"President Trump and the Republican Party placed the powers of the federal government in service to Trump’s reelection on Tuesday..."

"... staging pardoning and naturalization ceremonies as part of the GOP’s official nominating convention and using the White House Rose Garden for a speech by the first lady.... The format bucked traditional norms of diplomacy and launched a House investigation into whether Pompeo violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that separates government functions from political ones — and a line that Trump and many of his aides have appeared to delight in blurring. Pompeo's address, delivered with the night skyline of Jerusalem behind him, celebrated Trump's relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to 'this very city of God, Jerusalem.'... The president made an unadvertised appearance less than 15 minutes into Tuesday night's broadcast, where he signed a pardon for Jon Ponder, a convicted criminal who turned his life around with help from a former FBI agent. The two men, both scheduled as speakers Tuesday, appeared alongside Trump at the White House.... Trump has largely bypassed the traditional pardon system, in which convicted people appeal to the Justice Department.... Trump made a second unadvertised appearance Tuesday, to preside over a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants, which also featured acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf. Speaking at the White House, Trump praised the three women and two men from all corners of the globe for their perseverance. 'You followed the rules, and you obeyed the laws. You learned your history, embraced our values and proved yourselves to be men and women of the highest integrity,' Trump said. Trump has always put gauze over the specifics of his wife’s immigration story...."

From "Trump uses powers of government in service of reelection, with pardoning and naturalization ceremonies" (WaPo).

"The United States has become the first country with an embassy to Israel located in Jerusalem, the disputed city claimed as a capital by both Israeli and Palestinian people."

"The new embassy was dedicated on Monday in a ceremony attended by Israeli leaders and senior White House advisers. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are protesting the move, and dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli armed forces, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.... For many years the U.S. — like the rest of the world's countries — have declined to put the embassy in Jerusalem, saying that the status of the city needs to be decided in peace talks with the Palestinians. President Trump made a campaign promise to relocate the embassy. He was not the first president to make such a promise, but he is the first to actually make the move.

NPR reports.

"President Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders on Tuesday that he plans to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel..."

"... a symbolically fraught move that would upend decades of American policy and upset efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians," the NYT reports.

Those 2 words together like that.

White House affirms President Trump is in "Jerusalem, Israel." (Tillerson be damned.) pic.twitter.com/UaTng6uQuP

— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) May 22, 2017

Is it a big deal?

The Obama administration at least twice – in 2011 and then again last year – corrected photo captions and datelines that had read “Jerusalem, Israel” to “Jerusalem,” reflecting longstanding executive branch policy that the city should not be described as being in any country until there is a final status agreement. (Congress recognized the city as Israel’s capital in 1995.)

The George W. Bush administration also routinely captioned photos and listed the city on schedules and in news releases as simply “Jerusalem.”

As a candidate, Trump pledged to move the embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, but since assuming the presidency he has retreated.

Maybe it was just — as with Obama — a mistake.

ADDED: In July 2012, when he was running for office, Mitt Romney said: “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel."

That was a powerful statement, Jennifer Rubin writes, since the Obama administration has "repeatedly put out documents suggesting that Jerusalem isn’t in Israel and has attempted to scrub from the White House Web site the reference to Israel’s capital."

"What happened today is that the United States joined the jackals at the U.N."

"That was a phrase used by Pat Moynihan, the great Democratic senator, the former U.S. ambassador who spoke for the United States standing up in the U.N. and to resist this kind of disgrace. To give you an idea of how appalling this resolution is, it declares that any Jew who lives in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, the Jewish quarter, inhabited for 1,000 years, is illegal, breaking international law, essentially an outlaw, can be hauled into the international criminal court and international courts in Europe, which is one of the consequences. The Jewish quarter has been populated by Jews for 1,000 years. In the war of Independence in 1948, the Arabs invaded Israel to wipe it out. They did not succeed, but the Arab Legion succeeded in conquering the Jewish quarter. They expelled all the Jews. They destroyed all the synagogues and all the homes. For 19 years, no Jew could go there. The Israelis got it back in the Six-Day War. Now it’s declared that this is not Jewish territory. Remember, it’s called 'the Jewish quarter,' but it belongs to other people. And any Jew who lives there is an outlaw. That’s exactly what we supported. The resolution is explicit in saying settlements in the occupied territories and in east Jerusalem."

Said Charles Krauthammer.

In 2012, running for re-election, Obama spoke at the meeting of AIPAC, the big Jewish lobby. He said, “Is there any doubt that I have Israel’s back?” That’s why he didn’t want do it while he was in office. That’s why he didn’t want to do it in 2016 so it would injure Hillary and show to particularly American Jews, who tend to be Democratic, that it was all a farce. He does it on the way out, and that’s part of why it’s so disgraceful. He didn’t even — he hid it until there would be no consequence. Now he is out the door and the damage is done for years. That resolution cannot be undone.

ADDED: From the Washington Post editors: "The Obama administration fires a dangerous parting shot." The NYT has no editorial response yet.

AND: Outside of the opinion pages, the NYT does have a news article, "Obama, Trump and the Turf War That Has Come to Define the Transition." that begins:

President-elect Donald J. Trump and President Obama have been unfailingly polite toward each other since the election. But with Mr. Trump staking out starkly different positions from Mr. Obama on Israel and other sensitive issues, and the president acting aggressively to protect his legacy, the two have become leaders of what amounts to dueling administrations.

The split widened on Friday when the Obama administration abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote that condemned Israel for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and allowed the resolution to pass. A day earlier, Mr. Trump had publicly demanded that Mr. Obama veto the measure, even intervening with Egypt at the request of Israel to pressure the administration to shelve the effort....

It was the latest in a rapid-fire series of Twitter posts and public statements over the last week in which Mr. Trump has weighed in on Israel, terrorism and nuclear proliferation — contradicting Mr. Obama and flouting the notion that the country can have only one president at a time....

What happened in the U.N. was Obama showing off his power in the face of Donald Trump? Is that what the NYT means to say? That's not just pathetic. It's shocking.

I just realized that the David Friedman picked by Trump for ambassador to Israel is the David Friedman I went to law school with.

New York University School of Law (J.D., 1981).

I remember him as a young man. Vividly!

Strange to look at that old face and visualize the young man I knew. This blows my mind. "David Friedman" is such a common name that it took me a while — I've been reading news stories about him for days — even to consider checking to see where he went to law school.

Among the many news articles: "Trump Chooses Hard-Liner as Ambassador to Israel" (NYT):

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named David M. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right, as his nominee for ambassador to Israel, elevating a campaign adviser who has questioned the need for a two-state solution and has likened left-leaning Jews in America to the Jews who aided the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Mr. Friedman, whose outspoken views stand in stark contrast to decades of American policy toward Israel, did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach. In a statement from the Trump transition team announcing his nomination, he said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

Through decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, the embassy has been in Tel Aviv, as the State Department insists that the status of Jerusalem — which both Israel and the Palestinians see as their rightful capital — can be determined only through negotiations as part of an overall peace deal.

What do I remember of the young David Friedman? It's hard to trust memory enough to want to say anything at all, but I believe I remember a young man who was strong and intense and happy to be different from the mass of NYU law students. 

"Listen, this is Jerusalem. We Muslims don’t complain when the Christians ring their church bells. We don’t complain about the Jews with their ram horns."

"This is religion. No one should interfere." Said one resident of Jerusalem, quoted in "Israel wants mosques to turn the volume way down" (at WaPo).

“You know what the call is? The call is to come and pray to God,” he said. “The Jews don’t want to hear this? Tell me why.”

One answer is: "In tense times, the call feels threatening... It’s like they’re trying to get inside your head."

Another is the high amplification, especially in the early morning: "The mosques would put their speakers right up near the homes of Jewish people and wake them up." That quote is from Motti Yogev, a member of parliament from the pro-settler Jewish Home party, who observes that in the old days there was only unamplified singing from the minarets (or knocking on doors): If it's okay to use modern equipment in the call to prayer, why not use phone apps and alarm clocks?

The President, not the Congress, gets to decide whether a person born in Jerusalem can have his place of birth listed on his passport as Israel.

Here's the PDF of Zivotofsky v. Kerry, which just came out. There's a majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, with 5 votes. The Chief Justice writes a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Alito. Justice Scalia has a dissenting opinion, joined by the Chief and Justice Alito. And Justice Thomas concurs in part and dissents in part.

Justice Kennedy uses the 3 categories from Justice Jackson's opinion in Youngstown. This is a category 3 case, where the President and Congress are in disagreement, but the President's position prevails when the court finds the President's power "exclusive" and "conclusive." That was the case here, Kennedy writes, where the issue is the formal recognition of a foreign sovereign, and Congress was trying to require the President to "issue a formal statement that contradicts the earlier recognition."

"There are very few cases I can ever think of where the Court has said the President can act contrary to a statute."

Said Justice Breyer, 3 years ago, in the oral argument of a case that has returned to the Supreme Court for oral argument today.

Ever since the founding of Israel in 1948, the U.S. has taken the position that no country has sovereignty over Jerusalem until its status is negotiated in a Middle East peace deal. Israel's supporters in Congress, however, have tried to force a different policy, passing legislation that would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and require the State Department to allow U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth on their passports.

The Bush administration and the Obama administration both refused to do so, contending that the passport mandate unconstitutionally infringes on the president's foreign policy powers.

There are very few cases where the President can act in opposition to a statute, but — as I suspect the Court will have to say — this is one of them.

John Kerry's "poof speech."

Don't worry, Kerry lovers. He'll survive. He didn't use a homophobic slur. He said "Poof, that was sort of the moment. We find ourselves where we are."

He was talking about the Israeli/Palestinian difficulties, and the "poof" moment was "Israel’s announcement of 700 new housing units for Jewish settlement in an area of Jerusalem across the 1967 lines, in territory the Palestinians claim for a future state." In Israel, that's being called Kerry's "poof speech."

This does seem to open up the Israelis to a charge that they are using homophobic slur against Kerry.

"If one could nominate an absolutely tragic day in human history, it would be the occasion..."

"... that is now commemorated by the vapid and annoying holiday known as 'Hannukah.'"

For once, instead of Christianity plagiarizing from Judaism, the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a celebration that coincides with “Christmas,” which is itself a quasi-Christian annexation, complete with burning logs and holly and mistletoe, of a pagan Northland solstice originally illuminated by the Aurora Borealis. Here is the terminus to which banal “multiculturalism” has brought us.

From Christopher Hitchens's "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

"Wind farms have been 'peppered' across Britain without enough consideration for the countryside and people’s homes..."

"... a senior Conservative energy minister admitted last night as he warned 'enough is enough.'"

John Hayes said that we can “no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities” and added that it “seems extraordinary” they have allowed to spread so much throughout the country.

The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective.”...

“We can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities. I can’t single-handedly build a new Jerusalem but I can protect our green and pleasant land.”

That last sentence is a reference to the poem by William Blake.

The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during Jesus' lost years. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation.... describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian Church in general, and the English Church in particular, used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.

Are there wind turbines in Heaven?

"The State Department today again refused to name the capital of Israel, even after being questioned by the press..."

"... and even after the Democratic party (President Obama's party) voted yesterday to add language to its platform stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel."

Romney: “It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”

That was a powerful statement, Jennifer Rubin writes, since the Obama administration has "repeatedly put out documents suggesting that Jerusalem isn’t in Israel and has attempted to scrub from the White House Web site the reference to Israel’s capital."

More quotes from Romney's speech at the link, including:

I believe that the enduring alliance between the State of Israel and the United States of America is more than a strategic alliance: It is a force for good in the world. America’s support of Israel should make every American proud. We should not allow the inevitable complexities of modern geopolitics to obscure fundamental touchstones. No country or organization or individual should ever doubt this basic truth: A free and strong America will always stand with a free and strong Israel.

Courts can decide whether the State Department can decline to follow Congress's statute allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to have their passports say "Israel."

The question is justiciable — it's not within the "political question doctrine" — says the Supreme Court today, in an opinion, Zivotofsky v. Clinton, written by Chief Justice Roberts. Roberts states the doctrine in the one-line form that Chief Justice Rehnquist used in Nixon v. United States (1993): Is there "a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it." (The language comes from the 1962 case Baker v. Carr, but Baker v. Carr phrases the doctrine in terms of 6 factors. The Nixon version refers only to the first 2.)

The lower courts ruled that this case involves a political question because deciding Zivotofsky’s claim would force the Judicial Branch to interfere with the President’s exercise of constitutional power committed to him alone. The District Court understood Zivotofsky to ask the courts to “decide the political status of Jerusalem.” 511 F. Supp. 2d, at 103. This misunderstands the issue presented. Zivotofsky does not ask the courts to determine whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He instead seeks to determine whether he may vindicate his statutory right, under §214(d), to choose to have Israel recorded on his passport as his place of birth....

The federal courts are not being asked to supplant a foreign policy decision of the political branches with the courts’ own unmoored determination of what United States policy toward Jerusalem should be. Instead, Zivotofsky requests that the courts enforce a specific statutory right. To resolve his claim, the Judiciary must decide if Zivotofsky’s interpretation of the statute is correct, and whether the statute is constitutional. This is a familiar judicial exercise. 

Moreover, because the parties do not dispute the interpretation of §214(d), the only real question for the courts is whether the statute is constitutional. At least since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), we have recognized that when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Id., at 177. That duty will sometimes involve the “[r]esolution of litigation challenging the constitutional authority of one of the three branches,” but courts cannot avoid their responsibility merely “because the issues have political implications.” INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 943 (1983)....

Thus, there is no "textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department." Are there "judicially discoverable and manageable standards"? It might seem so if you think the question is the political status of Jerusalem, the Chief writes, but the issue is whether the statute is constitutional: Can Congress interfere with the Executive and create the right that Zivotofsky now asserts? The answer may be no, but that's the answer on the substantive constitutional merits, not a determination that the courts may not reach the substantive merits. Reciting all the arguments for and against congressional power, Roberts reject the notion that they show why judges cannot answer the question:

Resolution of Zivotofksy’s claim demands careful examination of the textual, structural, and historical evidence put forward by the parties regarding the nature of the statute and of the passport and recognition powers. This is what courts do.

So the "political question" argument fails and the case returns to the D.C. Circuit court to get on to the substantive merits.

Should John Brennan be the new Director of National Intelligence?

Dennis Blair has resigned, and Obama says he has "more confidence" in Brennan. Michael Anton looks at some things Brennan has said:

First, in prepared remarks in Washington, Brennan referred to his love for “al-Quds,” which happens to be the Arab revanchist name for the city that the rest of us call “Jerusalem.” This terminology is routinely used by Islamist terror groups to rally the faithful....

[Second, a]t a conference in Washington, he said that the Obama administration is exploring ways to strengthen the hand of “moderate elements” within Hezbollah....

Earlier this year Brennan said that the 20% recidivism rate of the Gitmo detainees released up to that point was “not that bad.” See, he explained, the rate for American criminals sometimes approaches 50%....