The Commentariat -- Oct. 12, 2014

Internal links removed.

Robert O'Harrow & Steven Rich of the Washington Post: "Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.... Brad Cates, a former director of asset forfeiture programs at the Justice Department, said the spending identified by The Post suggests police are using Equitable Sharing as 'a free floating slush fund.' Cates, who oversaw the program while at Justice from 1985 to 1989, said it has enabled police to sidestep the traditional budget process, in which elected leaders create law enforcement spending priorities."

The Proliferation of Dark Money:

Louis Sahagun of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama on Friday officially set aside 346,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains as a national monument, a move to link more communities east of Los Angeles with wild places in their own backyards. 'This is an issue of social justice, because it's not enough to have this awesome natural wonder within your sight -- you have to be able to access it,' Obama said at a ceremony attended by more than 150 people at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas":

... CW: We now have a president who sees the designation of a national monument/wilderness area near a vast urban area as an instrument of social justice. We used to have a president who saw public lands as resources to be exploited by miners, loggers & ranchers. Elections matter.

Daniel Lippman of Politico: "N.S.A. leaker Edward Snowden on Saturday defended his disclosure of reams of classified information and said his actions were worth fleeing his seemingly idyllic life in Hawaii and ending up in hiding in Russia, where he was joined by his girlfriend in July.... But he also suggested that if he had been a journalist handling the leaked documents, he would have been more conservative than some of the reporters who wrote about the surveillance programs." ....

... The New Yorker has video of Jane Mayer's full interview of Ed Snowden here. Also see Infotainment.

The New York Times publishes an excerpt from Times reporter James Risen's new book, in which Paul Bremer, whom George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his stellar work in Iraq, defends the way he lost billions of dollars to thieves during the course of his stellar work.

Peggy Noonan doesn't like Leon Panetta's book because he trashes Republicans. Here's some text, part of which you can copy & paste into a search engine if you want to read Our Lady of the Daiquiri's random thoughts:

He is catty about David Petraeus -- his office is 'a shrine ... to himself.' Mr. Panetta subtly, deftly, with a winning oh-goshness, takes a whole lot of credit for the bin Laden raid. This section is accompanied by unctuous compliments for Mr. Obama, whose chief brilliance appears to be that he listened to Mr. Panetta. 'Worthy Fights' is highly self-regarding even for a Washington book.

Carrie Brown of Politico: "The Clinton White House tried just about everything to pull itself through the Monica Lewinsky scandal. A trove of documents released Friday by the Clinton Presidential Library sheds light on the White House's internal machinations as it coped with the scandal -- from efforts to discredit rivals and attack the media to attempts to boost West Wing spirits by sharing supportive op-eds or the unfavorable poll numbers for special prosecutor Kenneth Starr."

God News

Steve Bittenbender of Reuters: "The developer of a Noah's Ark-based theme park in Kentucky said on Wednesday he would fight for his religious rights after state officials warned he could lose millions in potential tax credits if he hires only people who believe in the biblical flood." ...

... Simon Brown in Americans United: "... the ministry claims it has a First Amendment right to a tax break. You read that right. These guys believe they have a constitutional right to public support." Both articles via Steve Benen.

Michael Paulson of the New York Times: The "Mass mob -- the latest trend in Rust Belt Catholicism -- which is part heritage tour and part mixer (crudités in the fellowship hall followed the service) ... is bringing thousands of suburban Catholics to visit the struggling, and in some cases closed, urban churches of their parents and grandparents.... Named after flash mobs ... Mass mobs are ... fueled by social media, [and] they are doing best around Lake Erie...."

Philip Pullella of Reuters: "A leading Vatican cardinal said on Thursday the Roman Catholic Church will never bless gay marriage, wading into a controversy over the issue in Italy and other countries. On Tuesday, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano ordered mayors to stop recognizing the validity of gay marriages performed outside the country, prompting protests from rights groups and local officials."

November Elections

Martin Longman of the Washington Monthly: "... the news networks have some kind of civic responsibility to cover the elections, and I don&'t think they've been doing an adequate job of it. This isn't the primary reason that interest in the elections is low, but it's a significant contributing factor."

Iowa. Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register: "Iowa's blitzkrieg U.S. Senate race is now a 1-point contest: Republican Joni Ernst is at 47 percent, and Democrat Bruce Braley is right at her heels at 46 percent with likely voters, a new Iowa Poll shows. As armies of Democratic activists go door to door urging Iowans to fill out absentee ballots, they're piling up votes for Braley, who was 6 points down just two weeks ago."

Kansas. Ken Vogel & Tarini Parti of Politico: "A small group of free-spending wildcard donors, including investment tycoons Peter Ackerman and John Burbank, are rallying to support Greg Orman's independent Senate campaign in Kansas. Michael Bloomberg and a Jonathan Soros-backed group are also considering entering the campaign on Orman's behalf.... It's a dramatic twist for a candidate who staunchly opposes big money in politics but has been badly outspent on the airwaves after surging to a surprise lead over Republican Sen. Pat Roberts." ...

... Karoli of Crooks & Liars Is Tired of Your Kvetching: "For six years I've listened to people on all sides of the debate complain because 'Obama failed to shut down Guantanamo' and for six years I've said it was Congress, not Obama." Karoli cites Sen. Pat Roberts' boast that he kept President Obama from sending Guantanamo prisoners to Leavenworth & other U.S. mainland prison facilities. As the Hill noted in its report on Roberts' boast that he would stop Obama again, "Obama ordered the closure of the prison camp as one of his first acts as president, but the Congress overrode him by prohibiting the use of federal funds to transfer detainees."

Texas. Steve M. on Wendy Davis's "nasty" campaign ad attacking her gubernatorial opponent Greg Abbott. No, it isn't the nastiest campaign ad you'll ever see. ...

... Martin Longman: "Admittedly, the advertisement is a personal attack, as it focuses on Greg Abbott's disability. But it's not about his sex life. It's not about his college transcripts or the provenance of his birth certificate. It doesn't attack his wife or children. It's about a matter of law and policy, and it's about Greg Abbott taking advantage of the law to redress an injustice that was done to himself and then denying that same remedy to other Texans who find themselves in the same or similar situations."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Turkey will allow American and coalition troops to use its bases, including a key installation within 100 miles of the Syrian border, for operations against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, Defense Department officials said Sunday."

New York Times: "A health care worker here who helped treat the Liberian man who died last week of the Ebola virus has tested positive for the disease in a preliminary test, state health officials said Sunday." ...

     ... Dallas Morning News Update: "A Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital health care worker in Dallas who had 'extensive contact' with the first Ebola patient to die in the United States has contracted the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed the news Sunday afternoon after an official test.... [She is] the first person to contract the disease in the United States. The director for the [CDC] ... said Sunday that the infection in the health care worker, who was not on the organization's watch list for people who had contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, resulted from a 'breach in protocol.'" But they don't know precisely what the "breach" was.

The Commentariat -- Oct. 11, 2014

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Carol Lee & Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal: "The White House is drafting options that would allow President Barack Obama to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by overriding a congressional ban on bringing detainees to the U.S., senior administration officials said. Such a move would be the latest and potentially most dramatic use of executive power by the president in his second term. It would likely provoke a sharp reaction from lawmakers, who have repeatedly barred the transfer of detainees to the U.S." Firewalled. Copy part of the lede & paste into a Google search box. ...

... Steve M.: "This is where the entire heartland -- certainly the entire white heartland -- will turn into a bloc of seal-the-borders crazies. To heartlanders, it's going to feel like a border invasion...." ...

... Oh, Surely You Exaggerate, Steve. Let's Hear from the Heartland....

... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) on Friday vowed to block all legislation in the Senate with a prolonged filibuster if President Obama tries to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States.... 'I stopped him once from trying to send a Gitmo terrorist to Leavenworth. I shall do it again, I shall do it again and if he tries it again I will shut down the Senate,; Roberts said, referring to the military prison located sixty miles east of his campaign headquarters in Topeka where he spoke to campaign volunteers."

Liz Sly of the Washington Post: "The U.S.-led air war in Syria has gotten off to a rocky start, with even the Syrian rebel groups closest to the United States turning against it, U.S. ally Turkey refusing to contribute and the plight of a beleaguered Kurdish town exposing the limitations of the strategy."

Eli Lake of the Daily Beast: "Congress has quietly begun reviewing every U.S. government intelligence collection program. It's got the potential to trigger the next big fight between The Hill and Obama's spies." ...

... Jane Mayer of the New Yorker will interview Ed Snowden today, beginning at 1:00 pm ET. You can watch the interview live here. The New Yorker will also livestream its virtual interview of Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, beginning at 4:00 pm ET.

Ryan Gabrielson, et al., of ProPublica: "Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts -- 21 times greater, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings. The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police."

Aaron Kessler of the New York Times: "In his second day on the witness stand, Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, recounted his extreme reluctance to lend money to the American International Group in the summer of 2008, even as financial markets were weakening. 'We very, very much did not want to make a loan of this sort,' Mr. Bernanke said. He added that assisting an insurance company like A.I.G. could give an incentive to other nonbank companies to look to the Fed for help instead of the private sector."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Friday allowed same-sex marriages to proceed in Idaho, lifting a temporary stay issued two days earlier by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.... Justice Kennedy, the member of the court responsible for hearing emergency applications from the Ninth Circuit, entered a temporary stay on Wednesday morning on very short notice after a last-minute request from officials in Idaho. He acted so quickly that he included Nevada in his order. A few hours later, Justice Kennedy issued a revised order, limiting the stay to Idaho." ...

... Brad Cooper of the Kansas City Star: "The constitutional assault on same-sex marriage bans zeroed in on Kansas on Friday with a new legal challenge that could clear the way for gay marriage in the state. Two lesbian couples -- one from Lecompton and another from Wichita -- challenged the Kansas ban in federal court Friday afternoon.... The lawsuit by the two couples comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for same-sex couples to wed in Kansas when it let stand lower court rulings that found bans on their marriages unconstitutional. While the court did not rule on the Kansas law, it kept in place an appeals court ruling [against the ban] that would be binding if a challenge were brought against the state law.... Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt [R] ... spent Friday in state court trying to stop Johnson County from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples."

Matt Volz & Matthew Brown of the AP: "The U.S. Army War College revoked Democratic Sen. John Walsh's master's degree after an investigation completed Friday concluded that he plagiarized a research paper required to graduate. The college assigned an academic review board to the probe in August after The New York Times published a story showing Walsh borrowed heavily from other sources for the paper he wrote in 2007. Walsh was pursuing a master of strategic studies degree at age 47, a year before he became Montana's adjutant general overseeing the state National Guard."

Ben Jacobs of the Daily Beast: "On Friday, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library released its last batch of previously restricted documents from the 42nd president's administration. The latest document dump included details about Monica Lewinsky's tenure as a White House intern, a personal apology from Keith Olbermann to Clinton about his role covering the scandal, as well the White House's exasperation with Jimmy Carter." Jacobs highlights "five of the biggest and most interesting revelations." A list of the documents, with links, is here.

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "In the growing crop of tell-all memoirs by former Obama administration officials including [Leon Panetta,] Robert M. Gates and Timothy F. Geithner, [Hillary] Clinton has emerged largely unscathed -- proof that in Washington, it is easier to kick a sitting second-term president than a potential future one." When Panetta headed the CIA, "he had a shouting match with ... Clinton about who had ultimate authority over drone strikes in Pakistan.... It does not appear in Mr. Panetta's just-published book, even though it seems tailor-made for a volume called 'Worthy Fights.'"

Mike McIntire & Walt Bogdanich of the New York Times: "... an examination by The New York Times of police and court records, along with interviews with crime witnesses, has found that ... [Tallahassee] police on numerous occasions have soft-pedaled allegations of wrongdoing by [F.S.U.] Seminoles football players. From criminal mischief and motor-vehicle theft to domestic violence, arrests have been avoided, investigations have stalled and players have escaped serious consequences." ...

... Matt Baker of the Tampa Bay Times: "In the midst of an investigation by the federal government and intense scrutiny from multiple attorneys, Florida State University sent a letter to supporters outlining its actions in the Jameis Winston sexual assault case." The letter is here. Article includes response from attorneys of the woman who accused Winston of sexual assault in late 2012.

November Elections

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: "More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption. The advertising, which has overwhelmingly benefited Republican candidates, is largely paid for by nonprofit groups and trade associations, some of which are set up with the purpose of shielding from public scrutiny the wealthy individuals and corporations that contribute."

California. Chris Frates & Scott Zamost of CNN: "Charges of sexual misconduct, plagiarism and burglary have pitted a former staffer against a high-profile congressional candidate just weeks before the midterm elections. The drama is unfolding in a city that just weathered a sexual harassment scandal ending the career of its Democratic mayor. The latest accusations by a former campaign aide could derail the career of up-and-coming Republican Carl DeMaio.... This is not the first time DeMaio has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior."

Colorado. CW: Apparently the Denver Post editorial board is comprised of insane people. The board has endorsed right-wing extremist Rep. Cory Gardner over Sen. Mark Udall, who has been an excellent senator. If your read their endorsement, it is one long fairy tale about how Gardner will be bipartisan, blah-blah. Sickening. (The Post endorsed Udall in 2008 & President Obama in 2008 & 2012. It also endorsed Democrat Michael Bennet in 2010.) ...

... If you're wondering how much of a wingnut Gardner is, Luke Brinker of Salon (Sept. 25) ran down some of items on Gardner's "scary agenda." The Post editors not only fail to reveal any of Gardner's wildassed policy prescriptions in their endorsement, one wonders if they are even aware of them. These editors not only don't report the crazy, they endorse it.

Florida. Brendan Farrington of the AP: "Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Republican-turned-Democrat former Gov. Charlie Crist agreed during a debate Friday that Ebola would be bad for Florida -- and they disagreed about nearly everything else. In a contentious debate that reflected the negative tone of the campaign, Scott and Crist took opposite sides on issues including health care, the minimum wage, Cuba policy, gay marriage and medical marijuana." There are links to video of the debate here. ...

... The Tampa Bay Times editors endorse Charlie Crist for governor.

Kentucky. CW: This is funny. I was all set to watch "40 painful seconds of Alison Lundergan Grimes refusing to say whether she voted for President Obama," as advertised in the Washington Post. The Post picked up the video from the Republican party, which "took no time at all ... to clip the non-answer and put it online." But click on the video & what do you get? A message that says, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Gannett Co., Inc." Better check those copyright laws next time, Mitch. I will say that, generally speaking, Grimes is painful to watch.

New Jersey. Michael Symons of app.com: New Jersey "Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Bell said he is behind in the polls by double digits because single mothers are 'wed' to the social benefits like food stamps that Democrats hand out.... Bell is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Cory Booker in the November election. Booker, who won a special election last year, is seeking a full, six-year term. Bell's recent comments are 'misogynistic, despicable,' said Booker campaign spokeswoman Julie Roginsky." Real Clear Politics' average has Booker over Bell by 12.2 percent.

South Dakota. Jake Sherman of Politico: "Larry Pressler, who is running for Senate in South Dakota as an independent, has his principal residence in Washington, according to District of Columbia tax records. Pressler, who served as a Republican in Congress from 1975 to 1997, and his wife receive the homestead deduction, a generous tax break meant for people who use their D.C. home as their 'principal residence,' according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. The tax break reduces a property's 'assessed value by $70,200 prior to computing the yearly tax liability,' the District says." ...

... Here's the Democratic Senate candidate:

Texas. Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "... the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, who is the Republican nominee for governor, said he would ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to overturn the [district] decision [to block Texas's voter ID law]. On Friday, he asked Judge Ramos to clarify whether the ruling would apply to next month's election. The Fifth Circuit court, based in New Orleans, is known as one of the country's most conservative." ...

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Wendy Davis [D] is running one of the nastiest campaign ads you will ever see.... [The] ad is the sort of highly risky gambit you only see from a long-shot campaign. And, as often as not, these sorts of 'Hail Marys' fail miserably." ...

... Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times: "... many political analysts called the TV spot a monumental blunder, one of several bumps that have plagued Davis' campaign since the Fort Worth lawmaker announced her gubernatorial candidacy last October." ...

... CW: Neither the WashPo nor the L.A. Times mentions that Abbott has exploited his disability in his own campaign ad:

Virginia. Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: "The son of a former Virginia state senator has told federal investigators that U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner discussed the possibility of several jobs, including a federal judgeship, for the senator's daughter in an effort to dissuade him from quitting the evenly divided state Senate. Warner was part of a string of high-powered Virginia Democrats who in early June pressed then-state senator Phillip P. Puckett not to go through with plans to give up his seat in the middle of a bitterly partisan battle over health care." Warner is running for re-election to the Senate against vile Republican Ed Gillespie. Warner is up by an average of 11 points.

Wisconsin. Jason Stein & Bill Glauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "In their first meeting Friday, Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democrat Mary Burke drew many sharp contrasts but much less blood as they debated their positions on jobs, the minimum wage and abortion. The most pointed attack of the evening came from Burke, who accused Walker of signing a mining bill last year to benefit a company that put $700,000 into an outside group that backed him in the 2012 recall." You can watch the full debate here. ...

... Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel: "Just 14 hours after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin's voter ID law for the Nov. 4 election, five appeals court judges Friday issued a blistering opinion calling allegations of voter impersonation fraud 'a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters likely to vote for the political party that does not control the state government.' '"Some of the "evidence" of voter-impersonation fraud is downright goofy, if not paranoid, such as the nonexistent buses that according to the "True the Vote" movement transport foreigners and reservation Indians to polling places,' wrote appeals Judge Richard A. Posner. Posner, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was joined by four others in his dissenting opinion. The five other judges on the court did not spell out their views on the ID requirement. The latest ruling had no immediate practical effect, and the voter ID law remains blocked for the election." ...

... BUT. Erik Eckholm: "Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican, who signed the bill into law and had been expected to benefit from it in his race against the Democratic candidate, Mary Burke, expressed confidence [same article as linked above re: Texas's voter ID law] that it would eventually be upheld. The state attorney general, J. B. Van Hollen, said without offering details, 'We will be exploring alternatives to address the court's concern and have voter ID on Election Day.'" CW: Yeah, nullifying the Supremes would be cool, J.B. Why not consult Mike Huckabee? I'll bet he's got some great legal advice. ...

... Presidential Race

Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch: Mike Huckabee threatened "to leave the Republican Party if the GOP does not take a stand against the Supreme Court's decision ... not to hear appeals of lower court rulings striking down gay marriage bans in several states.... Huckabee declared that 'I am utterly exasperated with Republicans and the so-called leadership of the Republicans who have abdicated on this issue,' warning that by doing so the GOP will 'guarantee they're going to lose every election in the future.' ... I'm gone,' Huckabee warned. 'I'll become an independent. I'll start finding people that have guts to stand. I'm tired of this.'" ...

... The most recent poll of Iowa Republicans, conducted by CNN about a month ago, had Huckabee ahead of all other potential presidential candidates. ...

... Steve Benen: "Huckabee's ultimatum reinforces a Republican Party with an awkward dilemma. If the GOP quietly moves towards the mainstream on social issues, it alienates a significant part of the party's base. If Republicans toe the far-right line on the culture war, the GOP will continue to shrink, pushing away younger voters and a mainstream that's increasingly respectful of diversity. To be sure, this has long been a challenge for Republicans, but with the party's demographic challenges becoming more acute, and far-right voices like Huckabee's growing louder, GOP leaders are left with no good options."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Seven New Jersey teenagers were charged on Friday in connection with a series of sexual assaults in a hazing scandal that prompted a high school to cancel the rest of its football season, the authorities said. Six of the teenagers were taken into custody on Friday evening on charges stemming from attacks on four students in four separate encounters at Sayreville War Memorial High School, in Parlin, Andrew Carey, the Middlesex County prosecutor, said in a joint statement with Chief John Zebrowski of the Sayreville Police Department. The seventh teenager was being sought by the police, the officials said." ...

     ... NJ.com has links to numerous stories related to the hazings here.

Washington Post: "Demanding justice for Michael Brown, more than a thousand people marched through downtown St. Louis Saturday morning as part of a 'weekend of resistance.' Chanting 'hands up don't shoot' and 'no justice, no peace,' they marched about a mile through the heart of downtown toward the famed Arch." ...

... The St. Louis Post-Dispatch story puts the number of marchers in the "thousands."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 10, 2014

Internal links, document text & defunct video removed.

Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "... the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the 2014 peace prize to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, joining a teenage Pakistani known around the world with a 60-year-old Indian veteran of campaigns on behalf of children. The awards, announced in Oslo by Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee's chairman, were in acknowledgment of their work in helping to promote universal schooling and in protecting children worldwide from abuse and exploitation."

** Rebecca Traister of the New Republic: "... if there was anything fresh and important about those ridiculous 'Say Yes to the Candidate' spots [which ran in the Commentariat last week], it was that they marked one of the first instances in which conservatives have in any way embraced the idea that women now treat government as a stand-in for husbands.... In 2012, unmarried women made up 23 percent of the electorate; they voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a whopping 67 to 31 percent.... This is the new political reality: Women without husbands decide elections. And it's not surprising that they gravitate toward Democrats, who have more reliably fought for the social supports and rights that make unmarried life possible, over Republicans, who have reliably derided them as man-hating government mooches.... What too often goes unacknowledged is that women aren't the only Americans who have relied on the government as a partner. Rather, it's a model of support and dependence that has bolstered the fortunes of American men throughout the nation's history." Read the whole post.

Joe Klein of Time listens to neighbors talking politics conspiracy theories. The people Klein visited were not drooling morons; they just believed what they read in Breitbart or heard on Fox. "These are stories that stick in the mind and rot the body politic. They are a dominant political currency, and not just in the South." CW: If those executives & producers who want to make the Sunday morning "news" shows "edgy" had the slightest interest in educating their viewers, they would run a segment at the end of every show debunking "The Week's Most Ridiculous Conspiracy Theory." Chris Wallace, I'm talking to you, too. Many of their viewers would be shocked to discover the outlandish stories they accepted as factual were instead "ridiculous conspiracy theories." ...

... Should we be surprised regular people believe wingnut conspiracy stories when they hear some of the same nonsense from Members of Congress? ...

... Steve Benen: Rep. Tom Cotton (RTP-Ark.), Rep. Duncan Hunter (RTP-Calif.), Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Kentucky) & other "members of Congress have repeated truly bizarre ideas from the fringe about the Boston Marathon bombing, the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, the imaginary IRS 'scandal,' and a parade of related stories. In each case, there are fact-checkers who issue warnings such as, 'As lawmakers, they need to be careful about making inflammatory statements based on such flimsy evidence,' but for much of the right, it just doesn't matter." ...

... Frank Rich: "It'll be interesting to watch that number between now and Election Day as the president's political nemeses do everything they can to spread panic about Ebola and attach that panic to Obama. The right-wing Washington site Daily Caller has already dubbed him 'President Ebola.' Mike Huckabee has found a link to Benghazi. Rand Paul has accused the president of pursuing a 'politically correct' Ebola policy -- presumably because Paul believes an African-American president would rather let an epidemic destroy America than offend anyone in his ancestral continent. All this fire is coming from self-styled Reagan Republicans. Let us not forget that Reagan legacy in reacting to a spiraling health crisis. The first cases of the AIDS epidemic in America were reported in 1981; he didn't give a serious address about the disease until 1987, after thousands of Americans had died. Pat Buchanan, Reagan's communications director, called AIDS 'nature's revenge on gay men.' There's political correctness for you." ...

... Jonathan Cohn: "... you can't truly wipe out the Ebola threat, even for Americans, without controlling it overseas. As long as it's un-contained, it will continue to make its way to other countries -- carried by people over land, sea, or air -- because the world is simply too interconnected to shut down borders completely. Meanwhile, the damage to social and economic fabric of Africa could be devastating, in ways that would hurt the U.S. over the long run." ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "In this country, Ebola isn't yet a huge public-health threat. But it's fast becoming a political nightmare.... As public unease mounts, the Republicans are positioning themselves as Ebola hawks, and the Democrats risk being caricatured as doves. If you turn on right-wing talk radio, you will hear Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others excoriating the White House for failing to seal America's borders -- a charge they are already linking to the debate about immigration reform. During the past few days, a number of G.O.P. presidential hopefuls have also weighed in." Read Cassidy's lede graf. I'll bet those guys are white. ...

... Tom Dart & Lauren Gambino of the Guardian: "The faltering response to a Liberian's Ebola diagnosis in Texas contrasted starkly to the mobilization after the mere suspicion of the disease in a local law enforcement officer. Some wonder whether it was no coincidence."

Rolling Stone publishes "55 figures that prove President Obama has accomplished more than you may realize."

David Rohde & Warren Strobel of the Atlantic write a mostly-negative assessment of President Obama's foreign policy decisions & his decision-making process. CW: But when I read between the lines, & when I consider the probable consequences of the alternatives, Obama's strategies & processes seem pretty sound.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker on the imagery of terrorism. "Murder as a publicity stunt is not a new development; it is exactly what terrorism is. But these images [of masked jihadists beheading American & British men] have somehow broken new terror territory. It is hard to believe that, without them, we would now be bombing Iraq and Syria and trying to eliminate ISIS.... If there is one worst moral casualty of the past decade and a half, it surely lies there: Americans have gone from being the hardest of peoples to panic to among the most easily panicked people on the planet. In New Hampshire, the Granite State with the defiant license plate, security fears are dominating the senatorial campaign. New Hampshire voters -- including, it seems, New Hampshire mothers, for whom Islamist terrorism seems less of a danger than lightning at picnics, to say nothing of drunk drivers and proliferating guns -- are panicked enough to think of voting for a 'security' Republican."

Panetta Is "Rewriting History." Michael Hirsh in Politico: "Tommy Vietor, the former spokesman for Obama's National Security Council, says that based on 'talking to my friends back at the White House ... they are going out of their way to avoid a messy public fight' [with Leon Panetta.] But Vietor adds: 'Secretary Panetta was very clear back in 2011 that he wouldn't allow troops to remain in Iraq without the necessary protections from the Iraqi government, and I think it's reasonable for the White House to remind people of those statements.'... On Tuesday, Panetta told NBC's Andrea Mitchell that had the administration armed the fractious Free Syrian Army, as he'd advocated, then 'we would at least be in a better position to have in the rebel operation a group that we would have worked with, known, helped arm....' But several administration officials remember that Panetta was as concerned about arms falling into the hands of radical Islamists as the president was."

Jonathan Chait: "The Congressional Budget Office announced [Wednesday] that the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2014 came in at $495 billion, almost $200 billion below the previous figure.... Within minutes, Washington's debt-scold community sprang into action to guard against complacency." Now they're focusing on projected increases in deficits several years hence. "Where were the debt scolds when the short-term deficit was high and the business and political communities were freaking out? Their belief in patience and the long view might have helped the political system avoid its disastrous turn toward austerity. Instead they fomented panic.... Their misplaced priorities helped doom millions of Americans to years of suffering." ...

... Paul Krugman is subtle, whacking the Washington Post's deficit-hawk-in-chief/editorial page editor Fred Hiatt in a link, without naming him. Sadly, this won't translate to the print edition. "Deficit scolds actually love big budget deficits, and hate it when those deficits get smaller. Why? Because fears of a fiscal crisis -- fears that they feed assiduously -- are their best hope of getting what they really want: big cuts in social programs." (CW: I linked the Hiatt column a few days ago, as an example of die-hard hawkdom.)

Aaron Kessler of the New York Times: "Ben S. Bernanke ... took the stand [Thursday] in the lawsuit over terms of the 2008 bailout of the insurance giant American International Group. Mr. Bernanke gave terse and clipped responses to questions.... Mr. Bernanke did not agree with the notion -- a central part of the lawsuit -- that A.I.G. got a raw deal from the Federal Reserve, or that it could have gotten a better deal elsewhere. 'It was evident from the fact that the board took the Fed's offer that they didn't have a better offer,' he said, referring to the vote by A.I.G.'s board approving the government's loan, and its terms." ...

... Jon Stewart explains the case. Thanks to Victoria D. for the link:

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post on one effort to help poor, working families: get businesses to buy in by providing counselling for employees in trouble -- counselling that helps them find actual solutions to their difficulties. Rampell reports both the upside -- remarkably low worker turnover -- & downside -- the companies are relying on taxpayer-funded services to help their employees. "'There has been this Wal-Mart mentality," [the program's creator Randy] Osmun says, of cutting wages, reducing taxes that fund social spending, and prioritizing profitability today without thinking about the future. 'Twenty years later we've seen a complete destruction of our school system, huge rates of incarceration and poverty, and now employers are saying, "I can't hire good people." You can't hire good people because you have devastated the community.'" ...

... CW: Of course the government could take this program a step further & force companies to alleviate some of these problems by providing workers not just with flex time to deal with some of their problems but also with, you know, a living wage that would reduce or eliminate their needs for much of the taxpayer-funded aid. Oh wait, Republicans....

     ... Decades ago, when I was a low-wage worker with a family to support, I marvelled at how executives were able to come & go to take care of routine personal business, while I had to practically pretend I didn't have children who needed my attention & sometimes created emergencies. I solved my problem by getting promoted into more flexible, better-paying salaried positions. Not every worker can make that happen. Every worker, however, should be treated with the dignity to which executives treat themselves. (Rebecca Traister's piece, linked above, is relevant here.)

John Peter of USA Today: Jerry "Angelo, who was general manager of the Chicago Bears from 2001 to 2011..., said teams did not discipline players in 'hundreds and hundreds' of domestic violence incidents during his 30 years in the league, and said he now regrets his role in the failure to take action.... The Bears released a statement later Thursday denying any knowledge of Angelo's assertions. 'We were surprised by Jerry's comments and do not know what he is referring to,' the statement read." CW: It's hard to justify watching NFL games or otherwise supporting pro-ball teams, not so much because of Angelo's statement but because of the Bears' response.

Nicholas Kristof, who was the 4th man in the "Politically Incorrect" on-air "debate" about Islam: "Let's not feed Islamophobic bigotry by highlighting only the horrors while neglecting the diversity of a religion with 1.6 billion adherents -- including many who are champions of tolerance, modernity and human rights. The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition." Kristof cites some of the poll results on Muslim beliefs by country, linked Sunday in the Commentariat. ...

... It Depends on What the Meaning of "Most" Is. Hemant Mehta in Patheos: "Yes, most Muslims around the world condemn violence in defense of their faith. But when you exclude those who didn't respond to the question, we're still talking about 21% of Muslims worldwide and 13% in the U.S. who believe suicide bombing is rarely, sometimes, or often justified. That's hundreds of millions of people who do not unequivocally condemn faith-based violence.

November Elections

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "With four weeks to go before the midterm elections, Republicans have made questions of how safe we are -- from disease, terrorism or something unspoken and perhaps more ominous -- central in their attacks against Democrats. Their message is decidedly grim: PresidentObama and the Democratic Party run a government that is so fundamentally broken it cannot offer its people the most basic protection from harm."

Kansas. David McCabe of the Hill: "Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said [Greg Orman,] the independent challenger to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), would not be welcome to caucus with Senate Republicans if the GOP takes over the upper chamber's majority. 'It is an impossibility. It is not possible,' Priebus told Kansas City's 41 Action News." (No link.) CW: Apparently Prince Rebus is unaware he is not a U.S. senator & has nothing to say about how the Senate conducts its business. If Orman wins, Senate Republicans will court him.

North Carolina. E. J. Dionne: "In the struggle for control of the Senate, the reaction against reaction has allowed Sen. Kay Hagan, so far at least, to defy the punditocracy. Once seen as one of this year's most vulnerable Democratic incumbents, Hagan has been maintaining a small but steady lead over state House Speaker Thom Tillis. Tillis's problem is the sharp right turn in the governance of one of the South's traditionally moderate states, which he helped engineer along with Gov. Pat McCrory."

Oregon. Laura Gunderson of the Oregonian: "Less than 24 hours after news broke of a secret marriage, Oregon first lady Cylvia Hayes tearfully apologized to Oregonians and to her fiancé, Gov. John Kitzhaber, for accepting $5,000 to illegally marry an 18-year-old Ethiopian in need of a green card." Kitzhaber, a Democrat, is running for re-election. The latest poll, which is several weeks old, has Kitzhaber up 12 against his Republican challenger Dennis Richardson.

South Dakota. Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill: "... while former Sen. Larry Pressler [S.D.], who served nearly a quarter century in Congress as a Republican, won't say who he'd caucus with, he told The Hill Wednesday that, if elected, he'd be a 'friend of Obama' in the Senate. 'I don't regret those votes, 'cause on that day, that's how I felt,' he said of voting for Obama twice, a detail used by Republicans as evidence Pressler is now a closet Democrat.... A poll out this week showed him surging in the race -- despite only having raised about $107,000 through the second quarter of the year, and having spent even less -- narrowing Republican Mike Rounds' lead to just three points. He's more competitive in the four-way race than Democrat Rick Weiland, and in a head-to-head matchup with Rounds, Pressler leads him by 15 points."

** Texas. Phil Helsel of NBC News: "A federal judge has struck down a Texas voter ID law, saying the requirement that all voters show photo identification before casting a ballot amounted to a 'poll tax' designed to suppress voter turnout among minorities. U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos wrote in an opinion released Thursday evening that 'There has been a clear and disturbing pattern of discrimination in the name of combatting voter fraud in Texas,' and that the state hadn't demonstrated that such fraud was widespread. Gonzales said the evidence showed the proponents of the law 'were motivated, at the very least in part, because of and not merely in spite of the voter ID law's detrimental effects on the African-American and Hispanic electorate.'... Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office said it will immediately appeal Thursday's ruling." Abbott, a Republican, is running for governor. Ramos is an Obama appointee.

     ... CW: This opinion -- which is here -- makes the kind of bold statement that do a number of the pro-marriage equality opinions, written -- as some pundits have pointed out -- for the history books. In fact, Ramos writes extensive of Texas's long history of minority disenfranchisement & voter suppression. Here's a highlight: "In every redistricting cycle since 1970, Texas has been found to have violated the VRA with racially gerrymandered districts." She also recounts the high -- and costly -- hurdles some plaintiffs have had to jump to maintain or reinstate their voting rights. This is an opinion that will make you mad at the Texas GOP all over again.

** Wisconsin. Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "On a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin's voter ID law late Thursday, a month after a panel of appeals judges said it could go into place and less than four weeks before the Nov. 4 election. Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans approved the law in 2011, but it was quickly blocked by a series of court decisions in four lawsuits. Last month, a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled the law could go into place for the upcoming election.... The panel followed that decision up with its final ruling Monday that upheld the voter ID law in its entirety. But the U.S. Supreme Court's ... hold on the law will remain in place until the nation's highest court decides whether to take the case..." ...

... The order is here. Justices Alito, Scalia & Thomas dissented, natch. ...

... In today's Comments, Nadd2 has some tips for Wisconsin voters & GOTV enthusiasts.

... Jessica VanEgeren of the (Madison) Capital Times: "Poverty-wage work is widespread in Wisconsin, particularly in food, retail, residential and in-home health care sectors, with roughly 700,000 workers earning less than a living wage in 2013, according to a report released Thursday by the Madison-based Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Economic Policy Institute. The 'Raise the Floor' report based the number of Wisconsin workers who are not earning enough to support their families on the federal poverty benchmark for a family of four, or $11.36 an hour. Given that figure, 700,000, or one out of four, Wisconsin workers are employed but living in poverty. Wisconsin's minimum wage is much lower at $7.25 an hour." ...

     ... Scott Walker Is Fine with That. Wisconsin Gazette: "The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development determined this week that $7.25 an hour is a fair wage for minimum-wage workers. The department denied complaints from more than 100 Wisconsin workers. In a statement released this week, Wisconsin Jobs Now said, '... The law in Wisconsin is very clear: "every wage paid by any employer to any employee shall not be less than a living wage." ... The fact that Governor Walker thinks that $290 a week is what it costs to cover the basics of life in Wisconsin is beyond comprehension. This decision makes it unequivocally clear that Scott Walker is more than out of touch: he is brutally neglectful of a huge percentage of his constituents." ...

... CW: So starvation wages are against Wisconsin law? Don't worry about that, people. I'm sure Scotty & his gang in the state legislature can soon repair the situation: they'll repeal the law.

Beyond the Beltway

Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Two months after a police officer's killing of an unarmed black teenager set off weeks of racial conflict in a St. Louis suburb, tense clashes emerged [in St. Louis] late Thursday after the Wednesday shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer."

Laurel Andrews of the Alaska Dispatch News: "Prosecutors won't proceed with charges in a brawl that involved several members of the Palin family, Anchorage police said Thursday.... Five police officers wrote up police reports on the scene. More than 15 witnesses were interviewed.... Overall, the accounts in the police report seemed to confirm, in broad terms, initial witness reports that surfaced before the police report's release. At least two fights appear to have broken out during the party, according to witness statements: a fight involving Track and Todd Palin, and one involving Bristol Palin. Seven witnesses verified Klingenmeyer's account of being punched in the face repeatedly by Bristol Palin." ...