The debate over the appropriate role for Congress in the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran continues as the month-end deadline for a so-called "framework agreement" approaches.  A bipartisan group of senate co-sponsors led by Senator Corker  announced that on or shortly after March 24th they intend to begin deliberations over a bill (S. 615), which would require that any agreement t reached be submitted for review by the Senate, and which would also provide for a Senate vote on whether to approve the agreement.  The president has threatened to veto that bill and continues to insist that the advice and consent of the Congress is not required because any agreement that is negotiated will be "non-binding".  Last night, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough warned Senator Corker not to proceed with the vote, and claimed that such a vote would unduly interfere with the ongoing negotiations.  Corker has indicated that the bill will likely come to Senate floor in mid-April at the earliest. [Note this paragraph was edited to correct my erroneous description of the procedural aspects of S. 615. My apologies.]

There has been more debate among dagbloggers discussing ISIS, Syria, Iraq -- the Middle East -- than there has been in the Congress over the past couple of weeks.  It is election season and folks are back home raising money and kissing babies.  

The president is on the job still but today, with commendable candor, stated that the United States did not yet have a strategy for dealing with ISIS.  Commendable yes, but not entirely reassuring when you hear it from the commander in chief.  That is not the point of this piece.

One hundred years ago to the day, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot and killed along with his wife Sophie, while touring the city of Sarajevo.  The assassin was a 19 year-old Serbian nationalist, and of course this was the spark that precipitated the First World War.  Austria responded with a series of demands that Serbia could not comply with, Germany stood by Austria, Russia by Serbia, and France by Russia (the latter alliance prompted by France's humiliation in a war against Germany back in 1870).