The Commentariat -- April 30, 2014
Internal links removed.
Ashley Halsey of the Washington Post: "With pressure mounting to avert a transportation funding crisis this summer, the Obama administration Tuesday opened the door for states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for roadway repairs. The proposal, contained in a four-year, $302 billion White House transportation bill, would reverse a long-standing federal prohibition on most interstate tolling."
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "In a major environmental victory for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate the smog-causing pollution from coal-fired power plants that wafts across state lines from 27 Midwestern and Appalachian states to the East Coast. The 6-to-2 ruling upholds a centerpiece of what has become a signature of President Obama's environmental agenda: a series of new Clean Air Act regulations aimed at cutting pollution from coal-fired power plants.... In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, suggested that the regulation was Marxist and unwieldy." CW: Those two really are just a couple of clowns. ...
... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "After a tangled Supreme Court argument on Monday over the First Amendment rights of public employees, it seemed likely that the justices would render a split decision. The question was whether Edward R. Lane, a former director of a youth program at a public community college in Alabama, could be fired for responding to a subpoena and giving trial testimony in what the state's attorney general told the court on Monday 'was one of the most egregious public corruption situations in Alabama's history.'"
Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "In the Roberts Court, there are no Bundys and Sterlings; the real targets of the conservative majority are those who've spent their lives fighting the Bundys and Sterlings of the world.... [In Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action...,] it was as if the Justices in the majority and those in dissent were writing about different countries." ...
... Mark A. Thompson of the American Prospect: "Beginning with the April 22 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States allowing affirmative action's fate to be decided at state ballot boxes, followed 24 hours later by rancher Cliven Bundy's comments on slavery's positive attributes, followed 48 hours later by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling's plantation master attitude on display in a recorded telephone conversation attributed to him, this past week has been hell for African Americans. So much for post-racialism." ...
... CW: It pleases me that so many opinionators are linking Roberts, et al., to Bundy & Sterling.
... Lynn Zinser of the New York Times: "Donald Sterling ... was barred from the N.B.A. for life and may be forced to sell the team for making racist remarks, the league commissioner, Adam Silver, announced Tuesday. Silver said that Sterling would be barred from any contact with his team and the league and that he would be fined $2.5 million, the maximum allowed by the league's constitution." ...
... Travis Waldron: "Racist Donald Sterling is distracting everyone's attention from sexist Donald Sterling." ...
... ** Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "Race is, hands down, the most repulsive aspect of the Donald Sterling scandal. But sex is a close second."
Dylan Scott of TPM: "A Democratic congressman from Nevada said in a letter this week that his constituents have reported the armed militia supporting rancher Cliven Bundy have set up checkpoints to verify the residency of anybody passing through. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), who represents the area, sent the letter Sunday to Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, asking him to investigate."
Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors are nearing criminal charges against some of the world's biggest banks, according to lawyers briefed on the matter, a development that could produce the first guilty plea from a major bank in more than two decades. In doing so, prosecutors are confronting the popular belief that Wall Street institutions have grown so important to the economy that they cannot be charged. A lack of criminal prosecutions of banks and their leaders fueled a public outcry over the perception that Wall Street giants are 'too big to jail.'... Prosecutors in Washington and New York have met with regulators about how to criminally punish banks without putting them out of business and damaging the economy...."
NEW. Anthony Man of the Orlando Sun-Sentinel: "Gov. Rick Scott visited a senior center Tuesday to warn about cuts he said Obamacare is forcing in a popular version of the Medicare health program and to collect their horror stories. What he found was a satisfied group with few complaints." Thanks to Victoria D. for the lead. ...
... Arit John of the Atlantic: "... if Scott wanted to hear how the health care law affects people's lives, he didn't need to look that hard. The left's horror story is still the woman who died uninsured because Florida refused to expand Medicaid." ...
Medical Procedure Cures Brainwashing! I didn't care for Obama. I can’t say nothing bad about him now because it was his plan that probably saved my life. -- Dean Angstadt, Fox "News" victim ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: A confirmed anti-ObamaCare logger & Fox "News" viewer changes his mind after a friend "performed an intervention" to get him to sign up, allowing him to get a lifesaving heart valve replacement.
Daniel Strauss of TPM: "Rep. Vance McAllister (R-LA) said on Tuesday that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) had asked him to resign and, according to McAllister, the response was a very clear 'no.' Cantor had asked his fellow congressman to resign after McAllister was caught on tape kissing a staffer who is not his wife."
Michael Paulson of the New York Times: "The major umbrella organization of Jewish groups plans to vote on whether to admit a dovish lobbying organization that has been critical of some Israeli policies. The vote on whether to allow the group, J Street, to join the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations comes at a time when Jewish institutions have been struggling over how much debate over Israel they are willing to tolerate."
MoDo writes another column attacking President Obama. So, back to normal. ...
... AND, speaking of those suffering from obsessive-reflexive antiobamaitis syndrome..., Oren Dorell of USA Today: "Republicans say e-mails released Tuesday on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, include 'the smoking gun' that shows a White House official urged that the assault on the U.S. consulate be blamed on a protest that never happened. The e-mails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request, include one in which White House official Ben Rhodes lists 'goals' for then-U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to meet in explaining the attack and protests occurring across the Middle East that week to the American public.... The White House said it relied on the best intelligence available at the time, and when better intelligence arrived, the story was clarified."
Congressional Races
Steve M. looks at the Washington Post/ABC News poll, linked yesterday, that looked like bad news for Democrats. What Steve noticed was that Americans prefer Democratic to Republican policies; they just don't like Obama much.
Beyond the Beltway
Laura Vozzella & Pamela Constable of the Washington Post: "Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring thrust himself and his state back into the national spotlight on Tuesday by announcing that some illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children can qualify for in-state tuition under existing law.... The announcement came following a legislative session in which a Republican-dominated House of Delegates firmly rejected a 'Dream Act,' which would have accomplished through statute what Herring did Tuesday with the stroke of a pen."
Bailey McBride & Sean Murphy of the AP: "An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the head of the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there had been vein failure." ...
... Lindsey Bever of the Washington Post: "Tuesday night's botched execution in Oklahoma, which resulted in an inmate's writhing death from a heart attack 43 minutes after he received what was supposed to be a lethal injection, was just one in a series of bungled execution attempts the past few years. It's prompting calls for a moratorium on capital punishment from death penalty opponents." ...
... More horrifying details from Ben Crair of the New Republic: "In all likelihood, the executioner who inserted Lockett's IV -- and, in Oklahoma, an IV is inserted into both arms -- missed the veins or went right through them." ...
... Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "For years, there's been mounting evidence that lethal injections are being bungled in the hands of non-experts, leading an increasing number of medical professionals to condemn this method of execution as inhumane." ...
... James Downie of the Washington Post: "Disgracefully, this botched execution was entirely predictable.
Yes, Lockett and Warner's crimes were utterly heinous. But so was this state-sponsored killing, perhaps even more so in light of Oklahoma Republicans' bloodthirsty rush to execute Lockett and Warner. We have known for years that the death penalty is 'cruel and unusual punishment.' We know that the drug cocktails used in lethal injections were designed to be 'visually palatable' at the expense of more effectively preventing excruciating pain. We know that the death penalty is frequently administered in a racially biased fashion. And we know that, as reported this week, 'about one in 25 people imprisoned under a death sentence is likely innocent.' It is long past time for the United States to end this barbaric practice.
Patrick Marley, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "In a decision that could have implications nationally and in Wisconsin's November elections, a federal judge on Tuesday struck down the state's voter ID law, saying it violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The law known as Act 23 had already been blocked by a state judge. For the law to be put back in place, supporters would have to overturn both the state and federal decisions -- a possibility that could prove difficult between now and the Nov. 4 election for governor.... [Judge Lynn] Adelman, a former Democratic state senator known for sponsoring the state's open records law, determined that in practice the law requiring voters to show one of nine types of photo IDs at the polls established an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. It also violated the federal Voting Rights Act because its effects hit Latinos and African-Americans harder than whites, he wrote."
News Lede
Time: "The deadline for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians expired without a deal on Tuesday, with the two sides blaming each other for the lack of a breakthrough in the negotiations brokered by the U.S."