The Commentariat -- March 24, 2014

** Paul Krugman: "The drift toward oligarchy continues," thanks in large part to Republican policies. ...

... CW: I wonder where the conservatives are who hate this. After all, those so-called intellectuals & scribes who work at think tanks & winger rags are mostly ordinary working people. Yes, they know who's buttering their bread, but at some point, aren't they too going to revolt against policies that are directly hurting them? They can't all be so stupid or so shortsighted as to think advocating for Koch-friendly policies will be to their ultimate benefit. Where is the outrage on the right?

CW: Here's what I wrote on March 19 (or maybe 18): Ben Casselman of Nate Silver's new FiveThirtyEight venture susses out whether or not more Americans are trying to sustain themselves in minimum- & low-wage jobs. If Casselman's analysis -- which makes at least one ridiculous assumption & expresses complete ignorance of factors contributing to low wages ("Economists aren't sure"), then I am singularly unimpressed with Silver's product. ...

... Here's Krugman yesterday: "Timothy Egan joins the chorus of those dismayed by Nate Silver's new FiveThirtyEight. I'm sorry, but I have to agree: so far it looks like something between a disappointment and a disaster.... Unfortunately, Silver seems to have taken the wrong lesson from his election-forecasting success. In that case, he pitted his statistical approach against campaign-narrative pundits, who turned out to know approximately nothing. What he seems to have concluded is that there are no experts anywhere, that a smart data analyst can and should ignore all that. But not all fields are like that -- in fact, even political analysis isn't like that, if you talk to political scientists instead of political reporters. So, for example, before glancing at some correlation and asserting causation, you really should talk to the researchers." ...

... CW: It seems that Silver, like that other wunderkind Ezra Klein (and perhaps Glenn Greenwald, too), has bitten off more than he can chew. However, I wouldn't worry too much if their teenaged-style rebellions against their buttinsky MSM editors are failures. These are smart guys. A big flop can be a big learning experience -- if the flopper is indeed smart enough to heed the lesson.

Walter Dellinger, in a Washington Post op-ed, argues that access to contraception is a "test of equality." He recounts some of the arguments in Griswold v. Connecticut. ...

... Brian Beutler: The Hobby Lobby "case will test what's more sacred to this court: Corporate imperatives or so-called religious liberties."

Carrie Brown & Tal Kopan of Politico: "President Barack Obama said on Monday that Europe and the U.S. are 'united' on Ukraine, kicking off a series of talks with foreign leaders this week aimed at exerting pressure on Russia. Obama spoke briefly to the press with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam after landing Monday morning. Obama later met with President Xi Jinping of China at the U.S. ambassador's residence here." ...

... Kathleen Hennessey of the Los Angeles Times: "The fight over control and influence in Ukraine should not be seen as a Cold War-era battle, President Obama said in an interview released Monday as he opened a European trip certain to be dominated by discussion of the West's response to Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula." ...

... Reuters: "Barack Obama arrives on Monday morning in the Netherlands, where he will try to gauge how far European allies are willing to go to stop Moscow from moving deeper into Ukraine after annexing Crimea. The US president is visiting Europe for talks with fellow leaders of the Group of Seven industrial democracies, when he will try to persuade them to increase pressure on Russia."

Carol Morello & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "U.S. and Ukrainian officials warned Sunday that Russia may be poised to expand its territorial conquest into eastern Ukraine and beyond, with a senior NATO official saying that Moscow might even order its troops to cross Ukraine to reach Moldova."

Stephanie Simon of Politico: "Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies. Now a major push to expand these voucher programs is under way from Alaska to New York, a development that seems certain to sharply increase the investment." ...

... Katie Halper of AlterNet, in Salon, on how school vouchers provide taxpayer-funded teaching of goofy conservative/religious ideas. One example: the Great Depression was a hoax.

Evie Salomon of CBS "News": "This past week marked the 46th anniversary of the My Lai massacre, in which 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were massacred by U.S. troops in 1968. It's one of the most shameful chapters in American military history, and now documents held at the Nixon Presidential Library paint a disturbing picture of what happened inside the Nixon administration after news of the massacre was leaked. The documents, mostly hand-written notes from Nixon's meetings with his chief of staff H.R. 'Bob' Haldeman, lead some historians to conclude that President Richard Nixon was behind the attempt to sabotage the My Lai court-martial trials and cover up what was becoming a public-relations disaster for his administration."

Senate Races

Nate Silver: "We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six [Senate] seats and capture the chamber. The Democrats' position has deteriorated somewhat since last summer, with President Obama's approval ratings down to 42 or 43 percent from an average of about 45 percent before. Furthermore, as compared with 2010 or 2012, the GOP has done a better job of recruiting credible candidates, with some exceptions." ...

... Alex Roarty of the National Journal: "In an unusual step, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Monday issued a rebuttal the famed statistician's prediction -- made a day earlier -- that Republicans were a 'slight favorite' to retake the Senate. Silver was wrong in 2012, the political committee's Guy Cecil wrote in a memo, and he'll be wrong again in 2014. 'In fact, in August of 2012 Silver forecast a 61 percent likelihood that Republicans would pick up enough seats to claim the majority,' Cecil said. "Three months later, Democrats went on to win 55 seats."

Beyond the Beltway

Christie's Lawyers Clear Christie. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "With his office suddenly engulfed in scandal over lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey two months ago summoned a pair of top defense lawyers from an elite law firm to the State House and asked them to undertake an extensive review of what had gone wrong. Now, after 70 interviews and at least $1 million in legal fees to be paid by state taxpayers, that review is set to be released, and according to people with firsthand knowledge of the inquiry, it has uncovered no evidence that the governor was involved in the plotting or directing of the lane closings." CW: See? I knew Christie was totally innocent & now that's an indisputable fact. Hope New Jersey taxpayers are satisfied. "The investigation's most significant obstacle was the lack of access to the three figures at the center of the lane closings -- [Bridget] Kelly, the author of the infamous 'time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee' email; Bill Stepien, the governor's former aide and campaign manager; and David Wildstein, a Christie ally at the Port Authority — who all declined to be interviewed." CW: Eh. Details, details.

News Ledes

Seattle Times: "Fourteen people are confirmed dead from the massive mudslide in Snohomish County, after searchers found six more bodies this afternoon."

New York Times: "A federal jury on Monday found five associates of the convicted swindler Bernard L. Madoff guilty on 31 counts of aiding one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. The case centered around whether or not the employees had committed securities fraud and other deceptive acts to knowingly mislead auditors and investors in Madoff Securities. The trial in the United States District Court in Manhattan went on for more than five months...."

Chicago Tribune: "More than 30 people were injured this morning when a CTA Blue Line train ran into a platform at O'Hare International Airport and came to rest on an escalator, an accident that could close the station for up to 24 hours...."

New York Times: "Russia and Russian state companies have increased the economic pressure on the new pro-Western government in Kiev over the past week, closing the border to most trucks, shutting a Ukrainian factory in Russia and yet again raising the price of natural gas." ...

... AP: "A Ukrainian air force commander is being held after his base in Crimea was stormed by pro-Russian forces, and the acting president called for his release Sunday."

New York Times: "Japan will announce Monday that it will turn over to Washington more than 700 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and a large quantity of highly enriched uranium, a decades-old research stockpile that is large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons, according to American and Japanese officials."

AP: "A court in Egypt on Monday sentenced to death 529 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on charges of murdering a policeman and attacking police, convicting them after only two sessions in one of the largest mass trials in the country in decades. The verdicts are subject to appeal and would likely be overturned, rights lawyers said. But they said the swiftness and harshness of the rulings on such a large scale underlined the extent to which Egypt's courts have been politicized and due process has been ignored...." CW: Sounds like an attempt to legalize mass murder.

Washington Post: "President Obama has ordered a sharp increase in U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to Uganda and sent U.S. military aircraft there for the first time in the ongoing effort to hunt down warlord Joseph Kony across a broad swath of central Africa."

Washington Post: "Observers on a Chinese search plane on Monday spotted some 'suspicious objects' in the southern Indian Ocean -- two large floating objects and many smaller white ones -- as the search for the missing Malaysian Airline flight entered its third week." ...

     ... The Guardian has live updates. ...

     ... UPDATE. Washington Post: "Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was lost in the southern Indian Ocean, effectively removing all hope that it might have survived the still unexplained diversion from its flight path more than two weeks ago. Reading from a prepared statement, Najib said new information from satellite data showed that the plane's last location was 'in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth,' a city on Australia's west coast." ...

     ... UPDATE 2. Los Angeles Times: "The British company whose satellite data helped direct search efforts for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 toward the south Indian Ocean said about two weeks ago that it had received 'routine' and 'automated' signals from the missing Boeing 777.... While the Boeing 777's transponders and communications systems were disabled, the airplane's satellite terminal was still on, "pinging" to try to maintain a connection with a satellite."

The Commentariat -- March 23, 2014

Internal links removed.

In anticipation of President Obama's meeting with Pope Francis this Thursday, Jason Horowitz of the New York Times examines Obama's many interactions with the Roman Catholic Church.

David Sanger & Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "American officials have long considered Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the United States for fear that the company would create 'back doors' in its equipment that could allow the Chinese military or Beijing-backed hackers to steal corporate and government secrets. But even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents [provided by Edward Snowden] show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors -- directly into Huawei's networks."

New York Times Editors: "Hobby Lobby ... and Conestoga Wood Specialties ... are not religious organizations, nor are they affiliated with religious organizations. But the owners say they are victims of an assault on religious liberty because they personally disapprove of certain contraceptives. They are wrong, and the Supreme Court's task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees."

David Morgan of Reuters: "The Obama administration will soon issue new Obamacare guidelines allowing people to enroll in health coverage after a March 31 deadline, but only under certain circumstances, according to sources close to the administration. The sources said the new federal guidelines for consumers in the 36 states served by the federal health insurance marketplace and its website, HealthCare.gov, would allow people to enroll after March 31 if they had tried earlier and were prevented by system problems including technical glitches." ...

... Lisa Zamosky of the Los Angeles Times has tips for last-minute ObamaCare shopping. ...

... ** Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "In the poorest state in the nation, where supper is fried, bars allow smoking, chronic disease is rampant and doctors are hard to come by, Obamacare rolls into town in a lime green bus. It took some real convincing by the Obama administration and a leap of faith by one state Republican official to get one of the nation's largest insurance companies -- Humana -- to set up shop across Mississippi. Virtually no other insurer was willing to do so, discouraged by the acute health needs here and most elected officials' outright hostility to the law. Four months and more than 200 bus stops later, enrollment numbers here remain dismal. Only 9 percent of the state's Obamacare-eligible population have signed up...." ...

     ... CW: I was about to cite Haberkorn's report as evidence that Politico does have some serious reporters (and it does) when I read this disclaimer at the bottom of the report: "This story was produced with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism's California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships." So, if you pay Politico to publish important content, they'll do so.

Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker on President Obama's Supreme Court "farm team": a group of Obama-appointed judges from which he might choose to replace a current justice.

** Gregor Schmitz of Der Spiegel interviews mega-financier George Soros on the future of Europe. The interview, which appears in the New York Review of Books, is excerpted from their upcoming book. ...

Nicole Flatow of Think Progress: "A Buddhist student and his family won a settlement last week against a Louisiana school district where the student's religion was ridiculed in class as 'stupid,' the teacher taught that evolution is 'impossible,' and that the bible is '100 percent true.' The court-approved consent decree prohibits future religious discrimination in a school district that had portraits of Jesus Christ in the halls and a 'lighted, electronic marquee' outside one school that scrolls Bible verses." Via Steve Benen. The underlying report, by Heather Weaver of the ACLU is interesting/disturbing, too.

... George Packer of the New Yorker on Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "... about 13 years after the Bamian Buddhas were blasted into rubble [by the Taliban], the world faces a new quandary: whether to leave the gaping gashes in the cliff where the giant statues once stood, to rebuild the Buddhas from what pieces were left, or to make copies of them.... Opinion is passionately split. The major donor countries that would have to finance any restoration say the site should be left as it is, at least for now. The Afghan government wants at least one of the statues rebuilt."

Beyond the Beltway

Paul Egan & Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press: " The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, after first signaling it would not intervene in Michigan's gay marriage case until Tuesday, posted a new order late Saturday imposing a stay in the case until Wednesday. That means U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman's Friday order declaring unconstitutional Michigan's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is temporarily stayed, and clerks will no longer be able to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples before Wednesday at the earliest."

AP: "Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox [D] is resigning from his leadership post and will not run for re-election, he said Saturday, a day after federal and state authorities raided his Statehouse office and home as part of a criminal investigation that they would not detail." ...

... Gregory Smith & Katherine Gregg have the Providence Journal story, with nothing further on the nature of the investigation. They do cite Steven O'Donnell, the superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police who said, "'Fox knows what's going on.... He's certainly aware of what happened' Friday and why it happened."

Gubernatorial Race

Maureen Dowd interviews California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times: Glenn Champ, "one of four gubernatorial candidates introduced to California Republicans recently, is a registered sex offender who spent more than a decade in state prison, convicted of crimes including voluntary manslaughter and assault with intent to commit rape.... Champ's rap sheet is lengthy. Court records show that in 1992, he pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed firearm. In 1993, he was convicted of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and as a result was placed on the state's sex-offender registry. In March 1998, he accepted a plea deal on a charge of loitering to solicit a prostitute; later that year, he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge after hitting a man with his vehicle, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to court records."

Senate Race

Daniel Strauss of TPM (March 20): "North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-NC) has listed two different colleges as his alma mater. Tillis, who's running in the GOP primary to face Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), is a graduate of the University of Maryland but he actually went to the independent online school University of Maryland University College. Tillis' LinkedIn page listed the University of Maryland at College Park as where he got a Bachelor of Science Degree in Technology Management, Technology & Project Management. Similarly on Tillis's biography page on his House Speaker website, Tillis listed the University of Maryland as his alma matter and links to College Park's website. But according to officials contacted at both the University of Maryland at College Park and the University of Maryland University College, Tillis graduated from the University of Maryland at University College."

John Frank of the Raleigh News & Observer: "A day after questions surfaced about his alma mater, U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis said where he went to college shouldn't matter and dismissed suggestions he misled voters."

CW: Yeah, and I went to Harvard. A/k/a the Harvard Online School of Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning. But I admit I flunked out.

Right Wing World

So, what, it took us what 100 years to find the Titanic? It took us 2,000 years to find Noah’s Ark. Do we ever find Flight 370? -- Fox "News" anchor Bill Hemmer, right there on the teevee during a "news" show

It's impossible to exaggerate how stupid Hemmer's remark is. Steve Benen explains. -- Constant Weader

News Ledes

Washington Post: "With a burst of automatic weapons fire and stun grenades, Russian forces in armored personnel carriers on Saturday broke through the walls of one of the last Ukrainian military outposts in Crimea, then quickly overpowered Ukrainian troops armed only with sticks. The fall of the Belbek air base, along with the loss of a second Ukrainian air base Saturday near the Crimean town of Novofedorivka, removed one of the last barriers to total Russian control of the Crimean Peninsula."

Malia, Michelle & Sasha Obama walk a section of the Great Wall of China. AP photo. CLICK ON PICTURE TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

AP: "U.S. first lady Michelle Obama told Chinese professors, students and parents on Sunday that she wouldn't have risen to where she was if her parents hadn't pushed for her to get a good education. Mrs. Obama made her comments before hosting a discussion about education on the third day of a weeklong visit to the country aimed at promoting educational exchanges between the U.S. and China. She also walked a section of the Great Wall with her two daughters."

Guardian: "Images taken by Chinese and French satellites and separate sightings of scattered debris have become the focus of the search in the Indian Ocean for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370."

The Commentariat -- March 22, 2014

Internal links removed.

Claire Miller of the New York Times: "... tech companies abroad, from Europe to South America, say they are gaining customers that are shunning United States providers, suspicious because of the revelations by Edward J. Snowden that tied these providers to the National Security Agency's vast surveillance program.... Tech executives, including Eric E. Schmidt of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, are expected to raise the issue when they return to the White House on Friday for a meeting with President Obama." ...

... The Guardian story, by Dan Roberts & Dominic Rushe, is here.

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "... roughly one-third of American households -- 38 million of them -- are living a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. These are families who hold little to no liquid wealth.... But a staggering two-thirds of these households are not actually poor...; they own substantial holdings ($50,000, on average) in illiquid assets.... The wealthy hand-to-mouth are older, more educated and have substantially higher incomes than their poor counterparts.... While the poor hand-to-mouth tend to stay that way for long periods of time, wealthy-hand-to-mouth status is transient, lasting an average of only 2½ years."

Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "The White House has added meetings with the leaders of China and Japan to Barack Obama's visit to Europe and Saudi Arabia next week, as it seeks to use the six-day trip to build an international coalition and isolate Russia over its annexation of Crimea." ...

... Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The White House cast doubt Friday on the Kremlin's claims that thousands of troops massing on the border of southeastern Ukraine are merely involved in training exercises, deepening fears that Russian aggression will not end in Crimea. 'It's not clear what that signals,' the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, said to reporters in a briefing at the White House. But she added, 'Obviously given their past practice and the gap between what they have said and what they have done, we are watching it with skepticism.'" ...

... Steven Myers & Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "American and European sanctions rattled Russia's economy on Friday, with Moscow's stock indexes opening sharply lower, rating agencies threatening to reduce the country's creditworthiness, and hints of trepidation coming from Russia's tycoons as they concluded an annual conference here. But if the aim of the sanctions is to put economic pressure on the wealthy allies crucial to President Vladimir V. Putin's continued grip on power, there were few signs they would succeed, largely because those targeted were among the new generations of oligarchs who owe their fortunes and loyalties to Mr. Putin." ...

... Steven Myers, et al., of the New York Times: "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday formally completed the annexation of Crimea, signing into law bills passed by Parliament reclaiming the contested province from Ukraine.... As he cemented Russian control of Crimea, Mr. Putin declared a temporary cease-fire in a tit-for-tat battle of economic and political sanctions between Moscow and the West."

... Please click on Bolling's Daily Kos page so he gets a click credit for the 'toon. Thanks.

Charles Blow: "By suggesting that laziness is more concentrated among the poor, inner city or not, we shift our moral obligation to deal forthrightly with poverty. When we insinuate that poverty is the outgrowth of stunted culture, that it is almost always invited and never inflicted, we avert the gaze from the structural features that help maintain and perpetuate poverty -- discrimination, mass incarceration, low wages, educational inequities -- while simultaneously degrading and dehumanizing those who find themselves trapped by it." ...

(CW: A few days ago, I ID'd the guest host of Lawrence O'Donnell's show as Ari Berman. For some reason, the same guy calls himself Ari Melber. Maybe I'll start calling him that, too. My apologies to both men.)

... Jelani Cobb has an excellent essay in the New Yorker about black aspiration. CW: I completely disagree with his conclusions. If I get around to it, I'll explain why in the Comments section. ...

... Here's Ta-Nehisi Coates, continuing along the same line (Cobb links to an earlier Coates post).

Scott Kaufman of the Raw Story: "Although black children only represent about 18 percent of the students enrolled in preschool, according to a study released on Friday by the Department of Education's Civil Rights division, more than half of students suspended on multiple occasions are black. The study -- which includes 15 years of data collected from all of the nation's 97,000 schools -- indicates that the pattern of race-based inequality that begins even earlier than previous studies have suggested."

White House: "In this week's address, President Obama highlights the importance of making sure our economy rewards the hard work of every American...":

New York Times Editors: "... a proposed National Women's History Museum..., foiled by largely Republican opposition for years, suddenly started to gain traction when the House Republican majority leader, Eric Cantor, unexpectedly told The Hill that a vote would be permitted this year on a study commission for the museum." The museum would be entirely funded by private donors. ...

We already have, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how many museums for women all over the country, they are called malls.... Hey, I could have said brothel but I didn't. -- Rush Limbaugh

Republican obstruction of the National Women's History Museum was never about the money. It was always about the low regard in which the GOP holds women, combined with Fear of Rush. The reason for Cantor's change of heart? It's an election year. That's what Rush says. And I agree with Rush Limbaugh. -- Constant Weader

Rick Warren is praying that God will ensure that American workers do not get the health care they need if their bosses claim a religious objection. ...

     ... CW: The question is this: are the conservatives on the Court so thoroughly corporatist that they will find this additional corporate cudgel to be fine & dandy, or will they have an iota of sense & realize that disallowing contraceptive coverage here means disallowing all kinds of necessary treatment for millions of employed Americans elsewhere? If history tells us anything, I'd guess the former rather than the latter. The conservatives on the Court are not particularly concerned with the obvious consequences of their rulings (although Scalia will sometimes predict the "dire consequences" of liberal-leaning decisions). I suppose, however, they might split the baby & grant corporate leaders the right to "reasonable religious objections." This would be very good for the legal profession, because hundreds of lawsuits later, we'll find out what "reasonable" means.

Charles Pierce on presidential hopeful Rand Paul's amazing popularity, as outlined by Sam Youngman in Politico Magazine: "So he can appeal to Jeebus fanatics, tricorn-wearing crackpots, and the wealthier members of the supply-side cult. That certainly covers the gamut from A to A-minus. I get that he can be the nominee, but that is because the Republican party is insane at its base."

Danielle Ivory & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "Federal authorities' nascent investigation into General Motors is looking in part into whether the automaker committed bankruptcy fraud by not disclosing defects that could lead to expensive future liabilities, a person briefed on the inquiry said on Friday. The question is whether G.M. knew about the defect -- a faulty ignition switch -- when it filed for bankruptcy in 2009, and failed to fully disclose the problem, while realizing that it could lead to a cascade of liability claims."

... Michael Ruane of the Washington Post: Paul Taylor of Columbia, Maryland, may have found lost or forgotten photos of Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession in New York City. "If Taylor is right, scholars say he has identified rare photos of Lincoln's marathon funeral rites, as well as images that show mourners honoring the slain chief executive. Plus, it appears that the photographs were taken from an upper window of the studio of famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, which was across the street from [Grace C]hurch.... The digital photographs were made from some of the thousands of Brady images acquired by the federal government in the 1870s and handed down to the National Archives in the 1940s."

CW: I missed the obituary of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. New York Times: "Lawrence E. Walsh, a former federal judge and a mainstay of the American legal establishment who as an independent counsel exposed the lawbreaking in the Reagan administration that gave rise to the Iran-contra scandal, died on Wednesday at his home in Oklahoma City. He was 102." ...

... Charles Pierce has a remembrance. And then some.

Beyond the Beltway

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "A federal judge Friday struck down Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage, saying the state failed during a two-week trial to justify a prohibition that he said violates the equal protection rights of gays. U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman dismissed the state's contention that Michigan voters adopted the ban on the premise that heterosexual married couples provided the optimal environment for raising children." ...

... The Detroit Free Press story, by Tresa Baldas, et al., is here. The judge's decision is here.

Congressional Races

** David Atkins explains progressive voters to dummies, the dummies being Democratic elected officials, beginning with the President: "For a young voter or voter of color, voting for Democrats isn't a matter of hope for a better future. It's basically a defensive crouch to prevent the insane sociopaths from taking over. To provide real hope, Democrats would have to start pushing for a $15 minimum wage, for basic universal income, for single-payer healthcare, for a green jobs Apollo Program, for student loan forgiveness, and similar policies.... But there's no way Democrats are going to solve their midterm problem without providing a real, positive vision for the country. If even hardcore activists like me see voting as a defensive rather than an offensive weapon, it's no surprise that many more apolitical people can scarcely be bothered to care."

Right Wing World

Dylan Scott of TPM: "It seems conservative monolith Matt Drudge is taking some pride in paying the penalty for not purchasing insurance under Obamacare.... There's just one problem: Americans don't pay a penalty for not having health insurance until they file their 2014 taxes -- in 2015. So either Drudge is lying or he paid a huge penalty a year earlier than he needed to." In response to Scott's story, Drudge claimed he was talking about the penalty he has to pay as a small business owner. "If Drudge was referring to the employer mandate, it only applies to companies with more than 50 employees.... But companies with less than 100 employees are exempt from any penalty until 2016. Drudge has never revealed the full extent of his staff, but the Huffington Post characterized it as 'small' in a 2012 article about two new hires." ...

... CW: So not only is Drudge lying, what catches him out is his amazing ignorance of the law against which he's been railing for lo these many years. Ignoramus.

Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch: "The Creationist group Answers In Genesis, which was already incensed about Neil deGrasse Tyson's revival of Cosmos, is now complaining that the show lacks scientific balance because it fails to provide airtime for evolution deniers."

CW: Despite their many hangups & obsessions, you might think the one type of sex wingers would favor was consensual sex between married adults (or at least between heterosexual married adults). But no. Scott Keyes of Think Progress reports that Massachusetts State Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Ross (R) has introduced (and re-introduced) a bill making it illegal for married couples with children who have filed for divorce to have sex in their own homes without a court order permitting it. Under Ross's bill the couples could not even have dinner or a drink together in the home. In an update, Keyes writes that Ross claims that the bill was a constituent's idea & that he (Ross) doesn't support it.

Argumentum ad Hitlerum. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters: "Clinging to persecution fantasies that seem to grow darker each year, conservative voices continue to hype doomsday scenarios in which President Obama is scheming to confiscate firearms, socialize American medicine, silence his critics through brute political force, and wage violent class warfare.... The result? Wallowing in self-pity and convinced of the dark forces moving against them, conservatives launch attack after attack, insisting they're fighting forces at home akin to Hitler's Nazi storm troops."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "On Saturday, Pope Francis named [seven] people to a new panel to help the Catholic Church combat sexual abuse of minors by clerics."

Reuters: " Russian troops forced their way into a Ukrainian airbase in Crimea with armored vehicles, automatic fire and stun grenades on Saturday, injuring a Ukrainian serviceman and detaining the base's commander for talks. A Reuters reporter said armored vehicles smashed through one of walls of the compound and that he heard bursts of gunfire and grenades."

Washington Post: "Michelle Obama became an ambassador for cultural exchange Saturday, taking her goodwill tour of China to the Stanford Center at Peking University to discuss the importance of study abroad and the free exchange of ideas. In a 15-minute speech she delivered before a mix of American students studying at Peking University and Chinese students who have studied in the United States, she called on young people to be 'citizen diplomats' and stressed the importance of the free flow of ideas over the Internet and through the media."

AP: "A satellite image released by China on Saturday offered the latest sign that wreckage from a Malaysia Airlines plane lost for more than two weeks could be in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean where planes and ships have been searching for three days."

Reuters: "The United States on Friday said it was disappointed at the lack of an apology from Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon for his criticism of U.S. policies in a speech on Monday."