The Commentariat -- Feb. 10, 2013

My column in the New York Times eXaminer incorporates some Reality Chex contributors' comments on the Citadel, a planned survivalist community.

John Bresnahan of Politico: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says the tens of billions of dollars of spending cuts under sequestration that kicks in on March 1 can be avoided through eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies. 'The fact is we've had plenty of spending cuts, $1.6 trillion in the Budget Control Act. What we need is growth,' Pelosi said in an interview on 'Fox News Sunday.' Slashing spending indiscriminately, she said, would hurt growth prospects for the U.S. economy. 'It is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem,' [she] asserted."

Aveva Shen of Think Progress: "On ABC's This Week Sunday morning, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called out Tom Cole (R-OK) for his claim that President Obama is responsible for the automatic budget cuts set to go into effect if Congress cannot reach a budget deal by March. The so-called 'sequester' includes steep defense cuts intended to motivate Republicans who refused to agree to any deal that included a tax increase in 2011":

ABC News: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) "is threatening to hold up Senate confirmation of President Barack Obama's nominees to lead the Defense Department and the CIA until the White House provides more answers about the deadly Sept. 11 attack against a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya."

John Bresnahan: "Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said on Sunday embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) should keep his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee despite an investigation into his dealings with a top donor."

Michael Shear & Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday will seek to move beyond the politics of the moment to define a second-term agenda built around restoring economic prosperity to the middle class, using his State of the Union address to unveil initiatives in education, infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing."

The Disappeareds, American-Style. David Cole of the Nation, in a Washington Post op-ed: "... when it comes to the particular legal issue raised in a recently leaked 'white paper' from the Justice Department -- namely, whether it is legal to kill Americans with drones -- one problem looms largest: The policy permits the government to kill its citizens in secret while refusing to acknowledge, even after the fact, that it has done so." ...

... Dana Milbank: "... the only drones in evidence Thursday afternoon at [John] Brennan's confirmation hearing were the lawmakers on the dais.... The senators, with few exceptions, exempted Brennan from tough questioning about the drone program...." ...

... Last week Bill Moyers discussed the U.S. drone program with Vicki Divoll & Vincent Warren:

... Paul Harris of the Guardian: "President Barack Obama is facing a liberal backlash over his hardline national security policy, which critics say is more extreme and conservative than that pursued by George W Bush."

Anna Bernasek of the New York Times: "... what is being taxed [under the current U.S. tax code] is often just a small portion of the income and wealth of the very richest Americans; unearned income, including unrealized gains and gains on investments, is either not taxed or taxed at a fraction of the top rate on wages. Taxing wealth in addition to income is one way to make sure that the rich contribute more to government coffers. That would essentially be a tax on household assets like property, stocks, bonds, unincorporated businesses, trusts, art and yachts." ...

... Peter Applebome of the New York Times: "Even if a state recognizes same-sex marriage, federal law doesn't -- resulting in a maddening array of tax complications for gay couples.

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "The stronger argument for a major government response to climate change is the ... obvious argument: climate change. The continental United States endured its hottest year on record in 2012, and the planet's 13 hottest years have all occurred since 1998. Major storms and wildfires are increasing.... The seas are rising faster than forecast only a few years ago, and the costs of extreme weather are rising, too. In Washington, the economic case for responding to climate change has made little progress, with Democrats failing to pass a sweeping bill when they controlled Congress and Republicans remaining strongly opposed. And President Obama has subtly shifted his approach, talking less about green jobs and more about extreme weather."

Tim Egan gives a thumbs-up to Sally Jewell, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Interior. "For all the ranchers and wildcatters, the loggers and right-wing county commissioners who clamor for control of the nation's public lands, the dominant user is an urbanite, who bikes, skis, rafts, climbs, hunts, fishes, watches birds, waits for sunsets with a camera or finds an antidote for 'nature deficit disorder' in a weekend on a high plateau. Yet this silent majority is taken for granted." ...

... Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times: "Only about a third of the 640 million acres of public land -- national parks, permanently protected wilderness..., national wildlife refuges -- enjoy complete or high levels of protection against commercial development. Nearly all the rest is multiuse land, for logging, grazing, hard-rock mining, oil and gas development. Especially vulnerable are the 248 million acres overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. It is to this threat that President Obama must pay more attention than he has.... In a speech last week, President Clinton's interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, presented a telling chart that showed how much land has been protected -- by Congress and by the president -- from the Reagan to the Obama presidency. So far, the current administration is dead last, and by several lengths." ...

... Here's the story on Babbitt's speech by John Broder, and here's Babbitt's chart:

Bob Moen of the AP: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Saturday night that President Barack Obama has jeopardized U.S. national security by nominating substandard candidates for key cabinet posts and by degrading the U.S. military." CW: the speech, by a veep who makes Spiro Agnew look good, was not intended to be ironic.

Joel Greenberg & Babak Dehghanpisheh of the Washington Post: "Israel's recent airstrike in Syria, which according to Western officials targeted weapons destined for the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah, could mark the start of a more aggressive campaign by Israel to prevent arms transfers as conditions in Syria deteriorate, according to analysts in Israel and Lebanon. Israel's readiness to strike again if necessary heralds a new and more volatile phase in the regional repercussions of Syria's civil war, which has raised concerns in Israel about the possible transfer of advanced or nonconventional weapons to Islamist militant groups."

God Is a Flat-Taxer. Steve Benen: at this past week's annual National Prayer Breakfast [CW: which I ignored] "... the president was preceded by Dr. Benjamin Carson, a conservative physician, who used his time at the microphone to complain about 'fiscal irresponsibly' and the national debt, before insisting that God wants a 10 percent flat tax. Though conservatives were outraged that Obama tried to 'politicize' the prayer breakfast in 2012, the right quickly celebrated Carson's remarks this week. It's funny how that works out, isn't it?"

Irregardless of Gene Weingarten's opinionating, I do not mean to infer that the Web is preventative of really, really good English writing. His column, tho, is the best evah! IMHO.

Local News

Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "This Monday begins the long-awaited trial of Jim Greer, 50, a flamboyant former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. Mr. Greer, who was chosen for the job by [then-Governor Charlie] Crist, was indicted in 2010 on charges of fraud, money laundering and theft. Prosecutors accuse him of steering $125,000 of party money to a personal account in 2009 through a shell fund-raising company, Victory Strategies, of which he was a secret co-owner.... The trial is expected to rummage through the messy -- some say unethical -- inner workings of the party from 2007 to 2010, back when Mr. Crist still called himself a Republican (he is a Democrat now) and when [Sen. Marco] Rubio was an underdog candidate."

News Ledes

Reuters: "Airports slowly cranked back to life on Sunday, rare travel bans in Connecticut and Massachusetts were lifted, but roads throughout the region remained treacherous, according to state transportation departments. As the region recovered, another large winter storm building across the Northern Plains was expected to leave a foot of snow and bring high winds from Colorado to central Minnesota into Monday...."

Reuters: "U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, expected to oversee the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year, took control of the NATO-led mission on Sunday, in an elaborate ceremony which emphasised the country's sovereignty."

AP: "The hunt for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected in three killings entered a fourth day in snow-covered mountains Sunday, a day after the LAPD chief ordered a review of the disciplinary case that led to the fugitive's dismissal and new details emerge of the evidence he left behind." ...

... New York Times: "The Los Angeles Police Department will reopen its investigation into the 2007 episode that led to the firing of Christopher J. Dorner, the former police officer who is wanted in three killings, department officials said Saturday night." CW: they also might want to open an investigation into their hiring practices -- could they use some screening tools to detect homicidal tendencies?

AP: "Three foreign doctors have been killed in Nigeria, one of them beheaded, officials have said. Their nationality remains unclear, with differing reports claiming they were either South Korean or Chinese. The deaths on Saturday night of the physicians in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state, comes less than a week after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north."

Al Jazeera: "The secular party of Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki has withdrawn its three ministers from the country's government, saying that its demands for changes in the cabinet have not been met. The decision on Sunday by Marzouki's Congress for the Republic Party deals a further blow to Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali's government, already reeling from last week's assassination of secular opposition leader Shokri Belaid."

The Commentariat -- Feb. 9, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. The President begins his remarks with a huge lie: "Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans." (AND he doesn't get much better as he goes along, promising "sensible changes to entitlement programs.") How fucking balance is this? --

... (From the February 7 Commentariat) Greg Sargent: "Even if the parties reach a deal in the third round of deficit reduction to avert the sequester with something approaching an equivalent sum of spending cuts and new revenues, the overall deficit reduction balance would still be heavily lopsided towards Republicans. Yet they continue to insist on resolving round three only through cuts, anyway." There are more related links in the February 7 Commentariat. ...

... Tom Raum of the AP: "Trying to ratchet up pressure on Congress, the White House on Friday detailed what it said would be the painful impact on the federal workforce and certain government assistance programs if 'large and arbitrary' scheduled government spending cuts are allowed to take place beginning March 1. They include layoffs or furloughs of 'hundreds of thousands' of federal workers, including FBI agents, U.S. prosecutors, food safety inspectors and air traffic controllers, said White House budget officials at a briefing and in a fact sheet...." ...

... Here's the White House fact sheet. ...

... Jonathan Chait: Speaker Boehner is (1) standing pat on (2) the "horrible sequester," which is all President Obama's fault. "I don't understand the strategy of publicly declaring you don't mind the sequester and blaming it all on Obama. Don't you have to, you know, pick one?" CW: no, Jon, you do not, if you live in Right Wing World, where self-contradiction is the norm. ...

... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos has the best idea on how to handle the sequester: repeal it. CW: If you think this would lead to a lot of wasteful defense spending, you might be right. But maybe not: a budget authorization is just that: an authorization. It doesn't mean the Pentagon has to spend the money, though obviously the Defense Department would be under a lot of pressure from military contractors to let authorized contracts.

... This Huff Post interview of Paul Krugman is well-worth hearing. Krugman's questioner Marc Hill asks all the right questions, allowing Krugman to cover all the basics of what's wrong with Washington's (mis)management of deficits & spending. The interview comes to me via Chris Spannos, my editor at NYTX, who found it because the accompanying Huff Post story by Jack Mirkinson links one of my NYTX columns:

Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill this week that would eliminate the corporate "'deferral,' which allows U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes on overseas profits until they bring that money back to the U.S., giving them every incentive to leave it overseas permanently [and other corporate giveaways].... According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 'the provisions in this bill will raise more than $590 billion in revenue over the next decade.'" CW: good luck getting so much as a hearing on the bill, Bernie.

Kelsey Snell of Politico: "An investment Jack Lew made in the Cayman Islands has been flagged as an issue in the Treasury secretary nominee’s vetting by the Senate Finance Committee, according to multiple sources close to the confirmation process. The White House says the investment was previously disclosed and is already a public matter.... 'That Mr. Lew had an investment in the Caymans from 2007 through 2010 will likely draw questions during his nomination hearing,' said ... a spokeswoman for Finance Committee Republicans. Lew has been confirmed by the Senate three times in the past -- twice by unanimous consent." CW: so I guess it was okay that President Romney still had a slew of Caymen investments, but it's not okay if Treasury Secretary Lew had a Caymen investment in the past (he sold the investment, at a loss, i 2010). The real problem: "Republicans have been critical of Lew since his nomination was announced last month. Sens. Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch have questioned his role in Medicare policy decisions...." ...

... Sen. Carl Levin: "Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter today to Ranking Member Sen. James Inhofe, responding to a letter by Sen. Inhofe and other Republican senators insisting on additional financial disclosure information from secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel.... Sen. Levin outlines the Armed Services Committee's rules and practices for nominees and says the request by Inhofe and other Republican senators 'appears to insist upon financial disclosure requirements that far exceed the standard practices of the Armed Services Committee and go far beyond the financial disclosure required of previous Secretaries of Defense.' Levin intends to hold a committee vote on the Hagel nomination as soon as possible."

New York Times Editors: "... Harry Reid needs to remove [Sen. Bob Menendez {D-N.J.} from his position as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee], at least pending credible resolution by the Senate Ethics Committee of the swirling accusations of misconduct."

Ari Berman of The Nation: "In 2006, Congress voted overwhelmingly to reauthorize key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another twenty-five years. The legislation passed 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate. Every top Republican supported the bill.... Seven years later, the bipartisan consensus that supported the VRA for nearly fifty years has collapsed, and conservatives are challenging the law as never before.... The current campaign against the VRA is the result of ... a whiter, more Southern, more conservative GOP that has responded to demographic change by trying to suppress an increasingly diverse electorate; a twenty-five-year effort to gut the VRA by conservative intellectuals, who in recent years have received millions of dollars from top right-wing funders, including Charles Koch; and a reactionary Supreme Court that does not support remedies to racial discrimination."

"Fitness for Office." Gail Collins considers the corpulence of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. ...

... Jason Volentine of KTVK Phoenix: "Dr. Connie Mariano was the White House doctor for nine years, encompassing parts of both Bush administrations and the entire Clinton presidency. She was recently asked her opinion of Gov. Chris Christie’s weight problem..." The doctor said she worried about his health if he didn't get his weight down before he ran for office. [Elsewhere it was reported she said he might die in office.] Christie did not take the criticism well, firing back at the doctor from a news conference he held in New Jersey.... Mariano said Christie called her and yelled at her. 'It was essentially the tone of the press conference only louder,' she said. 'It was hard to get anything across.' ... Mariano ... [said] it's common for medical experts to weigh in on the health concerns of potential presidential candidates.... Ironically, Mariano has been a Christie supporter and identifies herself as a Republican."

Matthew O'Brien of The Atlantic explains that -- contrary to claims by know-it-alls -- liberal arts majors are not having a hard time finding jobs because their majors are useless; it's because, um, there aren't many jobs out there. With charts!

Andy Borowitz: "Citing budgetary concerns, the United States announced today that it would discontinue regular Saturday drone strikes on U.S. citizens, beginning in 2014."

Oh, boy! Remember Pretend President Rubio, the Republican savior who is going to deliver the Republican response to the SOTU? Now there's also going to be Pretend President Rand Paul who will deliver the Tea Party response to the SOTU. Paul should be great because, as Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon notes, "Paul will try to do a better job of looking at the camera than Michele Bachmann."

News Ledes

Reuters: "Chinese welcomed the arrival of the Year of the Snake with raucous celebrations on Saturday, setting off a cacophony of firecrackers in the streets and sending fireworks blazing into the sky to bring good fortune. Celebrations will carry on into the early hours of Sunday, officially the first day of the Lunar New Year."

AP: "A Cairo court on Saturday ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that caused deadly riots across the world."

AP: "After weeks of anxiety plodding through the opaque Russian legal system, two U.S. women have custody of their adopted Russian children and are preparing to take them home to start a new life together. Jeana Bonner of South Jordan, Utah, and Rebecca Preece from Nampa, Idaho, told The Associated Press on Saturday about the expenses, the confusion and emotional swings they've gone through since arriving in Moscow in mid-January, expecting to quickly leave with their children, both of whom have Down syndrome."

Bloomberg News: "Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt is adopting a plan to sell as many as 3.2 million shares in the operator of the world's most popular search engine. The planned share sales, worth about $2.5 billion, are for Schmidt's individual asset diversification and liquidity, Mountain View, California-based Google said in a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."

New York Times: "A powerful nor'easter swept fast and furiously across the Northeast on Saturday, dumping mountains of snow, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their cars at the height of the blizzard and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people." Latest updates are here. ...

     ... AP Update: "New Englanders began the back-breaking job of digging out from as much as 3 feet of snow Saturday and emergency crews used snowmobiles to reach shivering motorists stranded overnight on New York's Long Island< after a howling storm swept through the Northeast. About 650,000 homes and businesses were left without electricity, and some could be cold and dark for days. Roads across the New York-to-Boston corridor of roughly 25 million people were impassable."

... Boston Globe: "Hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents have lost power because of the mammoth blizzard that lashed Massachusetts with hurricane-force winds and dumped more than two feet of snow in some areas overnight. The state is at a standstill, with residents hunkering down at home under a rare travel ban imposed by the governor on Friday, and the MBTA saying it will not be able to restore service today. Snowplows are out in force struggling to clear the roads, but the storm is expected to continue dumping snow into midday." ...

... Hartford Courant: "Roads across the state were impassable Saturday morning, with drivers, emergency responders and even highway crews stuck in 2 to 3 feet of snow. At 5 a.m., Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ordered all roads closed until further notice, according to spokesman Andrew Doba. Just before 7 a.m., more than 36,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers were without power, along with more than half a million households in Massachusetts and Rhode Island."

AP: "Secret Defense Department studies cast doubt on whether a multibillion-dollar missile defense system planned for Europe will ever be able to protect the U.S. from Iranian missiles as intended, congressional investigators say. Military officials say they believe the problems can be overcome and are moving forward with plans."

AP: "First lady Michelle Obama will join some of Illinois' most recognizable politicians and clergy Saturday to mourn a 15-year-old honor student whose death has drawn attention to staggering gun violence in the nation's third-largest city. But Hadiya Pendleton's family says her Saturday funeral service won't be about politics, but about remembering a girl who loved to dance, once appeared in an anti-gang video and died just days after performing at one of President Barack Obama's inauguration events." ...

     ... Update: "Hundreds of mourners and dignitaries including first lady Michelle Obama packed the funeral service Saturday for a Chicago teen whose killing catapulted her into the nation's debate over gun violence." The Chicago Tribune story is here.

New York Times: John "Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94..., quietly yet emphatically defined the experience of using the telephone in the mid-20th century and afterward, from ushering in all-digit dialing to casting the shape of the keypad on touch-tone phones. And that keypad, in turn, would inform the design of a spate of other everyday objects.... Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs..., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry."

New York Times: "India hanged a man on Saturday who had been convicted of involvement in the 2001 attack on Parliament that killed nine people. The hanging of Afzal Guru, a 43-year-old militant with the group Jaish-e-Mohammad, came more than a decade after the Dec. 13, 2001, suicide attack on India's Parliament in which five gunmen opened fire, killing nine people, including security officials and a journalist."

Washington Post: "Parking lot attendants at the Smithsonian Institution's air and space center in Chantilly" skimmed at least $1.4 million from the parking fees they collected. Two have been sentenced. A third attendant, charged with stealing $120,000, committed suicide before her case was resolved...."

Los Angeles Times: "An attorney representing two women who were delivering newspapers when they were shot by police during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer called the incident 'unacceptable,' saying his clients looked nothing like the suspect. Emma Hernandez, 71, was delivering the Los Angeles Times with her daughter, Margie Carranza, 47, in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue in Torrance on Thursday morning when Los Angeles police detectives apparently mistook their pickup for that of Christopher Dorner, the 33-year-old fugitive suspected of killing three people and injuring two others." CW: Hernandez & Carranza are odd names for "Asian" women, which was the initially-reported description of the women. I guess all non-white people look alike. Who wouldn't mistake a 71-year-old Latina for a 33-year-old black man?

The Commentariat -- Feb. 8, 2013

Mark Mazetti & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "In a tumultuous start to the confirmation hearing for John O. Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday, protesters briefly disrupted his testimony and Mr. Brennan came under unexpectedly intense questioning from both Democrats and Republicans about drone strikes, leaks of classified information and his knowledge of the agency's former interrogation program." ...

... Greg Miller has the Washington Post report: "A Senate hearing on the nomination of John O. Brennan to serve as CIA director exposed deep skepticism of key aspects of the Obama administration's approach to fighting terrorism, including its unprecedented reliance on targeted killing and the secrecy it maintains around the exercise of that lethal power." ...

... Here's the "NBC Nightly News" report on the Brennan hearing:

     ... C-SPAN has video of the full public hearing here. ...

... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "... five key questions Brennan avoided [answering] throughout the course of the hearing: [1.] Did torture lead to the capture of Osama bin Laden? ... [2.] Did torture work? ... [3.] Will Brennan reduce the CIA's paramilitary role? ... [4.] Is waterboarding torture? ... [5.] Do American citizens have a right to know when they might be killed on suspicion of terrorism?" ...

... Marcy Wheeler: John Brennan, "who can't (or refuses to) say whether waterboarding is torture because he is not a lawyer, is entrusted every Tuesday to make far more difficult legal decisions, both on the subjective feasible and imminent questions, but also on specific international laws. In other words, according to the guy who has been acting as judge and jury for the last four years, the guy who has been acting as judge and jury is completely incompetent to act as judge and jury."

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "President Obama vowed Thursday to confront Republicans over the issue of closing tax loopholes, saying that he would relish a debate with those who insist that Congress has done all it should to get more tax revenue from wealthy individuals and corporations." ...

... Here are the President's remarks to House Democrats:

... Digby on sequester negotiations: "The President has already screwed the pooch on this with his statement that the Fiscal Cliff deal he offered is still on the table so there's really no point in pretending that the Democrats won't be offering up more cuts. Still, it could be useful if they at least tried to bluff a little bit before caving.... (Of course, that means that Cokie and Ruth Marcus might not give them plaudits for being grown-ups and that would be the worst thing that could possibly happen.) ... It's also a long term catastrophic error on the part of the Democrats to enthusiastically take credit for deficit reduction at exactly the wrong moment. They are cementing conservative economic ideology at their own expense. It's political malpractice.... It will be the 'grown-ups' who [are to blame for] fully [buying in[to] ... the economic ideology that destroyed the middle class." ...

... Paul Krugman: "While it's true that we will eventually need some combination of revenue increases and spending cuts to rein in the growth of U.S. government debt, now is very much not the time to act. Given the state we're in, it would be irresponsible and destructive not to kick that can down the road."

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The nation's Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees." CW: In a statement, the bishops said they would continue fighting the federal mandate in court." The bishops also said that until HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joins a convent & pledges her fealty to Rome, they will fight her every effort to accommodate their anti-woman agenda. (Okay, maybe I took liberties here.) ...

... NEW. Charles Pierce pens a note to the President re: the Clan of the Red Beanie: "You are attempting to compromise with people who simply do not want anyone to have access to birth control. You are attempting to compromise with people who do not accept your right to demand anything of them in return. It is time to be a secular political leader again and not give a damn."

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "After decades of friction over immigration, the nation's labor unions and the leading business association, the Chamber of Commerce, have formed an unusual alliance that is pushing hard to revamp American immigration laws. These oft-feuding groups ... are also nearing common ground on a critical issue -- the number of guest workers allowed into the country -- that has deeply divided business and labor for years and helped to sink President George W. Bush's push for an immigration overhaul in 2007."

Shabnam Bashiri in Salon: "The housing recovery is largely a myth, as increases in home sale prices are the result of Wall Street firms buying up foreclosed homes & renting them out, sometimes to the former owners upon whom the banks have foreclosed. "After creating a massive bubble in home prices that eventually burst and caused our economy to go into a tailspin, these guys have decided to come back for more, and figured out a way to profit off their destruction -- by turning foreclosed homes into rentals and securitizing the rental income.... Many are claiming this is a 'private sector solution.'" Bashiri provides an example. CW: if she's right (and she's an expert), this is a further -- & horrendous -- instance of how Wall Street & Washington are collaborating to turn back the clock to the 19th century, in this case to a time when homeownership in the U.S. was quite low.

Alan Fram of the AP: "A bipartisan quartet of senators, including two National Rifle Association members and two with 'F' ratings from the potent firearms lobby, are quietly trying to find a compromise on expanding the requirement for gun-sale background checks.... The private discussions involve liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is the No. 3 Senate Democratic leader; West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, an NRA member and one of the chamber's more moderate Democrats; Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., another NRA member and one of the more conservative lawmakers in Congress; and moderate GOP Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois."

Kimberly Kindy, et al., of the Washington Post: "Shoddy practices and unsanitary conditions at three large-scale specialty pharmacies have been tied to deaths and illnesses over the past decade, revealing that the serious safety lapses at a Massachusetts pharmacy linked to last fall's deadly meningitis outbreak were not an isolated occurrence.... A Washington Post analysis found that state and federal authorities did little to systematically inspect and correct hazards posed by specialty pharmacies, which custom-mix medications for individual patients, hospitals and clinics. In the lightly regulated industry, pharmacies were rarely punished even when their mistakes had lethal consequences."

Troubles in Right Wing World

According to my two favoritest Politico reporters, Jim Vandehei & Mike Allen, the GOP is aiming to "marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots." ...

... But, inconveniently enough, Jon Chait of New York points out that "In order to purge a party of crankish and bigoted sentiments, you would need to identify what those sentiments are. Climate-change denial? Opposition to gay marriage? 'Self-deportation'? Railing against food stamps? Supply-side economics?" ...

... While we're thinking about that brilliant plan, along comes ...

(Just a reminder here that the first & only woman ever to be Speaker of the House & House Minority Leader has never, ever been on the cover of Time magazine.) That's convenient. Or maybe not. Steve Benen takes a tally (all the links that follow are Benen's: "Maybe now would be a good time to note the blurred line between GOP 'cranks, haters and bigots' and the rest of the party? Let's use Rubio, the Republican 'savior,' as an example. Rubio doesn't accept climate science, thinks the age of the planet is a theological question, and opposes marriage equality. Remember the Blunt Amendment that would have empowered employers to deny birth-control coverage to their employers? It was originally known as the 'Blunt-Rubio Amendment.' Rubio is part of a shrinking fringe that opposes the Violence Against Women Act, embraces strange conspiracy theories involving gun control, and thinks George W. Bush was a 'fantastic' president. Rubio tells teleprompter jokes while reading from teleprompters, has been caught lying about the basics of Republican budget policy, has suggested TARP recipients shouldn't have to repay bailout money, and in 2011, argued programs like Medicare and Social Security have 'actually weakened us as a people.' ... What happens when the party realizes it doesn't have a moderate wing and its cranks and rising stars believe in roughly the same far-right ideology?" ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress posts 8 reasons Rubio is not the Republican savior: "1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling.... 2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment.... 3. Signed the Norquist pledge.... 4. Backed Florida's voter purge.... 5. Doesn't believe in climate change.... 6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women.... 7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees.... 8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group." ...

... Ed Kilgore has more. "So if Rubio has been on the crazy fringe of his party on fiscal policy [he has], why exactly are we supposed to believe he's somehow the voice and face of a middle-class-friendly GOP? He was front-and-center late last summer in defending the Republican platform’s support for a flat ban on abortions even in cases of rape and incest. So why is he 'saner' than Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock? ... [Because] immigration is the only issue on which Republicans as a whole are actually considering a 'shift' in their policies (though not so much their ideology). Rubio is the front-man for that effort...." ...

... The Time portrait of Rubio, by Michael Grunwald, is pretty sympathetic and just barely hints at Rubio's policies on anything outside immigration. ...

... Don't worry too much about Right Wing World, though. Orwellian Logic still applies. Jon Chait of New York: "Rubio has managed to get conservatives to think of cooperating with Obama on immigration reform as a kind of triumph over Obama. Never mind that Obama has favored comprehensive reform all along, and Rubio opposed it until the last few weeks. The new partisan narrative presents Obama as a foe of immigration reform and Rubio as its long-standing champion.... So then finally, Rubio will be standing with his foot atop Obama's throat, having bested him by forcing him to sign a bill fulfilling one of his longtime legislative priorities. And then 2016!"

Matt Gertz of Media Matters: Fox "News" may have purged two of its more high-profile crazy people -- Sarah Palin & Dick Morris -- but it still has its share of loons, including birther Eric Bolling & truther Andrew Napolitano.

** Melissa Henneberger of the Washington Post: "For more than 30 years, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald have been studying the unconscious biases that take root in our brains, coloring everything from hiring decisions to how doctors mete out medical care and judges pass sentence. If you don't think you harbor any such mental stowaways, tugging you in favor of white over black, straight over gay, or male over female ... then log onto Harvard's Project Implicit and prepare to be disappointed in someone you never knew held such appalling views: you."

Local News

Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post: "North Dakota has only one abortion clinic and has been rated the worst state in the country for women, but the State Senate passed two bills on Thursday will make it even more difficult for women in the state to access abortion care. [The state senate] passed a Personhood Constitutional Amendment initiative on Thursday that would amend the state's constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. If the ballot initiative passes the House, North Dakota voters will decide on it during the 2014 elections." ...

Melissa Anders of M Live: Michigan "House Speaker Jase Bolger said the Michigan House will not approve legislation that mandates transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion. Rep. Joel Johnson, R-Clare, introduced a bill this week that would require an ultrasound at least two hours before an abortion is performed using the 'most technologically advanced ultrasound equipment available at that location.' Many have interpreted the bill to mean that it would require the controversial and more invasive transvaginal ultrasound, but Johnson said that's not his intent and that he's 'very open' to amending the bill to clarify that."

Firedoglake, re: the shooting in Torrance, California of newspaper carriers: "... the police ... have already shown themselves to be reckless cowards. Two Asian women delivering newspapers were shot by Torrance undercover Los Angeles police this morning simply because they were in a Nissan truck similar to that [Christopher] Dorner, [a suspected police murderer,] may have been driving.... Dorner is a 6'4″ black male. There's no way the cops could have made any sort of visual identification of the people in this truck and mistaken either of them for Dorner. And wouldn't a second person in the truck, who might have been a hostage, preclude them from using deadly force? Shouldn't the fact that the license plate was not Dorner's have kept them from emptying their guns into the back window of this truck? Or maybe the fact that the truck was the wrong color and model? Somehow, the two women escaped death; one was shot in the back twice and is expected to recover and the other was shot in the hand was injured by broken glass. A second shooting, which involved Torrance police firing at a vehicle which also turned out not to be Dorner's, miraculously did not cause any injuries." CW: maybe the Torrance police are worse shots than the LAPD.

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "With snow piling up in Big Bear, authorities continued searching cabins deep in the forest but have turned up no leads on ex-cop and suspected killer Christopher Jordan Dorner, police said Friday afternoon."

UPI: "Los Angeles County plans to fire seven sheriff's deputies for membership in a secret group called the Jump Out Boys, officials said. The clique's members allegedly have tattoos showing skulls with skeletal hands holding revolvers, the Los Angeles Times reported. Smoke on the tattoo indicates a deputy has been involved in a shooting."

New York Times: "Alice Boland, 28, who was charged in 2005 with threatening to assassinate President George W. Bush and members of Congress..., is again charged with plotting a violent attack. On Monday, after pacing in front of the school gates [of Ashley Hall, a private girls school in Charleston, South Carolina] during car pool and visibly swinging a gun, she tried to shoot two faculty members," but she didn't know how to unlock the gun. "She appeared to have bought the gun legally...."

New York Times: "The leader of a dissident Amish sect, [Samuel Mullet, Sr.,] was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in prison for a series of bizarre beard- and hair-cutting attacks on other Ohio Amish that drew national attention.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later. Los Angeles Times: "Two women who were shot by Los Angeles police in Torrance early Thursday during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer were delivering newspapers...."

Guardian: "An investigation has been launched [by the FBI???] into how a hacker managed to access the email accounts of the former US president George HW Bush and members of his family. A number of Bush family photographs and personal emails were posted online by the hacker, who goes by the name of Guccifer. According to the Smoking Gun website, the emails -- which were sent between 2009 and 2012 -- contain details about the state of the former president's health as well as the home addresses, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of dozens of members of the Bush family." The Smoking Gun story is here. ...

     ... Reuters Update: "The Secret Service is investigating the hacking of email accounts belonging to members of the Bush family that divulged correspondence, addresses [and] phone numbers...."

New York Times: "Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's largest makers of computers and other electronics, is imposing new limits on the employment of students and temporary agency workers at factories across China. The move, following recent efforts by Apple to increase scrutiny of student workers, reflects a significant shift in how electronics companies view problematic labor practices in China."

Guardian: "European leaders were inching towards a deal in the early hours of Friday morning that would see the first cut in the EU's budget in its 56-year history. [British PM] David Cameron, who had demanded a freeze in real terms in the near-€1tn budget, was planning to claim victory after the European council president proposed a €34.4bn cut over the next seven years." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "After a failed attempt to set spending targets at a summit meeting in November and in a 24-hour marathon of talks this week, European leaders finally agreed late Friday to a common budget for the next seven years."

Al Jazeera: "Tens of thousands chanted anti-Ennahda slogans in the streets of Tunisia's capital for the burial procession of a slain opposition leader [Shokri Belaid] whose murder plunged the country into a political crisis and fresh post-revolution violence." CW: Ennahda is Tunisia's ruling party. With video.

Reuters: "Turkey has spent more than $600 million sheltering refugees from the almost two-year-old conflict in neighboring Syria, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Friday.... The United Nations said on Friday that refugee numbers have spiked, with around 5,000 people fleeing each day, 2,000 more a day than last year's figures."

Reuters: "Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead nine health workers who were administering polio vaccinations in two separate attacks in Nigeria's main northern city of Kano on Friday, police said. No one claimed responsibility but Islamist militant group Boko Haram - a sect which has condemned the use of Western medicine - has been blamed for carrying out a spate of assaults on security forces in the city in recent weeks."

AP: "The former American ambassador to Mali says France paid $17 million in ransoms to free French hostages and that the money ended up in the hands of the same al-Qaida militants the country is fighting now. In an interview that aired Friday on iTele, Vicki Huddleston said the money allowed al-Qaida's North Africa branch to flourish in Mali. Claude Gueant, who was French President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff at the time, on Friday denied that France had ever paid a ransom and said intermediaries had been negotiating to free the hostages."

AP: "Lawyers for Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, say that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has agreed to pay her for repeatedly intercepting her voicemail messages. The Duchess of York was one of a slew of phone hacking victims who settled on Friday with News Corp. over its campaign of illegal espionage by its British newspapers."