Tag: news

• Enrollment through Colorado’s insurance exchange
  is
  barely half the projected worst case scenario, which officials
  say will make it difficult for the state “to deliver on promises
  made to Colorado citizens” and jeopardize the program’s revenue
  stream. The American Lung Association and the American Cancer
  Society, both supporters of the Affordable Care Act, nevertheless
  
  oppose Obamacare’s tobacco surcharge, arguing it will push
  smokers out of insurance policies and make it even more difficult
  for them to quit.
• National Security Advisor Susan Rice is in
  Afghanistan, where she is
  expected to meet with Hamid Karzai to discuss the post-2014
  security pact between the two countries.
• The U.S. government
  reportedly turned a larger profit on student loans,$41.3
  billion, than all but two companies worldwide, Exxon Mobil and
  Apple.
• State police in New York have
  acquired 32 SUVs so that troopers can more easily peer into
  cars to catch drivers who are texting.
• A Texas man has been in
  prison for more than 30 years despite having his conviction
  overturned and a new trial ordered in 1980.
• A couple in the Florida Keys were
  mistakenly shipped 11 pounds of marijuana to a rental property
  in Louisiana. They turned the marijuana in to local police in
  Florida, who say the couple could’ve been arrested had cops
  discovered the marijuana while the couple was unknowingly driving
  it back to Florida.
• Microsoft
  acknowledged a “very small number” of customers purchased Xbox
  Ones with serious disc reading issues. No blue screens
  reported.

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Peter Orszag was the director of the White House
Office of Management and Budget for the first year and a half of
the Obama administration. Other than President Obama himself, he’s
the person most identified with the argument that health reform was
necessary to save the government money. Ira Stoll wants to know why
Orszag has gone so quiet since the disastrous launch of
Healthcare.gov and Obamacare.

View this article.

Republicans are not happy about the
deal relating to Iran’s nuclear program that was announced over the
weekend. The deal includes,
among other things, Iran halting uranium enrichment above 5
percent and neutralizing “near-20% enriched uranium”.

House Majority Leader
Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has expressed concern about the enrichment
allowed in the deal, saying “Loosening sanctions and recognizing
Iran’s enrichment program is a mistake, and will not stop Iran’s
march toward nuclear capability.”

Sen.
Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) has a statement on his website that reads
in part:

By allowing the Iranian regime to retain a sizable nuclear
infrastructure, this agreement makes a nuclear Iran more likely.
There is now an even more urgent need for Congress to increase
sanctions until Iran completely abandons its enrichment and
reprocessing capabilities.

Sen. Ted Cruz
(R-Texas) says that he agrees with Israeli President Benjamin
Netanyahu, who called the deal “a historic mistake.” A statement
from Sen. Cruz begins:

According to the interim agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear
program that was reached this weekend in Geneva, not one centrifuge
will be destroyed. Not one pound of enriched uranium will leave
Iran.

So, what is all this fuss about uranium enrichment, and why does
it matter?

Less than one percent of natural uranium is uranium-235, the
isotope needed for nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Enriched
uranium is uranium that has had the percentage of uranium-235
increased, which can be done by using centrifuges.

Low-enriched uranium (3.5
percent to 5 percent) can be used for nuclear power. In order
to develop a nuclear weapon highly enriched uranium (about
90 percent) is needed. With this in mind, it initially seems
that the requirements that Iran halt enrichment at 5 percent and
dilute or convert uranium enriched at 20 percent greatly reduces
the risk of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

However, the deal only requires Iran to not install any new
centrifuges, not have them destroyed. This means that Iran could
renege on the deal and work towards a so-called “nuclear breakout.”
According to
David Albright, president of the U.S. Institute for Science and
International Security, once the enrichment conditions of the deal
are met “the breakout time – how long it would take Iran to produce
sufficient highly-enriched uranium for one atomic bomb – would
lengthen from at least 1-1.6 months to at least 1.9-2.2 months if
the Iranians used all their installed centrifuges.”

The New York Times has a good graphic illustrating the
deal and its impact on uranium enrichment, which can be seen

here. 

The fact that Iran could still develop a nuclear weapon through
aggressive uranium enrichment once the new deal is implemented is
what has Republicans, not to mention Israeli officials, concerned.
An unnamed official from Netanyahu’s office summarized the concerns

as follows, “The agreement makes it possible for Iran to
continue enriching uranium, permits Iran to keep centrifuges that
would allow it to create fissile material for nuclear
weapons.” 

Yesterday, Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani said that his country would never seek a nuclear
weapon.

Netanyahu and some Republicans may not be happy with the deal,
which has not eliminated the possibility of Iran developing a
nuclear weapon. That said, the diplomats involved in the deal
deserve some praise for managing to come up with any deal at all
given the far from ideal relationship between Iran and the West,
particularly the U.S. 

It should not be surprising that Netanyahu isn’t a fan of the
recent deal. It is very unlikely that there are any conditions
under which Israel and Iran would realistically be able to meet to
discuss Iran’s nuclear program, especially given that
Netanyahu has said that Israel is willing to “act alone” to
ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon and has called
President Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

That Republicans are critics of the deal should not be a
surprise, there is a Democrat in the White House. As
Fred Kaplan has rightly pointed out, “Had George W. Bush
negotiated this deal, Republicans would be hailing his diplomatic
prowess, and rightly so.”

So the U.S. (by which we mean Germany,
France, England, Russia, China, and the U.S.) and Iran are striking
a deal about nuclear development in the Peacock Kingdom and U.N.
sanctions.

One odd byproduct? An aligning of interest between Israel and
Saudi Arabia, which are hardly friendly to one another. Yet both
countries – along with a number of other Sunni-majority states in
the Middle East – are absolutely opposed to the United States
cozying up to Iran.

The Saudis now fear Obama may be tempted to thaw ties with
Tehran by striking a deal to expand inspections of its atomic sites
in return for allowing Iranian allies to go on dominating Arab
countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. That such a bargain has
never been publicly mooted from within the Obama administration has
not stopped Saudis voicing their concerns.

“I am afraid in case there is something hidden,” said Abdullah
al-Askar, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Saudi
Arabia’s advisory parliament, the Shoura Council. “If America and
Iran reach an understanding it may be at the cost of the Arab world
and the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia.”

More here.

As Ed Krayewski

noted earlier today, Israel – or at least its elected leader,
Benjamin Netanyahu – is apoplectic at the deal. And
as Matt Welch wrote, hawkish elements in the American GOP are
trying to wrap any deal with Iran in the mantle of appeasement and
Munich Redux. Given that a majority of Americans are interested in
seeing the United States play a more limited role in disputes
around the globe, it’s going to be tough sledding for hawks to push
the idea that we need to be bombing Iran even as we negotiate with
the country. Funny how a decade-plus of failed foreign wars have
made everyone but neocon hawks rethink U.S. foreign policy, isn’t
it?

Which isn’t to say that Obama is a good spokesman for American
interests. He’s a trigger-happy character himself, who tripled
troops in Afghanistan, tried to stay in Iraq past the original
withdrawal date (something he’s succeeding at in Afghanistan
incidentally), unconstitutionally dispatched American forces over
Libya, and was all set to bomb Syria until wiser, cooler heads won
the battle of public opinion.

And then there’s John Kerry, our secretary of state. As Hawkeye
Pierce once said of Col. Henry Blake, the hapless commander of the
good ol’ fashioned M*A*S*H 4077 in that awful TV series that lasted
five times longer than the Korean War, I honestly believe John
Kerry could get held up via the mail. 

Is Iran a trustworthy negotiating partner? Kind of a weird
question coming from people in a country that was bugging the phone
of Angela Merkel and other allies, but no, Iran isn’t trustworthy.
Which doesn’t mean you don’t negotiate with them – it just means
you trust but verify, as Reagan counseled with the Soviets.

The Hill, citing a behind the paywall
Wall Street Journal story, reports that National Security
Agent director Keith Alexander offered to resign over the Edward
Snowden revelations that Alexander had overseen a massive
warrantless surveillance program aimed against American citizens.
From
The Hill:

The National Security Agency’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander,
offered to resign from his post shortly after Edward Snowden began
leaking classified government documents, according to
The Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, the Obama administration rejected his
offer.

Snowden, a former NSA contractor, began disclosing documents
detailing the agency’s surveillance programs in June.

Top administration officials’ confidence in Alexander was
shaken, the Journal reports, because he oversaw the agency
during the security lapse, an unidentified former senior defense
official told the paper. 

But an Alexander resignation, the official added, would indicate
Snowden won, and wouldn’t solve the security problem.

Certainly wouldn’t want to be seen as admitting to violations of
the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans to remain secure in their
persons and papers against unreasonable search and seizure.

Rather than merely accepting Alexander’s resignation, President
Obama should have fired him and that
bald-faced liar to Congress, James Clapper, the Director of
National Intelligence. Frankly, it appears that President Obama
doesn’t fire incompetent and mendacious minions out of fear that it
will make him look weak. Actually, the opposite is true. In
addition, the president should immediately
pardon Edward Snowden.