The Commentariat -- June 30, 2014

Obsolete video removed.

ScotusBlog will liveblog the Supremes' announcements of decisions this morning. The liveblog will begin at 9:15 am, with the Court airing its rulings beginning at 10 am. The two cases to be announced are Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn. There was some discussion here yesterday about Harris; also, in today's Comments, P.D. Pepe links this New Republic piece on Harris by Taylor Malmsheimer. ...

     ... Update: Both decision by Alito. So there you go. Five-four vote on Harris with the liberals dissenting. The decision & dissent are here. Alito reads summary from the bench.

     ... Update 2: Hobby Lobby: 5-4 ruling. Closely-held corps can't be required to provide contraceptive coverage. "Kennedy's concurring opinion says that the government could pay for the coverage itself, so that women receive it." Three dissents: (1) Ginsburg joined by Sotomayor & partially by Breyer & Kagan, each of whom write separate dissenting opinions who filed together. "Alito reads summary from the bench. "It is extremely likely that the Obama administration will by regulation provide for the government to pay for the coverage. So it is unlikely that there will be a substantial gap in coverage." -- Tom Goldstien of ScotusBlog. "Kennedy's opinion emphasizes that in this particular case, a mechanism for accommodating employers is 'already in place' so that the majority opinion does not require the Govt to create 'a whole new program or burden on the Govt'." -- Kevin Russell of ScotusBlog. Ginsburg is reading from her dissent. The decision & dissents on Hobby Lobby are here. ...

... AP: "The Supreme Court dealt a blow to public sector unions Monday, ruling that thousands of home health care workers in Illinois cannot be required to pay fees that help cover the union's costs of collective bargaining. In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take." ...

... Some Corporations Are People, My Friend. Jason Millman of the Washington Post: "The federal government can't force owners of closely held for-profit companies to provide birth control coverage to female employees if they object to the administration's requirement on religious grounds, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 5-4 ruling, in one of its most contentious cases of the year, recognizes for the first time the religious rights of corporations." The New York Times report, by Adam Liptak, is here.

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Monday will nominate Bob McDonald, a West Point graduate who served as chief executive of Procter & Gamble, to take over as head of the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs, according to White House officials." ...

... OR, as Mark Thompson of Time puts it, "Obama to Tap Soap Salesman to Clean Up VA."

James Risen of the New York Times: "Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: 'that he could kill' the government's chief investigator and 'no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,' according to department reports." ...

     ... CW: Another chilling example of how things worked under Bush-Cheney. Even after the Nisour Square shooting, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the Blackwater guards were swell. If you connect the dots, you wonder if they threatened his life, too. The "accidental" assassination of a person supposedly under their protection would be pretty easy to accomplish. And this is rich: Crocker told reporters after the mass murder, "I certainly do wish I'd had the foresight to see that there were things out there that could be corrected." Foresight? His embassy had just aborted a State Department investigation of Blackwater, an investigation in which the preliminary findings were devastating.

Hillary Stout of the New York Times: "A $1 million starting point for each death anchors the formula to pay families of those who died in accidents caused by a defective ignition switch in General Motors cars, under a plan unveiled Monday by a compensation expert hired by the automaker. The plan, announced by the expert, Kenneth R. Feinberg, is broad and inclusive, and seems certain to account for deaths beyond the 13 that G.M. has publicly linked to the defect."

Of Pitchforks & Plutocrats. Nick Hanauer, a self-described .01 percenter, in Politico Magazine: "... I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won't last. If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us."

Neil Irwin of the New York Times: We can't predict GDP growth because ... ObamaCare! CW: Now, finally something for which we can legitimately blame the ACA.

Paul Waldman, in the Washington Post: "The idea that Obama is a tyrant wiping his muddy boots on the Constitution as he goes about his project to destroy the United States used to be the province of spittle-flecked talk radio hosts, right-wing Web sites and those chain e-mails your father-in-law reads while he watches 'Hannity.' But it has now moved to the core of the GOP's case against the president":

This is imperial power. This is George III. -- Karl Rove, on President Obama's use of executive authority, speaking on "Fox 'News' Sunday" ...

Fox 'News,' the place where irony gets no purchase. Rove meant George III of England, of course, but I wonder if FoxBots thought he was referring to Pappy Bush I, Duyba II, and Barack III. And speaking of Georges, if you read Tim Devaney's whole report (linked above), you'll see how Rove & George Will are on exactly the same page: the one about Obama's overreach coming in his adjustments to ObamaCare implementation. Hard to know who put out the memo on this one; chronology doesn't help much since Will often seems to get his "ideas" from his contacts. -- Constant Weader

David of Crooks & Liars: On ABC's "This Week," Katrina Vanden Heuvel tells Bill Kristol he should join the Iraqi army. ...

... Driftglass: Nonetheless, Kristol will endure. No matter who fires him, there is another major media outlet to hire him.

Rachel Bade of Politico: In back-to-back appearances on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday Darrell Issa (RTP Calif.) & William Taylor, the attorney for former IRS official Lois Lerner, accused each other of being assholes. (Paraphrase.) "Appearing just before Taylor, Issa (R-Calif.) accused Taylor of lying about Lerner not printing out official emails.... 'This is election-year politics; it's convenient to have a demon that they can create and point to,' Taylor said...."

Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic reports "Everything We Know About Facebook's Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment."

Beyond the Beltway

What's the Matter with Kansas? Paul Krugman: Gov. Sam Brownback (RTP) & his wingnut legislature still follow the long- & oft-disproved theory of supply-side economics, brought to them by ALEC & discredited economist Arthur Laffer. "... faith in tax-cut magic isn't about evidence; it's about finding reasons to give powerful interests what they want." ...

... Josh Barro of the New York Times on Kansas's small-business tax exemption. Um, "If you cut taxes, you get less revenue." The exemption has not proved to be a job-creator; Barro gives one example of why not. It does, however, encourage some firms & individuals to change their filing status to make themselves tax-exempt.

New York Times Editors: "Time and again, [New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie] has used dubious strategies to avoid raising taxes (sparing him from inevitable criticism by party conservatives).... Such tactics have not helped the state. New Jersey's bond rating took another hit when Mr. Christie, facing a big budget shortfall, rejected the usual remedies -- cutting costs, borrowing money or raising taxes -- and instead cut state contributions to the public employees' pension fund.

News Ledes

How do you say, "Sanctions, Schmanctions" in French? Reuters: "About four hundred Russian sailors arrived in western France on Monday for training on Mistral amphibious assault ships before the first of two is delivered to Moscow by the end of the year. The United States and some European partners have urged Paris to reconsider the 1.2 billion euro ($1.6 billion) sale to Moscow following Russian action in Ukraine, including its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in March."

Reuters: "The U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce on Monday a settlement with BNP Paribas involving a record fine of nearly $9 billion over alleged U.S. sanctions violations by France's biggest bank...."

AP: "A Marine who was declared a deserter nearly 10 years ago after disappearing in Iraq and then returning to the U.S. claiming he had been kidnapped, only to disappear again, is back in U.S. custody, officials said Sunday. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 34, turned himself in and was being flown Sunday from an undisclosed location in the Middle East to Norfolk, Va. He is to be moved Monday to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to a spokesman...."

The Commentariat -- June 29, 2014

Internal links removed.

** Joe Stiglitz in the New York Times, on income inequality. This is the best short discourse I've read on how the Republican Tea Party has destroyed "who we are" -- or were -- "as a nation." Also, Tim Geithner is a putz. (Stiglitz never mentions Geithner by name nor does he specifically call out Ronald Reagan & his legacy of unscrupulous wingers & selfish, self-defeating dingbat voters.) Thanks to P.D. Pepe & MAG. ...

... CW: If you want to look for a good example of what Stiglitz is talking about, one that is expected to come with tomorrow's news, Ian Millhiser of Think Progress obliges: "On Monday, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down two cases, Hobby Lobby and a lesser-known case called Harris v. Quinn. Of the two, more is actually at stake in Harris than in Hobby Lobby." If the Harris decision goes against the union, it "could set off a death spiral endangering the unions themselves." ...

     ... There's something else implied in Millhiser's piece: that the right is again using its very effective tactic of filling the air with sound & fury over "values" issues in order to hide its scheme to ruin ordinary Americans in service of the few. There's a reason John Roberts chose to issue these two decisions at the same time and -- unless Anthony Kennedy has developed a sudden fondness for healthcare workers -- Roberts' choice does not bode well for most Americans.

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "President Obama will ask Congress to provide more than $2 billion in new funds to control the surge of illegal Central American migrants at the South Texas border, and to grant broader powers for immigration officials to speed deportations of children caught crossing without their parents, White House officials said on Saturday."

Sari Horwitz, et al., of the Washington Post: "Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspected Libyan ringleader of the 2012 terrorist embassy attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans, was brought Saturday from a Navy warship to the federal courthouse in the District, where he entered a plea of not guilty to a single conspiracy charge."

Annie Rose-Strasser of Think Progress: "The latest way that Facebook has been peeking into its users' personal lives may be the most surprising yet: Facebook researches have published a scientific paper that reveals the company has been conducting psychological experiments on its users to manipulate their emotions."

Nicole Winfield of TPM: "The Vatican conceded Thursday that most Catholics reject its teachings on sex and contraception as intrusive and irrelevant and officials pledged not to 'close our eyes to anything' when it opens a two-year debate on some of the thorniest issues facing the church. Core church doctrine on the nature of marriage, sexuality, abortion and divorce isn't expected to change as a result of the debate that opens in October." Via Steve Benen.

Emma Margolin of NBC News: "Six months after losing his ordination credentials for presiding over the wedding of his gay son and for leaving open the possibility of performing future same-sex wedding ceremonies, a Pennsylvania pastor has been welcomed back into the United Methodist Church. On Tuesday, a nine-person appeals panel of church officials overturned an earlier decision to defrock Rev. Frank Schaefer of Lebanon, Pa., who in 2007 married his oldest son, Tim, to another man. The wedding took place in Massachusetts...." Via Benen.

The Gray Lady Don't Shit. Often. Ben Zimmer in Slate: According to Politico's Mike Allen, President Obama & his aides have repeatedly said in off-the-record conversations with reporters that the Obama Doctrine is "Don't do stupid shit." However, the New York Times has bowdlerized the sentence to "Don't do stupid stuff" on four separate occasions, even in articles where the "doctrine" is the point of the story; this despite the fact that the Times in the past has accurately quoted Presidents Nixon & Bush II and others when they used the word "shit." Thanks to Barbarossa for the link. ...

... In a March 2014 New York Times op-ed, which Zimmer links, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower makes "the case for profanity." Obviously, Sheidlower lost the case. ...

... CW: I think it is fair to euphemize surprise utterances, as in the Wendy Davis example Zimmer cites, but when a public figure purposely uses profane &/or obscene language, there's no reason to, um, mince words. I suppose I wouldn't put "shit" in a headline of a mainstream news outlet. It does really aggravate me when publications print "used a profanity," so I have to go hunting the Internets to find out what the person actually said. ...

     ... "Fuck Yourself." Ten years ago, Helen Dewar & Dana Milbank of the Washington Post -- and their editors & headline writers -- handled this story just right, IMHO. Sheryl Gay Stolberg & the Times, however, completely blew it." Salty language??? Oh, shiver me timbers.

Senate Election

Philip Bump of the Washington Post on why "Chris McDaniel isn't going to win any challenge" to the results of the Mississippi GOP primary runoff.

News Lede

ISIS, We Hardly Knew Ya. Washington Post: "In an audio statement posted on the Internet, the spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria announced the restoration of the 7th-century Islamic caliphate, a long-declared goal of the al-Qaeda renegades who broke with the mainstream organization early this year and have since asserted control over large areas spanning the two countries. The move signifies 'a new era of international jihad,' said the spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who also declared an end to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as the group had called itself."

The Commentariat -- June 28, 2014

Internal links removed; obsolete audio removed.

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "In a scathing appraisal, a review ordered by President Barack Obama of the troubled Veterans Affairs health care system concludes that medical care for veterans is beset by 'significant and chronic system failures,' substantially verifying problems raised by whistleblowers and internal and congressional investigators. A summary of the review by deputy White House chief of staff Rob Nabors says the Veterans Health Administration must be restructured and that a 'corrosive culture' has hurt morale and affected the timeliness of health care." The New York Times story, by Michael Shear & Richard Oppel, is here. The summary report is here.

... this decision came from people who work in a building where the protesters aren't allowed within 250 feet of the front door. -- Gail Collins, on the Supreme Court's unanimous decision that buffer zones around abortion clinics create an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment right to free speech

Scott LeMieux has an excellent rebuttal in the Guardian to Justice Scalia's claims that the Constitution "unambiguously" forbids the President to make intrasession recess appointments. He elaborates in Lawyers, Guns & Money. ...

... Jeff Toobin demonstrates that both Scalia's dissent/concurrence & Breyer's majority opinion are pretty stupid. ...

... CW: So why don't the Supremes expect the Senate to do its job? The Constitution reads, "... he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States...." While it's true this clause appears in the presidential powers section, doesn't it also imply that the Senate has a duty to advise? To me the authors of the Constitution imply by this arrangement that (a) these appointed officers are so important that one person -- the president -- should not have the soul discretion to choose them; so (b) the Senate must consent or deny the appointment -- because these officers are so important to the functioning of the government. That is, if they're so important, they need to be in place. Putting holds on nominations, tying them up in committee, just failing to bring them to the floor, etc., represents an unconstitutional dereliction of duty. ...

** Massive, Multi-$$Billion Big Brother Op Does Practically Nothing. Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The National Security Agency was interested in the phone data of fewer than 250 people believed to be in the United States in 2013, despite collecting the phone records of nearly every American. As acknowledged in the NSA's first-ever disclosure of statistics about how it uses its broad surveillance authorities, released Friday, the NSA performed queries of its massive phone records troves for 248 'known or presumed US persons' in 2013." CW: How intrusive is that? I think your Fourth-Amendment rights are safe with the NSA. Of course it's hardly impossible that the NSA is notbeing transparent & are listening in on your phone conversation now, plotting your undoing &/or laughing at your personal foibles.

Greg Sargent: "Republicans have ... opted to be the party of maximum deportations. Now Democrats and advocates will increase the pressure on Obama to do something ambitious to ease deportations in any way he can. Whatever he does end up doing will almost certainly fall well short of what they want. But determining the true limits on what can be done to mitigate this crisis is now on him." ...

... Here's the Politico story, by Seung Min Kim & Carrie Brown, to which Sargent refers. "The best chance in three decades to rewrite immigration laws has slipped away just one year after the Senate garnered 68 votes for sweeping reform of the system, 20 months after strong Hispanic turnout for Democrats in the 2012 election sparked a GOP panic, and five years after Obama promised to act.... Reformers underestimated how impervious most House Republicans would be to persuasion from evangelicals, law enforcement and big business, and how the GOP's animus toward Obama over health care and executive actions would bleed into immigration reform." ...

... Worse Than Mitt. Ed Kilgore: "You may recall that the whole push within the Republican Party to do something on immigration was impelled by fears that Mitt Romney's 'self-deportation' position had fatally damaged the GOP's standing among Latinos. I'd say becoming the party of forced deportation by government is worse." ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "For years, [President Obama] followed a strategy of beefing up enforcement in hopes of gaining goodwill among conservatives. In the end, all that accomplished was to anger his own Hispanic supporters without producing anything of substance." ...

... CW: I do think it possible that elected Republicans would have behaved just as badly toward Obama if he were as white as the driven snow, but I just can't help seeing the connection between the GOP's rejection of all of Obama's conservative-friendly outreach efforts over the years & Thad Cochran's refusal to sponsor voting rights reform (see Greg Sargent's reporting linked below). These ole boys feel no need to reciprocate any favors from black people because they have no respect for people who aren't the same color they are. They genuinely believe they're not racists because as far as they're concerned, having people of color kowtow to them is the natural order of things, not a racist POV. Pigs.

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "The Vatican has defrocked its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, an archbishop from Poland who was accused of sexually abusing boys while he served as the pope's representative in the Caribbean nation. The former archbishop, Jozef Wesolowski, 65, is the first papal nuncio known to have been removed from the priesthood because of accusations of child sexual abuse."

Congressional Races

Colleen Jenkins of Reuters: "The Tea Party-backed candidate who has refused to concede defeat to Republican U.S. Senator Thad Cochran in Mississippi's primary runoff said his campaign has found more than 1,000 instances of ballots cast by people who were ineligible to vote. Chris McDaniel said his supporters continue to look for evidence of voters who participated in the state's Democratic primary on June 3 and then voted in the Republican runoff primary on Tuesday, which would not be permitted by Mississippi law." ...

Josh Marshall of TPM: By his own definition & legal theory of "voter fraud," Chris McDaniel himself is one of the few Mississippi voters who openly committed voter fraud under a (probably unenforceable) provision of state law. Marshall admits, "Yes, the whole thing is sort of a reductio ad adsurdum down the rabbit hole of Chris McDaniels' world of derp. But this is his theory. And the theory seems to fit him way better than it fits the voters whose votes he wants to invalidate." CW: Read the whole post to get the gist of the legal/theoretical argument. ...

... Jimmie Gates of the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger: "Attorney Mark Mayfield was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Friday at his Ridgeland home. Mayfield, vice chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party, and is one of the three men charged with conspiring with Clayton Kelly to photograph U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's bedridden wife in her nursing home and create a political video against Cochran.... Mayfield of Ridgeland, an attorney and state and local tea party leader, was arrested last month along with Richard Sager, a Laurel elementary school P.E. teacher and high school soccer coach. Police said they also charged John Beachman Mary of Hattiesburg, but he was not taken into custody because of 'extensive medical conditions.' All face felony conspiracy charges." The New York Times story, by Jonathan Weisman, is here. ...

... James Hohmann of Politico: "State Sen. Chris McDaniel's policy director lashed out at the GOP establishment Friday over the apparent suicide of a supporter charged with felony conspiracy related to pictures taken of Sen. Thad Cochran's wife. 'A good man is gone today [because] of a campaign to destroy lives,' Keith Plunkett, a Mississippi GOP operative, tweeted. 'To all "so called" Republican leaders who joined lockstep: I WILL NOT REST!' Plunkett deleted the post after others on Twitter responded negatively and accused him of using a tragedy for political gain." ...

... Thad Cochran to black Mississippi voters who made his primary win possible: Thanks, suckahs. P.S. I'm not supporting a fix to the Voting Rights Act. CW: Those Southern white politicians are all class acts, aren't they?

So you think Chris McDaniel is a doofus for challenging black voters who voted in a "white primary"? Well, here's a sore loser to beat all:

... Courtney Francisco of KFOR Oklahoma City: "An Oklahoma congressional candidate has announced he plans to contest Tuesday's primary election of long time Rep. Frank Lucas. In a bizarre letter obtained by NewsChannel 4, Tim Murray says ... 'it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike.' ... His campaign website goes into detail about his theory that Lucas was hanged '... executed by the world court on or about jan. 11, 2011...' in Ukraine." Via Sam Levine of the Huffington Post. ...

... Charles Pierce quotes at length from what he calls Murray's "completely awesome Website." Something about Starship & President Ford & tiny body doubles in Space (with a capital "S." CW: Okay, so the guy is a completely insane conspiracy theorist. That doesn't make him much different from much of the GOP base. I'm surprised he only got 5.2 percent of the vote, and not just because he was running against a body double (or two).

Gail Collins: Colorado GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner has had a change of heart about personhood: "Gardner had supported the unsuccessful personhood referendums in Colorado when he was a state representative. Then he went to Congress in 2010, and twice co-sponsored Life Begins at Conception bills there. Then he announced he was running for the Senate against Mark Udall. Then he announced that he had changed his position on personhood entirely.... Supporters said it was unfair to presume that his change of heart was inspired by the need to run a statewide race in a state that had twice rejected the idea by 3 to 1 majorities."

News Ledes

Reuters: "A U.N. expert panel has concluded that a shipment of rockets and other weapons that was seized by Israel came from Iran and represents a violation of the U.N. arms embargo on Tehran, according to a confidential report obtained by Reuters on Friday. The finding comes just days ahead of the next round of negotiations in Vienna between Iran and six world powers.... Despite Israel's public statements that the seized arms were destined for Gaza -- an allegation that Gaza's governing Islamist militant group Hamas dismissed as a fabrication -- the experts said the weapons were being sent to Sudan."

AP: "The US has confirmed it is flying armed drones over Baghdad to protect US troops who recently arrived to assess Iraq's deteriorating security. The military for more than a week has been flying manned and unmanned aircraft over Iraq, averaging a few dozen sorties daily for reconnaissance, according to the Pentagon."

New York Times: "In one of the most significant coordinated assaults on the government in years, the Taliban have attacked police outposts and government facilities across several districts in northern Helmand Province, sending police and military officials scrambling to shore up defenses and heralding a troubling new chapter as coalition forces prepare to depart." ...

     ... AFP Update: "Afghan security forces on Saturday claimed victory against a Taliban offensive in the country's volatile Helmand province after days of fighting seen as a test for the country's security forces as NATO-led troops pull out."