Mohamed Morsi is finally named the new president of Egypt, after days of delays of announcing the elections results everyone already knew.
As Brookings’ Shadi Hamid pointed out:
The only thing we’ll really learn with the coming announcement is whether or not the election results were rigged. #Egypt
— Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid) June 24, 2012
But Institute for Policy Studies scholar Phyllis Bennis raises a number of questions about the relationship between Morsi and SCAF — including whether or not a deal was struck in recent days.
The loudest chant in Tahrir Square remains “Down, down with military rule!” Many protesters in the Square have already announced their intention to remain in Tahrir once again, reprising the 18 days of the spring uprising, until the SCAF has transferred real power to the elected civilian government. Until that happens, the status of Egypt’s revolutionary transformation remains precarious, active, and unfinished. It is a reminder that no part of the Arab Spring is yet a finished revolution. These are revolutionary processes, still contested and still in formation. Revolutionary times, indeed.
The Israelis, on the other hand, are understandably concerned about what the election results means for their peace accords.
•Demos senior fellow Rich Benjamin plays the role of reviewer and, at times, target of Linda Hirshman’s “Victory” in the New York Times Book Review.
•In a Bloomberg survey of 21 top constitutional scholars, 19 of them think the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act is valid based on legal precedent. Only eight think it will be upheld.
If they’re right, ThinkProgress wants you to remember the 10 things you would miss about ‘Obamacare.’
“And if [the Supreme Court] throws out all or part of the law now popularly known as ‘Obamacare,’ we will need a fearless conversation about how a conservative majority of the court has become a cog in a larger right-wing project to make progressive political and legislative victories impossible,” writes Brookings’ E.J. Dionne.
Of course, this could all be changed if we just had 19 Supreme Court Justices instead of nine.
•AEI’s Marc Thiessen is outraged over what appears to be another Obama administration leak — this time regarding potential raids in Pakistan.
•RAND’s ‘father of windsurfing,’ James Drake, dies at 83.
•The Competitive Enterprise Institute joins a lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, arguing that its powers and President Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray as its director are unconstitutional.
•AEI’s Andrew Kelly reminds us that we need a long-term solution to the student debt problem.
•Demos distinguished fellow Bob Herbert tells Rachel Maddow that the claims that link of Fast and Furious with an attempt to take away the right to bear arms is “like being on acid.”
