Robert Wright

An Israeli settler shot and wounded a Palestinian man on Saturday in a clash that began when a group of settlers set fire to fields belonging to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, officials said.

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I mean, it's not that I think Mitt Romney really would make John Bolton his Secretary of State. But that serious people are even talking about this is testament to how heavily Romney's foreign policy advisers tilt toward the neocon/uberhawk end of the Republican Party. And note that even Hurlburt, the more skeptical of the two, concedes that it would be awkward if a President Romney couldn't find some high-prestige position for Bolton--a man whom Drezner, who is no lefty, calls "borderline delusional" (a characterization I personally consider too generous by half).

Geez, the next thing you know Romney will be thinking about having a birther speak at the GOP convention!

The primary sticking point, as I anticipated, was relief from sanctions. Iran, it seems, is open to doing what P5+1 wants (halting the production of 20-percent-enriched uranium, surrendering all existing 20-percent-enriched uranium, etc.). But in return, Iran wants significant sanctions relief, and the only relief on offer involved sanctions on spare airplane parts.

Why the P5+1 refusal to budge? I think it lies partly in a mistakenly binary conception of sanctions--the idea that any meaningful sanctions relief at all means giving up most of, or at least much of, the leverage that sanctions offer. In truth, we can proceed more incrementally, giving Iran meaningful sanctions relief while keeping almost all of our powder dry.

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Goldberg worries that the talks won't move fast enough--that when they adjourn (presumably on Thursday), Iran won't have made enough in the way of concrete concessions. He points to a New York Times report about what the P5+1 (the permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) hopes to get out of Iran this week. According to the Times, we want Iran to quit producing 20-percent-enriched uranium, to surrender what 20-percent-enriched uranium it possesses, and then "down the road" dismantle the Fordow processing plant, which is buried in a mountain and so difficult to attack. Goldberg would like the dismantling to begin sooner than "down the road".

His logic: " 'Down the road' is not an expression that would cause the Israeli prime minister, or the defense minister, to call President Obama and tell him that they are taking the military option off the table. It would actually cause them to think -- not that they don't think this already -- that the Baghdad talks are a charade." And, he adds, if Israel thinks this, then it may "take [military] action, which is a very bad idea."

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Optimism always makes me nervous, and today's news about the offer we plan to put on the table hasn't eased my anxiety.

According to reporting by Laura Rozen and Barbara Slavin, the P5+1 (the permanent Security Council members plus Germany) wants Iran to halt the production of uranium enriched to the 20 percent level--a level that's well below weapons grade (around 90 percent), but is significantly closer to weapons grade than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium that Iran also produces.

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The essential mission of Israeli soldiers stationed in the West Bank is to protect settlers against Palestinians. The job of protecting Palestinians against settlers falls to a separate Israeli police force that, as it happens, is massively understaffed. This imbalance--ample troops who are de facto allies of the settlers, dinky police force that could in theory help Palestinians but never seems to be around--is a recipe for the harassment of Palestinians and worse.

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Economist Glenn Loury has a gay son, and so does blogger and law professor Ann Althouse. So I wasn't expecting their conversation about gay marriage to take this turn:

If you're wishing Glenn had been matched with someone who disagrees with him, I have good news. Here he presents the other side of the argument, which leads to some interesting thoughts from Ann about the role of religion in progressive moral change:

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