The Commentariat -- July 26, 2014

Michael Shear & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "President Obama on Friday urged the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to exercise what he called their 'shared responsibility' to help stem the flow of migrant children toward the United States border, but the Central American leaders said America shares some of the blame for the crisis." The presidents met for 90-minutes in the White House Cabinet Room:

... Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "Three Central American leaders met President Obama on Friday to tell him that billions of dollars poured into attempting to prevent migrant children crossing the US border would be better spent addressing the root causes of the crisis in their countries." ...

... Pamela Constable of the Washington Post: "Some immigration experts and advocates suggest [a major cause of the migrant children influx was] U.S. policies of the 1990s and 2000s that deported thousands of gang members back to Central America. At the time, authorities were attempting to root out Latino gang violence in American cities.... The gangs took new root in Central America, abetted by the push of drug-trafficking routes into Central America from Mexico. The gangs grew more ruthless and expanded into international drug trade and other crimes, leading to escalating violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Critics of proposals to deport the new crop of youths warn that the United States risks making the same mistake twice, accelerating violence over the border by condemning those fleeing the gang explosion to become either gang members or victims."

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "Over the past several months, [Former CIA Director George Slam-Dunk] Tenet has quietly engineered a counterattack against the Senate committee's voluminous report [on the CIA's detention & interrogation program], which could become public next month. The effort to discredit the report has set up a three-way showdown among former C.I.A. officials who believe history has been distorted, a White House carefully managing the process and politics of declassifying the document, and Senate Democrats convinced that the Obama administration is trying to protect the C.I.A. at all costs."

Yesterday I linked to a story featuring a videotape of a January 2012 talk by Jonathan Gruber -- one of the architects of the ACA, who said, in response to a question, "... if you're a state and you don't set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill." This is the same argument conservative plaintiffs made in the Halbig case, & the D.C. Circuit Court agreed. In an interview with Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic, Gruber said, "I honestly don't remember why I said that. I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake." Both Gruber & Cohn offer evidence that the intention of Congress was always to grant tax subsidies to eligible citizens of every state -- whether the state had established its own exchange or not.

     ... BUT, in an update, Cohn links to a Breitbart audio in which Gruber says the same thing, in another venue, in the same time frame. So, not a mistake. CW: Clearly, this is what Gruber believed at the time. It helps explain, IMO, how the language got into the bill. If Halbig eventually comes before the Supreme Court, the justices won't hear this new information, but you can bet the conservative justices will know about it. Yesterday, I was skeptical that this was a smoking gun; I'm not skeptical any more, unless the Breitbart audio is a mashup of some sort (not an impossibility, given Brietbart's record). ...

     ... Adam Serwer of MSNBC: "Asked over email whether those remarks [in the Brietbart audio] were a mistake, too, Gruber wrote back, 'same answer.'"

     ... Jon Walker of Firedoglake: "Either Gruber was misleading these people earlier, perhaps in an attempt to promote his consulting work or trick more states into adopting exchanges to make the law seem more popular, or he is misleading people now."

** Never Mind. Katie Zavadski of New York: "When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not mince words. "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay," he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region. But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas's handiwork after all." Israel now says the kidnapping & murders were committed by members of a "lone cell."

Paternalism doesn't change through the ages. It just dresses differently. -- Charles Pierce, on Paul Ryan's latest granny-starving scheme

Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "Starting this Wednesday, Twitter users began pointing out instances in which a BuzzFeed writer, Benny Johnson, had lifted phrases and sentences from other websites. After carefully reviewing more than 500 of Benny's posts, we have found 41 instances of sentences or phrases copied word for word from other sites. Benny is a friend, colleague and, at his best, a creative force, but we had no choice other than letting him go." ...

     ... CW: BuzzFeed, not the NYT, fired Johnson for plagiarizing posts, the content of which were intentionally inconsequential; e.g., "15 things to avoid if you don't want to eat horse meat." These were not exactly master's theses. Apparently BuzzFeed is way more serious than the U.S. Senate. Also probably more serious than the Army War College: contributor Citizen 625 invites you to read Senator General John Walsh's "master's thesis": "If you want to read one god-damn lame masters thesis by John Walsh. The Army War College ought to be embarrassed for their obvious support for grade inflation."

Ed Pilkington, et al., of the Guardian: "Leading experts on the use of medical drugs in capital punishment have accused death penalty states of conducting a 'failed experiment' with new drug combinations following a recent run of drawn-out executions in which prisoners have shown signs of distress on the gurney."

One More Way Fox "News" Undermines Democracy. April Sorrow in Science Daily: "When asked who is going to win an election, people tend to predict their own candidate will come out on top. When that doesn't happen, according to a new study from the University of Georgia, these 'surprised losers' often have less trust in government and democracy.... Despite all evidence to the contrary, 78 percent of Mitt Romney supporters during the 2012 election believed he would win.... Among Romney supporters, watching Fox News Channel had a unique effect.... Those who watched Fox News Channel were even more likely to predict Romney would win, and this in turn had an effect on whether or not they thought government posed a threat." Thanks to James S. for the link.

My New Congressman Is Just as Great as My Old Congressman
                          -- Constant Weader

Sahil Kapur of TPM: "In an extraordinary -- and extraordinarily awkward -- failure of basic situational awareness, a U.S. congressman [Curt Clawson (R-Fla.)] apparently mistook American government officials for Indian government officials during a congressional hearing.... 'I'm familiar with your country. I love your country. And I understand the complications of so many languages and so many cultures and so many histories all rolled up in one,' Clawson said. He added: 'Anything I can do to make the relationship with India better, I'm willing and enthusiastic about doing so.' ... Clawson took office on June 25, replacing Rep. Trey Radel (R), who resigned after getting arrested for cocaine possession last fall." ...

     ... CW: Hey, how was Clawson to know? (Well, okay, maybe from cheat sheet on his table that identified all the hearing participants.) The officials didn't "look American." Clawson also told Rep. Colleen Wakako Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) that he was famililar with Japan & loved Godzilla movies. He greeted Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) with a hearty "Hola, Amigo!" & told him he was familiar with Taco Bell. ...

     ... CW Update: Since I can't access Foreign Policy, which was the source for the story, I read secondary sources. I missed this Gawker piece, which cites the FP story (Update update: the FP story is available here):

During the hearing, [Clawson] repeatedly touted his deep knowledge of the Indian subcontinent and his favorite Bollywood movies.

You cannot satirize this guy.

Beyond the Beltway

Meghan Keneally, et al., of ABC News: "A doctor with a semi-automatic gun and a caseworker who was 'nothing short of heroic' were able to wound and then subdue an armed psychiatric patient after he had killed another caseworker and appeared intent of reloading and shooting more people in a Pennsylvania hospital, police said today." After the assailant Richard Plotts killed the caseworker, Dr. Lee "Silverman dove to the floor, pulled a semi-automatic pistol out his pocket and had a furious close range gun battle with Plotts." CW: We'll be hearing about this from the NRA & their supporters, even though the person who actually subdued Plotts was unarmed caseworker John D'Alonzo. Another doctor, also unarmed, assisted him.

Presidential Race

Charles Pierce is not impressed with Aqua Buddha's outreach to the people his former employee & co-author the Southern Avenger asked to apologize to white people for their high crime rate. CW: I'm not sure if it's guts or chutzpah, but Paul's efforts seem okay to me so far.

News Ledes

AP: "The United States shut down its embassy in Libya on Saturday and evacuated its diplomats to neighboring Tunisia under U.S. military escort amid a significant deterioration in security in Tripoli as fighting intensified between rival militias, the State Department said."

Washington Post: "Large Palestinian protests against Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip spread across the West Bank on Friday, as U.S.-led talks to secure a lasting truce sputtered. But a brief 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire did begin as promised Saturday and ambulances rushed into no-go zones to look for dead and wounded." ...

... AP: "Israeli aircraft struck 30 houses in the Gaza Strip early Friday, killing a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group and two of his sons, as Israel's Security Cabinet was to decide whether to expand its operation or consider ideas for a cease-fire."

AP: "The European Union on Friday extended its Ukraine-related sanctions to target top Russian intelligence officials and leaders of the pro-Russia revolt in eastern Ukraine, official documents showed."

The Commentariat -- July 25, 2014

Internal links removed.

Look Out, Poor People. Paul Ryan Is Here to Help. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times: "Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, outlined a plan to combat poverty on Thursday that would consolidate a dozen programs into a single 'Opportunity Grant' that largely shifts antipoverty efforts from the federal government to the states." ...

... CW: Sounds like a Tenther Plan to me.

... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "... it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it’s still driven by the longstanding conservative desire to limit the help we give to the poor.... Ryan's plan assumes that the same Republican states that rejected the federal government's offer to insure poor citizens through the expansion of Medicaid -- in other words, who would rather see poor people go uninsured than get coverage from the government -- are now going to be spectacularly committed and creative in working to help those same poor citizens through their time of need.... One of the real dangers of Ryan's approach is that it would render the programs unable to deal with economic downturns unless Congress stepped in and supplied more money, which would be unlikely as long as Republicans control at least one house." ...

... Steve Benen: "In the interest of magnanimity, let's acknowledge some of the good stuff. Ryan bucks his party, for example, by endorsing expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), an issue on which Democrats can and should welcome the opportunity to work with him. He's also prepared to embrace sentencing reforms, which is heartening, and his recommendations on occupational licensing aren't bad, either.... [And] Ryan doesn't include any of the deep spending cuts to the safety net that have helped define the congressman's far-right budget proposals." But then, a person who needs help has to sign a contract (promising to be a better, more responsible person, I guess, with a sort of life coach who evidently determines what measureable markers constitute better-personhood. If the impoverished person doesn't meet her part of the deal, she'll be subject to some kind of "sanctions." So demeaning, threatening AND weird. Great. ...

... Annie Lowrey, in New York, explains how this "condescending and wrongheaded" program is supposed to work. It "presupposes that the poor somehow want to be poor; that they don't have the skills to plan and achieve and grow their way out of poverty.... It isolates the poor. Middle-class families don't need to justify and prostrate themselves for tax credits.... It threatens to punish the poorest and most unstable families for their poverty and instability.... It does not address the core problem of a lack of jobs -- or the problem of a lack of jobs paying a living wage and affording a middle-class lifestyle." ...

... As Emily Badger of the Washington Post puts it, "the idea is fundamentally punitive. It betrays the fact that Ryan's latest thinking has not strayed all that far from the simplistic notion that people in poverty are solely to blame for their own circumstances. An incentive system like this assumes that end goals such as employment are entirely within the control of a poor people if they would just try hard enough." ...

... for a party that does absolutely nothing, Republicans are awfully concerned about how much work other people do. -- Akhilleus, in today's Comments (read his entire comment)

... See today's Comments for the context on this:

... AND, according to House Democrats, the Ryan plan is not "revenue neutral," as Ryan claims. Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Ryan ... cast his new initiative as a plan that wouldn't roll back resources for the poor but would change how the money is delivered and spent.... Ryan also insisted that his new grant plan, which would consolidate 11 separate federal anti-poverty programs into one funding stream for participating states, was not a block grant.... Van Hollen, on the other hand, said that's exactly what the plan was, and he was surprised Ryan would do little more than dress up his previous ideas.... Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) added that two-thirds of the cuts in Ryan's latest budget would hit low- and middle-income families, and railed against the Wisconsin Republican's idea to block-grant the Head Start program for early education.... The 11 programs that Ryan wants to consolidate would get hit with 20 percent cuts, Van Hollen noted, even as Ryan said he envisioned a deficit-neutral plan."

... In his critique of Ryan's plan (linked above), Paul Waldman writes, "The devil would be in the details; what if a state decided to take its entire block grant and devote it to giving lectures to poor people on why they should get married?" Florida doesn't need a block grant for that. We have Sen. Marco Rubio, who's providing the life-coaching advice -- while also serving as a role model -- for free! ...

... Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post: In a address at Catholic University Wednesday Rubio said, "'I consider myself to be a child of privilege,"' because being 'raised by two parents who were married to each other ... led me to live my life in a sequence that has a proven track record of success.' Specifically, this sequence: Get an education, then a job, then marry and have children. Stick to that order and you'll be better off by virtually every measure, he said...."

Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "The House on Thursday narrowly defeated a Democratic motion to instruct House conferees on the Department of Veterans Affairs overhaul to simply adopt the Senate-passed bill. The motion offered by Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) was rejected in a close 205-207 vote, with 13 Republicans voting in favor. All 207 no votes were from Republicans." ...

... Burgess Everett & Lauren French of Politico: "Democrats and Republicans are struggling to agree on how to pay for [VA overhaul] legislation that could cost between $25 billion and $30 billion. That logjam is transforming the VA debate from one that united both parties to yet another fiscal fight, prompting the same type of partisan finger pointing that has become familiar after years of budget showdowns." ...

... The Hill story, by Martin Matishak, is here.

Sarah Mimms of the National Journal: "House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that the House will not deal with funding the government before the August recess.... Boehner told reporters that the House will pass a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open sometime in September, avoiding a government shutdown that would otherwise occur on the last day of the month. The legislation would likely expire in early December, he said, punting decisions about the nation's spending to a lame-duck Congress just after the midterm election."

Lauren French: "The House Rules Committee approved a resolution Thursday allowing the full House to vote on authorizing a lawsuit against President Barack Obama accusing him of abusing executive authority. The 7-4 vote was split along partisan lines...." ...

... Paul Steinhauser of CNN: A CNN poll finds that "By a 57%-41% margin, Americans say House Republicans shouldn't file the suit. As with the question on impeachment, there's a wide partisan divide over the lawsuit.... Only 35% want Obama impeached, with nearly two-thirds saying the President should not be removed from office." ...

... CW: So why the suit? According to the poll (page 8), 75 percent of Republican respondents favor the suit.

Frances Robles & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Hoping to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico.... If approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the first American refugee effort in a nation reachable by land to the United States, the White House said, putting the violence in Honduras on the level of humanitarian emergencies in Haiti and Vietnam, where such programs have been conducted in the past amid war and major crises."

Nick Corasaniti & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The United States Army War College determined in a preliminary review on Thursday that Senator John Walsh of Montana appeared to have plagiarized his final paper to earn a master's degree from the institution, and sent a letter to the senator instructing him that an investigative panel will meet next month to conclusively assess any culpability." The whole story is worth reading. ...

... CW: The paper was only 14 pages long. (I've never heard of a 14-page master's thesis, except perhaps in math & science fields where the "paper" might be one long equation.) He couldn't write 14 pages with plagiarizing half of it? I love the way Democrats are standing by this guy who IMHO did something just as bad, or worse, than did Anthony Weiner with his foray into dick pix. National Democrats couldn't dump Weiner fast enough. ...

... NEW. CW: Paul Waldman agrees with me here: "What the hell are the standards at the Army War College that you can write a 14-page paper and get a master's degree? Is it like that at the colleges the other services run? It might be OK if it was 14 pages of dense calculations for a degree in economics or something, but it reads like a paper written by a reasonably bright high school sophomore in his international relations class, not somebody getting an advanced degree. Not only that, there's no original research in it, which is usually a requirement of a graduate thesis." ...

     ... AND Waldman is with me on the PTSD "excuse" (see my comment to yesterday's Commentariat. Waldman write,

That's an insult to the thousands of veterans who have suffered from PTSD. It can be a terrible ailment, but one thing it doesn't do is make you plagiarize other people's work on your "thesis." What, did Walsh wake up in the middle of the night and think he was back in Iraq, in a firefight where the only way to save his comrades was to cut and paste a bunch of articles and then put his name on the top of the resulting paper? Give me a break.

     ... "Elvan," a commenter on Waldman's post asks a question I've had, too (but haven't expressed & would not have expressed as cleverly as Elvan did): "What faculty member couldn't detect such blatant plagiarism in this paper? Or is military science to science what military music is to music?"

... NEW. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post has a good piece on "John Walsh and how not to respond to a political scandal."

Paul Krugman: After years of dysfunctional government, the Democratic majority in the California state legislature grew large enough to override Republican obstruction & impose a mildly "liberal agenda." Conservatives predicted disaster; instead, California is doing very well. And then there's Kansas.

No Surprises Here. Paul Krugman Sen. Rob Portman (R-Wis.Ohio), rich guy & "debt disaster dead-ender," has written a Wall Street Journal op-ed on how we must curb entitlements, etc. "And it is an interesting piece -- it's a very good illustration both of the desperate desire to see a debt crisis, and what happens when someone (Portman, or more likely the staffer who wrote it) tries to be a Very Serious Person without actually understanding the numbers or having followed any of the analysis.... The main thing that struck me was the policy recommendations, written as if he knows nothing about the ongoing discussion of these issues over the past decade and more."

Winger Peter Suderman of Hit & Run (republished here in the libertarian Reason) thinks he has found the smoking gun in the Halbig anti-ACA case when he catches (via a commenter to another blog) Jonathan Gruber during a January 2012 talk saying, "... if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits." ...

... The Long Arm of the Kochs. Steve M. points out, "This was found by a guy at the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute and published on the blog of the Koch-funded Reason magazine, in support of a lawsuit pushed by the partly Koch-controlled Cato Institute. The Kochs and their bleeding-edge wingnut billionaire allies can't wait.... Their goal is to win this war. And it's total war." ...

... Dave Weigel has the background: "By late Thursday night, the entire conservative/libertarian blogosphere/twittersphere was crowing about the video.... The timing of the speech is important. Gruber said this in January 2012. It wasn't until May 2012 that the IRS issued a rule, clarifying that subsidies would also be available to the states that joined the federal exchange.... But this bolsters the libertarians' case. Gruber is acknowledged, by everyone, as an architect of the ACA.... It just happens that in early 2012, when [Halbig architect Michael] Cannon was barnstorming states to get them to avoid creating exchanges, Gruber was telling them they had better create exchanges or they wouldn't get subsidies." ...

... Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, who's usually fairly silly, makes a compelling prognostication that the conservative Supremes will pretend that they are preserving "legislative integrity" by taking literally the ACA phrase "an exchange established by the State." I also agree with her that if the Court takes the case, the law's best chance of survival lies with Justice Kennedy, because I think he may not be quite as mean-spirited as the other righty-rights on the Court.

NEW. Forgot this one. Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and two other groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Warren, Mich., who banned an atheist group from setting up a station alongside one run by a prayer group in the city hall atrium. Mayor Jim Fouts (R) said that the group's 'reason station' would be opposed to prayer and compared atheists to Nazis and members of the Klu Klux Klan."

News Ledes

** New York Times: "Russia has increased its direct involvement in fighting between the Ukrainian military and separatist insurgents, moving more of its own troops to the border and preparing to arm the rebels with ever more potent weapons, including high-powered Tornado rocket launchers, American and Ukrainian officials said on Friday."

New York Times: "Secretary of State John Kerry has proposed a two-stage plan to halt the fighting in the Gaza Strip that would first impose a weeklong truce starting Sunday, an official involved in the negotiations said on Friday. As soon as the truce took effect Palestinian and Israeli officials would begin negotiations on the principal economic, political and security concerns about Gaza, with other nations attending." ...

     ... Update: "Israel agreed to halt its military offensive in Gaza for 12 hours starting Saturday morning amid intense international efforts to seal a broader cease-fire deal and a new explosion of violence in the West Bank.... The announcement by the military came early Saturday, hours after Israel's security cabinet rejected Secretary of State John Kerry's proposal for a seven-day cease-fire in Gaza and further talks...."

... AFP: "Israeli fire Friday pushed the Palestinian death toll in Gaza to above 800, as Washington pressed Israel and Hamas to agree a week-long umanitarian ceasefire and thrash out a durable truce."

AFP: "The United States on Thursday said it had evidence Russian forces were firing artillery from inside Russia on Ukrainian troops, in what officials called a 'clear escalation' of the conflict. Moscow is also planning to 'deliver heavier and more powerful multiple rocket launchers' to the pro-Russian separatist forces in Ukraine, US deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said." ...

... AFP: "Ukraine's prime minister resigned after his governing coalition collapsed, plunging the former Soviet state into political limbo as it struggles to quell a deadly rebellion in the east.... Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he was stepping down over the "dissolution of the parliamentary coalition and the blocking of government initiatives" after several parties walked out on the ruling group. The collapse of the ruling coalition paves the way for early elections to be called by President Petro Poroshenko within 30 days."

New York Times: "As a detachment of French soldiers reached the crash site in Mali of an Air Algérie jetliner, officials in Paris said Friday that the accident was most likely weather-related and that the distribution of the wreckage over a limited area suggested that the plane probably hit the ground intact."

Guardian: "The Washington Post's correspondent in Tehran has been arrested along with his Iranian wife and two American photojournalists. Iranian judicial officials confirmed on Friday that Jason Rezaian, who holds dual American and Iranian citizenship, had been detained and is under investigation."

The Commentariat -- July 24, 2014

Internal links removed.

Amie Parnes of the Hill: "State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf on Wednesday said blame for the crashed Malaysian Airlines flight 'lies directly at President [Vladimir] Putin's feet,' as the Obama administration looked to raise pressure Russia. Harf said Putin was responsible not just for the downed commercial airliner, 'but every incident we've seen' throughout the conflict. 'Period.'"

Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "A decorated veteran of the Iraq war and former adjutant general of his state's National Guard, [Sen. John] Walsh [D-Montana] offered the Democratic Party something it frequently lacks: a seasoned military man.... But one of the highest-profile credentials of Mr. Walsh's 33-year military career appears to have been improperly attained. An examination of the final paper required for Mr. Walsh's master's degree from the United States Army War College indicates the senator appropriated at least a quarter of his thesis on American Middle East policy from other authors' works, with no attribution.... The breadth of Mr. Walsh's apparent plagiarism ... is startling...." His explanations/excuses are, well, conflicting. ...

... CW: I thought it was hilarious when Rand Paul got caught plagiarizing a few speeches. This is not hilarious. Walsh should resign.

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "President Obama is flat wrong to seek changes in current immigration law to manage the wave of migrant children at the southern border, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) charged Wednesday.... Obama has urged 'more flexibility' to expedite deportations of the migrant children, and the head of the Homeland Security Department clarified Tuesday that he's seeking changes to a 2008 human trafficking law to speed up the process."

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma are among the most vocal Republican skeptics of the science that burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming, but a new study to be released Thursday found that their states would be among the biggest economic winners under a regulation proposed by President Obama to fight climate change. The study, conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Rhodium Group, both research organizations, concluded that the regulation would cut demand for electricity from coal -- the nation's largest source of carbon pollution -- but create robust new demand for natural gas.... The demand for natural gas would, in turn, drive job creation, corporate revenue and government royalties in states that produce it, which, in addition to Oklahoma and Texas, include Arkansas and Louisiana." ...

     ... This is just one of many ways, of course, that the rank ignorance of "leaders" like Perry & Inhofe hurt their states, & in Inhofe's case, hurt all of us.

Wendy Koch of USA Today: "Spurred by a boom in oil-carrying trains and several recent tragic accidents, the Obama administration proposed stricter rules Wednesday for tank cars that transport flammable fuels."

Neither the canons of construction nor any empirical analysis suggests that congressional drafting is a perfectly harmonious, symmetrical and elegant endeavor. ... Sausage-makers are indeed offended when their craft is linked to legislating. -- Judge Andre Davis, 4th Circuit

... E. J. Dionne: "We are confronted with a conservative judiciary that will use any argument it can muster to win ideological victories that elude their side in the elected branches of our government.... The extreme judicial activism here is obvious when you consider, as the 4th Circuit did, that even if you accept that there is ambiguity in the law, the Supreme Court's 30-year-old precedent ... held that in instances of uncertainty, the court defers to federal agencies rather than concocting textual clarity when it doesn't exist." ...

... Everything Is Obama's Fault, Ctd. CW: Re: a link I posted yesterday to an apologia for the D.C. court's decision, I wrote that the author Michael Cannon provided a good preview of "how Republicans will sell the chaos they've engendered." Well, lo & behold, Dave Weigel reports that Cannon is already at it, & in so doing, "drain[ing] the national strategic chutzpah reserve": In a conference call, Cannon told reporters, ""If 5 million people lose subsidies, it is because the administration I think recklessly was offering them subsidies that it had no authority to offer. If that causes dislocation, if that causes disruption, I think that responsibility lies with the administration." Piggybacking Cannon's Blame Obama message, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said, "This means that the President has been misrepresenting the true costs of health coverage to millions of American families." CW: So that's the party line: you people are screwed because Obama promised you something he couldn't deliver legally. ...

... Oh, please, let's not forget Scott Brown, arguably the person most responsible for the legislative screw-up. By Weigel's reckoning, "Scott Brown Has the Single Most Chutzpah-Rich Response to Halbig.... Yesterday, he reacted as if Halbig was now the law of the land and Democrats had just raised taxes on people.

The court's ruling means that people receiving subsidies for their insurance coverage will lose those subsidies. Either they will have to dig deeper into their own pockets to pay the full cost of their insurance, or taxes will have to be raised on all of us to make up the difference.

     ... According to the Brown campaign, 'in New Hampshire, premiums for those who have subsidies could jump 70-74 percent.' Of course, the state could prevent the subsidy hikes by doing something rather simple. It could create a state exchange. That way, even if Halbig were upheld, New Hampshire residents would continue to get the subsidies. But Brown isn't saying anything about New Hampshire creating its own exchange." ...

     ... Steve M. has a good post on the GOP strategy, which is gearing up now in anticipation of the Supremes siding with the D.C. court.

Frank Rich on the crises in Gaza, Ukraine & the U.S.-Mexico border.

New York Times Editors: "The attorney-client privilege is the oldest, broadest and most important of all privileges in the American legal system.... In recent years, the Bureau of Prisons has made limited email access available to federal inmates, but the price of that access ... is allowing the government to monitor and read all messages sent and received. As the Times reported on Wednesday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and around the country are taking advantage of this fact, freely accessing emails between inmates and their attorneys.... If the Justice Department refuses to change its policy, which undermines the constitutional right to counsel..., judges should ... disallow this unprincipled practice."

Nicholas Kristof explains the downsides of inequality to "idiots."

Kendall Breitman of Politico: Bloomberg rips Blitzer for being "insulting to America" & "trying to create dissension" when Blitzer asked him if he thought the State Department (or FAA) had disallowed flights to Tel Aviv "for political reasons." ...

... Keith Laing of the Hill: "The Federal Aviation Administration is extending a ban on U.S. airlines flying to Israel for another 24 hours, despite high-profile objections from politicians in both nations. The ban was originally issued on Tuesday afternoon, after rocket fire diverted aircraft near Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport. Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argued that the Tel Aviv was safe for passengers, and they complained that the ban would embolden Hamas leaders." ...

     ... Update: The ban has been lifted. See today's Ledes.

... If you listen to Michael Bloomberg's remarks to Blitzer posted here, you'll find he's criticizing the FAA & U.S. air carriers for not doing as good a job as Israel & El Al in providing a safe air travel experience. He never mentions this, which explains a lot ...

     ... Lee Ferran of ABC News: "El Al, the national airline of Israel, has reportedly equipped its planes with some form of anti-missile tech since the mid-2000s, a move that came in response to an attack on an Israeli chartered aircraft in late 2002 in Mombasa, Kenya. Two shoulder-fired rockets narrowly missed their target then, and El Al and other Israeli airlines have been preparing for a repeat ever since. In the years following the failed attack, El Al turned to Flight Guard, a combination of several technologies reportedly including early warning systems and flares designed to confuse any heat seeking missiles." ...

... BTW, if Bloomberg found Blitzer's question "insulting to America," he probably would not think much of fellow Republican Ted Cruz's accusation ...

The facts suggest that President Obama has just used a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign-policy demands. -- Sen. Ted Cruz

... AP: "State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf rejected Cruz's comments as 'ridiculous and offensive.' ... Cruz said later Wednesday he would block Senate confirmation on all State Department nominees until his questions were answered. Harf said, 'There's no place for these kinds of political stunts in confirming nominees for critical national security positions.'" ...

     ... Cruz's staff adds a little nah-ne-nah-ne-you-are-too: "Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Cruz, said the Obama administration's foreign policy was itself 'ridiculous and offensive.'" ...

... CW: I'm not sure if the Bloomberg-Blitzer exchanged occurred before or after Tailgunner Ted made his accusation. If after, Blitzer's question was appropriate, though he should have cited Cruz's charge when he asked Bloomberg if he thought the FAA's decision was "political."

Ted Johnson of Variety: "White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that President Obama and his staff chose not to do an appearance on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' on Wednesday because of 'more serious matters the president is dealing with on the international scene.'"

Beyond the Beltway

Michael Kiefer & Mariana Dale of the Arizona Republic: "The Wednesday afternoon execution of convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood III took nearly two hours, confirming concerns that had been raised by his attorneys about a controversial drug used by the state of Arizona. Wood remained alive at Arizona's state prison in Florence long enough for his public defenders to file an emergency motion for a stay of execution with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, after the process began at 1:53 p.m. The motion noted that Wood 'has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour' after being injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs." ...

... Fred Barbash of the Washington Post: "Executions are 'brutal, savage events' -- and if society wants to carry them out, it ought to stop pretending otherwise, forget about lethal injections and return to 'more primitive -- and foolproof -- methods.' Like the guillotine -- or on second thought, the firing squad. That's the view of Alex Kozinski, one of the nation's most prominent appeals court judges, a Ronald Reagan appointee generally regarded as a libertarian conservative and, by standards of the judiciary, a bit of a 'troublemaker,' who likes to stir the pot. Kozinski dissented Monday from a decision of the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to stay the execution of Joseph R. Wood until Arizona told Wood more about the drugs that would be used in the execution and the personnel who would carry it out." ...

... Update: Josh Sanburn of Time has more on Wood's attorneys efforts to stop the execution-in-process.

Charles Pierce: "The United Nations treaty regarding the rights of the disabled is back. It went through a Senate committee easily (again) and, therefore, the Congress has another chance to join the rest of the world in being humane to people in wheelchairs, like Bob Dole, who sat there on the Senate floor and watched the nutball paranoid fringe of his party sell him out wholesale.... We have another chance to see if there are 60 votes in the United States Senate against being paranoid. I'm not betting on it either way." ...

     ... CW: Actually, the Constitution requires a 2/3rds vote to ratify treaties, not 60 votes. The rights of the disabled treaty got 61 votes in December 2012. A mere 38 of his fellow Republican Senators sold out Ole Bob Dole.

Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "In what will most likely be one of the last Nazi cases on American soil, an 89-year-old Philadelphia man [Johann Breyer] who served as an armed guard at Auschwitz during World War II died Wednesday, just hours before a judge ordered him extradited to Germany in the murders of 216,000 prisoners at the notorious concentration camp."

Congressional Race

Josh Israel & Scott Keyes of Think Progress: Meet "Baptist pastor and right-wing radio show host Jody B. Hice," the likely next representative of Georgia's 10th Congressional district. He calls the U.S. a "distinctly Christian society"; he supports radical "nullification"; he has "argued that women should receive permission from their husband before running for office"; he thinks people can "leave the homosexual lifestyle" & believes "there is a gay plot to recruit and sodomize children"; he says that Muslims do "does not deserve First Amendment protection; & he blamed "secularism" for the Sandy Hook massacre. Israel & Keyes say Hice is certain to best his Democratic opponent, Ken Dious. Here's Dious's biography. It's a sad country.

Presidential Election

Nia-Malika Henderson & Jackie Kucinich argue that Michele Bachmann should run for president -- as she hinted she might -- because "there has been almost no speculation about any GOP women being at the top of the 2016 ticket." They also mention Sarah Palin favorably for "upend[ing] stereotypes" of women's political potential. CW: What about the fact that both Bachmann & Palin are ignorant & stupid? Shouldn't a presidential or vice-presidential candidate be at least minimally intellectually qualified to handle the top job? The writers don't seem to think so. You can't take a paper seriously when its reporters suggest a doofus should run for president & another doofus was a model candidate. Have I mentioned the Washington Post sucks? ...

... Henry Decker of the National Memo is not so much into cheerleading Bachmann: In the last GOP POTUS Sweepstakes, "... her candidacy rapidly bottomed out and collapsed. It was exactly as crazy as you might expect; along the way, the campaign allegedly committed multiple campaign finance violations, and Bachmann allegedly fell under the 'unnatural,' 'Rapsutin-like' influence of a campaign advisor.... Bachmann has claimed that in 2012, she was a 'perfect candidate' who 'didn't get anything wrong' and was literally chosen by God -- so she's setting a pretty high bar when she promises to improve.... Still, it's unclear why Bachmann would bother to seek a four-year term in the White House. After all, according to her, we’re already in the End Times."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A series of explosions at a school run by the United Nations sheltering hundreds of Palestinians who had fled their homes for safety from Israeli military assaults killed at least 16 people on Thursday afternoon and wounded many more. The cause was not immediately clear."

Bloomberg News: "Jobless claims fell by 19,000 to 284,000 in the week ended July 19, the fewest since February 2006 and lower than any economist surveyed by Bloomberg forecast...."

Guardian: "A flight operated by Air Algérie carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital disappeared from radar early on Thursday, the plane's owner said." ...

... New York Times UPDATE: "An Air Algérie jetliner with 116 people on board crashed early Thursday in a remote area of Mali near the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, officials said."

The Guardian is liveblogging developments in the Gaza crisis. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, many of them children.

Reuters: "A powerful Ukrainian rebel leader has confirmed that pro-Russian separatists had an anti-aircraft missile of the type Washington says was used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and it could have originated in Russia. In an interview with Reuters, Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the Vostok Battalion, acknowledged for the first time since the airliner was brought down in eastern Ukraine on Thursday that the rebels did possess the BUK missile system and said it could have been sent back subsequently to remove proof of its presence."

Los Angeles Times: "The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday night lifted its ban on U.S. flights to and from Tel Aviv."