The Commentariat -- Feb. 3, 2013

Skeetergate Ends! -- President Exonerated!
Until Conspiracy Theorists Determine Photo Is Faked
Which They Surely Already Have

... Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time. -- President Obama, to The New Republic, January 2013 ...

... A funny segment:

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post puts the President to the Pinocchio test: "The evidence suggests that until Obama had access to a shooting range as president, he never went skeet shooting. He certainly did not speak like a politician who had once used a firearm." Kessler did not award any Pinocchios because he did "not have enough information." Kessler has since updated his post & awarded the President a "Geppetto." ...

... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "Pro tip: if you want to be taken seriously as a fact checker, maybe you should avoid writing absolutely ridiculous articles like [Kessler's].... A 'Gepetto Checkmark' for the president. I'm sure he'll cherish it always." ...

... Peter Baker & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "... on Saturday, the White House tried to silence the skeptics by releasing a photograph of Mr. Obama shooting on the range at Camp David in August." ...

... CW: Clearly (1) an Obama look-alike; (2) Photoshopped: (3) Taken yesterday. I do believe it will be necessary to put White House photographer Pete Souza under oath to settle this. ...

... Sure enough, an actual smoking gun is not good enough for skeetergaters. Max Rivlin-Nadler of Gawker provides a few examples. ...

... CW P.S. To those wingers who are saying "Yeah but Obama can't be a very good shot because blah-blah-blah," let me just note that, unlike Dick Cheney, Obama did not shoot any Republicans in the face. That we know of.

Comparatively Irrelevant News & Commentary

Chris Wallace tore into Wayne LaPierre on "Fox 'News' Sunday." Wallace demonstrated just how ridiculous is the NRA's attempts to make gun safety a "class warfare" issue & to label the President an elitist because his children have Secret Service protection & yours don't. Via Igor Volsky of Think Progress:

David Nakamura & Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "President Obama is aiming to grant same-sex couples ... equal immigration rights as their heterosexual counterparts. The proposal could allow up to 40,000 foreign nationals in same-sex relationships to apply for legal residency and, potentially, U.S. citizenship. But the measure has inspired fierce pushback from congressional Republicans and some religious groups, who say it could sink hopes for a comprehensive agreement aimed at providing a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants." ...

... NEW. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Senate Majority Leader Harry [Reid] (D-NV) expressed support for including gay and lesbian families in comprehensive immigration reform, during an appearance on ABC's This Week on Sunday, insisting that they should have the same protections as everyone else." ...

     ... UPDATE: video of full interview:

Will Weissert of the AP: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry said emphatically Saturday that the Boy Scouts of America shouldn't soften its strict no-gays membership policy, and dismissed the idea of bending the organization to the whims of 'popular culture.' Perry is an Eagle Scout and in 2008 he authored the book 'On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For.'"

Mark Landler & Michael Gordon of the New York Times interviewed Hillary Clinton on Thursday. ...

... Landler & Gordon: "As she leaves the State Department, the simplest yardstick for measuring Mrs. Clinton's legacy has been her tireless travels: 112 countries, nearly a million miles, 401 days on the road. Historians will point to how she expanded the State Department's agenda to embrace issues like gender violence and the use of social media in diplomacy."

What a Friend We Had in Timmy. Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times on some reasons the big banks were lucky to have Tim Geithner at Treasury -- and the rest of us were not. Thanks to Kate M. for the link.

Don Walton of the Lincoln [Nebraska] Journal Star: "Sen. Mike Johanns [R-Neb.] said Saturday he will vote to confirm Chuck Hagel's nomination for secretary of defense. In the wake of Hagel's contentious confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, the green light from Nebraska's senior Republican senator could be timely and pivotal in helping pave the way for additional Republican support in the Senate." ...

... Steve Erickson of the American Prospect in Salon on "John McCain's sad, bitter twilight," much of which Erickson says is a function of his hatred of the upstart Obama. CW: when Obama pisses you off -- as he invariably will do -- just remember that he saved us from McCain & McRomney. ...

... Frank Rich comments on the foibles & fantasies of McCain & Co.

"Cockroach Ideas." Paul Krugman complains about people's continually repeating the same economic myths. ...

... Richard Longworth of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has a summary of Krugman's remarks. The page also has a link to audio of the program. (I've listened to the audio, & it's quite good.)

Alex Pareene of Salon: "... deficit fear-mongering succeeded in getting 57 percent of survey respondents to believe that Social Security is a 'crisis or significant problem,' until they learned that minor tax increases would make it totally sustainable for 75 years, at which point 74 percent of Americans were like 'Oh, really? Then it seems fine, why don't they ever put it like that on the news.' ... This news will presumably enrage and baffle Joe Scarborough, because everyone he knows knows that we must Do Something About Entitlements."

Zeke Emanuel in the New York Times: "... bending the health care cost curve will actually spur the economy forward."

Jake Miller of CBS News: "Republican Nebraska Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy resigned Saturday after the disclosure of thousands of 'late night telephone calls' Sheehy placed to four women, none of whom were his wife, during the last four years. His resignation was announced at a morning press conference by Gov. Dave Heinemann, also a Republican, who said that Sheehy had broken 'the public trust.' ... His wife, Connie Sheehy, filed for divorce last July...." CW: how is it possible that the lieutenant governor of a state with a population of less than 2 million has so much to do that having phone sex with multiple women would interfere with his public duties?

News Ledes

So apparently the Ravens beat the 49ers in a "Super Bowl thriller," CBS reports. I was nevermore thrilled.

AP: "New Secretary of State John Kerry reached out to Israeli and Palestinian leaders in phone calls this weekend, assuring them the Obama administration will continue to pursue a Mideast peace agreement while recognizing the individual concerns on both sides."

Odd News. New York Times: "The story of an emaciated, ragged man found wandering barefoot in the middle of a quiet country road last week in County Leitrim, near the border with Northern Ireland, continues to confound the police, even after he was identified as a missing Irish property tycoon who said he was abducted eight months ago and tortured during his captivity." The Irish Times has related stories here.

New York Times: "The Israeli attack last week on a Syrian convoy of antiaircraft weapons appears to have also hit the country's main research center for work on biological and chemical weapons, according to American officials who are sorting through intelligence reports."

AP: "Former Navy SEAL and 'American Sniper' author Chris Kyle was fatally shot along with another man Saturday on a Texas gun range, a sheriff told local newspapers." ...

     ... New York Times Update: police have identified a suspect in the shooting -- Eddie Ray Routh, a veteran whom Kyle & a friend had taken to a shooting range. Routh allegedly also shot & killed Kyle's friend Chad Littlefield.

New York Times: "Egypt's interior minister offered a rare apology on Saturday after officers under his command were seen on television beating a naked man two blocks from the presidential palace. But under what his family said was police coercion, the victim, Hamada Saber, said in an interview later that the officers had been helping rather than attacking him."

AP: "Andre Cassagnes, the inventor of the Etch A Sketch toy that generations of children drew on, shook up and started over, has died in France, the toy's maker said."

New York: former President Bill Clinton & New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will eulogize former Mayor Ed Koch tomorrow.

Comments

[James Singer]

Why the fuck are we becoming aficionados of skeet shooting?

[Kate Madison]

Re Skeetergate:

Oh stop it, Barry! You are a metro male, thank goodness, not one 'o dem good old guyz who loves to skeet shoot--or Marsha Blackburn, who seyz she could beat ya silly. With all of this craziness about guns and trying to get some effective (?) gun control legislation, do you really think it adds to your NRA creds to be photographed with your skeet rifle blasting away?

Now I'm sorry if I have offended and/or antagonized any of our brilliant male commenters, who like to shoot skeet and will argue with me that it can be a metro male thing. Yes, I know, assault weapons are not used, or high capacity magazines. One bullet at a time. Okey dokey--but the only skeet shooters I have ever known are my right wing brother, brother-in-law and their friends. Not saying there are not a few libruls who "shoot up." I just do not know any.

Please correct me if I am wrong. (:

[Marie Burns]

@Kate Madison: I have just visited the lovely Website Cuccinelli.com. The last line of the last graf "About Ken": "Ken is also an avid reader of history and enjoys skeet shooting when he's not spending time with his family." Apparently, your right-wingers are not the only right-wingers who "enjoy skeet-shooting." Also, I was unaware that one could not read & spend time with the family simultaneously.

Marie

[Diane]

@Kate.Well I am completely, entirely, wholeheartedly in the bag for rigorous gun control, including believing that the intent of the 2nd amendment was not to "protect your family" in the way it is used today. I no longer shoot skeet because I do not have a weapon and I am out of practice. I used to love to do so with my father. Frankly, the President skeet shooting has no more significance than his basketball or golf games.

Skeet for me has little to do with hunting or protecting my family including Trotters "screaming babies." Never much liked screaming babies.......might have been driven to violence if mine had been.

[JJG]

Re: SSShHOT gun! Do you give a skeet? Ricardo Cabeza aqui; In my country you shoot a skeet; you eat the skeet. What's wrong with the Prez putting food on the table? It's called "Camp David" not "Hotel David"; he's got friends over and nothing in the larder; let's go hunt up some skeet. Skeet pot pie, skeet stew, skeet roasted whole on the grill, bread crumb fried skeet with tots. Skeet; America's third white meat; ummm; good, que sabor!
Wait; the huevon just walked by and took a look at what I have written. Says skeets are not a tasty, soon to be extinct fowl from south of the border, says skeet is a clay plate that by hand or mechanically is thrown in the air to be shot at by a gunner.
Wow; you gringos waste a lot. Now it's dishware you're breaking.
He says sometimes they're called clay pigeons.
Skeets, pigeons; life is confusing here.
According to senior Quien Sabe skeet shooting was a class thing. Rich guys bought ten thousand dollar English or Italian shotguns and went to the skeet range where the targets were taken care of by servants. Los ricos son locos,no?
Now days it's a sport more than anything else. Men and women excel at it. Anne Oakley became famous for beating all comers at it.
Course, I don't know a thing about the pastimes of rich Americans but just guessing at the photo I'd say the Prez is holding the shotgun a little high in the shoulder and is aiming the barrel rather than aiming the target. I'd bet he misses low and behind a bunch.

[Marie Burns]

@ Diane. You don't have to "believe" the 2nd Amendment as framed was not the 2nd Amendment so-called "originalist" Nino Scalia decided it was in the Heller v. D.C. case. It's a fact. Several weeks back, I posted a link to a history of the 2nd Amendment, the original purpose of which was to ensure safety against insurrectionists -- especially slaves. This isn't what I posted, but Saul Cornell, writing in Newsweek, gets it exactly right:

"... there are gun-rights advocates today who think the Second Amendment actually gives them the right to take up arms against the government — but if that were true the Second Amendment would have repealed the Constitution’s treason clause, which defines treason as taking up arms against the government! This is all so deeply twisted: after all, the Founders framed the Constitution in part as a response to the danger posed by Shays’ Rebellion."

I would add this: Article I of the Constitution includes the following "powers of Congress":

"To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress...."

It's pretty clear, then, what the Framers had in mind by "a well-organized militia," as the language of the 2nd Amendment has it. The militia are required to work for the government, not against it. Moreover, the government -- state or federal -- "organizes" & "disciplines" the militia. This is so not an individual right -- rather it is a community responsibility.

Here's a helpful scholarly article on the history of the 2nd Amendment, & how the fear of slave insurrections, in particular, figured in.

I get pissed off every time Obama says the 2nd Amendment gives individuals a right to bear arms. I consider that a "temporary" interpretation, one the wingers on the Court made up -- in defiance of 200 years of unanimous interpretation that the 2nd Amendment was a "collective" right.

Marie

[Diane]

Thank-you Marie. I read the UCDavis Law Review article with great interest. I have heard some more popular culture people argue the same position in sound bites - Jeffrey Toobin and David Stockman. Generally, I get pissed at the universal statement that "of course I believe in the 2nd amendment." Huh???

[cowichan's opinion]

"we do skeet shooting all the time."
The picture of Obama incorrectly holding a shotgun and aiming it like a rifle puts him in the same category as Dukakis the tank driver. Note, no 'do' required. Was it really necessary to buy into another republican delusion? Is masculinity really measured by the number of guns you have slept with?

[safari]

Wow the Dems have really gone off their rocker! They want to let illegal foreign HOMOS have the same rights as the illegal foreign "normal" folk??? We don't even want to give gay Americans the same rights as their hetero counterparts, and now they go off talking about brown people too?

God is gonna send us another natural disaster or mass shooting for this crock-pot idea.