Back up for a long shot, however, and a different fact vs. fiction dilemma comes into focus: Is Chalabi, that consummate politician and schemer, a scoundrel or a hero? That's a question that Richard Bonin's new book, "Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi's Long Journey to Triumph in Iraq," probes with wincing persistence.

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The grandiloquent post in question requests either (it's not entirely clear) that Israelis feed Shalit's captors to sharks or that they feed his captors along with women and "their offspring" to sharks. (I imagine Abrams considers nearly every Palestinian in Gaza to be complicit in Shalit's imprisonment, so this distinction may not amount to much.) Either way, the post makes liberal usage of unambiguous anti-Arab slurs ("devils' spawn," "savages," "animals") and, well, it's a call for mass slaughter.

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Bolton is, of course, a single-issue guy. His issue is bombing Iran. That is the only reason why anyone has expressed any interest in him as a candidate: He is the man who promises to bomb Iran. Every foreign policy issue of our time looks like a nail to John Bolton, and his hammer is bombing Iran.

Some Republican political appointees are representatives of the interests of various GOP-supporting major industries. Others, like Bolton or Michael Brown, are just hacks who are brought in to demonstrate the unimportance and uselessness of whatever position they are supposed to be filling. The message is, a trained chimp -- or a right-wing ideologue -- could do this government job.

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Some very nice Mitch Daniels fans emailed me to say that I was wrong, and that Republicans would not care about Daniels' background once they examined his record. (Of course the other problem with Mitch Daniels as a presidential candidate is that he is the sort of person who is only interesting if you care about "records.")

Commentary answers my point directly today. His heritage is totally not a big deal!

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The course, "Modern Conservatism in America: Conservative Thought in the 20th Century," was developed as part of a project called Conservatism 101.

The project aims to introduce courses on conservatism at universities to bring balance to what its founders see as a heavy bias against conservative thinking in academia.

In a statement, Brown student and project co-developer Terrence George says students at elite schools are often unable to study views "outside of academia's leftist mainstream."

A Brown spokeswoman says the Ivy League university encourages broad intellectual exploration and gives students freedom to design their education.

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Specifically, the research shows that people with conservative tendencies have a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate than other people. The amygdala -- typically thought of as the "primitive brain" -- is responsible for reflexive impulses, like fear. The anterior cingulate is thought to be responsible for courage and optimism. This one-two punch could be responsible for many of the anecdotal claims that conservatives "think differently" from others.

Since only adults were included in the investigation, researchers were unable to determine if cerebral physiology drives politics or if political beliefs change the brain. A previous University of California study suggests the former is possible, isolating a so-called "liberal gene" -- the neurotransmitter DRD4 -- responsible for an increased receptiveness to novel ideas.

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(Republicans won the last major election, so the Post must hire more conservatives to reflect their new stature. Once Republicans lose a major election, the Post will of course hire some former Republican speechwriters and aides, so that they don't have to stoop to finding respectable work. But on the other hand, Ezra Klein.)

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Today he writes about the slightly bizarre desire of some "Tea Partiers" to repeal the 17th Amendment (because, again, their worship of the Constitution is limited to the bits they like). He concludes that it's a waste of time, but not because the 17th Amendment is a good thing. No, popular election of Senators by citizens, instead of the appointment of random beneficiaries of patronage by state legislators, is, Yoo agrees, an attack on federalism.

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This Quinn/Chalabi chat was a breathtaking display of shamelessness, culminating in this immortal line, from Chalabi: "The weapons of mass destruction was to our view a marginal issue."

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It's just a dumb analysis born of a facile understanding of history, which is unsurprising because no one will ever convince me that Paul the younger is actually smart, but Paul's defensible misgivings about the future stability of the nation do just sound, to his followers, like "OBAMA = HITLER." I think he understands that, but doesn't really care. (Just like libertarians and "responsible" conservatives of yore usually understood that their intellectual defenses of states' rights just provided respectable cover for racist segregationists.)

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Or at least some did, even as Republican politicians remained silent on the Florida outrage. What should have been an opportunity for reflection on the national mood of Muslim-bashing bigotry -- and especially how that mood was conjured -- instead became an occasion to preen and pretend that the little band of idiotic rubes in Florida could not possibly have been inspired by the "sophisticated" critics of Islam on Fox News, talk radio and the Internet.

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Bolton, who dreams of constant, unending war with every Arab nation, simply will not rule out a presidential run, when asked by the Daily Beast:

“In the sense that I want to make sure that not only in the Republican Party, but in the body politic as a whole, people are aware of threats that remain to the United States. You know, as somebody who writes op-eds and appears on the television, I appreciate as well as anybody that ... there is a limit to what that accomplishes,” he said. “Whereas, some governor from some state in the middle of the country announces for president they get enormous coverage even if their views are utterly uninformed on major issues.”

When pressed a third time about running, he said that while “he is not going to do anything foolish,” he added, “you know, I see how the media works ... you have to take that into account.”

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That's where the new Emergency Committee for Israel -- the group that launched with a Politico feature and an ad calling Pennsylvania Senate candidate Joe Sestak a terrorist symp -- is currently operating. And it's the same building that was base for the old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (the Iraq sign is even still outside, apparently).

The latter was the outfit, rememeber, that had a brief but influential run in the early 2000s providing an outside assist to the Bush Administration's push for an attack on Iraq. It included neocon luminaries like Bill Kristol (who is also on the board of the new Israel group), Richard Perle, and James Woolsey, along with senators like John McCain and Evan Bayh.

Eli Clifton of Lobe Log makes the connection:

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I mean, think about it. What would they say if bin Laden is killed on Obama's watch?  I can think of a few lines of attack...

1.  The credit should go to Bush: it was information obtained from torture during the Bush administration that allowed the new team to benefit, even as they dismantled the methods that worked so well. Problem: first of all, it's highly unlikely that there will be any evidence for the connection; second, the longer into the new administration, the less plausible this attack will be.

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Then the New York Times goes and runs an urgent dispatch from "a tiki-lantern-lighted backyard garden in northwest Washington." This breathless report on a fancy Washington social gathering may have appeared under the heading "The State of Conservatism," but make no mistake, it’s grade-A, uncut Style-section writing: blissfully dazzled by the bright stars, their banter, outfits, food and drink. (Poached tilefish and grilled asparagus!)

The party was in honor of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the refugee writer from Somalia, by way of Holland, who has been happily appropriated by the neoconservative right because of her hostility to the religion of her upbringing, Islam. Although she identifies as a pro-choice atheist, Hirsi Ali is a heroic figure to the clash-of-civilizations set for her militant embrace of the values of the Enlightenment. She's a foreigner who's renounced the dark ways of her homeland, and loudly declared the superiority of Western culture, at no small personal risk.

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If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I'd do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.  

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Why is this great news for progressives? The American conservative movement enjoyed its successes only after William F. Buckley Jr. expelled Rand and her followers from the movement in the late 1950s. Reflecting the vanity of their guru, the Randians have long insisted that "objectivists" are not libertarians. (Pssst: They are!) The non-Randian libertarians split with the mainstream conservative movement in the 1960s, complaining that conservatives were too interventionist in foreign policy and too soft on big government at home. Having lost the libertarian isolationists, the conservatives went on to success after success, dominating the presidency after 1968 and Congress in 1994.

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John Bolton is the prototypical right-wing pseudo-tough-guy:  cheering on every war he can find without ever getting near any of them.  And as usual for this strain of play-acting, chest-beating warrior, all of the belligerence and craving of vicarious power masks a deep and pitiful cowardice.  That is often the principal purpose of warmongering from a distance.  Yesterday, Bolton -- on "Washington Times Radio" -- revealed that he is so petrified of Terrorists that he would not feel safe in New York City during the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and would not even allow his family there (audio here):

Host Melanie Morgan: Given the nature and danger of bringing these terrorists to American soil, where do you think is the most safe place to be when they get here and this trial begins? Where would you put your family?

John Bolton: Well, not New York City, I'm afraid to say. This is part of the callousness and the really, lack of professionalism and judgment to put them on trial anywhere in the United States in civilian courts. 

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