The Commentariat -- July 8, 2013

Daniel Strauss of the Hill: "Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup d’etat and pressed the Obama administration to suspend aid to the country on Sunday." ...

... CW: Read today's News Ledes & you'll likely find yourself agreeing with McCain.

Jennifer Valentino-Devries & Siobhan Gorman of the Wall Street Journal: "The National Security Agency's ability to gather phone data on millions of Americans hinges on a secret court ruling that redefined a single word: 'relevant.' This change -- which specifically enabled the surveillance recently revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden -- was made by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a group of judges responsible for making decisions about government surveillance in national-security cases. In classified orders starting in the mid-2000s, the court accepted that 'relevant' could be broadened to permit an entire database of records on millions of people, in contrast to a more conservative interpretation widely applied in criminal cases, in which only some of those records would likely be allowed, according to people familiar with the ruling." CW Note: the article is firewalled. You won't get it via the link provided unless you're a WSJ subscriber; if you're not, copy & paste the title "Secret Court's Redefinition of 'Relevant' Empowered Vast NSA Data-Gathering" into a Google search box. ...

... James Risen of the New York Times: "A privacy rights group plans to file an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Monday asking it to stop the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans. The group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says it is taking the extraordinary legal step of going directly to the Supreme Court because the sweeping collection of the phone records of American citizens has created 'exceptional circumstances' that only the nation's highest court can address.... Alan Butler, a lawyer for the group, said the judge 'lacked the authority to require production of all domestic call detail records.' He noted that the Patriot Act provision cited by the FISA court required that the business records produced be 'relevant' to an authorized national security investigation. 'It is simply implausible that all call detail records are relevant,' Mr. Butler said." ...

... Ian Traynor of the Guardian: "Britain has blocked the first crucial talks on intelligence and espionage between European officials and their American counterparts since the NSA surveillance scandal erupted. The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA's Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two 'working groups' on the espionage debacle with the Americans.'" ...

... John Stanton of BuzzFeed profiles Judge Reggie Walton, the chief judge of the FISA court. ...

... In a Washington Post op-ed, Daniel Ellsberg argues that Ed Snowden made the right call when he fled the U.S. ...

... Peter Orsi of the AP: Cuban President "Raul Castro stood shoulder-to-shoulder Sunday with Latin American countries willing to take in NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but made no reference to whether Cuba itself would offer him refuge or safe passage. Venezuela and Bolivia both made asylum offers to Snowden over the weekend, and Nicaragua has said it is also considering his request." ...

... Charles Pierce ties Eric Lichtblau's piece on the extreme reach of the FISA court (see yesterday's Commentariat) to President Obama's "preposterous public claim that the rubber-stamp FISA court qualified as 'oversight.'" CW: either President Obama is wilfully ignorant of the court's rulings & practices -- which is possible -- or he lied on the teevee to you & me. ...

... T. Steelman of Addicting Information (a liberal site) questions Ed Snowden's motives. Steelman reviews some of Snowden's 2009 chatroom entries in which he railed against Social Security: "they [seniors] wouldn't be fucking helpless if you weren't sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day"; various Obama policies; leakers: "those people should be shot in the balls"; and chatters who disagreed with him: "I hope you're killed by a drunk driver on Halloween." Snowden also expressed his support for warrantless wiretapping, Ron Paul & the NRA. Steelman finds it curious that Snowden's views changed when the administration changed from Bush to Obama. "Is this whole thing a ruse to make the President look bad? If so, who is funding it -- who is paying for all his travel and hotels? Or is Edward Snowden, a man who has completely destroyed his own life, just stupid?" ...

... CW: I wrote a comment on this earlier, but this site was hacked & the comment deleted. This is the second time this particular hacker has hacked this site. I didn't figure it out the first time, but I get it now. ...

... Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post has an interesting piece on a Somali-American (he recently acquired U.S. citizenship), who has been a target of "a shadowy Pentagon counterpropaganda campaign." The FBI went calling on the young man, a fundamentalist Muslim named Abdiwali Warsame who runs a Website which posts controversial stories & opinions of interest to Somalis.

Alex Altman of Time: "Just two weeks ago, Republican Senators were boasting about big plans to spend $46 billion over the next 10 years to enhance security on the southern border.... But as the bill moves to the House, the excess is beginning to look like a liability. The deal ... is unlikely to sway House Republicans who insist on securing the border before some 11 million undocumented immigrants can begin the naturalization process. And it is alienating allies who are vital to immigration reform's chances in the House, including a prominent Latino advocacy group and at least one Democratic Representative." ...

... New York Times Editors: "Mr. Boehner has a choice. He can let [immigration] reform go forward with bipartisan support -- House Republicans and Democrats together could pass a good bill. This would infuriate the hotheads in his caucus but save the Republican Party from itself. Or he can stand back and let his party kill reform. As the issue festers, a nation is watching to see whether the Republicans can work out their Steve King problem and do something difficult for their own good, and the country's."

Paul Krugman: "Someday, I suppose, something will turn up that finally gets us back to full employment. But I can't help recalling that the last time we were in this kind of situation, the thing that eventually turned up was World War II."

Erin McClam of NBC News: "... as legal scholars ... examine the [Supreme Court] term in full, they say the court leaned unmistakably to the right -- and came down consistently on the side of big business. The justices made it more difficult to bring class-action suits against companies, raised the bar for workers to win discrimination claims and protected pharmaceutical companies against people who say they were harmed by defective generic drugs."

In a compelling New York Times op-ed, Beth Merfish urges women who have had abortions to speak out. ...

... Washington Post Editors: "On Wednesday, just before the Fourth of July holiday, North Carolina Republicans added a slew of anti-abortion restrictions at the last minute to a bill otherwise concerned with banning Sharia law (already a questionable endeavor, but never mind that now). Any law that will limit women's access to abortion and to much other health care deserves a public hearing. Honesty about the true motivation of these laws would be welcome, too."

Another GOP 2012 Post-Mortem, This Time Featuring the Wisdom of Brownback. AP: " Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said Friday that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney focused too narrowly on economic issues during last year's campaign and that the GOP needs to stick to its principles on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion."

Local News

Michael Barbaro & David Chen of the New York Times: "Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor of New York five years ago amid a prostitution scandal, is re-entering political life, with a run for the citywide office of comptroller and a wager that voters are ready to look past his previous misconduct." CW: Weiner for mayor & Spitzer for comptroller. What a lineup. Should we really embrace politicians because they have managed to refrain from sexually exploiting young women for a couple of years? ...

... Andy Borowitz: "In a stunning bid for a political comeback, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said today that he was considering running for office in New York City.... Mr. Berlusconi said that he was unconcerned by rumors of a possible bid for office in New York by another former European politician, Dominique Strauss-Kahn."

Corey Johnson of the Center for Investigative Reporting: "Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals.... The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men's prison. Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future." ...

     ... Update. Charles Pierce comments.

News Ledes

AP: "Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and heir to a ketchup company fortune, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition Monday, a day after showing symptoms consistent with a seizure, a person in close contact with the family said." ...

     ... Boston Globe Update: "The health of philanthropist Teresa Heinz Kerry has improved at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where the wife of Secretary of State John F. Kerry is now considered to be in fair condition, an improvement from the critical condition she was in on Sunday."

New York Times: "Egyptian soldiers opened fire on hundreds of unarmed supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi early Monday as they were praying before dawn outside the facility where he is believed to be detained, dozens of witnesses said. At least 43 civilians were killed, all or most of them shot, and more than 300 wounded, doctors and health officials said. Security officials said one police officer died as well. The massacre marked a sharp escalation in the confrontation between the generals who forced out the president and his Islamist supporters in the streets." ...

... The Al Jazeera story is here. The Al Jazeera liveblog is here. ...

... New York Times: "A party of ultraconservative Islamists that emerged as an unexpected political kingmaker in Egypt after the military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi said on Monday that it was suspending its participation in efforts to form an interim government. A spokesman for the Al Nour party said its decision was a reaction to a 'massacre' hours earlier at an officers' club here in which security officials said more than 40 people had been killed." CW: the Times should take "massacre" out of quotation marks. It was a massacre, if news reports are accurate.

AP: "An air taxi crashed Sunday at a small Alaska airport, killing all 10 people on board and leaving the aircraft fully engulfed in flames before firefighters could get to it, authorities said." With video.

San Francisco Chronicle: "An autopsy was being conducted Sunday to determine whether one of the two teenage passengers killed on the Asiana Airlines flight had been run over by a San Francisco fire rig at the crash scene. The 16-year-old girl was found near the evacuation slide from the left side of Asiana Flight 214 that crashed Saturday while landing at San Francisco International Airport. The girl was not identified. San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said Sunday that her injuries are consistent with having been run over."

The Commentariat -- July 7, 2013

David Kirkpatrick & Mayy El Sheikh of the New York Times: "The abrupt end of Egypt's first Islamist government was the culmination of months of escalating tensions and ultimately futile American efforts to broker a solution that would keep Mr. Morsi in his elected office, at least in name, if not in power."

** Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.... The court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny.... The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come.... Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case -- the government -- and its findings are almost never made public." ...

... CW: guess who chooses the judges who sit on the FISA court? Without anybody else having any say-so whatsofuckingever? Chief Justice John Roberts, that's who. And before him, of course, Chief Justice William Rehnquist. I'll bet those two fellows just loaded the FISA court with flaming civil libertarians. As Michael McGough writes in the Los Angeles Times, "Presidential nomination and Senate confirmation of judges for the FISA court would allow senators to question nominees about their view of the 4th Amendment and constitutional privacy rights." ...

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email. -- Ed Snowden, to the Guardian, June 2013

... CW: if Snowden really could wiretap & read the personal e-mail of "a federal judge," then it would have been a damned good idea if he had proved it by revealing some of the personal love notes or other embarrassing hoohah written by a few FISA court judges. What better way to cause them to rethink their cavalier rulings? ...

... Jeff Rosen of the National Constitution Center, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Repeatedly, our government has chosen technologies, policies and laws that reveal innocent information without making us demonstrably safer. The massive telephone and Internet surveillance programs disclosed last month are the most recent examples. But the tendency goes back at least as far as the USA Patriot Act, passed in the anxious weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, with only one dissenting vote in the Senate [Russ Feingold].... A better Patriot Act might have avoided national scandals over not only airport scanners and phone metadata but also wiretapping and library records. A better law could have dispensed with the 'trust us' mentality and mitigated the erosion of trust in government. It could have put us in a better position to detect terrorism and other serious crimes without threatening privacy." Rosen, a lawyer, goes on to suggest some improvements in the law. ...

David Mindich, in a New York Times op-ed -- citing President Lincoln & his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's establishment of a draconian surveillance state -- argues that the problem isn't the surveillance as much as it is the duration of the amorphous war on terror....

... CW: Mindich has a point. Perhaps it's not coincidental that Snowden's leaks came precisely at the time President Obama announced it was time to wind down the war on terror. Would the Post & the Guardian have been willing to publish the same type of information in November 2001? Nonetheless, Mindich is not considering two important factors: (1) inertia, and (2) special interests, both of which encourage, at the very least, continuance of the surveillance state. The federal government has never been good at cutting back military-related programs (do you think Sen. Orrin Hatch [R-Utah] wants to shut down the NSA facility in Utah?), & private contractors' interest in maintaining & extending their multi-billion-dollar contracts (easily effected by greasing Congress) only exacerbates administration officials' desires to enhance their fiefdoms. ...

... Deadline. Daniel Arkin & Brinley Bruton of NBC News: "Venezuelan officials say they have not heard from Edward Snowden since the country offered the professed NSA leaker asylum, but would wait until Monday to hear if he would take up the offer." ...

... Add Bolivia to the list of countries that have offered asylum to Ed Snowden. So that's three: Nicaraqua, Venezuela & Bolivia. Hope the duty-free shop at the Sheremetyevo Airport sells Spanish-language Berlitz tapes. ...

... Catch 22? Nataliya Vasilyeva of the AP: "Because Snowden's U.S. passport has been revoked, the logistics of him departing are complicated. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have made asylum offers over the past two days, but the three countries haven't indicated they would help Snowden by issuing a travel document, which he would need to leave Russia."

Frank Bruni: "Protecting assets and massaging facts, Cardinal Dolan and other Catholic leaders have responded to the abuse crisis the way the cunning chieftains of a corporation might.... Over the last few decades we've watched an organization that claims a special moral authority in the world pursue many of the same legal and public-relations strategies -- shuttling around money, looking for loopholes, tarring accusers, massaging the truth -- that are employed by organizations devoted to nothing more than the bottom line."

The American Jihad. Historian James Byrd, in the Washington Post: "When colonists declared their independence on July 4, 1776, religious conviction inspired them. Because they believed that their cause had divine support, many patriots' ardor was both political and religious. They saw the conflict as a just, secular war, but they fought it with religious resolve, believing that God endorsed the cause.... Whatever century it is, our leaders often include some suggestion of the same biblical themes that filled revolutionary-era sermons, including sacrifice, courage for the fight and appeals for God's providential blessings on America."

Mackenzie Weinger of Politico profiles liberal talk-radio host Thom Hartmann.

Brian McFadden of the New York Times goes to journalism summer camp.

Congressional Race

It's All About Liz. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: Liz Cheney "has made it clear that she wants to run for the Senate seat now held by Michael B. Enzi, a soft-spoken Republican [Wy.] and onetime fly-fishing partner of her father. But Ms. Cheney's move threatens to start a civil war within the state's Republican establishment, despite the reverence many hold for her family. Mr. Enzi, 69, says he is not ready to retire, and many Republicans say he has done nothing to deserve being turned out."

News Ledes

AP: "Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, is in critical but stable condition in a hospital in Nantucket, Mass." It's worth noting that a few days ago, wingers were berating John Kerry for "vacationing" during the Egyptian crisis. ...

     ... Boston Globe Update: "Teresa Heinz Kerry, leading philanthropist and wife of US Secretary of State John F. Kerry, was at Massachusetts General Hospital tonight after being rushed this afternoon to Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where a hospital spokesman had said she was in critical but stable condition."

Al Jazeera: "The continuing chaos in Egypt in the aftermath of last Wednesday's military coup has been compounded further after the choice of liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei as interim prime minister was thrown into doubt by objections from conservative groups." Al Jazeera's profile of ElBaradei is here. ...

     ... Update: "A polarised Egypt entered a second week of political crisis, as opponents and supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi held rival demonstrations in Cairo and cities across the country. The rallies on Sunday came as a coalition that backed Morsi's removal wavered over the choice of Mohamed ElBaradei as interim prime minister."

Al Jazeera: "Turkish riot police have fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse about 3,000 demonstrators who tried to enter a park adjacent to Istanbul's Taksim Square, the heart of recent protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan."

AP: "Fires continued burning more than 24 hours after a runaway train carrying crude oil derailed in eastern Quebec, igniting explosions and fires that destroyed a town's center and killed at least one person. Police said they expected the death toll to increase."

NBC News: "Investigators recovered both black boxes from Asiana Airlines Flight 214 on Sunday, NTSB officials told NBC News, as the airline's president said that engine failure was likely not the cause of the crash that killed two and injured scores more on the runway at San Francisco International Airport." ...

     ... San Francisco Chronicle Update: "The doomed Asiana Airlines jetliner came perilously close to stalling before the pilot made a last-second attempt to abort landing and crashed into a seawall bordering a San Francisco International Airport runway, injuring dozens on board and killing two teenagers, transportation safety investigators said Sunday. Preliminary analysis of flight data and cockpit recordings shows that the plane's speed was 'below target,' said U.S. Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman at a media briefing on Sunday afternoon." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "On Monday, Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said that Lee Gang-guk, the pilot in control of the Boeing 777, had little experience flying that kind of plane. She told the Associated Press that it was the pilot's first time landing in San Francisco and that he had nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes but only 43 hours on the 777."

The Commentariat -- July 6, 2013

** Joe Stiglitz, in the Guardian: "... it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free trade area between the US and Europe, and another between the US and much of the Pacific (except for China), are not about establishing a true free trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime – managed, that is, to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the west... We have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent. The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans' interests is low. The outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker."

Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "Yes, the sequester is affecting the job market." Rampell explains, in part, how. ...

... ** Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge: "In June, the household survey reported that part-time jobs soared by 360,000 to 28,059,000 - an all time record high. Full time jobs? Down 240,000.  And looking back at the entire year, so far in 2013, just 130K Full-Time Jobs have been added, offset by a whopping 557K Part-Time jobs. And there is your jobs "quality" leading to today's market euphoria (if only for now)." (Emphasis original.) CW: why am I reading these figures for the first time? -- and not in the MSM? P.S. I don't get Durden's headline; I don't see what this has to do with Obamacare, unless means "Obama doesn't care." ...

     ... Update. Credit Annie Lowrey of the New York Times for (a) covering the rise in part-time jobs, & (b) clearing up Durden's ObamaCare dig: "The June jobs report saw a surge in part-time workers, and the health care law that starts coming into full effect next year might be in part responsible.... The Affordable Care Act gives employers an incentive to hire part-time workers rather than full-time workers, as they might be compelled to offer health coverage to the latter, but not the former. That’s why a number of big employers have started offering more temporary or part-time positions." The delay of the employer mandate may slow the shift from full- to part-time. ...

     ... CW: if we had Medicare-for-All or even a public option, corporations at least would have to come up with some other excuse to screw their workers. ...

... CW: maybe Obama doesn't care. In a White House blogpost, Alan Krueger, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, is pretty happy about the great jobs numbers. No mention of part-time v. full-time. I wrote to Alan about that. I'm sure I'll be hearing back any day now.

Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "America’s post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why?" ...

... Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who is believed to have spent the past two weeks at a Moscow airport evading US attempts to extradite him. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daneil Ortega, made the asylum offers on Friday, shortly after they and other Latin American leaders met to denounce the diversion of a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, due to suspicions that Snowden might have been on board." ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "... Edward J. Snowden has applied for political asylum in six additional countries, according to his associates at WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization. But the names of those six countries are being kept, um, secret, the group said on Friday." CW: yes, a New York Times reporter wrote "um" in a straight news report.

A Coup by Any Other Name. Peter Baker of the New York Times: When is a coup not a coup? Hmm, apparently when the U.S. State Department would rather not say. ...

... Peter Hart of FAIR: OR, maybe when the New York Times would rather not say. "... it's interesting to note the similarity between the U.S. government's public position on this question and the Newspaper of Record." ...

... Ed Kilgore has an excellent takedown of David Brooks' "reasoning" on the Egyptian coup. Carrying Brooks' theory to its logical conclusion, Brooks seems to favor a coup against the Tea Party. CW: well, okay, Brooksie! Where do I sign up? ...

... Marty Kaplan, in the Huffington Post, goes there: "Writing about Middle Eastern fanatics, Brooks says 'Islamists ... lack the mental equipment to govern.' Does he really not get that this diagnosis nicely fits the Tea Partiers, enabled by simpering colleagues fearful of right-wing primary challenges, who have ground our own government to a halt?" ...

... Another good argument by Max Read of Gawker. After illustrating why Brooks doesn't make sense -- at least if you care about democracy -- Read adds, "Shall we note here, the day after Independence Day, that it took the United States of America 13 years after rejecting monarchy to settle on a stable constitutional form of government?" ...

... David Sirota of Salon says what has to be said about Brooks: he has written, and the Times has published a column that makes an "argument that reads like a[n] unhinged manifesto from a 19th century eugenicist.... Once you get into deriding entire populations as intrinsically lacking the cognitive capacity for self-governance, you’ve jumped into the ugliest, most discredited and vile kind of invective of all — the kind of bigotry that insinuates whole populations are genetically, culturally or otherwise inherently deficient."

The Re-emergence of Dubya? Dianne Solis of the Dallas Morning News: "George W. Bush ... will deliver opening remarks at an citizenship ceremony and immigration forum at the Dallas presidential center bearing his name, where it’s expected he will talk about how immigration reform will be good for America.... It’s unclear whether the ex-president will stick to generalities during his remarks at the citizenship ceremony, or elevate the conversation with details about the super-sized immigration bill now being debated in Congress." ...

... Gail Collins: "Illegal immigration across the Mexican border is ... hardly the worst threat we’ve got out there. Last month, Rolling Stone had a long and terrifying article about how rising sea levels could begin to overwhelm Miami within the next couple of decades. Next time you see Senator Rubio [R-Fla.], be sure to ask him about this. If we can afford to pay border agents to catch three people a year [which is about the average per agent now], shouldn’t we at least be looking at getting the Miami nuclear reactors onto higher ground?" ...

... CW: in case you can't wait to find out what a discharge petition is (Collins teases it at the end of her column), Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post explains: "The discharge petition allows an absolute majority of the House of Representatives (218 lawmakers) to force a floor vote on a bill, even if the leadership, who usually controls what legislation makes it to the floor, is opposed. The opposition party can, in theory, use the technique to hijack the legislative agenda on an issue that divides the majority." Sounds like a plan, but it's only happened twice since 1986.

New York Times Editors: "The three Republicans on the [Federal Elections] Commission appear ready to take advantage of a temporary vacancy on the three-member Democratic side to push through 3-to-2 votes for a wholesale retreat from existing regulations.... The proposals are being pushed by Donald McGahn, the Republican vice chairman of the commission who has engineered repeated 3-to-3 standoff votes to stymie approval of staff recommendations for penalties against campaigners found in violation of the law. Mr. McGahn, a former ethics adviser to Tom Delay...." CW: Oh, let's just stop there.

Francis v. the Old Beanies Club. Hans-Jürgen Schlamp of Der Spiegel: "It appears Pope Francis truly wants to change the Catholic Church. He's reforming the Vatican Bank first, but he's also circumventing the old guard wherever he can. The establishment is up in arms."