The Commentariat -- Sept. 6, 2014

Internal links removed.

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama has delayed action to reshape the nation's immigration system without congressional approval until after the November elections, bowing to the concerns of Senate Democrats on the ballots, White House officials said on Saturday. The decision is a striking reversal of Mr. Obama's vow to take action on immigration soon after summer's end. The president made that promise on June 30, standing in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation."

Alix Bryan of CBS Richmond: Bob "McDonnell will have his license to practice law removed once the Virginia State Bar receives notice of his felony convictions. There is also chance that he could lose his pension, due to a law he signed into effect in 2011. The legislation states that retirement benefits are forfeited upon certain felony convictions. This means that McDonnell could lose the pensions he earned while serving as an Army Reserves lieutenant colonel, Virginia Attorney General, and as a lawmaker in the House of Delegates." CW: Now that would be ironic. The value of his pensions is far more than the value of the gifts he & Maureen took from Williams. ...

... Dahlia Lithwick: "Whatever shame [the McDonnells] brought on the office of governor by their dealings with Williams was overshadowed by the shame of their legal strategy. The jurors must have felt unimaginably filthy listening to gruesome tales of a 'nutbag' first lady, rebuffed letters from the governor trying to resolve marital spats, and tween-grade text messages to a man Maureen McDonnell was allegedly 'obsessed with.' As the jurors begin to talk, we may begin to get some insight into why they came down so hard on the former first couple. But one possibility is that you just can't explain lies with lies. And the McDonnell strategy always seemed to be just that: 'We couldn't have been lying to you about our finances, Virginia, because we were too busy lying to you about everything else." ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "As the jury seems to have recognized..., the stories about Maureen's fascination with Williams and Bob's emotional absence were never more than a distraction. The defense didn't make legal or emotional sense, and it didn't fit the facts of the case. There is no requirement, in the law or anywhere else, that we love our co-conspirators, or even that we find them tolerable. A couple can be spiteful and venal all at once." ...

I would love to spend about a month on a beach. Just reading books. I've got 25 books on my night stand.... I got a bunch of them there I'd like to read. But that, honestly, a little R and R and a lot of pleasure reading is what I'd like to do. -- Bob McDonnell, August 15, 2013, in answer to a question about how he'd like to spend his post-gubernatorial days

Things always work out for the best. Bob will now have plenty of time to read those books. Too bad about the beach thing. -- Constant Weader

... Tim Noah of msnbc: "To whatever extent the 2009 [Virginia] governor's race turned on family values, Virginia voters couldn't, in retrospect, have been more wrong in finding [Bob] McDonnell superior to his Democratic opponent, Virginia State Sen. Creigh Deeds. McDonnell wouldn't accept a plea bargain to spare his family. Deeds, by contrast, nearly died for his this past November. A judge had ordered Deeds's 24-year-old son Gus, who suffered from severe mental illness, to be committed involuntarily. But a hospital bed couldn't be found, and so Deeds took him home, where Gus stabbed his father multiple times in the head and chest before shooting himself dead. In a speech in March, Deeds called the son who very nearly killed him 'my hero.' It's hard to resist comparing that statement with some of the things McDonnell said on the stand about a wife who merely yelled at him." ...

It's like House of Cards without the cunning. -- Joe Coscarelli of New York

... Josh Gerstein of Politico speculates on why the prosecution -- same lead prosecutor, BTW -- won the McDonnells corruption case but lost the John Edwards corruption case, even though the Edwards case involved a lot more money & centered around Edwards' extremely sleazy behavior.

Annie Gowen, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Ukrainian government and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine agreed Friday to a temporary cease-fire, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said, raising the prospect of at least a brief respite in an increasingly bloody conflict. At a NATO summit in Wales, President Obama welcomed the announcement while expressing skepticism that the separatists and their Russian backers would adhere to the truce and other commitments." ...

... Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "As the truce went into effect, fighting that had raged throughout the day around the strategic port city of Mariupol tapered off, and Ukrainian soldiers could be seen pulling back to their bases. But in interviews, the troops said they had not yet received orders to stand down."

Phil Stewart & Julien Ponthus of Reuters: "The United States said it had created a 'core coalition' on Friday to battle Islamic State militants in Iraq, calling for broad support from allies and partners around the world but ruling out committing ground forces. [U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck] Hagel told ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark that they, with the United States, formed the core group for tackling the Sunni militant group." ...

... Hayes Brown of Think Progress compares President Obama's 'core coalition' against ISIS with President Bush II's 2003 "coalition of the willing." ...

... Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast: "There's widespread frustration in both chambers and both parties about President Obama's admission that 'we don't have a strategy yet' to deal with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But now the lack of strategy is actually protecting Obama from oversight because Congress can't authorize or reject what it can't understand. In fact, the White House has been totally mum on how it plans to legally justify the air war in Iraq after the temporary authority granted to it in the War Powers Resolution expires.... With only two weeks in September to legislate, there's little to no chance Congress will act before its next recess, which means the issue will be punted to the post-election lame duck session."

Mitt Romney, first-runner up in the 2012 presidential beauty contest, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Russia invades, China bullies, Iran spins centrifuges, the Islamic State (a terrorist threat 'beyond anything that we've seen,' according to the defense secretary) threatens -- and Washington slashes the military." ...

... Paul Waldman: "In a comically ridiculous op-ed, the failed presidential candidate explains why the largest military on earth is actually a scrawny loser getting sand kicked in its face." CW: I'd say the vast Not-President Romney financial empire includes some flagging munitions stocks.

CW: This is obvious, but it's worth highlighting. The Republican party is never, ever going to reconstitute itself as "the Party of Lincoln" because it now owns the Confederacy. Jonathan Chait: "Given that the alliance between the white South and the Republican Party has grown more firm than ever, it is hard to imagine how the party can refashion itself along Lincolnian or Rooseveltian lines."

Steve Benen explains the hacking of Healthcare.gov to shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions GOP critics: "Was healthcare.gov hacked? Not really. A test server was uploaded with 'denial of service' malware -- a practice 'so common that it's attempted 28 different times every hour.' The healthcare.gov site itself was unharmed. Was healthcare.gov specifically targeted? No. Was any consumer information compromised? No. Was any data transmitted? No. Was there an attempt to steal data? No. Was the website knocked offline? No."

Steven Pinker in the New Republic on "the trouble with Harvard." "... it's common knowledge that Harvard selects at most 10 percent (some say 5 percent) of its students on the basis of academic merit.... Elite universities are nothing close to being meritocracies. We know that because they don't admit most of their students on the basis of academic aptitude. And perhaps that's what we should try next."

Beyond the Beltway

... Michael Keys of the Blot: "The chief of police for the Ferguson Police Department misled members of the media and the public when he asserted that his hand was forced in releasing surveillance footage that purported to show 18-year-old resident Michael Brown engaged in a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store.... When questioned by members of the press about the tape -- which apparently had nothing to do with the fatal shooting of the unarmed teenager -- [Ferguson Police Chief Tom] Jackson told reporters that he was legally obligated to release the tape because members of the media had submitted an open records requests for it.... 'We got a lot of Freedom of Information requests for this tape, and at some point it was just determined we had to release it. We didn't have good cause, any other reason not to release it under FOI.' ... A review of open records requests sent to the Ferguson Police Department found that no news organization, reporter or individual specifically sought the release of the surveillance tape before police distributed it on Aug. 15." (Emphasis added.) Read Keys' whole report, or at least click on his site, please. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the lead. ...

... CW Note: A few weeks ago, a couple of readers sent me this image of Michael Brown, who is pointing a gun at the camera & holding a wad of cash in his teeth. I think the readers got the images from their right-wing friends or relatives. The images have appeared all over the winger blogosphere & have showed up in the comments sections of legitimate news outlets. I figured the picture was of a kid being a jerk. And it is. But Michael Brown isn't the jerk. KCTV of Kansas reports that the man in the photo is Joda Cain, an accused killer from Oregon.

Senate Races

John Judis & Brian Beutler of the New Republic: Kansas Senate Democratic nominee Chad "Taylor dropped out [of the race], he claims, under assurances from the Kansas Secretary of State's office that his official withdrawal would remove his name from the ballot. But the Kansas Secretary of State is Kris Kobach -- a veteran GOP vote suppressor and one of the intellectual forces behind 'self-deportation.' He serves on [Sen. Pat] Roberts' honorary campaign committee. And on Thursday, he pulled an apparent bait and switch. Taylor's name, he concluded, will remain on the ballot. Election law guru Rick Hasen writes that though Taylor has a case, the question of what the courts will do is a tossup.... Normally [Republicans make] it hard for Democrats to vote in the first place. This time around it means trying to trick low-information Democrats into voting for a candidate who isn't running. But it's still voter suppression." ...

... The Disappearance of Pat Roberts. Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report: "Roberts' long-time campaign manager LeRoy Towns told The Wichita Eagle after the [primary] race was over. 'He went back home for two days or three to rest. I think he's going to come back here the first of next week,' said Towns, referencing Roberts' home in Virginia. Towns' comments seemed tone deaf considering Roberts was dogged by residency questions throughout the race.... 'He does intend to spend every moment between now and the election in Kansas, I think, that he can,' Towns also told the Eagle. But, according to Republicans familiar with the race, that just hasn't happened.... Roberts has not been actively campaigning for about a month now." Via David Nir of Daily Kos.

Thom Tillis, Throwback. Michael LaRosa of msnbc: North Carolina GOP nominee Thom "Tillis, who referred to [Sen. Kay] Hagan [D-N.C.] simply as 'Kay' during the hour-long debate and came under fire by some for taking a condescending tone toward Hagan, questioned the Senator's ability to comprehend budgets, math and policy.... 'I'm actually insulted by his comments, [Hagan] said. 'I was a Vice President of a bank. I wrote billion dollar state budgets in North Carolina. I understand math.'" CW: She's also on the Senate Banking Committee. ...

... Here's Tillis during Tuesday's debate whacking Hagan again & again for, you know, being a silly little woman who just can't understand big-boy subjects like math:

Gail Collins: "Republicans in close elections suddenly turn into cheerleaders for over-the-counter birth control pills. A negative and suspicious mind might almost suspect they were following a script." ...

... CW: Also, of course, this could force women to pay for this own contraception instead of getting it "free" under their insurance policies. ...

... Cathleen Decker of the Los Angeles Times in a straight news report: "Under the healthcare law, contraceptives are to be available without a co-pay. If the medication becomes available over the counter, most will not be covered by health insurance, meaning that drugs that have become more affordable would suddenly be less so."

Comments

[carlyle]

Rather than the screwy wife defense, Bob McDonnell should have used the SCOTUS reasoning in the Citizens United decision and made the prosecution prove the " quid pro quo " given for each gift to the leaches.
From the majority opinion; "The type of "corruption' that might justify government controls on spending for speech had to relate to some type of "quid pro quo" transaction."
Seems like a perfect defense for every crooked politician in America. Must have a specific "quid pro quo".
Are we nuts or what?