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The Commentariat -- June 5, 2015
All internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
Jean Hopfensperger of the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The Ramsey County Attorney's office filed criminal charges Friday against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for 'failing to protect children' from an abusive priest. The charges stem from the archdiocese's oversight of former priest Curtis Wehmeyer, who is now serving a prison term for abusing two boys while he was pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul."
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David Sanger & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Thursday announced what appeared to be one of the largest breaches of federal employees' data, involving at least four million current and former government workers in an intrusion that officials said apparently originated in China.... The target appeared to be Social Security numbers and other 'personal identifying information,' but it was unclear whether the attack was related to commercial gain or espionage." CW: The announcement was almost certainly the administration's "response" to the NSA hacking piece the Times published online yesterday, linked below. ...
... The Washington Post story, by Ellen Nakashima, is here. ...
... They're Just Gonna Do It Anyway. Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of Americans' international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad -- including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show. The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and 'cybersignatures' -- patterns associated with computer intrusions -- that it could tie to foreign governments." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Eric Tucker of the AP: "The growing use of encrypted communications and private messaging by supporters of the Islamic State group is complicating efforts to monitor terror suspects and extremists, U.S. law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Appearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, the officials said that even as thousands of Islamic State group followers around the world share public communications on Twitter, some are exploiting social media platforms that allow them to shield their messages from law enforcement." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Ed Snowden in a New York Times op-ed: "Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy -- the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights -- remains under threat.... As you read this online, the United States government makes a note.... As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects."
Tim Devaney of the Hill: "Legislation to fund the Justice Department is chock full of GOP-backed language designed to keep the Obama administration from moving ahead with gun control regulations. The Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, which cruised through the House this week, contains several provisions directed squarely at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) rule-making authority. Under the measure, the ATF would be prohibited from banning certain forms of armor-piercing ammunition or blocking the importation of military-style shotguns. Another provision would block federal agents from creating what critics say is a gun registry." ...
... CW: Here they use the same trick to prevent the President's immigration reform orders (now on hold, BTW). Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A little more than a week after denying President Barack Obama's effort to move forward with controversial executive actions on immigration, a federal appeals court has ordered both sides in the case to file new legal briefs.... The House voted Wednesday in support of an amendment that would bar funding for the Justice Department's defense of the pending appeal as well as the underlying lawsuit."
Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday he does not expect his chamber will appoint new circuit or Supreme Court justices for President Obama.
Paul Krugman: "... conservatives have long held Texas up as a supposed demonstration that low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor are the keys to prosperity. So it's interesting to note that Texas is looking a lot less miraculous lately than it used to.... the spectacle of the Texas economy coming back to earth, and Kansas sliding over the edge should at the very least make right-wing bombast ring hollow, in the general election if not in the primary. And someday, maybe, even conservatives will once again become willing to look at the facts." CW: Nah.
How to Become a Very Successful Politician. Noah Bierman & Evan Halper of the Los Angeles Times: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) "may lack some of the qualities of previous top party leaders in the House - the grand political vision of Newt Gingrich, the deal-making savvy of Tip O'Neill, the strong arm of Tom DeLay. But McCarthy excels at something else that has become key to leadership in Congress: recruiting candidates and raising money for them.... That spending and fundraising have fueled one of the fastest rises to power in congressional history." CW: Yeah, McCarthy's predecessor Eric Cantor was really good at that stuff, too.
Charles Blow: "How you view 'broken windows' policing completely depends on your vantage point, which is heavily influenced by racial realities and socio-economics. For poor black people, it means that they have to be afraid of the cops as well as the criminals."
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A landmark Environmental Protection Agency report on the impact of hydraulic fracturing has found no evidence that the contentious technique of oil and gas extraction has had a widespread effect on the nation's water supply, the agency said Thursday. Nevertheless, the long-awaited draft report found that the techniques used in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, do have the potential to contaminate drinking water. It notes several specific instances in which the chemicals used in fracking led to contamination of water, including drinking water wells, but it emphasized that the number of cases was small compared with the number of fracked wells." ...
... Natash Geiling of Think Progress: "Industry groups were quick to tout the report as proof of fracking's safety, while environmental groups claimed that the report was hampered by a lack of available information and watered-down by oil and gas interests. The study wasn't a comprehensive survey of all wells, and relied heavily on data already collected by state and federal agencies or willingly submitted by gas and oil companies."
Karl Mathiesen of the Guardian: "Global warming has not undergone a 'pause' or 'hiatus', according to US government research that undermines one of the key arguments used by sceptics to question climate science. The new study reassessed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (Noaa) temperature record to account for changing methods of measuring the global surface temperature over the past century. The adjustments to the data were slight, but removed a flattening of the graph this century that has led climate sceptics to claim the rise in global temperatures had stopped." ...
... CW: Wait, wait! This just prove that Jeb Bush was right: that climate science is "convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you." So, you know, it's silly to trust climate scientists. They're always disagreeing, so fageddaboudit till the science stops advancing & everybody gets on the same page. Bring on the Dark Ages. ...
... Ah, yes, Michael Bastasch, the energy & climate science editor at the right-wing Daily Caller, has NOAA's number: "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year 'pause' in global warming: They 'adjusted' the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record. New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years." Bastasch calls this "fiddling" or "tampering" with the data.
Brian Ross, et al., of ABC News: "In Steve Reinboldt's 1970 high school yearbook, wrestling coach Dennis Hastert wrote that Steve was his 'great, right hand man' as the student equipment manager of the Yorkville, Illinois wrestling team. But Steve was also a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Hastert, Steve's sister [Jolene] said today in an interview with ABC News. It is the first time an alleged Hastert victim has been identified by name since his indictment for lying to the FBI and violating federal banking laws to cover-up past misconduct. Hastert, due in court next week, has not responded to the allegations.... Jolene said that Steve told her the abuse lasted throughout Steve&'s four years of high school.... Her brother also spent time with Hastert as a member of an Explorers troop, which Hastert ran.... Reinboldt died of AIDS in 1995." ...
... CW: So obviously Steve Reinboldt was not "Individual A" in the Hastert indictment. Assuming the allegations have merit, Hastert has been a serial abuser.
Dan Williams of Reuters: "The Israeli military sees potential security benefits in an expected international deal curbing Iran's nuclear program, a senior officer was quoted as saying on Thursday in an unexpected analysis of the issue. Prime Minister Netanyahu has presented the planned deal as a threat to Israel. But in a closed-door briefing to Israeli reporters published in part by local media, the officer said the deal - if agreed by its June 30 deadline - could provide clarity on whether Iran is on course to a bomb." Via Paul Waldman.
Margaret Talbot on Abercrombie's foolish exclusivist policies & how they led not just to the company's defeat in the Supreme Court but also to its slumping sales.
Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "Jack Warner, the former FIFA vice president who was among 14 people indicted by a United States grand jury as part of an inquiry into corruption in world soccer, says he knows why the organization's president, Sepp Blatter, announced plans to step down from soccer's governing body.... Mr. Warner, who said he feared for his own life, also said he had evidence linking FIFA to his country's 2010 election.... Mr. Warner's sons, Daryan and Daryll, are also cooperating with the authorities, having secretly pleaded guilty in 2013 after they tried to deposit more than $600,000 in nearly two dozen United States bank accounts in an attempt to avoid detection. During a rambling and sometimes incoherent seven-minute television address..., [which was] a paid political advertisement, he said he had reams of documents, including copies of checks, linking Mr. Blatter and other senior FIFA officials to an effort to manipulate a 2010 election in Trinidad and Tobago." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... AP: "Military intelligence officers have raided the headquarters of the Venezuelan Football Federation amid the spiraling FIFA scandal. Venezuela's public prosecutor's office said agents raided the Venezuelan organization's offices Wednesday to gather evidence for a criminal investigation. The organization's former head, Rafael Esquivel, was detained in Switzerland last week along with six other FIFA officials accused of taking bribes." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race
Peggy Fikac of the Houston Chronicle: "Former Gov. Rick Perry announced for president Thursday with a promise to 'restore hope' to Americans left behind by the economy at home and unsettled by chaos abroad. 'We have the power to make things new again, to project America's strength again, and to get our economy going again,' he said at a small airport hangar in the Dallas area, backed by veterans against a backdrop formed by a C-130 plane of the type he flew while in the Air Force. 'And that is exactly why today I am running for the presidency of the United States of America.'" CW: Bigger news: got through speech without once saying "oops." I still think his chances would be better running for president of the Republic of Texas. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... CW: However, I have to admit Perry is better-prepared this time around. Why, he even has his own rap-country theme song. If you can't quite figure out what a rap-country song is, Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed explains. ...
... HOWEVER, as Steve M. documents, it would appear that the country Perry loves ever so much is the one that flies this flag.
... Washington Post Editors: "Voters should evaluate [Rick Perry] on the terms he suggests -- on real measures of his judgment.... Mr. Perry's 'simple formula' [of low taxes & light regulation] ... included fighting several counterproductive ideological wars that have hurt Texans. His battles against Environmental Protection Agency clean-air rules were as extreme as they were unsuccessful. Even though Texas had the nation's highest uninsured rate at the outset of health-care reform, he rejected federal funds to expand its Medicaid program, irrationally leaving a pile of money on the table and low-income residents with few or no real coverage options. Mr. Perry's deployment of the Texas National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border was simple grandstanding on immigration."
Hunter Walker of Business Insider: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) offered a somewhat confusing explanation of his Iraq policy in an appearance on Fox News' 'Outnumbered' on Thursday. Rubio seemed to express support for US troops being present in Iraq, but he maintained this did not represent the controversial 'nation-building' philosophy that led to a protracted American military presence in that country following the US invasion in 2003.... 'It's not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation,' Rubio said...." (Emphasis added.) CW: As I have noted in the past Marco is a master at meaningless double-speak. This is a classic example. ...
... NONETHELESS, Brent Budowsky, a Democrat, writes in the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) is the most interesting GOP presidential candidate in the 2016 field, a field that is becoming a party embarrassment.... It includes candidates who are egotistical vanity players, unelectable rightist ideologues, talk show wannabes and book sale promoters, and it features only one woman, whose only qualification is a failed tenure as a CEO and whose only purpose in the campaign would be to act as the female Republican stalking the female Democrat who could be America's first female president."
Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Endorsements from Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, of TLC's '19 Kids and Counting,' have disappeared from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's (R) presidential campaign website. The Duggar endorsements enjoyed top billing on the campaign site's 'I Like Mike' sidebar on May 22, the day Huckabee issued a full-throated defense of the family following the publication of a 2006 police report that showed the Duggar's eldest son, Josh, was investigated for molesting five underage girls when he was a teenager. Parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said that four of the victims were Josh's sisters, while the fifth was a babysitter, during an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly that aired Wednesday night.... Archived versions of the campaign site show that the endorsements were removed sometime Monday night.... When a reporter on Tuesday asked Huckabee whether the Duggars would be joining him on the campaign trail, the former governor responded "I don't know, it'll be up to them...," according to video captured by BuzzFeed." CW: So Mikey is ambivalent about child molestation & incest. That's an improvement.
Ron Fornier of the National Journal: "... Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and other GOP presidential candidates critical of Obama's formulation [of American exceptionalism] are making a mistake with their retro pitch to a populace that has always looked to the future.... The term 'American exceptionalism,' first used with respect to the United States by Alexis de Tocqueville, refers to the notion that this country differs qualitatively from other developed nations because of its national credo, ethnic diversity, and revolution-sprung history. It is often expressed as superiority.... Obama's concept of American exceptionalism is not, as critics say, something smaller. It's Reagan-plus: a striving city under constant construction." CW: Yes, Ron Fournier. Because a thousand monkeys typing → Shakespeare sonnet.
Paul Waldman on "why many of the GOP presidential candidates are repeating a narrative of victimhood and oppression that has become common on the religious right:... Call it empathizing or pandering, but the candidates know it isn't enough to say 'I agree with you on the issues' -- you have to demonstrate that you feel what they feel and look at the world the same way they do. That's true to a degree of any constituency group, but it may be particularly important with voters who feel as besieged as social conservatives do today." ...
... Robert Costa & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "... among the social conservatives who are a powerful force within the Republican Party..., the widespread acceptance of [Bruce] Jenner's evolution from an Olympic gold medalist whose masculinity was enshrined on a Wheaties box to a shapely woman [Caitlyn] posing suggestively on the cover of Vanity Fair was a reminder that they are losing the culture wars. Across social media, blogs and talk radio this week, conservatives painted an apocalyptic view of America.... The GOP's struggle with the issue was evident by the fact that -- although President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats uniformly praised Jenner's bravery -- no top-tier Republican candidate had anything to say about her this week."
Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday accused Republicans including her potential rivals Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Perry of 'deliberately trying to stop' young people and minorities -- both vital Democratic constituencies -- from exercising their right to vote, as she presented an ambitious agenda to make it easier for those groups and other Americans to participate in elections. Speaking at Texas Southern University [in Houston] in front of her largest crowd yet as a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton accused Republicans generally of enacting state voting laws based on what she called 'a phantom epidemic of election fraud' because they are 'scared of letting citizens have their say.'" ...
... CW: Chozick might have taken the trouble to note, somewhere in her report, that Clinton's "allegations" are well-supported by the facts. Instead, she followed the she said/he said playbook, citing an RNC spokesman's rebuttal. ...
... Ferinstance. Ari Berman of the Nation: "From 2011 to 2015, 395 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and 21 states have adopted new laws making it harder to vote, 14 of which will be in effect for the first presidential cycle in 2016.... [Clinton's] policy proposals would make it easier for millions of Americans to cast a ballot and participate in the political process. Clinton's speech signaled that voting rights will be a major issue in the 2016 [presidential] race." ...
... Adrian Carrasquillo of BuzzFeed: "Hillary Clinton called for universal, automatic voter registration for every citizen when they turn 18, at a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston, one of the largest historically black colleges in the nation." ...
... Dana Milbank: "There doesn't have to be smoke to give the appearance of fire at the Clinton Foundation. The sprawling charity has sucked in so much cash from so many sources that, with some creativity, it can be tied to virtually any skullduggery.... [Hillary] Clinton and her husband have only themselves to blame for making themselves vulnerable to guilt-by-association attacks.... At a time of rising populist backlash against Wall Street, inequality and wealth-purchased privilege, there is no Democrat more closely tied to the rich and the powerful than Clinton. At a time when Democrats need to draw contrasts with Republicans by sticking up for the little guy, Clinton's solicitation of -- and favors for -- the powerful make her an inauthentic messenger." ...
... CW: Just as inauthentic as Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt. Noblesse oblige, vous savez. Maybe voters should choose Ted Cruz instead, because he authentically grew up poor.
Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post on why formerly solid Republicans Lincoln Chafee & Jim Webb are now Democrats (Hillary Clinton, too, was once a Republican, though she changed her party affiliation early in life): "Polarization in the House and Senate is now at the highest level since the end of Reconstruction, according to at least one measure. And it's true that both parties have moved outward. But the polarization has been asymmetric, with Republicans having moved much further right than Democrats have moved left.... If there isn't room for Nixon and Reagan in today's shrunken GOP tent, there definitely isn't space for centrists such as Chafee and Webb."
Beyond the Beltway
AP: "Guam has become the first U.S. territory to recognize gay marriage after a federal judge struck down the prohibition."
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck and the Police Department's independent watchdog have determined that two officers were justified in fatally shooting Ezell Ford, a mentally ill black man whose killing last year sparked protests and debate over the use of deadly force by police, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. Department investigators found evidence indicating that Ford had fought for control of one officer's gun, bolstering claims the officers made after the shooting, said two sources...."
Politico: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden greeted thousands of mourners in the sanctuary of St. Anthony of Padua's church on Friday afternoon as they paid their respects at a wake for his beloved eldest son."
Washington Post: "Tariq Aziz, a top minister for Saddam Hussein who served as Iraq's international spokesman for more than 20 years and was perhaps the government's most recognizable figure after the longtime dictator, died June 5 at a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. He was believed to be 79."
Bloomberg News: "Payrolls climbed in May by the most in five months and worker pay accelerated, showing companies were upbeat about the U.S. economy's prospects after an early-year slump. The 280,000 advance in payrolls exceeded the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey and followed a revised 221,000 April increase, figures from the Labor Department showed Friday in Washington."
Guardian: "Twenty million Yemenis, nearly 80% of the population, are in urgent need of food, water and medical aid, in a humanitarian disaster that aid agencies say has been dramatically worsened by a naval blockade imposed by an Arab coalition with US and British backing. Washington and London have quietly tried to persuade the Saudis, who are leading the coalition, to moderate its tactics, and in particular to ease the naval embargo, but to little effect."
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