NEW. The Senate has voted for cloture on the continuing resolution. 19 Republicans voted against. There is a series of 4 votes to go at 1:00 pm ET. I'm having major problems with connections, so I'm going to give this up & go do some other thing.
Alina Selyukh of Reuters: "At least a dozen U.S. National Security Agency employees have abused secret surveillance programs in the past decade, most often to spy on their significant others, according to the latest findings of the agency's internal watchdog. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Charles Grassley, NSA Inspector General George Ellard outlined 12 instances of 'intentional misuse' of the agency's intelligence gathering programs since January 1, 2003." CW: Sounds like the same stuff the Washington Post reported about a month ago.
Mike Corder of the AP: "The inspectors responsible for tracking down Syria's chemical arms stockpile and verifying its destruction plan to start in Syria by Tuesday. They will face their tightest deadlines ever and work right in the heart of a war zone, according to a draft decision obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The decision is the key to any U.N. resolution on Syria's chemical weapons program." ...
... Rick Gladstone & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have agreed on a resolution that will require Syria to give up its chemical weapons, but the text will not threaten the use of force for a failure to comply, officials said." ...
... Update. Here's the text of the draft agreement.
Laurence Norman & Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal: "The U.S. and Iran held their highest-level talks in 36 years on Thursday, in what some officials present described as a substantial meeting over Tehran's disputed nuclear program that could begin to counter decades of enmity. In the session, diplomats began the process of trying to establish programs to inspect, verify and curtail Iran's expanding nuclear complex, a process diplomats on both sides warned was arduous and uncertain." (CW: the fact that John Kerry is presiding over this thawing with Iran & the ever-more-likely chemical weapons detente in Syria must be aggravating Hillary Clinton.) ...
... Why the Obama-Rouhani handshake didn't happen. (Sorry, wingers, it wasn't because nobody respects Obama or he's not really a world-class leader or yadayadayada):
The Stupid Party, Ctd.
No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget. -- Barack Obama, yesterday
... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Barring any unforeseen twists..., the Senate will proceed to a series of votes at 12:30 p.m. that will send a budget bill to the House that Republicans there have vowed to change because of their strong opposition to any measure that helps the administration put the health care law into effect. That will set up a game of legislative Ping-Pong that will tip the government perilously close to shutting down on Tuesday.... It is unclear what the Republicans want, other than a complete repeal of the health law." ...
... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "... Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio signaled he was not ready to abandon a spending fight that could shut down the federal government as soon as Tuesday. Asked whether he would put a stopgap spending bill to a vote free of Republican policy prescriptions, he answered, "I do not see that happening." ...
... Ed O'Keefe, et al., of the Washington Post: "Top House Republican leaders Thursday rejected the short-term spending plan expected to be passed by the Senate in coming days, increasing the possibility of a government shutdown next week. Asked if the House would pass the bill unchanged once it is sent from the Senate, Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) replied: 'I do not see that happening.'" ...
... Update. Lori Montgomery & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Late Thursday afternoon, Boehner convened an emergency meeting of his leadership team to try to hash things out. They emerged with no answers, and no clear path forward for any piece of legislation, either to keep the lights on in Washington or to make sure the Treasury Department can continue to pay the nation's bills by raising the borrowing limit." ...
... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker on the geography of the "suicide caucus": "... it's worth considering the demographics and geography of the eighty districts whose members have steered national policy over the past few weeks.... Half of these districts are concentrated in the South, and a quarter of them are in the Midwest, while there's a smattering of thirteen in the rural West and four in rural Pennsylvania (outside the population centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). Naturally, there are no members from New England, the megalopolis corridor from Washington to Boston, or along the Pacific coastline. These eighty members represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans." Includes map. ...
... Jonathan Chait: Wednesday, House Republicans "began circulating their initial ransom list of demands that President Obama and Senate Democrats must meet or else watch the world economy melt down." Chait lists their "extensive" demands and asks, "Does that list sound vaguely familiar? It's Mitt Romney's 2012 economic plan. Almost word for word.... The fact that a major party could even propose anything like this is a display of astonishing contempt for democratic norms." ...
... This is almost hilarious. Russell Berman, et al., of the Hill: "In a closed-door meeting, the leaders outlined to their members a proposal that would demand a laundry list of Republican priorities in exchange for a yearlong suspension of the nation's $16.7 trillion borrowing limit. The centerpiece of the plan is a one-year delay of President Obama's signature healthcare law. But hours after the meeting, the party had yet to release the legislation formally, and conservatives complained that it lacked specific spending cuts and failed to tackle entitlement reform." (Emphasis added.) CW: Get that? Teabaggers figure that in exchange for their "concession" to refrain from causing international economic chaos, Democrats should enact Mitt Romney's agenda -- and more. And I like to say "elections have consequences." Well, not according to the teabag brigade. ...
... CW: Can we all at least agree on this? John Boehner is the worst Speaker of the House in anyone's memory. Contributor Patrick wrote yesterday that Boehner should fall on his sword for the good of the country. Let's see if he's man enough to do it. I have a sneaking suspicion he is. ...
... Greg Sargent: "Democrats are not asking Republicans to give up anything in requesting that they support a debt limit hike. They are not asking Republicans to agree to more spending. They are not asking for new taxes. They are simply asking Republicans to join them in making it possible for Congress to pay obligations it has already incurred, and in so doing, avert economic catastrophe for the whole country. There is no rationale for giving Republicans anything in return for this." ...
... Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post: "The thing about the debt ceiling is that it's not in any way, shape, or form a 'partisan' issue. There's no 'position' to take on it. It is not a liberal or a conservative 'idea.' And raising the debt ceiling confers no privileges or advantages on anyone -- it doesn't advance any policy or philosophy, and it doesn't even permit new debt.... If Republicans do the responsible thing, and offer a clean debt ceiling hike, they will have conceded nothing. They will still be free to block spending, deny revenue increases, stage debates on their preferred policies, enter into bargains, and use the traditional campaign cycle to make the case for whatever the legislative process denies them.... It is up to Obama to break this cycle of violence (and this is perhaps fitting, since he played such a major role in unleashing it in the first place)." ...
... CW: That is, raising the debt limit is not on a par with the usual legislative horse trading where one side agrees to X if the other side will concede on Y. Raising the debt ceiling is just a routine requirement imposed by a now-anachronistic 1917 law, a law intended to give the executive the power to issue liberty bonds & to incur other debt necessary to carry on World War I efforts -- but which Congress had not specifically authorized. By contrast, the debt the government is incurring today is for stuff that Congress has previously authorized. Alex-Seitz Wald makes my point, via Greg Sargent:
... Matt Yglesias of Slate: "The one thing Obama absolutely cannot do under any circumstances is negotiate over the statutory debt limit. The reason is that Republicans are essentially asking for an end to constitutional government in the United States and its replacement by a wholly novel system.... The absolute worst mistake Obama has made as president came back in 2011 when Republicans first pulled this stunt.... The good news is that the White House recognizes they made a mistake.... A terrible monster was let out of the box in 2011 and the best thing Obama can possibly do for the country at this point is to stuff it back in and hopefully kill it." ...
... Ed Kilgore agrees: "... the answer to this vicious 'opening bid' from Boehner needs to be 'no,' not 'maybe' or 'maybe something else.' If no negotiations occur, then there is a reasonably high probability that the GOP's corporate allies will make Boehner walk the plank and cooperate with House Democrats to pass a 'clean' debt limit increase. That's actually the only sane way out of the dark place Boehner is leading the country towards right now." ...
... Josh Barro of Business Insider: "America's constitutional system only works if the divided branches of government are willing to work together to make consensual agreements about running the government. Republicans are showing themselves to be too irresponsible to make the American constitutional system work." ...
... Noam Scheiber of the New Republic argues that if Boehner wants to (a) keep his job & (b) avoid economic chaos, his best path is to allow the government to shut down & watch the minor chaos that ensues, then tell his teabaggers everybody hates them for shutting down the government, thus paving the way for raising the debt ceiling without conditions. ...
... Ben White of Politico: "Wall Street to GOP: 'Are you nuts?'" ...
... CW: I know the President doesn't agree with me, but I think both he & the Congress have the Constitutional duty to honor the nation's debts. The Constitution requires that the Congress "make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution ... [it Constitutional] Powers," and that the President "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed...." So Congress passes laws & in many cases those laws require the executive branch to make substantial expenditures. (Note how this differs from the purpose of the 1917 law, which was to allow the executive to incur debt for expenditures Congress had not authorized.) When the Congress fails in its Constitutional duty, as Boehner is threatening, that doesn't give the President a pass to fail in his, too. He'd better "take care" to pay the bills Congress incurred. (People who argue that the president has Constitutional authority to raise the debt ceiling usually cite the 14th Amendment; others -- including President Obama -- say that the 14th Amendment doesn't give her/him that power.) ...
... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Feuding in the Republican Conference moved to the Senate floor on Thursday as Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) accused two colleagues [-- Ted Cruz & Mike Lee --] of risking a government shutdown as a publicity stunt." ...
I'm not saying Ted Cruz is responsible for all his supporters, but he has tapped into a dark strain here in the American political psyche here, and again, the most obscene, profane stuff you can imagine all from people who say they support the Constitution. I think what we have to do is reach out to his people and let them know that they're following a false leader here. -- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), after saying he had received many "vile, obscene & profane" phone calls from Cruz supporters
So far at least Democrats are proving they are not stupid enough to fall into the Delay ObamaCare Trap. Ben Terris of the National Journal: "Any delay to Obamacare -- whether it's pushing back the individual mandate or stripping funding for a year -- would only open the door to devastating consequences for the law. Once Obama shows he is willing to negotiate on his signature piece of legislation -- and, by implication, signaling that the law may have deep, fundamental problems -- there will be no end of trying to tear it down, with opponents perhaps garnering another 41 House votes to defund it in the process. 'It's not worth discussing, because it's not going to happen,' Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told National Journal. 'We're more than happy to work with Republicans to fix some of the glitches. But they're not interested in making adjustments; they're simply trying to wipe it out completely.'" ...
'Fairness' does not seem to us a judicially manageable standard." -- Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the conservative majority in "Pennsylvania's [2004] carefully orchestrated, computer-driven redistricting -- a partisan coup openly designed to maximize Republican gains" (Epps) ...
... Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: The members of the Supreme Court may congratulate themselves as leading the only functional branch of government, but their hands are hardly clean. The current dysfunction in Congress & in many of the states is the direct outcome of some of their naive decisions: "The Court isn't the cause of our current crisis. But the justices are not immune from the zombie epidemic; indeed, the Court may actually be a carrier of the plague." ...
... CW: Epps doesn't say so, but I will: the chaos we're witnessing now is precisely the situation the conservatives on the Court wanted: a minority of white wingers paralyzing the government & eliminating or curtailing social welfare programs. Scalia's opinion is stunning; the fundamental purpose of any judiciary is to right wrongs; i.e., to make the unfair fair. That's the purpose of torts; you sue somebody because you believe he has treated you unfairly under the law. Scalia doesn't know what his job is.
Paul Krugman has an excellent column on the .01 percent sociopaths, who besides thinking they are entitled to all that they possess, also believe they deserve massive government handouts -- and you don't -- expect your adulation, too. (Yes, I have my decimal in the right place.)
Matt Taibbi: "All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers." ...
... CW: the "system" has always been rigged against ordinary people, but the rape of pension funds -- which has been going on in one form or another for decades -- seems particularly egregious to me. While the wingnuts look for conspiracies involving Obama & his Muslim puppetmasters or whatever, the Masters of the Universe & their bought-&-paid-for public officials are systematically robbing the deluded conspiracy theorists (and many others) blind. The anti-Obama hysteria, the anti-abortion hysteria, the NRA hysteria, etc., are all diversions to keep people from noticing who the real pickpockets are.
Massimo Calabresi of Time: "A Department of Justice Inspector General report lays out the limited ways domestic law enforcement is using drones, for now, and recommends policies to constrain their use." CW: Calabresi's post on the DOJ report would be interesting by itself, but he makes it more fun by comparing the actual findings to what Sen. Rand Paul imagined during the course of his March filibuster. Jane Fonda, you're safe.
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