IF THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE WERE TRYING TO UNDERMINE OUR COUNTRY, what would they do differently?

RISK-BASED PRICING: Should student loans be priced differently according to major? “Without risk-based pricing of student loans, there may be no reliable price signal about the long-term financial risks inherent in different courses of study. This lack of price signals undermines students’ ability to make informed decisions about the course of study that will best balance their innate abilities and individual preferences with postgraduate economic opportunities. Similarly, the lack of price signals may undermine post-secondary educational institutions’ ability to adjust their programs to improve their students’ postgraduate prospects. Misallocation of educational resources is not only harmful to individual students and their families — it could threaten to undermine the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. labor force and the U.S.’s ability to continue to invest in education and research.”

If we’d priced student loans this way, we probably wouldn’t have had a higher education bubble.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Unwell-Looking Joe Biden Tells on Himself in SCOTUS Comments During Trainwreck MSNBC Interview.

At the end of the interview, something awkward happened. After Wallace thanked him for being on the show, Biden got up before the segment went to commercial break and as the cameras continued to roll:

Bathroom run?
Biden gets out of his seat before the commercials start and awkwardly walks off-set. pic.twitter.com/Ne9BAuXo0t

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 29, 2023

I wrote yesterday that I felt Biden wasn’t fit for another term based on his declining health and mental fitness. But it’s not just that. Comments like the ones he made today in response to the ruling are dangerous and do in fact undermine the legitimacy of the court by design, regardless of what he says about packing the court.

He has once again demonstrated his fair weather tendencies on “respecting our institutions” not to mention his rank hypocrisy on the matter.

2024 cannot come soon enough.

If Biden can’t handle the softest of softball interviews without glitching, he has no business pretending he’s still (p)resident.

And it really was a softball interview: Nicolle Wallace Fails to Ask Biden About His Son Hunter’s Guilty Plea During 20-Minute Interview.

BOB MCMANUS: Stopping thieves doesn’t need more acronyms — it needs arrests!

Shoplifters are stripping New York’s retail shelves all but bare these days, and fare-beaters are busting the MTA’s budget. But not to worry — City Hall has acronyms.

Gotham’s best and brightest have studied these problems for months now, and both City Hall and the MTA just coughed up proposed solutions.

The Adams administration offers PROP — the Precision Repeat Offender Program.

This will comprise a list of serial retail thieves and City Hall will be checking it twice — or three or four or five times, whatever it takes to avoid arresting anybody.

Then there is RESTORE — or Re-Engaging Store Theft Offenders and Retail Establishments, which explicitly is intended to protect shoplifters from consequences.

If the powers that be set out to deliberately undermine civilized society, what would they do differently?

S.O.S. FOR THE U.S. ELECTRIC GRID: PJM Interconnection sounds the latest alarm that fossil-fuel plants are shutting down without adequate replacement power. The political class yawns. They have generators, and they’re disconnected from reality and the notion of consequences anyway.

The warnings keep coming that the force-fed energy transition to renewable fuels is destabilizing the U.S. electric grid, but is anyone in government paying attention? Another S.O.S. came Friday in an ominous report from PJM Interconnection, one of the nation’s largest grid operators.

The PJM report forecasts power supply and demand through 2030 across the 13 eastern states in its territory covering 65 million people. Its top-line conclusion: Fossil-fuel power plants are retiring much faster than renewable sources are getting developed, which could lead to energy “imbalances.” That’s a delicate way of saying that you can expect shortages and blackouts.

PJM typically generates a surplus of power owing to its large fossil-fuel fleet, which it exports to neighboring grids in the Midwest and Northeast. When wind power plunged in the Midwest and central states late last week, PJM helped fill the gap between supply and demand and kept the lights on.

That’s why it’s especially worrisome that PJM is predicting a large decline in its power reserves as coal and natural-gas plants retire. The report forecasts that 40,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation—enough to light up 30 million households—are at risk of retiring by 2030, representing about 21% of PJM’s current generation capacity.

Most projected power-plant retirements are “policy-driven,” the report says. For example, the steep costs of complying with Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including a proposed “good neighbor rule” that is expected to be finalized next month, will force about 10,500 MW of fossil-fuel generation to shut down.

At the same time, utility-company ESG (environmental, social and governance) commitments are driving coal plants to close, the report notes. Illinois and New Jersey climate policies could reduce generation by 8,900 MW. Do these states plan to rely on their good neighbors for power?

If they were trying to undermine America, and working Americans’ quality of life, what would they be doing differently?

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. emergency oil reserve draws by 6.9 mln barrels to lowest since 1986.

If they were trying to undermine America, what would they be doing differently?

THE ATLANTIC: Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way. “Perhaps Americans have become so cynical that they have given up on defending their freedom from surveillance, manipulation, and exploitation. But if Russia or China were taking the exact same actions to undermine democracy, Americans would surely feel differently. Seeing Facebook as a hostile foreign power could force people to acknowledge what they’re participating in, and what they’re giving up, when they log in. In the end it doesn’t really matter what Facebook is; it matters what Facebook is doing.”

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO AND AMERICAN CONSERVATISM — PASTERNAK’S NOVEL PLAYED A ROLE IN SORTING OUT BIRCHERS FROM MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES. At National Review Online, Benjamin Musachio writes:

Buckley gave his take on the Zhivago controversy in the introduction to his 1959 book, Up From Liberalism. He praised Pasternak as a “triumph of man over ideology.” Of Doctor Zhivago specifically, he later wrote in a letter to Welch that he “found in it an engrossing poetical indictment of Communism.”

Robert Welch and the more radical American Opinion, the John Birch Society’s monthly magazine, thought differently. In the February 1959 issue of American Opinion, the editors proclaimed the publication of Zhivago to be a part of the Communist conspiracy. The “damning” facts that prove the novel’s Communist character? 1) Pasternak never explicitly praises capitalism. 2) Nor does he obviously and unequivocally condemn revolutionary socialism. 3) The religious sentiments expressed in the novel are forced and “unconvincing.”

Western intellectuals’ warm reception of Zhivago, as well as its wild popularity among Western readers, was, according to American Opinion, cause for celebration in the capitals of Communism. Yes, Moscow and Tito’s Belgrade were both in on the deceit — even though the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had been at odds since 1948.

America Opinion’s staggering “revelations” triggered a stinging rebuttal from Eugene Lyons in the pages of National Review. Lyons, a seasoned warrior of the anti-Communist crusade, had a rich insider’s perspective on the Soviet state. A native speaker of Russian, Lyons had worked in Moscow for the United Press from 1928 to 1934. (He was in fact the first foreign correspondent to obtain an interview with Josef Stalin, in 1930.) Lyons regularly contributed to NR in its early years, in addition to holding down a post as a senior editor for Reader’s Digest.

In rebutting American Opinion’s accusations, Lyons reminded the readers of Buckley’s magazine that the Soviet authorities had suppressed the publication of Zhivago behind the Iron Curtain. Lyons’s polemic, which was titled “Folklore of the Right,” went on to mention that the Soviet authorities had essentially forced Pasternak to decline the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. Not only that, but Pasternak was publicly denounced by the Soviet literary establishment. Lyons claimed that these two facts undermine American Opinion’s paranoid reading.

Like Buckley, Lyons discovered an anti-Soviet message in Pasternak’s poeticized prose: “[Pasternak] exalts man above the State, life above terrestrial dogma . . . , conscience above conformity, religious insights above sociological forms.”

Regarding David Lean’s epic 1965 cinematic adaptation, after the earlier box office and critical triumph of Lawrence of Arabia, the reception of his film version of Zhivago split the opinion between the general public and film critics. Commercially, Zhivago was one of Lean’s most successful films. But critics, particularly New York critics, crudely trashed Lean for the first time in heretofore celebrated career, likely because of the strong anti-Communist message of his film and its similar role of exalting man over state. Leftist film critic Pauline Kael, who would go on to champion the crude violence of the “New Hollywood” of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, watched Zhivago and sniffed that Lean’s “method is basically primitive, admired by the same sort of people who are delighted when a stage set has running water or a painted horse looks real enough to ride.”

Thanks in part to Kael’s efforts, Hollywood would be nearly incapable of staging such a “basically primitive” movie ever again.  If you’ve only seen Zhivago late at night on a small low definition TV, watching the blu-ray version on a large HDTV set is a revelation, revealing Lean’s brilliant compositions, sweeping camera moves, and all of the multifaceted techniques he employed to recreate the scope of Russia in much the same way he depicted Lawrence’s desert.

Breitbart London notes that “Director David Lean’s legendary epic, which won five Oscars upon its release in 1965, is getting a 4K digital restoration and re-release to cinemas in the United Kingdom, courtesy of the British Film Institute, to coincide with the film’s 50th anniversary” in late November. I hope an American cinematic rerelease is also forthcoming, and if so, I’ll certainly be there to finally see it on the big screen myself.

KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: K.C. Johnson: More on Vassar’s Rigged Sex Hearing.

According to the filing, Vassar’s Title IX investigator, who had been on the job for nine months, “could not remember any training he received.” The investigator subsequently admitted–at his deposition in the lawsuit–that Walker’s Facebook messages undermined her statement to the Vassar tribunal, but that he didn’t recognize the problem during his inquiry. And he added that while he looked into Walker’s alleged intoxication, it wasn’t Vassar’s policy to inquire about the alleged intoxication of the male student. Yet since Vassar (like most schools) holds that sex after a certain level of intoxication constitutes rape, how can the level of intoxication of both parties not be relevant? This would seem to be a Title IX issue of treating females differently than males.

It seems all but certain that in future years, lots of male students will suffer Yu’s fate. Parents of future students would be well-served in taking a look at how Vassar treated him.

Six figures for a chance at being branded a rapist in a Kangaroo Court? Not much of a deal. But these procedures seem vulnerable to all sorts of lawsuits, not just limited to Title IX. At some schools they may rise to the level of conspiracies to deprive people of civil rights, and possibly even RICO violations.

MORE ON CONGRESS AND THE SEPARATION OF POWERS: What’s frustrating in these discussions is the failure to distinguish between what the law should be in somebody’s opinion, and what it actually is, based on the Constitution and the caselaw. This entry on Congressional immunity from Jerry Pournelle — a smart guy, but no lawyer — is a good example:

Just as each House is the judge of the qualification of its members, each House is responsible for enforcement of ethics and criminal actions of members. The Houses have sufficient authority to do as they will in those cases.

When you bring the executive power into direct enforcement against sitting Members of either house of Congress, you end the separation of powers. It is easy for the executive to fake ‘evidence’ if it chooses. Once the executive power can intimidate sitting Members of Congress, you have an entirely different kind of government.

Now it is required that the Houses inquire into the criminal actions of Members. But that is done by their own agents, or at the request of the Speaker or President pro tem; not by the executive authority.

Now you may think that this is a good idea — I don’t, but Pournelle apparently does — but it is not now, nor has it ever been, the law. In fact, with the sole exception of impeachment (which doesn’t run against members of Congress), the Congress cannot investigate or try offenses, and impeachment is carefully distinguished from criminal prosecution in the Constitution. The Constitution’s prohibition of Bills of Attainder, in fact, explicitly forbids Congress dealing with criminal matters.

A house of Congress can also refuse to seat members it judges not properly elected, and expel members for misbehavior — but even then it’s not immune from outside review, as Powell v. McCormack makes clear. (And note that when a member is expelled, it’s generally after criminal conviction not the result of independent Congressional investigation). The autonomy of Congress extends only to legislative business: Congress could, if it chose, let a convicted Senator or Representative continue to vote and participate in Congressional business from a jail cell, but the Speech and Debate Clause provides no generalized immunity from law enforcement, which is an executive function. It’s just not true that, as Pournelle claims, “Members of Congress and Senators enjoy many of the immunities of the old Roman Tribunes of the People.” At least, not unless “many” means “a slight tinge.”

I don’t know why this, which is and always has been the law, seems so hard for some people to grasp. It’s true, of course, that things are done differently elsewhere: The Russian Duma has immunity from prosecution, for example. But that’s not how it’s done here. And I thought that we weren’t supposed to get our constitutional law from foreign jurisdictions?

There’s a good oped on how unhappy many members of Congress are with the notion of accountability and how anxious they are for special status, by Prof. Bob Turner, in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s subscription-only, but here’s an excerpt:

Put simply, only Congress can inquire into the motives or content of votes, speeches or other official legislative acts.

But as the Supreme Court observed in the 1972 case of United States v. Brewster, the clause was never intended to immunize corrupt legislators who violate felony bribery statutes — laws that have expressly applied to members of Congress for more than 150 years. In Brewster, the court noted the clause was not written “to make Members of Congress super-citizens, immune from criminal responsibility,” adding: “Taking a bribe is, obviously, no part of the legislative process or function; it is not a legislative act. It is not, by any conceivable interpretation, an act performed as a part of or even incidental to the role of a legislator.”

Such behavior is therefore not protected by the Constitution. The purpose of the Speech or Debate Clause was to protect the integrity of the legislative process, and the Court noted that bribery, “perhaps even more than Executive power,” would “gravely undermine legislative integrity and defeat the right of the public to honest representation.”

A dozen years ago, I testified before the House Committee on Administration on this same basic issue. Newt Gingrich and other reformers were trying to bring Congress under the same ethics laws it had imposed upon the rest of the country, and some indignant legislators seemed confident that the laws were not supposed to apply to them. The hearing was held in a small room in a part of the Capitol Building off-limits to the public, with exactly enough chairs for members, staff and the three witnesses.

Two members of the public who managed to make their way to the room were turned away on the grounds that there was “no room” for public observers.

Critics of the Gingrich proposal did not hear what they wanted. Some seemed genuinely shocked when I informed them that, in Federalist No. 57, James Madison noted one of the constraints in the Constitution to prevent legislators from enacting “oppressive measures” was that “they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.”

It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days. So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see — especially in a time of war — but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch.

In light of the attitudes held by so many of our legislators, it is no wonder three times as many Americans disapprove of Congress’s job-performance as approve, according to last week’s Gallup Poll. Those are Congress’s lowest numbers since the Democrats were last in power a dozen years ago.

Congress probably has the power, constitutionally, to immunize its members from prosecution while in office. Such legislation would be immensely unpopular, of course, and would cause a lot of people to lose reelection: “Vote for me — I’m in favor of immunity for corrupt members of Congress!” isn’t much of a slogan.

That’s why members of Congress are making a bogus Constitutional argument instead of using their undisputed legislative powers: To avoid the very kind of legislative responsibility to the voters that the Constitution, and separation of powers, places squarely in their laps. Such behavior is reminiscent of what Bill Clinton did in Clinton v. Jones, and I don’t recall many of the Republicans who are taking a pro-immunity position now endorsing Clinton’s approach then.

THE WHOLE GAY MARRIAGE THING: Occasionally, people want me to blog more on “the issues” and less about stuff like Dan Rather. My advice to them is usually to blog on the issues they think are important, rather than telling me what I ought to be blogging about on my blog. But even I’m suffering from Kerry fatigue these days, and it’s nice to break up these endless Christmas-in-Cambodia/CBS forgery posts with something else. So here goes.

Friday night, when I watched Kaus on Dennis Miller’s show, part of the discussion involved gay marriage. Chrissy Gephardt (Dick’s daughter) was there representing the Stonewall Democrats, and she launched into this whole diatribe about how Bush hates gays and calls them an “abomination.” Miller called her on this, and got her to admit that, actually, Bush hadn’t ever called gays an “abomination.” He also pressed her hard on the gay community’s different treatment of Bill Clinton, whose support for the Defense of Marriage Act gets a pass.

But he didn’t ask the killer question. The killer question would have been: “What is John Kerry’s position on gay marriage?”

Now, of course, any question beginning “what is John Kerry’s position. . .” is a tough one. But — correct me if I’m wrong here — the only real difference between Kerry and Bush is that Bush has offered vague support to the certain-to-fail Federal Marriage Amendment. But it’s, er, certain to fail. Now that’s a difference, I guess. But it’s not a huge one, and to me it doesn’t seem to be a big enough difference to justify the vitriol. (Kerry’s been, maybe, more supportive on civil unions, but I wouldn’t take that to the bank.)

I support gay marriage, of course, though I’d be lying if I said it was as important to me as it is to, say, Andrew Sullivan. But if you look at the polls, it’s opposed about 2-1 by voters. What that means is that you’re not likely to see much difference between the parties until somebody thinks they can pick up enough votes to make a difference.

I think that gay marriage is good for everyone. Marriage is a good thing, and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be just as good a thing for gay people as for straight people. Judging from the gay couples I know, it would be a good thing — and I’m entirely at a loss to understand why people think gay marriage somehow undermines straight marriage. But to get there, you need to make that case, not just accuse opponents of being closedminded-biblethumping-bigotsoftheredneckreligiousright. (Andrew Sullivan made some of these positive arguments quite well in Virtually Normal, but I don’t think the tone on his blog has been as constructive of late.)

Personally, I agree with the guy who told Julian Sanchez that it’s a generational thing. As I’ve mentioned before, attitudes are changing fast, even in Dayton, Tennessee, best known for the Scopes Trial. And my law students seem to expect a change. I’m not sure that name-calling will accelerate this process, though.

I’m no expert political strategist, but it strikes me as a mistake for gay-marriage advocates to take the Bush-bashing Gephardt position. First, with the polls as they are, attacking Bush on gay marriage may solidify the Democratic base, but it probably costs swing voters, at least in the short term. Second, that sort of thing can only serve to alienate Republicans, even those who are supportive, or at least not opposed to, gay marriage. Given that right now it seems likely that we’ll see a Republican Congress, and probably a Republican White House, in the coming years, that’s probably poor planning, at least if you want actual change and not just an interest-group rallying cry.

Finally, in all of this I’m reminded of something one of the New Haven black panthers said on a radio show I produced back when I was producing radio shows. Looking back at their failures in 1970, he remarked: “Revolution is a process, not an event. It’s not enough to agitate, you’ve got to inform and educate. And they didn’t do that.” It’s possible to package gay marriage as a move toward traditional values and away from 1970s style hedonism (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But again, you have to make the case, not call names, if you want to win people over.

So there you are. You want blogging on Bush’s vs. Kerry’s healthcare plans , you’ll have to go somewhere else.

UPDATE: William Kelly objects that Bush’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment isn’t “vague.” He’s right. A better term would be “lukewarm.” He’s said he’s for it, but he hasn’t exactly pushed it. Kind of like, to pick one of my issues, his support for a renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban, which was equally pro forma. In both cases, I think he’s wrong, and he’s pandering — to different constituencies, of course — but it’s awfully weak pandering, and thus not worth getting too excited about.

Meanwhile, reader Madhu Dahiya offers a different perspective:

I like your blog ‘as is’, but it is nice when you blog on other topics such as gay marriage. I don’t buy the argument that gay marriage undermines heterosexual marriage at all. I think the problem with heterosexual marriage is, uh, heterosexuals. If the opponents of gay marriage were serious about the challenges to straight marriage, then there would be tax credits for Match.com and Eight Minute Dating (and marriage counseling). There would be no mention of sports and steroids in any state of the union speech. Instead, the president would give a stern talking to those men, and women (and you know who you are), WHO NEVER CALL YOU BACK. I mean, you want to move the numbers towards the Republicans in the single, over thirty over educated female-type bracket? Well, there you go. There’s an issue that should poll just nicely, thank you very much.

This certainly makes me glad I’m not single anymore. . . .

[LATER: When they don’t call, it’s because they’re just not that into you.]

MORE: John Kerry’s position:

Once one of 14 Democratic senators to oppose the Defence of Marriage Act, Mr Kerry now favours outlawing all marriages except those between a man and a woman. “I’m against gay marriage,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”

Apparently not.

STILL MORE: Harvard law professor Bill Stuntz emails:

Your post on gay marriage is thoughtful and wise. I write to add a thought about the behavior of all those alleged bigots on the other side.

It seems to me that the gay marriage debate today is the price we pay for Roe v. Wade a generation ago. Roe sent a message to a sizeable fraction of Americans, and the message was: your views don’t count. Not “you lose,” but “you don’t even get to make an argument.” I think the rush to constitutionalize marriage is very, very bad in a host of ways and on a host of levels, but it’s hard to criticize the religious right for reaching for the weapons the other side used to crush them. Like you, I assume the marriage amendment is going nowhere. Maybe, once that happens, we can actually have a political debate (not a legal argument) that produces compromise and progress instead of polarization and regress. It’d be a nice change.

Keep up the good work. You’re terrific.

Oh, and re Bush and Kerry: Has anyone noticed that each of these guys comes from a state his party can’t possibly lose? Presidential candidates are career politicians, and they learn their trade running for office in their home states. Bush and Kerry both learned to appeal to very one-sided electorates. Is it any wonder that neither is very good at appealing to the other side? The mystery is why both parties behaved this way. The biggest political talents are generally to be found in swing states, or states that lean the other way: Think Rudy Giuliani in New York, or Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. Those guys are politically dead if they can’t talk persuasively to Democrats. Just like John Edwards could never have won in North Carolina if he couldn’t speak to Republicans. (If the ticket were reversed, I bet the Democrats would be ahead now.) Let’s hope we swing voters get a different and better set of choices in ’08.

I think that Texas was competitive until pretty recently, but the point holds. Swing states do seem to punch above their weight — but I think the apparatus of national parties makes people from safe states stronger internal contenders for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. On the rest — well: I’m one of the relatively few constitutional law professors who believes that Roe was properly decided, though the rationale needs to be understood in terms of limits to legitimate government power rather than affirmative individual rights. (I have a proof for this, but it will not fit in the margin.) Nonetheless, I think the basic point holds. Without Roe we would have had widespread legal abortion via legislation, something that was already well underway. It might have taken a bit longer, but as a practical matter, it might have been as available as it is now, given the many logistical hurdles in the path of legal abortion in many localities.

Gay marriage is different, but I do think that it would be much better obtained through political than judicial means. I might feel differently if I were gay, and anxious to get married, but of course that cuts both ways.

This is one of those hot-button issues that I don’t get. Perhaps it’s because I lack fire, but the strong feelings aroused by gay marriage escape me. Still, there’s no doubt that many people dislike the idea, do so intensely, and resent efforts to achieve gay marriage without taking their views into account. In a democratic system like ours, their views do matter, one way or another, and I think it’s better to try to persuade them. Others, of course, may disagree.

MORE: Andrew Sullivan has posted a nice response. Basically, he sees Bush as a cynical manipulator of homophobia. I see Bush as a beleaguered guy trying to keep his coalition together to fight a war, doing the bare minimum on this front to get by. Which of us is right? Your call.

THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH says that The Guardian is grossly distorting a comment by Paul Wolfowitz to make it sound like the war was about oil:

This time Wolfowitz is accused of now admitting the U.S. went to war because of oil.

The Guardian is headlining as follows:

“Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

But this quote is inaccurate on its face as well as taken completely out of context. Wolfowitz was answering a query regarding why the U.S. thought using economic pressure would work with respect to North Korea and not with regard to Iraq:

“The United States hopes to end the nuclear standoff with North Korea by putting economic pressure on the impoverished nation, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday. North Korea would respond to economic pressure, unlike Iraq, where military action was necessary because the country’s oil money was propping up the regime, Wolfowitz told delegates at the second annual Asia Security Conference in Singapore.”

“The country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse,” Wolfowitz said. “That I believe is a major point of leverage.” “The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil,” he said. Wolfowitz did not elaborate on how Washington intends to put economic pressure on North Korea, but said other countries in the region helping it should send a message that “they’re not going to continue doing that if North Korea continues down the road it’s on.” [my emphasis]

Now it might not have been smart of Wolfowitz, on the heels of the Vanity Fair interview imbroglio (however much the press distorted his comments there too) to describe Iraqi oil supplies using evocative language like “the country floats on a sea of oil.” But any judicious analysis of his comments begs the conclusion that he was making an explicit reference to his contention that there were no viable punitive economic options with regard to pressuring Iraq on compliance with relevant U.N. resolutions given the monies the Baathist regime could access because of its oil supplies. This is patently different than the Guardian’s spin (no, lie) that Wolfowitz said the U.S. had “no choice” regarding going to war in Iraq because of a too-tempting-to-pass-up-neo-imperialistic-oil grab-opportunity.

It is hugely irresponsible of the Guardian to run such a distorted, tabloid-style headline.

(Bolding added). Say it ain’t so! Next they’ll be rewriting Salam Pax’s stuff to keep The Guardian from looking bad!

I predict, however, that a lot of people will jump on this false report and keep repeating it — because that’ll save them from having to talk about mass graves full of children. To coin a phrase: “Pheh.”

UPDATE: Here’s a direct link to the transcript.

Those online transcripts are hell on Dowdifications.