The Commentariat -- May 20, 2013
** E. J. Dionne: Democracy is in trouble here & abroad. "... politicians might contemplate their obligations to stewardship of the democratic ideal. They could begin by pondering what an unemployed 28-year-old makes of a ruling elite that expends so much energy feuding over how bureaucrats rewrote a set of talking points."
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Sunday summoned the graduates of historically black Morehouse College to 'transform the way we think about manhood,' urging the young men to avoid the temptation to make excuses and to take responsibility for their families and their communities. Delivering a commencement address at the all-male private liberal arts college in Atlanta, Obama spoke in deeply personal terms about the 'special obligation' he feels as a black man to help those left behind":
... AND for another inspirational (pre)commencement address, Stephen Colbert speaks at the University of Virginia's "valedictory exercises":
... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post reports on Colbert's address.
CNN: "President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.... According to the survey, which was conducted Friday and Saturday, 53% of Americans say they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president's approval rating was at 51% in CNN's last poll, which was conducted in early April."
Meghashyam Mali of the Hill: "White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday defended the White House handling of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, saying the legality of the political targeting was 'irrelevant' and vowing the administration would ensure it 'never happens again.' Pfeiffer, who made the full round of Sunday talk shows, as the administration seeks to calm anger over the IRS, the Justice Department's seizure of reporters phone records and lingering GOP questions about the Benghazi attacks, vowed that the administration would act quickly to address the tax scandal." ...
... AP: Pfeiffer "insisted Sunday that President Barack Obama learned the Internal Revenue Service had targeted tea party groups only 'when it came out in the news' while Republicans continued to press the administration for more answers." ...
... Peter Nicholas of the Wall Street Journal: "The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday. That disclosure has prompted a debate over whether the president should have been notified at that time." ...
... An Inconvenient Fact for Conspiracy Theorists. Steve Benen: "Last July, in the middle of the presidential election, the administration told House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) about an investigation into the IRS's potential mishandling of applications for tax-exempt status. And what did Issa do when he learned about this? Not a thing -- he decided to wait for the IG's report itself." ...
I know approximately what's in [the IG report]. I knew what was approximately in it when we made the allegations about a year ago. This is one of those things where it's been, in a sense, an open secret, but you don't accuse the IRS until you've had a nonpartisan, deep look. That's what the IG has done. That's why the IGs in fact exist within government, is to find this kind of waste and fraud and abuse of power. -- Darrell Issa, speaking to Bloomberg News a week ago, before publication of the IG report ...
Taegan Golldard: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told CNN there was a 'written policy' floating around the agency that said IRS officials were 'targeting people who were opposed to the president.' ... When pressed for details about the memo he was referring to, Paul said he hasn't seen such a policy statement but has heard about it." Via Greg Sargent. ...
... CW: "Leaders" like Rand Paul are a real threat to democracy. Since most of us know that members of Congress are privy to information not circulated to the public, it's not unreasonable to believe a Senator or Congressperson when s/he asserts, "there's a document that says blah-blah." In fact, that's how Jonathan Karl got in trouble, isn't it? So when these people lie or mislead the public, voters will form their opinions on disinformation. Oftentimes the truth comes out -- eventually -- but usually the "never mind" gets less publicity than the original inflammatory charge. I doubt (but I don't know) that Fox "News" was all over the debunking of Karl's claims, for instance.
... Glenn Kessler: Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division, is a big fat liar.
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) -- the GOP leader in the senate -- distanced himself from Republican efforts to portray the Obama administration's response to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic issue in Benghazi, Libya as a Watergate-level scandal that should result in impeachment." ...
... MEANWHILE ... Zack Colman of the Hill: on "Face the Nation," "Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the Obama administration owes its recent troubles and controversies to a 'culture of cover ups and intimidation' within the White House." CW: both McConnell & Cornyn are up for re-election in 2014 & both face the prospect of winger primary challenges.
CNN: "Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, addressed criticism of his reporting on the Benghazi talking points controversy, saying in a statement to CNN that he regrets the inaccuracy of his report. 'Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it's become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately,' he said in the statement to Howard Kurtz, host of CNN's 'Reliable Sources.'" CW: yeah, the story still stands; it's just substantially different from what you wrote. Jerk. ...
... John Cole of Balloon Juice: "I guess when it is someone as ethically challenged as Howard Kurtz holding your feet to the fire, you probably just think you can tell people to piss off and be done with the whole matter.... Karl lied to us because he trusted his source. His source, however, burned him, and Karl's lie was exposed.... If the editors at ABC News had any damned integrity, Karl would be forced to expose his source, apologize, and then take a couple weeks off. Maybe some summer school ethics course." ...
... Just Who Is ABC News's Chief White House Correspondent? Peter Hart of FAIR says he's "a right-wing mole at ABC News": "Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses ... such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O'Keefe .... The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI's first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery.... He was a board member at the right-leaning youth-oriented Third Millennium group and at the Madison Center for Educational Affairs -- which ... seeks to strengthen young conservative journalism. After moving to ABC in 2003, Karl contributed several pieces to the neo-con Weekly Standard." Read on.
Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.... Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist -- and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources." ...
... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: the Keystone XL pipeline -- "another step on the march to disaster."
CW: a couple of weeks ago I wrote that doctoral committees of most major universities would not approve a doctoral dissertation built on discredited assumptions that intelligence is race-based. Well, a thousand-plus Harvard students are wondering why their particular university isn't up to snuff. Jeff Spross of Think Progress: "Over 1,000 Harvard students delivered a petition to Harvard University's JFK School on Saturday, demanding an investigation into how and why the school approved a 2009 doctoral thesis arguing that Hispanics have lower IQs. The thesis was written by Jason Richwine, a co-author of a paper by the conservative Heritage Foundation that argued immigration reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion. The discovery of Richwine's paper by the Washington Post sparked a firestorm around the Heritage study, and several days later Richwine resigned from the think tank."
Erica Werner of the AP: "The Senate Judiciary Committee is aiming this week to pass a landmark immigration bill to secure the border and offer citizenship to millions, setting up a high-stakes debate on the Senate floor." ...
... Kevin Robillard of Politico: Two unions representing a total of 20,000 customs & immigration agents oppose the bill the Gang of Eight is crafting. They say provisions of the bill worsens the problems agent face. They claim the U.S. immigration service has turned into an "'approval machine' ...discouraging the denial of any applications." The complain the bill's authors did not consult them, instead relying on the input of "special interests."
Danielle Douglas of the Washington Post: "Banks have paid less than half the $5.7 billion in cash owed to troubled homeowners under nearly 30 settlements brokered by the government since 2008, delaying help to the millions of victims of discrimination and shoddy lending that epitomized the housing crisis, according to a Washington Post analysis...."
New York Times Editors: "New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street and a setback for financial reform. They may also signal worse things to come." CW: Read the whole editorial. I think the fix is in -- and it's another swell career move for Barack & Michelle Obama.
Paul Krugman: "In elite mythology, the origins of the [economic] crisis of the 70s, like the supposed origins of our current crisis, lay in excess: too much debt, too much coddling of those slovenly proles via a strong welfare state. The suffering of 1979-82 was necessary payback. None of that is remotely true.... It would be bad enough if we were basing policy today on lessons from the 70s. It's even worse that we're basing policy today on a mythical 70s that never was." ...
... ** Tim Noah, in a New York Times op-ed, on the skills gap nobody wants to talk about.
When the "P" in PBS is David Koch. Jayne Mayer of the New Yorker: how public television tried -- and failed -- to placate board member & big contributor David Koch. As Michael Moore said, "The words 'chilling effect' came immediately to mind." ...
... You can watch full video of the documentary "Park Avenue" at this PBS page.
Tough Critique. Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog has a good critique of MoDo's latest advice for Obama. Dowd has "written thirty columns so far this year, but hasn't once published the same kind of 'smackdown' of the Republicans that she's recommending to the president." ...
... Tougher Critique. I don't normally read Maureen.... I don't largely because it's sort of largely the same column for the last, like, eight years. -- Robert Gibbs, former Obama press secretary
I don't normally listen to Robert. I don't largely because it's sort of largely the same tired defense of President Obama for the last, like, six years. -- Maureen Dowd, in response to Gibbs' remark
Local News
Nicole Flatow of Think Progress: "The Virginia Republican Party this weekend nominated for lieutenant governor [E. W. Jackson,] a minister who has a history of virulent anti-gay statements, accuses the Democratic Party of enslaving African Americans, and criticized President Obama for having 'Muslim sensibilities.' The former Senate candidate, who in 2012 garnered less than 5 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, bested six other candidates during the Virginia GOP convention, and will join conservative Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on the Republican ticket. He is the first black candidate the state party has endorsed since 1988."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Homes were flattened, cars were flung through the air and at least two schools packed with children were destroyed as a huge tornado, perhaps a mile wide, tore through towns near Oklahoma City on Monday, killing at least 37 people and sending rescuers and residents dashing to dig out survivors buried in rubble." The Lede has updates here; it includes live video. A map shows the path of the tornado.
AP: "Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ... warned that Monday's commute is expected to be 'extremely challenging' following the collision and derailment of two trains outside Bridgeport last week that injured 72 people."
New York Times: "Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China's People's Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials."
New York Times: "Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the [High Plains] Aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry. In many other places, there no longer is enough water to supply farmers' peak needs during Kansas' scorching summers. And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains."
Reuters: "At least 43 people were killed in car bomb explosions targeting Shi'ite Muslims in the Iraqi capital and the southern oil hub of Basra on Monday, police and medics said. About 150 people have been killed in sectarian violence over the past week and tensions between Shi'ites, who now lead Iraq, and minority Sunni Muslims have reached their highest level since U.S. troops pulled out in December 2011."
Reuters: "North Korea fired two short-range missiles on Monday, making six launches in three days, and it condemned South Korea for criticizing what it said were its legitimate military drills."
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