TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 802.

RUTH WEDGWOOD: Realism And The American Republic.

In the crude violence of the contemporary international scene—with Russia running rampant in Ukraine and rattling its saber toward the Baltic states, with Muslims and Christians facing slaughter by ISIS in the Levant, and with thousands of African migrants boarding overloaded scows to cross the Mediterranean in a perilous search for work—it may seem harsh to hold an American President to a moral standard of foreign policy any higher than “realism.”
But the moral aspirations of the American republic—even as framed by the current incumbent of the White House—permit a review of our foreign policy performance that is a bit more critical.

By that measure, the current report card is not inspiring. Preoccupied by issues of criminal justice, civil rights, and medical care at home, and flummoxed abroad, we seem to have forgotten the broader ideals of internationalism that animated the founders. John Quincy Adams warned the new republic against venturing abroad seeking monsters to slay—but that was at a time when monsters were more easily thwarted and avoided, and when sailing ships from Europe took thirty days to arrive in North America. It was a time, as Adams’ near contemporary, President James Monroe opined, when the New World could be declared as a hemisphere peculiarly unavailable to autocratic powers. In a world now circled by air in 48 hours, with an international commerce that brings tens of thousands of container ships to American seaports, problems have no protective distance. There is no cordon sanitaire to protect the American homeland from chaos elsewhere.

Nor does a thin-lipped “‘realism’ about American foreign policy warrant any different posture about moral catastrophe abroad. . . . Yet we often pull our punches, supposing that reticence will serve as aptly as speech or action. One example tainted the beginning of this Administration, when the White House failed to support the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran, and did not venture beyond soft-spoken remonstrance at the wanton shooting of an innocent young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan during the 2009 protests against the mullahs near Tehran’s Azadi Square. Our interest in curbing Iran’s nuclear program by negotiation also has muffled the human rights complaints that should be aimed at Tehran for its execution of dissidents of every stripe, including Christians, still hung high from the gantry arms of construction cranes. So, too, in China, our quarrels with the regime’s violent persecution of political dissidents and Christians—as well as the arbitrary use of detention and hard labor to eliminate rivals of the commercial elite—were raised only in a measured and demure voice during Mr. Obama’s first visit to the capital city of Beijing.

I believe we should call things what they are.

TRUMP WAS ALL OVER THE NEWS. BUT O’MALLEY’S NETROOTS DISASTER? ABC’s Martha Raddatz Panics and changes subject when Kristol mentions ‘White Lives Matter’ Debacle. More on that debacle here. It’s like the press acts swiftly to kill any narrative that might be bad for Democrats.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Carly Fiorina, The Other Woman.

AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Scott Walker tells undocumented worker that immigrants must follow the law.

ARE YOU A CAMPAIGN POLICY ANALYST OR SPEECHWRITER? Then you need to read Jim Bennett & Michael Lotus’s America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century: Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come.

Trust me on this. You’ll be glad you did. (Bumped).

“WHITE MAN WHITESPLAINS WHITE PRIVILEGE TO WHITE GIRL:” Think Progress editor attacks Bernie Sanders supporter over white privilege.

Recreate ’68!

RELATED: Sonny Bunch’s satiric Everything’s a Problem blog looks at Bernie Sanders and responds, “I give the transgression of a civil rights movement participant thinking he understands civil rights problems well enough to discuss them on a national stage (i.e., whitesplain) three problematics.”

THEY WERE FOR IT BEFORE THEY WERE AGAINST IT:

On April 7, 2015, President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “under this deal, you will have anywhere, any time 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.”

Now, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Secretary of State John Kerry said, “This is a term that, honestly, I never heard in the four years that we were negotiating. It was not on the table. There’s no such thing in arms control as any time, anywhere.”

Elsewhere in news from the Bizarro World, does Kerry believe he could use the Iranian deal as a springboard to another presidential run?

Isn't it obvious that Kerry will jump in the '16 race if 1) Iran deal goes thru 2) Hillary stumbles? When will he have a better 2d chance?

— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July 18, 2015

Peace Prize in Oct, resigns in Nov and files, in Dec gives Nobel speech about life seeking peace from 'Nam to Iran. https://t.co/zsUoOOQsha

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 18, 2015

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hillary Clinton’s Man In Morocco: Clinton campaign fails to disclose bundler actively lobbying for Morocco.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign failed to list a registered lobbyist for Morocco in its legally required disclosure of all bundled fundraising done by lobbyists, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

Edward Gabriel, who was named U.S. Ambassador to Morocco by former President Bill Clinton in 1997, now runs the Gabriel Company, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm that has had the government of Morocco as a client since 2002 and has been paid more than $3.7 million by the nation since that point.

Though Gabriel appeared on a list posted to the Clinton campaign website on Wednesday afternoon of all the bundlers that have raised over $100,000, his name is absent from documents filed to the Federal Election Commission listing all the other registered lobbyists that have been fundraising for the campaign.

All contributions bundled by registered lobbyists must be disclosed to the FEC each quarter.

Rules are for the little people.

FASTER, PLEASE: Police Release New Details In Dan Markel’s Murder.

AT A GUESS, SOMETIME AFTER JANUARY 20, 2017: Angry protesters in Chattanooga: When’s the government going to do something? “The attack in Chattanooga, and the raw anger it has provoked here, illustrate the increasingly daunting odds that U.S. counterterrorism agencies face in an era marked by surging Islamist propaganda and a proliferation of disparate, self-radicalized, one-off threats.” And elevated immigration from Muslim countries.

Meanwhile, it’s self-help: “At Carl Poston’s family-owned gun shop, a few miles from Abdul­azeez’s home, demand for concealed-carry classes doubled in the days after the shooting. Shooter’s Depot, a gun store on the other side of town, said it had seen a fivefold increase, with as many as 100 people a day requesting spots in the gun classes.”

If the government can’t defend you — or even itself — what’s it good for again?

TRUMP REFUSES TO RULE OUT THIRD PARTY BID as GOP candidacy blows up: “And if he runs as a third party candidate, he could well deliver the White House to Hillary Clinton – a past recipient of Trump praise and campaign contributions.”

VERSUS THEIR LOYALTY TO THE UNITED STATES: The Hill: Iran Nuclear Deal Tests Democrat Loyalty To Obama.

Off a contentious trade debate that highlighted Democratic divisions and infuriated Obama’s liberal base, even the Democrats most critical of the Iran deal are walking a fine line.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), for instance, has emerged as the leading Democratic critic in the upper chamber, warning that the agreement “legitimizes” Iran’s nuclear program and sets the stage for Iran to reap billions of dollars in financial relief it could use to bolster its stock of conventional weapons.

But Menendez has stopped short of saying he’ll join Republicans in a vote to disapprove the deal, saying he wants first to examine the agreement more closely, both on the Foreign Relations panel and in briefings with administration officials.

“It’s premature for some people to say they’re definitely against it and for others to say they’re definitely for it,” he said. “Let’s have the vetting.”

The issue is tough for Democrats because it represents Obama’s top foreign policy goal in his second term, but is strongly opposed by Israel’s government.

Also, it’s a lousy deal.

THE KEY INGREDIENT TO GOP SUCCESS — HOPE: Not to mention that in most presidential elections since the advent of TV, the candidate perceived as being the most cheerful usually wins. (Yes, Nixon was the arguable exception, but given what a nightmare for America 1968 was, it’s understandable why the public would want to change direction.)

RELATED: Donald Trump is Jeb Bush’s foil in upbeat new campaign video.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): U.S. Median Household Income Is Lower Than It Was In 1996. Hillary’s proposed solutions won’t help that.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Obama’s Age Of Nuclear Chaos.

In the old nuclear age, the US-led West had a system for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It had three components: sanctions, deterrence and military force. In recent years we have witnessed the successful deployment of all three.

n the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, the UN Security Council imposed a harsh sanctions regime on Iraq. One of its purposes was to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, we learned that the sanctions had been successful. Saddam largely abandoned his nuclear program due to sanctions pressure.

The US-led invasion of Iraq terrified several rogue regimes in the region. In the two to three years immediately following the invasion, America’s deterrent strength soared to unprecedented heights.

As for military force, the nuclear installation that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad built in Deir a-Zour with Iranian money and North Korean technicians wasn’t destroyed through sanctions or deterrence. According to foreign media reports, in September 2007, Israel concluded that these paths to preventing nuclear proliferation to Syria would be unsuccessful.

So then-prime minister Ehud Olmert ordered the IDF to destroy it. The outbreak of the Syrian civil war three years later has prevented Assad and his Iranian bosses from reinstating the program, to date.

The old nuclear nonproliferation regime was highly flawed.

Pakistan and North Korea exploited the post-Cold War weaknesses of its sanctions and deterrence components to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons and technologies.

Due to American weakness, neither paid a serious price for its actions.

Yet, for all its flaws and leaks, the damage caused to the nonproliferation system by American weakness toward Pakistan and North Korea is small potatoes in comparison to the destruction that Tuesday’s deal with Iran has wrought.

That deal doesn’t merely show that the US is unwilling to exact a price from states that illicitly develop nuclear weapons. The US and its allies just concluded a deal that requires them to facilitate Iran’s nuclear efforts.

It’s almost as if Obama supports the notion of a nuclear Iran.

CLAUDIA ROSETT ON THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL FROM HELL, AND UN AMBASSADOR SAMANTHA POWER IN THE AGE OF GENOCIDE:

Surely Power is smart enough to see the fatal flaws in this Iran deal, even if her bosses do not. She may be a functionary of the Obama administration, but she is also an American citizen, free to speak the truth. There is nothing to stop her from speaking up at the UN to say, “Never mind my instructions from Washington. I take seriously the phrase, ‘Never again.’ I cannot in good conscience vote for this terrible deal. I cannot condone a plan that could pave the way to nuclear genocide in the Middle East. I vote no.”

Of course, were Power to do this, she would almost certainly lose her job. Obama and Kerry could dispatch a more compliant flunky to cast a U.S. vote in favor of the resolution, and the UN and the Obama administration could carry right on without Samantha Power. Nonetheless, a statement of principle from the U.S. ambassador, a willingness in the real interest of the U.S. and its allies, to tell the truth, would be, morally and in terms of enlightened self-interest, the right thing to do.

But as we’ve seen since the start of 2009, whether it’s foreign or domestic policy, this administration has an exceedingly warped view of what is “the right thing to do” for America.

SAN FRANCISCO: ONE SICK SANCTUARY CITY, Victor Davis Hanson writes:

What we won’t hear from quite liberal people is that their own policies of legal nullification are catalysts for tragedies. Municipal and state nullification of federal statutes also has a shameful American history. It was just such a principle — that local and regional lawmakers could decide that the law of land is not applicable to themselves — that was at the heart of the argument for the Old Confederacy.

If 19^th-century South Carolina could unilaterally declare that U.S. law did not apply within its environs, why then not 21st century San Francisco as well? (Apparently San Francisco thinks South Carolina was on the winning side of the Civil War).

Such contemporary liberal nullification is predicated on the relativist premise that progressive and situational cancellation of law is noble — whereas other, less enlightened states or city rights movements have no business copying their model. Should Billings declare gay marriage illegal inside its city limits and thus its local officials would not sanction marriage between the same sexes, or should Fresno County decide to suspend the endangered species act inside its border, or should Provo announce that the city would summarily deport illegal aliens without notifying federal authorities, San Franciscans would be outraged. They would rightly equate such nullification with secessionism.

Picking and choosing which federal laws to follow — whether or not to file a tax return with the IRS? — leads where exactly? That those who are caught not filing tax returns statistically have no higher incidence of criminality? And if that were true, what exactly would it prove?

Read the whole thing.

THE MAIN REASON WOMEN DON’T WORK IN TECH FIELDS? OTHER WOMEN. Milo Yiannopoulos: 14 Facts the Tanking ‘Women in Tech’ Movement Doesn’t Want You to Know.

Every week, we are subjected to stroppy Gawker posts and soporific op-eds in national newspapers about how a woman in the technology industry who was fired for poor performance was secretly a high-achieving go-getter brought down by entrenched sexism and patriarchal oppression.

And every week we’re told that the reason more women aren’t working in technology is a combination of sexism, outdated social attitudes and stereotypes, historical prejudices and too few educational support programmes for women.

We’re told that women find it more difficult to get jobs and that when they do get jobs they’re subjected to hostile workplaces, sexism and bullying and that they’re paid less than their male counterparts for the same work.

We’re invited to believe, contrary to the evidence all around us, that the highly-progressive, socially-conscious and liberal-minded technology industry is in fact one of the most retrograde and oppressive places for women to work.

But here’s the dirty secret about the shrill and insatiable “women in tech” movement: none of that is true. And ordinary women innately sense that this is so, which is why — despite frenetic, wall-to-wall media coverage and endless plugs from politicians and celebrities, the women in tech movement is losing the sympathy of ordinary people and why, by some measures, the number of women going into tech is actually going down.

Encouraging women to take leadership and technical roles in technology, the Internet and gaming, if they want them, is a noble goal. But any plan designed to increase the number of women in a given STEM field is doomed to failure unless businesses tell themselves the truth about their supposed “women problem.”

It’s not about truth. It’s not even about women in tech. It’s about posturing, and about extracting contributions and consulting fees for the benefit of women who majored in gender studies and social justice, not tech fields.

‘LONE WOLVES,’ TRUMP AND THE ELECTION OF 2016, from Roger Simon, who is not happy with The Donald’s crude attack on McCain’s POW status:

Most importantly, as an admiral’s son, McCain was offered early repatriation by the North Vietnamese and refused, choosing to stay with the other POWs and be tortured and beaten continually to the proverbial inch of his life. (He attempted suicide at one point.) According to Wikipedia, which appears to be well-sourced on this matter, McCain spent nearly five of his five and a half years in prison because he refused this privileged repatriation.   I don’t know a single other contemporary figure who can say the same. Do you?

So goodbye, Donald, it’s been fun. You did a good job bringing up immigration, Mexico and sanctuary cities, but you’d be a lousy commander-in-chief of the United States military.  And if there’s anything clear right now, that is by far the most important qualification we should be looking for in our next president.  In fact, you could almost say it’s the only one.  Earlier, I have written, referencing The Godfather,  more than ever “we need a wartime consigliere.”  I’m doubtful about my opinions about many things, but not about that.

Read the whole thing — and note the number of comments defending Trump that went up within an hour of Roger’s initial posting near midnight Pacific time; shades of the intensely loyal followers of Perot in 1992 and Ron Paul in ’08.