls the West Bank. Yet the West Bank is not Gaza in reverse. Unlike in Gaza, Israel's West Bank presence is overwhelming and, unlike Hamas, Fatah has ceased to exist as an ideologically or organizationally coherent movement.

Fiddling around with Fatah is just another way of delaying the inevitable, a nation of Palestine led by democratically elected Islamic parties.

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EASILY DIVISIBLE:

Memo on Hillary stupid and caustic: Obama (Indian Express, June 19, 2007)

Facing flak over his campaign's paper criticising his party rival Hillary Clinton's links with Indian-Americans, Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama has blamed lower-level officials in his team for the document and described it as "stupid and caustic". [...]

The memo, which was passed on friendly political correspondents to quote from it without attribution to the campaign, had implied that Clintons haves raised tens of thousands of dollars from American Indians and that is why they are supporting outsourcing without caring for lost American jobs.

The paper also picked up a remark of Hillary Clinton to imply that her investments in India made her fit to fight elections in India. It was referring to the remark made by Hillary Clinton to an Indian-American audience in March that "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily."

A GOP that can't exploit the racial divides in the Democratic Party doesn't deserve to win elections.

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OFF AND RUNNING:

Who Needs David Caruso? (BRENDAN BERNHARD, June 19, 2007, NY Sun)

Critics seem almost obliged to go gaga about how good Kyra Sedgwick is at playing a whip-smart police chief and CIA-trained interrogator who can detect a lie before it's even left a suspect's mouth.

But what I really like about TNT's "The Closer" is not its plots or climactic interrogation scenes, riveting as these often are, but the quirky-sexy Ms. Sedgwick herself — the way she's always running rings around her hapless male boss, Assistant Police Chief Will Pope (J.K. Simmons), for instance, not to mention her principal rival, Commander Taylor (Robert Gossett). Or how she manages to cajole, boss, charm, and befuddle all the men under her command into doing whatever she wants them to do, not excluding (by and large) her maximally patient boyfriend, FBI agent Fritz Howard (Jon Tenney). [...]

There were also two subplots, both of which were like dessert in comparison with the main course. The first involved departmental budget cuts, leading to the worrying possibility that the oldest member of Brenda's squad, the crusty-but-endearing Detective Lieutenant Provenza (G.W. Bailey), might have to retire, but the main point was that it allowed us to enjoy watching Brenda flout every order Pope gave her by spending even more of the department's money than she usually does.

My favorite moment in the episode was when Pope, insisting that Brenda go ahead with the budget cuts, said, "Consider, just for a moment, a universe in which you work for me, and in which what I need is important too." Nice try. Brenda is not what you'd call a team player, a phrase she'd probably regard as a euphemism for agreeing to go along with the prevailing mediocrity in a given group. Her idea of team play is to do her best for the team by doing her best as an individual. There's a lot to be said for that approach, but it's amazing how many people can't quite wrap it around their team-playing skulls.

The second subplot was about Brenda's ongoing battle with boyfriend Fritz, who wants them to get a bigger house so that he can finally move his stuff out of the garage. "Don't you realize I'm working on an extremely important murder case?" Brenda asked him plaintively after he reminded her that this was the weekend they'd agreed to go house hunting together. "You're always working on an ‘extremely important' murder case," Fritz replied sarcastically, treating her to a marvelously level staredown. Somehow, Fritz manages to cater to practically all of Brenda's whims while combining understated machismo with the forbearance of a yogi.

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CO-EQUALLY THUMBED NOSES:

'Signing Statements' Study Finds Administration Has Ignored Laws (Jonathan Weisman, 6/18/07, Washington Post)

For the first time, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office -- Congress's investigative arm -- tried to ascertain whether the administration has made good on such declarations of presidential power. In appropriations acts for fiscal 2006, GAO investigators found 160 separate provisions that Bush had objected to in signing statements. They then chose 19 to follow.

Of those 19 provisions, six -- nearly a third -- were not carried out according to law. Ten were executed by the executive branch. On three others, conditions did not require an executive branch response.

The instances of noncompliance were not as dramatic as some of the signing statements that have caused the most stir, such as Bush's suggestion that he was not bound by a ban on torture in U.S. military detention facilities. But congressional aides said they were significant.

For example, Congress directed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to relocate its checkpoints around Tucson every seven days to improve efforts to combat illegal immigration. But the agency took the law as an "advisory provision" that was "not always consistent with CBP's mission requirements." Instead, the agency periodically shut down its checkpoints for short periods of time, believing that would comply with congressional demands.

Frustrated by the Pentagon's broad budget submissions for the "global war on terrorism," Congress demanded in its 2006 military spending law that the Defense Department break down its 2007 budget request to show the detailed costs of global military operations, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The department ignored the order. While the Pentagon did break out the costs of operations in the Balkans and at Guantanamo Bay, it did not detail expenditures in other operations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also ignored Congress's demand that it submit an expenditure plan for housing assistance and alternatives to the approaches that failed after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA told the GAO that it does not normally produce such plans.

In all those instances, presidential signing statements had asserted that congressional demands were encroaching on Bush's prerogatives to control executive branch employees as he sees fit and to receive effective services from his employees. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Congress should not be surprised that the administration carried out the recommendations of the signing statements, although he cautioned that he could not know whether the agencies took action because of the statements.

"The signing statements assert the president's understanding of how the law should be executed, pursuant to his understanding of the Constitution, and that's the way we deal with them," Fratto said.

But Democratic lawmakers jumped on what they see as the actions of an imperial presidency with little respect for the law or the legislative branch.

"The administration is thumbing its nose at the law," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who requested the GAO study and legal opinion along with Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.).

"This GAO opinion underscores the fact that the Bush White House is constantly grabbing for more power, seeking to drive the people's branch of government to the sidelines," Byrd said in a joint statement with Conyers.

The Executive ought to detail how it spends the money the Legislative provides, but ought not submit to micromanagement of its functions.

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HEY, HARRY HAS A PULSE:

Sen. Reid fast-tracks revived immigration bill: Proposal boosts funding by $4.4 billion for border security and workplace enforcement, a Bush-backed provision (Maura Reynolds, June 19, 2007, LA Times)

The new version cleans up the legislation, which had been altered so much in the last year that it had become legislatively unwieldy. It includes a provision, agreed to in principle last week by Senate leaders with the support of President Bush, that would boost funding for border security and workplace enforcement by $4.4 billion.

"Republican obstructionists are going to have a very simple decision to make later on this week," said Jim Manley, Reid's staff director. "Are they going to stand for efforts to provide increased funding for border security along with comprehensive immigration reform? Or are they going to continue to block one of the top priorities of the president?"

The proposal announced Monday will incorporate the substance of about two dozen amendments adopted when the Senate debated the bill for two weeks this year. The core of the legislation has become known as the "grand bargain." Under the plan, opponents agreed to provide many illegal immigrants now in the United States a path to citizenship in return for a restructuring of the immigration system to give greater weight to education and job skills, rather than family ties. [...]

To curb opponents' chances of blocking the bill, Reid used a Senate procedure known as Rule 14 to reintroduce and bring the measure immediately to the floor for debate without going through a committee.

Aides said the majority leader was also considering introducing the last two dozen or so amendments in a block, using a controversial maneuver to prevent others from being offered.

"This is a very heavy-handed tactic by the leader that is cutting a large number of senators out of the process, and there is nothing we can do to stop it," complained a senior aide to one of the bill's GOP opponents, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about inter-party disputes.

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