The Washington Post reports that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. said this Wednesday:

President Obama took sharp aim at critics of the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday, saying many of those who backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq now want to reject the accord and put the Middle East on the likely path toward another war. …

“Many of the same people who made the case for war with Iraq” are now opposing the Iran deal, Obama said, who urged for a shift away in U.S. policies “characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy.”

The heart of Obama’s address hammered hard on the administration’s views that the alternative to the deal is conflict.

“I am not saying this to be provocative,” Obama said. “I am stating a fact. . . . The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”

Obama and other top administration officials, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, have framed the Iran deal as a last chance to roll back Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, in particular, the scope of its ability to enrich uranium. In exchange, international sanctions over Iran would be eased on Tehran.

Speaking directly to lawmakers opposing the deal, Obama said rejection would cost more than missing a chance to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

“We would lose something more precious,” he said. “We would lose America’s credibility as a leader of diplomacy; America’s credibility as an anchor of the international system.”

The West and its allies fear that Iran’s nuclear fuel production could one day be expanded to make weapons-grade material. Iran insists it does not seek nuclear arms, but demands that it retain the capacity to make its own fuel for peaceful reactors. …

Obama also must confront relentless push back against the accord from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu did a webcast for more than 10,000 Jewish Americans in which he said that “this is the time to oppose this dangerous deal.”

In a clear sign of the divide, Obama countered with his own meeting with Jewish community leaders at the White House just hours after Netanyahu’s wrapped up.

“No one can blame Israelis from having a deep skepticism with any dealings with Iran,” said Obama, noting Tehran’s backing for Hezbollah and calls by Iran’s leaders for Israel’s downfall.

“A nuclear-armed Iran is far more dangerous to Israel, America and the world rather than an Iran that benefits from sanctions relief,” he said.

Facebook Friend Ken Gardner had the best response to the drivel you have just read:

That Iran speech may have been the low point of the entire Obama presidency. In one speech, he blamed the Iran deal on the Iraq war, falsely claimed only Israel opposes the deal, claimed he has been Israel’s best friend ever, compared his efforts to Reagan’s success against the Soviets, repeated the false claim that we can “snap” sanctions back into place, admitted that Iran will use some unfrozen funds to fund terrorism, made excuses for “death to America” chanters, and compared them to Republicans. It’s what I expect from a Twitter egg troll with 20 followers, not the President of the United States.

Meanwhile, James Taranto reports on the current secretary of state (no, not Douglas the phony La Follette):

We have to hand it to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg: Probably because he is (or at least appears) sympathetic to the Obama administration, he has a way of extracting statements from top officials that reveal their true thinking. The result is generally newsworthy—and terrifying. For an earlier example, see our May column on Goldberg’s interview with the president himself. For the most recent, read on.

This morning Goldberg published an interview with Secretary of State John Kerry on Iran. Here is the most alarming bit:

Kerry warned that if Congress rejects the Iran deal, it will confirm the anti-U.S. suspicions harbored by the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and eliminate any chance of a peaceful solution to the nuclear conundrum:

“The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them,” Kerry said. “This”—a congressional rejection—“will be the ultimate screwing.” He went on to argue that “the United States Congress will prove the ayatollah’s suspicion, and there’s no way he’s ever coming back. He will not come back to negotiate. Out of dignity, out of a suspicion that you can’t trust America. America is not going to negotiate in good faith. It didn’t negotiate in good faith now, would be his point.”

Goldberg’s headline is “John Kerry on the Risk of Congress ‘Screwing’ the Ayatollah.” We write for a family newspaper, so we went with something a bit more delicate.

To put this as politely as possible—and believe us, we’re straining to do so—Kerry’s tender concern for the ayatollah’s “dignity” is perverse. It’s true that a degree of mutual trust is necessary for a negotiation to succeed, but Kerry ignores the “mutual” part. His analysis is one-sided, and on the wrong side. The main question for Congress—as it should have been for the administration—is whether America can trust Iran.

This is, after all, a regime that traduced all diplomatic norms by seizing the U.S. Embassy and holding dozens of Americans hostage for over a year. OK, that was a long time ago. But it’s the same regime, one whose slogan is “Death to America.”

As the New Yorker’s Robin Wright notes, Kerry was asked about that slogan at a congressional hearing last week. His response was evasive:

“Is it the policy of the Ayatollah, if you can answer for him, that Iran wants to destroy the United States?” the Texas Republican Ted Poe, of the House Foreign Relations Committee, asked Secretary of State John Kerry, on Tuesday.

“I don’t believe they’ve said that,” Kerry replied. “I think they’ve said ‘Death to America!’ in their chants.”

“Well, I kind of take that to mean that they want us dead,” Poe countered.

“I think they have a policy of opposition to us and a great enmity, but I have no specific knowledge of a plan by Iran to actually destroy us,” Kerry said. “I do know that the rhetoric is—is beyond objectionable.”

Goldberg didn’t bring up that subject, but he did ask Kerry a similar question about Israel (the “little Satan,” as per the Iranians, as opposed to the “great” American one). The answer was the same:

Goldberg: Do you believe that Iranian leaders sincerely seek the elimination of the Jewish state?

Kerry: I think they have a fundamental ideological confrontation with Israel at this particular moment. Whether or not that translates into active steps to, quote, “Wipe it,” you know—

Goldberg: Wipe it off the map.

Kerry: I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t seen anything that says to me—they’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here.

Wright—not to be confused with the actress of the same name whose credits include “The Princess Bride,” “Forrest Gump” and Netflix’s “House of Cards”—also means to dismiss the significance of the “Death to America” slogan. She reports that “some Iranians” with whom she spoke “downplayed the revolutionary mantra’s importance,” while “others insisted it still has strong symbolic merit.” None, she implies, think it should be taken at face value. “All of them—particularly senior Iranian officials educated in the United States—seemed befuddled about why it would ever impact the fate of the nuclear deal.”

She adds that “the gap in perception may be the deal’s greatest vulnerability.” She closes with a quote from American-educated Nasser Haidan, “a Tehran University political scientist and influential voice in policy circles”: “Whom does America want to rely on to judge public opinion? The twenty per cent who do shout ‘Death to America!’ or the eighty per cent who don’t?”

In a regime that claims absolute religious authority, public opinion is rather beside the point. Still, it’s worth noting the contrast between the way in which Obama administration supporters treat domestic and foreign adversaries. When Tea Party protesters said “Take back our country”—a commonplace political trope—they imagined it had invidious racial implications and argued that it discredited opposition to Obama’s domestic initiatives. “Death to America” is invidious on its face, but the administration and its apologists are anxious to explain it away.

At any rate, “Death to America” is the slogan of the regime—the negotiating partner about whose trust and dignity John Kerry is so concerned. Wright quotes Rep. Eliot Engel—a New York Democrat who has expressed skepticism of the Iran deal but has not yet said how he’ll vote on it—at the House hearing: “You would think that after an agreement was signed with us there might be a modicum of good will that perhaps they would keep quiet for a week or two, or a month.” That’s asking far too little, but the point is right: “How can we trust Iran when this type of thing happens?”

Goldberg began his interview by asking Kerry about, as the interviewer put it, “something that you believe is analytical: If this deal goes down in Congress, if Congress doesn’t let this through, you’ve said that Israel will be blamed, Israel will be isolated. Many Israelis took this as a threat, not a piece of analysis. Why did you say this publicly?”

Kerry tried to avoid the question by saying nice things about Israel: “legitimately besieged,” “our friend,” “our ally.” Goldberg pressed ahead and finally got an answer:

Goldberg: Go to this Heisenberg question. By analyzing this publicly, you’re affecting this, giving permission to Israel’s enemies to isolate it—

Kerry: If you’ve ever played golf, you know that you yell “fore” off the tee. You’re not threatening somebody, you’re warning them: “Look, don’t get hit by the ball, it’s coming.” There are any number of analogies. What I’m saying is, I don’t want Israel to be isolated—obviously not. I don’t want Israel to see further tension and problems. I don’t want to see that. I really don’t want to get bogged down in this because then I look like the analyst. I was really sort of saying that there are consequences to the choices that everybody is making.

The Times of Israel reports that Obama has issued even direr threats—sorry, “warnings”—to the Jewish state:

If the US Congress shoots down the Iranian nuclear deal, America will eventually be pressured into a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities, which will in turn increase terror against Israel, US President Barack Obama told Jewish leaders Tuesday, a source who was present at the meeting said.

During the two-hour meeting, Obama said it was legitimate for opponents of the deal to lobby lawmakers to reject it, but added that a discussion focused on personal attacks, rather than the merits of the deal, could jeopardize the coherence of the American Jewish community and ultimately the resilience of US-Israel relations, according to Greg Rosenbaum, the chair of the National Jewish Democratic Council. . . .

“[The Iranians] will fight this asymmetrically. That means more support for terrorism, more Hezbollah rockets falling on Tel Aviv,” Rosenbaum quoted Obama as saying. “I can assure that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical response that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities.”

That points to the rather shocking inaptness of Kerry’s golf analogy. This is not a game. If the “ball” is “coming,” Obama and Kerry are the ones who “hit” it. They didn’t have to.</blockquote>

Investors Business Daily:

Gov. Bruce Rauner is fighting almost single-handedly against an entrenched, corrupt political class of lawyers, lobbyists, social service providers, media and teachers unions whose rallying cry is to smother reform and maintain business as usual in Springfield.

But business as usual has virtually bankrupted the once mighty industrial and agricultural capital of the Midwest. Illinois is now more than three weeks into the 2016 fiscal year with no budget in sight.

A spending plan passed by the Democrat-dominated legislature was almost $5 billion in the red (out of total expenditures of $34 billion) and bereft of ideas about where the money was going to come from to pay for it. Rauner squashed every word of this abomination with his veto pen — and rightly so.

Years of overspending have many state and city of Chicago bonds selling at junk status. Illinois is now called “the deadbeat state” because it’s two to three months behind in paying billions of dollars of bills owed. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels quips, “Being a neighboring state to Illinois is like living next door to the Simpsons.”

Money matters have grown so perilous in Springfield, the budget office tells us, that 25% of all tax revenue is now used to fund public employee pension obligations. Who wants to move to a place where a quarter of your taxes are used not for basic municipal services but to subsidize pension agreements made years ago for retired public employees who now live in Arizona or Florida?

For decades, Illinois has been ruled by two indomitable political forces that have brought it to this sad place: House speaker for life Michael Madigan and the teachers union bosses.

Meanwhile, Gary Cooper — er, Gov. Rauner — won’t sign a budget until he gets concessions on how the state operates. He wants pension reform (obviously), Medicaid savings, cuts in workers’ compensation, a sensible redistricting plan and an overhaul of so-called “project labor agreements” — a giveaway to the unions that inflates the cost of construction projects.

Rauner should take a lesson from Illinois’ neighbor to the north. Six years ago, Wisconsin’s plight was just as dire, with unemployment running above 9% and red ink topping $1 billion. Republican Gov. Scott Walker stared down the public employee unions and trimmed excessive compensation costs while ending the crisis of runaway pensions and ending automatic tenure for teachers.

Walker later made Wisconsin a right-to-work state. It has subsequently seen a steep drop in unemployment while taxes have been cut and the budget balanced.

Madigan and the unions want to wait out Rauner in hopes that he’ll eventually buckle under. But this is a gunfight that the governor and taxpayers can’t lose.

Remember the Fleeing Fourteen Democratic state senators who bugged out to Illinois to avoid the Act 10 vote? They went the right direction, because their bad economics tanked state finances in the late 2000s, just as Illinois’ is doing to itself now.

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute:

Most Americans think that the federal government is incompetent and wasteful. Their negative view is not surprising given the steady stream of scandals emanating from Washington. Scholarly studies support the idea that many federal activities are misguided and harmful. A recent book on federal performance by Yale University law professor Peter Schuck concluded that failure is “endemic.” What causes all the failures?

First, federal policies rely on top-down planning and coercion. That tends to create winners and losers, which is unlike the mutually beneficial relationships of markets. It also means that federal policies are based on guesswork because there is no price system to guide decision making. A further problem is that failed policies are not weeded out because they are funded by taxes, which are compulsory and not contingent on performance. Second, the government lacks knowledge about our complex society. That ignorance is behind many unintended and harmful side effects of federal policies. While markets gather knowledge from the bottom up and are rooted in individual preferences, the government’s actions destroy knowledge and squelch diversity.

Third, legislators often act counter to the general public interest. They use debt, an opaque tax system, and other techniques to hide the full costs of programs. Furthermore, they use logrolling to pass harmful policies that do not have broad public support.

Fourth, civil servants act within a bureaucratic system that rewards inertia, not the creation of value. Various reforms over the decades have tried to fix the bureaucracy, but the incentives that generate poor performance are deeply entrenched in the executive branch.

Fifth, the federal government has grown enormous in size and scope. Each increment of spending has produced less value but rising taxpayer costs. Failure has increased as legislators have become overloaded by the vast array of programs they have created. Today’s federal budget is 100 times larger than the average state budget, and it is far too large to adequately oversee. Management reforms and changes to budget rules might reduce some types of failure. But the only way to create a major improvement in performance is to cut the overall size of the federal government.