The Commentariat -- April 6, 2012

CW: I'm half-back, which is not to say I've become a ball-carrier in my old age, although I do look as if the other team got the best of me. Thanks for all the well wishes. Despite the description of my appearance, I'm doing okay; my sight keeps coming & going, though, so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to read today. I just "approved" a passel of comments on the April 4 and 5 Commentariat. I haven't read them yet, but the ledes (which is all I've seen) makes it appear that the comments my system held up for approval are substantive & interesting, & I'll be reading them as soon as I can. In the meantime, I'd say they are well-worth your reading, too.

** "Embarrass the Future." Linda Greenhouse's most recent post is an absolute must-read -- she dissects the Supremes' antics in the ACA hearings & offers some possible reasons the strip-search decision came down when & as it did.

Florida, Where Jim Crow Never Died. Erika Wood in the New York Times: "Last spring, Florida made some changes to its election law.... Cloaked as technical tweaks, the new laws have the potential to swing the 2012 election [to Republicans].... There is a long and troubled history of voter discrimination in Florida." Naturally, America's Worst Governor, Rick Scott, is a major culprit in the latest disenfranchisement scandal. CW: We may be looking at at 2000 all over again. Gee, wonder what president the Five Supremes would elect this time?

War on Caterpillars. Karen Tumulty & David Nakamura of the Washington Post on Democrats' outreach to women & Republican denials that they have been waging a "war on women."

Paul Krugman: "... the ... reason the attacks on [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke from the right are so destructive is that they’re an effort to bully the Fed into doing exactly the wrong thing. The attackers want the Fed to slam on the brakes when it should be stepping on the gas; they want the Fed to choke off recovery when it should be doing much more to accelerate recovery.... I think that Fed officials, whether they admit it to themselves or not, are feeling intimidated — and that American workers are paying the price for their timidity."

Send in the Clowns. Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The man at the center of the scandal embroiling the General Services Administration — the one who insisted that the infamous Las Vegas planning conference had to be 'over the top' — was trying to supplant what previous hosts of the biennial conference had achieved. Jeffrey E. Neely initially approved a $300,000 budget for the October 2010 conference, but later authorized spending up to about $823,000. ...

... Gail Collins: "I will refrain from pointing out that there were much worse G.S.A. stories during the Bush administration, one involving the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.... In the present, the Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee announced plans to hold hearings on clown-and-cheesegate. The chairman, Representative John Mica of Florida, did acknowledge that no one in the administration had tried to impede the inspector general’s work or keep the results quiet. Perhaps he was thinking back on Lurita Doan, the Bush G.S.A. head, who claimed that attempts to examine contracts for fraud and waste were 'eroding the health of the organization' and compared the auditors to terrorists."

... Jon Stewart calls the GSA scandal a "disgrace to corruption":

... Here's the full video of the video that won a GSA-sponsored contest at the Las Vegas "conference." It's appalling:

Michael Rapaport of the Wall Street Journal: "Critics of the JOBS Act [which President Obama signed into law yesterday], which stands for Jumpstart Our Business Startups, say that easing regulations will lead to more financial problems and fraud, and make it more difficult for investors to detect those issues." ...

New York Times Editors: "Citing 'unsafe and unsound' foreclosure practices, the Federal Reserve said recently that it plans to penalize eight financial firms — HSBC’s United States bank division, SunTrust Bank, MetLife, U.S. Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, EverBank, OneWest and Goldman Sachs.... If recent history is any guide, regulators are more likely to offer the banks a way to avoid fines for harmful and egregious behavior. That means there will be no deterrent against future misbehavior."

"The Violence Card." Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public, in a New York Times op-ed: "To play the violence card — as many criminal-justice advocates have done since the Rodney King police brutality case of the early 1990s — is to suggest that black people should worry more about the harm they do to themselves and less about how victimized they are by others. The national outrage over the Trayvon Martin case has prompted some recent examples.... Racial criminalization ... stigmatizes black people as dangerous, legitimizes or excuses white-on-black violence, conflates crime and poverty with blackness, and perpetuates punitive notions of 'justice' — vigilante violence, stop-and-frisk racial profiling and mass incarceration — as the only legitimate responses."

Right Wing World *

Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, whose wealth has become a central issue in the 2012 campaign, has taken advantage of an obscure exception in federal ethics laws to avoid disclosing the nature and extent of his holdings.... Several outside experts across the political spectrum ... say Romney’s disclosure is the most opaque they have encountered, with some suggesting the filing effectively defeats the spirit of disclosure requirements." CW: It is really up to the press to hound Romney on his finances. & the less he discloses the more this should be an issue.

What's Good for Me Is a Disqualifier for Thee. Benjy Sarlin of TPM: "Romney told an audience [in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania] that [Barack] Obama may have spent 'too much time at Harvard,' according to NBC. Obama, who has a law degree from Harvard, spent three years there. Romney, who earned both a Harvard law degree and business degree, spent four years at the university and was by all accounts a motivated student who was happy with the institution during his time there. Three of his sons attended Harvard and he has donated over $50,000 to the university. His campaign lists over a dozen advisers with Harvard ties...." ...

... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed posts this video of the 2006 version of Willard talking about the "terrific" Harvard program that allowed him to get two degrees at once:

* Where opacity is a last refuge of scoundrels. (In Right Wing World, the scoundrels have many refuges.)

Local News

Daniela Altimari & Jon Lender of the Hartford Courant: "Connecticut is poised to become the 17th state to abolish the death penalty after the Senate passed a bill early Thursday morning repealing capital punishment. The 20-16 vote came at 2:05 a.m., after more than 10 hours of debate. The measure now moves to the House of Representatives, where it has broad support. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has pledged to sign the bill once it reaches his desk." ...

    ... CW: I just watched (or, actually, mostly listened to) the 2010 film "Conviction," starring Hillary Swank as a blue-collar worker without a high-school diploma who gets her GED, then puts herself thru college & law school to save her ne'er-do-well brother from life imprisonment for a murder the Swank character believes he did not commit. Based quite closely on the true story of Betty Anne & Kenny Waters, the murder & conviction occurred in Connecticut's neighboring state of Massachusetts. One of the heavies in the true story: Martha Coakley, who as the state's new AG, refused to overturn Kenny's conviction, despite DNA evidence showing he was not the perp. I won't be a spoiler, but the afterword, which appears right before the credits roll, speaks to the death penalty. Here's the trailer:

 ... Here's a 2010 New York Times profile by Robin Pogrebin of Betty Anne Waters. If you want to know what happened to Kenny, the answer is here. ...

... AND here's a profile of Betty Anne by Nina Burleigh of Elle.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Emergency crews searched the charred remains of a Virginia Beach apartment complex Friday after a fighter jet crashed into it just after takeoff in what Navy officials called a 'catastrophic mechanical malfunction.' Two Navy pilots — a student and an instructor from nearby Naval Air Station Oceana — ejected just before the jet careened into the apartment complex, demolishing sections of some buildings and engulfing others in flames. Some 40 apartment units were damaged or destroyed in the crash, but hours later no fatalities had been reported." Photos here.

New York Times: "Tuareg rebels who overran much of northern Mali after disaffected soldiers toppled the government in the south declared an independent state called Azawad on Friday, cementing the division of the former French colony as its neighbors began drawing up plans for military action to tackle the twin crises of the coup and the apparent secession."

New York Times: "The United States expressed concern about the future of the impoverished African nation of Malawi on Friday after a swirl of reports that its heart-attack stricken president [Bingu wa Mutharika] had died, suggesting that the delay in an official announcement reflected possible succession problems."

New York Times: "... analysts predict that when the first-quarter reporting season starts in earnest next week, American companies will show the slowest rate of growth in operating earnings in three years."

Washington Post: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Thursday defended President Obama’s comments urging the Supreme Court to uphold the health-care law, telling a panel of federal judges that courts should show 'deference' to the 'legislative judgements of Congress.'Holder, responding to an unusual demand for his views on whether federal judges have the authority to strike down federal laws, affirmed that they have such authority."

Reuters: "Payrolls rose far less than expected in March, keeping the door open for further monetary policy support from the Federal Reserve, even as the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low of 8.2 percent. Employers added 120,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, the smallest increase since October." ...

... New York Times: President Obama & Mitt Romney disagree about the meaning of a weaker-than-expected jobs report.

AP: "A Marine who criticized President Barack Obama on his Facebook page has committed misconduct and should be dismissed, a military board recommended late Thursday. The Marine Corps administrative board made the decision after a daylong hearing at Camp Pendleton for Sgt. ."

Reuters: "Coca-Cola Co is dropping its membership in a conservative national advocacy group that supports 'Stand Your Ground' laws such as the one being used as a defense in the Florida killing of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. The move by the world's biggest soft drink maker comes as corporate America faces increased scrutiny from consumers and shareholder activists over lobbying and political spending."

AP: "United Arab Emirates authorities temporarily detained members of a U.S.-funded democracy group as they tried to leave the country after their office was ordered closed, U.S. officials said Thursday."

AP: "A U.S. Coast Guard cutter poured cannon fire into a Japanese ghost ship that had been drifting since the last year’s tsunami, sinking the vessel in the Gulf of Alaska and eliminating the hazard it posed to shipping and the coastline."

The Commentariat -- April 5, 2012

The Constant Weader Is Out Sick Today

If you want to post links to articles you find interesting, please do. Because your comment might get stuck in my annoying Approval Limbo, you might not want to bother to write long, thoughtful comments; if I malinger for days, your thoughts could linger for days unread.

The Commentariat -- April 4, 2012

CW: I'm having eye surgery -- again -- today, so I don't know when I'll be able to post again because I don't know when I'll be able to see again. When I start up again, posting will probably be light as I'm supposed to rest a lot. So keep coming back. I'll get back up to speed as soon as I can.

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer takes a quick look at today's New York Times op-eds and concentrates on Ross Douthat's amazing post on "The Virtues of the Super PAC." The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. Since I compare the Times Opinion page to "The Onion," I suppose I should tell you that this is an "Onion" report, not the Times' daily podcast:

... AND contra Douthat, Fred Wertheimer writes in a Washington Post op-ed that "the only good news about the super PACs flooding the 2012 presidential race" is that "these vehicles for corruption can be eliminated. Congress can pass legislation to end these candidate-specific super PACs that is well within the bounds of Citizens United."

... Trevor Trimm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes on an important ACLU investigation of warrantless cell phone tracking. Trimm also covers the Obama administration's "absurd" pretense that the U.S. might not have a drone surveillance program, and on the FBI's "bending the rules" to surveil Americans. CW: if you were waiting for Big Brother to arrive, turn around. He might be following you.

Don't miss yesterday's comments, especially the last -- a heart-rending memoir by Julie in Massachusetts & a reminder of why we keep rowing against the current.

Your Thought for the Day (thanks to Akhilleus, who I assume is not a Mithraist but perhaps is a Dionysian):

** CW: An excellent post by Andrew Cohen of The Atlantic on his "final thoughts" on the Supreme Court's hearing of oral arguments on the ACA. A good deal of this is review of what I've linked here or written on NYTX, but Cohen puts it all together. Especially if you have been persuaded that the ACA might not be constitutional, you should read Cohen's post. ...

... Maureen Dowd adds nothing to the argument but at least she's finally writing about a substantive political matter, & her characterizations of the Supremes are on target: "Inexplicably mute 20 years after he lied his way onto the court, Clarence Thomas didn’t ask a single question during oral arguments for one of the biggest cases in the court’s history." (If you'd forgotten about that perjury, here's a reminder.) ...

     ... Still, no matter how warmed-over-blogosphere her column, the right -- hard and soft -- thinks Dowd overstepped her bounds in criticizing the Court. Apparently "the way things should be in the opinionator realm" is that opinion writers may not write opinions that express a right-of-center view.

... Robert Pear & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times on what GOP legislators would do about health insurance if the Supremes strike the ACA: "Beyond some familiar ideas and slogans about 'patient-centered health care,' the Republicans concede that they have far to go to come up with a comprehensive policy to fill the gap that could be left by a Supreme Court ruling this summer."

** James Downie of the Washington Post on President Obama's budget speech yesterday, and how he used facts to make his points about the Ryan/GOP House budget -- in contrast to Ryan's speech on his budget -- a speech in which Ayn Ryan made up stuff. Video of the speech is at the top of yesterday's News Ledes. ...

... New York Times Editors: "President Obama’s fruitless three-year search for compromise with the Republicans ended in a thunderclap of a speech on Tuesday, as he denounced the party and its presidential candidates for cruelty and extremism. He accused his opponents of imposing on the country a 'radical vision' that 'is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity.'”

... Ezra Klein: "If Obama can convince the electorate that taxes go to fund services they actually care about, and the Republicans are unwisely committed to gutting those services in order to cut taxes on the richest Americans, then he's likely to win. If Mitt Romney is able to persuade them that taxes are mostly wasted, and that spending should be gutted to pay for large tax cuts, then he's likely to win." ...

... David Dayen of Firedoglake: Obama boasts about shifting right. "... the President made a very cogent case against Paul Ryan’s budget.... And he made a very good case that, in a choice between the right and the middle, the middle position, his position, should be preferable. That this leaves out an entire side of the argument should be quite obvious. This isn’t just on Obama, by the way. We’ve had a rightward shift in our politics for the last forty years. Obama didn’t really try to change that, instead positioning himself in the middle on policy, instead of shifting where the middle is perceived. But what major Democratic political figure HAS tried to change that over those forty years?" ...

... CW: I agree wholeheartedly with Dayen's caveat. But I will say this: if President Obama had been giving this kind of speech throughout his presidency, we might not be in the mess we're in. And we might not have a Republican House. Where was this guy? A part of the speech I especially enjoyed actually came in the Q&A session (I think), when Obama pointedly told the assembled reporters that he-said/she-said journalism is inherently untruthful; that the middle ground is not halfway between far right and the center, & they should quit reporting it as such.

Steve Benen: President Obama's remarks about the constitutionality of the ACA have "apparently sent some Republicans looking for the fainting couch. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) told Fox News Radio that Obama may have been 'trying to intimidate the Supreme Court' with comments Smith feared may have been 'threatening.' Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), still trying to prove his hysterical bona fides to his party base, sounded a similar alarm, saying it's 'unprecedented' for any president to try to 'intimidate the Supreme Court.' Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) parroted the same talking points... It's almost as if a memo went out -- saying in reference to the president's comments,'"It is threatening, it is intimidating.'" ...

... Greg Sargent: "If you really want to hear an 'attack' on the court, go check out F.D.R.'s 1937 address, in which he accused the Court of wanting to banish the nation to a 'No-Man’s Land of final futility.' Or check out his Fireside Chat about his court-packing scheme, in which he warned that it was time to 'save the Constitution from the Court' and accused the courts of operating in 'direct contradiction of the high purposes of the framers of the Constitution.'”

... Andy Rosenthal of the New York Times: "In the case of the individual mandate, the issue is whether this court will sweep aside deeply established judicial precedent and cripple the government’s ability to enforce the constitution’s commerce clause. The mandate is clearly within that established legal framework. It’s also troubling that some justices are more focused on whether they like this law than whether this law is constitutional. That is the argument Mr. Obama needs to make. His comments [Monday] were a bad start."

Deborah Solomon, now of Bloomberg News: "The phrase 'job-killing regulation' has become a standard part of the political lexicon this campaign season, most often used to disparage President Barack Obama's energy and environmental policies. But a new report suggests we ought to take claims of regulatory-related unemployment with a grain of salt. The Institute for Political Integrity, a nonpartisan think tank associated with the New York University School of Law, finds many of the studies purporting to show mass job losses -- or gains -- from environmental rules use poorly executed economic models that do not accurately measure true costs and benefits." ...

... Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "... the Obama administration has often been more cautious on regulatory issues than the F.D.A. Its top officials — many of whom have been at the agency for decades — contend that their decisions should be divorced from politics and based solely on assessments of the science." ...

... Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "... the real importance of the story is that, if the reporting is correct, the White House has made a serious mistake: It has focused too much on criticism from talk radio cranks and yahoos, instead of supporting good policy, even if it might yield 24 hours of attacks from the right.... The possibility that [talkshow hosts will] freak out over policy should be the last thing that the White House considers."

AP (via the NYT): "Surging above $1 trillion, U.S. student loan debt has surpassed credit card and auto-loan debt. This debt explosion jeopardizes the fragile recovery, increases the burden on taxpayers and possibly sets the stage for a new economic crisis."

Right Wing World

Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post watched Mitt Romney's victory speeches last night last night & couldn't help notice the Etch-a-Sketch is already at work: "It is ... hard to watch Etch-a-Sketch Romney and not think about his long record of pandering.... There [are] those clips in which Romney insists that he is 'severely conservative,' those in which he positions himself right of Rick Perry on immigration, those in which he claims to be enthused about the radical restructuring of the federal government that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) calls a budget, or those in which he obfuscates on climate change. Even the more vigorous shaking of the Etch-a-Sketch that we are bound to see from Romney won’t prevent Obama from replaying all of that film over and over again between now and November."

Yesterday Dave Weigel of Slate, who lives in Washington, D.C., cast his vote for Jon Huntsman. Weigel explains why.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Mitt Romney tightened his grip on the Republican nomination on Tuesday with a sweep of the primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia, and found himself in his first direct engagement with President Obama, an unmistakable signal that the general election would not wait for internal Republican politics. Mr. Romney emerged from the evening with substantial gains in delegates and a growing perception that he was winning over previously reluctant elements of the party." Washington Post story here.

New York Times: "In a move likely to alter treatment standards in hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide, a group of nine medical specialty boards plans to recommend on Wednesday that doctors perform 45 common tests and procedures less often, and to urge patients to question these services if they are offered. Eight other specialty boards are preparing to follow suit with additional lists of procedures their members should perform far less often."

Washington Post: "The standoff between the federal government and a high-profile Arizona sheriff accused of discriminating against Hispanics escalated Tuesday when settlement negotiations fell through and the Justice Department threatened to sue the sheriff. Justice officials have accused Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s department of illegally detaining Hispanic residents and denying them critical services in jail."

AFP: "Syrian forces stormed several rebel bastions on Wednesday despite a truce pledge, as Russia predicted the opposition would never defeat President Bashar al-Assad's army...." Al Jazeera story here.

The New York Times reports on possible motivations of alleged killer One L. Goh, accused of killing seven people, including two Korean-Americans, and wounded three more at a small Oakland, California, college. "On Wednesday, Mr. Goh is scheduled to be arraigned on charges of murder, attempted murder and kidnapping...."

Guardian: "The presidents of Somalia's Olympic committee and football federation are among at least six people killed in a suicide attack on the country's newly reopened national theatre."

AP: "The first detachment of 200 U.S. Marines has arrived in northern Australia, where a permanent joint training hub is taking shape as part of a U.S. shift of military strength in the Asia-Pacific region."

AP: "Campus police pepper-sprayed as many as 30 demonstrators after Santa Monica College students angry over a plan to offer high-priced courses tried to push their way into a trustees meeting, authorities said."

Guardian: "Yahoo is reportedly preparing to announce a massive round of layoffs as the troubled internet company struggles to turn around its fortunes."