The Commentariat -- May 15, 2013

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "... the government’s annual deficit is shrinking far faster than anyone in Washington expected, and perhaps even faster than many economists think is advisable for the health of the economy. That is the thrust of a new report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimating that the deficit for this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, will fall to about $642 billion, or 4 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, about $200 billion lower than the agency estimated just three months ago." ...

... Steve Benen: "Thanks in large part to higher taxes on the wealthy, which Republicans said would not reduce the deficit, deficit reduction is picking up speed at a pace few could have predicted. We're now looking at over $400 billion in deficit reduction in just one year, and about $800 billion in deficit reduction since President Obama took office.... It's fair to say this problem has been largely fixed.... Let's also not forget that Republican talking points on fiscal policy have effectively been left in tatters, and every conservative political figure who's declared 'Socialist Obama is turning America into Greece!' looks incredibly foolish right now." ...

... Paul Krugman in the New York Review of Books on "how the case for austerity has crumbled." A long piece, and review material for Krugman readers.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "An inspector general's report issued Tuesday blamed ineffective Internal Revenue Service management in the failure to stop employees from singling out conservative groups for added scrutiny. Congressional aides, meanwhile, sought to determine whether the Obama administration's knowledge of the effort extended beyond the I.R.S.... The report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration offered new details on the scope and duration of the I.R.S. targeting effort.... The I.R.S. headquarters in Washington was far more involved in the effort than initially portrayed.... The inspector general did seem to back up the Obama administration's portrayal of a roguelike operation in Cincinnati flouting the wishes of senior I.R.S. officials in Washington." The IG report is here. ...

... Charles Pierce: "Now, because of the enforced toothlessness of the FEC, we have the IRS tasked de facto with the job of regulating campaign spending, which is a bad idea in theory and now looks even worse in practice." (CW: I linked the Confessore piece, on which Pierce comments, here yesterday.) ...

... Rick Hasen of Slate: "This is all about the failure of Congress to require the disclosure of donors who bankroll groups designed to influence elections.... Congress should set clear rules to require any entity, regardless of its tax status, to disclose donors whose money pays for federal election ads." CW: so, um, Republicans in Congress are outraged that they -- and Supreme Court conservatives -- set up the IRS for a massive fail, & the IRS (supposedly) obliged.

Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post: "Republicans Are Mad that DOJ Carried Out Probe of Media that They Demanded Last Year." ...

... Washington Post Editors are outraged at Justice's sweep of the AP's phone records, natch, but they too add, "The investigation of AP began in response to Republican outrage about the purported fact that White House officials were leaking secret information and spinning it to make President Obama look good for reelection purposes. In response, the Obama administration launched the present investigation, on top of the six (mostly unsuccessful) ones it had attempted previously -- which, judging on costs and benefits visible to date, was probably six too many." ...

... Michael Crowley & Zeke Miller of Time: "The New GOP Case against Obama: He's Cheney!" ...

... New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers." ...

... Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money: "The subpoena of phone records is probably legal. I wouldn't say anything definitive until we know all the details, but under existing law the First Amendment doesn't provide a shield for journalists and Congress hasn't created a statutory shield. A subpoena, unlike a search warrant, doesn't require judicial approval." ...

... Alex Pareene of Salon: "The real scandal is, it was probably all legal." ...

... Jeff Toobin piles on: "It's what society chooses not to punish that tells us most about the prevailing ethical standards of the time. Campaign finance operates by shaky, or even nonexistent, rules, and powerful players game the system with impunity. A handful of I.R.S. employees saw this and tried, in a small way, to impose some small sense of order. For that, they'll likely be ushered into bureaucratic oblivion."

Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday evening ordered the armed services to immediately 're-train, re-credential and re-screen' tens of thousands of military recruiters and sexual-assault prevention officers as the revelation of another sex-crime scandal rocked the Pentagon. Hagel's order came in response to the Army's disclosure on Tuesday that a sergeant first class responsible for handling sexual assault cases at Fort Hood, Tex., had been placed under criminal investigation over allegations of abusive sexual contact and other related offenses. The Army investigation comes just 10 days after a lieutenant colonel in charge of the Air Force's sexual assault programs was arrested in Arlington County on charges that he groped and battered a woman in a parking lot. That incident, along with fresh statistics showing that sex crimes have become endemic in the military, sparked a furious response from lawmakers on Capitol Hill and President Obama." ...

... AP: "A soldier assigned to coordinate a sexual assault prevention program in Texas is under investigation for 'abusive sexual contact' and other alleged misconduct and has been suspended from his duties, the Army announced Tuesday.... The Army said a sergeant first class, whose name was not released, is accused of pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates. He is being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. No charges have been filed."...

... Craig Whitlock: "Military recruiters across the country have been caught in a string of sex-crime scandals over the past year, exposing another long-standing problem for the Defense Department as it grapples with a crisis of sexual assault in the ranks. In Alaska, law enforcement officials are fuming after a military jury this month convicted a Marine Corps recruiter of first-degree sexual assault in the rape of a 23-year-old female civilian but did not sentence him to prison. In Texas, an Air Force recruiter will face a military court next month on charges of rape, forcible sodomy and other crimes involving 18 young women he tried to enlist over a three-year period. Air Force officials have described the case as perhaps the worst involving one of its recruiters. In Maryland, Army officials are puzzling over a murder-suicide last month, when a staff sergeant, Adam Arndt, killed himself after he fatally shot Michelle Miller, a 17-year-old Germantown girl whom he had been recruiting for the Army Reserve. Officials suspect the two were romantically involved, something expressly forbidden by military rules."

Benghazzzzi! Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "There was a cover-up in Watergate, and people went to jail for it. There was a cover-up in Iran-Contra -- Oliver North, currently appearing on Fox News to express outrage at the Obama administration, perjured himself before Congress and shredded incriminating White House documents to hide the Reagan administration's illegal and morally abhorrent scheme. That's a cover-up. Editing talking points? Not even close."

Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Democrats frustrated with the GOP's blocking of a string of President Obama's nominees are seriously weighing a controversial tactic known as the 'nuclear option.' The option -- which would involve Democrats changing Senate rules through a majority vote to prevent the GOP from using the 60-vote filibuster to block nominations -- was raised during a private meeting Wednesday involving about 25 Democratic senators and a group of labor leaders."

Stanley Fish tries to figure out if the NRA's advocacy for armed rebellion against tyrants (Obama) is maybe unamerican. His answer: yes and no. If you think you are smarter than a celebrated intellectual, you are.

Wherein Pablo Pantoja, the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, becomes a Democrat. Thank you, Jim DeMint, for reaching out. Via Charles Pierce.

AND in More First Amendment Controversies -- Thomas Jefferson, Founding Nazi. Or something. Thanks to Kate M.:

... Mr. Irkfart there might like to know that one advocate for separation of church & state was his imaginary friend Jesus. (Mark 12:17) Another adherent to this view -- Martin Luther: "God has ordained the two governments: the spiritual, which by the Holy Spirit under Christ makes Christians and pious people; and the secular, which restrains the unchristian and wicked so that they are obliged to keep the peace outwardly." Jefferson might have got his idea from Rhode Island founder Roger Williams: "When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world, God hathe ever broke down the wall it selfe, removed the Candlestick, & and made his Garden a Wildernesse." But Jefferson more likely relied on the thinking of John Locke -- "I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other," and/or Denis Diderot -- "The distance between the throne and the altar can never be too great." When the U.S. Supreme Court (in 1947) first embraced the phrase "separation of church & state," they cited Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. Oh, and Hitler? Never said it. In short, Mr. Irkfart is an idiot (although when caught, he did walk back his ridiculous "history lesson," suggesting it was a metaphor [or something]). But you knew that.

Local News

Patrick Condon of the AP: Minnesota "Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday signed a bill making gay marriage legal in Minnesota, the 12th state to take the step, as thousands of onlookers cheered."

New York Times Editors: Florida's "indisputably defective death penalty system is made more horrifying by attempts to rush inmates to execution. There is a strong chance that [a current death-row inmate] will become the 25th death-row inmate exonerated in Florida since it reinstated capital punishment in 1973. More death-row inmates have been exonerated in Florida than in any state." Gov. Rick Scott should veto "the Timely Justice Act, a grotesquely named bill passed by the Florida legislature ... [which] would require a governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court, and the state would be required to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant."

Thank You, "Low-Level" IRS Agents

With outrage erupting from every corner, pundits & politicians seem to be missing the point of the IRS exercise: to ferret out applicant organizations which had primarily political agendae & would therefore be ineligible for the tax-exempt status for which they were applying. Fox News reported,

The internal IG timeline shows ... that list of criteria drastically expanding.... It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to 'make America a better place to live.' It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of 'how the country is being run.' By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in 'limiting/expanding government,' education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.

I don't see how an organization interested in "expanding government" or in "social economic reform" or in "making America a better place to live" is necessarily conservative.

In fact, "The IRS says that 300 groups were set aside for extra review. About 75 of them had the words 'tea party' or 'patriot.'" That is, about 25 percent of the groups who received closer scrutiny identified themselves as tea party or "patriot" groups. Since the tea party was expanding rapidly during the time frame in question, it is possible that the IRS under-"targeted" conservative groups.

The so-called scandal does not appear to be an effort to "intimidate political groups," as everyone is braying, but rather an effort to separate true charitable groups from political organizations which might have been trying to obtain undeserved tax-exempt status.

Maybe all these Congressional investigations will reveal some politically-motivated scheme. But right now I don't see any IRS intimidation. I see IRS employees following the law and protecting the government -- and the honest taxpaying public -- from potential tax cheats. I see IRS agents doing their jobs.

The Commentariat -- May 14, 2013

"There's No There There." Michael Shear & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "President Obama, facing re-energized Republican adversaries and new questions about the administration's conduct, on Monday dismissed a furor over the handling of last year's attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as a political 'sideshow' but joined a bipartisan chorus of outrage over disclosures that the Internal Revenue Service had singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny.... Mr. Obama called the I.R.S. reports 'outrageous' and 'contrary to our traditions,' adding his voice to those of Republicans and isolating the agency as the House scheduled a hearing on Friday in what is likely to be an extensive Congressional review of the agency's actions." ...

... Here's the President's joint press conference -- in which he made the remarks about the controversies -- with U.K. PM David Cameron:

... Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama, his troubles piling up in Washington, traveled to Manhattan for a busy evening of fundraising for the Democratic Party, telling audiences that progress was being stymied by a persistent wave of 'hyper-partisanship' in the Capitol." ...

... MEANWHILE, chief sideshow barker Darrell Issa keeps plugging along, Kathleen Hennessey of the Los Angeles Times reports. ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon profiles Victoria Nuland, the former Cheney aide at the center of the fake talking points scandal. ...

... Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post: "... by the ABC account, every draft of the talking points says that the attacks 'were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault....' That's what Rice said. It might have been wrong, but it was the intelligence assessment at the time. So what, exactly, is the scandal?" ...

... Joan Walsh of Salon: "Just like in the '90s, the American people may see through the GOP's effort to undermine Clinton and Obama. But just like in the '90s, they're not getting enough help sorting fact from fiction from Beltway reporters who can't resist a good scandal, even if it's fake." ...

... FreakOut Nation: "There are 16 issues which Republicans have brought up during various times suggesting they are worthy of impeaching President Obama -- including the fact he exists (seriously), and since we've observed their wrath over super important things such as the 'real birth certificate' ... While they're investigating the attack in Benghazi, in which 6 hearings have already been held with no conclusion to their favor, [maybe Issa should investigate this:] ... President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released by two nonprofit journalism groups...." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... Juliet Eilperin & Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.... The White House is legally prohibited from contacting the IRS about a tax matter, under a prohibition adopted after the Watergate scandal. And although it can contact the Treasury Department about tax issues, neither Treasury nor the IRS can disclose specific taxpayer information. The IRS can release information only about a petition for tax-exempt status once it has been approved." ...

... Kim Barker & Justin Elliott of ProPublica: "The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year." ...

... New York Times Editors: "... this is a far cry from President Richard Nixon’s interest in intimidating his political enemies through selective audits of personal tax records. There is no evidence President Obama knew about the audits by the I.R.S. The groups involved were seeking not to pay taxes on large amounts of income by claiming that they promote social welfare. No one has an automatic right to this tax exemption; those seeking one should expect close scrutiny from the government to ensure it is not evading taxes. For many years, however, the I.R.S. hasn't provided it. Democratic groups were the first ones to start abusing their social-welfare tax status in the 2004 election; the Republicans followed suit and became the biggest players in this field beginning in 2008. Far bigger than any Tea Party group, Crossroads GPS nakedly violated the tax code by spending tens of millions on behalf of Republican candidates, claiming it wasn't political because it ran only 'issue ads.' It never lost its tax exemption." ...

... Alec MacGillis of The New Republic has a good take on the IRS scandalette. ...

... This straight news report by Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times backs of MacGillis's critique: "The I.R.S. has done little to regulate a flood of political spending by larger groups -- like Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies co-founded by [Karl] Rove, and Priorities USA, with close ties to President Obama -- as well as Republican leaders in Congress and other elected officials. And an agency that is supposed to stay as far away from partisan politics as possible has been left in charge -- almost by accident -- of regulating a huge amount of election spending." ...

... Jonathan Bernstein, in the Washington Post: "Want a real Washington scandal -- one worse than the (phony) Benghazi scandal and the (apparently real, but apparently limited) IRS scandals combined? Try the continuing, and possibly accelerating, obstruction of executive branch nominees by Senate Republicans...: Republicans, by abusing their Constitutional powers, are -- deliberately, in several cases -- preventing the government from carrying out duly passed laws."

Mark Sherman of the AP: "The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a 'massive and unprecedented intrusion' into how news organizations gather the news.... In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies." ...

... Justin Sink of The Hill: "The White House on Monday distanced President Obama from the Department of Justice's seizure of Associated Press telephone records. 'Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,' White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement." ...

... Kevin Drum: "The government has been obtaining phone records like this for over a decade now, and it's been keeping their requests secret that entire time. Until now, the press has showed only sporadic interest in this. But not anymore. I expect media interest in terror-related pen register warrants to show a healthy spike this week. That could be a good thing. It's just too bad that it took monitoring of journalists to get journalists fired up about this."

Obama 2.Bro. Al Kamen of the Washington Post: "Commerce Department general counsel Cameron Kerry -- brother of Secretary of State John Kerry -- has been named acting secretary of Commerce when the outgoing acting secretary, Rebecca Blank, leaves at the end of this month. This may be the first time ever -- we're checking -- that two brothers served in the Cabinet at the same time.... Given the much-anticipated and likely lengthy Senate tussle over the nomination of Penny Pritzker to be Commerce secretary, Cam Kerry may be 'acting' for quite some time."

Local News

"Today, Love Wins." Rachel Stassen-Berger of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "With deafening cheers and overwhelming emotion, the Minnesota Senate voted 37-30 to legalize same-sex marriage.... The vote, on the heels of a vote last week in the House, brings to a close a decade of debate over marriage.... The measure next moves to Gov. Mark Dayton, who will welcome it with his signature in a celebratory ceremony at 5 p.m. Tuesday on the south steps of the Capitol."

More Evidence the Death Penalty Is a Travesty. Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "Seven years after he was sentenced to death in the fatal stabbings of two Florida women, Clemente Javier Aguirre appeared in a Seminole County courtroom on Monday to present DNA evidence that could win him a new trial."

News Ledes

ABC News: "Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell agreed today to serve two life sentences and waive his right to an appeal in order to avoid the possibility of being condemned to death. Gosnell was convicted of first degree murder on Monday in the deaths of three babies who were born live and then killed by severing their spinal chords with scissors."

New York Times: "Billie Sol Estes, a fast-talking Texas swindler who made millions, went to prison and captivated America for years with mind-boggling agricultural scams, payoffs to politicians and bizarre tales of covered-up killings and White House conspiracies, was found dead on Tuesday at his home in Granbury, Tex. He was 88."

New York Times: "... American ... Ryan C. Fogle, who had been officially posted in Russia as the third secretary of the political department of the United States Embassy, was ordered to leave the country by the Russian government, which officially declared him 'persona non grata.'" Russia accused him of being a CIA spy whose mission was to recruit a Russian security official.