Needlenose

This headline from the Israel’s attack on Gaza really just says it all: Gaza Children Found With Mothers’ Corpses.  I’m really not sure what more Israel can do in the way of war crimes before anybody on Capitol Hill says “Enough!”

“The statement said a team of four Palestine Red Crescent ambulances accompanied by Red Cross representatives made its way to Zeitoun Wednesday where it “found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all, there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses.””

I just wish our Pols would be more honest and finish the typical apologia statements around Israel’s actions and say “I support Israel’s right to defend itself regardless of the means and of the cost in innocent human life.”

Leon Panetta to head the CIA?  What a weird pick.  He’s a nice enough guy (I’ve met him twice), and certainly knows his way around D.C.  Unlike Feinstein, I don’t fault him for his lack of intelligence bureau experience – I’d consider that a positive, given the recent abject failures of the CIA.

However, he strikes me as sort of a party apparatchik, certainly of the more competent sort, whereas I think the job requires somebody with some fire in the belly, who is willing and able to do some ‘clearing out of the deadwood.’  More importantly, the head of the agency needs to change it’s focus and direction, to move away from Cold War legacy things like signal intelligence back to old-fashioned field agents and counter-insurgency work.

I really don’t see Panetta doing more than filling the seat and filling out paperwork.  D.C. Buddy has a higher opinion of the man (knowing him a bit better as he does), and feels Panetta will help in getting $ and intelligence-related legislation through Congress.  But after Daschle, this is the next most disappointing pick for me.

Forgotten, but not yet gone…

Photo 1 (via Reuters):

Photo 2 (also via Reuters):

(President-elect Obama struggles to explain why allowance increases will not be part of the economic stimulus plan he proposes to Congress.)

(Via Matt Yglesias.)

Alan K. Ota reports for Congressional Quarterly today:

An early partisan skirmish is likely in the House next week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to move a rules package that would curb the GOP’s ability to derail legislation through a parliamentary maneuver it used on occasion over the past two years.

. . . A senior House Democratic aide said Pelosi, D-Calif., had not made a final decision on whether to move the two proposed rules changes when the 111th Congress convenes Tuesday, Jan. 6.

But Democratic leaders are definitely taking a hard look at preventing the minority party from scoring easy political points with motions to recommit a bill to committee with instructions to make contentious language changes and then report it back to the House “promptly.” In the outgoing Congress, “promptly’’ has meant an indefinite hold, because committees were not willing to adopt poison-pill amendments sponsored by the minority.

. . . “Republicans will still get a chance to make motions to recommit. But they would not be allowed to just kill bills in a way that was never intended,” said one Democratic aide.

This development was hailed as a breakthrough by behavioral psychologists studying learned helplessness, who look forward to analyzing Pelosi’s recent diet and other environmental influences to see if a similar shift in thinking can be provoked in Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

The coming Congress will be a case where those who pray for bipartisan peace are well advised to prepare for partisan war.  The Republicans clearly remember that they derailed the last Democratic president who had House and Senate majorities of his party simply by using every obstructive technique available to them.  Telling the GOP that this isn’t 1994 will do little good if they see the same weapons lying within reach — as the last two elections have shown, they’re very poor at seeing the downside to staying the course.

At a time when the country desperately needs action, Congress (and the incoming president) would be smart to realize that winning the cooperation of enough Republicans to succeed will be easier if you dismantle in advance the tools they would use to defeat you.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)