Today marks the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U. S. embassy in Tehran by factions of the revolution that overthrew the shah. President Obama has issued a statement on the occasion which I will reproduce in full here:

Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice.

This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.

Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.

I find the statement strangely detached. In every action and statement, including its non-responsive retort this very week to the offer to end its nuclear enrichment program made by the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, the leaders of the Iranian government have demonstrated that they have already made their choice. Ray Tayekh of the Council on Foreign Relations states the situation quite plainly:

Dealing with Iran has always been a complicated enterprise with moral hazards. The persistent mistake that the West has made is to place the nuclear issue above all other concerns. The Iran problem is not limited to illicit nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal domestic repression. Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions are the only source of disagreement. Iran’s hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values.

Iran’s support for terrorist organizations and domestic repression are manifest this very day. Its leaders have made their choice and the time for counter-offers is over while the time for consequences has arrived.

We should implement consequences for Iran as stern as we can make them, non-violent in nature but punitive in quality. We should muster all of the permanent members of the Security Council to participate in these measures but be prepared to proceed without them. A peaceful, prosperous, and just Iran is in Russian and Chinese interests as it is in ours and, if they elect to support tyranny in Iran, Russia and China should be made aware that this latest tyranny in Iran will eventually end and the Iranian people will know who supported the tyrants and who opposed them.

Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins have written a piece for Brookings titled “Five Myths About Our Land of Opportunity.”  None of it’s new to those who’ve paid much attention to these things in recent years. What’s interesting, though, is the seeming contradiction in Myths 1 and 4.

1. Americans enjoy more economic opportunity than people in other countries.

Actually, some other advanced economies offer more opportunity than ours does. For example, recent research shows that in the Nordic countries and in the United Kingdom, children born into a lower-income family have a greater chance than those in the United States of forming a substantially higher-income family by the time they’re adults.

If you are born into a middle-class family in the United States, you have a roughly even chance of moving up or down the ladder by the time you are an adult. But the story for low-income Americans is quite different; going from rags to riches in a generation is rare. Instead, if you are born poor, you are likely to stay that way. Only 35 percent of children in a family in the bottom fifth of the income scale will achieve middle-class status or better by the time they are adults; in contrast, 76 percent of children from the top fifth will be middle-class or higher as adults.

[...]

4. If we want to increase opportunities for children, we should give their families more income.

Of course money is a factor in upward mobility, but it isn’t the only one; it may not even be the most important. Our research shows that if you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, you need to complete high school (at a minimum), work full time and marry before you have children. If you do all three, your chances of being poor fall from 12 percent to 2 percent, and your chances of joining the middle class or above rise from 56 to 74 percent. (We define middle class as having an income of at least $50,000 a year for a family of three.)

Many American families need supplements to their incomes in the form of food stamps, affordable housing and welfare payments. But such aid should not be given unconditionally. First, the public is concerned that unconditional assistance will end up supporting those who are not trying to help themselves. Second, new research in economics and psychology has shown that individuals frequently behave in ways that undermine their long-term welfare and can benefit from a government nudge in the right direction.

And third, policies with strings attached have had considerable success. One example is the 1996 welfare reform law, which required most adult recipients to get jobs, and dramatically increased employment and lowered overall child poverty. In the midst of a recession, we can’t expect everyone to work. But social policies will be more successful if they encourage people to do things that bring longer-term success.

What this seems to say is that “opportunity” is not what keeps the children of the poor from economic progress.  Rather, it’s the passing along of poor habits and values.

The poor, by and large, are those who have made bad decisions:  Dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock, and been satisfied with government supported subsistence living.  Their children, in turn, are trapped in the same pattern of behavior by being surrounded by a culture that sees these things as the norm and actively discourages responsible behavior.

This point is emphasized when one looks at the part I omitted from Myth 1:

The United States is exceptional, however, in the opportunity it offers to immigrants, who tend to do comparatively well here. Their wages are much higher than what they might have earned in their home countries. And even if their pay is initially low by American standards, their children advance quite rapidly.

And Myth 3:

3. Immigrant workers and the offshoring of jobs drive poverty and inequality in the United States.
Although immigration and trade are often blamed, a more important reason for our lack of progress against poverty and our growing inequality is a dramatic change in American family life. Almost 30 percent of children now live in single-parent families, up from 12 percent in 1968. Since poverty rates in single-parent households are roughly five times as high as in two-parent households, this shift has helped keep the poverty rate up; it climbed to 13.2 percent last year. If we had the same fraction of single-parent families today as we had in 1970, the child poverty rate would probably be about 30 percent lower than it is today.

Among women under age 30, more than half of all births now occur outside marriage, driving up poverty and leading to more intellectual, emotional and social problems among children.

So, again, the problem is behavioral rather than one of raw “opportunity” in any macro sense.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that those who came up poor had the same advantages as the children of the wealthy and the upper middle class.  The latter were much more likely to be surrounded by role models that steered them in the right direction.  Further, there are huge advantages conferred by wealth and connections, such as a much greater likelihood of getting a good primary and secondary education and not only going on to college but a much higher propensity of going to a “good” school that opens up doors much harder to walk through for those who went to Podunk State Directional University.

This is interesting, too: “we have seen a growing tendency among well-educated men and women to marry each other, exacerbating income disparities.”  My strong guess is that well-educated men have always married bright, socially adept women.  But those sort of women are now likely to be college educated.  Further, beyond the social advantages marrying that sort of women always brought, the fact that most married women continue to work outside the home even after they have children means that there are economic incentives as well.

UPDATE:  Dave Schuler amplifies my point above about culture:

Many of the poor live in nearly self-contained communities and their exposure to the breadth of possibilities in the United States is really quite limited. There are places where the only lives that the kids can imagine for themselves are pimp, prostitute, hustler, professional athlete, performer, or cop. Becoming an accountant or a hospital administrator is unimaginable.

As part of their ongoing effort to cement George Orwell’s reputation by making him the most accurate prophet in history, the British Home Office is now investigating the possiblity of forcing every Pub in Britain to replace pint glasses with plastic pint cups:

The BBC reported recently that the British Home Office is seeking a new design for pint glasses that it hopes may reduce the number of incidents in which people attack each other with pint glasses. According to official statistics, 5,500 people are attacked with glasses and bottles every year in England and Wales. (Probably lots more in Scotland, though maybe they just use swords.) This public safety emergency has spurred the government into action, seeking a design that cannot be used as a weapon.

Designers say they are considering two basic approaches: (1) plastic, or (2) something else. First, glasses could be made from plastic, or could be coated with it so that the glass would not shatter into sharp pieces if broken. Second, “[w]e could do something more radical,” said one designer, “by looking at the whole shape and substance of the pint – we could come up with something that is completely different [from] glass.” Seems a lot like the first approach, and it wasn’t clear what he had in mind. But he continued: “Remember that years ago people used to drink out of pewter tankards. It could be quite a significant paradigm shift.” That’s a great idea – I’d much rather be clubbed to death with a pewter tankard.

As Cory Doctorow notes, this is an essential piece of legislation

Because, you know, most bar-brawlers are fundamentally upset at the pint, not the people around them, and if they can’t smash a pint sleeve, they will contain their anger and not use a chair, bottle, or imposing scarred forehead.

Indeed.

If true this:

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

would deal with a major problem in the logistics of an attack by Israel on Iran, something I’ve been pointing out for the last four or five years. It still wouldn’t necessarily get the U. S. off the hook since the Israelis would still need to fly through airspace controlled by the U. S. but it would certainly make things easier.

An attack by Israel against Iran would be terribly risk and possibly even counter-productive. However, the combination of Israel’s terrible vulnerability to weapons of mass destruction, Iran’s continuing lies and misdirections, Ahmadinejad’s foolhardy rhetoric, and the international community’s manifest inability to deal with the situation brings us nearer to the brink seemingly with each passing day.

A British judge has ruled against a blogger who sought an injunction against having his secret identity published in the Times.

Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled yesterday.  In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of the NightJack blog. The officer, Richard Horton, 45, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, had sought an injunction to stop The Times from revealing his name.

[...]

In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”. The judge also said that even if the blogger could have claimed he had a right to anonymity, the judge would have ruled against him on public interest grounds.

[...]

The action arose after Patrick Foster, a Times journalist, identified the NightJack blogger “by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information on the internet,” the judge said.

It’s hard to argue against Eady’s reasoning here. The journalist found Horton’s identity through legitimate means and there was a genuine public interest in learning who this cop was who was revealing all manner of juicy inside details about the police force.

Gawker’s John Cook agrees, arguing, “nobody ought to have a right or privilege to publish whatever they please without the consequences of their ideas redounding to them” and “the notion that anonymous publishers have a right, in perpetuity, to keep their identities a secret—or that people who learn their identities are honor-bound not to reveal them—is nonsense.”  He adds, “There’s nothing inherently wrong with blogging anonymously … though some motivations are more cowardly than others. And much good can and has come from people who are free to write the truth without bearing the consequences. But the decision to do so carries with it certain exceedingly obvious risks, and when the jig is up, it’s best for anonybloggers to endure the scrutiny with dignity rather than complain that people who had no obligation or interest in preserving their anonymity have behaved as such.”

That’s all right, both as a matter of law and practicality. And I agree with Don Surber that “If it might cost you your job or your reputation, then you ought not be doing it.”

I would add, however, that some motivations for revealing the identity of anonymous (or, as in most of these cases) pseudonymous bloggers are more noble than others.  In this case, Foster had a perfectly valid reason for wanting to inform the public as to who this BlackJack fellow was.

UPDATE: Guy Herbert notes that, while Horton has deleted the NightJackblog in order to save his career, “deleting from public knowledge what has once been on the web is difficult.”  He provides a delicious sampling of what was once there, a posting titled “A Survival Guide for Decent Folk.” Among the long list of tips for those taken into police custody:

Admit Nothing
To do anything more than lock you up for a few hours we need to prove a case. The easiest route to that is your admission. Without it, our case may be a lot weaker, maybe not enough to charge you with. In any case, it is always worth finding out exactly how damning the evidence is before you fall on your sword. So don’t do the decent and honourable thing and admit what you have done. Don’t even deny it or try to give your side of the story. Just say nothing. No confession and CPS are on the back foot already. They forsee a trial. They fear a trial. They are looking for any excuse to send you home free.

Keep your mouth shut
Say as little as possible to us. At the custody office desk a Sergeant will ask you some questions. It is safe to answer these. For the rest of the time, say nothing.

Always always always have a solicitor
Duh. No brainer this one. Unless you know 100% for sure that your mate the solicitor does criminal law and is good at it, ask for the Duty Solicitor. They certainly do criminal law and they are good at it. Then listen to what the solicitor says and do it. Their job is to get you off without the Cops or CPS laying a glove on you if at all possible. It is what they get paid for. They are free to you. There is no down side. Now decent folks think it makes them look like they have something to hide if they ask for a solicitor. Irrelevant. Going into an interview without a solicitor is like taking a walk in Tottenham with a big gold Rolex. Bad things are very likely to happen to you. I wouldn’t do it and I interview people for a living.

Actively complain about every officer and everything they do
Did they cuff you when they brought you in? Were they rude to you? Did they racially or homophobically abuse you? Didn’t get fed? Cell too cold? You are decent folk who don’t want to make a fuss but trust me, it pays to whinge and no matter how trivial and / or poorly founded your complaint there are people who will uncritically listen to you and try and prove the complaint on your behalf. Some of them are even police officers. Nothing like a complaint to muddy the waters and suggest that you are only in court because the vindictive Cops have a grudge against you. Far fetched? Wait until your solicitor spins it in court and you come over as Ghandi.

Show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it
You think that if you are a difficult, unpleasant, sneering, unco-operative and rude things will go badly for you and you will be in more trouble. No sirree Bob. It seems that in fact the worse you are, the easier things will go for you if, horror of horrors, you do end up convicted. Remember to fake a drink problem if you haven’t developed one as a result of dealing with us already. Magistrates and Judges do seem to like the idea that you are basically good but the naughty alcohol made you do it. They treat you better. Crazy I know but true.

One can see where Horton’s employers might have preferred him not offering up such tips for the public in his spare time.

I am usually loath to comment on the domestic politics of countries other than my own but, considering the more general implications of the story, I felt that the ongoing problems being encountered by Britain’s Labour Party were worth a mention:

June 7 (Bloomberg) — Gordon Brown’s Labour Party was bracing for defeat in elections for the European Parliament as more lawmakers from Britain’s ruling party called on the prime minister to step down.

“Can we get unity under the current leadership? I don’t think we can,” Charles Falconer, the former lord chancellor in charge of the judiciary, said on the BBC’s “Politics Show” in London today. “We need to debate that issue. And that may require a change in leader.”

Six ministers left Brown’s Cabinet last week, one calling for him to resign, as Labour trailed Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in voting for local government officials in England. With less than a year before the next general election, Labour lawmakers are questioning whether Brown is the man to lead them.

“A majority of Labour MPs, whether they are prepared to express it or not, feel he needs to go,” Siobhain McDonagh said on Sky News.

The rebellion so far is short of the level needed to force Brown into a leadership contest. Unless Brown quits, 70 of Labour’s 350 members of Parliament would have to publicly call for him to go before the party would consider replacing him.

Labour has been running into problems for some time now. First, Tony Blair, the man who put Labour in the driver’s seat, was forced to resign. Blair’s decline was partly a result of his support for what is in the United Kingdom an even less popular war than it is here, partly because of his health problems, partly because of the ambitions of the man who was to succeed him, Gordon Brown, and partly, I suspect, because of a rising level of dissatisfaction among Britons.

Since then Labour’s problems have been many. Not only do they own the UK’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan but they own Britain’s economic woes as well, much in the way Republicans are blamed for both of these here.

Labour has been rocked by a scandal involving the abuse of official expenses by MP’s.

Just a few days ago Labour took major losses in local elections, cabinet ministers have resigned, and, despite his pledges to fight on, Gordon Brown’s days as prime minister are clearly numbered.

Undoubtedly the inference that some will draw from all of this is the vileness of Labour but I don’t think that’s the right conclusion to draw. I have no doubt that the Tories in their turn will be equally vile. As Ambrose Bierce put it a conservative is “a statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.”

No, I think the more proper conclusion to draw is that there is no substitute for good governance. Not party. Not ideology. Not purity of heart or courage or anything else. No party has a permanent lock on power or any right to power. Ultimately, in a representative democracy when any party fails to govern prudently, it will lose power. He who has ears let him hear!

UPDATE (James Joyner): I agree completely.  See my New Atlanticist post “Britain’s Brown on Borrowed Time.”

Despite an embarrassing drubbing of his Labour Party at the polls and the resignation of several key ministers, the UK’s Gordon Brown vows “I will not waver, I will not walk away, I will finish the work.”

As I explain in my New Atlanticist post “Britain’s Brown on Borrowed Time,” that’s unlikely to happen.  Nor should it.

The bottom line is that Brown isn’t doing a good job of governing.  He’s been holding on for dear life for a considerable period, hoping to ride out the rough patch, and things are only getting worse. And, as The Spectator’s Alex Massie points out, this is not mere politics:

John Hutton’s successor as Secretary of State for Defence [Bob Ainsworth, it turns out -JJ] will be the fifth person to hold that job in the last five years. No wonder there’s a total lack of continuity at the MoD. This is, to put it mildly, no way to treat what should be one of the most important jobs in government. And this at a time when, however fitfully, we’ve been fighting two wars.

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan declares, ” This is how governments die in Britain – a country where elections are not held to a fixed calendar.”  Despite his warnings against Tory hubris, Steve Hynd declares “it’s been clear for some time now that David Cameron would be the next PM whenever the general election was finally called. Today’s disaster for Labour will hurry that day along.”

More at the link.

The political financial crisis came to a head yesterday in Europe, with Hungary begging for help from its fellow EU members under the peril of a new “iron curtain” dividing the Continent and getting matter-of-factly rejected.  My New Atlanticist piece on the controversy, “Economic ‘Iron Curtain’ Dividing Europe?” concludes:

The present crisis has had the salutory effect of splashing a bit of cold water on the enthusiasm for a united Europe. Considering the state of perpetual war that existed for centuries, that comity that has existed for the last six decades is truly remarkable. Even the EU itself has come a long way from the days when it was a mere energy cooperative. But the fact remains that “Europe” remains a relatively vague construct in comparison to the very real forces which tie the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Hungary together as nation-states.

Much more at the link.

In both a Guardian op-ed and a speech in Mumbai, both today, British foreign secretary David Milibrand says that the “war on terror” was a bad idea.

In my New Atlanticist essay, “Time to Lose War on Terror?” I disagree.

In a New Atlanticist essay “How Special is the Special Relationship?” I take a look at claims that the US-UK relations are in bad shape and argue that, while the US may need an attitude adjustment, our friends across the pond need to step up their contribution to the partnership.

While a Rumsfeldian dismissiveness and talk of “work-arounds” is decidedly unhelpful in building soft power, the underlying frustration is at least understandable.  It requires an enormous amount of effort to build multi-national consensus on something as big as going to and prosecuting a war.  For a variety of reasons, that’s a good thing.  If, however, the end result of the process is a substantial hamstringing of options with very little to show for it in the way of additional resources, it’s not entirely unreasonable to wonder if it was all worthwhile.

Comments welcome, especially at the full post.

Ezra Klein wrote an interesting post Wednesday arguing that extending life through medical intervention is expensive and that tradeoffs and rationing have to be made.  The only question, then, is how much value is placed on that extra unit of health care and who’s making the valuation.

The inverse of the American health care system is the British health care system. Where we are the priciest, they are the cheapest. We refuse to make any explicit decisions, instead denying care based on criteria that makes the denial the fault of the patient rather than the system. You don’t have enough money for the treatment. They make all their decisions explicit, relying on criteria that makes the denial the fault of the system’s judgments. We don’t think that treatment worth the cost. Their system gives patients someone to be angry at. Ours has no connection to value. Their system creates more blame, ours engenders more tragedy.

What’s at issue here is rationing. In 2006, adjusted for purchasing power, the United Kingdom spent $2,760 per person on health care. America spent $6,714. It’s a difference of almost $4,000 per person, spread across the population. That’s $4,000 that can go into wages, or schools, or defense, or luxury, or mortgage-backed securities. And there’s no evidence that Britain’s aggregate outcomes are noticeable worse. But they do say “no” a lot more than we do. Their system refuses to pay high prices for medical technologies and pharmaceuticals that it judges insufficiently effective. They’ve forced themselves to make choice, because they have something we don’t have: A global budget.

I never found time to respond to this but several others have.  Andrew Sullivan has the most poignant retort:

One reason I’m a conservative is the British National Health Service. Until you have lived under socialism, it sounds like a great idea. It isn’t misery – although watching my parents go through the system lately has been nerve-wracking – but there is a basic assumption. The government collective decides everything. You, the individual patient, and you, the individual doctor, are the least of their concerns. I prefer freedom and the market to rationalism and the collective. That’s why I live here.

(It’s also, incidentally, a rejoinder to the hordes who question Sully’s right to call himself a “conservative.”) Steve Bainbridge agrees and wonders why Sully voted for Obama, since he’s much more likely to lead us in the direction of nationalized health care than McCain would have been.   Ron Chusid, meanwhile, agrees in theory with Andrew but adds, “Pragmatically we cannot ignore these differences in spending, especially considering the large number of American who are uninsured or under-insured.”

Noah Pollack, though, questions the premise of similar outcomes in the US and UK.  He cites David Gratzer, who in turn cites a Lancet Oncology study:

* The American five-year survival rate for prostate cancer is 99 percent, the European average is 78 percent, and the Scottish and Welsh rate is close to 71 percent. (English data were incomplete.)

* For the 16 different types of cancer examined in the study, American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent, compared with only 47 percent for European men. Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.

* American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared with 56 percent for European women. For women, only five European countries have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.

Ironically, Ezra has managed to engender a large cross-blog debate about the comparative merits of the US and UK systems despite his longstanding campaign to establish that as a canard. For example, his recent post THE CANADA/ENGLAND FALLACY correctly notes,

It’s natural to look to England. It’s just not all that useful. We will never have a situation in this country where you are not allowed to purchase your own care on the private market. It won’t happen, it’s not under consideration, and it’s not a plausible outcome of any plans being seriously examined. Conversely, something like France, where the government provides base insurance and the private market offers supplementary products, or Germany, where heavily-regulated non-profits compete with each other to offer coverage, is fairly likely.

While extremely dubious of further nationalizing our system, I agree that a UK-style system is incredibly unlikely to emerge here and we’re much more likely to have a public-private hybrid that simply leans ever more public.   I’m not philosophically opposed to the idea, since health care isn’t a pure market (there’s little elasticity of demand, for one thing) and the current system is incredibly inefficient.  But I do fear disencentivizing research and the provision of cutting edge resources and the general DMV-ization of health care.

UPDATE (Dave Schuler)

I’ve written a lot on this subject over the years but my observations are too long for the comments section and too intrusive to include in the update. I’ve put those observations, along with a substantial bibliography of my old posts on this subject, at The Glittering Eye.

Photo by Flickr user Erik K Veland under Creative Commons license.

The Scottish Nationalist Party took one of Labour’s safest seats in a rather dramatic and unexpected upset that marks yet another setback for British prime minister Gordon Brown:

Unfortunately for Labour, Glasgow is only the latest in a string of woeful electoral performances for the party under Mr Brown’s leadership. His party lost the London mayoralty to the Conservatives; it was routed in local-council elections; was beaten in a by-election in Crewe and Nantwich, a once-safe-Labour northern seat; and finished fifth, behind the extremist British National Party, in another by-election in Henley. Perhaps even more worryingly, in national opinion polls Labour is flatlining: it is roughly 20 points behind the Tories, in the sort of polling territory that governments find it very hard to come back from.

But Glasgow East—one of the most deprived constituencies in the country—is undoubtedly the worst humiliation of the lot. Glasgow’s east end has been a Labour stronghold for almost as long as the Labour Party has existed. Mr Brown once wrote an admiring biography of an early local socialist MP. Shallow anti-Scottish prejudice of the kind perhaps evident in some bits of England cannot explain why its voters have turned against him and his party so violently. The big question being asked after the Glasgow defeat—though it was already being asked before—is whether Labour will now ditch Mr Brown, replacing him with a new leader and prime minister.

Not all of the Labour Party’s problems can be chalked up to Brown: he inherited the job from a prime minister who badly miscalculated by supporting the War in Iraq (which, unlike in the United States, was unpopular in Britain from the start and justified to the public to a much greater degree than in the U.S. on the basis of Saddam Hussein’s WMD ambitions), the economy in Britain isn’t that much better than it is here, and Europe broadly speaking has made a turn rightward in recent years. But really the question surrounding Brown’s departure from Downing Street is not if but when: will he fall victim to a palace coup like Margaret Thatcher did after the poll tax fiasco, or survive long enough to be booted out by the voters and David Cameron’s Conservatives?

Barack Obama would easily win the presidency if the citizens of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom were doing the voting rather than Americans, Gallup reports.

Unless I’ve missed something, Europeans aren’t eligible to vote in our elections.   These surveys nonetheless provide interesting insights into how different cultures view things.   Gallup’s Zsolt Nyiri, Frank Newport, and Jeffrey Jones provide this analysis:

In each of these countries, Gallup recorded in 2007 abysmally low approval of U.S. leadership — just 8% approval in Germany, 9% in France, and 20% in the United Kingdom. Much of this likely stems from opposition to the U.S.-led Iraq war, but it could also result from U.S. policy on global warming or reported human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay.

Obama’s current strength in these countries may be an outcome of the early publicity surrounding his nomination, particularly the fascinating and dramatic primary contest between Obama and the well-known Sen. Hillary Clinton. As a result, during much of the spring McCain was not the subject of nearly the international media attention that Obama was. It is possible, therefore, that McCain could gain some as the visibility of the two U.S. presidential candidates in the worldwide media becomes more equal throughout the next three months. Still, there is no question that Obama has become a “rock star” of sorts in these countries, and whether it is simple name recognition or an awareness of and agreement with his policy positions, he is clearly the favorite at this point.

Of course, Europeans almost always prefer Democrats to Republicans.  Bill Clinton was beloved in Europe even during his lowest points in American public esteem and Ronald Reagan was thought a buffoon across the pond despite his tremendous popularity at home.

The United Kingdom is seriously considering doing away with prison sentences for scores of “lesser” crimes, Home Affairs Correspondent Tom Whitehead reports for the Daily Express.

Hundreds of thousands of crooks could escape jail every year under the proposals by advisers to the Lord Chief Justice. Those sentenced to short, sharp shock jail terms of less than 12 months for “less serious offences” – including burglary – should be handed community penalties instead, they said. Even those who are likely to reoffend could walk free from court if it is believed they will go on to commit “non-serious offences”.

[...]

More than 292,000 burglaries were reported to police last year. Burglars are locked up for an average of six months – but the Sentencing Advisory Panel said unpaid work or a curfew could be a better way of punishing them.

The panel – which advises the Sentencing Guidelines Council, chaired by the Lord Chief Justice – said short custodial sentences are not as effective at rehabilitating offenders. But it stressed that, rather than suggesting longer jail terms, it was saying that “there may be better alternatives to short custodial sentences”. The panel’s review said: “A presumption in favour of a community order is most likely to be appropriate in relation to the less serious offences of theft and dishonesty, burglary and motoring offences, where there may be clear advantages in a sentence in the community.”

I got the story from Ace, who quips, “I assume such penalties will include standing outside doing make-work like picking up trash in neighborhoods, becoming familiar with local houses and security systems and blind spots and police presence.”

Really, though, I think they’re on the right track.  Burglars, especially repeat offenders, likely should be taken off the streets.  But it’s not at all clear that subjecting drunk drivers, drug offenders, and minor white collar criminals to the horrors of the prison system is a net plus for society.

Today’s Outrage of the Day on the right side of the blogosphere regards this latest bit from Barack Obama, regarding the need for our educational system to get better at teaching other languages.

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me.

This, to me, seems pretty uncontroversial. I personally consider it a woeful deficiency in my education that I speak only the barest smattering of French and Spanish–certainly not enough to carry on a conversation–and am completely ignorant of any Chinese or Japanese. Indeed, I recall a time not too long ago when conversatives lamented the fact that multilinguism, once a foundation of what was considered a well-rounded education, had fallen to the wayside. Not anymore, apparently, as here’s a quick roundup from around the right side of the blogosphere:

• Glenn Reynolds: “Barack Obama: Europeans are cooler than Americans.”

• Tom Maguire: “Whoa. Reporting live from the United Kingdom, I have been assured that the typical Brit does not speak many (i.e., any) languages other than English and a smattering of American. Apparently Obama is aware that culturally, Britain is not part of Europe, and he assumes we know it as well.”

• Gateway Pundit: “Obama is quite embarrassed that Americans are so boorish and refuse to speak French while traveling abroad. It’s so uncouth.”

My OTB Colleague Dave Schuler has some more sensible comments on this at his own blog:

I’m a language junkie. I’m fluent in several and conversant in a number of others. But for Americans that’s a hobby and an eccentricity not a necessity. Many Americans can travel 1,000 miles in any direction and not find that even their knowledge of Spanish (or any other language other than English) is not particularly useful to them, other than in communicating with workmen they may employ.

I agree with him that in one sense, it’s not necessary to speak another language in the United States. That sense being a pure, practical one. But there are other benefits to learning a language. For one, as Obama suggested, it provides a competitive advantage for business. Americans may not travel much, but lots of folks from other countries travel to America. Even if those people speak English, there can be business advantages to being able to speak with them in their own language.

Additionally, from my multilingual friends I am assured that speaking other languages is helpful for trying to understand other cultures and ways of thinking–which is a good skill for any educated person to have. A broader understanding of ideas fosters creativity and innovation.

Frankly, all this seems to be is a pathetic attempt to feed the “Barack Obama is Unamerican” narrative. A narrative that, I might add, has the result of making Americans sound like ignorant hillbillies. “He’s got a funny name!” “He likes food that tastes good instead of crap that’s fried in lard!” “He likes foreigners!” “He wants to speak other languages!” “He’s educated!” “He played basketball instead of football!” Embarrassing, really.

There are lots of policy ideas that Barack Obama has that are pretty silly–his protectionist-leaning foreign trade policies, for one thing. His commitment to cutting taxes without commiserate spending cuts. His national service plan. His push to expand government funding for faith-based charities. His support for McCain-Feingold. His support for No Child Left Behind. There’s plenty to attack Obama on the merits. Why not stick to that?

UPDATE (James Joyner): While I agree with Alex about the silliness of this as an “outrage” and even agree that bilingualism has its uses, Obama has stumbled on one of my pet peeves with this one:

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

Europeans speak English because they live in geographically small countries and have regular occasion to speak other languages. English has become the default lingua franca because of the reach of the British Empire followed by the rise of the United States as a world power. If you live virtually anywhere in the world where English is not your first language, then your choice of a second language is rather obvious.

By contrast, Americans have no such easy choice. I learned to speak German because I spent quite a bit of time there growing up and again as a young adult because I grew up around and served in the United States Army, which meant I’d have plenty of occasion to use the language. Outside Germany, however, the ability to speak German has essentially no application and, indeed, my skills have atrophied substantially. French, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Farsi and a host of other languages would be occasionally useful. But, aside from those who learn languages easily and make a hobby of it, it’s simply not worth the time and effort to do so if you’re an American who doesn’t regularly travel to a specific country.

The one exception is Spanish. But, unless you live in Texas, New Mexico, California, or Florida the only real reason to learn that language is, as Dave notes, to more easily converse with workmen. Whether it’s worth the time investment for that purpose is, I suppose, an individual judgment.

UPDATE II (James Joyner): Steve Bainbridge points out that Obama made his comments in the context of the need for those living in America to learn English, making his answer a neat sleight-of-hand.