Joe Conason:

Many if not most Americans have repeatedly expressed an underlying doubt that either party can still serve the public interest. Those feelings are especially prevalent among the independent voters whose support was critical to the recent Democratic victory. To dispel such cynicism and fulfill the expectations raised by their anticorruption campaign, the new Democratic congressional leaders must quickly deliver real government accountability as well as substantial reorganization of their own institutions. While voters may understand that major changes in healthcare, education and environmental stewardship will be difficult to enact under this administration, they will not have much patience for any evasion on reform of Congress.

Whether Democrats can overcome the old habits that have often made them inarticulate and inert, however, remains to be seen. To put it kindly, the signs are mixed.

Democrats’ earmark moratorium: short-term pain for long-term gain.

Late update: More here on the scope of the moratorium.

The Roanoke Times, on Rep. Virgil Goode’s “macaca” moment: “He shouldn’t apologize for his beliefs because that would just pile the sin of hypocrisy onto the heap of bigotry.”

The White House declines to condemn the anti-Muslim comments of Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and conservative commentator Dennis Prager:

White House officials said they were aware that some Democrats and Muslims were urging President Bush to admonish Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, and Dennis Prager, the conservative commentator, for suggesting that the first Muslim elected to the House had no place in Congress. “We’re aware of the situation,” said Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bush, “but no judgments have been made.”

I might quibble with The Times‘ characterization of Goode’s remarks. He didn’t just suggest Muslims have no place in Congress. He said they have no place in the United States.

Finally some real pushback on the Bush Administration’s patronage hiring. Today’s profile in courage is of the State Department’s George Staples, as reported by Al Kamen:

The career diplomats at the State Department are celebrating a decision this week by the department’s director general to overturn the assignment of an aide to Undersecretary Karen Hughes to a top job running the new Public Diplomacy Rapid Response office in Brussels.

The American Foreign Service Association two months ago protested the selection of mid-level civil servant Diane Zeleny for the job, calling it a “pre-cooked deal” done by manipulating the process and violating personnel rules. AFSA filed a grievance asking foreign service director general George Staples to “undo this assignment.”

. . .

The Zeleny appointment came at a time when career diplomats were seething over jumps by several other lower-level officers with political connections into top jobs that the career folks thought should have gone to more senior officers.

It probably didn’t help matters, in this case, that Zeleny, a talented civil servant — but not a foreign service officer — who has some experience overseas, is married to prominent neocon Reuel Marc Gerecht, an Iraq war promoter and occasional Bush adviser.

Yeah, being Gerecht‘s wife probably didn’t help matters. By the way, she gets to stay in the post until next summer so it’s not a perfect solution. But it’s a step in the right direction. Not many of those these past six years.

UN votes Iran sanctions.

Lots of questions remain about the sudden resignation of the Saudi ambassador to Washington two weeks ago, and today’s WaPo piece on the whole mess raises more questions than it answers, but it’s an entertaining read:

Eighteen months ago, Prince Bandar bin Sultan ended a legendary 22-year career as the face of Saudi Arabia in the United States. Word at the time was that he was bored, preferring his palatial Aspen, Colo., lodge to Washington. As it turns out, however, Bandar has secretly visited Washington almost monthly over the past year — and is at least as pivotal today in influencing U.S. policy as he was in his years as ambassador.

Last week, his successor, Turki, abruptly resigned from the post — partly, sources close to the royal family said, because of Bandar’s back-channel trips to meet with top U.S. officials, including Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

Turki was kept so out of the loop that Bandar often did not inform him he was in town, much less tell him what he was doing, the sources said. Twice, the Saudi Embassy was told by an outsider that Bandar had arrived — and the embassy sent someone to the airport to look for his private plane to confirm it, according to the source who provided the tip.

Unpaid bills. Bruised egos. Shadow diplomacy. Internal riffs in the royal family. Why, it could be the Bush White House.

Over at TPMCafe, Ivo Daalder says George Bush has taken every foreign policy problem he inherited from Bill Clinton and made it worse. Pretty much. Glenn Kessler outlines the problems facing the Administration in Iran, North Korea, and the Sudan, all places where Bush foreign policy strategies have hit brickwalls. Of course, that’s not counting Iraq.

Sunday’s Times reports that the top US commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., is now, as the article’s headline puts it, “Open to Troop Surge.”

Says a ‘senior Defense Department official’: “They are open to the possibility of some increase in force. They are supportive of taking steps to support the Iraqis in their plan, including the possible modest augmentation in U.S. combat forces.”

This is a silly game we now seem ready to play. In theory at least, senior military commanders give frank advice to the commander-in-chief. But the president is their ultimate superior in the chain of command. They work for him. So they do what he says. Period. The only real alternative is principled resignation. But let’s not get distracted from the main point. It seems clear that most of the Army brass oppose an expanded troop presence in Iraq. As the Times notes, until recently, Casey himself has “argued that sending more American forces into Baghdad and Anbar Province, the two most violent regions of Iraq, would increase the Iraqi dependency on Washington, and in the words of one senior official, ‘make this feel more like an occupation.'”

The premise of this narrative is that the president is slowly persuading the generals of the logic of his position that we should escalate the conflict in Iraq by inserting however many tens of thousands of new troops into the country. But the premise is bogus because it is the duty of the three and four star generals to come around after the president does not accept their contrary opinions. He’s in charge. They’re not in charge. That is how we all want it to work — though, admittedly, it is somewhat harder to stomach when the president is a stubborn, serial bumbler.

Perhaps Casey really is changing his mind. But having no choice about the matter has a way of greasing the cognitive skids. And the long sought increase in the size of the Army makes the pill more digestible.

I know that in theory Casey could oppose the president’s plan, honestly explain his opposition before Congress when called to testify and then dutifully execute it on the president’s order. But that’s not the real world. He adopts the president’s position, gets Shinseki’d or resigns, with the first overwhelmingly likely, the second a distinct possibility and the third close to unheard of. Why muddy up an already complicated and grave situation by pretending anything else?

Celine Dion covering AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. Frightening. Don’t make me say anymore.