The Commentariat -- May 19, 2015

Internal links removed.

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF calls the revelation 'shocking' and says the figure is an 'extremely robust' estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world's governments."

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama on Monday banned the federal provision of some types of military-style equipment to local police departments and sharply restricted the availability of others. The ban is part of Mr. Obama's push to ease tensions between law enforcement and minority communities in reaction to the crises in Baltimore; Ferguson, Mo.; and other cities.... Mr. Obama promoted the effort on Monday during a visit to Camden, N.J. The city, racked by poverty and crime, has become a national model for better relations between the police and citizens after replacing its beleaguered police force with a county-run system that prioritizes community ties":

... Sarah Wheaton & Ben Schreckinger of Politico: "The nation's largest police union is fighting back against a White House plan to restrict local police forces' ability to acquire military-style gear, accusing President Barack Obama's task force of politicizing officers' safety.... James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told Politico on Monday that ... in particular he objects to a measure that would require police departments to get permission from city governments to acquire certain equipment, including riot batons, helmets and shields, through federal programs." ...

... CW: Right. Because police departments should be armed, independent organizations unaccountable to civilian authority. Also because there's nothing wrong with this photo that accompanied the Politico story:

... See also Rand Paul's remarks, linked below. Looks as if he'll be holding Hillary Clinton responsible for all this. ...

... UPDATE: See Akhilleus' & D. C. Clark's commentary in today's thread on these things.

Jordan Fabian & Kristina Wong of the Hill: "President Obama's strategy in fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is facing fresh scrutiny after the militant group toppled government forces in the major Iraqi city of Ramadi. The city's fall represented the biggest military gain for ISIS this year. The White House on Monday acknowledged the seizure represents a 'setback' but signaled it is unlikely to alter its approach to combatting ISIS, which relies on U.S.-led airstrikes and training Iraqi security forces to fight the ground war." ...

... Nick Gass of Politico: "Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that when it comes to the Middle East, he does not think the United States has a strategy 'at all.'"

Seung Min Kim of Politico: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) released a report Monday "that accuses both GOP and Democratic administrations of reneging on labor provisions in previous free-trade agreements -- dating to the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993." ...

... Michael Wessel, a Democratic trade specialist & former Congressional aide, in Politico Magazine: "I've actually read the TPP text provided to the government's own advisors, and I've given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can't share my criticisms with you. I can tell you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her criticism of the trade deal."

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times: "Immigrants are the pilings of the New York economy, the providers of low-cost, seamless comforts like 24-hour takeout food, cheap nail salons, all-night gas stations, nonunion construction workers. Some entered the United States legally; others did not. The ability of unscrupulous employers to steal wages can take your breath away."

Good Health Is a Terrible Thing. Rachana Pradhan of Politico: "More than 12 million people have signed up for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act since January 2014, and in some states that embraced that piece of the law, enrollment is hundreds of thousands beyond initial projections.... The federal government is picking up 100 percent of the expansion costs through 2016, and then will gradually cut back to 90 percent. But some conservatives say the costs that will fall on the states are just too big a burden, and they see vindication in the signup numbers, proof that costs will be more than projected as they have warned all along."

Maureen Dowd: Justice Ginsburg presides at a wedding. ...

... MEANWHILE, Ted Cruz is pretty sure Dimmocrats are going to make you get hitched to a person who shares your chromosome set. What Steve Benen missed in the linked analysis is the fact that "mandatory" is a Tea-Party-approved scare word unless it appears in a phrase like "mandatory sentences for crack users" or "mandatory drug tests for lazy moochers." Because freeedom.

Alex Ronan of New York: "Tennessee representative Scott DesJarlais opposes abortion, has run repeatedly as a pro-life candidate, and routinely votes in favor of restricting reproductive rights.... DesJarlais just doesn’t believe anyone should get an abortion. Except for his wife and mistress.... The contradictions between his personal views on abortion and his public stance drew renewed attention last week, when he voted in favor of the 20-week abortion ban. But DesJarlais's behavior is indicative of a larger contradiction between pro-lifers' professed views and their personal behavior. ThinkProgress points to a statistically supported dynamic in which people who identify as pro-life frequently find themselves choosing abortion when confronted with reproductive decisions in their own lives."

Annals of "Justice," Ctd. Eric Schlosser of the New Yorker: A Sixth Circuit panel "threw out the sabotage convictions [of three peace activists], and their view of the government's arguments was scathing."

J. K. Trotter of Gawker: "Three weeks ago, a Nassau County Supreme Court justice ended a bitter three-year custody dispute between Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly and his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy, by granting custody of the couple's two minor children to McPhilmy. Though nearly all documents pertaining to New York family court cases are sealed, Gawker has learned that the justice in the case heard testimony accusing O'Reilly of physically assaulting his wife in the couple's Manhasset home." ...

... Dylan Byers of Politico: "Bill O'Reilly says the allegation that he physically assaulted his ex-wife is '100% false.'" CW: And everything O'Reilly says is 100% true.

Krugman-Brooks Feud, Ctd. Brooks today: "There’s a fable going around now that the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war." Krugman yesterday: "We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "The Bush administration's strategy from the outset has been to hide behind this failure of intelligence.... This is how the dodge works. Step 1: Prevent a Senate report from looking into whether the administration lied. Step 2: Ignore the existence of the report that did show the administration lied. Step 3: Pretend that an intelligence failure and a deliberate effort to cook the intelligence are mutually exclusive. It was a mistake, therefore it could not have also been a crime." ...

... CW: It is worth bearing in mind that all of the GOP candidates' dodges (except maybe Jeb's first three or four answers) follow Dubya's own strategy to rewrite/whitewash history. Jeb's flubs haven't instigated a new intraparty "candid discussion" of the Iraq War but rather continued the GOP coverup. And that nice David Brooks is still the company spokesman.

Presidential Race

Hillary's Shady Friend Sidney. Nicholas Confessore & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, Sidney Blumenthal advised her "about events unfolding in Libya.... Mrs. Clinton ... took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable.... While advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Blumenthal, who had been barred from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was also employed by her family's philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation.... During the same period, he also worked on and off as a paid consultant to Media Matters and American Bridge, organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton's 2016 campaign. Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government." ...

... Here's a related story by Schmidt. Looks as if even Secretary Clinton was skeptical of Blumenthal's "intel." ...

... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The State Department is proposing a deadline of January 2016 to complete its review and public release of 55,000 pages of emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exchanged on a private server and turned over to her former agency last December. The proposal came Monday night in a document related to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Vice News filed in January seeking all of Clinton's emails." ...

... Sins of the Husband. Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul says he will bash Hillary Clinton over her husband's record of putting 'a generation of black men in prison' if he is the nominee. Paul ... says he will compete with [Hillary] Clinton in Philadelphia, where Democrats have a 7-to-1 registration advantage, and other impoverished cities by highlighting his support for criminal justice reform." ...

... CW: Other than in a few areas like health care reform, in which Hillary was actively involved, how responsible is Hillary for Bill's policies? Sure -- just as Jeb has to answer questions about Dubya's horrible misadventures -- she should state her current position on policies that are now some two decades old. (Let me add here that most of us of a certain age would do some things differently than we did two decades ago.) But "bashing" her "over her husband's record" doesn't make a lot of sense to me any more than it makes sense to "bash" Jeb over Dubya's policies -- unless, um, he agrees with them.

Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "The quotations he posts, rarely pithy, are often sayings he thinks up in the shower. The photographs he puts up sometimes show him frowning, while others show him gazing oddly into the horizon. And he does not seem to care about the importance of videos. But somehow, Bernie Sanders, the 73-year-old senator from Vermont, has emerged as a king of social media early in the 2016 presidential campaign, amid a field of tech-savvy contenders."

Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: Knowing what he knew then, Dubya should not have invaded Iraq. Marco "Rubio's depiction of Bush as a guy forced to invade because he 'was presented with intelligence that said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction' is absurd.... [But] Let's imagine that Bush had possessed irrefutable proof that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. Those weapons would still have presented no grave threat to the United States.... By claiming that the United States was right to invade Iraq given what its leaders thought they knew at the time, Rubio and his fellow GOP candidates are making George W. Bush's radical departure from past American practice the new normal.... The toxic spirit of the last Bush presidency still thoroughly infects today's GOP."

Roger Simon of Politico: "Now that we know whether Jeb would have launched his brother's invasion of Iraq -- yes, I don't know, I'm not saying, and no -- I want to know if Jeb would have launched his father's campaign against Willie Horton.... The 1988 presidential campaign pitt[ed] George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis and use[d] ... race to transform a losing campaign into a winning one.... The Bush campaign was run by Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes...."

Charles Pierce: Uh oh, the Supremes decline to help out Scotty. "Where that will end up is anyone's guess but, for now, unlike, say, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Scott Walker remains under actual criminal investigation. Just thought everyone should remember that."

Live Free AND Die. "You can't enjoy your civil liberties if you're in a coffin." Scott Conroy of the Huffington Post: "Hours after delivering a hawkish foreign policy speech, in which he lambasted critics of post-Sept. 11 domestic surveillance tactics, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) ramped up his rhetoric further against those whom he derided as 'civil liberties extremists.'" Via Greg Sargent.

More Exciting GOP News. Jose DelReal of the Washington Post: "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Monday formally launched a presidential exploratory committee, theclearest indication yet that he is gearing up for a White House run." ...

... Adam Weinstein of Gawker (who seems to be about the only public commentator who even noticed Jindal's planned exploration): "Presumably he'll be exploring outside the state he governs, because as much as Louisianans hate Democrats and Obummer, they hate Bobby more, a new poll shows." ...

... Even More Exciting News. Bill Barrow of the AP: "South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham all but confirmed Monday he will run for president in 2016, saying he believes he would be the best choice to serve as commander in chief amid continued unrest in the Middle East. 'I'm running because I think the world is falling apart,' Graham said in an interview on 'CBS This Morning.'" ...

... Dana Milbank: Apparently the CBS morning news producers thought a tweeting shark was more compelling teevee than Graham's announcement of his announcement.

Senate Race

Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times: "With her U.S. Senate campaign off to a bumpy start, Loretta Sanchez refused Sunday to rule out the possibility of running instead for reelection to the House of Representatives. At a brief question-and-answer session with reporters, Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) first declined to elaborate on her apology to state Democratic convention delegates Sunday morning for making a stereotypical Native American 'war cry'; gesture in remarks to a crowd the day before." ...

... CW: This is the weird (and egregious) part. Finnegan: "Sanchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, made the controversial gesture Saturday while joking with a group of Indian Americans about confusing an Indian American with a Native American. [The "Indian American" who was the subject of the war whoop: Kamala Harris, California's attorney general & a candidate for Senate. Harris's mother is from India.] Video of the gaffe on Twitter and YouTube showed Sanchez tapping her hand to her mouth in an imitation of a war cry."

Beyond the Beltway/American Violence

Manny Fernandez, et al., of the New York Times: "The police charged about 170 people on Monday in the shootout among rival motorcycle gangs at a busy shopping plaza in [Waco, Texas,] on Sunday that left at least nine bikers dead and 18 others wounded.... The people arrested after the shootout at the Twin Peaks Restaurant, in south Waco, were charged with engaging in organized crime linked to capital murder.... It will be up to prosecutors and a grand jury to decide what charges they will ultimately face, but capital murder charges can carry the death penalty....

Bikers, their lawyers and other supporters say that the constitutional rights of many club members are constantly under assault by law enforcement authorities, whom, they say, harass them because they are such a visible presence and because they are conspicuous in their disdain and distrust of the police and officers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the main federal agency that monitors biker organizations.

... CW: Yup, they're the victims. Because freeedom. ...

... ** Karoli of Crooks & Liars writes an excellent piece pointing out how officials, police & the media are treating the above-mentioned "victims" differently from the way they treat & cover minority protesters. ...

... Charles Pierce noticed the same thing. But he's totally optimistic! "I am sure that, when the dust settles, and the 200-odd (!) people who were arrested get arraigned, we will hear a great deal from the usual suspects about the cultural pathologies inherent in white society that are at the root of episodes like this one. David Brooks will notice that white people -- many of whom wear ponytails and mullets -- also tend to fk without his approval, and Ross Cardinal Douthat will wonder whether we'd even have motorcycle gangs if Pius XII were still alive. Earnest pundits on television will agree that we must discover immediately how many of the assembled grew up in two-parent homes." ...

... Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: "as police worked to book and process the gang members, lawmakers in the state's capital debated whether to further expand firearm 'open carry' rights. One bill, HB910, passed the Texas house and was debated on Monday in a state senate committee. It would allow people to carry handguns and pistols in the open and would bar police from asking whether the person carrying the gun is licensed. Texans can already carry so-called 'long guns', such as rifles, in public. Another bill, SB11, would allow 'concealed carry' of weapons on college campuses. Hours after the shootout, gun lobbyists called the legislation 'great bills by great bill authors'... A spokesman for the National Rifle Association said that he didn't see a connection between Texas;s legislation and the outlaw gangs' behavior....

WESH Orlando: "The man accused of shooting at George Zimmerman bonded out of jail over the weekend and has surrendered his guns and ammunition to law enforcement, police said."

Way Beyond

Ari Shapiro of NPR: "Ireland could make history this week. Same-sex marriage is legal in about 18 countries around the world. In all of those countries, the decision was made by the legislature or the courts. Ireland appears poised to become the first country to legalize same-sex marriage through a national popular vote set for Friday.... Ireland is one of the most socially conservative countries in Western Europe. It has nearly the highest church-going rate on the continent. Abortion is still illegal. Divorce was outlawed until the mid-1990s. That makes Ireland a less-than-obvious place for same-sex marriage but the polls indicate the Yes voters are favored by a wide majority."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Happy Rockefeller, the socialite whose 1963 marriage to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, soon after both had been divorced, raised a political storm in a more genteel time and may have cost him the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, died on Tuesday at her home \in Tarrytown, N.Y. She was 88."

Washington Post: "Iran's judiciary plans to open the trial next week of the Washington Post's bureau chief in Tehran after being detained nearly 10 months on charges that include 'espionage,' his lawyer said Tuesday."

The Commentariat -- May 18, 2015

Internal links removed.

Today's Commentariat will be extremely abbreviated. I will try to update this afternoon. Please feel free to share your own links in the Comments section. -- Constant Weader

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama on Monday will ban the federal provision of some types of military-style equipment to local police departments and sharply restrict the availability of others, administration officials said."

Paul Krugman: "Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.... The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.... This was, in short, a war the White House wanted, and all of the supposed mistakes that, as Jeb puts it, 'were made' by someone unnamed actually flowed from this underlying desire.... Once again: We were lied into war."

Daniel McGraw in Politico Magazine: "The GOP is dying off. Literally.... Since the average Republican is significantly older than the average Democrat, far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections. To make matters worse, the GOP is attracting fewer first-time voters." ...

... Jim Fallows: "... (a) ... Fox's core viewers are factually worse-informed than people who follow other sources, and even those who don't follow news at all, and (b) ... the mode of perpetual outrage that is Fox's goal and effect has become a serious problem for the Republican party, in that it pushes its candidates to sound always-outraged themselves." This is a synopsis -- with tidbits -- of a long piece by Bruce Bartlett, which Fallows links. CW: The point that Fox "News" has contributed to the dumbing-down of the U.S. & the radicalization of confederates is worth emphasizing. Rupert & Roger-- not to mention Limbaugh, et al. -- have made the crazies crazier. Or why the FCC's long-dead Fairness Doctrine mattered. ...

... Steve M.: "It beats me how having ill-informed voters is a bad thing for the GOP if what the voters think they know keeps them voting Republican.... Fox, along with talk radio, has found a way to turn rabidly partisan politics into mass entertainment, at least for the third of the country that's conservative. Fox and talk radio keep these people thoroughly focused on politics at all times.... The conservative media keeps Republicans wanting to vote, even in off-year elections, when many of the rest of us don't bother."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Driftglass has a funny post -- unless you're a huge Glenn Greenwald fan -- titled "Glass Housing Sales Remain Brisk, Ctd."

Presidential Race

Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton is running as the most liberal Democratic presidential front-runner in decades, with positions on issues from gay marriage to immigration that would, in past elections, have put her at her party's precarious left edge. The moves are part of a strategic conclusion by Clinton's emerging campaign: that it can harness the same kind of young and diverse coalition as Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012, bolstered by even stronger appeal among women."

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "... Jeb Bush reiterated in a new interview that he doesn't believe that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. The high court is expected to rule next month on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, and court observers and justices have hinted in recent weeks that the court is likely to expand marriage rights to gay men and lesbians." ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker shows the five ways Jeb's first Iraq War answer show why he's such a lousy candidate.

... GOP Moneybags Picked "the Wrong Retread." Steve M.: "There was a moment when it looked as if both Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney would be running for president. Then, apparently, meetings were convened in the modern-day equivalent of smoke-filled rooms, and Romney decided to bow out, allowing Bush to be the graybeard choice of the party Establishment. More and more, it seems as if the party made a mistake. Mitt and Jeb are both sad emblems of an embarrassing past, but Jeb appears to be a worse campaigner than Mitt, and Jeb refuses to budge from positions that are anathema to the party base. What's more, the party's voters want a candidate who's an grudge-driven attack dog, which is why the first candidate to shoot to the top of the charts this year was Scott Walker."

Jonathan Karl of ABC News: "John Kasich is 'virtually certain' to jump into the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, sources close to the Ohio governor tell ABC News." CW: Mr. Balanced Budget should drive Krugman mad.

Beyond the Beltway

Sarah Nir of the New York Times: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is expected to introduce legislation subjecting New York salons to some of the strictest health regulations in the country and expanding authority to punish those that mistreat workers."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A shootout among members of several rival motorcycle gangs in a busy shopping plaza in the Central Texas city of Waco on Sunday left at least nine bikers dead and 18 others injured, creating chaos in a sprawling parking lot packed with afternoon shoppers, law enforcement officials said.... No officers, shoppers or bystanders were injured." Because permissive gun laws, a/k/a freeedom, are such a good idea. ...

... The KWXT story is here.

Reuters: "The US is talking to China about imposing further sanctions against North Korea as the reclusive country is 'not even close' to taking steps to rein in its nuclear weapons programme, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, has said."

Washington Post: "Iranian-aligned Shiite militias headed Monday into Anbar province a day after its capital Ramadi fell to Islamic State militants and as hundreds of police personnel, soldiers and tribal fighters abandoned the Iraqi city in a chaotic exit." ...

New York Times: "The last Iraqi security forces fled Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and killed people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders."

The Commentariat -- May 17, 2015

Internal links removed.

** "High-Income White Noose." New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration has proposed new fair housing enforcement rules, which should be finalized soon, that make states, cities and housing agencies more accountable for furthering fair housing. But for these rules to be meaningful, the federal government will have to restructure its own programs so that more affordable housing is built in low-poverty, high opportunity neighborhoods. Federal officials must also be willing to do what they have generally been afraid to do in the past -- withhold money from communities that perpetuate housing apartheid. Given what we now know about the pervasive harm that flows from segregation, the country needs to get on with this crucial mission." The editorial provides an excellent synopsis of historical non-enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.

Helena Evich of Politico: "The Obama administration is expected to all but ban trans fat in a final ruling that could drop as soon as next week, killing most uses of an ingredient that has been put in everything from frozen pizza to Reese's Pieces but since deemed harmful to human health. The agency may create some very limited exemptions, but the ruling could force food companies to cut trans fat use beyond the 85 percent reduction already achieved over the past decade -- a key piece of the Obama administration's broader agenda to nudge Americans toward a healthier diet." ...

... digby: "If you think Iran or immigration pisses off the right, get ready. This is likely to make them completely lose their shit.

Katharine Seelye, et al., of the New York Times: "To the amazement of people elsewhere, Bostonians overwhelmingly opposed condemning the bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to death.... No one here felt sympathy for him. Rather, many thought life in prison would be a fate worse than death, especially for someone as young as Mr. Tsarnaev, who is 21. Others feared that putting him to death would make him a martyr. Still others, interviewed around the city Friday night and Saturday, reflected the region's historical aversion to the death penalty."

Karen DeYoung & Missy Ryan of the Washington Post: "U.S. Special Operations forces staged an overnight ground raid in Syria early Saturday, killing what the Obama administration said was a senior Islamic State official and capturing his wife.... In what a U.S. Defense official described as 'close-quarters combat' against militants using women and children as human shields, about a dozen militants were killed. They included the target of what was originally designed as a capture operation, identified by the White House and the Pentagon as Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian.... [U.S.] Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said that no U.S. forces were killed or injured during the operation. No civilians were reported injured."

David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: Egypt's "the death sentence against [former President Mohamed] Morsi will not weaken the Islamists but only radicalize them further." CW: Why this wasn't obvious to the Egyptian court is beyond me.

God News

Nicole Winfield of the AP: "Pope Francis canonized two nuns from what was 19th century Palestine on Sunday in hopes of encouraging Christians across the Middle East who are facing a wave of persecution from Islamic extremists. Sisters Mariam Bawardy and Marie Alphonsine Ghattas were among four sisters who were made saints Sunday at a Mass in a sun-soaked St. Peter's Square. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and an estimated 2,000 pilgrims from the region, some waving Palestinian flags, were on hand for the canonization of the first saints from the Holy Land since the early years of Christianity." ...

... Contributors to Juan Cole's site Informed Comment add background.

David McCabe of the Hill: "Former President George W. Bush offered a defense of religious liberty and faith more broadly while speaking at Southern Methodist University's (SMU) commencement ceremony Saturday.... 'It is essential to this nation's future that we remember that the freedom to worship who we want, and how we want -- or not to worship at all -- is a core belief of our founding'.... He said it was his first commencement speech since leaving office. Bush has deep ties to SMU. His wife Laura graduated from the school in 1968, and the university is the site of George W. Bush's presidential library."

James Tayler, in Salon, is mighty upset with President Obama for his National Day of Prayer proclamation.

Annals of Journalism, Ctd.

Josh Gerstein, et al., of Politico: "NBC Universal, News Corporation, Turner Broadcasting and Thomson Reuters are among more than a dozen media organizations that have made charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, the foundation's records show. The donations, which range from the low-thousands to the millions, provide a picture of the media industry's ties to the Clinton Foundation at a time when one of its most notable personalities, George Stephanopoulos, is under scrutiny for not disclosing his own $75,000 contribution when reporting on the foundation." CW: More indications that confederates should get over their Stephanopoulos freakout.

Presidential Race

David Greenberg in a Washington Post op-ed: "Candidates of the left, right and center have something in common: They all want to be seen as populists.... Yet these aren't modern versions of William Jennings Bryan, fiery crusaders jousting on the campaign trail.... All the candidates have taken what was once a very specific ideology and extracted their favorite parts, selectively interpreting the vision and generally bowdlerizing it."

Jonathan Allen of Vox: "Hillary Clinton [is] having her pockets lined by the very people who seek to influence her. Not in some metaphorical sense. She's literally being paid by them." Allen finds a quid pro quo in Corning, Inc.'s donations to the Clinton Foundation & in a $225,500 honorarium to Clinton herself. ...

... Ashley Parker & Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: Some right-wing groups are attacking Hillary Clinton from the left -- disseminating information via Twitter that is aimed to weaken her appeal to liberals.

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "More than 1,300 Republican stalwarts at the Iowa state party's Lincoln Dinner listened to the biggest field of 2016 presidential hopefuls to visit the state so far. In tightly paced speeches of 10 minutes each, 11 contenders displayed the broad spectrum of ideologies and personal styles in the party's unsettled, chaotic race." ...

... Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times: "Though 11 Republicans eyeing the White House largely delivered scathing indictments of President Obama and Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton's policies, small cracks in the GOP field emerged at a boisterous 'cattle call.'"

... Philip Rucker & Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: Republican "party officials are growing worried about a wide-open nominating contest likely to feature a historically large and diverse field. At best, they say, the Republican primaries will be a lively showcase of political talent -- especially compared with the relative coronation taking shape on the Democratic side. But officials also acknowledge just how risky their circumstance is for a party that hasn't put on a good show in a long time. With no clear front-runner and Bush so far unable to consolidate his path to the nomination -- his fumbles over the Iraq war and his brother's legacy further exposed his vulnerabilities -- the GOP's internecine battle could stretch well into the spring of 2016.

** Maureen Dowd on Dubya & "his frothing band of Reservoir Dogs": "It took a Herculean effort of imagination, manipulation and deception to concoct 'the information' that propelled the invasion, occupation and destruction of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.... Aside from the Blair poodle and the Coalition of the Willing-to-Overlook-Counterfeit-Claims, our allies tried to warn us.... Since Jeb purloined Florida for W., under family pressure, the Good Son bears some responsibility for the Prodigal Son plopping the country into a 'doo doo ball,' as one of Poppy Bush's pals calls it.... And consider this: Jeb hasn't even been asked any questions yet about W.'s dark contributions on waterboarding, the deficit and the near-total collapse of the American economy." Read her whole column; this is Dowd at her best.

Josh Israel of Think Progress: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) refused to make clear his view as to whether the Iraq War was a mistake in a Fox News Sunday interview. Repeatedly pressed by host Chris Wallace on whether in hindsight the Bush administration should have invaded Iraq, Rubio continued to dodge the question."

Beyond the Beltway

First, Fire All the Scientists." Benjamin Elgin of Bloomberg: "Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state's nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes, according to the dean's e-mail recounting the conversation. Hamm, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of Oklahoma City-based Continental Resources, is a major donor to the university, which is the home of the Oklahoma Geological Survey. He has vigorously disputed the notion that he tried to pressure the survey's scientists.... Yet an e-mail obtained from the university by Bloomberg News via a public records request says Hamm used a blunt approach during a 90-minute meeting last year with the dean whose department includes the geological survey. 'Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed,' wrote Larry Grillot, the dean of the university's Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, in a July 16, 2014, e-mail to colleagues at the university." Elgin reproduces the e-mail from Grillot.