Now, writers William Broad, Mark Mazzetti and David Sanger show us that in advance Thursday’s talks — the first direct diplomacy between America and Iran in 30 years — the U.S. is resisting European and Israeli intelligence that says Iran is actively working on nuclear warheads.

The U.S. is holding fast to a 2007 intelligence estimate that holds the Iranians spiked their weapons program in 2003, while our allies say the work has either restarted or never stopped. The Obama administration is playing for time with the Israelis – determined to prevent a nuclear-powered Iran – by arguing that the public exposure of the long-identified nuclear facility Qum has slowed the Iranians down.

“Graham Allison, the author of “Nuclear Terrorism” and a Harvard professor who focuses on proliferation, said he could not conceive of Iran’s building only one such site.

‘How likely is it that the Qum facility is all there is? Zero. A prudent manager of a serious program would certainly have a number of sites,’ he said.

After all, Mr. Allison said, the lesson Iran took away from Israel’s destruction of an Iraqi reactor more than 25 years ago is to spread facilities around the country.

New York Times — In Pitch for Games, a Gamble for Obama

It seems like a strange time for the president to fly to Denmark with Oprah and plead to have the Olympics held in his hometown, but the Obama brand seems to demand yet another publicity stunt.

As Examiner colleague Julie Mason points out, the president was as indecisive as Hamlet about the trip, so he must have understood the political risks of making such a detour for a parochial, vanity issue – it distracts from Afghanistan, Iran, health care and the rest of his very full plate.

But writers Peter Baker and Juliet Macur explain that advisor Valerie Jarrett, also going on the trip, convinced the president that it was worth the political cost.

“Unlike most other White House trips overseas, where agreements and statements are pre-arranged so the traveling president can appear to bring home something tangible, there is no guarantee that the Olympic committee will accede to Mr. Obama’s wishes. So Mr. Obama’s advisers are relying on the conclusions of Olympics analysts who have said the decision is so close that he could put it over the top by influencing just a few votes on the 106-member committee.”

New York Times — In Some States, a Push to Ban Mandate on Insurance
 

Time to dust off your copy of the Federalist Papers, because a states-rights fight is brewing over health care.

In the Senate, today will likely be the day when the idea of a federal insurance plan goes down to defeat on the finance committee. There may also be a scrap about an amendment barring subsidies for policies that cover abortions.

But assuming that Democrats are serious about passing a Frankenstein health bill that includes mandatory coverage, perhaps with parliamentary tricks to avoid a filibuster, there will be still more fights.

Many states have already passed laws reaffirming state sovereignty, and writer Monica Davey checks in on a more specific effort in at least 10 states to forbid Washington from requiring individuals to participate in a federally approved insurance plan — it’s already on the ballot as a constitutional amendment in Arizona for 2010.

And even if states lose in court, there will be plenty of individual lawsuits.

“Even Randy E. Barnett, a Georgetown law school professor who has written about what he views as legitimate constitutional questions about health insurance mandates, seemed doubtful.

‘While using federal power to force individuals to buy private insurance raises serious constitutional questions,’ Professor Barnett said, ‘I just don’t see what these state resolutions add to the constitutional objections to this expansion of federal power.’”

Washington Post — Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks

The presidential promises to get tough about wasteful spending and earmarks are receding further into the fog as the White House gives a big thumbs up to a porcine defense bill that will waddle its way to a Senate vote this week.

Packed with earmarks, un-requested projects, and an attitude of contempt for taxpayers, the legislation was not greeted by a presidential veto threat, but a warm welcome.

The president dubiously promised that the first fatty defense bill he signed would be the last – an unfortunate holdover from a corrupt era. Then, when the president took a razor to the defense budget and trimmed development of big-ticket items of debatable military value, it seemed as if he might be serious. But signing this bill would wipe out his credibility as a budget reformer.

Writer Jeffery Smith explains that administration is trying to take credit for what has been a move against earmarks over several years.

“Senior Obama aides responded that the White House never sought to fix the problem of earmarks in one year. ‘The president has been clear from Day One: He wants to change the way business gets done in Washington,’ Thomas Gavin, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said Monday. ‘The results speak for themselves. Earmarks in the defense appropriations bills are down 27 percent in the House and 19 percent in the Senate. This is an important step forward in the president’s drive to shape a government that is more efficient and more effective.’

Those figures are the most flattering the White House could have used: They refer to the number of earmarks in the bills, not total spending. Total spending on military earmarks in the Senate declined by only 11 percent from the $3 billion approved by Congress last year.”

Richard Cohen — Time to Act Like a President

Cohen nails the central issue facing the Obama administration and the cause of the public’s crisis of confidence with the president: Obama does not seem to understand the stakes for which he is playing.

“The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” — and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan — and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees — and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation — “Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . ” — and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama’s the president. Time he understood that.”