So yes, as we said last night, this was a pretty big deal. This is not my subject area. So I will spare you any unrooted commentary. I’ll share one thing. In all the conversations I’ve had over the years with people who do know about Iran they stress one thing: for decades, Iran’s core defense doctrine has been to maximize its strategic reach and deterrence as much as possible without getting into a conventional war with the U.S. That’s clear in the use of proxy militias across the region. It’s clear in the ways Iran has antagonized the U.S. but only up to a point while it occupied its two immediate neighboring states, Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you’ve observed or been engaged in the debate over The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” I have a book I want to recommend to you. It’s not about that specific debate at all, not about slavery or the Civil War or American history, at least not directly. It’s called That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession. I was reminded of it today for a totally random reason — a quote from deep in the book by the late historian of slavery Eugene Genovese.

Over the holidays the Times ran a Ukraine scandal story which mainly stitched together the broader storyline but also broke some significant news. In late August the Secretaries of Defense and State and the National Security Advisor met together with the President in the Oval Office to try to persuade him to release the contested military aid to Ukraine. This news only confirms what has always been the most ominous dimension of the Ukraine scandal.

The latest news about the attack on a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York is that the alleged assailant, Grafton Thomas has, according to his family and lawyer, no known history of ties to hate groups and a long history of schizophrenia. If we take those claims at face value that puts the incident in a somewhat different light and suggests the possibility that the attack was the product of delusion or psychosis more than ideology or bias. But even if we assume all this, it’s probably wrong not to see the connection to the mass shooting in Jersey City early this month and the string of anti-Jewish attacks over the last week.

One of the interesting side effects of a major scandal is all you learn about the details about how the government actually works, or is supposed to work. This is the case even if you’re broadly knowledgeable about the functioning of the federal bureaucracy. So for instance, one of the career officials in the pipeline for the Ukraine aide was a guy named Mark Sandy.