The Commentariat -- July 31, 2014
Internal links removed.
NEW. Ken Dilanian of the AP: "CIA Director John Brennan is apologizing to Senate intelligence committee leaders after his inspector general found that CIA employees acted improperly when the CIA searched Senate computers earlier this year. Agency spokesman Dean Boyd said in an email to The Associated Press that Brennan has convened an accountability board that will investigate the conduct of the CIA officers and discipline them, if need be. The Justice Department has so far declined to pursue criminal charges against the employees, who searched the computers for information gathered in the course of an investigation into the CIA's interrogation techniques."
** Harold Meyerson: "Who is a company?"
Paul Kane & Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "House Republicans voted to proceed with a lawsuit against President Obama on Wednesday, saying that his executive actions are so extreme that they violate the Constitution. The nearly party-line vote -- all Democrats voted against it, and all but five Republicans voted for it -- further agitated an already polarized climate on Capitol Hill as both parties used the pending suit to try to rally support ahead of the November elections." ...
This isn't about this lawsuit. This is about the road to impeachment. -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), during a briefing immediately after the lawsuit vote
... Amie Parnes of the Hill: "President Obama asked Republicans to stop 'hating' and 'being mad all the time' during a Wednesday speech in Kansas City, Mo., focused on the economy. The president accused GOP lawmakers of needlessly suing him, instead of doing their jobs":
... Gail Collins on impeachment & the House suit against the President: "Republicans tried to improve their legal prospects by picking a particular executive order. They settled on the one postponing enforcement of part of Obamacare that requires businesses to provide health coverage for their employees.... 'Not a single one of them voted for the Affordable Care Act,' said Louise Slaughter, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee. 'They spent $79 million holding votes to kill it. And now they're going to sue him for not implementing it fast enough.' We will look back on this moment in Washington as The Week That Irony Died." ...
... Dana Milbank: "For procedural reasons, Republicans opted to bring the lawsuit bill to the floor paired in debate with a measure to deregulate pesticides. Linking the two under the same debate rules was fitting, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) judged, because 'one is as ridiculous as the other.' Also, both would make the environment more toxic." ...
... CW: We should probably be more worried that our dangerous, irresponsible "representatives" want to deregulate pesticides than that they are about to sue the President in an election-year stunt. I have a feeling Boehner will slow-walk the suit right past November 4. ...
... Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times: "Republicans hoped that by filing a lawsuit against President Obama ... they would mobilize conservatives eager for a confrontation with the White House. But so far it appears to be rallying Democrats at least as much as Republicans. Warning that the lawsuit is just the first step toward impeachment, Democrats have turned the GOP strategy into their own fundraising and motivational tool, flooding supporters with emails in recent weeks." ...
... Thanks, Orange Man. Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Here's the big difference between impeaching President Obama and suing him: The former is a pipe dream being pushed by far-right conservatives, while the latter has the full support of the Republican establishment.... In the fall campaign, it will be much easier for Democrats to tether Republican candidates in key races to the push for a lawsuit than it will to tie them to impeachment calls. That's why it could be a bigger problem [for Republicans].... Why do it? Polls had already shown that the Republican base was more enthusiastic about voting in the fall than Democrats. Democrats have desperately been searching for ways to get their voters to go to the polls this fall. Republicans may have just inadvertently handed them a big one." ...
... Jonathan Capehart: "At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) delivered remarks so aggressive about how President Obama has 'exceeded his authority' that they are bound to fan the fervor for his impeachment among his fellow Republicans.... It is this kind of high-octane rhetoric that is going to make it all but impossible for Boehner to avoid the political hara-kiri that would be Obama's impeachment, that is, once his raucous caucus realizes that the lawsuit they are expected to approve late this afternoon will either never get a hearing or won't have any impact on Obama whatsoever. For many of them, publicly punishing the president is paramount." ...
... Dave Weigel looks at the history of the Impeach Obama movement, which started "early in the Obama presidency." The new Republican party line is that "Democrats at the White House" started the "impeachment scam," but it ain't so: "The conservatives who wanted to impeach Obama are acting like it was never their idea."
** Jake Sherman & Seung Min Kim of Politico: "House Republicans will vote to rein in the Obama administration's power to halt deportation for undocumented immigrants -- a surprise move that comes as they struggle to attract support for their bill to address the crisis at the border. The new plan, described by multiple GOP aides Wednesday evening, comes as House Republicans were unable to lock up 218 GOP lawmakers to vote for the $659 million emergency funding package.... The new House GOP tack takes a page from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)" ...
... Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) ... will meet with a group of House Republicans Wednesday to urge them to oppose House Speaker John A. Boehner's plan to stem the flow of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to several House members who plan to attend the 7 p.m. gathering at Cruz's office.... Boehner unveiled legislation Tuesday to make it easier to deport Central American minors who have entered the United States illegally, provide $659 million to federal agencies through the end of the fiscal year, and change a 2008 anti-trafficking law. The funding would be significantly less than the $3.7 billion that President Obama has requested from Congress and less than the $1.5 billion initially floated by Boehner and his allies earlier this month -- a figure that was cut due to conservative opposition." ...
... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "The White House formally threatened to veto House Republicans' border funding supplemental for the child migrant crisis, saying it 'could make the situation worse, not better.' ... Even if it passes, the bill is going nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, which is trying to pass a separate $3.6 billion supplemental package which does not change immigration laws." ...
... Ted Barrett of CNN: "The Senate voted on Wednesday to take up a $2.7 billion Democratic spending bill to address the southern border crisis. Lawmakers voted 63-33 on a procedural vote to begin debate on the emergency measure prompted by the deluge of migrant youth from Central America who have entered the country illegally this year."
Julie Pace of the AP: "The Obama administration condemned the deadly shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza Wednesday, using tough, yet carefully worded language that reflects growing White House irritation with Israel and the mounting civilian casualties stemming from its ground and air war against Hamas. The U.S. frustrations were compounded by a flurry of Israeli media reports this week that appeared aimed at discrediting President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent days trying to negotiate an unsuccessful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. In unusually blunt language, a State Department spokeswoman on Wednesday repeatedly described one of the reports as 'complete crap.'" ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker comments on Israel's bombing of shelters to which they had advised Palestinian civilians to go. ...
... Dana Milbank assesses Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to broker an end to hostilities in Israel/Gaza: "His predecessor, Hillary Clinton, preserved her political prospects by showing a preference for social media over international hotspots. But Kerry has risked his standing repeatedly, personally leading negotiations over Sudan, Ukraine, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan.... Kerry deserves credit for trying. But his nearly 18 months on the job are a lesson in humility -- not just for Kerry but for those in Congress who smugly second-guess the officials they oversee. Leading the world is harder than it looks." ...
... Meanwhile, one of the Washington Post's top wingnuts (they have a stable-full) Jennifer Rubin says Kerry should resign. CW: I didn't read her post & I'm not linking it. I'm sure it's "complete crap." ...
... Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: Anti-Israel protests springing from the current attacks on Hamas are troubling to German authorities & to the growing Jewish population, as some protesters are making anti-Jewish remarks.
Ferdous Al-Faruque of the Hill: "A series of management failures at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services led to the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov and $840 million in costs, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. 'CMS undertook the development of HealthCare.gov and its related systems without effective planning or oversight practices,' wrote William Woods, GAO director of acquisition and sourcing management, in testimony prepared for a Thursday hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee."
Jonathan Chait: The plaintiffs in the anti-ACA Halbig case argued that "Democrats in Congress made a typo when you wrote Obamacare, so ha-ha, you lose. The card says 'Moops':
... BUT "The Gruber video encouraged conservatives to suddenly invent a new and more sweeping argument.... It was Congress's actual plan to deny tax credits to customers on the federal exchanges.... It is exactly as if conservatives are now insisting not just that we must follow the misprint on the card, but that the people who invaded Spain in the eighth century were actually called 'the Moops.'" ...
... Paul Waldman gives credit where credit is due -- to Simom Maloy of Salon for coming up with the "Moops" analogy. Maloy, who also embedded the "Seinfeld" video, wrote last week that "Republicans [were] gloat[ing] over an Obamacare court case that poached its legal reasoning from "'Seinfeld.' No joke."
CW: House Ways & Means Committee Chair Dave Camp releases some e-mails that he says demonstrate former IRS official Lois Lerner's "disgust with conservatives." While Lerner should not have been using her IRS account for what was evidently a personal contact with a non-IRS employee (IMHO), it's absolutely clear from the context that she was talking about far-right nut jobs who were buy[ing] ammo & food & prepar[ing] for the end." Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP reports on the latest fake "smoking gun" e-mails. Included in his report: "A May 2013 report by the agency's inspector general blamed mismanagement by IRS officials for the way tea party applications were handled. But the report did not provide any proof of political bias on the part of agents. In fact, the report noted that Lerner tried to stop the targeting once she learned that tea party and other conservative groups were being improperly singled out." Of course it will rile the extremist base that Lerner called them "assholes." And Camp -- who is supposed to be a relatively moderate conservative & is retiring -- sure is playing to the assholes.
Rather than letting our faith dictate our politics, we've gotten to the point for many of us where we're letting our politics -- typically what the Republican Party says -- dictate our faith. Caring about God's creation and caring about God's people is entirely consistent with caring for your neighbor. -- Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and a climate scientist at Texas Tech
... Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times: "The E.P.A. on Wednesday ended two days of public hearings on its proposed regulation to cut carbon pollution from power plants, and mixed in with the coal lobbyists and business executives were conservative religious leaders reasserting their support for President Obama's environmental policies -- at a time when Republican Party orthodoxy continues to question the science of climate change. More than two dozen faith leaders, including evangelicals and conservative Christians, spoke [in favor of the regulation] at the E.P.A. headquarters in Washington by the time the hearings ended."
CW Where's the Outrage? Charles Pierce is as disgusted as I by the FBI's "incompetence or worse," as reported by Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post (& linked here yesterday). Yet Hsu's story has received very little attention. Maybe people just can't see themselves as ever being the victims of FBI malfeasance, or maybe it's so horrifying people don't want to think about it. But the government's putting people to death on the basis of false evidence which the government itself produced is the ultimate crime against humanity. In a just world, Hsu's report would put an end to the death penalty.
David Frum says he is very sorry he falsely accused major news outlets of staging photos of Palestinian victims of the Israeli-Gaza conflict: "These images do appear authentic, and I should not have cast doubt on them." Then he excuses himself for his "skepticism.... There is a long history in the region of the use of faked or misattributed photographs as tools of propaganda."" Never mind that he didn't tweet that he was "skeptical" of the photos' authenticity; he asserted without qualification that they were "faked photos" -- see link in yesterday's Commentariat.
Evan Thomas reviews two books on the Nixon tapes for the Atlantic: "Remarkably, we still do not know who ordered the June 1972 Watergate break-in that led to Nixon's downfall. There are lots of theories, including CIA plots and convoluted conspiracies about sex rings, but no conclusive evidence. There is, however, recorded proof of Nixon ordering a different break-in -- at the Brookings Institution in 1971."
Beyond the Beltway
Jason Stein & Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Gov. Scott Walker's signature labor legislation Thursday, delivering an election-year affirmation to the governor in just one of the three major rulings issued by the court on union bargaining, election law and same-sex couples.... The court also upheld the state's voter ID law and a 2009 law providing limited benefits to gay and lesbian couples. The state court's decisions on the voter ID and domestic partner registry could still be overtaken by decisions in separate but related cases in federal court. But after more than three years of litigation, the court's seven justices on Thursday put to rest the last of the major legal disputes over Act 10, the 2011 law repealing most union bargaining for most public employees. The decision was 5-2, with Justice Michael Gableman writing the lead opinion, which found that collective bargaining is not a fundamental right under the constitution but rather a benefit that lawmakers can extend or restrict as they see fit."
Laura Vozzella, et al., of the Washington Post: Jonnie R. Williams, Sr., "the man key to proving federal corruption charges against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, began his testimony late Wednesday afternoon, explaining how he lavished the first family with gifts." ...
Williams testified that he 'sat there and listened, and she said to me, "I have a background in nutritional supplements, and I can be helpful to you with this project with your company. The governor says it's OK for me to help you, but I need you to help me with this financial situation."' She said McDonnell asked specifically for a $50,000 loan and another $15,000 to cover costs at her daughter's wedding.
... New Lede: "The wheeling-and-dealing Richmond businessman at the center of the corruption case against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife stepped into public view Wednesday with a pivotal assertion: For $65,000, he testified, Maureen McDonnell said she would help his company, with her husband's blessing." ...
... The Washington Post is liveblogging testimony & developments here.
Susanne Craig, et al., of the New York Times: "In an escalation of the confrontation between the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over the governor's cancellation of his own anticorruption commission, Mr. Bharara has threatened to investigate the Cuomo administration for possible obstruction of justice or witness tampering. The warning, in a sharply worded letter from Mr. Bharara's office, came after several members of the panel issued public statements defending the governor's handling of the panel, known as the Moreland Commission.... At least some of those statements were prompted by calls from the governor or his emissaries...."
Congressional Races
Peyton Craighill & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "Pretty soon, the country's top pollsters will make a subtle change that even some political junkies won't process: They will shift from reporting results of registered voters to only those most likely to vote in the 2014 election -- a.k.a. 'likely voters.' For those who follow polling closely the distinction between the two is key to understanding the true state of play in a race. It's also likely to cause an apparent shift -- almost certainly in the GOP's favor -- that some will misinterpret as newfound momentum."
News Ledes
Washington Post: A "confluence of worries sent the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling more than 300 points, its worst one-day drop since February. The plunge snapped a string of five straight monthly gains, and pushed the blue-chip index to a slight loss for the year. But it wasn't just stocks that suffered. Oil fell to its lowest level since March, gold dropped and even Treasurys edged lower."
New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that he would not agree to any cease-fire proposal that does not allow the Israeli military to complete its mission of destroying Hamas's tunnel network in Gaza." ...
... ** Washington Post Update: "Israel and Hamas have agreed to an unconditional, 72-hour humanitarian truce to begin Friday morning, diplomats from the United States and the United Nations announced Thursday, potentially paving the way for an end to the 24-day-old conflict. In a joint statement, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said both sides in the conflict are sending delegations to Cairo for negotiations aimed at reaching a lasting cease-fire."
USA Today: "Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in a prisoner swap with the Taliban two months ago, will meet next week with the senior Army officer investigating the circumstances of his capture in Afghanistan, his lawyer said Wednesday. Bergdahl, who spent five years in captivity, plans to meet with Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, the investigating officer, in San Antonio, where Bergdahl is stationed, according to lawyer Eugene Fidell."