The Commentariat -- June 15, 2015
Internal links removed.
Michelle Boorstein, et al., of the Washington Post: "A draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis says 'the bulk of global warming' is caused by human activity -- a perspective aligned with most climate scientists but still highly controversial to some Americans. In the draft, portions of which were translated by The Washington Post, the pope takes climate change deniers to task and calls on 'humanity' to take steps -- including changing manufacturing and consumption trends -- to turn back the clock on global warming. He backs the science behind climate change, citing 'a very considerable consensus that points out we are now facing a worrisome warming of the climate.'" ...
... CW: This is bad news for "I Am Not A Scientist" Roman Catholic GOPers. Should be fun to watch Marco finesse this one.
Good News for Women & Families. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from North Carolina officials seeking to revive a state law that had required doctors to perform ultrasounds, display the resulting sonograms and describe the fetuses to women seeking abortions. The Supreme Court's one-sentence order, as is the custom, gave no reasons. Justice Antonin Scalia noted a dissent, also without saying why. 'The state cannot commandeer the doctor-patient relationship to compel a physician to express its preference to the patient,' Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in December for a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. 'This compelled speech, even though it is a regulation of the medical profession, is ideological in intent and in kind.'"
Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that a business can fire an employee for using medical marijuana even if the employee is off-duty at the time, a decision that could have far-reaching ramifications in a state that has decriminalized most marijuana use."
Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: Rachel Dolezal, "the head of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Spokane, subjected to national scrutiny and ridicule after it appeared she lied about her own racial background, announced Monday that she was quitting that post."
Mark Gethfred & Mitch Smith of the New York Times: "The Roman Catholic archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and a deputy bishop resigned on Monday after prosecutors recently charged the archdiocese with having failed to protect youths from abuse by pedophile priests. In statements released Monday morning, the archbishop, John C. Nienstedt, and an auxiliary bishop, Lee A. Piché, said they were resigning to help the archdiocese heal."
Sabrina Siddiqui of the Guardian: "The feud between Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the news media escalated on Monday, when the reporter designated by the traveling press to cover Clinton's events [in New Hampshire] was denied access. David Martosko, the US political editor at The Daily Mail, was scheduled as the so-called 'pool' reporter for Clinton's visit through New Hampshire. But when he arrived at the gathering spot for the traveling press corps on Monday morning, Martosko was turned away by a Clinton staffer who said the reporter was no longer the approved pooler for the day's events."
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** Our Long National Nightmare Is Over. Paul Krugman: Democratic politicians have returned to being Democrats. Krugman suggests several factors that explain why. "... you can describe all of this as a move to the left, but there's more to it than that.... Democrats are adopting ideas that work and rejecting ideas that don't, whereas Republicans are doing the opposite.... Something important is happening, and in the long run it will matter a great deal." ...
... Krugman's old pal Larry Summers didn't get the memo. (In fact, Krugman takes a dig at Summers, tho of course Krugman is too polite to name him.) In a Washington Post op-ed, Summers tells us the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is absolutely fabulous, & the Congress's failure to send a clean bill to the President is almost as bad as 100 years ago when the Senate rejected the League of Nations. Can World War III be far behind?
Odd News. Brad Meltzer in the New York Daily News: The Secret Service told me that when "Reagan was President, he carried his own gun.... A .38. Reagan used to hide it in his briefcase and take it on Air Force One." CW: Which should serve to demonstrate how safe packing heat keeps you.
Presidential Race
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Hillary Clinton, facing criticism from rivals for her silence on a stalled international trade agreement, spoke out Sunday during a campaign stop in Iowa, urging President Barack Obama to collaborate with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and craft a deal more palatable to Democrats":
The president should listen to and work with his allies in Congress starting with Nancy Pelosi, who have expressed their concerns about the impact that a weak agreement would have on our workers to make sure we get the best strongest deal possible. And if we don't get it, there should be no deal.
Dylan Stableford of Yahoo News: "A day after Hillary Clinton formally kicked off her 2016 presidential campaign with a speech at a rally on New York's Roosevelt Island, current and would-be rivals on both sides of the political aisle took aim at the former secretary of state on Sunday morning talk shows." ...
... Adam Desiderio of ABC News: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took a swipe at Hillary Clinton today, saying he doubts whether the Democratic presidential candidate knows the concerns of 'real Americans.' Christie ... said Clinton's speech during her campaign rally Saturday in New York City sounded like it was put together by 'liberal political consultants.' 'I thought Elizabeth Warren wasn't running for president,' Christie said in an exclusive interview on ABC's 'This Week.'" With video. ...
... Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is the only 2016 GOP presidential candidate with foreign policy stances that are worse than Hillary Clinton's." ...
... Mark Hensch: "Barely hours after Hillary Clinton's campaign launch in New York on Saturday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) used footage from the event for an ad that mocks Clinton as a politician of the past":
Michael Barbaro & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: Jeb Bush will announce his candidacy today at 3 pm ET at a public college in the Miami area. " ... he will offer himself as a messenger of optimistic conservatism, uninterested in the politics of grievance, obstructionism and partisanship that, in his eyes and those of his allies, have catapulted less accomplished rivals, like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, to national prominence." ...
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post profiles Bush's political metemorphosis from "head-banging conservative" to less-obnoxious conservative. It was a change of style, not a change of ideology. ...
... Favorite Son? Maybe Not. Joshua Green of Politico: "Jeb Bush's big political credential, and his presumed strength in the presidential campaign he'll launch on Monday, is the broad appeal he demonstrated over two terms as Florida governor -- doubly important given the critical role Florida's primary will play in winnowing the GOP field.... But he may not be nearly as strong in Florida as his reputation suggests. A Bloomberg Politics study conducted with University of Florida political scientist Daniel A. Smith found that nearly three-quarters of Florida's 12.9 million currently registered voters have never even seen Bush's name on a ballot.... By contrast, 92 percent of Floridians who voted when Marco Rubio was last on the ballot, in 2010, are still registered." ...
... Ha Ha. Brad DeLong catches Team Jeb comparing his revamped campaign to Pickett's charge. As DeLong puts it: "Jeb Bush: I want to send a message that my campaign is like a disastrous and profoundly stupid attack that costs three casualties for every one inflicted.... As George Pickett said of Robert E. Lee -- the general who ordered the charge -- 'That man destroyed my division!'" CW: Aw, maybe they meant the charge of the Light Brigade."
Mark Hensch: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the defeat of President Obama's trade legislation in the House on Friday was the right outcome for average Americans. 'The House has put a kibosh on the Trans-Pacific [Partnership],' he said at a rally at Drake University in Des Moines late Friday, according to The Des Moines Register. 'Our trade policies over the last 40 years .. have been a disaster,' Sanders said. 'TPP is a continuation of these disastrous trade policies.' 'Today, the good side won,' he added."
Beyond the Beltway
** Surprise! Gun Control Works. Jeff Guo of the Washington Post: "... researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, say that Connecticut's [1994] 'permit-to-purchase' law was actually a huge success for public safety. In a study released Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health, they estimate that the law reduced gun homicides by 40 percent between 1996 and 2005. That's 296 lives saved in 10 years.... There is a 40 percent gap ... between the expected number of gun-related homicides and the actual number of gun-related homicides."
Robert Roldan of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "Community members and activists are questioning a Louisville Metro Police officer's use of deadly force against an African man in Old Louisville on Saturday afternoon. But Police Chief Steve Conrad said the man, who he said was thought to be an African man in his mid-30s, was shot twice in self-defense after he allegedly picked up a metal flag pole and swung at the officer outside a convenience store." The video is here.
Thanks to contributor MAG, we now can answer the burning question, Whatever happen to Scott Brown, short-time senator? He is working as an unpaid intern in a bike shop. Really. Also, too, he's giving advice to GOP presidential candidates on how to win in New Hampshire. I hope they're listening. I do want to warn MAG & other Mainers that Scottie is still living very, very close to Maine, the state of his birth.
ELSEWHERE in New Hampshire. WGME: "A New Hampshire man wants to defy an Islamic prohibition on depicting the prophet Muhammad in pictures and plans to host a 'Draw Muhammad' art contest in August. Jerry Delemus, a 60-year-old former Marine, says the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment trumps any religion's limitations on such expression." ...
... CW: WGME might have said a little more about Delemus: He ran for "Constitutional sheriff" of Strafford County, New Hampshire (and lost), he is/was planning to form "a militia as a bulwark to protect the general population from despotism or tyranny," & was "the founder of Rochester's Glenn Beck-inspired 9/12 Project." In 2014, "Jerry DeLemus grabbed his Gadsden flag and raced to Bunkerville, Nevada to support [Cliven Bundy] in his confrontation with federal officials. When he arrived, the former Marine sergeant was appointed commander of the growing armed militia and was featured in numerous news reports and videos." His wife Susan, a former state representative, is a notorious birther.