A fair point.
A counterpoint, however: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-held-in-psychiatric-ward-after-correctly-saying-obama-follows-her-on-twitter-10132662.html

I'll just add that many, perhaps most, private defense lawyers actually do have pretty clear moral lines that they will not cross, though those lines differ from attorney to attorney. There are cases they simply will not take because of their own moral reasoning. Additionally, it's long been my understanding (though oddly, I've never actually asked about this, so maybe I'm wrong) that a good chunk of defense attorneys make a point of not seeking to know for absolute certain whether their client is guilty or not.

But even when they do know their client is guilty, they may well see it as a moral obligation - not just an ethical obligation - to put the best defense forward they possibly can by calling into question areas where they think the prosecution has screwed up. When the government wins a case against a guilty person on questionable evidence, they are enabled to make a case against an innocent person in the future based on similarly questionable evidence.

And all of this ignores that, as @j-r points out, in most instances, it's not even about getting the client acquitted, but instead ensuring that the client is treated humanely.

Thing is, the Israelis spying on Obama and turning the info over to Congress actually did happen, and I actually did see articles on the Right yesterday applauding them for what they did while also complaining about Obama's anger. E.g., http://spectator.org/blog/62162/i-hope-israel-spied-iran-nuclear-talks

If I had just left it at "this hero was the one who leaked the Iran talks to the Israelis and was discovered in a fit of rage by Michelle Obama," it totally would be something that could catch on in large segments of the Right. The waterboarding and being released part of it is what gives it away completely. It'd be a lot more plausible if I'd left that part out.

In addition to what @j-r said, the other thing here is that we don't know how long the pre-existing lease was for. If it was a 20 year lease - which is reasonably common - then a quintupled lease might well be entirely in line with changing market values in a given neighborhood, particularly when we're talking about retail space. Additionally, there's also the issue of what other tenants the landlord is hoping to attract in the rest of the building. Perhaps the landlord would charge a restaurant less rent per square foot (and that's the key metric, by the way - $40k is for the entire space, but there's no reason the landlord can't subdivide it, especially since it looks like such a large space that it would be too big for just one restaurant). But if so, that would be because having a restaurant in place would make the office space in the building (which is the bulk of the space) more marketable and thus increase the rent that could be charged for the office space. Quintupling the rent for the toy store thus may easily just represent the opportunity cost for lost rent in the office space.

I'll also add that $40k per month for what looks like a pretty sizable space in downtown SF is entirely reasonable. Take a look at the article I linked above about Starbucks in NY. That article refers to one store having its rent raised to $1 million per year, or roughly $80 k per month. The toy store in this case is significantly larger than any Starbucks I can imagine, in a real estate market that is nearly ( perhaps not quite, though it seems pretty close) as expensive as Manhattan. $40k per month seems almost reasonable by comparison. By contrast, $8k per month for a space in a high traffic neighborhood in an incredibly pricey city seems almost criminally low to the point where it's almost unthinkable that the neighborhood even remotely resembles what it did when this lease was entered into.

@kazzy @stillwater Aye to what Stillwater is saying here. Unlike residential leases, commercial leases are usually (always?) for multiple years, and the negotiations over a new lease renewal can take some serious time. It's not simply a question of "what type of rent do you want to charge me this year"? There are improvements to be negotiated, the length of the new lease to be negotiated, renewal options (which can be a contract within a contract) to be negotiated, signage terms, and a bunch of other stuff - not just the rent term.

If you're waiting until 60 days before lease-end to start negotiating, then you're begging for trouble.

@leeesq From what I can tell, the Dance Manhattan case isn't an example of what you're referring to and, honestly, I'd be surprised is such an example really existed. In the Dance Manhattan case, the lease was expiring and the landlord wanted to double the rent to enter into a new lease agreement. It did not appear to have a new tenant in place or anything like that, but instead seems to have thought the space would be attractive for a tech company and that they'd be able to get a huge chunk of change from such a potential tenant.

Even if they did have a tech tenant ready to come in at less than double the rent per square foot, it's also not clear to me whether they were looking to clear the space because such a potential tenant was going to lease other parts of the building as well. In other words, if the tech tenant wanted to rent Dance Manhattan's 14,000 square foot space, as well as an additional, say, 10,000 square foot space, at only a 50 percent higher rent, then allowing Dance Manhattan to stay for a 50 percent higher rent comes at the opportunity cost of not renting the additional 10,000 square feet at that same rent.

I'd be really surprised - like, really surprised - to see a lease where a landlord had the right to arbitrarily increase rent during the lease term, which seems to be the scenario you're worried about.

In my experience, to agree with @j-r , even small business commercial tenants tend to have a pretty fair amount of bargaining strength when it comes to their relations with their landlord. For instance, I've seen plenty of situations where landlords would deal with months of deficiencies and missed payments before taking any legal action at all, and even then, it usually takes a year or more before they get so fed up as to try to evict (as opposed to just file a breach of contract suit for the deficiency balance). In my experience, there are relatively few, if any, terms in a commercial lease that landlords are completely unwilling to negotiate or that are "take it or leave it" types of terms.

Also worth noting - exorbitant rent increases can affect big business tenants just as much as small business tenants. E.g.: http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-is-feeling-rent-increases-2015-3

Ms. Dowling and her husband, who as @kolohe points out above is senior counsel for the House Office of Legislative Counsel, are patriotic American heroes who saved the country from the horror of betraying Likud and, ultimately, turning the reins of our government over to Ayatollah Khamenei.

Ms. Dowling was supposedly last seen leaving the White House on February 13, but the story of her departure from the White House did not break until March 23, over a month later. March 23, of course, was the same day that another major story involving a leak from the White House broke, namely that the White House had caught Israel spying on its traitorous discussions with Iran and turning the information obtained from the spying over to the White House's enemies, namely the patriotic Republicans in the House of Representatives.

The report on the spying pointedly does not disclose how Israel had been getting the information, just as the White House refuses to explain why Ms. Dowling is nowhere to be seen and why there are dead flowers suddenly all over the White House. The White House figured that the sheeple would not connect the dots, but we free thinkers can't be fooled: Ms. Dowling was "disappeared" after Michelle Obama, in one of her typical fits of rage against one of the lowly Caucasian White House servants, threw a vase, and a previously hidden video camera fell out.

Further investigation found similar cameras in some of the flower arrangements in the Oval Office, and President Obama ordered the florist immediately arrested by two trusted Secret Service agents, both of whom were no doubt members of the Black Panthers.

He had her waterboarded with one of the pieces of equipment that were removed from Gitmo to appease the terrorists for whom the President really works, and - since waterboarding is always effective - she was forced to disclose that she and her husband, who works for Congress, were working as spies for the Israelis and conduits between Israel and Congress to defend America against the President and that she had put the cameras in place. She also disclosed that she would turn the video and audio over to Mossad, who would then pick the juicy bits to turn over to Congress through her husband.

Only after a month of torture was this brave woman released. The Administration's fear of the conservatives in the House is the only reason they never apprehended her patriotic husband.

The America-hating liberal media obligingly refused to report on her disappearance at the White House's demand until she was released and the White House had gotten all of the intelligence it could from her.

@chris I forgot one:

"the Arab world is fished so Palestinians can't be trusted." Again, not what he said so far as I can tell unless you're putting words in his mouth that aren't in this thread. He said that the problems of the rest of the Arab world would inevitably leak into any Palestinian led government with control over Israel. This has nothing inherently to do with trust - there's other reasons why one could expect those problems to seep in, most notably and obviously what I said above about "Geopolitics 101."

Anyways, this is the last I'm going to say on this issue.

@chris You've misread him badly on each and every single on of those items.

"Madness" was clearly and specifically referring to the political situation in the Muslim-dominated word, and to the extent it was about anyone was explicitly in reference to "leaders." Would we really say that the political situation in the majority of the Muslim dominated world right now is anything but "madness"?

"Genocidal fanatics" - I initially read that line as being specifically a reference to Hamas. @leeesq 's subsequent comments made that conclusion explicit. Hamas is a specific organization with an explicit mission and set of goals. We can debate whether that is an accurate description of Hamas, but it's hardly an unreasonable one and certainly not to be read as a generalization about the Palestinian populace.

"critics are anti-Semites" - I don't see where he said this. Even if he had, while it would be wrong and inappropriate, it certainly wouldn't be racist.

Regardless, he said two things, and only two things on this front, so far as I can tell, neither of which was "critics are anti-Semites":

(1) anti-Zionism is either anti-semitism or strong evidence thereof. Anti-Zionism is not synonymous with "critics of Israel" by a longshot. Moreover, whether or not he's correct in his assessment (I don't think he is even though I'm not at all anti-Zionist), he made the statement only in the context of explaining the specific reasons for the claim. From experience, that's a hell of a lot better than most of the times I've seen the anti-Semitic charge levied. For that matter, it's a hell of a lot better than a lot (not necessarily most) of the times I see the racism charge levied.

(2) He said that if he's a racist, then you're an anti-Semite. I'd rather he not have said this in this way, but ultimately his point here is that you're using such a broad brush in defining racism that it's either meaningless or that it can be applied just as easily to you. I'm not even interested in having an opinion on this other than: this is exactly why I asked that we try to keep shit confined to what is said on this thread.

@chris I asked early on in this thread that comments be confined to responding to statements in the OP or elsewhere in this thread rather than bringing stuff in from other threads. I'm not interested in what's been said in other threads, and don't have any interest, time, or desire to go back and review previous threads on this topic in which I may or may not have participated and which in any event were probably not one of my OPs.

I don't see any of what you allege in his comments here.

Aye. GWB effectively started putting his campaign together by the summer of 1998, and IIRC was already starting to put out feelers by late '97. I distinctly remember reading an article in one of the Capitol Hill papers when I was interning there in '98 discussing how various big players were effectively making pilgrimages to Crawford to pledge their support to GWB.

@stillwater

Interesting interview with Bibi yesterday on NPR. He effectively asserted that both Jews and Arabs agree that Jewish settlements on post-67 lands will be considered Israeli under any two state solution…. (???) Hearing him say that sorta blew my mind.

In fairness, without more context, I'm not sure how that's different from "1967 borders, plus swaps," which is pretty widely accepted position. The problem with the settlements is that the more they expand, the more difficult "plus swaps" becomes.

I disagree quite strongly with @leeesq here, but I think y'all are being incredibly unfair to him here. Honestly, I think he and @saul-degraw have conducted themselves quite admirably in this thread and that this discussion managed to be quite productive for damn near four days. I'm far too used to being immediately accused of anti-semitism or supporting terrorism for the slightest criticism of Israel to have anything but respect for how Lee and Saul have conducted themselves in this thread.

Y'all are making a lot of assumptions about the basis for his views - which, by the way, are him arguing against a one-state solution, a position with which I'm pretty sure several of you jumping down his throat happen to agree. There's certainly little dispute that a one-state solution in which Israeli Jews maintained government power would make oppression of Palestinians even worse and would be anything but liberal. Why is that position not bigoted (and it's absolutely not) but the position that one-state solution in which Palestinians were in the power seat would result in oppression of Jews is?

He's made two arguments for his position that a one-state solution, even under the best of possible circumstances, would not create a secular liberal democracy in which minority rights were respected: (1) theocratic politics are popular throughout the Islamic world - and, implicitly, popular with Palestinians as well, such that at least some level of entanglement, unacceptable to Israeli Jews, between Islam and government would be inevitable; and (2) such a solution would be subject to the same trends and problems that exist throughout the region.

Neither of these has a damn thing to do with race. The first is both an empirical question and a theological question: (a) do a critical mass of Palestinians believe that it is the proper role of the state to propagate Islam, and (b) what priority does Islam in its current forms (emphasis on forms, plural) give to opposing secularism? The assumption that Islam opposes secularism is hardly unreasonable - I cannot name a single religion that thinks it should, as a matter of practice, stay completely out of politics and government.

As for concerns about the problems in the rest of the region spilling over even more than they already do....I mean, that's just geopolitics 101, regardless of the West's role in creating those problems. The problems exist, and no one here has even attempted to give any evidence that a one-state solution with a Palestinian-led government would be at all immune to those problems or even help to solve those problems. To be clear - such evidence may well exist, and it's entirely possible that a Palestinian-led one-state government would be able to avoid regional problems seeping in. But if so, then simply saying it's racist to believe otherwise doesn't even remotely make the case.

Part of the issue of regional problems is the question of why secular liberal democracy has thus far failed utterly to succeed in the Middle East - the best example of a secular liberal democracy in the region would be Turkey, which is not really part of the Middle East, has a significantly different history, and still has been pretty noticeably affected by the region's many problems, and is starting to lose much of its secular nature.

What's more, the accusation of racism seems particular unfair here in light of the fact that Jews basically don't exist anymore in the rest of the Middle East because of severe oppression in the very recent past at the hands of Arab Muslims. It may well be that the oppressed have become the oppressors - indeed, I personally happen to think that to be largely the case - but that doesn't make it racist to fear a resumption of the old oppression if Israeli Jews became governed by a Palestinian majority, particularly one that would of geopolitical necessity have close ties to governments that openly promote severe anti-semitism. I mean...is there any evidence that anti-Semitism is less acceptable amongst Palestinians than it is in other neighboring states?

None of which is to say that Israeli Jews are immune to anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab bigotry of their own - certainly the opposite is pretty clearly the case.

But Lee and Saul, just as any of us, deserve to be treated as individuals and to have their arguments debated on the merits of what they actually say. If you really believe both that, despite what I wrote above, their opinions in this thread are racist and that it's important to call those opinions out as such, then you need to make the case for that and explain why.

Aye to that.

@mike-schilling This seems like one of the great tragedies in all of this the last 20 years- Rabin assassinated at just about the moment when hopes.ran highest. Sharon becomes incapacitated just as his Gaza decision is starting to look like a stroke of genius.

It's an affirmative defense, but in just about every state nowadays the government has to disprove affirmative defenses beyond a reasonable doubt. I'm not a huge fan of that standard in murder self-defense cases,* though I confess that this Connecticut case is making me think that maybe it's wise to have such a low bar for asserting self-defense.

*My view is that intentionally killing or committing an act of violence against someone else, whether or not in self-defense, is stepping into the shoes of the state, which is theoretically defined as the entity which possesses a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence. Because of that, the burden should theoretically be on the defendant to prove that the deceased was committing a crime warranting the use of deadly force, just as the burden should be on the state to prove that a defendant committed the act the state accuses her of committing. In a self-defense case, the defendant is essentially admitting that they committed the act, but is saying they have an excuse, just as the state in other circumstances openly commits acts of violence for which it has an excuse that it must prove. The Connecticut case is reminding me that this all assumes the prosecution acts fairly.

Cr1 - I don't see how this case shows the laws themselves going too far in the other direction against self-defense - though I should mention it absolutely shows how screwed up coverage of domestic violence still is. First, the article complains about "stand your ground" protecting men but there being no equivalent law protecting women being subjected to domestic abuse. That conclusion makes no sense - to the extent a state has a "stand your ground" law, it seems pretty clear to me that it would cover most domestic violence self-defense situations. It would not cover situations in which the abuse victim murders her abuser at a time when he's not committing an act of abuse, and that is certainly something worth discussing, but it doesn't appear to be relevant to this particular case.

Second, the issue in this particular case doesn't seem to be that the law is making it overly difficult for her to put forward a defense - after all, the jury voted 11-1 to acquit her. It seems instead to be a case of an overzealous prosecution. There are things that can and should be done to address the problem of overzealous prosecutors, but none of them are or should be specific to any particular defense situation. For instance, it seems appalling to me that in a system where you're supposed to be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, an 11-1 vote in favor of acquittal is only a mistrial rather than a full acquittal. There's also issues of removing qualified immunity protections from prosecutors and police.

There is nothing wrong with having some legislation that says these things are important and we can do some stuff to the detriment of markets for better values.

This is not the same as saying that those who support the repeal of such legislation "want to kill the weekend." There are, as far as I can tell, only a small number of states (as in, less than 10) that prohibit working seven consecutive days. Do you really think hourly workers in the remaining 40+ states lack weekends (at least to the extent they have only one employer, which is what we're talking about here)? When an hourly worker has to work a seven-day week, that means the employer is paying overtime. Employers do not like paying overtime. But employees like getting it - within reason, of course. That means that if they're asking an employee to work a seven-day week, it's going to be in response to an unusual situation where the employer's in a particular bind. Even then, the bill seems to require that the employee's decision be voluntary (ie, presumably not under threat of loss of job).

None of which means that you have to like the bill. Perhaps it's important to you that worker's weekends be viewed as sacrosanct regardless of whether an individual worker in an individual situation might be thrilled to give up the occasional weekend to make some overtime. Seriously, there's nothing wrong with that, my own values aside. And I get why unions oppose it - indeed, they should, for a number of reasons.

But to object on the grounds that advocates of allowing workers the agency to work seven day weeks "want to kill [or take away] the weekend" isn't even wrong. If you said "Republicans want to allow employers to take away your weekend," that would still be incorrect and hyperbolic and deny that workers possess any agency whatsoever, but at least there'd be an argument for it. But to say that the law itself threatens to make weekends disappear only makes sense, even as hyperbole, if you assume that "individual human adults are [not often] capable of negotiating morally permissible, even optimal, relationships outside of explicitly-stated legal codes and layers of bureaucratic oversight."

@murali I'd answer those first two questions "no" and "yes," respectively.

It seems to me that nationalism is on the whole a normatively bad ideology that would be better off not existing at all. But it's an ideology, so once it existed, there was no real way of stopping it from spreading.

To be sure, it's probably a beneficial ideology for any given ethnic group to adopt. But the effects of it for those outside of the ethnic group are often pretty horrible and illiberal, especially if they're living within the territory claimed by that group. Then there's the issue of what it means for those on the border of the new nation-state.

Thing is, it's a pretty damn powerful ideology and once it succeeds for one nation, it becomes increasingly imperative for affected groups and regions to adopt it themselves, if only as a defensive measure at first, while less affected nations may be inspired to adopt it as effectively an offensive measure right from the outset.

It seems to me that there's a threshold at which the nationalism cat is so far out of the bag that the only way to mitigate its worst effects is to ensure as many ethnic groups as possible have their own nation-state, or - far preferably - semi-autonomous nation-state. Not only that, but at that threshold, it outright becomes a moral imperative, as failing to do so becomes a license for oppression, aggression, and, at worst, genocide.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with both those points.

James Fallows wrote a pretty compelling piece a couple of weeks ago that Bibi's obsession with blocking any deal over the Iranian nuclear program is a function of his desire to prevent the US from realizing its interests are diverging from Israel's interests, which would be a huge blow to Israel. Certainly, a shift towards Iran and away from the Saudis (who, other than their official recognition of Israel, have all of Iran's worst vices, plus some others, like cultivating the ideology that's given us ISIS and al Qaeda) has a fair amount to recommend it from a pure standpoint of American interests.

I'm not sure I fully buy Fallows' argument - I think it underestimates the extent to which Bibi's partisanship limits his worldview and gives him tunnel vision. More charitably to Bibi, though, it occurs to me now that the combination of an American shift toward Iran with Iran eventually getting a nuke could in fact theoretically pose an existential threat for Israel by effectively removing American nukes from any MAD scenario, thereby limiting somewhat the deterrent effect of Israel's own arsenal. That scenario still seems wildly implausible to me, for various reasons, but I can see how it might not seem that way to Bibi.

Still, Fallows' argument makes a lot of sense.

@a-compromised-immune-system @kim is correct. Kulanu has little reason to let their personal feelings over Likud's shady tactics interfere in any significant manner with their willingness to join Likud. Their stated goal all along has been to have their leader appointed as finance minister - they may or may not have preferred that they be finance minister under Herzog, but their primary interest is in controlling the finance ministry. They're a center-right party that is an offshoot of Likud, so there aren't any great ideological hurdles - they've probably got as much in common with Likud ideologically as they have with the centrist parties.

Likud will certainly offer them the finance ministry, plus maybe some other less significant concessions to smooth over any hard feelings from the campaign. It would make no sense, given their interests, to turn that offer down and categorically refuse to join any Likud-led coalition.

If they turn Likud down, then they're taking an incredibly high-risk gamble that Yesh Atid would also categorically refuse any offer by Netanyahu.

And even if that gamble turns out to be correct, then the next step would be for Israel's President to try to strong arm ZU into a unity government (which the President has wanted from the beginning since he has no love for Netanyahu, and since it's always been a longshot that ZU would be able to form a sustainable coalition government absent a landslide victory for it). Any unity government would likely leave Kulanu out in the cold.

If, and only if, the President's attempts to strong-arm a unity government fail would ZU get a shot to form its own governing coalition. Even then, it would probably have only a brief window in which to do so before a new election gets called. And as I mentioned above, the best that could be hoped for would be for a majority of the Arab List to join the coalition, which likely still leaves them a couple seats short of 60. Worse, even any portions of the Arab List that did join would have a precarious relationship with the rest of the coalition, making the coalition very easy to break.

More likely, ZU would need to get Shas and UTJ into the coalition, which would probably mean the loss of any Arab List support - it's hard to see any part of the Arab List joining a coalition with two ultra-orthodox parties. If ZU got both Shas and UTJ, though, this would more than offset the loss of the supporting portions of the Arab List.

Still....that's a ton of ifs that Kulanu would need to put its faith in for it to turn down Likud's offer of the finance ministry just because it was offended by Likud's shady election tactics. Given their interests, it would be colossally stupid for them to take that gamble, even if it would help restart the peace process (in which they probably would not be involved in any event), and even if most of us outside of Israel would love to see them do it.

The chances that they take that gamble are close to zero.

@stillwater The AJL is by no means unified on the issue of joining an opposition government, and I believe one of their constituent sub-parties has said it would walk away from the List if the other elements of it join a ZU coalition. So that 14 probably gets reduced to at most 10 or 11 (and maybe even less).

What's more, it's not just a question of whether a coalition is possible - there's no reason some of the ultra-orthodox parties couldn't be part of a ZU-led coalition, - Shas, for instance, has been part of every Israeli government, Labor or Likud.

The bigger question is who the President gives the first crack at negotiating to. And that's Likud. Anyone who refuses to negotiate with Likud is taking a huge risk of being left out of the government entirely.

@a-compromised-immune-system Again, these are raw numbers, not percentages. 49 seats is not 49 percent, and leaves them 11 seats short of what is needed. ZU's announcement is not remotely surprising - they were always quite open that they had no interest in working with Netanyahu and were comfortable being in the opposition. The only way they might have wound up in a coalition with Likud would have been if they were effectively tied with Likud and the President successfully strong-armed them into a unity government (which actually was what most people were expecting to happen if the election results reasonably tracked the polls).

But that would have been considered a huge loss for Netanyahu, not for the ZU.

Additionally, your assumption that Kulanu is unlikely to join with Likud is a huge assumption. Ideologically, they're an offshoot of Likud. There's personal animosity between Kulanu and Likud now, but that only has the effect of marginally increasing the price Kulanu will require Likud to provide it - it doesn't make them completely unwilling to join Likud by any means. Their leader's stated goal was to join any government willing to make him the finance minister, and it's hard to imagine Netanyahu won't offer him that, plus perhaps some other minor concessions to smooth any remaining tensions.

If they refuse that offer, then the outcome will be that Netanyahu is either able to offer Yesh Atid a sweeheart deal, or is forced by the President to negotiate with ZU for a unity government. In either event, Kulanu probably gets left out of the government entirely, so there's essentially no chance that they'd turn down any reasonable offer from Netanyahu.

@a-compromised-immune-system This is incorrect. The numbers are of seats in the Knesset, not percentages. There are 120 seats, so you need 60 seats to form a government, and conversely 60 seats to block a government. Those 29 seats plus ZU's 24 only work out to 53. The other centrist and ultra-orthodox parties are likely to be more than willing to take any kind of reasonable offer to be part of the government regardless of who gets first crack at forming it.

Additionally, while unlikely, I wouldn't rule out Yesh Atid from Netanyahu's potential coalition - they joined his coalition once before and if he needed them (which he doesn't) he'd surely be willing to offer them a sweetheart deal.

The Arab List said on Monday that this year it would be willing to consider supporting Herzog for PM, though it would have only likely been part of the List since there was a lot of opposition to the concept.

It's also worth mentioning that it's a pretty recent thing that there's any meaningful difference between the nominal "Left" and "Right" on the Palestinian issue, particularly on the question of settlements. Jewish Home didn't exist at all until recently; now they're a central element of Netanyahu's governing coalition.

And it's not just the Palestinian issue - a good chunk of it is the rise of discriminatory legislation against Arab-Israelis.