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An Open Letter TO 47 Republican Senators FROM Iran’s Hard-Liners

March 11, 2015

Dear senators:

Thank you for your letter of March 9 explaining your system of government. We were unfamiliar with the complexity of your laws. For three years we have been negotiating a nuclear energy agreement with your president. We now realize our mistake. As your letter makes clear, the authority to establish such agreements on behalf of your country rests with your Congress.

We are in your debt for this clarification. Moreover, your letter has prompted us to undertake a broader study of the American political system. What we have learned has opened our eyes. For 35 years, we have treated you as an adversary. Our intelligence agencies told us that your culture and your political system were radically different from ours. We now understand that we were misled. Your country is much like ours. Indeed, your Republican Congress is much like our revolutionary Islamic councils. We are brothers.

Your letter explains that our discussions with your president have been in vain because “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” which can easily be cast aside by a future president or Congress. Under your Constitution, as you point out, “the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.” Therefore, the ultimate authority to make and interpret your country’s policies resides with you, not with your president. As you note, “President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades.”

We were delighted to read this sentence. What you have described—a circle of overseers who work in perpetuity to restrain the president—is very familiar to us. Our president, like yours, is limited to two consecutive four-year terms. His powers are also severely circumscribed. He has a national security council, but he and his council do not establish our nation’s policies.

In our system, true power lies with the chamber that oversees the president. For you, this chamber is the Senate, controlled by your Republican caucus. For us, it is the Council of Guardians. Members of our council, like members of your Senate, serve six-year terms. The council may veto any legislation, which, in its judgment, violates our republic’s guiding body of law. For us, that body of law is Sharia.

Our intelligence agencies told us that in your country, the guiding document is your Constitution. Recently, however, we watched videos from your “Conservative Political Action Conference.” Several of your senators spoke there about the abomination of homosexual marriage and the importance of protecting religion. Our assessment is that your senators interpret your Constitution in accordance with the Christian Bible, just as our council applies our Constitution in the light of the Holy Quran. We particularly enjoyed the speech of your senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, who called on your government to fight for Christians abroad. This is in agreement with our own policy of coming to the aid of faithful Muslims everywhere.

We are in great admiration of Sen. Cruz. In our republic, he would be an Ayatollah Uzma. We appreciate his signature on your letter and his steadfastness in correcting your president. Many of us were dismayed to learn that Sen. Cruz was criticized in your country for withholding the government’s operating funds in order to block the implementation of a health care law. Some Americans even called the senator a hostage taker.

We also very much admire the principal author of your letter, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Sen. Cotton, like many of our young militiamen, served in combat in Iraq and believes that he is an instrument of God. Some may consider him too young to assert dominion over your country’s foreign policy, at 37 years of age and with only two years of political experience. But we in Iran appreciate his vigor. He reminds us of the young men who seized your embassy here in 1979, two years after he was born. Those brave young revolutionaries did not wait for guidance from their elders.

In Iran, all educational institutions are governed by our Cultural Revolution Council, which safeguards the faith of the people. We have been unable to locate such a council in your federal government. However, we recently learned that the state board of education in Sen. Cruz’s state, Texas, controls through its purchasing power the content of textbooks throughout your country. The board has used this power to limit the teaching of evolution and promote the celebration of your country as a Christian nation. Our cultural council protects Islam in the same way.

Our system, like yours, has its critics. Some portray our Council of Guardians as unelected ideologues who override the will of the people. The charge is absurd, as your own experience demonstrates. In your country’s three most recent elections, which together produced your Senate’s entire current membership, the other party’s nominees won 5 million more votes than yours did. Nevertheless, you control the chamber. The true will of the people, as you know, is to follow those of us who understand what is best.

Thank you once again for this enlightening exchange. Prompted by your letter, our council has decided to end the talks with your secretary of state and dismiss nuclear inspectors from our country. We look forward to working with you in the future on other matters of common interest, such as prayer, capital punishment, and troops in Iraq.

Sincerely,

Council of Guardians
The Islamic Republic of Iran

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2015/03/an_open_letter_to_47_republican_senators_from_iran_s_hard_liners_we_have.html

Who says Slate can't do humor???

Republicans Blame Obama For Tom Cotton Letter

Source: The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- Republicans, under fire for a letter signed by 47 senators to the leadership of Iran, said Tuesday that complaints about violating foreign policy convention should be leveled not at them, but at President Barack Obama.

GOP lawmakers spent much of Tuesday being pressed on why Senate party leadership went around the White House with an open letter warning Iran that any nuclear agreement may be undercut in the future by Congress or Obama's successor. Several Republicans sought to distance themselves from the letter, saying that while they may not agree with the direction of nuclear talks with Iran, it was the purview of the president to conduct them.

But those who support the letter -- even some who didn't add their names -- deflected the blame. If it weren't for Obama's failure to consult lawmakers about the negotiations, or his threatened veto of a proposed bill to give Congress the final vote on a nuclear agreement, senators wouldn't have had to speak out in the first place, they argued.

“I think that, no doubt, the fact that the president, you know, issued a veto threat on a very common-sense piece of legislation, probably evoked, you know, a good deal of passion,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Huffington Post Tuesday. Corker, who is leading the push for a veto-proof majority on the bill to grant Congress oversight of a nuclear agreement, did not sign letter, which was organized by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Nevertheless, he showed no signs of ill will toward his junior colleague.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/10/gop-obama-cotton-letter_n_6843204.html

Word to the 47 Republicans: The Logan Act

Technically, 18 U.S. Code, Section 953, “Private Correspondence with Foreign Governments."

Insomnia!

And I have to be at work in three-and-a-half hours! ARRRRRRRRRRGH!

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie in Ha'aretz: American Jews are angry with Netanyahu

Mar. 9, 2015 | 2:01 PM

I talked over the weekend with a longtime friend – a committed Jew, active in Jewish communal life, and a strong supporter of Israel. He calls himself an independent but votes mostly Republican. On U.S. President Barack Obama, he is wary and reserved; he voted for him once but for his opponent the other time. And my friend is very, very worried about the threat that Iran poses to Israel’s security.

When I asked for his thoughts on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, I was taken aback by his reaction. He was angry; furious, in fact. He saw the speech as a wildly inappropriate orgy of Obama-bashing. As an American, he was offended – and worried. Had it ever happened before, he asked, that a foreign leader spoke to our Congress and launched a direct attack on the American administration? I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, it had not.

A couple I know with more or less the same Jewish commitments and political views responded similarly. They had watched the speech and felt that members of Congress were being bullied by a foreign leader. True, the leader in this instance was from a place they love dearly, have visited often, and advocate for vigorously. And yes, they are concerned about the dangers posed by an Iranian bomb. But Netanyahu’s high-handed reprimand seemed out-of-place to them and the adoring responses more political than sincere. They saw the whole spectacle as an affront to American dignity. An American Congress with any self-respect, they said, should not tolerate being lectured in this manner.

And these were the Republicans. The Jewish activists who are Democrats that I spoke to – and most Jews are Democrats – were much tougher. While all are Israel supporters, they had a range of views about Iran. Some shared the fears of Netanyahu, some backed the position of the Obama administration, and some were simply unsure or undecided. But no one was happy with Netanyahu's speech. “Look at what Nancy Pelosi said,” one friend told me. “That’s what Democrats really think.” Pelosi, who possesses an impeccable pro-Israel record, had referred to the speech as “an insult to the intelligence of the United States.”

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.645963

Netanyahu is like one of our Republicans: He doesn't really give a shit about the future of his country, he just wants that sweet smell of reelection.

Ex-Fox host Eric Burns: Olbermann is Right, Fox News is a Cult, and Bill O’Reilly is a Liar

From today's Reliable Sources on CNN

Jeff Wise: My Crazy Theory About MH370 Went Viral {Spoiler: Putin Did It)

March 6, 2015 8:15 a.m.

You know that thing in movies when the romantic lead’s mousey best friend takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair? My pet theory about MH370 had that kind of moment last week. For the better part of a year, friends and relatives crossed the street to avoid having to hear about my weird, long Malaysia Airlines hypothesis. When it came to pitching editors and producers, I couldn’t get arrested. Then, on February 23, New York ran my article “How Crazy Am I to Think I Actually Know Where That Malaysia Airlines Plane Is?” and by Tuesday the story was getting picked up around the world. Soon I was booked on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Fox, and a bunch of international networks.

In 25 years of journalism, I’ve never had a story blow up like this. In one day, page views on my personal website went up tenfold, and my Kindle Single “The Plane That Wasn’t There” went from an Amazon ranking of 10,000 to 120. The biggest surprise wasn’t how many clicks the story was getting — I knew that a lot of people are interested in MH370 — but how positive the response was. I was expecting, frankly, to get roasted alive. Months ago, when I ran an early version of a part of my theory on my blog, it sparked a Reddit thread in which the typical comment was “I’m so furious I can’t even.”

This time, I guess, people were more willing to hear what I had to say — understandably. Come this Sunday, March 8, a year will have gone by without any debris washing ashore. For four months, high-tech ships have been scanning the seabed in vain. Something seems obviously fishy. The idea that a pretty outlandish set of circumstances might have led us to this place seems less hard to swallow. “A far-out theory from one of CNN’s chief commentators on the aviation disaster, science journalist Jeff Wise, has been circulated worldwide,” wrote News Corp Australia, “and has more credibility than you might think.”

Some of the feedback was out-and-out mean. RT, the Russian news outlet, suggested that I suffered from a mental affliction called “Putin Derangement Syndrome.” More surprisingly, the Independent Group, a loosely affiliated group of like-minded tech geeks that I’d been working with since March, kicked me out: A faction was outraged that I had published a hypothesis at odds with the IG’s “official” scenario put out in September. I don’t know why a person can’t recognize the potential viability of two contradictory hypotheses, but there you have it.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/my-crazy-theory-about-mh370-went-viral-worldwide.html

And here's the link to Wise's original, where he argues persuasively (he persuaded me, anyway) that Vladimirr Putin had the plane hijacked to Kazakhstan.

Madison (Wisconsin) Police Fatally Shoot Unarmed Black Teen Anthony Robinson