The Commentariat -- Aug. 12, 2013

David Savage of the Los Angeles Times: "Federal prosecutors will no longer seek long, 'mandatory minimum' sentences for many low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, under a major shift in policy aimed at turning around decades of explosive growth in the federal prison population, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. planned to announce Monday.... The change responds to a major goal of civil rights groups, which say long prison sentences have disproportionately hurt low-income and minority communities."

Kremlin on the Potomac. Michael Phillips, an attorney writing in the New Yorker on "how the government killed a secure e-mail company." Well, actually Phillips doesn't tell you, because how the feds forced Lavabit to shut down is a secret. Even the fact that there are secrets is secret. "The truth may never come out." CW: worth noting -- it isn't just Fourth Amendment considerations that are at issue here. There's a huge First Amendment issue when the government -- via the FISA court -- tells private individuals they cannot even reveal actions or charges or orders against them. ...

What makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation. It's the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process. -- President Obama, at his Friday afternoon press conference ...

... Her writing is a bit disjointed, but Jennifer Hoelzer, formerly an aide to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), disproves President Obama's claim, made in his Friday afternoon presser, that he was totally into transparency, "open debate & the democratic process" & was already tweaking NSA programs to allay critics' concerns when Ed Snowden interfered. ...

... Keith Laing of the Hill: "During an appearance on CNN's 'State of the Union,' Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he was comfortable with Obama's recent attempts to improve the [NSA surveillance] program following leaks about its existence from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But Clyburn said he voted last month with Republicans to defund the NSA surveillance program because it required trusting more people than the president."

Oh, Another Friday Afternoon News Dump. Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg News: "The Justice< Department made a long-overdue disclosure late Friday: Last year when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder boasted about the successes that a high-profile task force racked up pursuing mortgage fraud, the numbers he trumpeted were grossly overstated." Weil writes that he himself forced the disclosure by repeatedly asking for proofs that turned out to be nonexistent. Holder "used a press conference with the cameras rolling to give out numbers that proved to be false -- and they appear to have been willfully false. He should be just as eager to hold another press conference to set the record straight...."

"A Revolt of Their Own." AP: "Midway between the 2012 and 2014 election campaigns, moderate Republican conservatives are beginning to foment a revolt of their own — a backlash to anti-spending tea party shrillness as budget cuts begin to significantly shrink defense and domestic programs. Tea party forces may have dominated the House GOP's approach to the budget so far, but pragmatists in the party have served notice they won't stand idly by for indiscriminate spending cuts to politically popular community development grants, education programs and even Amtrak."

Just so you know, global warming is a total fraud. Rep. Dana Rohrabacker (R-CA) ...

... Lee Fang of the Nation: "Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a senior member of the House Science Committee, used a portion of his time at a town hall this week to launch into a rant about global warming, which he described as a plot by liberals to 'create global government to control our lives.'"

Paul Krugman: Economist Milton Friedman, "who used to be the ultimate avatar of conservative economics, has essentially disappeared from right-wing discourse.... Instead, Rand Paul turns to the 'Austrian' view of thinkers like Friedrich Hayek -- a view Friedman once described as an 'atrophied and rigid caricature' -- while Paul Ryan, the G.O.P.'s de facto intellectual leader, gets his monetary economics from Ayn Rand, or more precisely from fictional characters in 'Atlas Shrugged.' ... Modern conservatism has moved so far to the right that it no longer has room for even small concessions to reality." ...

... The New York Times gives a lot of op-ed space to "austerity scaremongers" Glenn Hubbard & Tim Kane. Where to start? No doubt to confuse readers, since they certainly know better, Hubbard & Kane repeatedly & purposefully use the the terms "deficit" & "debt" interchangeably. They do this, apparently, in service of their claim that the U.S. will have "a trillion dollars in red ink" after 2023. So if you want to know where Eric Cantor & Rand Paul are getting the disinformation they spread about growing deficits & trillion dollar deficits, here's a clue. The Hubbard & Kane pretend that Detroit, which of course can't "print" money, is just like the federal government. The U.S. is going bankrupt! Finally, they say we should add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, which would tie Congress's hands to help the economy in future recessions or depressions.

Tony Barboza of the Los Angeles Times: "California is feeling the effects of climate change far and wide, as heat-trapping greenhouse gases reduce spring runoff from the Sierra Nevada, make the waters of Monterey Bay more acidic and shorten winter chill periods required to grow fruit and nuts in the Central Valley, a new report says. Though past studies have offered grim projections of a warming planet, the report released Thursday by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment took an inventory of three dozen shifts that are already happening." ...

... ** Joe Stiglitz in the New York Times: "Detroit's travails arise in part from a distinctive aspect of America's divided economy and society.... Our country is becoming vastly more economically segregated, which can be even more pernicious than being racially segregated.... The disintegration of Detroit precedes the conflicts over social-welfare programs and race relations (including riots in 1967) and reaches back into the postwar decades, a time when the roots of deindustrialization, racial discrimination and geographic isolation were planted. We've reaped what we've sown.... Our government spent decades papering over the growing weaknesses by allowing the financial sector to run amok, creating 'growth' based on bubbles. We didn’t just let the market run its course. We made an active choice to embrace short-term profits and large-scale inefficiency." CW: Read the whole essay, including the part about the "smart" bankers who cheated Detroit & will try to cheat city workers again during bankruptcy proceedings.

Senatorial Race

** "Anybody But Booker." Susie Madrak in Crooks & Liars: "If you want to risk a Manchurian candidate who, while running as a nominal Democrat, is and has been deeply entrenched with the vulture capitalists and their disaster capitalism education 'reform', grew up in and has never rejected the religious right (while selling himself as gay-friendly, he's cultivated the same extremist movement that has promoted homophobia in Uganda and benefited from their mythology of Newark's 'transformation'), is steeped in Wall Street money and philosophy and is deeply admired by the usual right-wing think tanks, you should vote for Cory Booker in tomorrow's NJ Senate primary." Thanks to Kate M. for the link. ...

... Michael Gartland & Susan Edelman of the New York Post: "Cory Booker pocketed 'confidential' annual payouts from his former law firm while serving as Newark mayor. Booker, the front-runner in New Jersey's Senate race, received five checks from the Trenk DiPasquale law firm from 2007 until 2011. During that time, the firm raked in more than $2 million in fees from local agencies over which Booker has influence. 'This was a settlement buyout for my interest in the firm,' the mayor told The Post at a campaign stop in Jersey City yesterday. 'I had an equity stake, and we had a negotiated settlement.'"

Presidential Race 2016

Hillary Drops Hints. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: Hillary "Clinton these days talks freely about women breaking barriers. She has woven a theme of women's empowerment throughout almost all of her public remarks in the seven months since she stepped down as secretary of state."

Joe Drops a Hint. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be the keynote speaker at Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry fund-raiser next month, a signature political event that often showcases as featured speakers those aspiring to be president."

The Donald Drops a Hint. Kasie Hunt of NBC News: "Donald Trump on Saturday made his first-ever political visit to Iowa, speaking to conservative Christians, stoking speculation about his political plans." ...

... Tal Kopan of Politico: "Donald Trump, in the early presidential caucus state of Iowa this weekend for an event featuring many potential 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls, defended his questioning of President Barack Obama's place of birth in an interview aired Sunday on ABC's 'This Week.'"

Patrick O'Connor of the Wall Street Journal: More hints from Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal & Amy Klobuchar.

Peter King Lacks Subtlety. Jordy Yager of the Hill: "Rep. Peter King [R-N.Y.] says he's dead serious about exploring a bid for the White House, even as GOP strategists and consultants offer steep and potentially insurmountable odds for the New York Republican."

Idylls of the King Messiah Stupid

Heidi Wigdahl of WBIR, Knoxville, Tennessee: "A Newport, [Tennessee,] mother is appealing a court's decision after a judge ordered her son's name be changed from 'Messiah.' ... 'The word Messiah is a title and it's a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ," Judge [Lu Ann] Ballew [a Child Support magistrate,] said." CW: Later Judge Ballew ordered the parents of a young teen to stop referring to her as a "Virgin," explaining that Virgin is a title that has only been earned by the mother of the Messiah. She ejected a father named "Jesus" from the courtroom & told a couple their children could not name their dogs "King" & "Prince" as those are titles reserved for the Windsors of England. (Actually, "messiah" is a title that means "anointed one," a title the ancient Jews gave to savior kings like Cyrus the Great of Persia, who freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity, & Judas & Simon Maccabee, who led a successful revolt against the Selecuid rulers of Judea.)

Local News

Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times: "In a repudiation of a major element in the Bloomberg administration's crime-fighting legacy, a federal judge has found that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers, and called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms. In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision." CW: worth noting -- President Obama is reportedly considering NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who oversaw this discriminatory, unconstitutional horror show, as the nominee to head Homeland Security. Don't like James Clapper listening in on your phone calls? Wait till Ray Kelly grabs you, throws you on the sidewalk & bootnecks you.

News Ledes

Boston Globe: "James J. 'Whitey' Bulger, the notorious gangster who rampaged through Boston's underworld for decades before fleeing and eluding a worldwide manhunt for more than 16 years, participated in 11 murders, a federal jury found today as it handed down its verdict in a racketeering case that had riveted the city. A jury of four women and eight men returned to US District Court in Boston with their verdict this afternoon after 32 1/2 hours of deliberations over five days, bringing a resounding end to Bulger's decades of evading justice. They found Bulger guilty of 31 of the 32 counts he faced." The New York Times story is here.

New York Times: "President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico on Monday, pushing one of the most sweeping economic overhauls here in the past two decades, proposed opening his country's historically closed energy industry to foreign investment. The president's plan, which would rewrite two constitutional amendments, challenges a bedrock assumption of Mexico's national identity -- its total sovereignty over its energy resources -- by inviting private companies to explore and pump for oil and natural gas."

Comments

[Kate Madison]

I have for a long time felt uncomfortable about Cory (too good to be true) Booker. He is publicized as such a nice, ordinary, generous guy--even helped get some people out of a burning house last year!
What's not to like?

Read this:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/nj-voters-pick-anybody-cory-booker

[James Singer]

Smart enough to know better: Intelligence is not a remedy for racism

http://tinyurl.com/mwlwyvt

[Barbarossa]

Re: Update 2. You're victim of what we used to call "drive by" programs in my days as a computer tech. The links won't show in the html; they're buried in the Windows Registry, probably as hidden text. The best solution is to back up your data, wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. You might have to take the machine to a repair shop to have it done. These kinds of programs are almost impossible to get rid of. They're like cockroaches--if you see one, before you knowit, there are more of them.

[Akhilleus]

Conservatism in America, used to stand for things, whether you agreed with them or not, things rooted in reality. Bill Buckley style conservatism at least made an attempt to ground its belief system with a philosophy that considered causes and effects of and in the real world.

Modern GOP style conservatism (and, even worse, those conservative factions that decry the party as far too liberal) has left all semblance, all simulations of connection with reality far behind, shrugging off as a snake does its skin, rationality, reasonableness, and comity. It has, to quote Hegel, discarded its earlier incarnation as “…the corpse of a system which has left its guiding tendency behind it.”

The new guiding tendency being barking, bug-eyed lunacy.

I call into evidence (if any additional evidence were actually required) the confederacy of dunces that pass as members of the House Committee on Science and Technology. It might as well be called the Committee on Bogeymen and Astrology.

From Arizona (the Cradle of Bigotry and Stupidity), we have Rep. David Schweikert who was booted off the Financial Services Committee for being too unstable. The perfect addition to the S and T Committee!

But the real idiots are Paul Broun (R-Whackostan), who claims, despite the paper on his wall that states that he is a doctor, that evolution and the big bang theory are lies from the pit of hell. At least he’s straightforward about his zealous lack of rationality.

Ralph Hall (R-Oilandgasistan), Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Fatassistan), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Braindeadistan), and Lamar Smith also an R from Oilandgasistan, all of whom are avowed haters and disbelievers of science.

Dana Rohrabacher in his latest anti-fact screed demonstrates not only drooling ignorance of science, but lack of understanding of our government and the operation of the UN, and, topping it all off, a soupcon of racism. He declared that science projects are used by liberals to inflict a world government to steal our FREEEDDOOOMMMZZ and that this plot would be run by a “UN government official” from Nigeria (nudge, nudge; Nigeria...get it?).

I don’t recall that the UN actually is a government, but there ya go. What do I know? I live in the real world. And upon what does he base the rest of his claims? His gut. Natch. And you thought reality wasn't involved!

But there you have it. Science Committee ruled by unhinged, balmy blockheads. What next? The Budget Committee run by a numerically challenged idiot like Paul Ryan?

Oh wait….shit.

[PD Pepe]

@Ak: Joe Stiglitz's piece spells all this out quite convincingly. We used to have Republicans that adhered to a different set of drum rolls than Democrats, but we could count on both sides to get together and give us a decent medley even though the horn section might get a little ornery. Uncle Milty we could listen to, perhaps disagree with which we did on many issues, but he was someone we respected, someone who was sane. Same for Buckley* as you mentioned.Something Elizabeth Drew once said about the Republicans today: As long as they worship at the altar of "smaller government"––a euphemism for cutting domestic programs such as education at all levels as well as food stamps, unemployment benefits, women's rights, etc.–––their appeal to groups they've been losing will remain limited. The whole science issue is enough to change a mild mannered human being into a raging bull-like stampeder who comes charging into these climate change deniers and boot them into the hot pockets of hell on earth. These Tea people and their Republican governors have created a serial cataclysm that has resulted in a government that has lost its moorings. Will enough of our population realize that and cast their votes accordingly?

*When Buckley received news that Kissinger had gone to China, he wrote: "I broke wind, with heavy philosophical reservation."