Internal links removed.
NEW. Josh Lederman of the AP: "Blasting the GOP as wilfully indifferent to American struggles, President Barack Obama issued a rebuke Friday to Republican attempts to thwart his economic agenda, offering a stark contrast that Democrats hope will yield electoral success in November. Obama's remarks at a picturesque lake in Minneapolis were billed by the White House as a speech on the economy. But as Obama ripped into his political foes before 3,500 cheering supporters, the political undertones were less than subtle":
Adam Liptak, et al., of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court issued a unambiguous rebuke to President Obama on Thursday, saying he had overreached in issuing recess appointments during brief breaks in the Senate's work. The court was unanimous in saying that Mr. Obama had violated the Constitution in 2012 by appointing officials to the National Labor Relations Board during a break in the Senate's work when the chamber was convening every three days in short pro forma sessions in which no business was conducted. Those breaks were too short, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a majority opinion joined by the court's four other more liberal members. At the same time, the court largely reinstated an uneasy, centuries-long accommodation between the executive branch and the Senate, in which recess appointments were allowed during more substantial breaks. Justice Breyer said such appointments generally remained permissible so long as they were made during a break of 10 or more days." The ruling is here. ...
... Amy Howe of ScotusBlog explains the decision "in plain English." ...
... Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "Leaning heavily upon a long history of Congress and presidents finding ways -- sometimes clumsy -- to make the federal government work, and perhaps silently wishing for a day when they might do so again, a sharply divided Supreme Court on Thursday embraced a practical constitutional solution to filling temporary vacancies in U.S. government posts. Refusing to strip presidents of nearly all power to make such appointments, as four dissenters would have, the majority set some limits but still kept that authority mostly intact." ...
... David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "Honestly, recess appointments are antiquated holdover from the days before telecommunications and air travel. Allowing appointments during recess that cannot be accomplished during regular business should probably go the way of the telegraph. That said, an obstructionist Congress will now have an even easier time not only derailing a president's choice and agenda, but of hamstringing entire departments of government by simply not allowing appointments to be made at all. Which means that control of Congress is now an even bigger deal than it was before."
Adam Liptak: "The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law that barred protests near abortion clinics. The law, enacted in 2007, created 35-foot buffer zones around entrances to abortion clinics. State officials said the law was a response to a history of harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Massachusetts, including a shooting rampage at two facilities in 1994. The law was challenged on First Amendment grounds by opponents of abortion who said they sought to have quiet conversations with women entering clinics to tell them about alternatives to abortion. The court was unanimous about the bottom line but divided on the reasoning. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote a relatively narrow majority opinion. He was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. He suggested that the state could pursue other alternatives. Justice Antonin Scalia, in a concurrence joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, said the majority's approach was too tentative. The law, he said, is 'unconstitutional root and branch.' Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed a separate concurrence." Roberts' decision & other opinions are here. ...
... Lyle Denniston: "The lead opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in McCullen v. Coakley went to considerable lengths to suggest ways that cities or states could pass new laws to protect patient' access to abortion facilities. But all of those approaches, it appeared, would be to thwart actual obstruction, physical intrusion, or actual intimidation of patients, not the kind of 'counseling' that the Court found threatened by the Massachusetts law." ...
... Federal Appellate Judge Richard Posner (a conservative), on this & other recent cases: ".. .the opinion fetishizes First Amendment rights.... Who wants to be buttonholed on the sidewalk by 'uncomfortable message[s],' usually delivered by nuts? Lecturing strangers on a sidewalk is not a means by which information and opinion are disseminated in our society.... (Has Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of the opinion, ever done such a thing?) The assertion that abortion protesters 'wish to converse' with women outside an abortion clinic is naive. They wish to prevent the women from entering the clinic, whether by showing them gruesome photos of aborted fetuses or calling down the wrath of God on them. This is harassment of people who are in a very uncomfortable position; the last thing a woman about to have an abortion needs is to be screamed at by the godly."
... In-Your-Face. Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "Protesters will be allowed to crowd the sidewalks around the clinic and speak directly to patients -- something that can make people feel uncomfortable enough to avoid the clinic and skip out on the health services they need."
Laurence Tribe in Slate: "Even when the court agrees 9–0 over a case's holding, it can divide, sometimes sharply, over the reasoning and rule to be applied. And it is precisely this sort of division that we see in both Noel Canning and McCullen. A look at the two cases together illustrates the need to dig deeper to understand what this week's unanimous decisions are really all about." Justice Scalia's "concurrences," one of which he read from the bench, are really dissents.
Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed: "One year after the Supreme Court struck down section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, Congress is nowhere near close to moving forward with restoring a federal approval requirement for certain voting process changes. While Democratic leaders rallied this week to urge Congress to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act (VRAA) -- a law to rewrite the section 4 formula -- a top House Republican [-- Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) --] said Thursday the bill wasn't going to move quickly, if at all."
The suit is a stunt. -- President Obama, on Boehner's lawsuit
... Benjamin Bell of ABC News: "Despite Republican House Speaker John Boehner's threat this week to sue President Obama over his use of executive orders, the president refused to apologize for his actions during an exclusive interview with ABC News and took the Republican Party to task for what he described as its attempt to interfere with the basic functions of government.... 'I'm not going to apologize for trying to do something while they're doing nothing,' the president added later." ...
... Update: Here's the interview, as broadcast this morning:
... ** Steve M.: "Why do you think Boehner got through primary season without a scratch this year, while Eric Cantor lost his job and Thad Cochran nearly did? It's because Boehner knows how toss the ravenous rubes large chunks of red meat." Also, Boehner's lawsuit against Obama, besides being made of red meat, "could be taken very, very seriously in the federal courts." Steve provides a history lesson on why. ...
... Paul Waldman, in the American Prospect, is not as impressed with Boehner's suit as are Jonathan Capehart of the WashPo (see links in yesterday's Commentariat) & Steve M.: "... it'll be an intensely partisan document whose purpose is to shake a fist at the president Republicans so despise, and it'll get tossed out of court and thrown in the dustbin where it belongs, one more futile, angry gesture from an opposition that has lost the ability to offer anything else."
Elias Isquith of Salon: "Speaking with NBC's David Gregory during an interview that will run in full during this Sunday's edition of 'Meet the Press,' former President Bill Clinton argued that there is something 'unseemly' about former Vice President Dick Cheney's willingness to criticize President Obama for the chaos and dysfunction that's still plaguing Iraq.... Clinton emphatically rejected the question's premise, saying, 'If [the second Bush administration] hadn't gone to war in Iraq none of this would be happening'":
... Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "How the Clintons went from 'dead broke' to rich: Bill earned $104.9 million for speeches. Bill "Clinton has leveraged his global popularity into a personal fortune. Starting just two weeks after exiting the Oval Office, Clinton has delivered hundreds of paid speeches, lifting a family that was 'dead broke,' as wife Hillary Rodham Clinton phrased it earlier this month, to a point of such extraordinary wealth that it is now seen as a potential political liability if she runs for president in 2016." ...
... "Out of Context"/Out of a Job. Jon Herskovitz of Reuters: "Johnny Rhoda, who was chairman of the Republican Party in the Second Congressional District in Arkansas ... has resigned after telling a magazine former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would 'probably get shot' if she returned to the state where she was a lawyer and served as first lady, officials said on Thursday.... U.S. Representative Tim Griffin, a Republican who represents the district, labeled Rhoda's comments offensive and inappropriate and called for his resignation."
Tim Egan: Land of the free. Where a Washington state family & friend (the husband is 70) may go to jail for 10 years under mandatory sentencing laws for growing pot for medicinal purposes -- in a state where growing pot is legal.
David Stout of the New York Times: "Howard H. Baker Jr., a soft-spoken Tennessee lawyer who served three terms in the Senate and became known as 'the great conciliator' in his eight years as the chamber's Republican leader, died on Thursday at his home in Huntsville, Tenn. He was 88." ...
... The Washington Post obituary, by James Gerstenzang, is here. ...
Matt Lauer of NBC News demonstrates how to ask a successful woman a series of sexist questions. Lesson 1: Begin with "Some people say...." See, it's not your fault. Hell, you hadda ask. People are talking. Lesson 2: Imply you're not a raving chauvinist. Say something like, "I want to tread lightly here," before asking the next blatantly sexist question. Lesson 3: After the fact, think up a lame defense for this shit & post it on Facebook. Pretend you "relate." ...
... And Matt, sweetie-pie, never you mind that digby awards you Moron o' the Day status & labels your lame defense bullshit. It's just outrageous the way powerful women like digby pick on men who are only trying to "relate."
Right Wing World
The Boundless Intellectual Dishonesty of Right Wing World. Brian Beutler of the New Republic: Whether or not those missing Lois Lerner e-mails are retrieved, & no matter what is in them, the right will cry Scandal! Coverup! "Heads I win, tails you lose." Beutler calls this "maddening illogic." ...
... Boundless Intellectual Dishonesty, Ctd. Jonathan Chait: "A couple months ago, conservatives had an aha! moment when an initial report suggested that health-care spending had spiked in the first quarter of 2014. A one-time jump in health-care spending had been expected all along, but its arrival brought a chorus of triumphant cries from the right.... But the ... revised data shows that health-care spending actually shrank in the first quarter." So now right-wing pundits -- including the Wall Street Journal editors -- are screaming that the reduction in healthcare costs are ruining the economy. No matter what the facts are, ObamaCare is destroying America! ...
... Paul Krugman: "The Affordable Care Act has receded from the front page, but information about how it's going keeps coming in -- and almost all the news is good.... What's interesting about this success story is that it has been accompanied at every step by cries of impending disaster.... While it has been funny watching the right-wing cling to its delusions about health reform, it's also scary. After all, these people retain considerable ability to engage in policy mischief, and one of these days they may regain the White House. And you really, really don't want people who reject facts they don't like in that position. I mean, they might do unthinkable things, like starting a war for no good reason. Oh, wait." ...
... CW: In fairness to right-wing loons, I should add that, to a much lesser extent, this illogical, conspiracy-laden mindset exists on the left, too. The other day I was directed to a blogpost that asserted that President Obama was secretly the brains behind the recent media rollout of Iraq War hawks because he figured they would make a good case for getting the U.S. involved in military ops in Iraq again, which is what he really, really wants. Uh-huh. Maybe Obama is also the brains behind the reputed Armenian who hacked my Google account because he wants to rile up Americans to support an American-military-led Armenian coup.
CW: Ha! In a comment in yesterday's Commentariat, Kate M. wrote that as a boy, Ken Cuccinelli was a lousy soccer player. I replied, "Well, soccer is kind of a sissy European-y sport, anyway. These days, Cooch [i.e., Ken Cuccinelli] is more into manly GOP pursuits; like shooting doves at one of those phony Cheney-type hunting farms." ...
... Sure, enough, comes now the lovely Ann Coulter to back me up. And then some. Elias Isquith: "In her latest syndicated column right-wing troll and pundit Ann Coulter rails against the growing popularity of soccer in the U.S., which she blames on a pro-soccer liberal media and America's millions of immigrants. 'Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay,' Coulter writes before listing all of the reasons why she thinks soccer sucks.
... CW: I am getting way too good at channeling crazy bigots. ...
... Update. Well, not as smart as I thought. Apparently one can become a Doctor of Conspiracy, which trumps me. Dr. Keith Ablow (no idea what kinda doctor he actually is) said on a Fox "News" show that he suspected the purpose of all the hoo-hah over the World Cup matches was to district Americans from paying attention to all of President Obama's problems.
Beyond the Beltway
James Hohmann of Politico: "A Wisconsin special prosecutor clarified Thursday that GOP Gov. Scott Walker was not the target of his investigation into what he described in earlier court papers as a 'criminal scheme.'"
Eric Russell of the Portland Press-Herald: Maine Gov. Paul LePage (RTP), unhappy because federal stats show Maine had the worst income-growth rate in New England & one of the worst in the nation, largely because Maine refuses to accept the ACA Medicaid expansion, simply eliminated federal payments from the stats -- payments from Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc., called them all "welfare, pure and simple," then recalculated the income figures -- a "welfare-free" recalculation that made Maine appear to be in line with other New England states. CW: I wonder if LePage's old fart Tea Party backers will be upset to find out he considers them welfare moochers. His opponents hope s & are milking his remarks.
Legal Corruption/Business as Usual in New Jersey. Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Corporations that contributed millions of dollars to the Chris Christie-led Republican Governors Association and other GOP campaigns have received public funding deals worth almost $1.25bn from his New Jersey administration in less than two years. A review of the 30 biggest corporate subsidies awarded by the state of New Jersey since Christie appointed one of his closest allies as head of the state's 'bank for business' found that 21 went to ventures involving firms that made significant donations to Republicans, or had senior executives who did.... The Guardian's findings prompted calls from Democratic state legislators and watchdog groups for reforms to the New Jersey economic development authority (EDA), which awards the subsidies and is led by Michele Brown, a close friend and veteran aide to Christie."
Monica Davey of the New York Times: "In a city that desperately needs to hold onto residents, there is a virtual pipeline out [of Detroit]. At least 70,000 foreclosures have taken place since 2009 because of delinquent property taxes. And more than 43,000 properties -- more than one in 10 in this city -- were subject to foreclosure this year, some of them headed for a public auction where prices can start as low as $500.... Several factors have brought the city to the point that crucial revenues are not being collected and thousands of houses are being taken away each year -- not by banks..., but by the government, for failure to pay taxes. Contributing are soaring rates of poverty, high taxes despite painfully diminished city services and a long pattern of lackadaisical tax collection by the city." ...
... Liz Dwyer of Take Part: "Detroit's Water and Sewerage Department has begun turning off the taps of 150,000 residents who are at least two months behind on payments. People are being left without a drop to drink and no ability to bathe or use the toilet. Now a coalition of water and human rights activists has banded together to ask the United Nations to step in and end the disconnections."
News Ledes
Detroit Free Press: "General Motors late Friday said it will recall 446,066 four-wheel drive pickups and SUVs to prevent them from rolling away when the transfer case accidentally shifts into neutral. These are among the company's best-selling and most profitable vehicles, including the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban SUVs from the 2014 and 2015 model years. It's the 48th recall for the company so far this year, covering more than 20 million vehicles, a record." CW: None of this would have happened if GM CEO Mary Barra were a better mother.
New York Times: "Iraq's top Shiite cleric on Friday urged the country's divided political factions to select a prime minister by early next week in a public call for a political solution that increases the pressure on the embattled prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Speaking from the holy city of Karbala, Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, a cleric representing Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Iraq's political blocs to select a new leader before the recently elected Parliament sits on Monday."
AP: "President Barack Obama is seeking to bolster U.S. efforts to train and arm select members of the Syrian opposition, a move that comes amid increased U.S. concern that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq are becoming an intertwined fight against the same Sunni extremist group. Obama sent Congress a $500 million request Thursday for a Pentagon-run program that would significantly expand previous covert efforts to arm rebels fighting both the Sunni extremists and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad."
AP: "Ukraine's new president signed a trade and economic pact with the European Union on Friday, pushing his troubled country closer into a European orbit and angering Russia, which warned of unspecified consequences."