Vice President Biden was on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos yesterday talking about Israel bombing Iran:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?

BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they’re existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.

The vice president made this point three times.

I suppose it would have been tangential to point out that Biden’s view of sovereignty has not always been so robust. Or that he is effectively renouncing the international laws of war, which dictate what self-defense allows. But Stephanopoulos might have at least acknowledged the irony of this particular exchange. Iran, the country being bombed in his question, is also a sovereign nation. Biden’s needlessly universal principle – U.S. deference in the face of a sovereign nation’s determination that it is in danger – would protect its right to build nuclear weapons. 

Biden is being overly broad to obscure the fact that he’s granting Israel special rights, of course. But it’s still worth pointing out that it’s a bad principle, if “not dictating” means never saying “bad idea.” When considering war, the opinions of other nations are generally worth knowing. Some of our European friends argued in 2002 that invading Iraq would not enhance our security, after all. Useful advice! Offering our opinions is perfectly consistent with a policy of military restraint.

The problem here goes beyond the principle though. We give Israel all sorts of aid. The F‑16s and F‑15s carrying out the bulk of the attack would be U.S.-made. They might pass through Iraqi airspace that the U.S. effectively controls. Historical U.S. support for Israel means that people around the world reasonably hold Americans responsible for what Israel does to Iran. Sooner or later, probably sooner, an Israeli attack on Iran would be likely to produce blowback, diplomatic or otherwise, that would damage us. Given that, our position should be that attacks on Iran are unacceptable, and would cost Israel our support.

For analysis on Israel’s ability to disable Iran’s nuclear programs, read Whitney Raas and Austin’s Long’s work.

Criminalization of marijuana use never did make sense. Surely the results of the Drug War–billions of dollars wasted, tens of millions of regular users, millions of people arrested–have made it even more obvious that prohibition is a failure. And now,with the U.S. suffering through a nasty recession, it is even more foolish to waste resources in a vain attempt to stop recreational drug use.

Before heading home for the July 4th weekend the Rhode Island Senate set up a committee to study the idea of decriminalization. Reports the Providence Journal:

Weeks after legalizing the sale of marijuana to sick people, lawmakers have voted to explore how much Rhode Island might collect in revenue if it were to make all sales of marijuana legal and impose a “sin tax” of $35 per ounce.

During the General Assembly’s aborted rush to adjournment Friday, the Senate approved a resolution — introduced earlier the same day — to create a nine-member special commission to study a swath of issues surrounding marijuana. Among them: “The experience of individuals and families sentenced for violating marijuana laws … The experience of states and European countries, such as California, Massachusetts and the Netherlands, which have decriminalized the sale and use of marijuana.”

Drug prohibition has failed. Rhode Island legislators have an opportunity to help the nation change direction in the way it deals with drug abuse.

Both President Obama and Sen. John McCain cited the Founders in their weekly radio addresses today, as they made the case for government actions that would have appalled those Founders. Obama invoked “the indomitable spirit of the first American citizens who made [independence] day possible” in arguing for a federal takeover of education, energy, and health care.

He might have trouble explaining how his policies reflect the spirit of the men who left us such words as these:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must be happy.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.

Meanwhile, McCain called for the American government to more vigorously support the protesters in Iran. What would the Founders say to him?

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.…Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest.

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.

[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. …Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

Maybe each week there should be three national radio broadcasts: one from the incumbent president, one from the other big-government party, and one reflecting the views of the Founders.

I’ve been struggling with how to respond to an article by The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait, who accuses conservatives of hypocrisy and Republicans of whorishness when it comes to wasteful spending in Medicare and other government health programs. I have grudgingly decided that a good fisking is the only way to go.

Chait writes:

Two weeks ago, President Obama offered to cut several hundred billion more dollars out of the Medicare and Medicaid budget to help make room for health care reform. This sort of gesture ought to appeal to conservatives, right? Apparently not. The Heritage Foundation warned, “At a time when Medicare is dangerously close to bankruptcy, it is shortsighted to funnel funds into the creation of another government-run program instead of shoring up Medicare.” A National Review editorial complained, “These cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments are nothing more than reimbursement reductions with no empirical or economic basis to justify them.”

A couple of problems here. Chait takes the National Review quote out of context. The magazine’s most recent issue states: “Republicans should not have only harsh words for Obama’s ideas. If he truly believes that he can squeeze hundreds of billions of dollars from federal health programs, then he should be encouraged to do so. But the savings should be banked before they are spent.” The Heritage quote is odd in that it suggests that conservatives should make “shoring up Medicare” a priority. But it makes essentially the same argument. Chait gives a false impression when he suggests that all conservatives are knee-jerk opponents of reducing wasteful Medicare spending.

No empirical basis to justify them? Since when do conservatives require an empirical basis to justify cutting social spending?

Ah, the gratuitous swipe. Chait actually has something useful to say about conservatives’ approach to health care. Too bad they just stopped listening.

The health care debate has been presented as a conflict between spendthrift Democrats and skinflint Republicans. The reality is closer to the opposite. Conservatives may make up the strongest opponents of new government spending (to cover the uninsured), but they also make up the strongest opponents of cutting existing spending. Health care has become the new defense spending–a category of public outlay that the right has trained itself to defend in even the most wasteful iterations.

Actually, the conventional wisdom fits the reality pretty well. Democrats’ desire to reduce the rate of growth in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending is not a sign of parsimony. They want that money so they can hand out new government subsidies, and they then want to raise taxes to hand out even more new subsidies. Mo’ money, mo’ money. I defy Chait to find me a conservative so eager to spend other people’s money. As for the Right defending wasteful health care spending, see the National Review quote above.

The U.S. health care system, as you probably realize, is a vast cesspool of waste… Alas, every dollar of what we call waste is what somebody in the industry calls “income.” So anything that makes the system more efficient makes somebody unhappy, and that somebody has a team of lobbyists.

I have no quibble with this, except that the Left endlessly bleats that the U.S. health care sector is wasteful, but never draws any connection to the fact that government controls half of it directly and even more indirectly.

This may help explain why conservatives have embraced the rather unlikely cause of stopping cuts in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. It would also explain the conservative attachment to “Medicare Advantage”–the program created in 2003 that enrolls some Medicare prescription-drug recipients into private insurance rather than traditional Medicare. Medicare Advantage costs $922 more per recipient than traditional Medicare, which makes it a lucrative boondoggle for the insurance industry. Conservatives defend it on the grounds that it offers “better benefits and better value,” as the Heritage Foundation puts it.

Medicare pays for things using price controls. At present, those price controls unjustly enrich doctors, hospitals, and insurers. Obama proposes to reduce future Medicare spending by ratcheting down those price controls. Conservatives object. Chait suggests the reason is because conservatives are in bed with the doctors, hospitals, and insurers. Yet there are other potential explanations.

One, conservatives may be indifferent to how Medicare’s price controls look. (Does anyone really expect Washington to come up with the right price, or the right per-unit measurement?) But since they object to the overall direction of Obama’s health care reforms, they may want to highlight the downsides of these particular changes. That’s exactly what Obama did to Sen. John McCain (R‑AZ) during the 2008 presidential election: “Senator McCain would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare.”

Two, the Heritage Foundation may be right that the controlled prices that Medicare Advantage plans receive are closer to optimality than what Obama proposes. The cost comparisons Chait and others use typically omit some of the benefits of Medicare Advantage and some costs of traditional Medicare. (Medicare Advantage plans do more than just dispense drugs.)

So the right defends having the government shell out more money in order to have (allegedly) better entitlement programs.

A third explanation is that conservatives fear a government that has the power to make people’s medical decisions more than they fear the higher taxes that result from lots of wasteful Medicare spending. I rather suspect that is how most conservatives feel. Most Americans, too. Sure would explain why Medicare looks the way it does.

Even the staunchest free marketers have started to sound like the AARP. The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon protested that Obama “ought not begin the [health care reform] effort by proposing to take something away from seniors, America’s largest and most politically active voting block.”

I don’t know which upsets me more: being lumped in with the Right or likened to the AARP. Either way, it appears Chait was casting about for evidence to confirm his thesis and missed the fact that I was making a tactical point rather than a policy argument. (I’m all for putting geezers on ice floes, but you don’t want to say that’s what you’re doing.)

And then you have the conservative apoplexy over “comparative-effectiveness research,” or CER. Right now, the federal government has little solid information to help figure out what treatments to fund under Medicare. That’s one reason why Medicare winds up finding so many unnecessarily costly medical interventions like expensive copycat drugs–or even interventions that do no good at all. In the stimulus bill, Obama got $1 billion to fund comparative-effectiveness research, which, as you may have deduced, helps compare the effectiveness of different medical interventions.

GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is co-sponsoring a bill to prohibit federal health care programs from using this research. Fellow Republican Jon Kyl, the bill’s sponsor, demands that CER not be used “to deny coverage of an item or service under a federal health care program.” The really silly thing here is that Medicare already has the ability to deny coverage for services it deems cost-ineffective. CER would merely arm the government with facts to make better-informed decisions…

I see three really silly things here. The first is the Left’s approach to CER; I won’t get into it here, because I wrote a whole paper about it.

The second is Chait’s claim that Medicare already has the ability to make coverage decisions based on cost-effectiveness. Medicare has the legal authority to do so, but it definitely does not have the ability.

The third really silly thing is that Chait blames that inability — and the resulting wasteful spending — on industry lobbying or conservatives whipping up public fears about government rationing. Chait and other Medicare supporters have no one to blame for wasteful Medicare spending but themselves. If you support putting health care under the control of the political system, you cannot then blame that system (or the actors within) for doing what it always does. You might as well blame a cow for going moo. As I tried, tried, tried to explain to Paul Krugman: “Unless you have a plan to abolish Republicans, they’re part of your plan.”

Conservatives CERtainly [ha!] have understandable ideological reasons to oppose the Obama health care reform as a whole. It’s the particulars of their opposition that arouse curiosity. The right has presented its opposition to health care reform as principled disagreement with “big government.” But opposing “big government” can mean different things… The Republican Party and its ideological allies have defined it increasingly as whatever suits the profitability of the health care industry…

The health care industry has spent vast sums to influence politicians and opinion leaders, mostly on the right. Health care is an issue where precious few conservatives have paid any attention to the details of policy. And the industry is a natural ally of the conservative goal of preventing single-payer health care. So the industry has managed to define its self-interest as the conservative position on health care.

For the most part, I have to agree. With precious few exceptions, conservatives couldn’t care less about health care. (How else can we explain why the GOP tolerates things like Medicare Part D and Mitt Romney?) When Democrats try to reform health care, many conservatives have no more to add to the conversation than “government rationing — bad.”

And therein lies the danger that Chait reveals. If conservatives do nothing but object to government rationing — if they decide they prefer (A) high taxes and wasteful government spending to (B) a government that has the power to make people’s medical decisions — the growing cost of health care will generate public support for a government-takes-all solution, by which time conservatives will be seen as apologists for a pack of rent-seeking weasels. If conservatives continue to ignore the details of health policy, they will increasingly fall prey to the fallacy that anything “private” is good. Universal coverage through the private sector? No problem. Government subsidies for private insurers? Hey, at least it isn’t socialized medicine. Doctors/​hospitals/​drugmakers/​devicemakers complaining the government isn’t paying them enough? Well, if they’re in the private sector, they must be right.

But they’re not right. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

If conservatives choose either (A) or (B), the Left wins. Conservatives need a way out of that box: (C) let seniors control the money and let markets set prices. I can’t remember the last time I heard a movement conservative articulate that approach to Medicare reform.

Andy McCarthy makes a good point over at The Corner about Laith al-Khazali, a member of a Shiite militant group responsible for the deaths of American troops in Iraq. Al-Khazali has been released, allegedly as part of negotiations with terrorists holding British hostages. Senators Sessions and Kyl have questioned this action in a letter to President Obama.

McCarthy lays out the facts on al-Khazali here. Al-Khazali participated in a sophisticated attack on American troops in Karbala. The militants wore American uniforms and took American soldiers hostage. After leaving the site of the attack, the militants executed their prisoners.

Though I have disagreed with McCarthy on other issues, he makes a valid point here.

Al-Khazali is guilty of honest-to-goodness war crimes.

Wearing an enemy’s uniform for infiltration is permissible. Wearing an enemy’s uniform while shooting at them is perfidy, a prosecutable war crime.

Otto Skorzeny, head Nazi commando, was acquitted of perfidy after World War II. Skorzeny’s men had infiltrated American lines during the Battle of the Bulge while wearing American uniforms. They avoided firing at American troops while in our uniforms, though in two instances fired at American troops in self-defense. British commando Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas testified for the defense, saying that he had infiltrated German lines in a German uniform. W. Hays Parks provides an excellent discussion of special operations soldiers’ use of non-standard uniform and the legal boundaries of this issue here. Al-Khazali crossed the line by wearing an American uniform while firing at our soldiers.

Killing enemy soldiers after they are in your custody is also a prosecutable war crime. We prosecuted German soldiers for doing this in the Malmedy Massacre, and have prosecuted our own soldiers for killing prisoners. We have even prosecuted contractors for killing prisoners on the battlefield and during interrogation.

Al-Khazali deserves to be brought to justice. It is a shame we did not provide it.

Yesterday, the SEC repealed a long-standing rule which allowed brokers to vote shares on behalf of their investors, unless they obtained written directions from each individual investors. While investors have long been able to direct the voting of their shares, many do not take the time to. In these cases, the brokers vote those shares, after all they are the agents of the investors and are hired to act on their behalf.

The direct effect of the rule will be to reduce the voting weight of retail investors, as represented by their brokers. In voting against the rule, SEC Commissioner Kathy Casey raised the point that the rule would skew voting toward large institutional investors and away from little retail investors.

What did the large institutions investors have to say? As reported in today’s Financial Times, Ann Yerger, who represents large pension funds claimed that “counting uninstructed broker votes is akin to stuffing the ballot box for management.” One has to wonder whether the pension funds, which Ms. Yerger represents should have to get written instructions from all the pensioners whose pensions are managed by these funds? Of course not, treating all agents of investors equally would make too much sense for the SEC.

Then one should not be too surprised to see pension funds be allowed to cast their “uninstructed” votes while brokers cannot. The largest pension funds manage the retirement of unionized state and local employees, often with the fund management itself representing the interests of the unions. We witnessed this same favoring of union interests over the common good in the auto bailouts.

The rule once again illustrates that the new bosses in Washington are busy rewarding their allies at the expense of everyone else.

It seems U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan and British schools secretary Ed Balls disagree on the merits of national standards. While Duncan has said that homogenizing educational standards nationwide is his single most important goal while in office, Balls has just pulled the plug on the U.K.‘s 10 year experiment with national reading and math strategies. He told the media:

I think the right thing for us to do now is to move away from what has historically been a rather central view of school improvement through national strategies to something which is essentially being commissioned not from the centre but by schools themselves.

The problem with saying that every 5th grader in the nation should learn the same things at the same time is that all 5th graders are not created equal. Some are better at math than reading. Some the reverse. Some are quick learners across the board. Some are slower. To deny this is ridiculous, but to acknowledge it is to admit that homogenized standards in a system that groups students rigidly by age is educational malpractice.

Even if kids were all identical automatons, national standards wouldn’t drive excellence. It is the incentive structure of the free enterprise system that has driven progress in all the fields that have actually progressed — not externally-imposed standards.

What America needs for an educational renaissance is to release schools and families from the shackles of monopoly, and re-inject the freedom and incentives that kindle innovation and efficiency. Sitting 50 million Jills and Johnnies down on a conveyor belt that drags them all through their studies at the same pace makes no sense.