† Obama Administration’s Tactless Diplomatic Debut: The U.S. and Russia disagree over the terms of the new U.S.-Russian arms agreement, reports The Washington Times:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia reserved the right to pull out of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, if the level of U.S. missile defense forces increases.

"The package of documents presumes that the treaty is concluded in circumstances where the parties have appropriate levels of strategic defensive systems," Mr. Lavrov said. "Changing these levels gives each party the right to decide the question of its future participation in the process of reducing strategic offensive arms."

However, Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, told reporters on Monday that the new START would not limit or bind U.S. actions whatsoever with regard to missile defense. …

The difference in interpretation on missile defense could determine the fate of START when the administration sends the document to the Senate for ratification. President Obama will need the support of at least eight Republicans to reach the 66-vote margin for a two-thirds majority required under the Constitution for treaty ratification.

That State Department “reset” button is getting a good workout.

† Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: A survey of 1,373 TV weathercasters by George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication finds that 63 percent attribute global warming to "mostly by natural changes in the environment" vs. 31 percent who believe it is caused by "human activities," reports The Washington Times:

John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel and a forecaster on KUSI in San Diego, has called global warming a "hoax" and "bad science" - a case that garnered public attention after some scientists were caught manipulating data to suit and environmental agenda. …

AccuWeather senior forecaster Joe Bastardi is another high-profile skeptic. "Common sense dictates that a trace gas needed for life on the planet would not be the cause for destroying life on the planet. Common sense dictates that what has happened before without man can happen again with man," Mr. Bastardi said. "Common sense would dictate that you not believe me, or any one else, but go look for yourself." …

"Our surveys of the public have shown that many Americans are looking to their local TV weathercaster for information about global warming," says Edward Maibach, director of the climate center at George Mason and lead investigator for the new survey.

Meanwhile, 42 percent of their viewers don’t think global warming is a serious problem, according to a recent Rasmussen Reports telephone survey:

Nearly half of voters (48%) believe global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends, a number that also has held steady since last July. Just 33% blame the problem on human activity, which is one point below the lowest level measured in over a year. Eight percent (8%) attribute global warming to some other cause, and 11% are undecided.

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current findings. At that time, 47% blamed human activity, while only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.  

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman cites “a very troubling article” published by the paper about Afghan President Hamid Karzai inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Kabul “to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration - after the White House had rescinded an invitation to Mr. Karzai to come to Washington because the Afghan president had gutted an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in his re-election last year”:

“Karzai recently told lunch guests at the presidential palace that he believes the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region, and that they pose an obstacle to striking a peace deal with the Taliban.” …

That is what we’re getting for risking thousands of U.S. soldiers and having spent $200 billion already. This news is a flashing red light, warning that the Obama team is violating at least three cardinal rules of Middle East diplomacy.

Rule No. 1: When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. Karzai brazenly stole last year’s presidential election. But the Obama foreign policy team turned a blind eye, basically saying, he’s the best we could get, so just let it go. …

One reason you violate Rule No. 1 is because you’ve already violated Rule No. 2: “Never want it more than they do.” If we want good governance in Afghanistan more than Karzai, he will sell us that carpet over and over. …

Rule No. 3: In the Middle East, what leaders tell you in private in English is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language.

† Bloomberg Wants N.Y.C. To Adopt Mexican Social Engineering Program (second item): Mayor Michael Bloomberg is ending his experimental program that pays parents for doing the sorts of things that competent and conscientious parents don’t need to be paid to do, except maybe in Mexico, where he first got the idea. The New York Times reports:

The three-year-old pilot project, the first of its kind in the country, gave parents payments for things like going to the dentist ($100) or holding down a full-time job ($150 per month). Children were rewarded for attending school regularly ($25 to $50 per month) or passing a high school Regents exam ($600).

[F]rom the beginning, the program set off controversy. Conservative critics asked whether it was wise to pay people for simple behavior like going to parent-teacher conferences or doctor’s appointments; some liberals considered the approach condescending. The mayor, a believer in incentives in business and government, was determined to try it, but he avoided using public money initially.

The program was certainly expensive: Mr. Bloomberg and Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, traveled to Mexico to learn more about Oportunidades, the welfare program there on which the New York City effort was based.

About $40 million in private donations, including from Mr. Bloomberg’s foundation, was collected to finance the effort, called Opportunity NYC Family Rewards. Two years into the program, more than $14 million had been paid out to 2,400 families. An additional $10.2 million is for operating costs, and $9.6 million for research and evaluation.

Brooklynite Janice Dudley, who “earned” more than $7,610 in two years because her 16-year-old daughter, Qua-neshia Darden got good grades and received regular medical checkups, said the program “gives children the motivation to want to go to school because they know they’re going to get something back.” [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]

The Stiletto’s parents immigrated to the U.S. (legally) from a country where education was not regarded as an essential government function, so their families had to scrimp and save to come up with tuition, books and school supplies. For the priceless gift of education, The Stiletto and her siblings were raised to give something back to our teachers by studying hard and bringing honor to our schools by winning academic competitions, scholarships and other honors. If Qua-neshia Darden was not raised by her mother to value learning for its own sake, then once the money dries up so will her motivation to continue to work hard to get good grades in school.  

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Seven out of 10 gun store owners reported an uptick in women customers in a 2009 survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Southwick Associates. Eight percent of women who participated in the survey said they purchased a gun for self-defense, 35 percent for target practice and 24 percent for hunting. The Washington Times reports that these findings notwithstanding, “[w]omen owned roughly 10.5 percent of this country's guns in 1980, compared to 10.8 percent of the more than 200 million guns in the U.S. in 2008.”

† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: Historian David A. Nichols, author of "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution," compares the politics surrounding the 1957 Civil Rights Act and Obamacare in this Los Angeles Times op-ed:

President Obama gets it. So did President Eisenhower half a century ago. When you are breaking a decades-long legislative logjam, you take what you can get so you can do better later.

Critics deplore the compromises Obama made on healthcare. And it's true that the bill he signed Tuesday doesn't accomplish everything reform advocates had hoped for.

But give Obama credit for historical perspective. Covering the millions without health insurance is the civil rights issue of our time. And Obama walked a path analogous to the one Ike walked on civil rights in 1957.

Eisenhower proposed a strong bill that year. It seemed a fool's errand - no civil rights legislation had been passed for 82 years. The proposal included protection for voting rights and authority for the attorney general to enforce an array of civil rights, including school desegregation [contextual link added by The Stiletto].

The latter provision, known as "Part III," quickly ran into political trouble. Southern Democrats at the time were the "party of no," and they presented a united front. Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia charged that Eisenhower's bill was "cunningly designed" to authorize the attorney general "to destroy the system of separation of the races in the Southern states at the point of a bayonet." …

Like Obama, Eisenhower was urged to give up or, in effect, "start over" on drafting a bill that would have wider acceptance. Civil rights leaders implored Eisenhower to veto any bill that didn't make meaningful change.

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, There's No Such Thing As Free Healthcare): The message (Obamacare is “unhealthy for America’’ and an “unconscionable abuse of power’’) is right -  but the messenger has a lot to apologize for. Former MA Gov. Mitt Romney (R) is desperately trying to convince voters that Romneycare isn’t Obamacare by another name. He first tried to make the case on “FOX News Sunday” earlier this month, telling host Chris Wallace that his “is the ultimate conservative plan.”

In Ames, IA, ostensibly plugging his book, “No Apology,” Romney insists that MA has a “model that works,” reports The Boston Globe, but pundits aren’t buying it:

Obama’s signing of a federal health care law has put Romney - a possible 2012 presidential candidate - again on the defensive over the most significant achievement in his brief career in public office. …

In the last week, many health care policy specialists, Democrats celebrating the bill’s passage, and Republicans condemning it have come to another conclusion. The difference between the two systems, they say, is slim.

“Basically, it’s the same thing,’’ said Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney and Obama administrations on their health insurance programs. A national health overhaul would not have happened if Mitt Romney had not made “the decision in 2005 to go for it. He is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform.’’ …

Romney faced a similar predicament during his last presidential run, when opponents attempted, with various degrees of success, to portray his record in Massachusetts as evidence of liberal priorities. Over the course of his campaign, Romney went from touting his health care policy to lamenting it to saying it was not really his, often at a disorienting pace.

After a side-by-side comparison of a speech President Barack Hussein Obama gave about healthcare “reform” on March 3^rd with a chapter from Romney’s book, Slate concludes: “Remove a little anti-Obama boilerplate and Romney's views become indistinguishable from the president's.” Unfortunately for Romney, it increasingly looks like voters have concluded the same thing.

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, The Uniter: Part II): According to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, 56 percent of likely voters believe President Barack Hussein Obama is governing like a partisan Democrat, up three points over the past month – and a new high since his inauguration, when 39 percent of voters saw him as a partisan. Just 28 percent say Obama is governing on a bipartisan basis.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Defending The Indefensible): As the Department of Justice is infested with attorneys who represented Gitmo detainees, the CIA is becoming increasingly concerned that its warnings about the ACLU’s John Adams Project risks exposing the identities of its interrogators is being given short shrift, reports The Washington Times:

[T]he John Adams Project, has photographed covert CIA interrogators and shown the pictures to some of the five senior al Qaeda terrorists held there in an effort to identify them further. …

The joint investigation, which recently added U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald to the Justice Department team, was stepped up earlier this month after a disagreement between Justice Department and CIA officials over whether CIA officers' lives were put in danger at the prison. …

The prosecutor was called into the case after agency officials voiced worries that Justice Department investigators did not share their level of concern over the danger that al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, could secretly send information on the identities of CIA officers to al Qaeda terrorists outside the prison through the attorneys. …

Newsweek magazine reported March 29 that CIA concerns were heightened after 20 color photographs of CIA officials were found in the cell of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a detainee who U.S. officials think is one of the financiers of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. …

The Washington Post reported in August that private investigators were able to identify CIA officers by tracking CIA-chartered flights of captured terrorists.