The Commentariat -- June 8, 2014

Internal links removed.

All Hillary All the Time, Ctd.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Are you ready for Hillary? If not, this is a week to turn off the television, put aside your morning paper, get off the Internet, never look at your Twitter feed, avoid Facebook and stay out of bookstores. Even then you probably won't be able to avoid the former secretary of state/senator/first lady. On Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton's new book, 'Hard Choices,' will be published amid a flurry of publicity worthy of, well, the opening of a major presidential campaign."

Michiko Likes It! Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, probably the toughest book critic around, reviews Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices: "The book ... turns out to be a subtle, finely calibrated work that provides a portrait of the former secretary of state and former first lady as a heavy-duty policy wonk.... 'Hard Choices' is a statesmanlike document intended to attest to Mrs. Clinton's wide-ranging experience on national security and on foreign policy.... Unlike former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's rawly candid memoir 'Duty,' this volume is very much the work of someone who is keeping all her political options open -- and who would like to be known not only for mastering the art of diplomacy, but also for having the policy chops to become chooser-in-chief."

Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "The billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, known best for shepherding big money to conservative causes and candidates, have given a $25 million grant to the United Negro College Fund, the organization announced Friday." P.S. "As of last week, the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity had spent at least $44 million on 2014 congressional races since August, according to a person familiar with the total." CW: Everything is relative, people.

Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has told medical officials that his captors locked him in a metal cage in total darkness for weeks at a time as punishment for trying to escape, and while military doctors say he now is physically able to travel he is not yet emotionally ready for the pressures of reuniting with his family, according to American officials who have been briefed on his condition." ...

... A Troubled Platoon. Richard Oppel & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "On their tiny, remote base, in a restive sector of eastern Afghanistan at an increasingly violent time of the war, the [soldiers in Bowe Bergdahl's platoon] were known to wear bandannas and cutoff T-shirts. Their crude observation post was inadequately secured, a military review later found. Their first platoon leader, and then their first platoon sergeant, were replaced relatively early in the deployment because of problems." ...

... Josh Halliday of the Guardian: "US authorities are investigating death threats sent to the parents of Bowe Bergdahl, the American soldier released by the Taliban last week after five years in captivity. The FBI is examining four threatening emails sent to Bob Bergdahl and his wife Jani." ...

... Michael Semple in the Washington Post on myths about "talking to terrorists." Also, Ted Cruz doesn't know WTF he's talking about.

A Reward for Heroism. Caroline Bankoff of New York: Strangers fulfill the wedding registries & pay for the honeymoon of Jon Meis, the young man who tackled & pepper-sprayed the Seattle shooter.

MoDo implies her column on her Colorado OD was a great public service -- bringing to the world awareness of the need for regulation of pot. She never addresses the claim that published in the Denver Post by her budista that he gave her dosage instructions.

Antonia Blumberg of the Huffington Post: "A revised teachers' contract in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has forced some teachers to leave their positions even after years of service. First-grade teacher Molly Shumate and high school English teacher Robert Hague are among the veteran teachers choosing to leave the diocese over a 'morality clause' included in the new contracts. The clause reportedly prohibits teachers, whether Catholic or not, from having sex or living with a partner outside of marriage, using in-vitro fertilization, leading a gay 'lifestyle,' or publicly supporting any of the above. For teachers like Shumate, whose son is gay, the clause threatens to pit teachers against friends and family in order to keep their jobs." Via Steve Benen.

... Benen: "Ohio is one of several states that allow private school religious vouchers, which means taxpayers can subsidize the same parochial schools that are imposing 'morality clauses' on their employees."

Congressional Races

Adam Green & Stephanie Taylor of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in the American Prospect: "This week's Democratic congressional primaries amounted to Progressive Super Tuesday. And it is the latest chapter in a larger story we've seen play out in American politics since the Wall Street economic wreck." ...

... Ed Kilgore disagrees.

Beyond the Beltway

Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch: "Family Research Council President Tony Perkins is urging parents across the country to pull their children out of public schools in response to a Washington, D.C., principal's decision to come out to his students and school staff." Also via Benen. ...

... CW: Could this be a bit of overreach? You live in Nebraska & you're opposed to the gay "lifestyle" (see "morality clause" above). Your child goes to a good public school which you support with your tax dollars. Well, pull him out of there, Lady, because if there's a gay teacher in Washington, D.C., your Nebraska school is tainted or something.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The actor and comedian Tracy Morgan remained in critical condition on Sunday after he was injured in a crash in New Jersey.... Mr. Morgan ... had several serious injuries, including a broken leg, a broken femur, a broken nose and several broken ribs, his publicist Lewis Kay said on Sunday.... Walmart confirmed on Sunday that the driver of the tractor-trailer, Kevin Roper, 35, of Jonesboro, Ga., [who caused the accident] was a Walmart employee." ...

     ... CW: I read elsewhere that the driver fell asleep at the wheel. I wonder if WalMart gives its drivers necessary turnaround & break time.

Los Angeles Times: "As many as five people were dead Sunday afternoon after police said a pair of people shot two police officers at a Las Vegas pizzeria and then stormed a nearby Wal-Mart, where they killed another victim in the store, then themselves. 'This is a revolution,' the suspects said during the attack, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Sheriff Kevin C. McMahill told reporters."

Guardian: "Heavy fighting has broken out at Pakistan's busiest airport after armed gunmen penetrated the security cordon, hurling grenades and exchanging gunfire with Pakistani security forces." The Guardian is liveblogging developments at the linked page.

Guardian: "Egypt's ex-army chief, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, was officially sworn in on Sunday morning as Egypt's fifth head of state since 2011, nearly a year after he ousted his predecessor Mohamed Morsi."

Reuters: "Pope Francis hopes an unprecedented meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian presidents at the Vatican on Sunday can help end 'eternal negotiations' and lead to peace but he has no wish to meddle in Middle East politics, the Vatican said on Friday." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "In a richly symbolic ceremony, Pope Francis oversaw a carefully orchestrated 'prayer summit' with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents on Sunday as Jews, Christians and Muslims offered invocations for peace in the Vatican gardens."

Reuters: "Ukraine's newly-installed President Petro Poroshenko is set to remake a governing team which will handle the crisis with Russia, with talks on gas prices on Monday providing an early test of his new relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin.... Poroshenko's blunt refusal to accept the loss of Crimea in a combative inaugural speech puts him further at odds with Putin." ...

... AP: "The United States pledged millions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia on Saturday, deepening American support to the Western-leaning countries on Russia's border. Vice-president Joe Biden announced the extra aid, which must be approved by Congress, during a visit to Kiev for the inauguration of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko."

The Commentariat -- June 7, 2014

Internal links removed.

Gail Collins: Rep. Dave Camp, chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, was for tax reform -- until he voted, along with his fellow Republicans, to scrap it. "'Republicans care deeply about deficits, unless they're caused by tax cuts. Then they don't give a damn,' said [Norm] Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Now this idea is for an exchange of prisoners for our American fighting man. I would be inclined to support such a thing depending on a lot of the details. -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), interview on CNN, Feb. 18, 2014

We were never told that there would be an exchange of Sergeant Bergdahl for five Taliban. -- McCain, interview on CNN, June 3, 2014 ...

... CW: Glenn Kessler's fact-check of John McCain's obvious flip-flop on the prisoner exchange of Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban raises a matter of which I was unaware: that the Washington Post had reported on this exact prisoner exchange in February 2014. As Kessler writes, "... the key elements of the deal that was announced last week were apparent in the article four months ago -- the exchange of five Taliban members held at Guantanamo for Bergdahl and the protective custody of Qatar. Throughout the discussions, it has always been the same five men, so their identities would have been no surprise to any lawmaker keeping track of the discussions." ...

     ... While it's true that not every rank-and-file MOC would be able to keep up on "the details" of the prisoner swap, key members certainly knew what was in the works. Those Republicans & Democrats who claimed they "no idea" such an "outrageous" exchange was pending might want to blame their staffs for not keeping up. And leaders like Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) & McCain should be ashamed of themselves for complaining they didn't get notification. Kessler demonstrates they've known about this pending exchange for years. ...

(Kessler's column is another instance of the liberal media picking on John McCain. Dylan Byers of Politico: "In the last week alone, Sen. John McCain has publicly accused three different media organizations of misrepresenting his remarks on subjects ranging from U.S. foreign policy to President Obama's prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl.") ...

... Kathleen Hunter of Bloomberg News: Dianne Feinstein, "the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, said she's not convinced there was a 'credible threat' against the life of freed Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl that motivated the White House to keep its plans secret." CW: Because five years in captivity is great: you don't have to work & you still get pay & promotions. Inexplicably, Bergdahl tried to escape at least twice from this excellent sinecure. ...

... Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: John "Podesta, the senior counselor to President Barack Obama, said that the president made the decision for the swap knowing it would be controversial, but argued that methods were in place for homeland security protections that extend beyond the one-year that the five will be in Qatari custody as part of the deal.... 'There are ways that we have to monitor them beyond what Qatar is doing,' Podesta said."

Steven Levy of Wired: Silicon Valley saved Healthcare.gov. Now a new team "of programmers drawn from startups as well as large companies like Google ... is creating core features of the next generation of Healthcare.gov that will debut when the next enrollment period begins." Via Kevin Roose of New York.

David Savage & Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "As fast as it can, Google is sealing up cracks in its systems that Edward J. Snowden revealed the N.S.A. had brilliantly exploited. It is encrypting more data as it moves among its servers and helping customers encode their own emails. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are taking similar steps. After years of cooperating with the government, the immediate goal now is to thwart Washington -- as well as Beijing and Moscow. The strategy is also intended to preserve business overseas in places like Brazil and Germany that have threatened to entrust data only to local providers." ...

... CW: MEANWHILE, of course, these spy-averse tech giants are merrily recording your every keystroke for their own purposes.

All Clinton All the Time -- A Sampler ...

... Not That She Doesn't Ask for It. Greg Gilman of the Wrap: "Hillary Clinton's town hall later this month will air on CNN, with the network's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour moderating the event.... The town hall, taking place at the Newseum in Washington DC on June 17, will focus on the former Secretary of State's new& memoir, 'Hard Choices.' CNN notes, however, that there will be 'no subjects off limits' as she answers questions from Amanpour and the live audience."

Ruth Marcus: "The last few days have offered vivid illustrations of why Hillary Clinton could decide not to run for president -- and why, in the end, I believe she will. Example No. 1 is the ludicrous debate over whether Clinton, in the latest People magazine cover, was leaning on a walker. To buy this scenario would require you to believe that People is implicated in a grand conspiracy to keep Clinton's enervated physical state from American voters. And that People's editors and Team Clinton are dumb enough, having hatched this scheme, to have her photographed with the walker cropped out, except not entirely."

Alexander Burns & Madeline Marshall of Politico: "Fair or not, [former Senate Leader Bob] Dole said the subject [of age] is as in-bounds for the 2016 Democratic field as it was for him in 1996, when he ran at the age of 73. 'We had signs, "Dole in '96," and the Democrats in some areas changed it to "Dole is '96,'" he recalled. 'Hillary will be, what, 69? Age can be a factor. I think it was in my race, and it'll be in hers.'"

Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "In her new book, even as she lays out her foreign policy vision, Mrs. Clinton shows a side of herself [the 2008] campaign did not: human, motherly, jokey, self-deprecating.

Liz Kruetz & Dana Hughes of ABC News: "In an exclusive interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, Hillary Clinton defended President Obama's decision to swap five Taliban prisoners for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, saying she won't second guess him."

The Other Clinton. Josh Gerstein & Darrell Samuelsohn of Politico: "Under early fire over his alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, President Bill Clinton's aides were urging him to avoid commenting on legal strategy and also to look more presidential, according to newly-disclosed White House documents the Clinton Presidential Library released Friday.... The roughly 2,000 pages released Friday by the National Archives-run library are the fifth such batch released this year as archivists process previously withheld Clinton White House records. They provide behind-the-scenes insights into the Clinton presidency."

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: Liberals "have surrendered seats on the [Supreme C]ourt by being less strategic than conservatives with the timing of their retirements. The six most conservative justices, based on their voting patterns, to have retired in the last 50 years all left the bench under a Republican president. By contrast, only one of the six most liberal justices has departed when a Democrat was president. In all, Republican presidents have named 12 of the 20 Supreme Court justices since 1960 -- even though the two parties have fought to a draw in presidential elections over that period...."

Alyssa Rosenberg of the Washington Post writes in support of Maureen Dowd's Rocky Mountain high column. Rosenberg makes the same point I did: not everyone "... knows how to consume [marijuana] in ways that are pleasurable and safe for them, or that avoid unpleasant side effects." (Rosenberg is apparently unaware of the claims -- linked yesterday -- that Dowd got 45 minutes of instruction on how to ingest her stash.) It's reasonable, Rosenberg writes, to assume a candy bar is a "single serving."

Whither the Obamas? Corrine Lestch of the New York Daily News: "President Obama may have roots in Chicago, but Mayor de Blasio wants his legacy in New York City. Brushing aside reports in the Chicago Sun-Times Thursday that de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo offered 'tepid and unspecific' support for the Obama artifacts and letters to land in the Big Apple, Hizzoner said Columbia - Obama's alma mater - would be 'a perfect place' for a library and museum dedicated to the nation's 44th leader after he leaves office."

AND the CIA gets a Twitter account.

Beyond the Beltway

Jason Stein, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "A federal judge in Madison on Friday overturned Wisconsin's gay marriage ban, striking down an amendment to the state constitution approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2006 and prompting an emergency action by the state to halt the scores of weddings that began in the state's two largest cities. In the 88-page decision, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that the prohibition on same-sex vows in the state violated the rights of gay and lesbian couples to equal protection under the federal constitution and fair treatment under the law. She did not stay her ruling but also did not immediately issue an order blocking the enforcement of the ban, sparking a heated and hasty debate on whether the ruling meant that couples could immediately marry in the courthouses of Wisconsin.... Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican, said that 'current law remains in force' in Wisconsin and took immediate action to try to halt the surge of gay couples seeking to wed, filing an emergency request for a stay from Crabb."

The President's Weekly Address

White House: "... President Obama underscored the importance of helping to lift the burden of crushing student loan debt faced by too many Americans and highlighted the efforts he's taken to ensure we uphold America's commitment to provide a quality education for all who are willing to work for it":

News Ledes

Al Jazeera: "Eleven sailors held hostage by Somali pirates for more than three years have been released, Somali and United Nations officials say. Abdi Yusuf Hassan, the interior minister of Somalia's Galmudug region, said on Saturday that the mostly South Asian sailors were released with no ransom paid."

AP: "An 89-year old World War II veteran who was reported missing from a nursing home in England has been found in Normandy after traveling to attend D-Day commemorations, police said Friday."

AP: In his inaugural address, Petro Poroshenko, "Ukraine's new president, on Saturday called for dialogue with the country's east, gripped by a violent separatist insurgency, and for armed groups to lay down their weapons but said he won't talk with rebels he called 'gangsters and killers.'" ...

... AFP: "Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday ordered the border service to reinforce the state border with Ukraine, the Kremlin press service told Russian news agencies."

New York Times: "Actor and comedian Tracy Morgan was in intensive care Saturday after the limousine bus he was riding in was involved in a multi-vehicle accident on the New Jersey Turnpike, state police said."

Woman as Object

If you go to this doctor & get the shot, the spouse -- he or her -- gets the shot free. -- Overheard at McDonald's this morning.