The Commentariat -- July 3

Okay, for you royal watchers & wedding sentimentalists, here's a doubly-whammy. If the bride, Princess Charlene, looks sad -- and she does -- it might be because a third woman came forward this past week claiming she had a child by the groom, Prince Albert II of Monaco. Here's the New York Times wedding announcement & here's an AP story on today's ceremony. This Reuters story mentions the 13th-century "Curse of the Grimaldis":

     ... The couple were married Friday in a civil ceremony. A video of the civil ceremony & link to the news story are under the Soaps near the bottom of the right column.

Now, to our own travails:

Maureen Dowd doesn't quite know what to make of the unraveling of the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. She concludes, "When a habitual predator faces off against a habitual liar, the liar will most likely lose, even if it is the rare case when she is telling the truth." ...

... I've added a comments page for Dowd's column on Off Times Square. You can write on something else, if you prefer. My comment got whacked again, so Off Times Square is the only place to read it. ...

... Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times profile Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, whose office has experienced a string of high-profile losses & whose management style is controversial.

News You Can Use. David Streitfeld of the New York Times: "Two of the nation’s biggest lenders, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, are quietly modifying loans for tens of thousands of borrowers who have not asked for help but whom the banks deem to be at special risk."

NEW. Matt Yglesias on the Constitutional option on the debt ceiling: "It’s not clear that anyone would have standing to sue if Obama refused to abide by the debt ceiling. But it seems perfectly clear that if the government promised to pay you to do some work, and then just doesn’t pay you that you have grounds for a legal complaint. The president must 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed' and the appropriations bills are real laws. [Emphasis mine.] Congress passed them." CW: this is what makes sense to me. Of course, I'm not a lawyer & I don't think Yglesias is, either.

Ghost of the Gipper -- Obama Assumes the Reagan Persona

Karen Garcia one-ups Krugman's post of yesterday and finds "Four Reaganisms in One Paragraph" of President Obama's radio address. "The good news, according to the One, is not the fact that he is fighting back, but that Democrats and Republicans are agreeing on the same fake problem."...

... David Rogers: "... a POLITICO review of [President Ronald] Reagan’s own budget documents shows that the Republican president repeatedly signed deficit-reduction legislation in the 1980’s that melded annual tax increases with spending cuts just as President Barack Obama is now asking Congress to consider.... The rich diversity of Reagan-era tax changes is most striking, impacting even such conservative priorities now as the estate tax. At the same time, Reagan also signed laws to double the federal gasoline tax to build more roads and increase payroll taxes to stabilize Social Security." ...

... Steve Benen. On taxes, this puts Reagan slightly to Obama’s left.... Doesn’t it bother Republicans, just a little, that Barack Obama is more in line with the Reagan legacy than they are?" ...

... Constant Weader: it sure bothers Democrats like me. ...

... BooMan: "... today's conservatives ... don't see Reagan's presidency as the ideal. They see it as the beginning. He was the great man who got the ball rolling, not the man who governed (Goldilocks-style) just right.... So, telling Republicans how reasonable Reagan was doesn't impress today's Republicans; it just reminds them of how much progress they've made. And I'm tired of writing things that make Republicans feel warm all over."

The War on Terror Everybody. Adam Estes of The Atlantic: "Somalia is now the sixth country over which the United States is flying attack drones." And boots on the ground: "Somalia's defense minister says that American military forces touched down to collect the bodies of the insurgents."

He’s a rotten prick.... This is all about him being a bully and a punk. I wanted to punch him in his head.... You know who he reminds me of? Mr. Potter from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ the mean old bastard who screws everybody.... He’s mean-spirited. He’s angry. If you don’t do what he says, I liken it to being spoiled, I’m going to get my way, or else. -- New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney on Gov. Chris Christie, who line-item vetoed many state programs for the disadvantaged. Thanks to commenter Marvin Schwalb for this rhetorical gem

Aristocracy Watch. Pradnya Joshi of the New York Times: "... the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. Some chief executives have consistently taken token salaries — sometimes, $1 — choosing instead to rely on their ownership stakes for wealth. These stock riches don’t show up on the current pay lists.... Warren E. Buffett, for instance, saw his stock holdings rise last year by 16 percent, to $46 billion.... The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less."

... Aristocracy Watch, Con'd. E. J. Dionne: "The United States Supreme Court now sees its central task as comforting the already comfortable and afflicting those already afflicted." ...

... Lincoln Caplan, the New York Times editorial writer for legal affairs, writes a powerful editorial condemning the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Connick v. Thompson which overturned a $14MM jury award for John Thompson, who was the victim of serial prosecutorial misconduct. Caplan concludes, "The capital punishment system in this country has put many innocent people on death row. It cannot be fixed and should be repealed everywhere. With this ruling, the court made it even more likely that innocent people will be railroaded by untrained prosecutors — with the terrible prospect of their being put to death for crimes they did not commit."

** Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly: "... the Department of Justice filed a brief in federal court employee Karen Golinski's federal court challenge, supporting her lawsuit seeking access to equal health benefits for her wife and arguing strongly that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional in terms unparalleled in previous administration statements.... Unlike in other cases where DOJ has stopped defending DOMA in accordance with President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder's decision that Section 3 of DOMA -- the federal definition of marriage -- is unconstitutional, DOJ lawyers today made an expansive case in a 31-page filing that DOMA is unconstitutional."

Bibi's Big Fat Greek Wedding. Barak Ravid of Haaretz: Israeli PM Benjamin "Netanyahu’s personal investment in his relationship over the past year-and-a-half with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in which he increased diplomatic ties with the floundering European nation seems to have put the final nail in the Gaza flotilla’s coffin." CW: see also today's Ledes on arrest of flotilla captain.

Andy Greenberg of Forbes: "If Visa Europe and MasterCard Europe haven’t re-opened payment WikiLeaks by next Thursday, the group and its payment provider DataCell plan to file a complaint with the E.U. Commission against the two companies as well as the Danish payment processor Teller, according to Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, the Icelandic lawyer for WikiLeaks and DataCell." In this knockoff "ad," WikiLeaks claims the financial institutions have cost it $15MM:

Right Wing World *

Vicki Needham of The Hill: Congressional Democrats & the Obama Administration expected smooth sailing for three trade deals the White House sent to Congress last week, but House Republicans walked out of the committee hearing on the markup. Here's why: "GOP lawmakers are opposing the decision to include Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which helps retrain workers displaced by foreign trade, as part of the South Korean deal, insisting, instead, that TAA be considered separately."  CW: They don't want to retrain displaced American workers???? Can we just face it? Republicans hate people. The 2012 Democratic campaign theme for 2012 should be "Republicans: They're just not that into you."

Ryan Reilly of TPM: "The sponsor of an Ohio bill which restricts access to the ballot box was arrested back in April on drunk driving charges.... On April 23, an Indiana state trooper pulled Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, [a Republican,] over for a burned out headlight.... After failing three separate field sobriety tests, Mecklenborg allegedly refused to take a breath test and was placed under arrest. A blood test later revealed that he had recently taken a Viagra.... Mecklenborg was accompanied by a 26-year-old woman, who a local blogger claims has 'personal connections' with Concepts Show Girls strip club, which is right near where Mecklenborg was arrested." CW: since the police almost certainly confiscated Mecklenborg's driver's licence, he no long has a voter ID.

* Where the facts occasionally kick the deserving in the ass. 

News Ledes

CNN: Speaking at Aspen, former President Bill Clinton urged the White House "not to blink" in the debt ceiling negotiations & said President Obama should stand his ground.&

AP: "Greek authorities have arrested the captain of a boat that is part of a Gaza-bound flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, officials said yesterday."

AP: "Hundreds of barrels of crude oil spilled into Montana's Yellowstone River after an ExxonMobil pipeline beneath the riverbed ruptured, sending a plume 25 miles downstream and forcing temporary evacuations, officials said. The break near Billings in south-central Montana fouled the riverbank and forced municipalities and irrigation districts Saturday to close intakes."

AP: On Friday Commander Christopher Ferguson, co-pilot Douglas Hurley, Rex Walheim and Sandra Magnus will make NASA's 135th and final shuttle flight on board Atlantis. "It will be years before the United States sends its own spacecraft up again."