The Commentariat -- October 1, 2014
Internal links & graphic removed.
Scarier & Scarier. Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "A security contractor with a gun and three prior convictions for assault and battery was allowed on an elevator with President Obama during a Sept. 16 trip to Atlanta.... The private contractor first aroused the agents' concerns when he acted oddly and did not comply with their orders to stop using a cellphone camera to record the president in the elevator.... The Secret Service director, Julia Pierson, asked a top agency manager to look into the matter but did not refer it to an investigative unit that was created to review violations of protocol and standards...." In hearings Tuesday, Pierson told House members that she brief President Obama 100 percent of the time when his security is breached. But she didn't tell him about the Atlanta incident. ...
... AND Scarier. Carol Leonnig: "The man who jumped over the White House fence and sprinted through the main floor of the mansion could have gotten even farther had it not been for an off-duty Secret Service agent who was coincidentally in the house and leaving for the night. The agent who finally tackled Omar Gonzalez had been serving on the security detail for President Obama's daughters and had just seen the family depart via helicopter minutes earlier. He happened to be walking through the house when ... the intruder dashed through the main foyer.... [Julia] Pierson did not reveal during her testimony that the agent who tackled him was not actually assigned to the post where he confronted Gonzalez." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: Democrats notice that Republicans are using "concern for the President's security" to undermine the President. No kidding.
... New York Times Editors: "... the Secret Service has revealed itself to be as bungling and dysfunctional as many other once-revered Washington institutions. It not only failed in its most fundamental task of protecting the White House premises, but it has failed to properly investigate threats after they occurred, and has not been forthcoming with the public about those lapses. The agency initially said [Omar] Gonzalez was subdued at the White House door, only admitting the truth about the extent of his intrusion after it was uncovered on Monday by Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post. 'I wish to God you protected the White House like you're protecting your reputation here today,' Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat of Massachusetts, told the Secret Service director, Julia Pierson, at a hearing Tuesday morning. Ms. Pierson was unimpressive in her testimony at the hearing on security breaches, delivering passive, pro forma answers and failing to persuade questioners of either party that she has either the strategy or the will to right an essential but troubled agency." ...
... Frank Bruni: "The guard dogs didn't guard. The alarm boxes didn't alarm. The front door couldn't be locked automatically as he sprinted toward it, because it wasn't rigged that way. We can fly drones over Pakistan, but we can't summon a proper locksmith to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?... In the end, it's people who make the difference. The Secret Service needs better ones." ...
... Dana Milbank: "... Julia Pierson "was brought in to change the frat-house culture seen in the Miami and Amsterdam. She claims to have improved that problem ('We've instituted an Office of Professional Integrity'), but she's now allowing an equally pernicious culture to flourish -- a culture of concealment and coverup." ...
... CW: Milbank doesn't mention that Pierson neglected to tell Congress that the agent who stopped Gonzalez was off-duty & just happened to be near the Green Room when he saw & tackled the intruder. It was after Pierson's testimony that the press revealed this relevant detail, which she chose not to share. Nor does Milbank note that Pierson lied to Congress when she said she informs the President "100 percent of the time" of security breaches: she didn't tell him about the Atlanta incident, according to Leonnig. So, more "concealment & coverup," including an outright lie to a Congressional committee. ...
... Update: Josh Voorhees of Slate: "Tuesday's hearing ... was an example of lawmakers doing a job only they could do, not in spite of their desire for political theater but because of it." CW: Voorhees makes all the same points I do above. ...
... Charles Pierce blames the attacks on President Obama on "a dark energy on the other side."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Steve M. points out that the Washington Post editorial board thought it would be an excellent idea to publish an op-ed by a former Secret Service agent who suggests that the Allen West would be a "perfect" choice to head up he Secret Service. Steve mentions a couple of things to suggest West might not be the best person for the job....
... CW: It is hard to credit a newspaper as a serious journalistic enterprise when its editors make such decisions. The media not only fail to ID the "complete fking loons" as such, as Charles Pierce complained recently, but a major outlet like the Post is actually encouraging the looniest among them. I guess this is what we can expect from the Post's new publisher & former Reagan aide Fred Ryan. ...
... digby: "But if the fellow who wrote [the] op-ed for the Washington Post is indicative of the sort of people who are protecting the president, I am now truly afraid for him.
Jonathan Cohn: "The latest legal challenge to Obamacare just won a round in court. On Tuesday, a federal district judge ruled in favor of a lawsuit challenging the federal government's authority to provide millions of people with tax credits for buying private health insurance. The decision, in a case called Pruitt v. Burwell, came from a Republican-appointed judge in Oklahoma. His opinion was succinct, strongly worded and betrayed not a hint of self-doubt.... The judge stayed his ruling, pending the Obama Administration's likely appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The real question now is what effect (if any) Tuesday's announcement has on the justices of the Supreme Court, who are contemplating whether to hear a similar lawsuit and make a definitive ruling on the matter."
Jeff Toobin in the New Yorker: On Hobby Lobby, Justice Ginsburg "was right: the decision is opening the door for the religiously observant to claim privileges that are not available to anyone else." One example: "Just days after the decision, the Court's majority allowed Wheaton College, which is religiously oriented, to refuse to fill out a form asking for an exemption from the birth-control mandate -- while retaining the exemption.... If just filling out a form can count as a 'substantial burden,' it's hard to imagine any obligation that would not." CW: Also obvious, Sam Alito is a lying snake. If you didn't read Chermerinsky's piece, linked yesterday, on Our Crappy Supreme Court (possible not the actual title), read it soon.
CW: A couple of days ago, I said the trial of Hank Greenberg's case against the federal government should be entertaining. Here's John Cassidy of the New Yorker with the first installment: "Most news organizations are covering the trial straight, as if it were a deadly serious affair. It is, in fact, an absurdist comedy, rich in ironies, worthy of the Marx Brothers or Mel Brooks." Greenberg made in the neighborhood of $300MM on the bailout. "That's three hundred million dollars he wouldn’t have had if Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner ... and Hank Paulson ... had allowed A.I.G. to go belly up. Rather than hauling those three musketeers into ... court..., Greenberg should be taking them out to dinner."
Beyond the Beltway
Patrick McGreevey of the Los Angeles Times: "Four months after a disturbed man killed six UC Santa Barbara students and wounded 13 others, Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed legislation allowing the temporary seizure of guns from people determined by the courts to be a threat to themselves or others. The Isla Vista massacre in May occurred even though the family of Elliot Rodger had sought help because of concerns about his strange behavior before the shootings."
American "Justice," New York City Edition, Ctd. The Anonymity of a Snitch. Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "For five years, Kenneth Creighton was held in jail, suspected of involvement in the killing of a bystander outside a bodega in the Bronx. In 2012, the charges were dropped. Mr. Creighton was released from Rikers Island. He has since filed a lawsuit against New York City for false arrest and malicious prosecution, and has sought the name of his accuser.... Criminal defendants, generally, have the right to know and confront their accusers. But when the accuser happens to be a confidential witness, the calculus can be more complicated."
Nathaniel Rich, in the New Republic: "Louisiana is disappearing. Since 1932, the Gulf of Mexico has swallowed 2,300 square miles of the state's wetlands, an area larger than Delaware.... The loss of the marshes has catastrophic implications, because they are the state's first, and strongest, defense against hurricanes. Two culprits are responsible for most of the destruction. The first is the Army Corps of Engineers, which over the past 130 years has built many of the levees that pin the modern Mississippi River in place to prevent flooding.... The other major destructive force in the region is the fossil fuel industry."
Presidential Election 2012 (& 2016??)
Charles Pierce assesses Mitt Romney's character. This is a short read.
News Lede
Jacksonville Times-Union: A Jacksonville jury today found Michael Dunn guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. "Under Florida law Dunn must be sentenced to prison for life with no possibility of parole for the murder of Davis. He also faces a minimum of 60 years for the attempted murders of Leland Brunson, Tommie Stornes and Tevin Thompson, friends of Davis who were in the Dodge Durango with Davis when he died.... A previous jury deadlocked on his guilt in Davis' death in February while convicting him of the second-degree attempted murders of Brunson, Stornes and Thompson."
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Reader Comments (10)
Maybe I'm misreading the story... but it would seem the more outrageous element of the Creighton story is that he was held FIVE YEARS without trial...
@Ken Winkes. Agreed. This is much like the NYT story I linked a couple of days ago, where another innocent young person was held in Rikers for three years -- much of it in solitary confinement -- apparently so the prosecutors could get him to voluntarily plead guilty. The case against him was extraordinarily weak. No legitimate prosecutor would even have brought it, IMO, because it screamed "reasonable doubt." It became nonexistent when the young man's accuser left the country & the prosecution couldn't find him. It's likely that the prosecutors did not tell the defense for months (or years) that they could not locate the only "witness" to the supposed theft.
At least in "Les Miserables," Jean Vanjean was an actual thief. Our so-called criminal justice system is worse, and it is worse in places that are not south of the Mason-Dixon line, too. I link these individual horror stories not because they are unique, but because they are common.
Marie
I have a question: What, if anything, is preventing President Obama from firing Julia Pierson? She appears to be totally incompetent; therefore it would seem the competent thing for the President to do would be to get rid of her ASAP.
@Victoria D. Pierson is a presidential appointee, & Obama could fire her at will. However, as Josh Voorhees notes in a post I just linked (& as others have remarked), it makes sense for Obama to tread carefully in criticizing an organization which is responsible for protecting his family & him. These are not the people you want to have mad at you. (Bear in mind, too, that some of the agents probably agree with that nutjob former agent who thinks Allen West would be a "perfect" replacement for Pierson.) This,Voorhees points out, is why it's a good thing for Congress to do the grandstanding, not the President.
Obama has typically let top officials "retire" some months after they've been embroiled in a scandal; e.g., Kathleen Sebelius. Eric Shinseki went faster, but I think it's credible that Shinseki volunteered to resign & Obama reluctantly but necessarily accepted the resignation.
Pierson should tender her resignation. So far we don't know that she has. And we also don't know if there's a qualified person standing in the wings to shake up the Secret Service in positive ways. I don't know who might be satisfactory to both President Obama & the wingier elements of the Secret Service. Pierson has a really tough job. Unfortunately, she isn't up to doing it well.
Marie
So I'm scrolling down today's offerings out here on RC and glance to the right.
A link to a trailer for an upcoming film of Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" with a cameo by the ultra reclusive Pynchon himself?!
So, of course, I click on it, I watch it, and I think, wait a minute, how the hell would I pick him out anyway? The last picture I know of him was taken in the mid 50s. So, I think, the guy's gotta be almost 80 by now. Look for someone in that range. Nothing. Maybe he's the guy on the stretcher under the sheet. Who knows?
And even though I'm a big fan of his work, I wasn't thrilled with "Inherent Vice". It's as if someone took a bunch of Pynchonesque elements and tossed them together but forgot the essential ingredients, the things that make it all hold together. Like baking a cake and forgetting the eggs.
But it certainly is one of the few Pynchon novels I can think of that could be filmed. Can you imagine a film of "Gravity's Rainbow"?
That being said, some Pynchon magic must be present here (his love of synchronicity, eg) because, reading one of Marie's comments today, she mentions the Mason Dixon Line, "Mason-Dixon" being his last really great book (cue Twilight Zone music), at least in my opinion.
But even better, when I clicked on the Gawker link to view the IV trailer, I find a wonderful little bit about Loofah Boy O'Reilly having himself a hissy fit because Stephen Colbert had a bit of a laugh at his daffy plan of gathering an army of psychos, weaponizing them, and sending them off to defeat ISIS (surrealism and mocking of self-important authoritarians being other essential Pynchon traits).
Contra Colbert's chuckling dismissal of The Plan of Stupid, O'Reilly hits him with a zinger. "O'Reilly reported that 70% of his fans agree with him that assembling a 25,000-member team of mercenary killers under the supervision of the U.S. Congress is definitely the right way to deal with ISIS" Ooooh Bill! Good comeback.
Get that? 7 out of 10 regular O'Reilly viewers think his idea is the balls.
Here are other things 7 out of 10 O'Reilly viewers believe:
Vaccines cause autism.
There WERE weapons of mass destruction, dammit!
Taxes cause cancer.
Coastal blue states are terrible takers.
Jefferson based the Declaration of Independence on the Bible.
No one knows how why tides go in and out.
The War of Independence was fought against Mexico.
It's impossible to become pregnant from rape unless you're a slut.
Satan contributes to the DNC.
Satan IS the DNC.
Bill O'Reilly is a smart guy.
Now if Pynchon were to write a novel about an egotistical loudmouth who works at a wingnut TV network promoting fake news, that might be worth reading. But maybe not.
Sometimes life IS stranger than fiction.
P.S. I may not see "Inherent Vice" after all. I thought I spotted Eric Roberts in the trailer and I have a policy against watching anything with him in it, if it can be at all helped.
Speaking of movies...
Just a thought, but one of the graver disservices to the commonweal by pop culture is the production and consumption of myths, misconceptions, and intentional misrepresentation.
Take, for example, three well known operations connected to public safety, intelligence, and protection that appear with great regularity in films and television, the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service.
In the last dozen years or so, all have found themselves with mud on their faces and shit in their pants. Even if we're not regular consumers of the multitude of narratives that portray these institutions (mostly), as super-efficient, highly skilled, committed and upright protectors of the US of A, her people and her president, the truth is much less salutary.
Many of us probably remember the television show, The FBI , with Efrem Zimablist, Jr., back in the 60's and 70's. Crossdressing Director Jedgar Hoover (oh, sorry, he wasn't a director of crossdressing, he was a crossdresser who directed the FBI. Or something) was the "technical adviser" who insisted on checking the scripts to make sure he and his agents were treated in the best possible light. He also insisted on background checks for all the actors and producers, perhaps a little blackmail here and there? Anyway, casual viewers came away with a solidly ingrained sense of the infallibility and superhuman capabilities of that agency. More recent treatments are no more realistic (remember the speech Hannibal Lecter gives in "Silence of the Lambs" recounting Clarice Starling's rise from poverty and unimportance "...all the way to the Eff...Bee...Eye" as if she had achieved Nirvana.
Still, to this day, the FBI and CIA are portrayed as institutions with preternatural powers of observation, protection and superb secret-agenting skills. 9/11 told us all we needed to know about that.
TV shows and movies have depicted Secret Service agents as perhaps the cream of the crop. Not the skirt chasing drunks and incompetent boobs that seem to populate their current ranks.
The promotion and propagation of pop culture myths help provide cover for these operations but don't help us, the American public, very much at all when trying to make clear-headed decisions about them, because as much as we might like to think that the people in charge of those agencies and our oversight operations in congress are smarter than the average bear, I have two words for those hoping for a more astute approach to security and intelligence:
Michele. Bachmann.
The Borowitz Report:
“Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, has cancelled a scheduled visit to the White House, citing ‘concerns about the security situation there.’”
http://tinyurl.com/okatwbs
Had a history prof once who said the main purpose of the Crusades was to get the thugs out of England. So maybe O'Reilly's on to something.
Ms Pierson certainly deserves to be fired but can the secret service be expected to protect the president effectively if she goes or stays? Organizations like fish, rot from the head down. Taking the fact that secret service agents are leaking to the press because there is no vertical communication within the service would indicate it requires a root and branch reorganization. In the meantime the president's security could be entrusted to a local police force but probably the Obamas have no wish to go around all day with their arms in the air while wearing t-shirts proclaiming 'I am president Obama', or 'I am president Obama's daughter' and practicing sslloooww moving always. Perhaps the only solution would be the formation of a small dedicated praetorian guard of teetotalling, democratic, eunuchs even though it hasn't worked that well long term in previous incarnations.
I wonder if Daenerys Targaryen and the Unsullied are available.