The Commentariat -- June 18
President Obama's weekly address celebrates fathers:
... AP story by Erica Werner here.
I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. With the Anthony Weiner story behind us, here's hoping this site will no longer be a magnet for predators. I'll be on the road, so I may not be available to immediately control the comments. If a serious problem develops, I'll just have to shut down comments altogether till I get where I'm going & can more closely monitor the comments pages.
"It Isn't 'Hostilities' if the People You're Bombing Don't Shoot Back." Amy Davidson of the New Yorker joins the crowd of opinionators who can read English sentences and are appalled at the Obama Administration's twisted claims that the Libyan conflict is not subject to the War Powers Resolution. ...
... Ha! Charlie Savage of the New York Times: " rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in without Congressional authorization.... Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to 'hostilities.' Under the , that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20. But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of 'hostilities.'”
Say What? John Aravosis of AmericaBlog: White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells Netroots Nation that a well-known 1996 questionnaire in which Barack Obama said he favored gay marriage "was actually filled out by someone else, not the President." With video of Pfeiffer making his unbelievable assertion and this reproduction of the "fake" questionnaire:
... CW: See Answer to Question 6. That sure does look like Obama's signature to me. ...
... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Liberal activists gave White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer a chilly reception on Friday at an online political conference as he tried to defend the Obama administration’s policies on gay marriage, Afghanistan and tax cuts. To heckling and some loud boos, Pfeiffer drove home two themes to activists attending the Netroots Nation conference: change is hard and installing a Republican in the White House would be much worse than reelecting President Obama." ...
... Here's a related report from Michael O'Brien of The Hill.
Associated Press: it's suddenly pretty difficult to tell where the AARP stands on Social Security, which comes as a shock to other advocates for the elderly.
Just Plain Mean. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: The "last extension of unemployment benefits — typically received in weeks 80 through 99 of unemployment — is paid for entirely with federal money and does not affect state budgets. But because of ideological opposition and other legislative priorities, Arizona and a handful of other states, like Wisconsin and Alaska, have not" made a minor change to their existing statutes which would "keep the program going."
David Carr & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "For the last two years, David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor who spent three decades fighting to prove the innocence of others, has been locked in a battle to do the same for himself. It hasn't gone as well." Here's an outline of the cases of those freed because of the work of Protess & his students.
CW: I have not been covering the controversy over a study, released by the ostensibly nonpartisan McKinsey and Co., mostly because the details of what's wrong with the study are (a) a deep, dark secret and (b) get pretty much into the weeds. (I did write a comment to Tom Friedman, who relied on the McKinsey report, to the effect that his commentary was intrinsically flawed, inasmuch as the study on which he based his analysis was subject to serious question. Not surprisingly, my comment was buried on a back page.) Anyway, Steve Benen demonstrates why the McKinsey controversy matters: conservatives who know the study results may be bogus are using it anyway to "prove" the Affordable Care Act is a bad deal.
News Ledes
Speaker John Boehner & President Obama on the course at Andrews AFB today. AP photo via ABC News.
President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Vice President Biden & Ohio Gov. John Kasich will play golf today. Washington Post story here. Update: here's the play-by-play from Politico.
New York Times: "President of launched a broadside against his coalition allies on Saturday, saying the motives behind their presence were suspect and even complaining that their weaponry is polluting his country." Guardian: "The US and other foreign powers are engaged in preliminary talks with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the war in Afghanistan, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said. It is the first official confirmation of US involvement in such negotiations." Story has been updated. ...
... Guardian: "The Afghan government will struggle to pay its bills 'within a month' after the International Monetary Fund rejected proposals for resolving the Kabul Bank scandal, western officials have warned."
Reuters: "Oracle is seeking between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion in a patent lawsuit against Google over the lucrative smartphone market, according to a court filing.Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes upon Oracle's Java patents."
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