The Commentariat -- April 8, 2014

Internal links, graphics & related text removed.

Ramsey Cox, et al., of the Hill: "The Senate approved a five-month extension of federal unemployment benefits on Monday in a 59-38 vote that saw six Republicans break ranks and vote in favor of the legislation. The bill now goes to the House, where Senior House Republicans have felt little pressure to act on jobless benefits. Although they won't say so directly, they are likely to ignore the Senate bill." ...

... ** Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "Since the early 1990s, politicians have deliberately shifted funds away from those perceived to be the most needy and toward those perceived to be the most deserving.... Since the mid-1990s, the biggest increases in spending have gone to those who were middle class or hovering around the poverty line. Meanwhile, Americans in deep poverty ... saw no change in their benefits in the decade leading up to the housing bubble. In fact, if you strip out Medicare and Medicaid, federal social spending on those in extreme poverty fell between 1993 and 2004."

Michael Shear & Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday will call attention to what he has said is an 'embarrassment' in America: the fact that women make, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns. But ... a study released in January showed that female White House staff members make on average 88 cents for every dollar a male staff member earns.... [Press Secretary Jay Carney] said that the 88-cent statistic was misleading because it aggregates the salaries of White House staff members at all levels, including the lowest levels, where women outnumber men. Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, said the 77-cent statistic that Mr. Obama has often cited was misleading for the same reason, because it aggregates salaries for the American workforce." ...

     ... CW: Guess what? Boehner's guy is right. Wouldn't it be fabulous if the Times writers would tell us this rather than present an easily-verifiable statistic in their traditional he-said/he-said format?

Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "The White House has defended a four-fold increase in the deportation of undocumented immigrants for minor crimes such as driving offences, insisting it is simply complying with 'administration priorities' by removing foreign law-breakers from the country." CW: Think about the logic there: We're just following our own policy, so it's okay.

Aamer Madhani of USA Today: "President Obama on Monday announced the winners of his Youth CareerConnect program, part of his long-touted goal of reshaping high schools to make sure students are properly prepared for the rigors of college and a rapidly evolving job market.

Adam Serwer of NBC News: "The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from a New Mexico photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony because of her religious beliefs, which the state supreme court found violated New Mexico's anti-discrimination law. If the Supreme Court had taken the case, 'all of public accommodations anti-discrimination laws would have been up for grabs,' said Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union. 'Drawing the line here is a huge victory.'"

Julian Hattem of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday declined an initial challenge to the National Security Agency's (NSA) bulk collection of information about the public's telephone calls. The high court passed on a chance to review a lower court ruling that found the controversial program 'almost Orwellian,' which means the case will go through the normal appeals process as lawmakers battle over reform proposals."

I am not a crook. -- Richard Nixon

Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon, and now John Roberts has absolved him. History is written by the winners, but for a while anyway, the losers know better. -- Constant Weader ...

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "... according to an opinion Chief Justice John Roberts handed down last week, most of the Nixon Administration's shadiest efforts to raise campaign funds do not qualify as 'corruption.'" ...

     ... Charles Pierce: "Richard Nixon didn't hand Gordon Liddy a bag of hundreds and tell him to bug Larry O'Brien's phone so, according to the Chief Justice, there was no corruption there at all." ...

... As the Worm Turns. Constant Weader: Under his "new rules," Chief Justice Roberts also has effectively granted pardons to all of the Keating Five (Charles Keating just died), since a quid pro quo was never specified between Keating & any of the five U.S. senators. Ironically, John McCain, one of the five, was so humiliated by his complicity in the Keating scandal that he began actively supporting campaign finance reform; ergo, McCain-Feingold -- the very law that the Roberts court further eviscerated in the McCutcheon v. FEC ruling.

New York Times Editors: "... the pro-Russian secessionists who seized the local administration building in Donetsk, the center of the industrial Donets Basin, are following the script laid down in Crimea to the letter. They have declared the region's independence from Ukraine and called for a referendum by May 11 on joining Russia.... The United States and Europe have said time and again that further Russian aggression would prompt a stern and painful response. Now is the time to prepare it." ...

... Ignorance Breeds Belligerence. Kyle Dropp, et al., in the Washington Post: "We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force." CW: Maybe if somebody had given Dick Cheney a map, all would be right with the world.

The accusations are not true. Some people called it torture. It wasn't torture. If I would have to do it all over again, I would. The results speak for themselves. -- Dick Cheney, last week, defending the CIA's use of waterboarding against a Senate report's "accusations" that waterboarding is torture

I was stunned to hear that quote from Vice President Cheney. If he doesn't think that was torture, I would invite him anywhere in the United States to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through, one of them a hundred and plus-odd times.... This was torture by anybody's definition. -- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Intelligence Committee, which wrote the report

David Corn of Mother Jones: "Last week..., former Vice President Dick Cheney took a shot at Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). But Paul is not likely to be fazed by criticism from Cheney, for several years ago the Kentucky senator was pushing the conspiratorial notion that the former VP exploited the horrific 9/11 attacks to lead the nation into war in Iraq in order to benefit Halliburton, the enormous military contractor where Cheney had once been CEO."

Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate Democrats ripped former CIA Director Michael Hayden on Monday for describing Sen. Dianne Feinstein as 'emotional,' calling Hayden's remarks both a 'baseless smear' and condescending.... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Hayden's comments are emblematic of 'Republicans' disregard for women as displayed here in Washington.'"

Juan Cole: "Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of peace negotiations that began last August under the auspices of Secretary of State John Kerry." Cole lists "the top ten things Israel did to cause the negotiations to falter."

Bush conservative Michael Gerson slams ObamaCare, not necessarily for the wrong reasons, but of course he goes awry by claiming "conservatives have serious alternatives to Obamacare." He never acknowledges the elephant in the room: single-payer would solve almost all of ObamaCare's problems. One point he does make though is crucial: Americans have a right to health care, & conservatives must come to recognize that.

Steve Ohlemacher of the AP: "Rep. Dave Camp set a [Way & Means] committee vote for Wednesday on whether to refer Lois Lerner, who used to head the agency's tax-exempt division, to the Justice Department 'for possible criminal prosecution.'"

Joan Walsh of Salon takes issue with Jonathan Chait's piece on racism, linked in yesterday's Commentariat.

At the Minnesota DFL Humphrey-Mondale fundraiser, Elizabeth Warren takes on Paul Ryan & Ted Cruz:

Gosh, Another Conservative Christian/Family Values Politician Is Caught on Tape. John Bresnahan & Jake Sherman of Politico: "Freshman GOP Rep. Vance McAllister (La.) - who ran as conservative Christian - has been caught on video in a romantic encounter with a woman believed to be on his congressional staff just before Christmas. The Ouachita Citizen, a newspaper based in West Monroe, La., posted a Dec. 23 surveillance video purportedly from inside McAllister's district office in Monroe.... McAllister won the special election on Nov. 16 to replace Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.). McAllister won in the heavily Republican district by playing up his conservative credentials, including his Christian faith and his 16-year marriage. McAllister's Washington office door was locked on Monday. He issued a statement in the afternoon apologizing for the incident and asking for forgiveness." The video is here.

Beyond the Beltway

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Maryland embraced President Obama's call to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour on Monday, the second state to do since Connecticut acted last month. The Maryland General Assembly voted for the pay raise on the last day of its 2014 regular session, giving Gov. Martin O'Malley a victory on his top priority this year. The governor, in his last year in office, has staked out a consistently liberal record as he weighs running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.... The governor also said he would sign a bill passed Monday that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana."

     ... CW: President Obama mentions Maryland's minimum wage effort in his speech, embedded above.

Scott Raab of Esquire: "Esquire has learned from sources close to the investigation that David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who helped plan and execute the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, is now cooperating with Paul Fishman, the federal prosecutor investigating the soon-to-be-ex-governor and his minions for criminal conduct. Fishman has also increased the number of investigators at work on the case, and has begun presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury in Newark."

AP: "Charlotte, N.C.'s council has chosen a state senator to be the city's new mayor to replace Patrick Cannon [D], who resigned last month in a public corruption scandal. Members on Monday picked Dan Clodfelter [D] to finish the two-year term Cannon only started in December."

Jim Efstathiou Jr. of Bloomberg News: "There have been more earthquakes strong enough to be felt in Oklahoma this year than in all of 2013, overwhelming state officials who are trying to determine if the temblors are linked to oil and natural gas production.... As fracking expanded to more fields, reports have become more frequent from Texas to Ohio of earthquakes linked to wells that drillers use to pump wastewater underground." But, hey, "The number of earthquakes with suspected connections to injection wells is a small fraction of the number of wells, according to America's Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group in Washington."

... CW: Okay then. Or as Hamilton Nolan of Gawker writes, "Could blasting water into cracks in the earth with incredibly high pressure be related to an explosion of earthquakes? Who's to say? In the meantime, strap yourself in -- for energy savings!" A commenter to Nolan's post has an explanation: "Those aren't earthquakes at all. It is simply Mother Earth quivering with pleasure from getting fucked so hard by humans." ...

... Griff Witte & Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "Ever since Russian forces took hold of Crimea last month, the British prime minister [David Cameron] has been leading a chorus of conservative politicians and energy executives in a refrain they believe will spark a shale gas revolution in Europe: Frack, baby, frack."

Smoking Gun: Al Sharpton was once an informant for the FBI & NYPD. "Beginning in the mid-1980s and spanning several years, Sharpton's cooperation was fraught with danger since the FBI's principal targets were leaders of the Genovese crime family, the country's largest and most feared Mafia outfit. In addition to aiding the FBI/NYPD task force, which was known as the 'Genovese squad,' Sharpton's cooperation extended to several other investigative agencies. TSG's account of Sharpton's secret life as 'CI-7' is based on hundreds of pages of confidential FBI affidavits"

CW: As a UW-Madison alum, I am super-proud of my old college for offering a women's studies course that included this informative handout, ca. 1988: "When You Meet a Lesbian: Hints for the Heterosexual Woman." Much of it concerns girl-on-girl etiquette (though not exactly like the advice we got from our housemother at Elizabeth Waters Hall, who was coincidentally a lesbian). For instance, Rule 1: "Do not run from the room. This is rude." I'm going to try to remember that for next time.

Congressional Races

Earmarker-in-Chief. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "In the post-earmark era, using the party's control of the federal bureaucracy to deliver local projects or delay new regulations that might stifle jobs has become a critical part of Democratic efforts to maintain control of the Senate. In close races, particularly in less populated states such as Alaska and Montana, incumbents are hoping that a few favorable agency decisions might secure the backing of key constituencies."

Presidential Election

Presidential aspirant Ted Cruz responds to presidential heir Jeb Bush on immigration reform:

Digby, in Salon: In the "Tea Party's great dunce-off...,Ted Cruz is quietly kicking Rand Paul's butt."

John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Whatever else you do this week, carve out half an hour to read my colleague Ryan Lizza's piece about Chris Christie and New Jersey politics. It's Robert Penn Warren meets Carl Hiaasen on the west bank of the Hudson. By the time you get to the end of it, I bet you'll find yourself asking the same question I did: How could we ever have taken this bully seriously as a Presidential candidate?"

News Ledes

New York Times: "Arthur Smith, a country musician known for the hit 'Guitar Boogie' and for 'Feuding Banjos,' a bluegrass tune that became 'Dueling Banjos' in the film 'Deliverance,' died on Thursday at his home in Charlotte, N.C. He was 93."

AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday blamed approval of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem for derailing peace talks with Palestinians, a charge that pricked Israeli officials and sent aides into damage control." CW: Which is what Juan Cole said yesterday. See today's Commentariat.

AP: "The defense chiefs of China and the U.S. faced off Tuesday over Beijing's escalating territorial disputes in the region, with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and telling his Chinese counterparts they do not have the right to unilaterally establish an air defense zone over disputed islands, with no consultation."

Reuters: "Deputies in the Ukrainian parliament brawled in the chamber on Tuesday after a communist leader accused nationalists of playing into the hands of Russia by adopting extreme tactics early in the Ukrainian crisis." With video.

The Commentariat -- April 7, 2014

"The Color of His Presidency." Jonathan Chait writes a long piece for New York on the invidious racism that continues to pervade American politics, writ large during the Obama era. "Once you start looking for racial subtexts embedded within the Republican agenda, they turn up everywhere. And not always as subtexts.... Conservatives are fixated on race, in a mystified, aggrieved, angry way...."

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "This week, the president will sign an executive order that would prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their pay with each other. The prohibition on the wage 'gag rules' is similar to language in a Senate bill aimed at closing a pay gap between men and women. That legislation is scheduled for a vote this week, though it is not likely to pass. In addition, Obama on Tuesday will direct the Labor Department to adopt regulations requiring federal contractors to provide compensation data based on sex and race. The president will sign the executive order and the presidential memo during an event at the White House where he will be joined Lilly Ledbetter, whose name appears on a pay discrimination law Obama signed in 2009."

Ginger Thompson & Sarah Cohen of the New York Times: "... a New York Times analysis of internal government records shows that since President Obama took office, two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases involve people who had committed minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all. Twenty percent -- or about 394,000 -- of the cases involved people convicted of serious crimes, including drug-related offenses, the records show.... Mr. Obama came to office promising comprehensive immigration reform, but lacking sufficient support, the administration took steps it portrayed as narrowing the focus of enforcement efforts on serious criminals. Yet the records show that the enforcement net actually grew, picking up more and more immigrants with minor or no criminal records."

Erin Delmore of NBC News: "President Obama will attend a memorial Wednesday for the victims of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer confirmed on CBS's Face the Nation...."

Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News: "Ahead of the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that is expected to say the CIA misled the government and the American people about its interrogation techniques, Nancy Pelosi is placing the blame squarely on former Vice President Dick Cheney. 'I do believe that during the Bush-Cheney administration, Vice President Cheney set a tone and an attitude for the CIA," Pelosi said in an interview with CNN's 'State of the Union' broadcast Sunday.... Pelosi said she thinks Cheney, who has long defended the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques, is proud of the CIA's misrepresentation." ...

... ** Dianne Feinstein Is a Crybaby Girl. Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: Former CIA Director Michael Hayden tells Fox "News"'s Chris Wallace that the Senate report on CIA torture is the product of girly emotions. So, not serious. "... if the intelligence community thinks that the controversy over our legacy of torture is just the result of some silly girlish feelings, then we haven't even begun to deal with the consequences of those years."

Katie Valentine of Think Progress: "Eight [Democratic] members of Congress sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Tuesday, asking her to reopen investigations into water contamination in the three states. The EPA investigations in Pavillion, WY, Dimock, PA and Parker County, TX were all called off between mid-2012 and mid-2013, before the agency determined for sure what had caused each region's contamination."

"Oligarchs & Money." Paul Krugman: " I'm increasingly convinced that our failure to deal with high unemployment has a lot to do with class interests.... Modestly higher inflation, say 4 percent, would be good for the vast majority of people, but it would be bad for the superelite. And guess who gets to define conventional wisdom.... What's good for oligarchs isn't good for America." ...

... Brad DeLong: "The top 0.01% ... have not been enriched by the post 2008 era. What they have gained via a higher capitalization via low safe interest rates has been offset by what they have lost as a result of depressed profits, depressed by a low level of economic activity, a depression which has not been completely offset by downward pressure on wages. The top 0.01% would not be poorer absolutely (although they would be poorer relatively) in a high-pressure higher-inflation economy." ...

     ... CW: DeLong doesn't understand why the .01% want a depressed economy. I do: they want to continue to increase the economic distance between them & us. They want us to envy them, something we won't much bother to do if we're fat & happy ourselves. ...

... E. J. Dionne: "It's a shame that the Republican majority on the Supreme Court doesn't know the difference between an oligarchy and a democratic republic.... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his four allies always side with the wealthy, the powerful and the forces that would advance the political party that put them on the court. The ideological overreach that is wrecking our politics is now also wrecking our jurisprudence." CW: I think Roberts, et al., do know the difference. And they prefer oligarchy.

Richard Escow in Nation of Change: In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Charles "Koch cites the following line [from a letter by Thomas Jefferson]: 'The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.' ... Jefferson wasn't saying that the government takes your liberty, but that liberty is lost when citizens become passive in the face of infringements on their rights.... Charles Koch may not understand Thomas Jefferson, but Thomas Jefferson would have understood Charles Koch very well. It was Jefferson, after all, who said the following: 'I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.'"

Ben Terris of the Washington Post: "About 600 of George H.W. Bush's closest friends, administration officials, political allies and family members headed to his presidential library in [College Station,] Texas this past weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his presidency. Familiar faces such as former secretary of state James Baker, ex-chief of staff John Sununu, and onetime vice president Dan Quayle spent the time reminiscing about their glory days, eating heaping plates of barbecue and listening to live country music played by Clay Walker and Garth Brooks."

Bruce Smith of the AP: "In a little-known chapter of American history, a federal judge who was the son of a Confederate soldier and presided in the city where the Civil War began was the first judge in the nation to write that segregated schools are unequal schools since separate but equal became the law of the land. U.S. District Judge Waites Waring's opinions in cases ranging from opening the South Carolina Democratic primary to blacks, to equal pay for teachers and school desegregation made him a pariah in his hometown in the segregated South. A cross was burned in his yard, bricks were thrown through his windows and he received death threats."

David Carr of the New York Times has some questions for Comcast as its reps appear before a Senate committee to defend Comcast's proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable.

What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true? -- Chemist Sherwood Rowland, ca. 1970s ...

... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "At a meeting in Yokohama, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest update on the looming crisis that is global warming. Only this time it isn't just looming.... Composed in a language that might be called High Committee, the report is nevertheless hair-raising.... Currently, instead of discouraging fossil-fuel use, the U.S. government underwrites it, with tax incentives for producers worth about four billion dollars a year.... The fact that so much time has been wasted standing around means that the problem of climate change is now much more difficult to deal with than it was when it was first identified."

Presidential Race

Hamlet, Enters Right. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "...Jeb Bush signaled on Sunday the kind of campaign he would mount if he ran for president: one arguing against ideological purity tests while challenging party orthodoxy on issues like immigration and education.... He said he would decide by the end of the year, in part on whether he thought that with a 'hopeful' message, he could avoid 'the vortex of a mud fight.'" ...

... Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: Meanwhile, other GOP presidential hopefuls are "study[ing] up on issues and cultivat[ing] ties to pundits and luminaries from previous administrations." ...

... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker has a long piece on this guy:

... Here Steve Peoples of the AP looks at what the prettiest boy in the GOP beauty contest -- Marco Rubio -- is doing to bolster his presidential creds.

Congressional Races

Juan Williams in the Hill: "Republicans want this year’s elections to be a repeat of 2010, a referendum on Obama and ObamaCare. They have no Plan B.... Meanwhile, Democratic messaging is picking up speed by forcing Republicans to cast votes against raising the minimum wage and blocking efforts to help the long-term unemployed. The top political prognosticators have rightly said this looks like a bad year for Democrats on Capitol Hill. But between the early success of the ACA and the introduction of the punishing Ryan budget, the GOP had a tough 24 hours on April Fools' Day. Early reports of the Democrats' demise are starting to look like hype."

Beyond the Beltway

Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic interviews/spars with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Steven M. Mazzacane of the Branford Seven: Sources say "... Ted Kennedy Jr. will run for [Connecticut's] 12^th district [senate] seat, a seat now held by Democrat Ed Meyer. Meyer is retiring."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Under the watchful eye of Russian state television, several hundred pro-Russian demonstrators in the city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, a region of millions, declared on Monday that they were forming an independent republic and urged President Vladimir V. Putin to send troops to the region as a peacekeeping force, even though there are no obvious threats to peace in the area." ...

... Washington Post: "In Washington, the Obama administration expressed deep skepticism that the scattered uprisings and building takeovers in cities such as Donetsk and Kharkiv have been spontaneous. 'There is strong evidence suggesting some of these demonstrators were paid,' said Jay Carney...." ...

... AP: "Secretary of State John Kerry agreed Monday to meet with top diplomats from Russia, Ukraine and the European Union in a new push to calm tensions in eastern Ukraine, as the White House threatened further sanctions if Moscow intervenes."

War at Sea. AFP: "China showed off its new aircraft carrier to US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday, allowing him a first-hand look at a symbol of its growing military prowess. Hagel arrived in the port city of Qingdao, kicking off a three-day tour of China with a visit to the carrier at Yuchi naval base. He was the first foreigner allowed aboard the vessel by the often secretive People's Liberation Army (PLA), officials said." ...

... AP: "The U.S. will deploy two additional ballistic missile defense destroyers to Japan by 2017 as part of an effort to bolster protection from North Korean missile threats, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday."

New York Times: "Mickey Rooney, the exuberant entertainer who led a roller-coaster life -- the world's top box-office star at 19 as the irrepressible Andy Hardy, a bankrupt has-been in his 40s, a comeback kid on Broadway as he neared 60 -- died on Sunday. He was 93 and lived in Westlake Village, Calif.

Washington Post: " An Australian navy vessel searching for a missing Malaysian passenger jet has picked up deep-sea acoustic signals 'consistent' with those emitted by an airplane's black box, the leader of the multinational search operation said Monday."

AFP: "Last-ditch talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on salvaging a teetering, US-brokered peace process ended without a breakthrough Sunday, Palestinian sources told AFP."

The Commentariat -- April 6, 2014

Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "Problems getting judges confirmed by the Senate have been a constant complaint for this White House -- but this week, President Barack Obama's aides are celebrating a confirmation count that outpaces President George W. Bush's. They've had that goal on their minds for over a year, ever since chief of staff Denis McDonough and counsel Kathy Ruemmler reprioritized judicial nominations for Obama's second term. John Owens, confirmed Monday to the Ninth Circuit, along with Edward Smith and Gerald McHugh, who confirmed to the district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania last week, put them over the top." ...

... What's the Matter with Pat Leahy? Ian Millhiser of Think Progress explains the "blue slip" tradition that is forcing President Obama to nominate conservative Republicans to the bench. "As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has the unilateral ability to eliminate the blue slip today if he chose to, though he has thus far refused to do so. Indeed, one of Leahy's Republican predecessors, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), largely did just that when he was Judiciary Chair and George W. Bush was president."

** David Cole in the New York Review of Books: "One Dollar, One Vote."

Benjamin Goad of the Hill: "Members of the Federal Election Commissioners are lashing back at the Supreme Court's decision this week to strip away a key campaign finance restriction, contending the ruling will only add to the influence of 'megadonors.' In a scathing statement, FEC Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel and commissioner Ellen Weintraub said they were [troubled' about the high court's decision to do away with overall individual contribution limits. 'This decision will not increase the number of voices able to participate in the political debate,' the Democratic commissioners said. 'Instead, it amplifies the voices of the few to the detriment of the many.'"

** Missed This. You're Hitler; I'm Not. Paul Krugman: "Billionaires really are feeling vulnerable despite their wealth and power, or perhaps because of it. And the apparatchiks serving the .01 percent are deeply insecure, culturally and intellectually, so that ridicule cuts deep.... When great power goes along with fragile egos, seriously bad things can happen."

I think there is a gay mafia. I think if you cross them, you do get whacked. -- Bill Maher, on his show "Real Time" ...

... Mark Stern, in Slate, explains to conservatives (and to Bill Maher, et al.) the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. CW: Sorry, Mark, they're not listening.

You Pay Taxes So Megarich Televangelists Don't Have To. John Burnett of NPR: "Today, television evangelists are larger, more numerous, more complex, richer, with bigger audiences than ever before and yet they are the least transparent of all nonprofits." Also, so they can get away with being crooks & liars. Via Steve Benen. ...

... CW Question: Is the IRS violating the establishment clause when it establishes a teevee network as a religion? Or indeed if it establishes the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or the Roman Catholic Church?

Congressional Races

Jeremy Peters & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "By drawing public attention to layoffs by subsidiaries of Koch Industries across the country -- a chemical plant in North Carolina, an oil refinery in Alaska, a lumber operation in Arkansas -- Democrats are seeking to make villains of the reclusive billionaires [Charles & David Koch], whose political organizations have spent more than $30 million on ads so far to help Republicans win control of the Senate. The approach should seem familiar. President Obama and his allies ran against Mitt Romney in 2012 by painting a dark picture of Bain Capital ... as a company that cut jobs and prized the bottom line over the well-being of its employees":

Catalina Camia of USA Today: "In a new campaign ad in Georgia's U.S. Senate race, [Rep. Jack Kingston] apparently hired an impersonator who sounds like [President] Obama to give him a fake phone call.

Presidential Race

Not only can Chris Christie not win [the GOP presidential primary], I think he may have trouble finishing out his term [as governor].... There's absolutely no chance that he didn't know this was going on if he didn’t order it or OK it. So I think he's not a factor. -- Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D)

Beyond the Beltway

And on the Sixth Day, God Created the Wooly Mammoth. Steve Benen on a South Carolina bill to establish a state fossil.

Jim Avila, et al., of ABC News: "The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey has convened a grand jury to investigate the involvement of Governor Chris Christie's office in the George Washington Bridge scandal, ABC News has learned. Twenty-three jurors convened in a federal courthouse in Newark [Friday] to hear testimony from a key staff member, Christie press secretary Mike Drewniak, whose lawyer, Anthony Iacullo, said Drewniak was not a target of the investigation."

John Hanna of the AP: "Kansas legislators gave final approval Saturday to a bill that would nullify city and county gun restrictions and ensure that it's legal across the state to openly carry firearms, a measure the National Rifle Association sees as a nationwide model for stripping local officials of their gun-regulating power. The House approved the legislation, 102-19, a day after the Senate passed it, 37-2. The measure goes next to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. He hasn't said whether he'll sign it, but he's a strong supporter of gun rights and has signed other measures backed by the NRA and the Kansas State Rifle Association."

Dick Junior

I'm a safety guy. Gosh, I'm as safety as I can be. I was so mad at myself for even thinking about shooting the bird in this direction where I knew he was down in there. -- Oklahoma State Rep. Steve Vaughn, (R), a gun-rights advocate, about shooting a fellow hunter in the head

Rachel Huggins of the Hill: "'I just felt horrible about it. I just was sick,' said Rep. Steve Vaughan, who wounded the man in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun as he was aiming at a pheasant." CW: Apparently "as safety as you can be" is knowingly shooting into a group of hunters & hoping you'll bag a bird.

Missed This, Too. What Goes Up Must Come Down. Michael Van Sickler of the Miami Herald: Unaware that the laws of gravity supersede man-made laws, "the [Florida] state Senate passed a bill Thursday that grants immunity to people with clean criminal records who fire a warning shot or threaten to use deadly force in self-defense. It also seals court records of those charged with firing a weapon but later have those charges dropped. Already passed by the House, the measure next goes to Gov. Rick Scott, who 'supports the 2nd Amendment and Florida's self-defense laws (and) looks forward to reviewing this legislation,' said a spokesman." CW: I can't get out of this state soon enough. Thanks to Barbarossa for the lead.

News Lede

AP: " Crowds of pro-Russian demonstrators stormed government buildings Sunday in several major cities in eastern Ukraine, where secessionist sentiment has sparked frequent protests since Ukraine's Russia-friendly president was ousted in February."