House Republicans lined up to reject a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation’s debt limit Tuesday, a political gambit designed to reinforce their demand for spending cuts to accompany any increase in government borrowing.

“The blank check debt limit increase supported by President Obama and his fellow Democrats would send our great country into an economic death spiral,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

But Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat, said Republicans were playing politics with the nation’s creditworthiness.

The House legislation would allow government borrowing to reach $15.8 trillion, but it does not include any steps that GOP leaders—who arranged the vote—have demanded to restrain future spending.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says Congress must raise the debt limit by Aug. 2 or the government will default, and he has warned the resulting turmoil could plunge the nation into another recession or even an economic depression.

Republicans, who are scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Wednesday, signaled in advance that the debt limit vote did not portend a final refusal to grant an increase.

The government has already reached the limit of its borrowing authority, $14.3 trillion, and the Treasury is using a series of extraordinary maneuvers to meet financial obligations.

At the same time, the Obama administration and congressional leaders are at work trying to produce a deficit-reduction agreement of more than $1 trillion to meet Republican demands for spending cuts.

Political maneuvering on legislation to raise the debt limit has become common in recent years, as federal deficits have soared and presidents of both political parties have been forced to seek authority to borrow additional trillions of dollars.

Because such legislation is unpopular with voters, presidents generally look to lawmakers from their own political party to provide the votes needed for passage. In the current case, though, Republicans control the House, and without at least some support from them, Obama’s request for a debt-limit increase would fail.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Serbia extradited Ratko Mladic to the UN war crimes tribunal on Tuesday, 16 years after the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by troops under his command forced the West’s hand in the Bosnian war.

The extradition to The Hague, Netherlands, came the same day judges’ received and rejected Mladic’s appeal to stop the hand-over on the grounds that the 69-year-old is not mentally and physically fit to stand trial.

Mladic is charged by the tribunal for atrocities committed by his Serb troops during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, including the notorious Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity against civilians in Europe since World War II.

Mladic attorney Milos Saljic visited him in his jail cell in the early afternoon and said the ex-general was crying and very emotional during what he called a farewell visit by his wife and sister. They brought him a big suitcase with clothing he will need in The Hague, Saljic said.

Mladic was arrested Thursday in a village north of Belgrade after 16 years on the run, looking worn and disheveled. In addition to the appeal, Saljic had asked for a team of doctors to examine Mladic, who is said to have suffered at least two strokes.

Prosecutors accused Mladic of using delaying tactics and said nothing should prevent his extradition to the tribunal, maintaining that doctors who have examined him say Mladic is in good enough health to face trial.

Serb nationalists in Serbia and parts of Bosnia still consider Mladic a hero—the general who against all odds tried to defend ethnic Serbs in the Bosnian conflict. In the Bosnian city of Banja Luka, thousands of supporters protested his arrest Tuesday, in the biggest demonstration so far in the country.

On Monday, Serbian President Boris Tadic rejected speculation that authorities had known of Mladic’s hiding place and delayed his arrest to coincide with a visit by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The rumors have persisted because Mladic was found living not far from the capital, Belgrade, with relatives who share his last name.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As residents confront a gigantic cleanup following the tornado that savaged Joplin, experts say environmental dangers could lurk amid the mountains of debris in the southwestern Missouri city and even in the water and air.

Damage from tornadoes, like floods and hurricanes, often goes beyond what is readily visible. Liquid fuels and chemicals can leak from ruptured containers and contaminate groundwater. Ruined buildings may contain asbestos. Fires can generate smoke containing soot, dioxins, and other pollutants. Household, industrial, and medical wastes are strewn about.

Yet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency teams sent to inspect the damage turned up no serious pollution issues in the first week, although the search was continuing, spokesman Chris Whitley said.

The nation’s deadliest single tornado in more than six decades killed at least 132 people and injured more than 900 while severely damaging or leveling an estimated 8,000 structures.

Property owners and emergency workers were advised to use caution when removing debris from the area, said EPA emergency response team coordinator Eric Nold. Lead exposure happens primarily by ingesting contaminated soil on dirty hands and breathing contaminated dust.

Another likely hazard is oil spilled from downed electrical transformers, some of which contain highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. But a spokesman for Alabama Power, that state’s largest electric utility, said more than 4,000 transformers had been recovered there.

Some of the greatest long-term environmental risks from tornadoes come during the cleanups, experts said.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources last week announced a temporary waiver of some solid waste and air pollution regulations for the counties where the tornado struck. The move allows landfills to accept brush, yard waste, appliances, and other materials that normally wouldn’t be allowed. It permits burning of tree and brush waste under certain conditions.

But improper handling or disposal of waste material could make a bad situation worse, said David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany-SUNY.

If plastics, asbestos material or treated wood find their way into brush fires, they could produce emissions particularly dangerous for people with asthma or respiratory diseases, he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Angered by civilian casualties, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday he will no longer allow NATO airstrikes on houses, issuing his strongest statement yet against attacks that the military alliance says are vital to its war on Taliban insurgents.

NATO countered that airstrikes on houses are essential and will continue, setting up a possible confrontation with Karzai.

The president’s remarks followed a recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women in southern Helmand province. Karzai declared it would be the last.

“From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed,” Karzai told reporters in Kabul.

Ordering airstrikes is a command decision in Afghanistan. A NATO spokeswoman there, Maj. Sunset Belinsky, insisted they would continue.

“Coalition forces constantly strive to reduce the chance of civilian casualties and damage to structures,” Belinsky said, “but when the insurgents use civilians as a shield and put our forces in a position where their only option is to use airstrikes, then they will take that option.”

In Brussels, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu insisted NATO airstrikes are still essential. She said the alliance takes Karzai’s concerns very seriously and would continue to make every effort to avoid civilian casualties. She said airstrikes on houses are coordinated with Afghan forces and “they continue to be necessary.”

“In many of these operations, Afghans are in the lead,” she said. She would not comment specifically on the recent raid in Helmand province.

Belinsky also offered a conciliatory tone. “In the days and weeks ahead we will coordinate very closely with President Karzai to ensure that his intent is met,” she said. Karzai has previously made strong statements against certain military tactics, such as night raids, only to back away from them later.

If Karzai holds to what sounds like an order to international troops to abandon most airstrikes, it could bring the Afghan government into direct conflict with its international allies.

Karzai’s spokesman said the president plans to stand firm on this issue, regardless of the fallout with NATO.

“The president was very clear today about the fact that bombardments on Afghan homes and Afghan civilians are unacceptable and must be stopped. There is no room for back and forth on this,” Waheed Omar said. “The president was clear in saying that any such strikes in the future will make the Afghan government react unilaterally.”

NATO airstrikes target Taliban and other militants in towns and villages. The international force has scaled back such strikes because of worries that civilians could be inside targeted buildings, but has maintained that they are still an essential tool because they are often more precise and can be less costly in casualties on both sides than ground operations.

It is unclear if Karzai has the power to order an end to such strikes. NATO and American forces are in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate. Negotiations between the United States and the Afghan government over the presence of U.S. forces have become contentious. Karzai has declared that he will put strict controls on how U.S. troops operate.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

DUBLIN, Ireland—Observing the start of Lord and Lady Obama’s (aka president and Michelle) grand European tour and the fawning press coverage, one might conclude they were imbued with royal blood.

The normally reserved and thoughtful columnist for the Times of London, William Rees-Mogg, gushed about the president’s speech before members of Parliament, comparing him to Winston Churchill. Obama is to Winston Churchill as Lady Gaga is to Ella Fitzgerald. Both are singers, but that’s where the comparison ends.

In his parliamentary speech, which began with herald trumpets announcing his arrival (appropriate since Obama frequently toots his own horn by overdoing the personal pronouns “I” and “me”), the president spoke favorably of Adam Smith, the patron saint of economic conservatives. Smith’s philosophy is the antithesis of President Obama’s “spread the wealth around” socialist philosophy. Smith is to Obama as Ronald Reagan is to Karl Marx.

Daily Telegraph columnist Bryony Gordon claimed to have had a conversation with an unnamed Secret Service agent. She quoted the agent as saying about Michelle Obama, “She has this glamour that I haven’t seen before. She isn’t just a first lady. She is Hollywood.” Gush.

During the Obamas’ brief visit to Dublin, I lined up with thousands of people waiting to get in to hear the president’s speech in College Green. I was especially interested in what young people think of the president now, since it was American youth who fueled much of the enthusiasm behind his 2008 election.

A girl of high school age said she “loves” Obama and added without prompting, “I hate President Bush.”

“Why?” I asked.

She stumbled, as if entering unexplored cerebral territory. “I hate all American presidents,” she said (but obviously not Obama).

“Even George Washington?”

“Yes.”

If this girl represents what is taught here, it would appear the state of Irish education is worse than American public education.

I interviewed a middle-age man who was only slightly less enthusiastic than the high school girl. “What about his policies?” I asked. “He promised to close Guantanamo and quickly end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

That bothered him, but Obama’s image clearly had gotten the best of his political judgment.

It was only after the Obamas had left for the G-8 meeting in France that a few in the British press began to recover from their fainting spell. Writing in The Telegraph, Andrew Gimson said, “Barack Obama’s speech [to Parliament] failed to live up to his own high standards.”

There were several factual errors in the president’s speech, including his contention that since the War of 1812, when the British burned down the White House, “it’s been smooth sailing” between the United States and Britain. Not exactly. Gimson cited one example: “Suez did not seem like plain sailing.”

The president claimed, “. . . young men and women in the streets of Damascus and Cairo still reach for the rights our citizens enjoy.” That is debatable, especially since the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood will be active, perhaps decisive, in the coming Egyptian election. And who knows what government will follow in Syria, should Bashar al-Assad stop killing protesters, or Libya with or without Qaddafi, or anywhere else in the Islamic world?

There were some emotional high points in the president’s address, especially his reference to “the grandson of a Kenyan who served as a cook in the British Army to stand before you as president of the United States.”

That brought applause, as it should have, but this is biography over which the president has no control, not policy, which he sets.

The Irish and British press put their skepticism on hold during the Obamas’ visit, much as the American media regularly do with most Democratic presidents. In America, the big media have a political agenda, which is that of the Democratic Party. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, it was style over substance.

Forget Scotty McCreery, winner of TV’s American Idol. As host Ryan Seacrest might put it if he were announcing the arrival of President Obama in Ireland and England: “This is our American Idol.”

© 2011 Tribune Media Services Inc.

North and South Sudan have agreed to establish a jointly patrolled demilitarized border zone between the two sides as the South prepares to declare independence in July, the African Union said Tuesday.

AU adviser Alex de Waal, who has facilitated negotiations on security issues between Sudan’s North and South regions, said the parties agreed on Monday during talks in Ethiopia’s capital to form a common, demilitarized zone stretching across the 1,300-mile north-south border.

The zone will stretch 6 miles north and south from the 1956 border, the tentative line drawn when Sudan became independent from Britain.

De Waal said discussions over a third-party military monitoring body—a United Nations peacekeeping force, for instance—were still to come.

Col. Philip Aguer, spokesman for the South’s army, said the Southern military will support the agreement “100 percent” if both sides can agree where the actual border is.

North and South Sudan fought two civil wars off and on for more than four decades before signing a 2005 peace deal. But the sides’ relations took a nosedive earlier this month when the Northern Sudanese army invaded and seized the disputed border town of Abyei.

The military action came after months of building tensions between the two armies in Abyei, a fertile, oil-producing border zone which both the North and South claim. It sent an estimated 80,000 residents of the area running for their lives, fleeing into villages and towns in the Southern state of Warrap,.

De Waal said the agreement to establish a demilitarized border zone provides a model for solving the Abyei crisis. He called the deal a necessary step between the two parties that will allow the Sudanese government to take the necessary action to demilitarize Abyei.

Since the Sudanese Armed Forces invaded the town of Abyei on May 21 with tanks, heavy artillery, and air cover, the UN Security Council and a host of Western nations have repeatedly condemned the act.

The Security Council has called for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the northern army from Abyei, but the government of President Omar al-Bashir has not made any concessions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“And people think they have taken quite an extraordinary bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another,” Frederick Engels wrote 120 years ago in his introduction to The Civil War in France.

Judging by recent speeches and interviews, Barack Obama plans to run for reelection on a platform of class antagonism. He exposed his opponents’ vision as one that sacrifices education for poor children and care for the elderly, pollutes the environment, and leaves us vulnerable to oil disruptions in the Middle East, only to lower the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans. He blamed his predecessor for policies that made 90 percent of us worse off in order to increase the income of the top 1 percent by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. “They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6,000 more in health costs,” said the president.

As other bourgeois intellectuals before him, Obama parades an ability to selflessly raise his consciousness above his own class interests and take a stand for the oppressed. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, he mocked his opponents’ ideas to balance the budget by cutting “Head Start or, you know, low-income, you know, heating assistance. Or you know, various programs that are not popular with Republicans.” At the same time, the president’s plan calls for taking the extra revenue needed from only the wealthiest: “We need to find a trillion dollars in revenues that wouldn’t hurt the middle class, but would affect people like you and me, George, who can pay a little bit more.”

Obviously it is time for the exploited proletarians of America to take back the state apparatus (that has done so much for the rich) and “ask” them to “give back.” I can almost picture Obama going on a tour singing John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” with Michael Moore as a supporting dancer.

An inmate I was visiting commented that some guys show up in prison in such bad shape that he looks at them and thinks, “That wasn’t an arrest; it was a deliverance.” There is freedom, and then there is just rope to hang yourself.

I wonder if most of us wake up in the morning to a variety of bondages, and we put them on like a pair of pants, because we’re used to them. It’s worse than that: We don’t even want to be free of them. There is a man in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce who is hagridden by an annoying lizard (lust) on his shoulder day and night. Yet when an angel offers to kill it, he doesn’t want to:

“There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality. . . . The time comes when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust, and would not have it taken from him. He’d fight to the death to keep it. He’d like well to be able to scratch: but even when he can scratch no more, he’d rather itch than not.”

How do you figure? Our bondages are ruining our lives—and still we hold on to them for dear life. Why? It seems to me we don’t really believe that God has anything to offer that we would like better. Heaven has always seemed boring to those who live in darkness. It’s just a matter of not believing God, I guess.

Listen to commentaries by Andrée Seu.

Hello!

Random question of the day: Does it feel like summer yet?

This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.

Last week saw two cultural markers, widely remarked: Scotty McCreery won American Idol and Oprah Winfrey blew a farewell kiss to her daytime TV talk-show audience.

Scotty’s win seemed like a promising sign to a lot of conservatives: a small-town Baptist boy with an honest love for (and a very traditional rendering of) country songs, the most reliably patriotic and religious branch of popular music. He and the equally wholesome Lauren Alaina won a record number of votes in the final balloting, giving Idol’s spongy ratings a boost of adrenaline in its 10th season.

Oprah’s ratings have been drooping for the last few years, and she knows not to exhaust her welcome. It’s been an amazing run, though: from her national debut in 1986 (first show topic: “How to Marry the Man/Woman of Your Choice”) she parlayed business savvy and an empathetic, non-threatening personality into an unmatched media empire. Along the way she’s gone head-to-skinhead with neo-Nazis; lost and gained literally hundreds of pounds; launched Dr. Phil, new-age guru Eckhart Tolle, Barack Obama, and dozens of best-sellers; brought the cattle industry to its knees; provided a platform for Ellen DeGeneres to come out and Tom Cruise to jump up and down; gave away new Pontiacs; established new charities; and either uplifted or weakened American culture, depending on who you talk to.

Somewhere in the middle of that career the term “Oprahfication of America” was coined by The Wall Street Journal, meaning a softening of principles and standards in favor of misty-eyed, therapeutic acceptance of the latest social aberration. The term isn’t quite fair, in the sense that “Oprahfication” predates Oprah. Jonathan Livingston Seagull and I’m OK-You’re OK didn’t need her book club to become best-sellers, back when she was still a teenager, but they helped shape the hearts and minds (mostly hearts) of Oprah’s future audience. Her life up to then would make anybody go misty-eyed: distant mother, absent father, sexual abuse and early pregnancy, etc. This was the Americanization, or rather the sub-Americanization of Oprah, growing up in a culture that allowed no firm footing. It’s to her credit that she overcame—and that’s an only-in-America story, too—but the worldview she built and the solutions she offered are equally footloose.

America, in some small corner of its spacious heart, has always put out the welcome mat for every eccentric religion and crackpot social theory that ever occurred to humanity’s fevered brain. What kept us stable, besides Providence, was the type of small-town, church-centered community that struck Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1840s and nurtured Scotty McCreery in the 20-aughts. There has always been an underclass, but always a chance of escaping it by joining the community and affirming its standards, whether you actually lived by them or not. Oprah represents the underclass, with its anything-goes morality, becoming mainstream. It’s not her doing; she rode the current to the right place at the right time. But it’s her legacy.

Scotty and Lauren make us feel good, but that’s only for this season. Oprah made us feel good about slipping for 25 years, and that current has a way to run before it turns.