The Commentariat -- February 13
Yesterday, I linked to Joby Warrick's fascinating WashPo account of the behind-the-scenes workings of the Obama Administration as it wrestled with the rapidly-changing situation in Egypt. Today, here's an account by Helene Cooper and others of the New York Times: "A president who himself is often torn between idealism and pragmatism was navigating the counsel of a traditional foreign policy establishment led by Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Biden and Defense Secretary , against that of a next-generation White House staff who worried that the American preoccupation with stability could put a historic president on the wrong side of history." ...
... CW: if these reporters' accounts are relatively true -- and remember, they are stories that Administration CYA sources are spoonfeeding the media after Mubarak's unceremonious departure -- then we are better off with Obama as President than we would have been with Hillary Clinton. This sort of difference between Obama & Clinton, again -- if true -- is the reason I favored Obama over Clinton in the primary. ...
... Nicholas Kristof: "Even in the last month, we sometimes seemed as out of touch with the [Middle East] region’s youth as a Ben Ali or a Mubarak." Kristof "suggest[s] four lessons to draw from our mistakes." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "For Mr. Obama, the challenge may be to define the spread of liberty and democracy as a nonpartisan American goal, removing it from the political debate that has surrounded it in recent years." ...
... Mubarak Doesn't Think Much of Arab Democracy. Reuters: "Hosni Mubarak had harsh words for the United States and what he described as its misguided quest for democracy in the Middle East in a telephone call with an Israeli lawmaker [former cabinet minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer] a day before he quit as Egypt's president." ...
... Neil MacFarquhar, et al., of the New York Times: "Now with Hosni Mubarak out of power, there are growing calls for an accounting [of his finances] to begin. Within hours of Mr. Mubarak’s resignation on Friday, Swiss officials ordered all banks in Switzerland to search for — and freeze — any assets of the former president, his family or close associates. In Egypt, opposition leaders vowed to press for a full investigation of Mr. Mubarak’s finances. Tracing the money is likely to be difficult because business in Egypt was largely conducted in secret among a small group connected to Mr. Mubarak."
As we salute and we cheer the coming of democracy in Egypt, it is time for democracy to come to our nation’s capital.... Take the opportunity to talk to three people and say, 'We need to bring democracy to the people of the District of Columbia.' -- Vince Gray, Mayor of Washington, D.C. (Via Ben Smith)
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "A week from Tuesday, when the returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice has spoken during a court argument." ...
... CW: I personally dislike Harvard Law Prof. Noah Feldman, because I think he's an insufferably pompous ass, but his New York Times op-ed in defense of Supreme Court Justices' politicking is at least an interesting read on the history of Supremely judicial politicking, and it's getting a lot of buzz. Update: as reader Jim T. points out, "the extension of [Feldman's argument] is the excuse '...everybody does it.'"
Katy Steinmetz of Time: "The Transportation Security Administration ... is field testing a new technology ... called Automatic Target Recognition, or ATR, [which] displays only a generic stick-figure image, rather than the actual outline of the traveler being screened.... An image only pops up if there’s something unusual detected on the body -- otherwise there’s just a big green screen that says 'OK.' ..."
Right Wing News
Boehner Bats for Birthers: says people & members of Congress have a right to be ignorant:
News Ledes
New York Times: "A lawyer for victims of sexual abuse by priests says he plans to seek depositions from Archbishop Timothy R. Dolan and other church officials over the lawyer’s accusations that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, while Archbishop Dolan was its leader, moved $130 million off its books to avoid paying abuse claims."
Washington Post: "President Obama will ... propos[e] sharp cuts of his own in a fiscal 2012 budget blueprint that aims to trim record federal deficits by $1.1 trillion over the next decade. Obama would reach his target in part by raising taxes, an idea that Republicans refuse to consider. But two-thirds of the savings would come from spending cuts that are draconian by Democratic standards and take aim at liberal priorities, such as a popular low-income heating assistance program and community development block grants. Obama also targets the Pentagon ... by adopting $78 billion in savings proposed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. ...
... AP: "An administration official says President Barack Obama is proposing to cut $100 billion over a decade from the Pell Grant program through belt-tightening, but use the savings to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550."
AP: "Egypt's military leaders dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution Sunday, meeting two key demands of protesters.... The caretaker government held its first meeting since the president was ousted and before it began, workers removed a giant picture of Mubarak from the meeting room." New York Times story here. ...
... Al Jazeera: "Scuffles have broken out in Cairo's Tahrir Square as soldiers tried to remove activists from the epicentre of Egypt's uprising which resulted in the president stepping down. Hundreds of protesters remained in the square on Sunday and organisers said they would not leave until more of their demands are met. Meanwhile, normality was slowly returning to the rest of Egypt, at the start of the first working day since Hosni Mubarak was toppled during the weekend." AP story here. ...
... (London) Telegraph: "Hosni Mubarak used the 18 days it took for protesters to topple him to shift his vast wealth into untraceable accounts overseas, Western intelligence sources have said.
... AP: "Yemeni police have clashed with anti-government protesters demanding political reform and the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Several thousand protesters, many of them university students, tried to reach the central square in the capital of Sanaa on Sunday, but were pushed back by police using clubs. It was the third straight day of anti-government protests."
... New York Times: "The Palestinian leadership announced Saturday that it planned to hold presidential and parliamentary elections by September, apparently a response to the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt calling for greater democracy and government accountability." ...
... AP: "Bahrain's leaders promised Sunday to expand media freedoms in another apparent attempt to quell plans for the first major anti-government protests in the Gulf since the uprising in Egypt. The tiny kingdom of Bahrain is among the most politically volatile in the Gulf and holds important strategic value for the West as the home as the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet." ...
... AP: "Heavily outnumbered by riot police, thousands of Algerians defied government warnings and dodged barricades to rally in their capital Saturday, demanding democratic reforms a day after mass protests toppled Egypt's autocratic ruler." ...
... (London) Telegraph: "Internet providers were shut down and Facebook accounts deleted across Algeria on Saturday as thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested in violent street demonstrations."
AP: "US researchers said Friday they have found that people who used two specific varieties of pesticide were 2.5 times as likely to develop Parkinson's disease. The pesticides, paraquat and rotenone, are not approved for house and garden use."
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