Conservative: Obama Did Everything for the Ayatollahs
Many details of the Obama administration’s nuclear dealings with Iran remain shrouded in secrecy, but Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari says those that have already seeped out “invariably reinforce a single theme”: Barack Obama’s “utter abjection and pusillanimity before Tehran, and his corresponding contempt for the American people and their elected representatives.” The AP reported this week that after the 2015 nuclear deal, Obama’s Treasury Department secretly issued a special license allowing Tehran to convert $6 billion in Omani rials to dollars — a violation of still-in-force US sanctions. The deal fell apart only because US banks, with “better legal and moral sense than the Obama Treasury” refused to participate. Still, this was “subterfuge and secrecy objectively aimed at enriching an enemy of the United States” — in other words, “collusion.”
Political scribe: Primaries Suggest Blue Wave Has Ebbed
We’re halfway through the 2018 primary season, and Michael Barone at the Washington Examiner suggests the latest results “tend to undercut the many gleeful predictions of a blue wave that produces a big Democratic majority in the House and perhaps the Senate as well.” Add to that the generic ballot, in which the Democrats’ 13-point lead last December has dwindled to a three-point margin. In California, seven key House districts that went for Hillary Clinton but are held by Republicans now “look less Democratic than they did” last November, reflecting President Trump’s solid support among Republicans. So while another blue wave may still be building, “the one almost everyone was expecting six months ago seems to have crested and ebbed.”
Foreign desk: What Does US Get for Aid to Lebanon?
Since 2007, the US has provided $1.7 billion worth of aid and equipment to the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF, notes Bloomberg’s Eli Lake. Yet Hezbollah, the “Iran-backed militia, political party and terror group,” has since “effectively taken control of the state,” including the LAF. Which is why many in Congress “are ready to write off the US relationship with the LAF,” given that it’s made “zero progress in disarming” Hezbollah, as required by the UN Security Council. Now an amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) requires the Pentagon and State Department to assess the LAF’s anti-Hezbollah requirements. And that could give Congress “fodder in 2019 to cut off US military aid to the LAF” or at least pressure it to stop cooperating with a designated terrorist organization.
Ex-assemblyman: MTA’s Continuing Information Deficit
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s comprehensive subway-fix plan “has left the public in the lurch” on many details, most particularly its cost, which is still being calculated, asserts Jim Brennan at Gotham Gazette. But assuming the agency has to borrow “a lot more money” for a plan estimated to cost up to $37 billion, “the public deserves to know how much new revenue will be needed to cover a lot more debt, and when.” Plus, we don’t know “how the MTA might gain control of the unending cost overruns on the multi-billion dollar expansion projects.” After all, it’s already projecting a $600 million deficit by 2021 even without the plan. Says Brennan: “The political theater probably won’t stop for a long time but it would help if we could all work with the right numbers.”
From the right: A Real But Costly Chance To Cure Cancer
Nearly half a century after President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer, The Washington Post’s Megan McArdle says we remain “pinned down by a wily enemy.” But “it’s no longer unreasonable to hope that the battle might finally turn our way,” thanks to new “therapies based on a patient’s own immune system — though “immune-based therapies are unlikely to ever be available for a few cents a dose, especially not the personalized ones.” And while the results thus far are largely confined to relatively rare cancers, even-newer therapies are reporting “striking recoveries in patients with colon and liver cancer.” But there’s a long haul still ahead, and we’re going to have to find some way to pay for it. Indeed, it means asking: “If you were diagnosed with cancer, what object do you own, what public service do you enjoy, that you’d rather have than a tumor-killing treatment?”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann