If Bolton surprised you last time ...

Today, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee (and Thursday on the House side) to give the intelligence community's annual global threat analysis. These hearings are always significant, but the stakes are especially high now because of the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

Criticism of the NIE's politicized, policy-oriented "key judgments" has spanned the political spectrum and caused considerable turmoil in Congress. Few seriously doubt that the NIE gravely damaged the Bush administration's diplomatic strategy. With the intelligence community's credibility and impartiality on the line, Mr. McConnell has an excellent opportunity to correct the NIE's manifold flaws, and repair some of the damage done to international efforts to stop Iran from obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons.

There are (at least) three things he should do ...

Our Politicized Intelligence Services

Our politics seem awash with hypocrisy, which leads us to suspect that honesty and integrity are increasingly rare qualities in public life.

But is hypocrisy really so bad? Given what it takes to get elected, and what we expect of politicians once in office, we may want to think again about political hypocrisy. Hypocrisy may not be an attractive human quality, but in politics, it is often a desirable one - and may sometimes be better than the alternative.

Vote hypocrite

Don't get so excited already. It's not like it matters.

It’s not that presidents don’t matter. It’s that they don’t matter nearly as much as we would like to think and they would have us believe. Mostly, they are trapped in realities not of their own making.

That's George Friedman.

Foreign Policy and the President’s Irrelevance

Like much of the nation, New Hampshire is in a frenzy over illegal immigration. In 2005, a police chief from New Ipswich, a sleepy small town near the Massachusetts border, arrested an illegal immigrant, who had pulled over on the side of the road, on the grounds that he was trespassing in New Hampshire. "We're applying a state law to illegal aliens, instead of federal law, because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. Someone needed to bring it, so I brought it," the chief told the Concord Monitor. The courts threw out the case, but the police chief became a statewide celebrity.

Phantom Menace: The Pyschology Behind America's Immigration Hysteria

President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

Bush made the assertion in a signing statement that he issued late Monday after signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. In the signing statement, Bush asserted that four sections of the bill unconstitutionally infringe on his powers, and so the executive branch is not bound to obey them.

"Provisions of the act . . . purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as commander in chief," Bush said. "The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President."

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act

IT DOESN'T TAKE an Anglophile to appreciate the English way with understatement, particularly at moments of high tension or pique. Readers of the Moscow Times got a slight taste of this national characteristic last Friday, when Mr. Giles Cattermole, a resident of Sonning-on-Thames, wrote in to express his discomfiture at the current state of British-Russian relations:

So Andrei Lugovoi allegedly assassinated Alexander Litvinenko. And that's fine--he becomes a hero, gets elected to the State Duma and is appointed second head of the LDPR party list. He also gets asked if he will run for president.

Vitaly Kaloyev, the architect from the Caucasus region of North Ossetia, assassinates Peter Nielsen, a Swiss-based air-traffic controller, and Kaloyev gets a senior government job in his hometown.

Now, just what message about Russian society and morals does that send?

You couldn't have asked it more politely yourself.

See also: Where Did All Those Gorgeous Russians Come From?

Russia's Regression

Perhaps more useful than snark ...

This week the President gave his annual State of the Union address to the Congress. On Monday he will send Congress his 2009 Budget Request.

Below is a chart comparing what he said in his State of the Union address with what he did last year in his 2008 Budget request.

Fact Check: The President, the State of the Union, & Appropriations

Bush's 2008 State of the Union address, annotated by The Atlantic's James Fallows

Better late than never ...

State of the Union: Post Mortem

Office of Special Counsel chief says his investigation into alleged politicization of the attorney general's agency has been repeatedly 'impeded.'

Justice Dept. accused of blocking Gonzales probe

So what will make this year different from all other years? Talk to Clinton advisers and they’ll tell you: Nothing. It won’t be. The Republicans who are currently praising Obama are wolves in sheepskin, and Obama himself, with his appeal to transcending partisanship, is the little lamb that never smelled the blood of the slaughterhouse and won’t know what’s happening until the knife is at his throat.

If I were advising the Obama campaign, I’d find a quiet way to get as many copies of “Hillary: The Movie” into voters’ hands as possible—only because it will remind them of the relentless ugliness in store for all of us if she becomes the nominee or the President.

Mud Season | Interesting Times: George Packer