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Thanks to contributor Kate M. for the link.

The Commentariat -- Nov. 28, 2013

Freedom from Want. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers was one of the recipients of the 2013 Roosevelt Institute's 2013 Four Freedoms Awards. The Coalition received the award for Freedom from Want. "The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a farm worker organization that is spearheading the national movement for Fair Food. With its Fair Food Program, launched in 2010 in over 90 percent of Florida's $600 million tomato industry, the CIW has created a sustainable blueprint for worker-driven corporate social responsibility, winning fairer wages; work with dignity; and freedom from forced labor, sexual harassment, and violence in the workplace for nearly 100,000 workers." -- Roosevelt Institute

The First European Thanksgiving Celebration in America. Kenneth Davis, in a New York Times op-ed, November 2008: "Long before the Pilgrims sailed in 1620, another group of dissident Christians sought a haven in which to worship freely. These French Calvinists, or Huguenots, hoped to escape the sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants that had bloodied France since 1560. Landing in balmy Florida in June of 1564, at what a French explorer had earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville), the French émigrés promptly held a service of 'thanksgiving.'" Thanks to contributor P. D. Pepe for the lead.

** "A WalMart Thanksgiving." Labor Prof. John Logan, in the Hill: "The disastrous economic consequences of Walmart's bad jobs and worker intimidation are now well known. Taxpayers pick up the tab for the company's poverty-level wages. The company's employees are often so poor that they and their dependents are among the nation's biggest users of food stamps, health programs for low-income individuals and other forms of public assistance. This public subsidy of the nation's largest corporation, owned by its richest family costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year. But those who suffer the most from poverty-level wages are its employees.... Walmart could immediately stop intimidating workers, improve their conditions and pay a minimum wage of $25,000 per year for full-time work. Last week, the think tank Demos reported that if Walmart stopped buying back shares of its own stock -- which adds nothing to its productivity -- it could afford to raise employee wages by almost $6 per hour without increasing retail prices. In 2012, the company spent $7.6 billion to buy backs shares." ...

Dominic Rushe of the Guardian: "Retail workers and union activists are preparing for a record day of action across the US on Friday, protesting wages and conditions on the busiest shopping day of the year. Retailers, including Macy's, are opening their doors on Thanksgiving for the first time this year, joining other store giants including Target, Sears and Kmart. But it is Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, which has attracted the focus of protests. Protests are planned at more than 1,500 of Walmart's 4,000 US stores on Black Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday and traditionally the start of the festive shopping season."

Thanksgiving Eve News Dump. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Obama administration announced Wednesday a one-year delay in the element of the new health care law that allows small businesses to go online to buy insurance for their employees through the new federal marketplace website.... The announcement of the delay, just before Thanksgiving, is reminiscent of the way the White House announced, just before the Independence Day weekend, a one-year delay in the requirement for larger employers to offer health insurance to employees." ...

... Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "Small businesses will still have the option to purchase SHOP health insurance plans through a broker or agent, who will assist the employer with filing a paper application. The federal government expects to process those filings for eligibility within three to five days...."

The Christology of Sex. Linda Greenhouse: "The religious-based challenges that have flooded the federal courts from coast to coast -- more than 70 of them, of which the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear two -- aren't about the day-in, day-out stuff of jurisprudence under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause: Sabbath observance, employment rights, tax exemptions. They are about sex." ...

... Steve Lemieux in the American Prospect: "... it's not just economic libertarianism -- the challenge to the mandate is rooted in misogyny and puritanism as well. Employers are free to have reactionary views about economics and gender, but these beliefs are not protected.... The idea that a secular, for-profit corporation can 'exercise' religion is a strange concept that would be inconsistent with a substantial body of precedent." ...

... An Online Magazine Is a Blog Is a, a Tabloid! Eden Foods chairman & founder Michael Potter didn't much like it when the Sixth Circuit cited his remarks to Irin Carmon of Salon when it rejected his fake religious objection to providing contraceptive care. Potter didn't claim he had been misquoted, just that it didn't count because he made the remarks to a reporters on a blog or a tabloid.

New York Times Editors: President Obama's claim during his speech Monday that "it would be illegal" for him to halt deportations was "misleading.... While the president cannot throw out whole sections of immigration law to bypass Congressional inaction, he does have discretion in choosing how to enforce it wisely.... He can undoubtedly expand administrative efforts to protect other immigrants left stranded by legislative failure."

Glenn Greenwald, et al., in the Huffington Post: "The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as 'exemplars' of how 'personal vulnerabilities' can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "With the United States sending two B-52s to reinforce its protest over China's attempt to control the airspace over the islands, it served as a timely reminder that President Obama wants to turn America's gaze eastward, away from the preoccupations of the Middle East. Mr. Obama's shift ... has always seemed more rhetorical than real. But when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. travels to China, Japan and South Korea next week, the administration will have another chance to flesh out the policy."

Maria Golovnina & John Chalmers of Reuters: "President Hamid Karzai's stubborn refusal to sign a pact that would keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014 is a high-risk gamble that Washington will give in to his demands, one that has left him isolated as the clock runs down on his presidency. Diplomats said he may have over-played his hand, raising the risk of a complete U.S. withdrawal.... It also risks a backlash at home by critics who believe he is playing a dangerous game with the country's future security." ...

... Tim Craig of the Washington Post: "President Hamid Karzai is facing a growing backlash from Afghan political leaders over his reluctance to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States."

What a Difference a Year Makes. Steve Benen: A year ago departing Sen. Joe Lieberman promised he would never become a lobbyist. Uh, he's a lobbyist now. CW: Hard to believe Joe would go back on his word. (Medicare for 55+.)

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee Campbell Soup Chef.David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Wednesday said that Lara Logan's botched reporting on Benghazi made her a 'hero journalist' and he was shocked that CBS News would force her off the air." ...

... Huckleberry himself is losing his radio show, billed as an alternative to Rushbo. Having failed to unseat Rush, Huckleberry is thinking of running for POTUS. CW: The White House is a consolation prize, I guess.

The Pompous v. the Pontiff. ...

     ... Eric Dolan of the Raw Story: Fox Business host Stuart Varney lectures Pope Francis on capitalism & religion. With video. ...

This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope. -- Rush Limbaugh

Local News

Kirk Johnson of the New York Times: Alaskan Democrats like former Half-Gov. Sarah Palin's tax on oil companies. CW: Half-Gov. Palin's tax was totally socialistic Robin Hood stuff, which -- as I recall -- just happened to especially benefit large families. It provided a per capita payout & kids were capita.

CW: I hadn't planned to post much today, but the jerks just don't take a holiday, do they? It's hard to keep up with them.

News Ledes

New York Times: Afghanistan's "President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his American allies again on Thursday after word came that at least one, and possibly two, NATO drone strikes had killed civilians in southern Afghanistan."

New York Times: Despite "brisk winds and an occasional gust," Macy's parade went ahead as scheduled today.

AP: "A wintry blast of heavy rain, wind and snow across the eastern United States disrupted Thanksgiving travel plans on Wednesday for some of the millions of Americans hitting the roads and taking to the skies on the busiest holiday travel day of the year. While the travel delays were not as bad as many had feared, meteorologists warned that falling temperatures could create icy road conditions for those who put off travel until Wednesday night."

AP: "After keeping away inspectors for two years, Iran has invited the U.N. nuclear agency to a facility linked to a still unfinished reactor that could produce enough plutonium for up to two warheads a year, the agency's head said Thursday."

Washington Post: "Both Japan and South Korea said Thursday that they'd flown surveillance aircraft through China's newly claimed air defense identification zone, the latest challenge to an airspace that China has vowed to defend. flights drew no unusual response from Beijing, but they intensify the game of dare being played above Asia's contested maritime territory." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "China sent fighter jets on the first patrols of its new air defense zone over disputed islands in the East China Sea on Thursday, the state news agency, Xinhua, said. The patrols followed announcements by Japan and South Korea that their military planes had flown through the zone unhindered by China."

The Commentariat -- Nov. 27, 2013

** Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to issue new rules that would curtail political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit groups, with potentially significant ramifications for one of the fastest-growing sources of campaign spending. The proposed rules, announced by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, would expand and clarify how the I.R.S. defines political activity and then establish clearer limits for how much activity nonprofits can engage in. Such a change ... would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity." The Washington Post story, by Matea Gold, is here. ...

... Kim Barker of ProPublica: "Experts also cautioned that the real test of oversight on the political spending by nonprofits will be how these regulations are enforced, something that the IRS has been so far reticent to do."

Norm Ornstein in the National Journal: "... if the [Senate] norms are blown up, which is what Senate Republicans under Mitch McConnell have done over the past five years -- using the rules not to build bridges but to construct dams — it becomes almost inevitable that the rules will change to adapt." Ornstein provides quite a good overview of how Republicans destroyed "the atmosphere" that so concerned Ted Cruz that I couldn't control my laughter (November 25 Commentariat). ...

... Jeff Toobin in the New Yorker: "Obama faces one remaining barrier to his ability to fill vacancies in the federal courts: an arcane senatorial tradition known as the blue slip." Toobin explains why President Obama hasn't even tried to fill vacancies in some districts.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider a new challenge to President Obama's Affordable Care Act and decide whether employers with religious objections may refuse to provide their workers with mandated insurance coverage for contraceptives. The cases accepted by the court offer complex questions about religious freedom and equality for female workers, along with an issue the court has not yet confronted: whether secular, for-profit corporations are excepted by the Constitution or federal statute from complying with a law because of their owners' religious beliefs. The justices accepted two cases that produced opposite results in lower courts." ...

... Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog comments on the ACA cases. ...

... Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: No, corporations are not people, my friend. ...

... NEW. CW: Amanda Marcotte & I are on the same page about the Hobby Lobby case: "... if they're allowed to withhold benefits because they disapprove of your private life, then what else will they be able to do? Refuse to hire women at all?" Includes tweets by Jill Filiovic that express some of the same concerns I did in today's Comments.

Michael Shear & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "White House officials, fearful that the federal health care website may again be overwhelmed this weekend, have urged their allies to hold back enrollment efforts so the insurance marketplace does not collapse under a crush of new users. At the same time, administration officials said Tuesday that they had decided not to inaugurate a big health care marketing campaign planned for December out of concern that it might drive too many people to the still-fragile HealthCare.gov."

... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: Don't blame ObamaCare if you lose your doctor: "... the primary reason carriers are offering so many small-network plans in the exchanges is that they believe consumers want them. Their marketing research suggests that, when forced to choose between paying higher premiums for wider networks or lower premiums for narrower networks, the majority of people will go for the cheaper insurance.... Market forces, not government, and the main reason insurers are introducing tighter networks. Yet the people objecting to the result are the same ones who say they love markets." ...

... Paul Krugman predicts, "... the whole horrors-of-Obamacare meme will be gone in weeks, not months. But the GOP echo chamber won't be able to let it go." ...

... NEW. Tom Kludt of TPM: "In an interview on Monday with the conservative Newsmax, Time's Mark Halperin said that so-called 'death panels' are enshrined in the Affordable Care Act.... 'So, you believe there will be rationing, a.k.a "death panels"?' host Steve Malzberg asked Halperin.... 'It's built into the plan. It's not like a guess or like a judgment. That's going to be part of how costs are controlled," Halperin said before arguing that it's necessary to ration care.'" Kludt points out that the ACA specifically prohibits "death panels." ...

    ... Kludt: Halperin later "clarified" his remarks. He does the same thing on MSNBC, digging the hole deeper, as far as I can tell. Video. ...

... ObamaCare Obsession. Olivia Kittel & Olivia Marshall of Media Matters: "Right-wing media are dismissing President Obama's and Congressional Democrats' work on filibuster reform, a diplomatic agreement with Iran, and immigration reform as merely attempts to distract from the Affordable Care Act." ...

... Obama Obsession. Jose Delreal of Politico: "Conservative commentator and writer Dinesh D'Souza ignited a social media backlash Tuesday, when he referred to President Barack Obama as 'Grown-Up Trayvon' on Twitter.... D'Souza followed up 45 minutes later, writing, 'Feigned outrage on the left over me calling Obama 'grown up Trayvon' except that Obama likened himself to Trayvon!'" ...

... Igor Bobic of TPM: D'Souza deleted both tweets a short time later. CW: D'Souza isn't a grown-up at all; he's an adolescent prick.

Craig Timberg, et al., of the Washington Post: "Microsoft is moving toward a major new effort to encrypt its Internet traffic amid fears that the National Security Agency may have broken into its global communications links, said people familiar with the emerging plans. Suspicions at Microsoft, while building for several months, sharpened in October when it was reported that the NSA was intercepting traffic inside the private networks of Google and Yahoo, two industry rivals with similar global infrastructures...." Slides, provided by Edward Snowden, suggest "but do not prove" the NSA would target Microsoft. CW: Here is where Snowden does something useful: demonstrating that the U.S. is targeting U.S. companies & gathering info on their customers. ...

... Dominic Rushe of the Guardian: "The United Nations moved a step closer to calling for an end to excessive surveillance on Tuesday in a resolution that reaffirms the 'human right to privacy' and calls for the UN's human rights commissioner to conduct an inquiry into the impact of mass digital snooping. A UN committee that deals with human rights issues adopted the German- and Brazilian-drafted resolution that has become an increasingly sensitive issue among UN members."

Who's Right in This Exchange -- President Obama or Heckler Ju Hong?:

... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "As the likelihood for congressional action [on immigration reform] diminishes, there is pressure on President Obama to act unilaterally.... Clarissa Martinez-De-Castro [of] ... National Council of La Raza, an ally of Obama's on immigration reform, said the administration should do more to prioritize deportations to focus on national security and community safety concerns.... Pro-immigrant activists argue the president has more authority over deportations than he acknowledged Monday." ...

... CW: I said the other day that the President handled the heckler well. But his critics suggest in his "handling," he didn't tell the whole truth. However, there's this from Bolton's report: "'Contrary to popular myth, the administration has enormously scaled back deportations and now almost all the individuals deported are either convicted criminals, repeat immigration violators or national security threats,' said a GOP aide. The aide noted that Hong, the heckler, is an illegal immigrant himself who was arrested in 2011 and was not deported. Instead, he was invited to stand on stage with the president of the United States." (Emphasis added.) So you decide.

Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: "Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of '60 Minutes,' informed staff Tuesday that Lara Logan and her producer, Max McClellan, would be taking a leave of absence following an internal report on the news magazine's discredited Oct. 27 Benghazi report.... Al Ortiz, executive director of standards and practices at CBS News, presented his findings in a memo to employees.... He wrote that the Benghazi story 'was deficient in several respects' ..." Calderone's report includes the full memos from Fager & Ortiz. ...

... Hatas Gold of Politico: "CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is no longer hosting the Committee to Protect Journalists' press freedom awards dinner Tuesday night in New York. In her place will be 'CBS Evening News' anchor and fellow '60 Minutes' correspondent Scott Pelley." ...

... AND, people, when it comes to dressing up for gala affairs, Scott Pelley is no Lara Logan:

... Digby: "If CBS thinks [Logan's] comments about Benghazi show a bias, her comments about Afghanistan and Pakistan show exactly the same one. She thinks that powerful 'dark forces' are trying to destroy our way of life and evidently believes they are capable of doing it. She believes that the US should be sending in 'clandestine warriors' and drones to 'take people out' to send messages and exact revenge. She has a particular hang-up about Pakistan and apparently wants the US government to 'teach them a lesson.' She identifies very closely with the military brass.... That is a pretty immature worldview.... She's a hardcore, but somewhat shallow, warhawk and her work needs to be seen through that filter." ...

... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post wonders, among other things, "Where's Jeff Fager's leave of absence?"

Dana Milbank: "The White House has increasingly excluded news photographers from Obama's official events and is instead releasing images taken by in-house photographers, who are government employees. 'As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist's camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the executive branch of government,' the White House Correspondents' Association, joined by the Associated Press and other news organizations, wrote in a letter to White House press secretary Jay Carney last week. 'You are, in effect, replacing independent photojournalism with visual press releases.'"

Homophobia Hoax. Brian Gingras of WNBC New York: "After a gay server at a New Jersey restaurant said a customer denied her a tip and wrote her a hateful note on the receipt, a local family contacted NBC 4 New York and said their receipt shows they paid a tip and didn't write any such note."

Local News

NEW. Luz Lazo of the Washington Post: "The Prince George’s [Maryland] County Council voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to raise the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage to $11.50 over the next four years. The action came a day after Montgomery County [Maryland] Council approved a similar measure."

Rene Stutzman & Jeff Weiner of the Orlando Sentinel: "Seminole County deputies found five guns and more than 100 rounds of ammunition in the home George Zimmerman shared with his girlfriend, where he was arrested last week, accused of domestic violence. A search warrant made public Tuesday shows that Zimmerman had the weapon that his then-girlfriend said he had used to threaten her: a high-capacity, high-tech 12-gauge shotgun. He also had a semi-automatic assault rifle and three handguns."

Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: Gov. Tom "Corbett [of Pennsylvania] is now the most unpopular Governor anywhere in the country that we've polled, with only 24% of voters approving of him to 65% who disapprove." Corbett is running for re-election next year.

News Ledes

AP: "China acknowledged Wednesday it let two American B-52 bombers fly unhindered through its newly declared air defense zone in the East China Sea despite its earlier threat to take defensive measures against unidentified foreign aircraft." The New York Times story, which is more extensive, is here.

Guardian: "More than two months after the German general elections, Angela Merkel's CDU party has reached an agreement to form a coalition government with the Social Democrats."

Reuters: "Pakistan named a career infantry officer considered a moderate as army chief on Wednesday as the country fights a Taliban insurgency and seeks accord with the United States on how to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that Lieutenant-General Raheel Sharif, brother of a war hero, would take charge of the world's sixth-largest army, with a formal handover from General Ashfaq Kayani on Friday."

Reuters: "Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis has resigned after the collapse last week of a supermarket roof in the capital Riga that killed more than 50 people.... The resignation throws into political turmoil a Baltic state that is due to join the eurozone in January and is seen as an example of fiscal prudence and economic recovery after a deep financial crisis in 2008."

Guardian: "Silvio Berlusconi could suffer arguably the heaviest blow of his political career on Wednesday night when the upper house of parliament is expected to vote to oust him following a conviction for tax fraud." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Having spent months manufacturing procedural delays or conjuring political melodrama in hopes of saving himself, Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday could no longer stave off the inevitable: Italy's Senate resoundingly stripped him of his parliamentary seat, a dramatic and humiliating expulsion, even as other potential troubles await him."