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This week’s Newsweek magazine has this cover story; Victory at Last – The Emergence of a Democratic Iraq. Kathryn Lopez starts off a few Corner posts on the subject. We’ll end with Peter Wehner.

… In 2006, the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami wrote a powerful and stylistically beautiful book, The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq. That gift, Ajami said, was the idea of consensual government. It is a gift we gave the Iraqis at the cost of many American lives and much treasure. It is a gift they appear to have received.

“Iraq seemed the most forbidding place for a campaign of reform, the hardest soil,” Ajami wrote during the darkest days of the war. “Yet every now and then, that country offered glimpses of hope that Iraqis may yet pull off a decent political world that works. There were days its sectarianism seemed like an affliction that would never go away. Then there were hints that the multiplicity of its communities could yet support a politics, and a culture, of pluralism.”

The Iraqis were not as enchanted with tyranny or indifferent to democracy as some critics of the war insisted.

What America has done for Iraq, which had been brutalized for so long, may not be the noblest act in our history. But it ranks quite high. The Iraq war was, in fact, a war of liberation. And the liberation appears to be working. Nothing is guaranteed; “Everything in Iraq is hard,” Ambassador Crocker once said. But regardless of where one stood on the war and the surge, what we see unfolding in Iraq today is something to be grateful for, and to take pride in.

In the NY Times, Efraim Karsh discusses the lack of cohesion amongst the Islamic states and the implications for US foreign policy.

…So, if the Muslim bloc is just as fractious as any other group of seemingly aligned nations, what does it mean for United States policy in the Islamic world?

For one, it should give us more impetus to take a harder line with Iran. Just as the Muslim governments couldn’t muster the minimum sense of commonality for holding an all-Islamic sports tournament, so they would be unlikely to rush to Iran’s aid in the event of sanctions, or even a military strike.

Beyond the customary lip service about Western imperialism and “Crusaderism,” most other Muslim countries would be quietly relieved to see the extremist regime checked. It’s worth noting that the two dominant Arab states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been at the forefront of recent international efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. …

In the WSJ, Bret Stephens writes about how Milton Friedman, and free market ideas, helped Chile to become South America’s most prosperous nation.

…In 1973, the year the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile was an economic shambles. Inflation topped out at an annual rate of 1000%, foreign-currency reserves were totally depleted, and per capita GDP was roughly that of Peru and well below Argentina’s.

What Chile did have was intellectual capital, thanks to an exchange program between its Catholic University and the economics department of the University of Chicago, then Friedman’s academic home. Even before the 1973 coup, several of Chile’s “Chicago Boys” had drafted a set of policy proposals which amounted to an off-the-shelf recipe for economic liberalization: sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on.

…Pinochet … In March 1975, he had a 45-minute meeting with Friedman and asked him to write a letter proposing some remedies. Friedman responded a month later with an eight-point proposal that largely mirrored the themes of the Chicago Boys.

…By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet’s democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America’s richest people. They have the continent’s lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.

Chile also has some of the world’s strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. …

Bill Kristol says that Republicans did not stop Obama. Here’s who did:

(1) President Obama himself. As one wag commented, Obama turned out to be quite an effective community organizer. But the community he organized was a majority of the American people in opposition to his agenda of big-government liberalism.

(2) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Republicans, facing overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, should thank their lucky stars to have squared off against an ideologically blinkered speaker of the House and a short-tempered, incompetent majority leader of the Senate.

(3) Conservative and independent grassroots activists. It’s this simple: No Tea Parties, no defeat of Obamacare. It wasn’t just the practical and political effect of the demonstrations across the nation. It was the example of people not being intimidated by elite opinion, the example of their  willingness to fight what was supposed to be an inevitable new era of liberal big government, and the enterprise that self-generating and self-organizing activists showed in resisting the Obama agenda. …

Robert Samuelson says that politicians on both sides of the aisle have delusions about the budget. We disagree with part of Samuelson’s assessment regarding tax cuts, as the Reagan tax cuts fueled economic growth after the disastrous Carter years. However, Republicans have done little in recent decades to restrain government growth or reduce spending, which has contributed to the current economic crisis and increased the national debt.

…On the left, President Obama and Democrats have spent the past year arguing that, despite the government’s massive deficits and overspending, they can responsibly propose even more spending. Future deficits are to be ignored (present deficits, to be sure, partially reflect the economic slump). The proposal is “responsible” because it’s “paid for” through new taxes and spending cuts. Even if these financing sources were completely believable (they aren’t), the logic is that the government can undertake new spending before dealing with the consequences of old spending. Of course, most households and businesses can’t do this.

Politicians can, because it’s all make-believe. They pretend to deal with budget deficits when they aren’t. Just recently, the Democratic Congress passed a new version of the “pay-go” budget rule. Under pay-as-you-go rules, if Congress cuts taxes or increases spending beyond present policies, it must find offsets by raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere. This seems a prudent discipline, and Obama bragged about being “responsible.” What he didn’t say is that this new pay-go contains huge exceptions. These include the renewal of most of the Bush tax cuts, revisions of the alternative minimum tax, higher Medicare reimbursements for doctors and overhaul of the estate tax. Over the next decade, these exceptions could be worth about $2.5 trillion, says Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. …

David Harsanyi examines the conflict of interest in the government investigating Toyota while owning GM.

…The other majority shareholder in GM (also on your dime) is the United Auto Workers union. As Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner recently uncovered, 59 Democrats serving on the two congressional panels involved in the investigation of the non-unionized Toyota had received re-election campaign contributions from UAW.

Then there is the administration. Less than a year ago, Ford — a private, non-government good ol’ American corporation — issued the largest single recall in its long history. A total of 4.5 million vehicles were recalled after it was learned that faulty switches were fire hazards.

At the time, the Obama administration’s overmatched Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gently prodded customers “to pay attention.” When news of Toyota’s problems began to emerge, before we even knew what it was all about, LaHood told Americans to “stop driving” them. (He later claimed to have misspoke.) …

…There is, however, an unsettling conflict of interest. Whatever happened with these cars, the subsequent investigation creates suspicion about the motives of those involved. And just another of countless reasons that Washington should stay out of the car business.

In the NY Times, Ross Douthat sees presidential material in Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

…Since then, though, he’s become America’s best governor. In a just world, Daniels’s record would make him the Tea Party movement’s favorite politician. During the fat years of the mid-2000s, while most governors went on spending sprees, he was trimming Indiana’s payroll, slowing the state government’s growth, and turning a $800 million deficit into a consistent surplus. Now that times are hard, his fiscal rigor is paying off: the state’s projected budget shortfall for 2011, as a percentage of the budget, is the third-lowest in the country.

But Daniels hasn’t just been a Dr. No on policy. His “Healthy Indiana” plan, which offers catastrophic coverage to low-income residents, aspires to eventually cover 130,000 people, about a third of the state’s long-term uninsured. He’s pushed targeted investments in kindergarten programs, the police force and the child welfare office. And he’s been a pragmatic free-marketeer, rather than a strict ideologue. His controversial decision to lease the Indiana toll road reaped $3.8 billion for the state. But when an attempt to outsource welfare enrollment went awry, Daniels yanked the system back into the public sector.

…And unlike both CPAC-goers and his party’s leadership, Daniels was blunt about the challenges of deficit reduction. “There’s been some very healthy hell-raising going on in the country,” he said of the Tea Parties. “But to my knowledge, nobody’s gotten up in front of those rallies and explained what’s going to have to happen.” His ideal approach to the deficit would look like Paul Ryan’s fiscal roadmap, all spending restraint and no new taxes. But one way or another, deficit reduction “has to be done” — even if “you have to take the second- or third-best method.” …

Nancy Pelosi’s hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, has an article from Sally Pipes on the dismal state of the Canadian healthcare system.

…Danny Williams, the premier of the Canadian province of Newfoundland, traveled to the United States earlier this month to undergo heart valve surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. With his trip, Williams joined a long list of Canadians who have decided that they prefer American medicine to their own country’s government-run health system when their lives are on the line. …

…Lawmakers should take Williams’ case to heart. Canada’s experience shows that government health care leads to waiting lists, rationing and lower quality of care. …

…Canadian patients also face wait times for medical procedures. Nearly 700,000 Canadians are on a waiting list for surgery or other treatments.

A Canadian patient has to wait roughly four months for the average surgical or other therapeutic treatment. Wait times were similar a decade ago – even though the government has substantially increased health care spending since then. …

This is an editorial from the Chicago Tribune that was posted in Pickings last August. Chicago aldermen had been trying to prevent a Wal-Mart from opening on the south side of Chicago. This is background for the next story.

…When that Chicago store opened in 2006, it was flooded with applicants for 450 jobs. But the aldermen want to dodge a vote to allow another Wal-Mart — the first on the South Side — because they’re petrified over the influence of organized labor on local elections.

Organized labor doesn’t like Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart doesn’t have union jobs. It just has jobs (with an average hourly wage of $12.05 in Chicago).

The aldermen, of course, already have jobs. They get paid $110,556 a year and they figure that as long as they keep the labor unions off their backs, they’ll keep making $110,556 a year. Who says the City Council doesn’t generate jobs? If you’re one of the 50 aldermen, your unemployment rate is 0 percent.

But the unemployment rate for the rest of Chicago is above 10 percent. …

Chicago Business.com tells us about a coalition of South-side ministers prepared to fight the Chicago government to get Wal-Marts built in Chicago. This is not your president’s community organizing. It’s much better.

…The alliance of just over 200 ministers, representing more than 100,000 congregants, will first demand that Mayor Richard M. Daley grant administrative approval to begin construction of a Wal-Mart at the Chatham Market shopping center, saving that project from falling into foreclosure. The group also will pressure aldermen to approve that store and others in retail-starved neighborhoods such as Englewood and Pullman.

If, as appears likely, more Wal-Marts don’t get the green light this year, the ministers say they’ll mount a campaign against aldermen who oppose the big retailer’s expansion. Taking a page from union groups that have held Wal-Mart back, the ministers say they will support candidates in favor of the store with political advertising and urge their congregants to vote against dissenters.

“The pressure must be applied, starting with the mayor,” says the Rev. Larry Roberts of Trinity All Nations Ministries on the South Side. “The procrastination is just bringing more damage to the city and the communities.”

…The pastors are betting that community sentiment in favor of Wal-Mart has grown immensely as store closings and job losses have piled up, leaving Wal-Mart the only viable hope in many poor neighborhoods

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David Goldman comments on the state of the economy and what lies ahead.

…We see the magical incantation, “There’s no place like home!,” in numerous guises. The unemployed–20% of Americans according to a Gallup poll of 20,000 individuals–are more likely to support President Obama than the general public. They still hope against hope that Obama will wave a magic wand and allow them to click their heels and go home. I dubbed him “Obama bin Lottery” in January 2008 after his surprise South Carolina primary victory. With nothing to lose, the unemployed might as well hope…

…Americans have trouble realizing how much trouble they have. The numbers trickling out during the past couple of weeks suggest a Wile E. Coyote effect, to mix pop culture metaphors. During 2009, most people just didn’t look down. But with 30% of home mortgages at the waterline or below it, and a 20% effective unemployment rate, the household balance sheet is shot–and so is the balance sheet of small business. In January, Americans took a collective look down, and the numbers began to plunge like the Road Runner’s canine nemesis. The first to go, of course, was consumer confidence, a squishy number to be sure, but one that does not often show a 10-point drop. …

…The US economy simply can’t run on 20% unemployment. Consumers will go to the mattresses, retail and service business will drop like flies, investors will pull in their horns, and things will get worse. The only way to reverse the problem is to persuade capital to take more risk, and the only available policy lever to accomplish this is the elimination of taxes on capital income–interest, dividends, and capital gains. As the Obama administration is proposing the precise opposite (an increase in taxation of all these categories supposedly for Medicare) it is more likely that policy will aggravate the problem rather than cure it. …

John Hinderaker of Power Line posts about the Obami refusal to back the UK in the newest dispute with Argentina.

…Why Barack Obama hates England is hard to say, but his antipathy is distressingly real. Now, Obama has declared that the U.S. is neutral with regard to the Falklands. The Telegraph headlines: “Et tu, Barack? America betrays Britain in her hour of need”:

Washington has declined to back Britain in its dispute with Argentina over drilling rights in the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands. …

…For this alliance to survive, both countries must recognise their obligations and, from time to time, that involves one of us setting aside more localised concerns for the sake of the cause. Tony Blair would have preferred it if President Bush had been prepared to wait for a second UN resolution before launching the invasion of Iraq, but he decided that Britain should follow America into battle nevertheless. He recognised that the preservation of the Atlantic alliance had to be prioritised above all else, both for our sake and the sake of the world. …

…So it is truly shocking that Barack Obama has decided to disregard our shared history and insist that we have to fight this battle on our own. …

It is astonishing that any administration could make such a mess of both domestic and foreign policy in barely more than a year. One wonders whether we will have any allies left by the end of President Obama’s term in January 2013.

Toby Harnden has a post on Jeb Bush criticizing Sarah Palin.

…Bush then delivers what amounts to a devastating critique of Palin: “I don’t know what her deal is. My belief is in 2010 and 2012 public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity. The world is really an amazing place but it is very complex, it is very fast moving. If you think you’ve got it all figured out, the minute you start thinking that is the first day of your demise.”

Just in case Bush thinks he’s stopped talking about Palin, he adds: “So if she has those skills and she wants to run then she’ll be a great candidate.”

It is hard to dispute that Bush is right on both counts. Palin clearly possesses a rare and natural political talent. But thus far she has displayed very little willingness to build on this by studying the world and coming up with some intelligent conclusions or questions about it. …

In Investor’s Business Daily, David Hogberg interviews Thomas Sowell about his new book, Intellectuals and Society.

…IBD: What incentives and constraints do intellectuals face?

Sowell: One of the incentives is that, to the extent that intellectuals stay in their specialty, they have little to gain in terms of either prestige or influence on events. Say, an authority in ancient Mayan civilization just writes about ancient Mayan civilization, then only other specialists in ancient Mayan civilization will know what he is talking about or even be aware of him.

So intellectuals have every incentive to go beyond their area of expertise and competence. But stepping beyond your area of competence is like stepping off a cliff — you may be a genius within that area, but an idiot outside it. …

…IBD: How about those who argue that we can use government to move society in a more conservative direction, like compassionate conservatism? Do they suffer from the vision of the anointed?

Sowell: To some extent, yes. Compassionate conservatism meant that Republicans added to the housing problems created by the Democrats rather than mitigating them.

George W. Bush, for example, was for a law that allowed the Federal Housing Administration to do away with nuisances like down payments on houses. And even his father was for the notion that the federal government should intervene if there were statistical differences among groups in housing or mortgage approvals.

These are people who seem to think that the way to be clever politically is to accept some of the premises of Democrats but reach different conclusions. But if you accept the premises, in many cases you’ve accepted the conclusions. …

In the Atlantic, Corby Kummer reports on a fascinating agricultural movement afoot. And Wal-Mart is behind it.

…I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.

The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.

Ron McCormick, the senior director of local and sustainable sourcing for Walmart, told me that about three years ago he came upon pictures from the 1920s of thriving apple orchards in Rogers, Arkansas, eight miles from the company’s headquarters. Apples were once shipped from northwest Arkansas by railroad to St. Louis and Chicago. After Washington state and California took over the apple market, hardly any orchards remained. Cabbage, greens, and melons were also once staples of the local farming economy. But for decades, Arkansas’s cash crops have been tomatoes and grapes. A new initiative could diversify crops and give consumers fresher produce. …

John Tierney looks at the latest nutritional mandate in the making; the evidence for which you can take with a grain of …something.

…That’s the beauty of the salt debate: there’s so little reliable evidence that you can imagine just about any outcome. For all the talk about the growing menace of sodium in packaged foods, experts aren’t even sure that Americans today are eating more salt than they used to. …

…Dr. McCarron and his colleagues analyzed surveys from 33 countries around the world and reported that, despite wide differences in diet and culture, people generally consumed about the same amount of salt. There were a few exceptions, like tribes isolated in the Amazon and Africa, but the vast majority of people ate more salt than recommended in the current American dietary guidelines.

The results were so similar in so many places that Dr. McCarron hypothesized that networks in the brain regulate sodium appetite so that people consume a set daily level of salt. If so, that might help explain one apparent paradox related to reports that Americans are consuming more daily calories than they used to. Extra food would be expected to come with additional salt, yet there has not been a clear upward trend in daily salt consumption evident over the years in urinalysis studies, which are considered the best gauge because they directly measure salt levels instead of relying on estimates based on people’s recollections of what they ate…

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David Goldman (AKA Spengler) gives ten reasons why the economy is not recovering. He discusses his number one reason at some length in the post. Here are three of his other reasons:

7. State fiscal crises continue to worsen. “Doomsday is here for the state of Illinois,” California’s last set of cosmetic measures do little to address a $20 billion deficit, Baltimore has no idea how to close a $120 billion deficit. On top of this year’s $200 billion deficit, states face a trillion-dollar shortfall in pension funds.

5) Regional banks continue to drop like flies, with 702 banks holding assets of $403 billion on the danger list.

3) What bank credit is available is funding the US Treasury deficit in the mother of all crowdings-out, replacing commercial loans on banks’ balance sheets…

In the WaPo, Senator Tom Coburn says that government spending is the our biggest problem.

For the past several weeks the American people have been inundated with analysis about what’s wrong with Washington largely from the perspective of Washington insiders who are frustrated about health care and political retirements. We’re told that gridlock, procedural holds, partisanship and extreme ideology are preventing members of Congress from working together. While some of this analysis is true — Washington is petty, partisan and shortsighted — few are acknowledging that Congress does enjoy remarkable unity in one critical area: spending beyond our means.

In the past two years, an institution supposedly paralyzed by gridlock has succeeded in passing the most consequential pieces of legislation it handles every year — appropriations bills — by 3-to-1 margins. In the past few weeks, Congress has increased the debt limit from $12.1 trillion to $14.3 trillion but made no effort to eliminate any wasteful or duplicative spending. Since 1994, both parties have worked together to create 90,000 new earmarks, with only a handful of earmarks going down to defeat. …

…The message of hope that America needs to hear is that individual citizens really do have the power to fire and replace members of the spending supermajority. Since just 1994, the country has experienced several “change” elections that resulted in shifts in power in Washington. These change elections show that our political system is working. When the American people are engaged, new representatives and senators are elected.

The gridlock theorists should remember the wise words of Thomas Jefferson: “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” …

Prepare to be nauseated. In Reason, Steven Greenhut explains the numerous ways in which the government rich are getting richer and more powerful while the rest of us are getting poorer.

Politicians allow government employees to break laws.

In April 2008, The Orange County Register published a bombshell of an investigation about a license plate program for California government workers and their families. Drivers of nearly 1 million cars and light trucks—out of a total 22 million vehicles registered statewide—were protected by a “shield” in the state records system between their license plate numbers and their home addresses. There were, the newspaper found, great practical benefits to this secrecy.

“Vehicles with protected license plates can run through dozens of intersections controlled by red light cameras with impunity,” the Register’s Jennifer Muir reported. “Parking citations issued to vehicles with protected plates are often dismissed because the process necessary to pierce the shield is too cumbersome. Some patrol officers let drivers with protected plates off with a warning because the plates signal that drivers are ‘one of their own’ or related to someone who is.” …

Politicians approve large salaries for people who produce nothing in the economy. Although they do produce more bureaucracy, rules, and regulations that we must pay for and follow.

…There was a time when government work offered lower salaries than comparable jobs in the private sector but more security and somewhat better benefits. These days, government workers fare better than private-sector workers in almost every area—pay, benefits, time off, and job security. And not just in California.

According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005, compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” … As Heritage Foundation legal analyst James Sherk explained to the Press, “The government doesn’t have to worry about going bankrupt, and there isn’t much competition.”

Politicians legislate excessive pensions that will be paid for by those of us who work in the private sector.

…But the real action isn’t in what government employees are being paid today; it’s in what they’re being promised for tomorrow. Public pensions have swollen to unrecognizable proportions during the last decade. In June 2005, BusinessWeek reported that “more than 14 million public servants and 6 million retirees are owed $2.37 trillion by more than 2,000 different states, cities and agencies,” numbers that have risen since then. State and local pension payouts, the magazine found, had increased 50 percent in just five years.

Then politicians and government workers say there’s not enough money to provide basic services like policing. They don’t tell the truth about why they can’t provide the minimal services that a government should provide its citizens.

In July 2009, Orange County, California, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens proposed more than $20 million in budget cuts to close the gap caused by falling tax revenue. …

…The sheriff failed to identify another reason for the tight budget: In 2001 the Orange County Board of Supervisors had passed a retroactive pension increase for sheriff’s deputies. That policy nearly doubled pension costs from 2000 to 2009, when pension contributions totaled nearly $95 million—20 percent of the sheriff’s budget. So the sheriff decries an economic downturn that is costing her department about $20 million, but she doesn’t mention that a previous pension increase is costing her department more than double that amount. It’s safe to say that had the pension increase not passed, the department would have money to keep officers on the streets and to avoid the cuts the sheriff claims are threatening public safety. …

And the government grows and metastasizes, killing the economy and destroying the standard of living for normal Americans.

…At all levels, state and local government employment grew by 13 percent across the United States from 1994 to 2004. The number of judicial and legal employees increased by 28 percent. The number of public safety workers increased by 21 percent. The number of teachers increased by 22 percent. …

Michael Hodges’ invaluable Grandfather Economic Report uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics to chart the growth in state and local government employees since 1946. Their number has increased from 3.3 million then to 19.8 million today—a 492 percent increase as the country’s population increased by 115 percent. …

Chase Davis, in the Ventura County Star, reports on another perk that California government employees are receiving.

Amid a crippling fiscal crisis, managers throughout California’s government have routinely allowed their employees to amass unused vacation time, enabling hundreds of workers to end their public service careers with payouts topping $100,000, a California Watch investigation has found.

…In one case, James C. Tudor Jr., the former president of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, cashed out six times more vacation time than regulations allow, taking home more than $550,000 after he was fired in 2007 in the wake of an internal probe that “uncovered serious abuses at the highest levels,” according to state Senate documents. …

…State regulations cap the amount of vacation time most employees can accrue at a maximum of 80 workdays, or 640 hours. …

…It also dwarfs caps at some of the state’s largest private employers, including Oracle, Western Digital and Nestlé USA, records and interviews show.

Nestlé in Glendale, for instance, caps its longest-serving employees at 280 hours. …

In the LA Times, Andrew Malcolm has the back story on Desiree Rogers’ departure from the White House.

…The departures have started rather early for the Obama Chicago crowd — just 13+ months in. But the power jockeying has been going on inside all along. And today….

…the weeding began. Desiree Rogers, the White House Social Secretary who was such a close Chicago pal of both Obama and his wife Michelle, is gone as of next month. …

You will recall the Obamas’ first-ever White House State Dinner last fall for India’s prime minister, one of dozens of events organized by Rogers. However, the glittery guests included the notoriously uninvited Salahi couple. They were thoroughly searched like everyone else. …

…The Obama political crew, which knows how important family friends are to the boss and, more importantly, the boss’ wife, hung the blame on the Secret Service.

…But here’s Rogers’ problem: She’s not from the Daley Democratic faction that controls the White House now, particularly access to Obama. The Ticket examined the Chicago connections in depth here earlier this month. …