DAVID GREGORY: Governor Daniels, one of the things you hear from the campaign trail, Mitt Romney said it just the other day, is that the recovery should have been so much stronger. You know, it's very difficult to prove something like that, just like it's difficult for the president to prove the economy would've been weaker if not for his particular policies. How could it have been stronger had a Republican been in president, in your judgment? Been in the White House, I should say.

DANIELS: Well, for one thing, for one thing, national policy wouldn't have been so relentlessly anti-enterprise as it's been. If you'd assembled a team of Nobel economists and said design us a policy to stifle and strangle investments and small business growth and innovation in this economy, you couldn't have done better than what's happened the last three years. The mindless piling on of new regulations, every one of them very expensive, and in the aggregate extraordinarily so, that's all drained away dollars that could've been used to hire someone. New taxes and the threat of more, all the uncertainty that's come with that. What we know is this, David, I don't have--no one can prove what might have happened, but this is the weakest recovery, by far, from a deep recession that we have in--since the records have been kept, and I don't think that's an accident.

Wow--anti-enterprise tax-hiking regulatory excess!

Instead of the reporter in the room quizzing his guest on what he's talking about, let's get another guest to weigh in.

Like, say, a billionaire mayor:

GREGORY: Mayor Bloomberg, as an independent voice in all of this, is that your judgment as well, that that's a fair criticism?

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: I think I agree with most of what Mitch said. I think if you want to have growth, number one, you have to have the financial industry be strong and willing to take risks. And this relentless criticism and investigation of them, whether--regardless of the facts in the past, if we want to have a future, we have to have people have confidence.

Here he is, on Friday night (2/3/12):

Last year the Komen Foundation gave Planned Parenthood $680,000. Now, that is the source of controversy because as you know, Planned Parenthood is primarily in business to provide abortions, more than 300,000 each year.

Later he added:

Planned Parenthood does not give women who visit its clinics the other side of the abortion story because again PP is in business for abortion.

Here is Planned Parenthood's breakdown of medical services (h/t Ezra Klein):

O'Reilly was fortunate enough to book an opposing guest--talk radio host Leslie Marshall--who wasn't prepared to argue this point:

O'REILLY: OK their big business, Planned Parenthood is abortion. And lobbying for abortion, would you concede that?

MARSHALL: I would concede that they perform abortions and they are politically --

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: No the largest part of their business, the most things that they get involved in concerns abortion, would you concede that.

MARSHALL: I can't because I've heard a good argument on both sides and information on both sides.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: OK, well, all right, there is no good argument. The absolute truth is PP is in business for abortion; 300,000 a year and they make tons of money from it.

That much you learn from the New York Times report by Scott Shane (2/6/12):

WASHINGTON — British and Pakistani journalists said Sunday that the CIA's drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan have repeatedly targeted rescuers who responded to the scene of a strike, as well as mourners at subsequent funerals.

The report, by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, found that at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile. The bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals. The findings were published on the Bureau's website and in the Sunday Times of London.

For some reason the Times felt it necessary to get an anonymous U.S. official--again--to smear the people trying to count the dead:

A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, questioned the report's' findings, saying "targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation." The official added: "One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions--there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al-Qaeda succeed."

For the record, the Times' policy on the use of anonymous sources:

We do not grant anonymity to people who use it as cover for a personal or partisan attack. If pejorative opinions are worth reporting and cannot be specifically attributed, they may be paraphrased or described after thorough discussion between writer and editor. The vivid language of direct quotation confers an unfair advantage on a speaker or writer who hides behind the newspaper, and turns of phrase are valueless to a reader who cannot assess the source.

Is that really what's happening, though? Another interpretation is that Iran might want nuclear weapons not to launch any such an attack but to prevent an attack on its country--nuclear deterrence, in other words. (Of course, it's important to note that there is currently no evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapons program.)

I was struck when I heard Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman bring up some of these ideas on NPR's Talk of the Nation on January 30. Bergman is no outsider critic of Israeli policy; when he appeared recently on the NewsHour (1/12/12) and was asked about the assassination of Iranian scientists, his answer was: "I don't know. And even if I knew, I would tell you that I don't know."

Here's what he said on NPR, appearing to talk about his New York Times magazine piece on Israel and Iran:

NEAL CONAN: Chris, thanks very much for the call. Israel itself possesses, what, 300 nuclear weapons we believe, maybe more? Why does not deterrence work? Israel, of course, would retaliate if Iran were to use a nuclear weapon.

BERGMAN: I would assume that--oh, I know that most of Israel's leaders do not believe that Iran is going to use nuclear weapons against Israel. The problem is not the nuclear threat. The Iranians are not stupid. They want to live.... And I think that most leaders, and me personally as well, see that there are only a few people who believe that Iran would be hesitant enough to--sorry, brutal enough and stupid enough to use nuclear weapon against Israel.

The problem is that once Iran acquires this ability, it would change the balance of power in the Middle East. And a country that possesses nuclear weapon is a different country when it comes to support proxy jihadist movement. And these Israeli leaders afraid would significantly narrow down the variety of options from the point of view of Israel, just to quote one example coming from Minister of Defense Barak, when he said, just imagine--he told me in a meeting we had on the 13th of January in his house--said, just imagine, Ronen, that tomorrow we go into another war with Hezbollah in Lebanon like we did in 2006, and this time we are determined to take them out. But Iran comes forward and say, to attack Hezbollah is like attacking Iran, and we threaten you with nuclear weaponry.

Now, Minister of Defense Barak says it's not necessarily that we would be threatened not to attack, and we would decide to cancel the war, but it would certainly make us think twice.

In other words, Israel's position might be that an nuclear-armed Iran could make it harder to have future wars. That's a very different discussion from the one we're having now.