Great commentary from the Bret Stephens:

It’s what the good people on West 40th Street like to call a “Times Classic.” On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times ran a lengthy op-ed by Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, under the headline “Trusting Khomeini.”

“The depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false,” wrote Mr. Falk. “What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.”

After carrying on in this vein for a few paragraphs, the professor concluded: “Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.”

Whoops.

The Times is at it again. Last week, the paper published an op-ed from Essam El-Errian, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Council, who offered this soothing take on his organization: “We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians.” Concurring with that view, Times reporter Nicholas Kulish wrote on Feb. 4 that members of the Brotherhood “come across as civic-minded people of faith.”

… “We think highly of a country whose president is important, courageous and has a vision, which he presents in the U.N., in Geneva, and everywhere,” the Brotherhood’s Kamal al-Hilbawi told Iran’s Al-Alam TV earlier this month, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust and 9/11 denials. “We think highly of a country . . . that confronts Western hegemony, and is scientifically and technologically advanced. Unfortunately, these characteristics can be found only in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I hope that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia will be like that.”

Nor should there be any doubt about what the Brotherhood is aiming against. “Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny,” Muhammad Badie, the Brotherhood’s supreme guide, sermonized in October. “The improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained . . . by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.”

Such remarks may come as a rude shock to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence who last week testified in Congress that the Brotherhood was “largely secular” (a remark his office later retracted). They may also surprise a coterie of Western analysts who are convinced that the Brotherhood is moving in a moderate direction and will only be further domesticated by participation in democratic politics. Yet the evidence for that supposition rests mainly on what the Brotherhood tells Westerners. What it says in Arabic is another story.

In 2005, candidates for the Brotherhood took 20% of the parliamentary vote. Gamal al-Banna, Hassan’s youngest brother, once told me they command as much as 40% support. Neither figure is a majority. But unless Egypt’s secular forces can coalesce into serious political parties, the people for whom Islam is the solution won’t find the fetters of democracy to be much of a problem.

I’d be curious to see the retorts from every Hollywood Chavez loving Leftist:

Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives…

Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).

There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.

Caracas itself is almost unrivaled among large cities in the Americas for its homicide rate, which currently stands at around 200 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Roberto Briceño-León, the sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela who directs the violence observatory.

That compares with recent measures of 22.7 per 100,000 people in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, and 14 per 100,000 in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. As Mr. Chávez’s government often points out, Venezuela’s crime problem did not emerge overnight, and the concern over murders preceded his rise to power.

But scholars here describe the climb in homicides in the past decade as unprecedented in Venezuelan history; the number of homicides last year was more than three times higher than when Mr. Chávez was elected in 1998.

“Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades.” — Victor Davis Hanson.

“The consequence of this moral and cultural relativism is that people are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behavior. Such moral equivalence rapidly mutates into moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a “victim” group while those at the receiving end of their behavior are blamed simply because they belong to the “oppressive” majority. This is on repeated display over a wide range of domestic issues such as family breakdown, drug abuse and the various demands of the “victim culture,” including the response to examples of Muslim aggression. …There is a tendency to equate and then invert the behavior of the perpetrators of violence and that of their victims, so that self-defense is misrepresented as aggression while the original violence is viewed sympathetically as understandable and even justified.” — Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan.

Well said Victor and Melanie! Indeed, whenever the topic turns to Israel and Palestine one finds the masses of conventional “wisdom” become the harbingers of extreme irrationality.

Example number one came from Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who in the wake of activist aggression resulting in 9 dead labeled it “Turkey’s 9-11.” Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Sure, numb skull, it’s just like 9-11, except 3,000 or so less dead and instead of hijacked airplanes flown into buildings it was a lawful attempt to search for terrorist supplies. After all, when it comes to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have used Red Crescent ambulances to ferry arms and militants and international commercial shipping to deliver weapons. No other country but Israel would be expected to put up with such nonsense. But nonsense is precisely what we get from closet anti-Semites in Turkey.

Throughout Europe the typical cry that Israel acted “disproportionately” continues. It makes one wonder what the heck Europe would consider “proportionate.” This is the same world community that, as Victor Hanson above retorts, said virtually nothing when North Korea sunk a South Korean ship (an act of war) a few weeks ago, or when Russia put its boot on the neck of Grozny, or nowhere near “the scale of violence, given what we see hourly in Pakistan, Darfur, and the Congo.”

How’s this for proportionate:

Israel (foolishly) withdrew from Gaza years ago, ceding control to Hamas, which proceeded to launch thousands of rockets into Israel. Israel then enacted this blockade for self defense, simultaneously pitying the residents of Gaza from their elected terrorist leaders by delivering food and supplies, “including [from just January to March alone] 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food” to the very Palestinians trying to kill them and destroy their state.

As columnist Mona Charen reminded, Israel (1) asked the flotilla organizers to deliver to a predetermined port first for inspection, but were refused, (2) ignored Israeli Navy requests to change course, (3) and boarded with only the minimally-defensive weaponry, including a single pistol for each soldier, the primary weapon being a paintball gun. In return (4) the “activists,” which included members of a group with known ties to Hamas and other global jihad terrorist groups, and who seemed fully prepared and preordained for violence and martyrdom, complete with chanted references to a massacre of Jews in Arabia by Muhammad, (5) began to beat the Israelis with metal rods, knifes, tossed stun grenades, and possibly fired guns.

Were it not obvious enough that the intentions had nothing to do with “relief” for Palestinians, today (6) refused the supplies Israel detained from the blockade, our NATO “ally” Turkey appears to have officially sealed a “strategic alliance between Turkey, Iran, and Syria,” notably detailed by Seth Cropsey. There’s a reason why Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his parliament that “today is a turning point in history. Nothing will ever be the same again.” (7) This wasn’t a reaction by Turkey to Israel, it was a proactive decision. Their plan was to provoke a response, and that’s exactly what they got.

One day, however, Turkey might wish it hadn’t made a deal with the devil in Iran.

Here’s William Bennett in a must-read commentary regarding the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law:

[Mexican President] Felipe Calderón has simply no business lecturing us, lecturing America, about our immigration policies. How does Mexico treat illegal immigrants? See Article 67 of Mexico’s General Population Law: “Authorities, whether federal, state or municipal . . . are required to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country, before attending to any issues.” Now, the Arizona law, which we’ll get to in a moment, doesn’t even say this; there is no such language as “demand,” in Arizona.

But, first, here’s an Amnesty International press release from last month: “The Mexican authorities must act to halt the continuing abuse of migrants who are preyed on by criminal gangs while public officials turn a blind eye or even play an active part in kidnappings, rapes and murders.” Public officials — the government of Mexico — turns a blind eye. The AI report continues: “Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses. . . . Persistent failure by the authorities to tackle abuses carried out against irregular migrants has made their journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world.”

So, illegal immigrants in Mexico face some of the most dangerous abuses in the world and they face reprisal and deportation if they complain. Further, there is “persistent failure” by the government of Mexico in stopping this. Felipe Calderón should be schooled on this, and until he is schooled on this, he should simply shut up about Arizona, about the United States — one of the safest places in the world for illegal immigrants and one of the most welcoming places in the world for legal immigrants.

Now, on to Arizona’s law. It cannot and will not operate the way President Obama has said; one will not be stopped because he may be calmly eating ice cream while looking different than the rest of America. Here’s what the law says:

FOR ANY LAWFUL STOP, DETENTION OR ARREST MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

What this means is that one simply cannot be stopped or inquired of, regarding their immigration status, based on any kind of suspicion whatsoever, not without a condition precedent, not without being stopped for an illegal act antecedent. For example, one will not be inquired of unless first stopped for violating some other law, like speeding or running a red light. Status and looks are not in play. And then, if inquired about, all inquiry stops if proof such as a driver’s license or green card is shown.

Second, the law continues:

A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SUBSECTION.

It is written into the law: race, color, and national origin cannot be the basis for reasonable suspicion to inquire of someone’s status. It is against the law.

Now, let’s look at the federal law that has been on the books for over 50 years: Not only is it a federal offense to be in this country illegally, but the federal law states, “Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him.”

And the federal law adopts no standard for such enforcement, not even the standard of reasonable suspicion. And it requires no lawful stop precedent to such inquiry. Furthermore, Department of Justice guidelines state: “State police officers have ‘inherent power’ to arrest undocumented immigrants for violating federal law.”

So just what exactly has Arizona done to bring down the wrath of city councils, the president, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the president of Mexico? What exactly has Arizona done that could serve as the basis for an assistant secretary of state to tell the Chinese that we, too, have our human-rights problems, citing Arizona’s new law? The answer is nothing.

Now, a new argument came up yesterday from the president. He said: “I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested.”

We first ask if he’s read the law, because the AG and the Secretary of HLS have said they have not read it. But what of the “possibility of being harassed or arrested” unfairly? Sure, it’s there, but the state law is more protective on this score than the federal law. And, moreover: All laws are potentially discriminatory or have the potential to be abused. As Andy McCarthy put it, not just laws, but policing:

All policing is potentially discriminatory. Police make arrests without judicial arrest-warrants all the time if they believe they have witnessed a violation of law. They conduct searches all the time without judicial search-warrants if, in their judgment, the facts they observe amount to one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. And, as we’ve pointed out repeated, they do not have to have any reason at all to ask questions — including to ask a person for identification or immigration status.

It makes no sense, except as an exercise in pandering, to criticize a law because it can potentially be abused. Should we, for example, shut down the legislative process because Congress could potentially abuse its power by, say, hiding the occasional hundred billion or two in spending?

Final point, why did Arizona pass this law? Last year, as Abby Wisse Schachter put it, “the Border Patrol apprehended 241,453 people and confiscated a record 1.3 million pounds of marijuana — in the Tucson, Ariz., sector alone. Nearly a fifth of all those apprehended already had a U.S. criminal record.”

There are nearly half a million illegal immigrants in Arizona. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, while illegal immigrants make up 9 percent of the Arizona population, they are responsible for 22 percent of the felonies in Arizona and they constitute 11 percent of the state prison population. Arizona is now the kidnapping capital of the United States, and Phoenix has the second-largest kidnapping problem in the world (second to Mexico City).

According to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, kidnapping in Arizona increased 402 percent between 2004 and 2008, with almost 70 percent of the kidnapping cases submitted for prosecution involving illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants account for 16.5 percent of those sentenced for violent crimes; 18.5 percent of those sentenced for property crimes; 33.5 percent of those sentenced for the manufacture, sale, or transport of drugs; and 44.4 percent of those sentenced or forgery and fraud in the Phoenix area. And, according to DOJ statistics, three Border Patrol agents are assaulted on the average day at or near the U.S. border. Someone is kidnapped every 35 hours in Phoenix, Ariz. — mostly by agents of alien-smuggling organizations. And one in five American teenagers last year used some type of illegal drug, many of which were imported across the unsecured U.S.-Mexico border. For example, most of the cocaine and meth consumed in America comes in from Mexico, and in some states, over 90 percent of the marijuana consumed is from Mexico.

Was there a compelling interest for this law? Yes. Was there a rational basis for this law? Yes. Is there any rationality in beating up on Arizona, or in the president’s allowing — even welcoming — leaders of foreign countries to do so? None, and it is a moral shame that he persists in this ugly business.

Um, “Deem and Pass” that is, although the American public, of whom only 25 percent polled actually want the existing version(s) of ObamaCare (and a CNN poll at that!) might one day argue to the Democrats’ demise that it was “Demon Passed” — given the amount of obfuscation and chicanery Democrats are exhibiting to enact it without ever having voted on it.

If you’re confused by all of this Congressional lawspeak, or should I say lawfare, (or confused by the above paragraph which was admittedly written after a very long work day) you are not alone. If the Democrats really thought the American people wanted this they wouldn’t go to such lengths to warp Article I into something that even George Orwell himself would never have imagined (and I do hate it so when any politician explains in parental “Shut up and swallow it” language to us dense, nonelitist 300 million consumers how something is good for us). Thomas Paine picked up a pen (and musket) for far an intrusion on transparency and democracy.

James Taranto describes below:

Late last year, the House and Senate each passed its own version of ObamaCare. Normally, these bills would go to a “conference committee,” at which selected congressmen from both chambers would iron out the differences between them, producing a “conference report”–a single bill that would become law after both chambers approve it and the president signs it.

Scott Brown’s election made it impossible to enact ObamaCare using the usual procedure. Republican senators now number 41, enough to prevent any conference report from coming to the floor for a vote. For whatever reason–and we’ll speculate on this in a moment–President Obama was determined to ram this thing through despite the message the voters of Massachusetts sent in January. So congressional Democrats had to come up with a Plan B.

Since the House, unlike the Senate, operates for the most part by simple majority rule, the simplest solution would be for the House to pass the version of ObamaCare that the Senate already approved. It could then go to President Obama for his signature without any further Senate action required. Take that, Massachuses and Massachusettes!

But this option, while procedurally simple, was politically impossible. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “Nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill.” Some liberal House members view it as insufficiently socialistic since, unlike the House bill, it would not put the government directly into the business of selling insurance (the so-called public option). And most everyone is squeamish about the special deals struck to win the votes of senators like Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Florida’s Bill Nelson and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman. Principled moderates all, they steadfastly refused to vote for legislation they didn’t believe in unless the price was right.

Democrats thus had to find a way of getting the Senate to make some changes. They alighted on “reconciliation,” a procedure through which certain legislation involving the federal budget can go through the Senate on a simple majority vote. The House would pass the Senate bill, and both houses would pass the reconciliation bill, yielding a final product that, if all went well, would be merely miserable as opposed to horrible.

Up to this point, the procedural logic makes sense even if the political logic doesn’t. But now things take a bizarre turn. The promise of reconciliation isn’t enough to persuade some representatives to set aside their objections to the Senate bill. The result is the delightfully named “Slaughter rule,” under which the House, instead of approving the Senate bill, would approve a “rule” that would “deem” the Senate bill to have “passed.”

Republicans object to this bit of trickery–hence their effort to force a vote on holding a vote. “By supporting this resolution, Democrats can demonstrate that they will not try to hide from their constituents,” the Post quotes Minority Leader John Boehner as saying.

What will probably happen is that Democrats will block the vote on whether to hold a vote on the bill. Then–assuming Pelosi is able to scrape together a majority, which remains uncertain–they will vote on the rule to deem the Senate bill passed. They would thus bypass both the vote on whether to hold the vote and the vote itself.

But they would still have to approve the “rule” to “deem” the bill “passed,” which–assuming the courts either approve of this procedural dodge or decide the question is not justiciable–is the functional equivalent of voting for the Senate bill.

The Post reports that Democrats “suggested Republicans were trying to distract from the real discussion of what’s actually in the reform bill. . . . ‘If you don’t want to talk about substance, [you] talk about process,’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.” The Washington Times quotes Rep. Steny Hoyer, Pelosi’s No. 2: “ ’So what,’ says [sic] the American people. What they’re interested in is what resulted. ‘What did you do for me and my family to make my life more secure and better and greater quality.’ And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

But if the substance of the bill is as good as they say it is–indeed, if it is anything other than a monstrosity–why do they have to come up with one procedural gimmick after another to persuade their fellow partisans to approve it?

Furthermore, especially if the American people care about substance and not process, the Slaughter rule looks delusional. Is any voter going to judge his congressman more favorably because he voted for a “rule” to “deem” the Senate bill “passed” rather than cast the substantively identical vote to pass the bill? Is any wavering member of Congress foolish enough to expect that his constituents will make this distinction?

Admittedly, one can’t rule out the possibility of congressmen behaving foolishly. Perhaps Pelosi and Hoyer are close to a majority and the Slaughter scam is targeted at a handful of waverers whom they know to be especially gullible.

But such tactics seem more likely to backfire. CNN, for example, reports that undecided Pennsylvania Democrat Jason Altmire “said he doesn’t support Slaughter’s idea because it ‘increases the opportunity for the public to say, “You know what, I’m not comfortable with this process.” ’ ”

What accounts for the relentless drive to ram ObamaCare through every procedural obstacle, regardless of the political cost? Ideological zeal, from Obama himself above all, is part of the explanation, but it isn’t sufficient. One can, after all, be ideologically committed to a goal without falling into a self-defeating obsession.

There seems to be an emotional desperation at work here. The legislative success of ObamaCare has become so tied up with Obama’s sense of himself that he feels he must push ahead–and to some extent, the leaders in Congress feel the same way. Obama is not the calm rationalist he seemed during the campaign. But while there’s a place for passion in politics, to be governed by a politician who fails to govern his passions is a frightening and creepy experience.

The following excerpts are taken from Marc Thiessen’s book Courting Disaster — and relevant to the discussion post below regarding Obama Justice Department officials who worked previously defending terrorists (point #3 is huge):

Others say that the lawyers at these firms are in fact following a  great American tradition, in which everyone gets a lawyer and their  day in court. Not so, says Andy McCarthy, the former Assistant  U.S. Attorney who put Omar Abdel-Rahman (the blind sheik)  behind bars for the first bombing of the World Trade Center in  1993.

“We need to be clear about what the American tradition is,”  McCarthy says. “The American tradition is that the 6th Amendment  guarantees the accused-that means somebody who has been  indicted or otherwise charged with a crime-a right to counsel. But  that right only exists if you are accused, which means you are someone   who the government has brought into the civilian criminal justice   system and lodged charges against. ”

The terrorists at Guantanamo, McCarthy says, do not qualify  because they have not been brought into the civilian justice system  for criminal trial. “They are being held as enemy combatants in a  war which has been authorized by Congress.”

**********
Indeed, when the lawyers began litigating these cases, there was no precedent for a right to representation for enemy combatants. McCarthy says, “We’ve had around 5 million prisoners of war in the history of the United States-that’s probably a conservative estimate. Before 2004, it would have been absurd to suggest that enemy combatants in a war had a systematic right of access to U.S. courts.”

**********

More than that, these lawyers, no doubt intentionally, are  encouraging enemy combatants to violate the laws of war. As former   Defense Department General Counsel Jim Haynes explained in a 2008 speech, “During World War II, the United States detained  more than 400,000 German and Italian prisoners of war in camps  sprinkled around the United States, and had zero successful habeas  petitions. Today, we have less than 300 unlawful combatants  detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and 246 ongoing habeas cases  to go with them…. The legal process afforded these detainees far  exceeds anything that German or Italian soldiers enjoyed at any  time during their captivity within our borders.”

The danger, according to Haynes, is that, “If you give more protections   and privileges to Al Qaeda fighters than to lawful combatants, then you will strip away any legal incentives for people to fight  according to the rules…. You encourage countries and groups to  develop corps of unlawful fighters. Ultimately, you increase the savagery of future conflicts.”

Haynes asks: Why stop at Guantanamo? “Coalition forces hold  tens of thousands of detainees in Iraq and over a thousand in Afghanistan. If the detainees in Cuba receive habeas, should those  detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan receive it as well? Instead of hundreds,   why not tens of thousands of military detainee habeas cases  in federal courts?”" These habeas corpus cases, Haynes says, are  creating “an incentive to violate the laws of war…. What’s in it for  any foe of the United States to abide by those rules if one gets better treatment upon capture by violating them?”

**********

In fact, Guantanamo detainees now enjoy rights far beyond those  afforded to prisoners of war with full Geneva protections. Nothing  in the Geneva Conventions provides POWs with the right to counsel, access to the courts to challenge their detention, or the opportunity to be released prior to the end of hostilities. Yet thanks to the habeas corpus campaign, al Qaeda terrorists who violate the laws  of war enjoy all these privileges.

Stop. Go to Free Our Health Care Now, and sign the petition demanding among other things that the U.S. Congress “stop any increased role of the government in my health care decisions.”

Far from Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that such protest is somehow “unAmerican,” and no matter that the White House asked citizens to report suspicious health care statements by others, the First Amendment still guarantees the “right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

So don’t just sit there. Exercise that right.

In the words of Michael Goldfarb, the Obama Administration officially “certified” the Iranian “election.” Nice.

“He’s the elected leader,” says Obama press secretary Gibbs. Elected? Really? Who elected Ahmadinejad? Does a council of 12 unelected religious clerics with absolute omnipotence over all legislative and judicial ability make an election? Every time the Obama administration attempts to coddle the Iranian theocracy all they do is undercut the will and influence of the Iranians who risk their lives to thwart that illegitimate regime.

Here’s Francis Fukuyama on the political architecture of Iran. Basically, imagine if the Bill of Rights had included an Amendment 10b that stated, “an unelected council of religious clerics lead by a supreme leader may at will define, qualify or overrule all these previous amendments.”

Political scientists categorize the Islamic Republic of Iran as an “electoral authoritarian” regime of a new sort. They put it in the same basket as Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. By this view, Iran is fundamentally an authoritarian regime run by a small circle of clerics and military officials who use elections to legitimate themselves.

Others think of Iran as a medieval theocracy. Its 1979 constitution vests sovereignty not in the people, but in God, and establishes Islam and the Quran as the supreme sources of law.

The Iranian Constitution is a curious hybrid of authoritarian, theocratic and democratic elements. Articles One and Two do vest sovereignty in God, but Article Six mandates popular elections for the presidency and the Majlis, or parliament. Articles 19-42 are a bill of rights, guaranteeing, among other things, freedom of expression, public gatherings and marches, women’s equality, protection of ethnic minorities, due process and private property, as well as some “second generation” social rights like social security and health care.

The truly problematic part of the constitution is Section Eight (Articles 107-112) on the Guardian Council and the “Leader.” All the democratic procedures and rights in the earlier sections of the constitution are qualified by certain powers reserved to a council of senior clerics.

These powers, specified in Article 110, include control over the armed forces, the ability to declare war, and appointment powers over the judiciary, heads of media, army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another article lays out conditions under which the Supreme Leader can be removed by the Guardian Council. But that procedure is hardly democratic or transparent.

Author Mark Bowden (Guests of the Ayatollah; Blackhawk Down) summed it up similarly:

“The term “republic” is double-talk. The elected government is run by a small group of privileged clerics who decide what candidates and what laws are acceptable, who control the military and the secret police, and whatever else they wish, and who stifle dissent, beating up or locking up those they don’t like….

All laws and candidates for any public post must be approved by him [the Ayatollah] and the Guardian Council, a twelve-member body of clerics and judges that he appoints. The elected government of Iran is a kind of toy democracy that serves at his pleasure. It consists of an elected president, currently the populist ultraconservative former mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad, the Majlis, and a judiciary. The mullahs tolerate just enough of a semblance of democracy and freedom to maintain the pretense of a democracy

…. [After Khatami's 1996 election] There was a brief blossoming of free speech and debate, opposition newspapers sprang up, and Iran began to smell the prospect of real freedom. There was heady talk of Iran “evolving” peacefully toward democracy. Khatami encoded the hopes of many in the legislation that would have freed Iran’s lawmakers from the veto power of the Guardians Council.The mullahs stopped that fast. Ayatollah Khamenei vetoed the legislation, which provoked some rioting on college campuses in 2003 and some spontaneous heretical Pro-American displays, but such outbursts were quickly subdued. Early in 2005, the Guardians Council simply crossed all reform candidates off the ballot

…. Writers and artists must be licensed to work for any of the major news outlets, or for their work to be published or shown. A jury representing the ministries of information and culture weighs applicants and decides which pass political and religious muster

…. In the current crackdown more than a hundred reform newspapers and magazines have been banned. Many formerly tolerated journalists are out of work. To attempt any unlicensed work means risking being hauled in to chat with a polished but unyielding middle-management Information Ministry zealot with the power to fire, arrest, torture, and even execute enemies of the state, although in the Land of the Bordbari [Iran], such measures are no longer frequently required. Some writers are silenced by threats to keep their children from acceptance at universities, a critical path to future success.Without a free press it is hard to know how most people feel about progress toward the umma [community of Muslims].”

Here’s Bret Stephens:

In other words, Mr. Obama seems to have thought that a considerable part of America’s Iran problem was simply an America problem, to be addressed by various forms of conciliation: Mr. Obama’s New Year’s greetings to “the Islamic Republic of Iran”; the disavowal of regime change as a U.S. objective; the offer of direct talks without preconditions; withdrawal from Iraq; the insistence, following the election, that the U.S. would neither presume to judge the outcome nor otherwise “meddle” in an internal Iranian affair.

What did all this achieve? Iran’s nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.

Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of “meddling.”

Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be “realism”?

A more common sense form of realism would reach different conclusions. One is that the “bloviations” of Ahmadinejad are not just politically motivated, but are also expressions of contempt for Mr. Obama. That contempt springs from a keen nose for weakness, honed by the habits of dictatorship and based on an estimate — so far unrefuted — of Mr. Obama’s mettle.

Second, as long as Tehran can murder its own people, scoff at a U.S. president and flout U.N. resolutions without consequence, it will continue to do so.

Third is that the Achilles Heel of the Iranian regime isn’t its “isolation.” (What kind of isolation is it when Ahmadinejad’s “election” was instantly ratified by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev?) Nor is it its vulnerability to a gasoline embargo, vulnerable though it is. Its real weakness is its own domestic unpopularity, which has at last found expression in a massive opposition movement.

The fourth is that Iran’s nuclear programs have now reached the stage where they can only be stopped through military strikes — probably Israeli — or an internal political decision to abandon them. The prospect of another Mideast war can’t exactly please the administration. So how about trying to achieve the same result by leveraging point No. 3?

Maybe ordinary Iranians welcome Mr. Obama’s solicitude. What they need is Mr. Obama’s spine. If that means “democracy promotion” and tough talk about “regime change,” well, it wouldn’t be the first time this president has made his predecessor’s policy his own.