I asked a source with expertise in the region for thoughts about the David Ignatius Waziristan column that we’ve been discussing [on Tapped] today. The reply:

Nothing in there that’s new. I don’t think Washington is lacking for disgruntled ex-gov’t employees with ideas how to solve this crisis or that… of course, Crumpton is smoking crack if he thinks that aid agencies can simply waltz into Waziristan or anywhere else in FATA and immediately deliver electricity and all sorts of other developmental goods. And it’s similarly unclear why outsourcing the dirty work to the tribal militias will do the trick, when the current model of outsourcing to the Pakistan Frontier Corps has proven such an unmitigated disaster. Remember – foreign militants by and large only reside where they are welcome in the tribal areas. So the only tribes that would conceivably go along with an American strategy would be ones that are not currently hosting foreigners. Which would mean that, in order to score the US foreign policy objective, they’d have to be asked to basically invade other tribes’ territorial abodes – not something I see happening in the Pashtun frontierlands…

It might sound like a good idea to use the tribes to fight Al Qaeda, but using proxies to fight our wars for us can be a lot harder than it looks, and the prospect of success will depend a great deal on the specifics of the on-the-ground situation. That said, Ignatius deserves a lot of credit for casting the spotlight on this simmering issue, and for raising public awareness about how important what’s happening in the area is to America’s long-term safety.

–Crossposted from Tapped.

We’ve all heard about lax mortgage lending rules but this is ridiculous:

It was a little baffling when Jose F. Lara got a check in the mail for almost $2,800 from a bank in Arlington County in December. When the bank told him that it was the overpayment on his second mortgage, things got really baffling.

He didn’t have a second mortgage.

Turned out it all tracked back to that day last year when Lara’s wallet was stolen. Elizabeth Cabrera-Rivera found it and used Lara’s identification to buy . . . a house.

A $419,000 townhouse in Springfield. With no money down.

A townhouse she and her family moved into, refinanced and then quickly fled not long after Lara turned up at the bank in December….

“The mortgage brokers are really the people who should be looked at,” said Salvado, arguing that lenders helped create the situation. “Somewhere in the U.S., a dog has gotten a loan.”

Officials with the Virginia Association of Mortgage Brokers did not return calls. The federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network reported last year that as many as two-thirds of mortgages are now arranged by mortgage brokers and that there are no national standards for licensing and oversight of mortgage brokers.

WestStar, which financed the first and second mortgages on the Springfield townhouse for $419,000 at 7.125 percent interest, advertises on its Web site “no documentation loans” in which “you can avoid the need to verify your income.”

The move from a bank-based mortgage economy to a broker-based one explains a lot.

People are asking what it means that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a “benign idiopathic seizure” yesterday, his second in 14 years. According to the Associated Press:

By definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy, said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a neurologist at Washington Hospital Center, who is not involved in the Roberts’ case.

Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another is something he and his doctor will have to decide.

But after two seizures, the likelihood of another at some point is greater than 60 percent.

“When it’s going to occur, obviously nobody knows,” Schlosberg said.

Roberts’ previous seizure was when he was golfing in 1993, and also happened outside. My non-medical advice given that precedent would be that Robert should wear hats and make sure to drink lots of fluids when he spends time outdoors during the summer. Given that everything else was ruled out, the most likely explanation for the seizure, looking at his packed travel schedule since the Court adjourned in late June, is the impact of multiple changes in temperature, time, and pressure on the neurobiology of an organically susceptible individual. The heat of the July day, which Roberts had spent running errands before his seizure, then worked itself upon this already disrupted ground.

Roberts, the youngest person on the court, will likely suffer another seizure in his lifetime, and may need at some point to take anti-seizure medication, which can affect cognition. Until that time, however, I think it is far better for the nation to have a Roberts on the court who is conscious of his human frailty, than one who judges only from the perspective of a hale and powerful man.

A friend informs me that the Hillary Clinton YouTube video I didn’t cotton to last week is actually referencing this Bob Dylan video, which started the signs in video trend. Perhaps:

If so, it seems an odd reference to have made in a YouTube debate, as YouTubers tend not to have been born in the ’60s (or even ’70s), and I’d have thought Clinton wanted to avoid allying herself with the ’60s counter-culture, even by allusion.

Lindsay Lohan‘s new movie I Know Who Killed Me is going to be helped by her recent legal troubles and the terrible reviews it’s received, and be received as a piece of camp trash, rather than a bomb. I’ve never seen a Lohan movie in theaters but I’m going to go see this one just because it looks so awful it could be good. Just check out some of the reviews so far (via Dlisted):

“There is no way that Lohan was in her right mind when she signed the contract for this one.”

“Imagine the worst possible idea for a Parent Trap sequel that manages to combine elements of Stigmata, Dune, The Empire Strikes Back, The Corsican Brothers and Blue Man Group.”

“With sky-blue tools, gloves and mask, the killer looks so much like a member of the Blue Man Group that you expect him to spit marshmallows at his victims.”

“Having broken free of the Disney machine that molded her, Lohan now seems intent on destroying her career and credibility on her own terms.”

“After a 20 minute delay in starting the movie, I had to assume the projector was taking an ethical stand and refusing to be party to the heinous act of showing this movie”

“The film is so cheap, lurid and overwrought it could be made up of lost reels from Grindhouse, except it lacks the knowing, self-referential humor of that B-movie parody.”

How can that not pique your curiosity? That’s not a movie — that’s disaster porn.

Washington Post this morning, Page A1, “Obama Rises in New Era Of Black Politicians; Most Have Similar Résumés, Ideology”:

Although Obama (Ill.) has forged a path as the first African American with a serious chance of becoming president, his rise coincides with the emergence of a whole cohort of black politicians who share similar résumés and ideology. Raised in the post-civil rights era, they attended elite schools, built coalitions of white and black supporters, and cast themselves as agents of change, even if they were running to succeed other African Americans.

GFR in The American Prospect, July 2004, “The Next Generation: Illinois’ Barack Obama is just the most visible of a new breed of African American leaders with ambitions their forbears couldn’t have imagined.”:

If Obama wins his Senate race, he will be the most accomplished of a new generation of African American political leaders…

In recent decades, the background of black politicians gaining elective office has changed dramatically. A whopping 76 percent of black elected officials over age 65 had attended segregated high schools, according to research by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, but only 34 percent of black elected officials under 40 did. Nearly 70 percent of those over 65 attended historically black colleges, as compared with 37 percent of those politicians under 40.

“It gives them advantages that older generations of African Americans did not have,” says David Bositis, a senior scholar at the center. Obama repeatedly reminded voters of this during his primary campaign, telling them, “I’m of the African American community, but not limited by it.”

Where older black politicians tended to be products of a segregated communities and local political cultures, the new leaders, thanks to the gains of the civil-rights movement, grew up in an integrated world (though not always easily so). Many attended elite, white educational institutions. Though still rooted in and nurtured by predominantly black political districts, the new generation’s comfort in a highly competitive, integrated world may well allow its members to reach out across the racial lines they have been bridging their whole lives and gain support in white districts as well.