Of course the big event of Tuesday, June 27, was the new war in the Middle East, as Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza and the Egyptian army was massing off to the south. This should be interesting, as the Associated Press noted here -

Israeli tanks and troops entered southern Gaza and planes attacked three bridges and knocked out electricity to the coastal strip early Wednesday, stepping up the pressure on Palestinian militants holding captive a 19-year-old Israeli soldier.
The soldiers and tanks began taking up positions in two locations about a mile east of the Gaza town of Rafah under the cover of tank shells, according to witnesses and Palestinian security officials. Palestinians dug in behind walls and sand embankments, bracing for a major Israeli offensive.

Oh great. Our Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was trying urging Israel to "give diplomacy a chance." And that wasn't working. We taught them too well - somebody does something outrageous, and it will be war, and that's that. We lead by example, not by what we say. The Israelis say it's just a "limited operation" - and we said we'd bop into Iraq, get rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, hand the place over to Ahmed Chalabi, and be home by Christmas. We'll see.  Six days later the Israelis are still at it.

There was some movement, or not -

Trying to defuse building tensions, negotiators from the ruling Hamas movement said Tuesday they had accepted a document implicitly recognizing Israel. But two Syrian-based Hamas leaders denied a final deal had been reached.

Israel said only freedom for the captive soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, could defuse the crisis, not a political agreement.

We did teach them well. There's just nothing that can do. There are "consequences" - and that's that.

So we've become the model. As Fareed Zakaria points out in the latest Newsweek here, war had been our default approach to foreign affairs, and our diplomatic efforts, such as they are, whne we are forced to use such things, have been a bit limited and ineffective - "The entire approach of isolating, shunning and sanctioning regimes as a way of changing them or their behavior has been an unmitigated failure from Cuba (boycotted since 1960) to Iran (since 1979). Meanwhile, the regimes we have talked to and thus had influence with - in China, Vietnam, Libya - are evolving. In Washington, it's still more important to look tough than be effective."

And so it is in Israel, with the same bad PR - the minor side issues everyone picks on, as the locals just don't seem to appreciate that our looking tough, and doing the strong thing because it's noble and just "right," means they may be somewhere between inconvenienced and dead - "The attack raised the specter of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as water pumps in the strip are powered by electricity. Some power in Gaza City was restored by tapping into electricity supplied by Israel in northern Gaza."

But Israel wants that one soldier back - and no talking will do. No water? What's the problem? We taught them well.

On other hand, the other big story of the day was also awful, or cheering, depending on your point of view - the Senate, by one vote, rejected joining the house and moving forward with a new constitutional amendment to add the very first exception to that free speech stuff in the first amendment. There will be no change to the constitution to create a special case where one form of free speech, burning the flag in protest, is forbidden. The details are here, and the vote tally, of just who voted for and against, is here.

The ACLU had this to say -

"The Senate came close to torching our constitution, but luckily it came through unscathed," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "We applaud those brave Senators who stood up for the First Amendment and rejected this damaging and needless amendment.

"America prides itself on tolerance and acceptance; it is essential that we not amend our founding document to allow censorship, even when the speech in question is reprehensible," Fredrickson added. "Today the First Amendment and, indeed, the entire Bill of Rights remain untarnished and more meaningful than ever. It is our hope that the Senate will now move on to the real problems this country faces."

Good luck with that.

But then, the whole range of carve-outs the first amendment, creating specific but patriotic exemptions to the principles of free speech - first the flag burning exclusion, then anything said by the Dixie Chicks or whatever, then the exclusion that allows the government to tell the press what news can and cannot be printed or broadcast - were derailed at the first try. By one vote. They'll try again.

This "don't burn the flag" effort is discussed elsewhere in the pages in July 2, 2006 - Shutting Things Down, along with the parallel effort to charge the New York Times with treason, formally or informally, for revealing all the secret spying done on us all - from the warrantless phone taps and data-mining of everyone's phone records, to sweeping up all financial records available. The former is clearly illegal on the face of it, and that may be news, while the later is, while amazingly broad, more defensible, if disturbing.

The Times thought people ought to know about both - so did the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times - but the administration thought not.

Sure people might like to know that their privacy is pretty much gone, but if the bad guys got wind of the programs they'd stop using phones and banks. No, that can't be right, because that would be a good thing, crippling their communications and screwing up their funding. The basic idea must be then that they don't know we're looking for them, and now they do. No, that can't be right either - we said we're looking for them, so they know that. But the programs were secret, and now they're not. One must assume we're to imagine these programs are like the Enigma business in WWII - we'd captured the encryption device and finally figured out how it worked, and the Germans had no idea we could read their message traffic and were three steps ahead of all their moves. It must be like that. They simply had no idea we'd actually be tapping their phones and following the money. No, that can't be right either. Are they diabolically clever, as we're told they are, or dumb as a post? Which is it? They'd assume we were watching and listening and reading those bank records. And the American public wants that done. That's what the administration should be doing.

What the newspapers, particularly the Times, were reporting, was that this was being done in an odd way, outside the explicit law to protect us all from the spying being abused - used for political or financial purposes or whatever - and basically looking at anything and everything without much discrimination and certainly no oversight, and little focus, making us all "the enemy."  That's news.

It's all very odd, but may come down to a matter of principle. The government said this stuff was classified, and when they say something is classified - even if illegal and ineffective and unconstitutional six ways from Sunday - you have to give them the benefit of the doubt and trust them that's it's for the best, really. What was revealed was offensive because it implied maybe you cannot trust this crowd, and after the war business - the WMD that we're there and the al Qaeda connection that wasn't, and the mobile chemical weapons labs that weren't there either, and the aluminum tubes they were told had nothing to do with any nuclear weapons program - anyone who implies that, that trusting these guys has been a problem and still may be, needs to be shut down fast.

So the National Review, faithful surrogate for the administration, demands that the New York Times has its press credential taken away - no more access to anything. (Read that here.) But then the new White House press secretary, Tony Snow of Fox News, tells Editor and Publisher that the Times won't lose its press credentials, really, and the attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, isn't likely to "prosecute" the Times for treason or sedition or even littering - it would just be a political circus. Who needs that? (That item is here.)

So now what?

Greg Sargent tries to untangle it here -

This is kind of strange. Both Snow and Dick Cheney have explicitly said that the Times is putting the nation's security at risk. Yet by all indications the administration is unlikely to take any real action against the paper, mainly because it would be politically disastrous for Bush.

That leaves only two possibilities. Either:

1) Officials won't act aggressively against an institution they're claiming puts American lives at risk, because it's politically untenable. That would mean the administration is putting politics ahead of aggressively prosecuting behavior it says endangers American lives.

Or:

2) The administration doesn't genuinely believe the Times has put our national security at risk at all, and hence won't act. If this is the case, both Snow and Cheney blatantly and repeatedly lied.

So there you have it. Either the administration is putting politics ahead of national security and won't act aggressively against an institution it says is endangering American lives - because it would be bad for Bush. Or the administration's claim that the Times endangered national security is just the latest in a long string of lies it has told to the American people. Which is it?

The answer, of course, is number two. This isn't about protecting American lives at all. It's about scapegoating, pure and simple. Desperate to deflect attention from its disastrous international performance, unable to persuade Americans that things are improving in Iraq, the administration now is embarrassingly trying to shift the blame to an institution that GOP base regards as the most prominent symbol of liberal elitism in the land. This is a cheap stunt. The administration doesn't think the paper's endangering national security, and it's not going to genuinely go after the paper, either. This is just bluster for the boneheads, pure and simple.

Incidentally, the fact that the White House is engaging in such rank scapegoating is the real reason the administration has narrowed its previously broader attack on the media into one focused on the Times. Scapegoating requires the selection of a single target, the singling out of one from the herd so the rest of the herd doesn't feel it has a stake in the battle's outcome. And it appears to be working.

... now that the Times has basically been isolated in the White House's sights the rest of the media has unwittingly legitimized this assault on one of their own by cheerfully letting such ridiculous rhetoric find a comfortable place in the mainstream conversation.

Luckily this attack is pure bunkum and will end with a fizzle in a few days. But with this kind of official behavior slowly gaining legitimacy, doesn't the possibility grow that the next one might be for real?

That is a possibility, but how remote a possibility is the question.

Note Matthew Yglesias the day before with this -

Tragically, I walked through the door yesterday and my roommate already had Hardball on. There were two people debating the issue ... whether or not the New York Times should be brought up on charges of treason. Seriously. Treason. For publishing an article in a newspaper. Treason. And there was Chris Matthews happily presiding over the whole thing as if this was a serious conversation that people should be having. This all taking place on a network that, allegedly, does journalism.

Well, some wonder about journalism on MSNBC - think Rita Crosby. You can watch the debate on MSNBC Hardball here.

Duncan Black says this -

Torturing people, jailing journalists for treason, the president being allowed to disobey the law at whim... The mainstream media has made all of these things a part of the normal conversation. They've allowed "two sides" to all of these things to be debated on equal footing. ... Conservatives call for the New York Times to be blown up and their reporters and editors jailed and they get treated seriously on MSNBC's flagship political talk show.

There's a problem here. You've been playing this game for years, letting these people control the terms of the debate. This is where it has brought you. Congratulations.

On the other hand, James Wolcott is just nasty -

... Consider what's happened in the last 24 hours. Bush has called the disclosure "disgraceful," looking far angrier (or fake-angrier) than he ever did about the Katrina fuckup. Cheney, of course, released some deep-stomach rumbles. Tony Snow made his displeasure known. And in a cloud of dust rode the Ox-Bow posse, fashioning a necktie for Bill Keller and company. Congressman Peter King, the sort of bullyboy who would have been right at home planted next to Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare, urged criminal prosecution. Today alone I've seen Newt Gingrich employing his full-press sneer to decry the "pathology" of the Times is revealing security secrets, Hugh "The Iceman Cometh" Hewitt demagoguing the issue on CNN, the blue glint in his eyes demanding retribution. The Fox News All Stars haven't yet convened, but I'm certain they're return with a guilty verdict.* The right blogosphere is similarly inflamed. ... The National Review, stepping forward into the chamber with a heavy heart, grumbles, "The administration should withdraw the newspaper's White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information." I didn't bother listening to talk radio, but I'm sure they're baying for blood between commercials for bladder control.

What a gummy uproar. One so loud and ferocious that there almost has to be some follow-through, otherwise you are going to have one frustrated batch of highly indignants. They want the administration to show the Times and the rest of the press who's boss. The neocon contingent is already dismayed with the tiptoeing around Iran's nuclear program, with Ledeen and Perle lodging protests. If the pushback against the Times peters out, if the posse disbands shortly after mounting up, the White House is going to look weak in the bugged-out eyes of its mutant defenders. It'll be interesting to see if the controversy builds or fades over the next few days, and whether or not the Times-bashers will be compelled to call their own bluff. In the meantime, whatever one thinks of the Times's performance leading up to Iraq and the Judith Miller debacle, the ugly threatmongering and barking ("For the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous") of Peter King shouldn't go unchallenged. Let him climb the Empire State Building if he wants to work off steam.

*They sure enough did. Fox News All Star and full-time schmendrick Mort Kondracke said, more in anger than sorrow, "I think they [The New York Times] has forgotten that New York is the place 9/11 happened." Only a Beltway coward could be that obtuse.

Ah well, the talk is of shutting down the press. Make of it what you will.

But we are exporting democracy. To Iraq and wherever. See Josh Marshall here -

1. President encourages supporters to accuse newspaper reporters of treason: check.

2. President mandates systematic use of torture: check.

3. President routinely asserts right to ignores laws passed by Congress: check.

What am I missing?

Actually, I think it's more one of those trick questions. Like, we're not exporting "democracy" but our democracy. So, as we send it to them, we lose ours.

So it would seem.

And even that's not working, as Philip Gordon explains in the current issue of Foreign Affairs - "The rhetoric of the Bush revolution may live on, but the revolution itself is over."

Why's that? We've overstretched ourselves in Iraq, alienated just ably every key ally, worn away almost all domestic support for spreading democracy abroad - only 20 percent of Americans today say that should be "a very important goal" - and Bush's post-9/11 revolution in foreign policy was enabled by "a feeling of tremendous power" that seems false now. There's more detail and other links here from Paige Austin, but you get the idea.

There may be a third war brewing in the Middle East, but since the flag thing failed, shutting down the Times may just what the doctor ordered. That'll fix everything.