The Internet does it again:

Background here. The audition clips (examples here, here, and here) are nearly as haunting as the final performance.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

Saletan sees some signs:

His political advisers are hinting at a more aggressive strategy: portraying Republicans who oppose the legislation as opposing all of its benefits. In the Bush administration, this was standard practice.

Hard Truths From George Friedman:

Israel sees the American preoccupation in these other regions [Iran and IraAf-Pak and India], along with the current favorable alignment of forces in its region, as an opportunity both to consolidate and expand its power and to create new realities on the ground. One of these is building in East Jerusalem, or more precisely, using the moment to reshape the demographics and geography of its immediate region. The Israeli position is that it has rights in East Jerusalem that the United States cannot intrude on. The U.S. position is that it has interests in the broader region that are potentially weakened by this construction at this time.

Israel’s desire to do so is understandable, but it runs counter to American interests. The United States, given its overwhelming challenges, is neither interested in Israel’s desire to reshape its region, nor can it tolerate any more risk deriving from Israel’s actions. However small the risks might be, the United States is maxed out on risk. Therefore, Israel’s interests and that of the United States diverge. Israel sees an opportunity; the United States sees more risk.

No wonder he's popular abroad:

A new Gallup poll shows a bounce for the health care bill.

Massie admires the American system:

[S]ure, you could look at a year of grinding health-care debate, some of it tedious and some of it ridiculous, and complain that this shows how broken American politics is. But I think it may actually be the other way round: the system is neither irretrievably nor fundamentally broken and the United States, by dint of history and diversity, remains the great experimental, democratic melting pot.

The sad day - the day when we'll know something really has changed - is when big stuff happens in Congress and no-one cares. Happily that prospect still seems some way off.

Ben Smith:

Netanyahu gave a defiant speech yesterday, but Haaretz suggests it's accompanied with quiet concessions. Indeed, there's a theory (one of many) that Netanyahu's chest-thumping is in inverse proportion to private concessions.

Ackerman also writes up the speech.

YouTube defends itself against Viacom's persistent legal action over copyright:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (R) holds a pen given to her by US President Barack Obama after signing the healthcare insurance reform legislation during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington on March 23, 2010. By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

"This is a big fucking deal," - vice president Joe Biden, on HCR.

Andrew Brown worries about the ways in which abuse cases were silenced and covered up at low levels of the church - especially between 1970 and 1985.

There was no Vatican cover-up. Instead of one centrally ordered cover-up, there were hundreds of little local ones. They didn't require special regulations. They grew quite naturally out of the clerical culture. They worked by silence and omission rather than anything more obviously sinister. The scandal is going to be much worse as a result...

But the crucial line in Vatican investigator Mgr Charles Scicluna's evidence comes much earlier. He says that between 1975 and 1983, there was not a single case referred to his office from anywhere in the world. This is astonishing.

I'm sure he's telling the truth. But this should be scaring him out of his wits ...

My own view is that healthcare reform will play a minor role in November's elections - because of amnesia, and other events. But in so far as it does play a role, my hunch is that it will help Democrats. My belief is that when people absorb the details that people with pre-existing conditions will soon be able to get insurance, that no-one can get priced out of their current insurance plan by massive sudden premium hikes, and that lifetime limits on insurance are now over ... well, people will like it. Why would they not? And if Obama seizes the initiative on debt reduction and calls the GOP bluff on debt this summer and fall, he can outflank them on the right as well. Meanwhile people like him far more than they do the GOP.

More to the point: Obama can campaign on these things. And he and the Democrats can point plainly to all the GOP and say: they wanted no change; they tried to kill it all. If you still believe in change, vote for us. We delivered, we'll deliver again. The more determined the GOP is to argue that this will kill the Democrat vote in the fall, the less I believe them. If the economy is reviving by then, their obstructionism will fall even flatter.

Meep, meep.

Obama's favorable since November after the jump, compared with Romney's - and Palin's. Brutal:

Sam Harris sees science as a way to determine what is right and wrong. He is basically attacking the post-Nietzsche fact-value distinction:

Tom Ricks:

The line I am getting from Thiessen's defenders is that, Well, he criticized her, too, in his book. Let's see: One person is a reporter who worked alongside me the Wall Street Journal. The other was a flack for Jesse Helms and Rumsfeld. Who am I more likely to trust? It puzzles me that my old newspaper, The Washington Post, would hire Thiessen to write for its op-ed page. How many former Bush speechwriters does one newspaper need?

One nugget Tom dug out of Mayer's must-read demolition job:

Thiessen's account of the foiled Heathrow plot, for example, is "completely and utterly wrong," according to Peter Clarke, who was the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch in 2006.

AXA_EVOLUTION from TronicStudio on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: LikeCool)

Contra my column this week, Walt is confident that Obama's HCR victory will not boost his clout abroad:

To begin with, Obama’s No. 1 concern still has to be the U.S. economy. The Democrats are going to lose seats in the midterm elections, which will make pushing domestic reform efforts much harder. It might be tempting to focus on foreign policy, therefore, except that everyone knows Obama’s re-election hinges largely on getting Americans back to work. If the economy and especially employment turn around by 2011 he’s golden; if it doesn’t, he’s in trouble.

More importantly, there isn’t a lot of low-hanging fruit in foreign policy.

"When I get messages from people who want to be a part of this I ask back: what are you willing to sacrifice? ... I'm giving up my military rank, my unit—which to me is a family—my veterans' benefits, my health care, so what are you willing to sacrifice? They say freedom is not free, but it doesn't have to cost anything either. Jesus up on the cross did not have a party with all his major donors to raise money for his cause, his cross was free. Ghandi did not need three-course dinners and a cocktail party to get his message out. These are people who sacrificed their lives. For them it was hemlock, a cross, the bullet that shot Harvey Milk … it was not the size of their distribution list, but their message that endured...

When I heard Kathy Griffin was going to be a spokeswoman for Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I wondered about that. I have great respect for her as an advocate. But if [the Human Rights Campaign] thinks that having a rally at Freedom Plaza with a comedienne is the right approach, I have to wonder. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not a joking matter to me. To be at Freedom Plaza and not at the White House or Congress? Who are they trying to influence? I felt like they were just trying to speak to themselves. If that's the best the lobbying groups and HRC can do, then I don't know how these powerful groups are supposed to represent our community." - Dan Choi, after a short stint in jail.

He gets it. HRC never will.

Theocon George Weigel - surprise! -  insists that Benedict's letter demonstrates his "utter seriousness" in confronting abuse:

The Pope is quite aware of two facts of the global crisis: that it is far worse in other parts of society than it is in the Catholic Church today, and that the Catholic Church must nonetheless hold itself to a higher standard than others. Indeed, as one of the bright spots in this dark picture, Benedict’s letter notes that the Church’s efforts to come to grips with these problems within the household of faith — which have been more far-reaching than in any other institution or sector of society — have led others to look to the Catholic Church for guidance on how to address what is, in fact, a global plague.

Josh Green admits that he underestimated her:

In hindsight, my mistake is clear. I made the common media error of placing too much weight on public relations, and too little on legislative skill. Obama took care of the salesmanship, and Pelosi's underappreciated experience as whip has proved instrumental to her success. [...] Pelosi didn't strike me as an effective opposition leader, and I wouldn't have imagined that she'd be an effective Speaker. But she's adapted handily to the way Congress operates today. It isn't always pretty and it doesn't resemble the bipartisan days of yore. But after last night's vote, it's much harder to argue that it can't be effective. And it's impossible to argue that Pelosi herself can't be either.

Chait concurs, and points to a profile of Pelosi by Michelle Cottle - a piece that "really helps explain how [Pelosi] pulled this off."  Meanwhile, Jonathan Bernstein gives props to Harry Reid.

Sprung pivots off Klein:

Ezra Klein on the strange beast that is the health care reform bill:

It is a comprehensive reform with an incremental soul.

Reverse that formula, and you have Barack Obama: an incremental reformer with a comprehensive soul.

Mark Shea considers whether the pope will remove any bishops:

T'aint gonna happen. (Not that I don't wish it would some days. I long for the expulsion of toads like Mahony from their sees.) But the reality is that this Pope appears to be pursuing almost exactly the same course as JPII when it comes to dealing with idiot bishops. To be sure, he is far more zealous in seeing to it that pervert priests get the bum's rush. But as far as bishops go, he is as reluctant as JPII to treat them like middle management who work for him. [...T]he Pope is not the Supreme Maximum Leader who can run about treating brother bishops as mere underlings who work for him. If I'm right (and I'm pretty certain I am), the Pope feels himself very hindered by the Church's teaching on collegiality. [...] What's that? says John Q Public, "collegiality?".. And that, right there, is the source of the disconnect (since most people perceive the Pope as the CEO of Catholicism, Inc.)

Henry Farrell mocks pundits who exaggerate public approval or opposition.

The Dish's love of dogs collides with the Dish's love of facial hair. She doesn't look very happy:

These bulldogs, on the other hand, are probably quite happy.

Marc outlines them:

Democrats assume that the immigration debate will open the curtain on the Tea Party movement; health care will be child's play compared to the tantrums over the prospect of earned legalization and other measures. The overlap between the Tea Partiers and ethnocentric immigration restrictionists is huge, and even many Republicans worry that the embedded nativism in the movement, whether or not it is also racialized (as a proxy for being against Obama and his ilk) will come to the fore in a way that once again diminishes the fervor of right-leaning independents and energizes Hispanics.

But forget immigration even: the next two big presidential initiatives, domestically, at least, will be -- or should be -- easy political victories: reauthorizing but reforming the education law, and financial services reform.

Tax blogger Howard Gleckman has an unusual definition of "fun":

The odds are very high that Congress will enact a significant tax reform long before anyone ever pays the Cadillac tax. And unions are poised to kill it. Similarly, the Medicare tax will be hugely controversial. Plus it eliminates a major revenue option for those who want to find new taxes to help balance the budget.

In the end, I’m betting that nobody will pay these taxes in quite the way the new law requires. It will be fun, however, to see how they change.

Jonathan Bernstein can see the future:

[T]he main thing to expect is that Republicans will campaign against the health care system.  As they did with the economy from January 20, 2009 on, they will attribute every insurance premium hike, every medical error and every bureaucratic nightmare with insurance forms to the new law, beginning as soon after passage as they can.  Really -- someone gets a cough, and Fox News will run an hour-long special about how Obamacare caused it, complete with Beck's sobbing analysis of how the Progressives caused the Great Influenza and Sarah Palin's cutesy gibes at the liberalmedia for ignoring this critical story and picking on her (kids, wardrobe, diction, whatever).

They can try. But I think their creation of reality is making a few Fox Newsers a teensy but uncomfortable.

Dallas, Texas, 1.32 pm

"It reads like a robot was told to split the difference between David Brooks and Bill Kristol," - Alex Pareene on torture loving propagandist Marc Thiessen's latest op-ed.

Today on the Dish we continued to track commentary on the HCR victory. Marc Lynch, Seth Masket, Andrew, and a reader assessed Obama's skills. Readers gave props to Pelosi and praised Stupak.  Reihan and Ross warned about the impact of reform, Yglesias dashed Kristol's hopes to repeal HCR, and Packer sized up Newt's strategy. And we found out how reform can affect you.

Ongoing coverage of the pope's response to the abuse scandal here, here, and here. Jane Mayer tore apart Thiessen's book, Josh Marshall dissed DC group think, and TNR spotted some progress in education reform. A US general blamed gay soldiers for genocide, a congressman compared HCR to communist dictatorships, and Fred Barnes got a Von Hoffman. Recession view here, beard blogging here, and particularly great MHB here.

-- C.B.

Marc Lynch hopes:

For most of the last year, I've been torn between two general views of Obama's Middle East policy. One says that he's got no strategy, that his team is making things up as it goes, reacting to events, and has no clear idea of how to achieve his lofty goals. The other says that he's been playing a long game, keeping his eye on the long-term objective while others get lost in the tactics and the public theatrics.  I've gone back and forth, hoping it's the latter while seeing way too many signs of the former.  I still don't know which is right, but last night's  passage of health care reform suggests that maybe, just maybe, his administration really does know how to play a long game... in the Middle East as well as on domestic priorities.

Linkage, strategy, linkage. Does Obama have more clout now to deal with Netanyahu or Putin?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pauses while speaking during the 2010 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference March 22, 2010 in Washington, DC. Secretary Clinton spoke to the pro-Israel lobbying group about the relationship between the United States and Israel and issues facing the Middle East. By Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.

Support for nuclear power hits a new high.

TNC lists his:

Man, looking back over this list, I really need to read some books about white people. My canon is culturally biased and reflects the perspective of sheltered African-American who is embarrassingly ignorant of the White Experience.

Heh. Friedersdorf also plays along. Ezra Klein places periodicals and blogs above books.

Yesterday Newt Gingrich outlined the Republican strategy going forward, saying that the Democrats “will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for forty years” by signing civil rights into law. Leave aside the deep cynicism of this view of racial equality: Gingrich was expressing the Republican belief that health-care reform will be so unpopular that it will reduce the Democrats to minority status for two generations.

Ross contemplates whether Republicans should have proposed a more limited plan after the Massachusetts upset:

[The Republicans] may well be vindicated on the politics this November. But as far as the policy goes … well, from a conservative perspective, it’s hard to see how at least floating some sort of post-Massachusetts compromise could have produced a worse outcome than the bill the House passed yesterday.

Ross, your party isn't interested in policy. Or government. They're about self-expression in a cocooned ideology. I wish they were all like you. But they're not.

Scott Lucas reports:

A reliable EA source confirms that Hasan Lahouti, the grandson of Hashemi Rafsanjani and son of Faezeh Hashemi, was arrested by Iranian authorities at Imam Khomeini airport this morning. While the story broke in Fars, which has been known to post disinformation, it is also being carried in Tabnak and Alef.  Lahouti, who is studying at a British university, was returning to Iran for the Nowruz holidays when he was detained. There has been no comment from Rafsanjani or Faezeh Hashemi. A few weeks ago, Lahouti was interviewed by BBC Persian, and he criticised the Government’s harassment of his mother and grandfather.

Such harassment was recently caught on tape.

A reader writes:

Virtually all the reactions today have focused on President Obama’s grit, determination, skill and patience — and I have no quarrel with any of that. But I don’t think Nancy Pelosi is getting her due today. I’m a progressive Democrat in California, and have butted heads with Pelosi on several issues over the past three decades. For most of that time, I was not impressed. In the past two months, I have been very impressed.

For Jewish liberals under 40, the entire mindset of previous generations seems to be cracking open. Jake Weisberg:

If the stupidity of the settlements is obvious to most American Jews, it is not to the majority of Israelis, who have chosen a prime minister who represents the rejection of a two-state solution. At the same time, American liberals have recoiled from the pattern of miscalculation and inhumanity—there is no other word for it—in Israel's attempts to protect itself from Hezbollah and Hamas.

A reader writes:

I posted an ad on craiglist for an $8.55 minimum-wage, part-time person to work at our dog kennel in Snohomish, Washington. The job is not glamorous. Picking up poop, walking dogs cleaning diarrhea, etc.  I received over 245 resumes in just a couple of days. Everybody from the high school kid up to the unemployed 60 year old. It's simply amazing how many people are dying to get even a low paying job like this.

Douthat cautions:

Barring an extraordinary economic boom, the American situation will soon require the slow and painful restructuring of the welfare state that liberals have spent decades building. This environment may or may not lead to a revival of D.L.C.-style centrism among the Democrats, but at the very least it’s hard to see it proving congenial to further adventures in sweeping social legislation. I’ve talked to liberals who seem to understand this: The reckoning is coming, they allow, and the theory of health care reform has always been to get everybody inside the barrel before it goes over the falls. (I’d lay good money that this is Peter Orszag’s view of the matter.) But seen in this light, the health care victory looks less like the dawn of a bold new era, and more like the final lurch forward before a slow retreat.

Or rather, surely, to embark on long-term, dead serious fiscal reform, while making sure the poorest and those most struggling in the barrel are kept on as equals, not cast aside as burdens. In the big fiscal task ahead, we'll need a sense of fairness as well as strictness if we are to persuade a majority - rich an poor - of necessary but painful change.

Or did I just lapse into total Disraeliism?

Who could possibly make that Ben Folds-ish improv more charming? Ben Folds:

Clive Crook is upset:

Thanks to the unrewarded exertions of conservative Democrats, this health care plan has moderate, centrist ambitions. It is not socialism in disguise. Shame on liberal Republicans (if there are any) for failing to support it. Even so, the Democrats' claims for the reform have been dishonest in one crucial respect, and most voters understood this. It is right to provide guaranteed health insurance, but wrong to claim this great prize could be had, in effect, for nothing. Broadly based tax increases and fundamental reform to health care delivery will be needed to balance the books. Denying this was a mistake. What was worse--an insult to one's intelligence, really--was to argue as Obama has in the past few days that this reform was, first and foremost, a cost-reducing initiative, and a way to drive down premiums.

The Economist makes some related points:

A reader writes:

When on I saw the NYT headline, "House will not use ‘deem and pass’ to pass health care”, I had a thought: What if it was all a ruse?  What if Pelosi and Slaughter know the right wing so well that they knew if they dropped a hint that they might use it to pass the health care bill, the right blogosphere and all their friends would jump on it like it was a piece of red meat thrown to the lions. 

So while Peggy Noonan was busy writing a column for the WSJ entitled “Demon Pass” and excoriating the Dems for even thinking about it ...