Robert Wright explores whether the idea of the states of Israel and Palestine living side by side is dead and concludes:One of the few things I can imagine delivering a shock to Israel's political system sufficient to salvage a two-state solution is the tangible prospect of a one-state solution.
Michael Barbaro examines the friendship between the likely GOP nominee and Israel's prime minister, who worked together as business consultants in Boston in the mid-1970s:Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any significant policy decisions about Israel without consulting Mr. Netanyahu — a level of deference that could raise eyebrows given Mr. Netanyahu’s polarizing reputation, even as it appeals to the neoconservatives and evangelical Christians who are fiercely protective of Israel.
In a telling exchange during a debate in December, Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Gingrich for making a disparaging remark about Palestinians, declaring: “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’ “
Martin S. Indyk, a United States ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration, said that whether intentional or not, Mr. Romney’s statement implied that he would “subcontract Middle East policy to Israel.”
“That, of course, would be inappropriate,” he added.
In the wake of the publication of Max Holland's Leak -- which argues that the Washington Post's legendary secret source, lately identified as Mark Felt, was parceling out FBI secrets in a bid to get the director's job -- Holland dukes it out with Woodward and Bernstein in The Daily Beast:Woodward and Bernstein are most alarmed by Holland’s claims about the scope of their Watergate reporting. “The most interesting thing he says is that we were just following what the prosecutors had found, and that is factually wrong,” Woodward says, noting that at the 1973 trial of the first seven Watergate defendants, federal prosecutors identified former G-man Gordon Liddy as “the mastermind” of the operation. On the contrary, Woodward says, their Washington Post reporting uncovered a massive, long-running political espionage and sabotage campaign that went far beyond the mere wiretapping of the Democrats and was run directly out of the Nixon White House. “This guy Max Holland doesn’t understand Watergate,” he says.
Holland retorts: “I wasn’t writing about Watergate,” but instead focusing on a single key actor amid a complex moment in history. “Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting deserves every kudo it has ever gotten. But let’s appreciate it for what it was and not pretend it was something it wasn’t … I talked to everybody at the FBI, the prosecutors, the journalists—I talked to everybody who’s still alive. Don’t they have a side of the story? Watergate isn’t the exclusive history of Bob Woodward. He doesn’t own it. There are other points of view.”
In late March, Charles Snelling of Allentown, Pennsylvania killed his wife of 61 years, Adrienne, who had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for six years, and then himself. Last fall David Brooks published an essay by Mr. Snelling about his life and devotion to Adrienne:It never occurred to me for a moment that it would not be my duty and my pleasure to take care of my sweetie. After all, she took care of me in every possible way she could for 55 years. The last six years have been my turn, and certainly I have had the best of the bargain. So I have dug in with the will. Adrienne likes to be with me so, everywhere I go Adrienne goes as well. We have wonderful helpers here in Allentown, at Estrellita, and in Washington. Certainly they have helped me enormously, but real care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s cannot be delegated. I did not need to be told that; I felt it in my bones.Brooks reflects here. I was an Andover classmate of one of Mr. Snelling's daughters, Marjorie, and had the pleasure of meeting him and Adrienne. I can only imagine the agony in their close-knit family over the tragedy and all the commentary. At church I probably worry most about those such as Mr. Snelling who are providing full-time care for the chronically ill. Few responsibilities are more grueling, lonely, and emotionally and spiritually exhausting, especially, it seems, when the patient is suffering from dementia.
Homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires, a series of psychology studies demonstrates.
From Mike Wallace's New York Times obit:
As Nixon's chief of staff in the 1980s, I fielded constant interview requests from journalists and rarely got to say yes. He loved pouring over weekly lists of the "TDs" (turn-downs). I bequeathed to my successor, Kathy O'Connor, a plaque reading "Tact is the ability to tell a man to go to hell and make him feel happy to be on his way."Running for president, Nixon offered Mr. Wallace a job as his press secretary shortly before the 1968 primaries began. “I thought very, very seriously about it,” Mr. Wallace told The Times. “I regarded him with great respect. He was savvy, smart, hard working.”
But Mr. Wallace turned Nixon down, saying that putting a happy face on bad news was not his cup of tea.
I know that the International Olympic Committee is another old-boys’ club and that tyrannies are legitimized in the name of sport. But the I.O.C. does have a charter that bans discrimination, and it did bar South Africa from the Games from 1970 to 1991 because of apartheid. So why not resist the petrodollars and kick out Saudi Arabia for gender apartheid?
I snapped this photo on Holy Tuesday from a St. John's Middle School classroom as seventh graders and I labored through 1 Peter. I offered it to Andrew Sullivan for his "View From Your Window" feature at "The Dish," which ran it today. A photo from Kathy's and my idyll in Twentynine Palms in March 2009 also made the cut.
