The Commentariat -- March 9, 2015

Internal links removed.

Washington Post: "Thousands of marchers, government officials and other public figures gathered Sunday for a second straight day to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a brutal police assault on civil rights demonstrators that spurred the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Starting from early morning, groups of people -- some with locked arms, some in song, some taking to their knees to pray -- began to march across Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of Selma's 'Bloody Sunday' march on March 7, 1965. By midafternoon, police said at least 15,000 to 20,000 people had joined the crush on and around the bridge...."

Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "Echoing a speech given by President Obama a day earlier, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Sunday that access to the polls was 'under siege' by a flurry of recent state laws, and by a 2013 United States Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act, the landmark legislation that was the great prize for the civil rights activists who marched here a half-century ago. Mr. Holder spoke at ceremonies before veterans of the civil rights era and ordinary citizens who gathered [in Selma, Alabama,] for a commemorative march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 50th anniversary of a violent confrontation between the police and protesters that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act." ...

... E. J. Dionne: "At a minimum, Congress should honor Selma by restoring an effective Voting Rights Act, once a bipartisan cause.... But let's be more adventurous and make voting in federal elections an obligation of citizenship." ...

... CW: Dionne doesn't go far enough. As much as possible, local elections should be tied to federal elections. One of the problems in Ferguson, & in many other communities, is that local elections are held in off-months &/or off-years, severely limiting turnout. Thousands of elected officials are serving at the whims of tiny minorities of eligible voters, giving the officials little incentive to answer to the broader public. That's precisely what happens in Ferguson. As the Washington Post reported last August, "Ferguson holds municipal elections in April of odd-numbered years. In doing so, the town is hardly unique. Approximately three-fourths of American municipalities hold their elections in odd years, a Progressive-era reform intended to shield municipal elections from the partisan politics of national contests, but one that has been shown to have a dramatic effect on reducing turnout." ...

... Greg Sargent explains why -- and of course it's obvious -- Republicans are not going to allow restoration or expansion of the Voting Rights Act. ...

... Ed Kilgore: "The president's speech at Selma on Saturday will definitely make the history books as one of his finest flights of oratory. But it was notable not just for its heights but for its gritty practical impact. It was not one of those 'civil rights speeches' absolutely anyone could nod along with, safely distant from the revered events of a past rapidly receding into history. Indeed, its central thrust was to insist the dynamics of Bloody Sunday are still being played out on the streets and in the courts and Congress." ...

... Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker: "If we have learned anything new from the D.O.J. report [on Ferguson, Mo.], it is about the ways in which racism facilitated corruption, and the way that stereotypical views of black criminality camouflaged a practice of targeting -- and all but extorting revenue from -- African-American residents.... Ferguson ... is an object lesson in the national policing practices that have created the largest incarcerated population in the Western world, as well as a veil of permanent racial suspicion...." ...

... CW BTW: If you want to know how John Roberts, et al., get away with claiming that racism is so over, you need only read the headline of the National Review article by Ian Tuttle, which Cobb cites: "The Injustice the DOJ Uncovered in Ferguson Wasn't Racism." The denizens of Right Wing World live in an absurd, fraudulent bubble which they invoke at every turn to justify their elitist, racist, sexist, anti-science policies. This bubble allows Mitt Romney to disown the 47 percent, Haley Barbour to claim that the white supremacist Citzens Councils were really gentlemanly businessmen who outlawed the KKK, Todd Akin to claim that nice girls can't be impregnated by rapists, and Rick Scott to render climate change unspeakable (see links under "Beyond the Beltway" below). ...

... That's Not de Mississippi. It's de Nile. Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, who had not read the DOJ entire report at the time of his interview, did not find the report convincing. Carimah Townes of Think Progress: "He also maintains that there is 'no proof' of gross civil rights violations." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... By Sunday, Knowles seemed a little more willing to accept some of the report's findings, but complained the town had undergone a level of scrutiny to which other communities had not been subjected & suggested that he & the city council members didn't bear much responsibility because they were part-timers wh outsourced day-to-day operations to "professional staff."

Somani Sengupta of the New York Times: "Despite the many gains women have made in education, health and even political power in the course of a generation, violence against women and girls worldwide 'persists at alarmingly high levels,' according to a United Nations analysis that the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to present to the General Assembly on Monday. About 35 percent of women worldwide -- more than one in three -- said they had experienced violence in their lifetime, whether physical, sexual, or both, the report finds. One in 10 girls under the age of 18 was forced to have sex, it says." ...

... CW: I think the percentage is higher than that. I suspect women underreport violence against them, because they are ashamed, because they fear further violence, or because they're so abused, they think they "deserve" it & don't consider it abuse. I write from personal experience.

Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday warned President Obama not to agree to an unsatisfactory deal over Iran's nuclear program, suggesting the president's unilateral moves on Iran had their limit. 'Obviously, the president doesn't want us involved in this. But he's going to need us if he's going to lift any of the existing sanctions. And so I think he cannot work around Congress forever,' McConnell said in an interview aired on CBS's 'Face the Nation.'"

We really don't have 218 votes to determine a bathroom break over here on our side. So how are we going to get 218 votes on transportation, or trade, or whatever the issue? -- Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.)

... Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "In their first major test of governing this year, Republicans stumbled, faltered -- and nearly shut down the Department of Homeland Security. And that vote may have been the easy one. In April, physicians who treat Medicare patients face a drastic cut in pay. In May, the Highway Trust Fund runs dry. In June, the charter for the federal Export-Import Bank ceases to exist. Then in October, across-the-board spending cuts return, the government runs out of money -- and the Treasury bumps up against its borrowing limit.... While many of these measures used to be pushed through in an almost unthinking bipartisan ritual, there is no such thing as simple in Congress anymore.... The Republican turmoil has, in turn, empowered congressional Democrats, who found that by standing unified, they can wield significant power from the minority...." ...

There's never been a time when we've taken progressive action and regretted it. -- Dan Pfeiffer

... ** Jonathan Chait spoke to outgoing presidential advisor Dan Pfeiffer about how the White House gave up on Republicans. "If you had to pinpoint the moment this worldview began to crystallize, it would probably be around the first debt-ceiling showdown, in 2011, when Obama tried repeatedly and desperately to cut a budget deal with House Speaker John Boehner only to realize, eventually, that Boehner did not have the power to negotiate. The administration has now decided that in many cases, even adversarial bargaining fails because the Republican leadership is not capable of planning tactically."

Paul Krugman hopes the Fed is smarter than Paul Ryan & won't raise interest rates over a fear -- real or imagined -- that the rate of inflation could top 2 percent because a hike in the interest rate could cost millions of jobs & perhaps also cause the U.S. economy to slide "into a Japanese-style deflationary trap, which has already happened in Sweden and possibly in the eurozone."

Supreme Tenthers May Save ObamaCare. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In 2012, the Supreme Court declared that Congress had put 'a gun to the head' of states by pressuring them to expand Medicaid, and it said that such 'economic dragooning' of the states violated federalism principles embedded in the Constitution. Now, in a separate case, comments by several justices indicate that they could uphold a pillar of the Affordable Care Act -- insurance subsidies for millions of lower-income people -- by invoking those same principles."

Carvin v. Carvin. Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: In his argument before the Supremes in 2012, the lawyer for the anti-ObamaCare side directly contradicted his statements to the Court during his 2015 argument in King. Millhiser has the goods on Michael Carvin & on Scalia & Alito., who also contradicted their 2012 statements: "Carvin, as Roberts alluded to, is an advocate who is paid to advance the views of his client. Scalia and Alito do not have the same excuse."

Ian Austen of the New York Times: "For years, cycling's top officials turned a blind eye to doping, operating in deference primarily to one rider -- Lance Armstrong -- according to a reform commission that spent the past year excavating the sport's doping problems. The three-member commission issued a scathing indictment of the sport's officials Sunday, laying much of the blame on a governing body that, it said, had interests that ran counter to any genuine efforts to expose doping. The 227-page report detailed how Mr. Armstrong's extraordinary influence had not only compelled officials to ignore drug use but had also enabled his lawyer to secretly write and edit the report of an earlier investigation into Mr. Armstrong's doping practices."

Presidential Race

Coronation Interruptus

Obviously, Hillary isn't actually texting in the photo. She's just looking at photos of sunny beaches.Adam Sneed of Politico: "The top House Republican Benghazi investigator says the emails Hillary Clinton has handed over for review have 'huge gaps' that challenge her credibility over what happened in the 2012 attacks in Libya. 'There are gaps of months and months and months,' Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on Sunday on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' In the batch of emails handed over to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Gowdy said there’s no record of any communication on the day that Clinton was famously photographed wearing sunglasses and typing on her Blackberry." ...

... Allen Rappeport of the New York Times: "Mr. Gowdy said that he was interested only in communications relating to Benghazi, but that Mrs. Clinton’s evasiveness on the matter was wrong. 'It's not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what's public record and what's not,' he said. Other leading Republicans sought to further press the issue of Mrs. Clinton's emails." ...

... Ben Brody of Bloomberg Business: "Members of a House committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack tussled Sunday over whether they should release the committee's cache of messages from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private e-mail account." CW: Darrell Issa seems to suggest that the purpose of the subpoenas is to render illegal Clinton's private e-mails. ...

... Jim Puzzanghera of the Los Angeles Times: "... Sen. Dianne Feinstein [D-Calif.] ... said [Hillary] Clinton should speak publicly about her emails or risk damaging her potential 2016 presidential campaign. 'She is the leading candidate, whether it be Republican or Democrat, to be the next president, and I think she needs to step up and come out and state exactly what the situation is,' Feinstein said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'I think from this point on the ... silence is going to hurt her.'" ...

... Real Men Don't Type. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-19th-Century) has never sent an e-mail. ...

... CW: The beau of the cotillion does have a Twitter account. The nature of the content suggests staff members are the "real tweeters." ...

... Former Secretary of State Colin Powell lost his e-mails: "I don't have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files. A lot of the emails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and state.gov domain, but I don't know if the servers in the State Department captured those or not." ...

     ... CW: Could we now hear from the right-wing outrage machine on the horror & duplicity of Colin Powell's lost e-mails? What about that one where he wrote, in part, "I bet my phony dog-and-pony show convinced a lot of those yokels that Saddam really does have WMDs. I should get an Oscar. LOL." Or the one where he wrote, "My boss is the Dumbest Oaf in America." Oops, deleted. Laptop tossed.

... Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "... as Mrs. Clinton commemorates her 1995 women's rights speech in Beijing in back-to-back events in New York, she finds herself under attack for her family foundation's acceptance of millions of dollars in donations from Middle Eastern countries known for violence against women and for denying them many basic freedoms. This was not how she intended to reintroduce herself to American voters."

Screwing Wisconsin's workers and proud of it. Journal Sentinel photo.Meg Kissinger & Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Overhauling more than a half century of labor law in Wisconsin, Gov. [Scott] Walker Monday signed so-called right-to-work legislation banning labor contracts that require private sector workers to pay labor fees.... The passage marks a shift in the GOP governor's position that comes as he pursues an all but certain presidential run. Walker said repeatedly during the intense battle over Act 10 -- his 2011 law that repealed most collective bargaining for public workers -- that he would not let legislation affecting private-sector unions reach his desk." ...

... Charles Pierce: "At this point, if Scott Walker's positions on most major issues get any more fluid, he's going to have to campaign in a wine skin."

Rand Paul for President! And Senator! Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader: At Rand Paul's urging, the Kentucky Republican executive committee voted unanimously to hold a caucus next March rather than a primary, as the party has in the past. This would allow Paul to run for both president & Senate. Kentucky law disallows a person to appear on two ballots simultaneously. "While winning approval for a caucus from the executive committee was key to Paul's efforts, the state central committee, which comprises more than 350 members, will still have to vote on a formal proposal, with caucus rules and details, when it meets Aug. 22."

Senate Race

Arelis Hernández of the Washington Post: "U.S. Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) plans to announce on Tuesday that she will run for the Senate seat being vacated by Barbara A. Mikulski (D), according to two Democrats familiar with her plans, setting up a potentially bruising primary fight with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)."

Beyond the Beltway

Ben Brumfield of CNN: "A fraternity fraught with scandal quickly shut down a chapter in Oklahoma when a video surfaced that showed members singing a racist chant that used the n-word. The video shows a group of young white students chanting the n-word loudly and boisterously while riding on a bus. Sigma Alpha Epsilon's national chapter shut down the chapter Sunday night, suspended all of the chapter's members and threatened to remove those responsible from the fraternity for life." ...

... Mecca Rayne of KOCO Okalahoma City: OU "President David Boren said the members of the fraternity have until midnight to get off campus." ...

... CW: By Right Wing News standards, this "wasn't racism," but "a failure of university discipline" or something. (See Jilani Cobb post, linked above.)

We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact. -- Kristina Trotta, former Florida Department of Environmental Protection employee. ...

... Officially Ignorant. Tom McCarthy of the Guardian: "Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP, the agency in charge of setting conservation policy and enforcing environmental laws in the state, issued directives in 2011 barring thousands of employees from using the phrases 'climate change' and 'global warming', according to a bombshell report by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting (FCIR). The report ties the alleged policy, which is described as 'unwritten', to the election of Republican governor Rick Scott and his appointment of a new department director that year. Scott, who was re-elected last November, has declined to say whether he believes in climate change caused by human activity. 'I'm not a scientist,' he said in one appearance last May.... The 2014 national climate assessment for the US found an 'imminent threat of increased inland flooding' in Florida due to climate change and called the state 'uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise'." ...

... Digby: "You have to love the idea that someone told scientists that they are not allowed to discuss anything that isn't a 'true fact.' Presumably they would not likewise be barred from talking about God ... It's true that this small band of elites have unfettered power but they are more reminiscent of the Inquisition than anything in the 1920s. (If you click that link you can see the original Vatican document declaring the Copernican system 'foolish and absurd.')"

Phil Willon & Melanie Mason of the Los Angeles Times: "A U.S. Supreme Court case that could force California to redraw its congressional districts has stirred up fears of a return to partisan gerrymandering, a divisive process that has been criticized for both cementing and crushing political careers. While the potential impact remains uncertain, both Democratic and Republican leaders agree that the ruling could solidify the Democrats' tight grip on California's 53-member House delegation, the largest of any state."

Ugly Americans. Rosie Scammell of the Guardian: "Tourists are once again getting into trouble in Italy, with two American women caught carving their names into Rome's Colosseum. The Californians, aged 21 and 25, snuck away from their tour group on Saturday and began scratching their initials into the amphitheatre with a coin." CW: One of the two letters they carved was a "J." There is no "J" in Italian (or Latin).

Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "In those areas of Iraq and Syria controlled by the Islamic State, residents are furtively recording on their cellphones damage done to antiquities by the extremist group. In northern Syria, museum curators have covered precious mosaics with sealant and sandbags. And at Baghdad's recently reopened National Museum of Iraq, new iron bars protect galleries of ancient artifacts from the worst-case scenario. These are just a few of the continuing efforts to guard the treasures of Iraq and Syria, two countries rich with traces of the world's earliest civilizations." ...

... CW: ISIS reminds me of medieval & later Christian fundamentalists: "In the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, locals destroyed many of the standing stones around the [Avebury, England,] henge, both for religious and practical reasons.... At some point in the early 14th century, villagers began to demolish the monument by pulling down the large standing stones and burying them in ready-dug pits at the side, presumably because they were seen as having been erected by the Devil and thereby being in opposition to the village's Christian beliefs.... In the latter part of the 17th and then the 18th centuries, destruction at Avebury reached its peak, possibly influenced by the rise of Puritanism in the village, a fundamentalist form of Protestant Christianity that vehemently denounced things considered to be 'pagan'...."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Sam Simon, the often-overlooked but instrumental co-creator of 'The Simpsons,' which popularized the hapless patriarch Homer ('D'oh!') and his puckish son, Bart ('Eat my shorts!'), and became a phenomenon in the new genre of irreverent animated sitcoms, died March 8 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 59."

Washington Post: "The estimated cost of President Obama's signature health care law is continuing to fall. The Congressional Budget Office announced on Monday that the Affordable Care Act will cost $142 billion, or 11 percent less, over the next 10 years, compared to what the agency had projected in January."

The Commentariat -- March 8, 2015

Internal links removed.

Peter Baker & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "As a new generation struggles over race and power in America, President Obama and a host of political figures from both parties came [to Selma] on Saturday, to the site of one of the most searing days of the civil rights era, to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go.... But coming just days after Mr. Obama's Justice Department excoriated the police department of Ferguson, Mo..., the anniversary ... provided a moment to measure the country's far narrower, and yet stubbornly persistent, divide in black-and-white reality":

"WelKKKome to Selma!" Rich Schapiro of the New York Daily News: "Within sight of the bridge where President Obama will commemorate the 1965 Bloody Sunday march is a billboard set up by a group dedicated to honoring Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. The sign, set up in recent days, invites visitors to see 'Selma's War Between The States Historic Sites.' But it also features a picture of the Confederate flag and an image of Forrest, who was also a Confederate general. Beside Forrest's picture is a quote adopted by his men: 'Keep the skeer on 'em.' In a bizarre twist, the other side of the billboard -- a straight shot and about a half-mile east of the Edmund Pettus Bridge -- contains a welcome message to President Obama." ...

... Athena Jones & Deirdre Walsh of CNN: "House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy will now go to Selma Saturday to join in the 50th anniversary events. McCarthy tells CNN he considers John Lewis a close friend, and wants to be there to commemorate the historic anniversary." ...

... CW: Maybe this piece in the right-wing National Review, by Charles C. W. Cooke, is what embarrassed McCarthy into going to Selma: "By electing to skip the proceedings ... the Republican leadership suggests that it does not recognize what Selma represents within America's long history of public dissent.... If we are to put George Washington upon our plinths, and to eulogize him on our currency, we must agree to elevate Martin Luther King Jr. to the same dizzy heights. They are less famous, perhaps, but by virtue of their brave march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, John Lewis and Hosea Williams immortalized themselves into quintessential American heroes in the mold of Sam Adams and George Mason. To miss an opportunity to solemnize their daring is to blunder, disgracefully." Read the whole post; it's pretty powerful. ...

... OR this one, in the Daily Beast, by winger Ron Christie: "Somehow, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) are too busy with other plans than to commemorate the bravery of those who helped remake American society. The same may be said for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX). Are they too busy on the golf course, raising money, or otherwise content to sit on the couch to head to Selma?" ...

... David Atkins in the Washington Monthly: Republicans "will continue to try to disenfranchise as many minority voters as possible -- one of the reasons why the Selma memorial is so problematic for them." ...

... Alice Ollstein of Think Progress: Republicans who attended the Selma commemoration express a profound lack of concern for voting rights.

... Former Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.) writes a fascinating remembrance in Politico Magazine of the second Selma march. ...

... ** I Know that My Redeemers Cometh. Jamelle Bouie: "If the 1960s were a Second Reconstruction -- a second attempt to fulfill the promise of emancipation -- then our present period is a second Redemption, where a powerful movement attempts to reverse gains and dismantle our fragile efforts at racial equality.... In appearance and in effect, the program of 21st-century conservatives is remarkably similar to the one of 19th-century Redeemers. It guts civil rights laws, shrinks state spending, and limits the scope of activist government. Yes, there are important differences.... But it's undeniable that the two are connected by history."

Greedy Bastards. Illustration by Victor Juhasz for Rolling Stone.** Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: The utility & fossil-fuel industries are waging a war against rooftop solar panels. "The campaign's first phase -- an industry push for state laws raising prices for solar customers -- failed spectacularly in legislatures around the country, due in part to surprisingly strong support for solar energy from conservatives and evangelicals in traditionally 'red states.' But more recently, the battle has shifted to public utility commissions, where industry backers have mounted a more successful push for fee hikes that could put solar panels out of reach for many potential customers.

Legislation to make net metering illegal or more costly has been introduced in nearly two dozen state houses since 2013. Some of the proposals were virtual copies of model legislation drafted two years ago by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a nonprofit organization with financial ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship don't want you to forget Sheldon Adelson, the gambling magnate who is "the Godfather of the American right," and of the Israeli right, too. ...

... MEANWHILE, Adelson's man in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, credited his speech to Congress with slowing down the Iran nuclear negotiations.

Bill Curry, in Salon, lambastes both parties & their leaders as soulless incompetents overseeing a "broken, venal, dysfunctional" government.

Cristian Farias in Slate: "... the fate of Obamacare now rests with Kennedy. Or with Roberts. Or both. But let's also credit Sotomayor for finding a way to corner them both and hold them to precedents the Supreme Court has long believed in."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. CW: If you enjoy office gossip about people you don't know, but some of whom you might have seen on teevee, Gabriel Sherman of New York has the story for you: "(Actually) True War Stories at NBC News."

Presidential Race

Reena Flores of CBS News: "President Obama only learned of Hillary Clinton's private email address use for official State Department business after a New York Times report, he told CBS News...":

... Not exactly a ringing endorsement:

... CW: One of the down sides to this Hillary-Is-the-Only-Alternative is having to repeat, more than once, "Maureen Dowd has a point." To wit, in today's predictable column, Dowd writes, "Everyone is looking for signs in how Hillary approaches 2016 to see if she's learned lessons from past trouble. But the minute this story broke, she went back to the bunker, even though she had known for months that the Republicans knew about the account." ...

... Todd Purdum, in a Politico Magazine piece, compares Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon. Purdum is married to former Bill Clinton aide Dee Dee Myers.

... Andy Borowitz: "In what could be a prelude to a Presidential run in 2016, on Friday Joe Biden released to the public both e-mails that he has written while serving as Vice-President for the past six years."

Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "Jeb Bush's charter school is a ruin baking in the Miami sun.... Mr. Bush moved on." ...

... Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "In his first major public appearance in Iowa as a potential presidential candidate, Jeb Bush took a low-key approach at the Iowa Agricultural Summit." ...

... Dave Weigel of Bloomberg Politics: Jeb Bush, confronted by a DREAMer in Iowa, compared President Obama's executive actions on immigration to decrees by a "Latin American dictator." Impressively, he did it in Spanish. He said, "We need to do this by law, not by executive order." CW: He's right. He should tell that to the House leadership, not to our very own "dictator."

Trampling on History. Betsy Woodruff of Slate: "Republicans' overwhelming victories in the last few election cycles have let them dominate the state government, so they don't really face much of a fight anymore. That's why the state that birthed the organized labor movement in the United States is now right-to-work. In Madison, it's clear that Walker and his allies have learned how to take charge, get things done, and render their ideological foes irrelevant. First Wisconsin, then the country? The governor's presidential prospects hinge on the possibility that that idea isn't too far-fetched." ...

... Dave Zweifel, former editor of the Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Times: "Why don't we just cut to the chase and call this governor of ours what he really is: 'Slippery Scott.'... Scott Walker, of course, has become a master of the sleight of hand. One thing that we all should have come to learn these past four years is that you can never take this man at his word. The classic example played itself out the last couple of weeks as the state Legislature passed a right-to-work law." CW: Note doubt Slippery Scotty is the odds-on favorite to win this year's "Bait and Switch" Champ prize at the annual convention of Hucksters, USA.

Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade: "Potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said on Friday affording the distinction to marriage to same-sex couples 'offends myself and a lot of other people.'" CW: I could not care less that equal rights "offend" L'il Randy, but his misuse of the reflexive pronoun deeply offends me, myself and I. I hope he cares. ...

... Digby is offended, too, on somewhat more substantive grounds: "This is why it's hard to take libertarianism seriously. This man is the acknowledged leader of that faction. And he is unable to say that it's none of his business who marries whom or admit that women own their own bodies (but says they do own their children!) It's inconsistent on such a fundamental level that it gives away the game: he's either whoring for the social conservative vote or he's philosophically incoherent."

Ted Cruz Announces His Obama Conspiracy Theory of the Week. Ben Jacobs: "Senator Ted Cruz has alleged that the leak of the pending indictment of the New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez may be a politically motivated act of retaliation by Barack Obama and the Department of Justice. Speaking to reporters at the Iowa Agricultural Summit in Des Moines on Saturday, the Texas Republican said he found it 'awfully coincidental' that charges were reportedly set to be brought against Menendez, a leading Democratic critic of Obama's Middle East policy, during such a fraught period in US negotiations with Iran." Also, too, Selma & Daylight Savings Time.

Beyond the Beltway

Samantha Masunaga of the Los Angeles Times: "A bill dissolving Cover Oregon, the state's dysfunctional health insurance exchange, has been signed by Gov. Kate Brown. The measure, which had bipartisan support, transfers responsibilities for the Oregon exchange to the state Department of Consumer and Business Services."

Katie Dean of the Capital Times: "Protesters gathered at noon Saturday in front of the Madison Police Department at 211 S. Carroll St. in response to the shooting of a 19-year-old African-American man, identified by friends and family as Tony Terrell Robinson Jr., who was killed Friday evening after an incident with a Madison police officer."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Two Chechens, one a police officer who fought Islamic insurgents and the second a security guard, were charged in a Moscow court on Sunday in connection with the killing of Boris Y. Nemtsov, a leading Kremlin critic, while three other suspects were jailed pending further investigation.Judge Nataliya Mushnikova of Basmanny District Court said that the officer, Zaur Dadayev, had confessed to involvement in the killing and that other evidence confirmed his participation...."

New York Times: "A suspect in the murder of the opposition politician Boris Y. Nemtsov blew himself up as the police closed in on him overnight, Russian news reports said on Sunday, while new disclosures indicated that one of the men already detained in the killing had served as a police officer in the fight against Islamic insurgents. Five suspects were due to be arraigned at Basmanny District Court in Moscow.... Security forces established a cordon around the court."

"An Exchange Established by the State"

Suppose I say to you, "Last year, I put a big addition on my house." Since I'm not a professional builder, the odds are you will assume that what I mean is that I hired a contractor and/or a team of masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., who physically built the new structure. You are not likely to immediately picture me single-handedly raising roof trusses. Neither are you going to take me for a liar who claimed she did a big job when in fact she didn't lift a finger. You know what "put" means, but you didn't limit your understanding of it to its most narrow, literal meaning.

So what is "an exchange established by the state"? After all, the entire question raised by the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell is a semantic one.

News reports about the number of people who would lose health insurance if the Supremes side with the King v. Burwell plaintiffs typically cite 37 states as not having "an exchange established by the state." Here's a Kaiser Foundation map of state "subsidies at risk" in the King case (the linked map is interactive):

But that is not really true. It turns out that 19 states have established (there's that word again) some manner of "state-federal partnership" exchanges, according to this Commonwealth Fund interactive map (the linked map is interactive):

CLICK ON MAP TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.That's in addition to the 13 states which independently run their exchanges and are not subjects of the lawsuit. So that is 32 states which actively run all or part of their health insurance exchanges. That means only 18, not 37, states have not actively established exchanges.

Surely a state that is running its exchange in partnership with the federal government is operating "an exchange established by the state" -- just as "I put an addition on my house" in partnership with my contractor & her subs.

Will it take another lawsuit to determine what the meaning of "established" is? It shouldn't

The plaintiffs in King have claimed a tortuously narrow meaning of "established by the state." But anyone conversant with English, even reading that clause alone & not in the context of the entire law, would understand a more flexible meaning of "established." A reasonable person would assume that a state government that was working in partnership with the federal government had "established" -- that is, recognized, accepted & embraced -- the exchange operating in that state. Even Justice Moops (né Scalia) should be happy with this. He is fond of using the dictionary as a source for some of his arguments. Therein he will find "recognized" as a synonym for "established," as in "established church."

Thus, there is a way for the justices to decide for the plaintiffs but still allow residents of states with federally-run exchanges to get their health insurance tax credits/subsidies. The 32 states which are currently participating in managing or outright running their exchanges already have exchanges "established by the state."

The Court can then allow other states, via legislative or executive resolution, to declare that the exchange the federal government set up for their state has been "established by the state." That is, it is a bona fide, state-sanctioned system.

It is true that such a decision might leave out a few Republican-run states where residents are currently receiving subsidies. But I expect public pressure would cause them to recognize the federal exchanges as their own.

So if the states-rights justices insist upon being all federalisty, they can let the states decide if they want to "own" the federally-run exchanges, save their residents millions of dollars and ensure that tens of thousands can purchase affordable health insurance. It will only take one election cycle to get rid of the lamebrains who don't.