The Commentariat -- April 5, 2013

April Is the Cruelest Month. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president's demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations." The Washington Post story is here.* ...

     * Lousy Reporting Award of the Day. Goldfarb writes, "[Republican critics] are also likely to focus on the fact that, unlike the Republican budget that passed the House last month, Obama's budget does not balance within 10 years. The GOP has made the failure to balance the budget a key talking point in recent weeks." The House budget balances in 10 years only if you believe in asterisks & unicorns. ...

... Susie Madrak has a quick overview of the lowlights. Really shocking. ...

... CW: maybe Obama should read the news. When he made his original proposal, Republicans & the deficit were ascendant, so at least there was some lame excuse for his bowing to Boehner. Now the opposite is true: Republicans are on the skids & the deficit is taking care of itself. So here's the latest excuse: "... the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis." Yes, because every American adult is waking up this morning to read all about Obama's budget before reading the actual budget itself in detail & saying aloud, "My, President Obama is a reasonable fellow. I'm glad he's cutting my Medicare & Social Security just to show those Republicans a thing or two." As I recall, Obama's budget proposal to Boehner was way worse than Simpson-Bowles, with far more tax cuts & far less revenue. ...

... Paul Krugman: "The truth -- although you'll never hear this in Serious circles -- is that we really should be increasing SS benefits.... So what's this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he's willing to do what they consider Serious -- which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he's reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy. But it won't happen.... Oh, and wanna bet that Republicans soon start running ads saying that Obama wants to cut your Social Security?" ...

... Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is withering in her criticism of Obama, essentially calling him a bully who picks on little people but is too cowardly to take on anyone remotely approaching his own size. ...

... D. S. Wright of Firedoglake: "President Barack Obama has once again started his negotiations by scoring into his own net.... The loopholes for the wealthy [which Obama proposes] will not stay closed. The current tax system is designed for that type of gamesmanship. So what is likely to happen if Obama gets his dream deal? Social Security will be permanently cut and the rich will lose a deduction or two for a year before they get slipped back in. Exchanging temporary increases in taxes for permanent benefit cuts to those in need in an a two-tier economy is beyond cynical." ...

... Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money: "It'd be nice if Obama realized for once that the Republicans will never compromise with him unless he completely capitulates to their agenda, with its ever rightward shifting goalposts. Pretending to be a nice moderate Republican is not going to work. Nor should it since if a Democratic president can't stand up for Social Security, what can he stand up for?" ...

... CW: a parting thought: Obama is delighted liberals are screaming. He will point to us & say, "See, liberals are screaming. That's proof this is a great deal."

Just Remember Obama Is "Belt-Tightening," Too. Dana Milbank: "... the White House announced that Obama, 'to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants,' would return 5 percent of his salary.... The gesture, matched by several Cabinet members, was meant to be roughly the same percentage by which domestic agencies are being cut. But the amount -- $20,000 of his $400,000 salary -- is so little for a man made wealthy by his political fame that it comes across as patronizing.... During World Wars I and II, there were 'dollar-a-year men' who left lucrative private-sector careers to serve their country in Washington. If Obama really wants to share in the furloughed workers' 'sacrifice,' he should follow that honorable example and give back all but a dollar of his $400,000 salary. When he leaves office, he'll be able to earn it back with a couple days' work." ...

... Justin Sink of The Hill: "Treasury Secretary Jack Jew and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano have joined President Obama and other top members of the administration in taking pay cuts in solidarity with federal workers facing furloughs under the sequester.... Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are both forfeiting the equivalent of 14 days' worth of pay -- the maximum number of days faced by departmental employees." ...

... As Julianna Goldman & Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg report, you can add multi-millionaire John Kerry to that list of self-sacrificing public servants. Feeling better now? ...

... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, in a straight news report, demonstrates he is as impressed with all this "self-sacrifice" as is Milbank: "By Thursday, the Obama administration's stampede to embrace the politics of self-sacrifice was on. Cabinet secretaries practically tripped over themselves to hand over parts of their paycheck as federal workers brace for furloughs because of the across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester.... Of course, they can well afford it. Mr. Kerry has an estimated net worth exceeding $200 million and Mr. Hagel, Mr. Holder and Mr. Obama are all millionaires." ...

... The Real Conspiracy. Government Economic Policies Are Killing You. In 43 percent of U.S. counties, women's mortality rates are rising. According to the authors of a study published in the journal Health Affairs, "Female mortality rates were not predicted by any of the medical care factors.... Many people believe that medical care and individual behaviors such as exercise, diet, and smoking are the primary reasons for declines in health... But socioeconomic factors such as the percentage of a county's population with a college education and the rate of children living in poverty had equally strong or stronger relationships to fluctuations in mortality rates."

Paul Krugman says David Stockman is just another Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary: "... his analysis is pretty much standard liquidationism, with a strong goldbug streak.... Now, the fact is that these ranters have been wrong about everything, at every stage of the crisis, while the Keynesians have been mostly right."

Our Republican President, Ctd. You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it's probably not rising to your No. 1 concern. And if people think, well, that's shortsighted, that's what happens when you're struggling to get by. -- Barack Obama, "justifying" his likely decision to approval the Keystone XL pipeline ...

... Charles Pierce: "This is the argument we get from the oil companies, the extraction industries, and all the politicians they have sublet over the past 40 years -- that environmental concerns are the province of the liberal elites, as though small farmers are not being killed by drought, small businesses being killed by what's killing the small farmers, and small homeowners along both seaboards being killed by increasingly massive storms."

New York Times Editors: "... twisted radicalism is playing an outsized role in the current debate" over gun safety legislation.

Alex Leary of the Tampa Bay Times: "Florida Sen. Bill Nelson reversed his opposition to gay marriage on Thursday, joining a swell of moderate Democrats to do so recently as public support for gay marriage has grown."

Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "President Obama reopened the debate Thursday over whether his administration is too influenced by men after praising the looks of Kamala Harris, California's attorney general and a possible future gubernatorial candidate. 'You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,' Obama said at a party fundraiser in Atherton, Calif., a wealthy suburb of San Francisco. 'She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general in the country.'" CW: Forget the sexism. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just took a look at photos of state attorneys general, & I found quite a number of very attractive men & women. So while Harris is certainly beautiful, I wouldn't call her "by far the best looking A.G. in the country." ...

... "Crimes Against Nature." Speaking of attorneys general, Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli is his own worst enemy, and yours, too. Josh Israel of Think Progress: "Cuccinelli II (R) filed an appeal last week after a federal appeals court struck down Virginia's sodomy law as unconstitutional." But the law is unconstitutional precisely because Cuccinelli was among state lawmakers who refused to revise it to meet federal standards after the Lawrence v. Texas decision struck down sodomy laws. ...

... We Are All Criminals Now. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones figures that "If Virginia's ban on 'unnatural' sex acts applied nationwide, the Virginia law would make 90 percent of men and women in the United States between the age of 25 and 44 criminals." Serwer asked Cuccinelli's "campaign if Cuccinelli or anyone working for his campaign had ever engaged in any of the prohibited conduct and whether Cuccinelli would fire any campaign staff who had done so. We have received no response."

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: Chuck Schumer, former hatchet-man, makes friends with Republicans.

Kate Zernicke, in her New York Times article about Rutgers University President Robert Barchi doesn't say Dr. Barchi is totally tone-deaf, but her recounting of one incident after the other in which he outraged students, faculty, administrators & minorities sure says Barchi is a bull in a china shop. I'm not sure how well the Rutgers fiascos will work ultimately out well for Chris Christie, either. ...

     ... Reuters Update, by Scott Malone: "Rutgers University Athletic Director Tim Pernetti will leave his post in the wake of revelations that ousted men's basketball coach Mike Rice had verbally and physically abused players, the Star-Ledger newspaper and ESPN reported on Friday."

Get Ready for a Culture Warriors Freak-out. Jessica Dye of Reuters: "A federal judge on Friday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the 'morning-after' emergency contraception pill available without a prescription to all girls of reproductive age. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn, New York, comes in a lawsuit brought by reproductive-rights groups that had sought to remove age and other restrictions on emergency contraception." CW: sorry, Mr. President, that means your lovely daughters have access, too. As well they should.

A Memphis sanitation worker states the obvious: privatization is about destroying unions & depriving workers of fair pay & decent working conditions:

Tim Egan: "The scourge of 24-hour news, in which stuff that isn’t important gets its own countdown clock, is now doing to the weather what it did to public affairs and the stock market. It's making us all a little jumpy and anxious, with a twisted view of the normal rhythms of the seasons." ...

CW: If the people at the Weather Channel want to frighten their audience for good reason, maybe they should do a little less "Snowmageddon" reporting & a little more reporting like this -- Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance."

Frank Rich on everything -- always rich.

Right Wing World *

"System X." Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "Last week, conservative talk show host and media mogul Glenn Beck decided to let his listeners in on what he dubbed 'the biggest story in American history.' It's called System X. ... System X: a government run by a single party in control of labor, media, education, and banking; joined by big business to further their mutual collective goals.... If you don't stop it,' he warned, 'American history is over as you know it.'" System X turns out to be national core curriculum standards. As Murphy points out, reasonable people can disagree on the merits of the Common Core standards without seeing it as a bipartisan plot to steal your brains or something.

You hear some of these quotes: 'I need a gun to protect myself from the government.' 'We can't do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away.' Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It's a government of and by and for the people. -- Barack Obama ...

... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "Just a simple statement of fact, right? ... Leave it to the raving kooks of the right wing blogs to find a way to distort Obama's words and read things into them that he never said -- in lockstep unison, because that's how they do everything.... The hatred is rotting their brains." Johnson provides numerous examples of the Crazy.

* ... is a dark, dark place.

Reefer World

Pew Research Center: "For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans favor[s] legalizing the use of marijuana. A national survey finds that 52% say that the use of marijuana should be made legal while 45% say it should not."

News Ledes

AP: "An alleged white supremacist gang member who was arrested during the investigation into the killing of Colorado's prisons chiefs may have thrown a gun from his vehicle before his arrest. James Lohr was arrested early Friday after a brief chase in Colorado Springs."

New York Times: "The parents of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager who was shot by George Zimmerman last year, have settled a wrongful-death lawsuit against the homeowners' association in the gated community where he was killed."

AP: "Pope Francis directed the Vatican on Friday to act decisively on clergy sex abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, saying the Catholic Church's 'credibility' was on the line. The announcement was quickly dismissed by some victims' advocates as just more talk, while others lobbying for reform in the church held out hope the new pontiff might challenge the Vatican's bureaucratic culture seen as fostering a cover-up mentality."

Reuters: "American employers hired at the slowest pace in nine months in March, a sign that Washington's austerity drive could be stealing momentum from the economy. The economy added just 88,000 nonfarm jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below market expectations for a 200,000 increase."

The Commentariat -- April 4, 2013

Michael Shear of the New York Times: President "Obama, who appears to be leaning toward approval of the [Keystone XL] pipeline, acknowledged that it is difficult to sell aggressive environmental action to Americans who are still struggling in a difficult economy...."

National Constitution Center: "It was 45 years ago today that civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by an assassin's bullet in Memphis. The world has changed greatly since 1968, but King's message survives intact." CW: the world may have changed, but the hatred & greed against which Dr. King fought is still controlling our politics.

Ezra Klein has a good piece on what a GOP health expert claims is the Republican plan to replace ObamaCare: "This isn't a plan to 'replace Obamacare.' It's a plan to do the opposite of replacing Obamacare.... Rather than make comprehensive insurance more accessible through government subsidies and regulation, it makes insurance stingier and rarer by removing government subsidies and regulation.... Obamacare and the Republican ideas aren't even apples to oranges. They’re apples to taking away apples.... The fact that Republicans haven't put forward an actual legislative replacement to Obamacare suggests that" they know their "plan" would be exposed as a sham.

Yes, the Sequester Is Killing People. Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post: "Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts. Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially." ...

... Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post: "Of all the blinkered buzz-saw cuts in this year's $85 billion spending sequestration, perhaps none is as counterproductive -- or as flat-out boneheaded -- as the one now hitting medical research under way in a refurbished industrial expanse of central St. Louis." ...

... Peter Baker & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama plans to return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury in solidarity with federal workers who are going to be furloughed as part of the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, an administration official said Wednesday. The voluntary move would be retroactive to March 1, the official said, and apply through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The White House came up with the 5 percent figure to approximate the level of spending cuts to nondefense federal agencies that took effect that day." CW: sure hope that makes Medicare patients dying of cancer feel better.

Jon Lender, et al., of the Hartford Courant: "After more than 13 hours of debate..., the [Connecticut] General Assembly early Thursday approved an historic and far-reaching gun-control bill that proponents said was their toughest-in-the-nation response to the Dec. 14 Newtown school massacre. The state House of Representatives at 2:26 a.m. gave final legislative approval to the bill by a vote of 105 to 44, with 2 absent. Of the 98 House Democrats present, 13 voted no; and 31 of the 51 Republicans in the hall voted no. About eight hours earlier, the state Senate had approved it by a 26-10 vote -- with two of 22 Democrats and eight of 14 Republicans opposed. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will sign the bipartisan bill into law at noon Thursday in the Old Judiciary Room on the third floor of the state Capitol." ...

     ... AP Update by Susan Haigh: "Alongside family members of some of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Malloy signed the bill hours after the General Assembly approved the measure to give the state some of the toughest gun laws in the country."

... Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: "The Maryland House of Delegates passed what would be among the nation's most restrictive gun-control measures Wednesday, voting to ratchet up the state's already tough rules by requiring fingerprinting of gun buyers, new limits on firearm purchases by the mentally ill, and bans on assault weapons and on magazines that hold more than 10 bullets.The 78 to 61 vote handed Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).... The bill now returns to the state Senate, which passed a substantially similar version of the legislation last month." ...

... Erica Goode of the New York Times: "Many states with the weakest gun laws have the worst rates of gun violence, ranking high on numerous indicators, like gun homicides and suicides, firearm deaths of children, and killings of law enforcement officers, according to a report ... issued Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress." Zack Beauchamp of Think Progress has more. The study report is here (pdf). ...

... there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them.... We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. -- Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic Convention

I am a pundit. -- Constant Weader

... Denver Post: "President Barack Obama took to a lectern in Denver to make his case for tougher federal gun laws Wednesday with the backdrop of a Western state that focused the nation's attention on a mass shooting last year and took significant legislative steps on guns this year":

GOP Sides with Iran, North Korea & Syria (Not a Typo). Steve Benen: "Following seven years of negotiations, the Arms Trade Treaty was approved by the U.N. General Assembly, 154 to 3, though there were [23] abstentions. The United States was part of the majority." China & Russia were among the abstentions. The three "no" votes: Iran, NK & Syria. "The National Rifle Association and Republican policymakers are taking the Iranian, North Korean, and Syrian side of the argument." ...

... Gavin Aronsen of Mother Jones: "... the treaty doesn't dictate domestic gun laws in member countries. It requires signatories to establish controls on the import and export of conventional arms.... The US is the world's leading arms exporter, and gun dealers aren't eager to be required to report weapons exports that may wind up in the hands of warlords or terrorists overseas."

UN Arms Treaty should be rejected outright by US Senate. It is international gun regulation, plain and simple & it must never be ratified. -- Sen. Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas), in a Tweet

The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty is another attempt by internationalists to limit and infringe upon America’s sovereignty. Such a treaty would require the United States to implement laws as required by the treaty, instead of the national controls that are currently in place. -- Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) Via Jonathan Bernstein.

One thing we know about Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi -- he has no sense of humor:

Brian Beutler of TPM: "We’ve reached a point in the power struggle between the White House and Senate Republicans where it's unclear whether President Obama can get a judicial nominee supported by Ken Starr -- yes, that Ken Starr -- confirmed to a federal appellate court.... John Roberts' old seat on the DC Circuit has been vacant for eight years." And still no filibuster reform. Beutler thinks the Senate's blocking Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. CW: I think the camel has a mighty strong back. ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "The Republican party excuse: "The DC Circuit doesn't really have a very heavy caseload, so it doesn't need any more judges.... Now that David Sentelle has retired and the court has four vacancies, maybe this argument won't fly any longer. Then again, maybe it will."

"The Nihilism of David Stockman." Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: "Stockman’s view of the economy seems to be: that basically anything the state does to try to fix things is undermining some elegant capitalist order and will inevitably lead to chaos.... [But] capitalism can only exist in a framework -- monetary and legal -- set up by the government." ...

... William Greider of the Nation: in the 1990s & 2000s, Paul Krugman got the effects of globalization seriously wrong. Thanks to Kate M. for the link. Here's Krugman's withering 1997 review of Greider's book, which Greider mentions in his column.

Gail Collins agrees with a portion of a comment contributor Diane made in yesterday's Comments. Collins writes that former South Carolina Gov. Mark "Sanford has always had a terrible case of chronic self-absorption. Now that he's talking about his feelings so much, it's turned into a creepy New Age egomania."

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a New York Times op-ed, on Dr. Benjamin Carson, the latest Conservative Black Hope.

Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times: "Walmart, the nation's largest retailer and grocer, has cut so many employees that it no longer has enough workers to stock its shelves properly, according to some employees and industry analysts. Internal notes from a March meeting of top Walmart managers show the company grappling with low customer confidence in its produce and poor quality. Before the recession, at the start of 2007, Walmart had an average of 338 employees per store at its United States stores and Sam's Club locations. Now, it has 281 per store, having cut the number of United States employees while adding hundreds of stores." CW: maybe one reason consumers have "lost confidence" in WalMart is that they don't like shopping at stores that underpay AND overwork their employees. Meanwhile, the Waltons just keep getting richer.

Steve Eder & Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "On Wednesday morning, Rutgers fired the men's basketball coach, Mike Rice, a day after video surfaced of him berating his players during practices, throwing basketballs at them, kicking them and taunting them with vulgar language, including homophobic slurs. But Mr. Rice's dismissal did little to quiet critics, including selected officials, faculty members and students, who called for the dismissal of [athletic director Tim] Pernetti and [university president Robert] Barchi and demanded to know why Rutgers had not fired Mr. Rice after it initially investigated the abuse allegations last November." ...

... New York Times Editors: "Critics like Walter Byers, a former N.C.A.A. executive director, have complained of a 'neo-plantation' system of college sports in which athletes are pawns while high-priced coaches and athletic directors -- under pressure to win -- exercise the power of kings. The Rutgers tape is a timely warning not only to Rutgers but to university presidents everywhere as the final games of the N.C.A.A.'s basketball tournament play out before the nation."

Local News

Harry Warren, et al., of WRAL Raleigh: "A resolution filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide. The resolution grew out of a dispute between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers." ...

... Charles Pierce: "Thus does North Carolina march boldly into the past, looking neither right nor left as it passes 1789 or 1776, until it arrives at 1640, and Quakers and Catholics are hiding under the bed." ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic: "The bill might be pointless grandstanding, but it's just one of many pointless pieces of grandstanding that signal the revival of nullification as a legal theory in the Obama years, mostly among conservatives who have claimed that states could disregard duly passed federal laws on matters like health care or gun control. (Liberals have indulged too, demanding that the feds not enforce drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana.)" ...

... Laura Leslie of WRAL: "The [Republican-controlled North Carolina] state Senate voted 33-14 Wednesday to repeal the state's historic Racial Justice Act and restart executions in North Carolina. The 2009 Racial Justice Act allowed death row inmates to appeal their sentences on the grounds of racial bias in the court system. If a judge agreed, the inmate's sentence could be commuted to life without the possibility of parole."

Right Wing World *

War on Women, Ctd. Digby: "Here's more evidence that the Republican Party is 'moderating' on these pesky social issues due to their shellacking in the last election. This post is by Reince Preibus, Chairman of the Republican Party: 'Media Covers up Democrat-Backed Planned Parenthood's Support for Infanticide.' ... Anyway, I think we can all feel fairly confident that the War on Women has not been abandoned. ...

... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "This is damage control, folks -- a sop thrown to the religious right, who are getting very angry with the Republican Party and their talk of 'rebranding.' The absurdly hateful lie that President Obama supports infanticide has been bouncing around the right wing echo chamber for years, impervious to refutation, and Priebus is very calculatedly playing to that lovely group of people who are willing and eager to believe it." CW: my thoughts exactly. Besides, the 22 percent of Romney voters who believe Obama is the Anti-Christ won't be slightly surprised that he supports infanticide.

Even More GOP Outreach. (The Hits Just Keep Coming.) Lou Chibbaro of the Washington Blade: "Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has filed a petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state's sodomy law. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on March 12 that a section of Virginia's 'Crimes Against Nature' statute that outlaws sodomy between consenting adults, gay or straight, is unconstitutional based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2003 known as Lawrence v. Texas." CW: the ruling should have been 3-0; don't know what the problem was with the dissenting judge, but I can guess.

* Is still right-wing.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70." CW: the obituary, written by Douglas Martin, who also write Virginia Brill's obituary, does not mention until th een dof the 4th paragraph that Ebert "published a cookbook on meals that could be made with a rice cooker." The Chicago Sun-Times obituary of Ebert is here, with links to related stories.

New York Times: the Manhattan D.A. brought indictments "against 63 members of ... three [East Harlem] gangs. All males, they range in age from 16 to 25. All but eight of them are younger than 20. Forty-nine of them face up to life in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder. The top charges against the 14 others carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison. Most of the young men were arrested on Wednesday in an operation that involved more than 300 police officers. Throughout the day on Thursday, they were brought before two judges in Manhattan, where they all pleaded not guilty."

Christian Science Monitor: "Investigators in the case of slain Colorado prison chief Tom Clements have begun a search for two white-supremacist prison gang members identified as persons of interest in the case. The men, James Lohr and Thomas Guolee, are said to be part of the 211 Crew, a gang whose members also included Evan Ebel, the primary suspect in Mr. Clements's killing."

Reuters: "The Bank of Japan unleashed the world's most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows. New Governor Haruhiko Kuroda committed the BOJ to open-ended asset buying and said the monetary base would nearly double to 270 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) by the end of 2014, a dose of shock therapy officials hope will end two decades of stagnation."

Reuters: "New York State Assemblyman Eric Stevenson and four others were charged with corruption by U.S. prosecutors on Thursday, in the second federal graft case brought against New York politicians this week. Federal prosecutors have accused Stevenson of taking more than $22,000 in bribes in exchange for official acts, which included drafting and sponsoring legislation to assist four businessmen in opening a network of adult daycare centers in the Bronx and avoid competition."

Reuters: "An Ohio judge sentenced Richard Beasley to death on Thursday for the murder of three down-on-their-luck men who responded to an ad he placed on the Craigslist website for a nonexistent job."

AP: "The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid rose last week by 28,000, the third straight increase. Weekly applications increased to a seasonally adjusted 385,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the highest level since late November."

New York Times: "An enormous leak of confidential financial records has revealed the identities of thousands of wealthy depositors — including European and Russian officials and corporate executives, Asian dictators and their children, and even American doctors and dentists -- who have stashed immense amounts of money in offshore tax havens.... The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a 15-year-old Washington-based group that obtained the secret records, collaborated with The Guardian, Asahi Shimbun, Le Monde, The Washington Post and more than 40 other news organizations to untangle and report their contents." The Guardian story is here, with links to related stories.

The Commentariat -- April 3, 2013

** New York Times Editors: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets it wrong on the political climate at the time the Court decided Roe v. Wade. Her misunderstanding could negatively affect how she helps decide the gay marriage cases before the Court now. ...

... AND, as Maureen Dowd points out, it's the Supremes who are behind the times now, not the public. So Ginsburg is doubly wrong.

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: President "Obama was traveling to the Denver suburbs Wednesday, stepping up his call for universal background checks for gun buyers as well as his demands for Congress to at least vote on an assault weapons ban and limits on large-capacity ammunition magazines." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "With Senate Democrats still struggling to line up support, the success or failure of President Obama's four-month campaign to overhaul gun laws will most likely revolve around a single provision: a proposal to expand federal background checks for gun purchases.... Even though around 90 percent of those polled in public surveys support background checks, the fight for it and the rest of the first major piece of gun control legislation since 1993 faces a difficult test in the coming weeks." ...

... Peter Finn of the Washington Post: "A 225-page study commissioned by the National Rifle Association has endorsed and amplified the gun rights group's immediate response to the mass killing in Newtown, Conn.: that all schools in the United States should have police or armed staff members trained to confront a shooter. Although ostensibly independent of the NRA, the examination of school safety issues, released Tuesday, provides the organization with an alternative narrative to the various gun control measures on Capitol Hill that it is opposing or seeking to dilute." CW: a study! I'll bet it's really scientific & all. ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas who led the task force, unveiled the report at a packed news conference with unusually heavy security, including a bomb-sniffing yellow Labrador retriever. A dozen officers in plain clothes and uniforms stood watch as he spoke; one warned photographers to 'remain stationary' during the event." ...

... ** Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "In a spectacle that officials at the National Press Club said they had never seen before, the NRA gunmen directed some photographers not to take pictures, ordered reporters out of the lobby when NRA officials passed and inspected reporters' briefcases before granting them access to the news conference. The antics gave new meaning to the notion of disarming your critics." If the NRA prevails, "American schoolchildren may grow accustomed to the sort of scene Hutchinson caused Tuesday, protected by more armed guards than a Third World dictator." ...

... Charles Pierce: "Well, the NRA has managed to come up with its 'Guns For Everybody School Safety Plan' and it contains pretty much what you'd expect it to contain, including whole new markets and increased profits for the guns-and-ammo manufacturers that represent the NRA's primary constituency.

Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obama's economic advisers and outside experts say the nation's much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession."

Jonathan Bernstein, in the Washington Post: "Media Matters has noticed something important: Climate was almost completely absent on the national broadcast network news last year. Only twelve stories, combined, on the CBS, ABC, and NBC news shows, were devoted to the topic -- which certainly has a legitimate claim as the single most important policy problem facing the United States right now." Bernstein says to get climate change in the news, politicians need to talk about it more often. ...

... Media Matters has a "Take Action" petition here. ...

... Matthew Wald of the New York Times: "The Environmental Protection Agency's latest proposed tightening of limits on sulfur in gasoline, and its previous rules, will most likely have the perverse consequence of retarding the development of cars running on batteries, advanced biofuels or hydrogen -- all promising but expensive technologies that have not become mass-market products. At the least, domestically produced gasoline and rapid advances in technology to make the internal combustion engine more efficient are likely to help the conventional automobile survive against competition from vehicles powered by electricity, natural gas and other cleaner alternatives." CW: this is a "perverse consequence" we're lucky to have.

Dion Nissenbaum of the Wall Street Journal: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to voluntarily give up part of his $200,000 annual salary in solidarity with about 700,000 of his civilian workers facing mandatory furloughs this summer ... even though his paycheck is immune from the mandatory cuts."

Words Matter. Paul Colford of the AP: "The AP Stylebook today is making some changes in how we describe people living in a country illegally. Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explains...: 'The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term "illegal immigrant" or the use of "illegal" to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that "illegal" should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.'" CW: to Rep. Don Young's (R-Alaska) dismay, the AP Stylebook has also dropped "wetback" from its list of acceptable descriptors. ...

 ... Margaret Sullivan of the New York Times: "The Times, for the past couple of months, has also been considering changes to its stylebook entry on this term and will probably announce them to staff members this week....From what I can gather, The Times's changes will not be nearly as sweeping as The A.P.’s." CW: For instance, the Times will continue to permit the use of terms like "beaner," where appropriate. ...

Washington Post Editors: Sen. Marco Slo-Mo "Rubio [R-Fla.] appears paralyzed -- or to be trying to have it both ways. At first he led the charge, trying to brand an overhaul of the immigration system as his signature achievement. Then, when progress was made last weekend, he backed away, warning that talk of a breakthrough was premature.... [But] it's one or the other; Mr. Rubio needs to decide."

... SO, expect reactions like this one from the person who writes the Right Scoop: "I refuse to call illegals by any other name, no matter how insensitive people are going to claim it is. Because that is next, papers and news orgs will fall in line and minorities here illegally will begin claiming discrimination in a louder voice and pretty soon saying 'illegal' when referring to someone will be akin to hate-speech." CW: mind you, there's not an iota of hate in her/his big heart. ...

... Weasel Zippers calls the change a "major victory for the lib PC enforcers." ...

... AND Allahpundit at Hot Air sees an insidious liberal plot: "The timing here suggests that this is the AP's dumb little way of cheerleading for immigration reform in Congress...."

John Aravosis of AmericaBlog: "Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois became the second GOP Senator to endorse gay marriage today...." ...

... Justin Sink of the Hill: "Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said Tuesday he now supports same-sex marriage, now leaving just seven Senate Democrats who have not publicly voiced support for allowing gays to marry. 'As our society has changed and evolved, so too has the public's opinion on gay marriage -- and so has mine,' Carper said in a post to his Facebook page." ...

... Rep. John Carney, also a Delaware Democrat and the only Delaware representative in the House, announced his support for same-sex marriage today, too. ...

... Josh Israel of Think Progress notes that "With Vice President Joe Biden the tie-breaker, this marks the first time that a majority in the U.S. Senate has endorsed same-sex marriage." CW: yet another reason the filibuster matters. ...

... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs provides some examples of how wingers are responding to the senators' announcements. I won't reproduce any of the remarks here.

Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "... the Atlanta school cheating scandal, the largest in recent history..., is fueling critics who say that standardized testing as a way to measure student achievement should be scaled back."

Jim Williams of the Pew Public Policy Center: "On our national poll this week we took the opportunity to poll 20 widespread and/or infamous conspiracy theories. Many of these theories are well known to the public, others perhaps to just the darker corners of the internet. Here's what we found: 37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at 41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax." CW: this one is scary, but the rest of the results are more fun.

Congressional Races

Steve Holland of Reuters: "President Barack Obama will launch a fund-raising drive for the 2014 U.S. mid-term elections on Wednesday with addresses to deep-pocketed donors in California, hoping the Democratic Party can defy the odds and gain congressional seats in the polls."

Bruce Smith of the AP: Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford won the Republican primary race to fill a vacant Congressional seat in South Carolina. Sanford "faces Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, in a May 7 special election." ...

... Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal: Colbert Busch could beat Sanford. ...

... Even Politico is wary of Sanford's chances. Alex Isenstadt: "Fellow GOP pols don't like him. Neither do female voters. His campaign is largely an exercise in seeking forgiveness for his transgressions four years ago -- a defensive crouch that makes it tricky to take the fight to Colbert Busch...."

Local News

Michael Wilson & William Rashbaum of the New York Times: according to a criminal complaint which federal prosecutors unsealed Tuesday, influential state Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat turned Republican, & Queens City Councilman Daniel Halloran, a Republican, conspired with others to buy Smith the Republican nomination for mayor of New York City. "Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan whose office is prosecuting the case, said the arrests demonstrated 'that a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York government.'" ...

... Jim Dwyer of the Times has more. ...

... Thomas Kaplan of the Times: "The charges against Mr. Smith were particularly disruptive [to state government] because he was part of an unusual and fragile two-party coalition controlling the Senate and because he was the only nonwhite member of that coalition, criticized for a lack of diversity."

Andrew Kirell of Mediaite: "On his radio show last night, Mark Levin had on newfound conservative 'hero' Dr. Ben Carson to discuss all the lashings he's received from the 'left-wing media' over his views on gay marriage and religion. While discussing his being a black conservative, Carson told Levin that, in his experience, white liberals are the 'most racist people there are. They need to shut me up, they need to delegitimize me,' Carson told the radio host while explaining why he believes the media has [sic.] scorned him for lumping homosexuality in with unsavory sexual acts like bestiality and pedophilia." CW: right you are. Because liberals would not have even noticed if a white person had made the bigoted remarks Carson did. ...

... Fer instance, Tim Rohan of the New York Times: "In a video shown Tuesday on ESPN, the Rutgers men’s basketball coach, Mike Rice, is seen yelling homophobic slurs at his players, kicking them, grabbing them and shoving them. He also throws basketballs at their legs, their heads and their bodies from point-blank range -- as if he were playing dodge ball." Rutgers fired the person who shot the video & reported it to higher-ups. CW: Now, Coach Rice looks like a white guy to me, so I'm guessing white liberals will see those homophobic slurs & all as A-okay, especially because it appears most of the players Rice abused were black....

... CW: Here's the portion of the video ESPN aired. Rutgers' athletic director Tim Pernetti gave Rice only a three-game suspension & $50K fine for repeated criminal assault & battery on the players. As far as I can tell, it was Pernetti who fired videographer Eric Murdock, who is black. Rice should be in jail, & both he & Pernetti -- an accessory after the fact -- should be banned from working in school sports programs:

... Update: Tom Canavan of the AP: "Now that the video has gone viral, many -- including the governor of New Jersey -- are wondering why Rutgers let Rice keep his job at all. Athletic director Tim Pernetti said Tuesday that the school was reconsidering its decision to retain the fiery 44-year-old coach. The videotape, broadcast Tuesday on ESPN, prompted scores of outraged social media comments as well as sharp criticism from Gov. Chris Christie and Miami Heat star LeBron James. The head of the New Jersey Assembly called for Rice to be fired." ...

... Steve Politi of the New Jersey Star-Ledger: "Mike Rice has to go. That's the easy part. If Pernetti doesn't reach that decision soon, and doesn't lead the healing process for his broken basketball program, he'll be the next one out the door."

The Gohmert Daily News

Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch: "During the course of [a conference call with a notorious anti-gay activist, Rep. Louis] Gohmert [RTP-Texas] was asked about his opposition to any gun control legislation, which he explained by bizarrely linking the topic to gay marriage and bestiality.... Earlier in the discussion, Gohmert called on Christians to take a more active role in politics ... because otherwise their churches are going to be forced to hire cross-dressing Satan-worshipers."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Jane Henson, the widow of and original collaborator with Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, died on Tuesday at her home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 78."

New York Times: "Milo O'Shea, an Irish character actor -- recognizable by his black bushy eyebrows, tumble of white hair and impish smile -- whose films included 'Ulysses,' 'Barbarella' and 'The Verdict,' died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 86."

New York Times: "The United States announced Wednesday that it was speeding the deployment of an advanced missile defense system to Guam in the next few weeks, two years ahead of schedule in what the Pentagon said was 'a precautionary move' to protect American naval and air forces from the threat of a North Korean missile attack."

New York Times: "In one of the deadliest insurgent attacks in the decade-long war in Afghanistan, nine Taliban fighters dressed as Afghan soldiers stormed a government compound in the western part of the country on Wednesday morning, killing at least 44 people and wounding more than 100 in a hostage standoff."

AP: "A sheriff known for cracking down on the drug trade in southern West Virginia's coalfields was fatally shot Wednesday in the spot where he usually parked his car for lunch, a state official said, and a suspect was in custody."

Reuters: "African heads of state on Wednesday refused to recognize rebel leader Michel Djotodia's self-appointment as president of Central African Republic, calling instead for the creation of a new transitional body to guide the country to elections."

Washington Post: "The United States and Jordan have stepped up training of Syrian opposition forces that may be used to establish a buffer zone along Syria's southern border, according to U.S. and Jordanian officials. Training begun last year has been expanded and accelerated after rebel gains in the south, including capture of a stretch of the Jordanian-Syrian border near the Golan Heights, two military outposts and the country's main border crossing with Jordan."

Reuters: "A Syrian jet flew 20 km (12 miles) into Lebanon and fired a missile into a field on the outskirts of the border town of Arsal on Wednesday but caused no casualties, witnesses said. Lebanon has maintained a policy of 'dissociation' from Syria's two-year-old conflict. But many Lebanese officials feel their country is increasingly at risk of being dragged into the civil war, which the United Nations says has killed 70,000 people."

Washington Post: "North Korea on Wednesday banned South Korean workers from entering a joint industrial complex near the demilitarized zone, officials in Seoul said, jeopardizing a project that provides the only daily contact between the two Koreas amid an escalating threat of conflict on the peninsula."

Reuters: "Uganda has suspended the hunt for fugitive warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army fighters, blaming hostility towards foreign troops by Central African Republic rebels who seized power last month. Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. He and his commanders are accused of abducting thousands of children to use as fighters in a rebel army that earned a reputation for chopping off limbs as a form of discipline." ...

... Update: "The United States on Wednesday offered a reward of up to $5 million each for fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and some of his top aides in the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group."

ABC News: "The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist prison gang, has become one of the top focuses of authorities investigating the murders of two Texas prosecutors, sources told ABC News. Prosecutors from Kaufman County,Texas, had helped imprison dozens of Aryan Brotherhood of Texas members late last year...."