The Commentariat -- April 23, 2013
Andrew Rosenthal: "What's the difference between McVeigh and Tsarnaev? ... The real difference is that Mr. Tsarnaev is a Muslim, and the United States has since the 9/11 terrorist attacks constructed a separate and profoundly unequal system of detention and punishment that essentially applies only to Muslims. [Sen. Lindsey] Graham and others who are demanding that prosecutors treat Mr. Tsarnaev differently from Mr. McVeigh are not even trying very hard to disguise the fact that they're drawing distinctions based on religion and ethnicity." ...
... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post speaks with a number of legal experts, who, as Alan Dershowitz does explicitly, suggest Graham "should go back to school & study their constitutional law." CW: Graham isn't an idiot. He knows Tsarnaev can't be tried as an enemy combatant. So why would he keep repeating his ignorant mantra? Oh, it makes him sound tough against "those people," and he's running for re-election.
Here's a Surprise. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: Republicans blame Obama for flight delays, which would be even more impressive if their complaints were vaguely factual.
What do [White House] tours and flight delays have in common? They affect [Congress] members directly. -- White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer
... Meanwhile, in the Blame Obama for Everything pile-on, Michael Shear & Peter Baker of the New York Times concur with MoDo: Obama Is a Wuss: "After more than four years in the Oval Office, the president has rarely demonstrated an appetite for ruthless politics that instills fear in lawmakers. That raises a broader question: If he cannot translate the support of 90 percent of the public for background checks into a victory on Capitol Hill, what can he expect to accomplish legislatively for his remaining three and a half years in office?" ...
... Remember the Roll Call. Steve Benen, on April 18: "Four Democrats broke ranks, but even if they had stuck with their party, the proposal would have come up short -- because of the scope of Republican opposition.That's not opinion; it's just what happened.... On one side of the aisle, we saw Democratic senators trying to console heartbroken parents whose children were killed in Newtown. We also saw a Democratic White House ... condemning the Senate vote in passionate terms. On the other side of the aisle, we saw the Republicans' Senate leader, Kentucky's Mitch McConnell ... effectively dancing in the end zone." CW: why do New York Times reporters & columnists find it so difficult to count?
... Gene Robinson on the Congress's failure to pass background-check legislation: "Imagine what our laws would be like if the nation were losing 30,000 lives each year to Islamist terrorism.... When we say 'never again' about terrorism, we really mean it. When we say those words about gun violence, obviously we really don't." ...
... ** David Karol in the Washington Monthly: "... gun rights supporters and gun owners specifically ... are disproportionately white, male and old. Disproportionately white, male and old is a description that fits the Senate and, to a lesser degree, most other American political elites quite well. For example campaign contributors are disproportionately white male, and old too." In addition, unlike gun safety advocates, the old white guys belong to "social networks that facilitate collective action in favor of gun rights.... The structural and sociological factors working in favor of the gun rights side seem fairly durable, while the memories of the horrific Newtown shooting will continue to fade." Via Greg Sargent. ...
... CW: While Lindsey Graham is out there shredding the Bill of Rights, let us bear in mind that Graham was among the vast majority of Republican senators who voted against universal background checks. It is true that the bombs used in the Boston Marathon explosions were made of common household items (I own most of the bombs' ingredients myself). But the Tsarnaev brothers (allegedly) murdered MIT officer Sean Collier & gravely wounded transit officer Richard Donahue with guns they appear at this point to have obtained without background checks. As Jerry Markon, et al., of the Washington Post reported yesterday: "Authorities are trying to trace a handgun recovered from the suspects. Law enforcement sources said the effort has been delayed because the serial number was removed. Technicians are working to determine the numbers, after which the weapons will be traced by a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives facility in West Virginia." And, as Jonathan Allen of Reuters reported Sunday, "... neither brother appears to have been legally entitled to own or carry firearms where they lived, a fact that may add to the national debate over current gun laws." ...
... Update: see related commentary in today's Comments section.
... Meanwhile, in Other Stupid Republican Tricks ...
Why did the current system allow two individuals to immigrate to the United States from the Chechen Republic in Russia, an area known as a hotbed of Islamic extremism, who then committed acts of terrorism? -- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, April 22, 2013
Paul appears to suggest that U.S. immigration officials ... could have discerned that two minor children, after living in the United States for a decade, would eventually commit a terrorist act.... Moreover, Paul misidentified the region from which the Tsarnaev family emigrated. Paul is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; one would expect he would know more about such elementary geography. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
The Dog Ate Their Homework. Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "After the Federal Reserve lent more than $1 trillion to big banks during the 2008 financial crisis, Congress required the central bank to devise specific ways of protecting taxpayers when doling out emergency loans to financial institutions. But nearly three years after that overhaul became law, the Fed still has not established these regulations." ...
The Amazing Shrinking Deficit. Zach Carter of the Huffington Post: "Goldman Sachs economists predicted on Friday that the federal budget deficit will shrink over the next few years by more than previously projected. After beginning the year expecting a $900 billion deficit for 2013, Goldman's economic team ... has now cut the figure twice, this time to $775 billion. By the close of 2014, the economists said, the deficit will decline to $600 billion, and clock in at $475 billion at the end of 2015." CW: of course the good news will not inspire Congress or the President to do more about unemployment. ...
... Ed Kilgore follows up on Paul Krugman's column (linked here yesterday) on unemployment: "Now we are talking about millions [of people] ... who may well descend into the underclass for the rest of their lives because they haven't held a job lately. At some point, if this status produces anti-social behavior, I'm sure a lot of comfortably situated people will share some additional self-righteousness with these folk, and find it in their hearts to support even more public expenditures for incarcerating them than anyone proposed for helping them get back into the mainstream economy."
Ashley Southall of the New York Times: "Praising the work of young scientists and inventors at the third White House Science Fair, President Obama on Monday announced a broad plan to create and expand federal and private-sector initiatives designed to encourage children to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics":
Erik Wemple of the Washington Post urges the young men implicated in the New York Post's "Bag Men" headline to sue the NYP for defamation of character. He explains why they have a good case. ...
... Jon Stewart comments on media coverage of the search for the Boston Marathon bombers. (The CNN footage is classic):
News Ledes
New York Times: "A state senator, [Malcolm Smith,] and a New York City councilman, [Daniel Halloran,] pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges that they plotted to bribe Republican Party bosses to place the senator on the ballot in the city's mayoral race."
Washington Post: "Paul Kevin Curtis, the Mississippi man charged with sending ricin-laced letters to the White House, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge, was released on bond Tuesday about the same time that more of the deadly substance was found in Washington.... Curtis's release came a day after an FBI agent told a court that a search of his home turned up no ricin, nor did investigators find any evidence that he was making it.... Meanwhile, a second Mississippi man, [Everett Dutschke,] said the FBI was searching his home in connection with the ricin letter case...." ...
... Reuters UPDATE: "U.S. prosecutors dropped charges against a Mississippi man accused of sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama and a U.S. senator, according to a court order signed by a judge on Tuesday. The decision came hours after Paul Kevin Curtis was released from a Mississippi jail on bond.... Prosecutors said the 'ongoing investigation has revealed new information' without providing any addition detail."
New York Times: "As investigators sought answers to what or who radicalized the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, leading lawmakers on Tuesday said potentially important clues about at least one of the men may not have been widely shared within investigative circles months before the attack." ...
... CBS Boston: CBS correspondent John Miller "said there are still several unanswered questions about the murder of MIT police office[r] Sean Collier. '... The operating theory now in the investigation is [the Tsarnaev brothers] were short one gun. The older brother had a gun. They wanted to get a gun for the younger brother.... Officer Collier had a locking holster, it's like a three-way lock. If you don't know how to remove the gun, you're not going to get it out. There was apparently an attempt to yank it and they couldn't get it and left.'" According to the carjacking victim, who is ethnic Chinese & doesn't speak much English, the Tsarnaev brothers said they were not going to kill him because he "wasn't an American." ...
... Boston Globe: "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted to authorities Sunday that he and his brother were behind the Marathon bombings, according to a senior law enforcement official. Tsarnaev made his admissions to FBI agents who interviewed him at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.... He had not yet been given a Miranda warning. Tsarnaev's attorneys are certain to challenge the legal admissibility of those admissions.... But in an interview with the Globe, a senior police official said authorities are not worried about the initial admission to authorities being thrown out, because they have a strong witness: the man who was abducted by the Tsarnaev brothers last Thursday night." CW: thank you, Senior Police Official, for backing up my contention that Tsarnaev's Fifth Amendment rights were superfluous because of all the evidence against him. ...
... Washington Post: "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ... has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials...." ...
... AP: "Federal officials say the Boston Marathon bombing suspect’s medical condition has improved. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ... had been listed in serious condition at a Boston hospital since he was captured Friday. On Tuesday, the U.S. attorney's office said his condition had been upgraded to fair." ...
... Boston Globe: "A private funeral Mass was held today for Martin William Richard, the youngest of three people murdered in the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings." ...
... Boston Globe: "A private funeral service for MIT Police Officer Sean Collier was held today at St. Patrick's Church where the slain officer's casket was watched over by an honor guard from the two police departments where he once worked."
ABC News: "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ... reportedly told investigators the whole attack was devised from the Internet. The two brothers, he said, had no direction or financing from governments or rogue groups overseas. Authorities tell ABC News they now believe the two foreign-born brothers were inspired to violence by the Internet preaching's of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki ... who has been dead now for more than a year. They used instructions from an al Qaeda Internet magazine to make their pressure cooker bombs. And Dzhokhar, the younger of the brothers, may not have even known about the plot until a week or so before the attack, sources told ABC News." ...
... Grandstanding Alert. Reuters: "Top security officials face a grilling from lawmakers on Tuesday over whether authorities who have charged one man with the Boston Marathon bombings may have overlooked warning signs two years ago flagging the other suspect." ...
... AP: "Hundreds of people packed a hall at Boston University to say goodbye to Lu [Lingzi], a 23-year-old graduate student. She was one of three people killed in last Monday's bombings. Gov. Deval Patrick was among the people who showed up to listen to an hour of music and stories about Lu."
ABC News: "Two men face a bail hearing Tuesday after their arrest on charges of plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaida elements in Iran, authorities said.... Authorities were tipped off by members of the Muslim community...."
Reuters: "Syrian government forces have used chemical weapons - probably nerve gas - in their fight against rebels trying to force out President Bashar al-Assad, the Israeli military's top intelligence analyst said on Tuesday."
Reuters: "At least 26 people were killed when Iraqi security forces stormed a Sunni Muslim protest camp near Kirkuk on Tuesday, sparking a gun battle between troops and protesters that threatens to inflame sectarian tensions. The clashes were the bloodiest since thousands of Sunni Muslims began staging protests in December to demand an end to perceived marginalization of their sect by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government."
AP: "A car bomb targeted the French embassy in the Libyan capital early on Tuesday, wounding two French guards and causing extensive material damage, Libyan security officials said.... The blast wounded two French guards and set off a fire at the embassy entrance that engulfed some of the offices inside...."
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Reader Comments (14)
Gotta say it! I am sick and tired of our "Empire's" unforgiveable amorality. To think about charging a screwed up kid--who was obviously in his sick, paranoid, older brother's sway--with possessing "weapons of mass destruction" is, welllll......sick and paranoid. He is a shooter and a killer--like the lesser sicko at Columbine. Plus, it seems possible that the crazy older brother was a psychopath who killed before the Marathon:
Tsarnaev’s Ex-Friends Suspect Him in 2011 Murder <http://elink.thedailybeast.com/4e555bd0e018bee76c341cb4yqek.11mk/UXV3UsJSzCMoul5PC79ed>
Members of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s social circle found it odd when he did not attend the funeral of one of his closest friends, Brendan Mess, who was one of the victims of a gruesome triple murder in 2011. But now that the late Tsarnaev is one of the main suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, some of them wonder if his decision to skip his friend’s funeral was a sign that he was involved in the murder. “Tam wasn’t there at the memorial service, he wasn’t at the funeral, he wasn’t around at all,” said a mutual friend of Tsarnaev and Mess. “And he was really close with Brendan. That’s why it’s so weird when he said, ‘I don’t have any American friends.’ He was somebody who was in contact with Brendan on a daily basis.” Tsarnaev took his six-month trip to Russia—which is now being investigated—after Mess’s murder. Prosecutors are also reportedly investigating <http://elink.thedailybeast.com/4e555bd0e018bee76c341cb4yqek.11mk/UXV3UsJSzCMoul5QC3982> a link between the 2011 murder and Tsarnaev.
Let us calm down and get a handle on this before making the Boston Marathon killings into another "terrorist" attack. Jeebus. I really am embarrassed to be an American! We are so thoughtlessly, in the main, a nation of patriotic, gullible idiots. AMEN!
As posted on RSN from the Guardian, U.K.: "At the same time that investigators were in the midst of a high-profile manhunt for the marathon bombers that ended on Friday evening, 38 more Americans - with little fanfare - died from gun violence. One was a 22-year old resident of Boston. They are a tiny percentage of the 3,531 Americans killed by guns in the past four months - a total that surpasses the number of Americans who died on 9/11 and is one fewer than the number of US soldiers who lost their lives in combat operations in Iraq. Yet, none of this daily violence was considered urgent enough to motivate Congress to impose a mild, commonsense restriction on gun purchasers."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/416-gun-control-/17076-why-does-america-lose-its-head-over-terror-but-ignore-its-daily-gun-deaths
Was it yesterday that the story appeared about NYC wanting to raise the age from 19 to 21, limiting the purchase of cigarettes? Making, I suppose, a 19-year old's shopping list OK for guns, but cigarettes NO. Because cigarettes will kill you! Priorities, people. Priorities!
If my mother would have been hard pressed to tell the truth she would have confessed that she would have preferred to do almost anything else rather than have to rustle up the countless meals for our family. When the pressure cookers came on the market she seized one immediately and from then on we got pressure cooked everything. But before she got the hang of the thing we had a mishap. She had put in two chickens and perhaps not being watchful of the valve thermometer, it exploded causing the lid to fly off barely missing our dog who got so excited he peed on the floor. Bits of chicken were everywhere especially threads of it hanging from the ceiling. I remember this incident as terribly frightening. I thought of this after learning of the brothers crude, but effective pressure cooker bombs and recalled ,too, of the cluster bombs we have used in other countries. Today Robert Sheer in Truthdig has a good article discussing this very thing:
"To this day, antipersonnel weapons––the technologically refined version of the primitive pressure cooker fragmentation bombs exploded in Boston––maim and kill farmers and their children in the Southeast Asian killing fields left over from our country’s past experiment in genocide. An experiment that as a sideshow to our obsession with replacing French colonialism in Vietnam involved dropping 277 million cluster bomblets on Laos between 1964 and 1973."
And here's the point of said article:
"On Aug. 1, 2010, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, banning such weapons, became a matter of international law for the 111 nations, including 18 NATO members, that signed the agreement. The U.S. was not one of them. Current American policy, according to the Congressional Research Service report, is that “cluster munitions are available for use by every combat aircraft in the U.S. inventory; they are integral to every Army or Marine maneuver element and in some cases constitute up to 50 percent of tactical indirect fire support.”
"However, there is new legislation pending in Congress that would require the president to certify that cluster munitions would “only be used against clearly defined military targets” and not deployed “where civilians are known to be present or in areas normally inhabited by civilians.” Lots of luck with that.
PD,
I'll bet you never suspected that your mother was using a weapon of mass destruction to cook your dinners. You, in your naivete probably assumed she was simply using chicken to construct an IED. Little did you know.
Those rascally moms!
The revelation in the Reuters story about the very real possibility that the Tsarnaev brothers used weapons easily obtained without background checks will not make a dent in the gun control debate. That boat sailed, was scuttled by cowards and lies now in the bosom of the deep sea buried (to misquote Will S.). Robert Ballard and the entire faculty and staff of the Woods Hole Institute couldn't raise that sucker.
If it turns out to be true it will be placed alongside all the other facts despised and ignored by racists like Lindsey Graham and geographic imbeciles (and amateur racists) like Lil' Randy.
Facts are fungible for these guys. One "truth" is as good as another, and usually whatever manufactured truth they come up with is best. Facts are often messy things.
Anyway, who cares as long as they get their point across? First, these guys were Muslim, right? Automatic torture and death sentence. No trial. They came from Chechen, right? No? They didn't? Where? Kyrgy-something? Never heard of it. No matter, Chechnya is close enough. They're all fucking terrorists wherever they came from, right? No? Well, that doesn't matter either. We say they're all terrorists by the time they're three years old and that's the new truth. We're Republican and we have to blame someone and look tough doing it, and even better if we can blame Mooslims, so fuck off with your namby-pamby requirements that we abide by facts, law, and ethics.
And no gun control either!
Tsarnaev the elder was a bonafide dick. Seems like a pretty useless layabout. Found an American woman (although he hated Americans), exploited some likely misbegotten idealism on her part and stayed angry until he found an outlet. I suspect that anger found its fuel just like McVeigh found his, from people who seek out the ripe-to-act dickheads that will do their dirty work. Losers. Ferreting out Tsarnaev and his brother ( who I feel no compassion for - do what my brother says or kill a lot of people isn't a real choice) before they act is like playing whack-a-mole or trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Yeah, if his name hadn't been spelled wrong when he went to Russia, yada yada yada. Terror, in all its forms benefits the most from fear and pointless blustering. I'm not convinced preemptive action is reasonable in many of these situations. The thread is too thin and only looks obvious after the fact because the trail has already been traveled and the deed done. After the fact "we are deeply religious" sounds a lot better than we're loser dickheads.
I sincerely believe in religious tolerance. This is not about religion. I do not have tolerance for the subjugation of women as a religious tenant. Many of the most prolific religions spend a lot of energy dictating the subjugation of women, sexual and intellectual. Islam is clear on that concept ( as is Catholicism). OK this part is my soapbox. Ayaan Hirisi Ali's books "Infidel" or "Nomad" are real eye openers. Many people find her writing controversial - it surely made me think.
@JJG in re: bodice ripping. In my 20's I worked in a museum village. The period was 1860-1880 and I did the costuming. I consider myself somewhat of an expert on bodices of that period. The authentic ones have an inner lining with tiny hooks and eyes at about 1/2" or less intervals and either buttons or more hooks and eyes on the outer layer. You can imagine if you were somewhat lathered up, a person could get easily frustrated and just rip the damn thing. On the other end, the knickers mostly had open crotches. Go figure.
Howard Fineman has a good response to the right wing world blaming the President for misallocating the sequester cuts to the White Tours and air traffic controllers. The sequester itself expressly demands 8.4% cuts from each of hundreds of programs. The President has no authority to reallocate what Congress has expressly decreed. This was Congress's intentional and explicit action, not the President's.
Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/sequestration-playing-politics_n_3140300.html
Prepare ye for biblical tidal waves of dung from the asses of bulls.
A week from tomorrow is the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, which includes a library. My sources tell me that this library houses only bibles, books written by Bush ghost writers explaining how no one understands how great he is, and 345,678 copies of My Pet Goat. There will also be picture books and paintings painted in paint and crayon by the great man. There will also be an onslaught of revisionist history and more of the ongoing attempt to rewrite the horrors of the worst administration in American history.
Get ready for it. It'll be a gala day for ex-president Frumious Bandersnatch.
Originally I was going to run out and by myself a new pair of Wellies, but now I'm thinking haz-mat suit.
Re: It don't add up; "Disproportionately gun owners are old and white" and "People between the ages of 15 and 24 are most likely to be targeted by gun violence as opposed to other forms of violence."
So Sherlock, something is wrong with the above facts or I'm guessin' that most unregistered guns are in the hands of young males. Which makes me think that the old guys with registered guns are most afraid of young guys with unregistered guns. Otherwise why the need for guns? And if that holds water, why would the old guys be opposed to gun registering? You would think guys with registered guns would want stricter registration not less registration. My logic ties me up in knots.
@Kate: As the old jingle goes:
When uncertain
When in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and shout!
Kinda scary that any nut can easily get instructions how to build a bomb: internet, any number of anarchist manuals floating around, etc. Contrary to the wingers fondest dreams, there doesn't have to be an international conspiracy.
As far back as December 30,1905, former governor of Idaho Frank Stueunenberg opened the gate in front of his house which set off a bomb, killing him. A man known as Harry Orchard (real name, Albert Horsely) confessed to the crime. Bomhs in American history are hardly new.
It seems that Sacco and Vanzetti were implicated in bombings, too.
In the 1970's a left wing radical blew himself up building a bomb.
Then there was McVeigh.
Haven't seen much of this story in Empire News, but Al-Jazeera has had it up on their website for a few days now.
It appears that up to at least half of the 166 remaining detainees in Guantanamo Bay have been on a collective hunger strike. To the point where 100 new medical personnel had to be sent in to deal with the situation. These "prisoners" have yet to be charged after being held in prison cells for over a FUCKING decade. I'm not claiming these "prisoners" are angels by any means, but after a decade it seems we should be able to figure out what in the bloody hell we're going to do with them. It seems clear that the initial plan by Cheney et al. was just throw 'em in Cuba and forget about the poor bastards. Yet now even Obama can't assert his will by fulfilling his promise of closing down this national embarrassment. I realize it's complicated and Repugs want to chafe Obama's ass by resisting any progress, but seriously now.
I can't imagine being held against my will in a small foreign corner of the world for an entire decade without any indication another decade won't go by without any change. I'd probably either go insane or on a hunger strike just the others. Can you blame them?
And to consider that the US government labels the Cuban regime a "state sponsor of terror" and repeatedly reminds us of the "constant human rights violations" perpetuated by Castro's communist thugs.
But we're indefinitely detaining people for decades on end and then shoving tubes down their nose to keep them alive and to make sure they stay put.
A pretty good example we're setting for all of those other pseudo-democracy lovers out there. Our beacon of democracy bulb is getting dimmer by the day.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/04/2013423143235877471.html
Re; It"s yesterday forever; Safari, I could not agree more. We are a cartoon of our selves. Goya's cartoons; I believe you work out of Spain? In Madrid El Prado; Goya cartoons the human nature like no one else.