The Commentariat -- Oct. 30, 2013

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The head of the National Security Agency on Tuesday vigorously challenged recent reports that the United States had been gathering the phone records of millions of Europeans, saying that the records had in fact been turned over by allied spy services.... The Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Tuesday that intelligence services in France and Spain had collected phone records of their citizens and turned them over to the N.S.A. as part of an arrangement to mitigate threats against American and allied troops and civilians.... [NSA director] General [Keith] Alexander and James R. Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence, broadly defended the N.S.A.'s practice of spying on foreign leaders. Such espionage, they said, was a basic pillar of American intelligence operations that had gone on for decades.... Such spying was essential, the officials said, because other countries, including allies, spy on the United States. The Wall Street Journal story, by Adam Entous & Siobhan Gorman, is here. The lede: "Widespread electronic spying that ignited a political firestorm in France and Spain recently was carried out by their own intelligence services and not by the National Security Agency, U.S. officials say." ...

... Ellen Nakashima's more extensive report for the Washington Post is here. "Army Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, said reports to the contrary, based on revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, were 'completely false.' ... Apparently referring to a slide outlining the information, Alexander said the leaker and reporters 'did not understand what they were looking at.' ... The French and Spanish intelligence agencies have had extensive, long-running programs to share millions of phone records with the United States for counterterrorism purposes, according to current and former officials familiar with the effort.... Current and former U.S. officials also said the United States has been the target of espionage by its allies, including those in the European Union. In 2008, the German foreign intelligence service targeted the communications of at least 300 U.S. citizens or residents, according to two former officials. The surveillance was exposed, according to one of them, when the Germans inadvertently turned over communications data to their U.S. counterparts." ...

... Mark Landler & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "... James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the N.S.A. had kept senior officials in the National Security Council informed of surveillance it was conducting in foreign countries. He did not specifically say whether President Obama was told of these spying efforts, but he appeared to challenge assertions in recent days that the White House had been in the dark about some of the agency's practices." CW: This report is more-or-less an update of Schmidt's earlier report, linked above.

... New York Times Editors: "That Chancellor Merkel's cellphone conversations could fall under that umbrella is an outgrowth of the post-9/11 decision by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that everyone is the enemy, and that anyone's rights may be degraded in the name of national security. That led to Abu Ghraib, torture at the secret C.I.A. prisons, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, grave harm to international relations, and the dragnet approach to surveillance revealed by the Snowden leaks." ...

     ... CW: Because spying on Merkel is like Abu Ghraib & other torture??? Can't we work in Nazis & Hitler somehow? At least over at Firedoglake Peter Van Buren is describing Jay Carney as a more professional version of Goebbels. I know I'm the lonely liberal who can't get worked up about spying on our allies, but, well, I can't. ...

     ... Update. Keir Simmons & Michele Neubert of NBC News: "Amid the growing furor over allegations that the United States spied on some of its closest allies in Europe -- including German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- a quiet refrain is being repeated by intelligence insiders across the [European] continent: We all do it.... Former head of French intelligence Bernard Squarcini sounded more surprised at the claims that the political class did not know about the snooping." ...

... He Only Knows What He Reads in the Papers. Dana Milbank: "It stretches credulity to think that the United States was spying on world leaders without the president's knowledge, or that he was blissfully unaware of huge technical problems that threatened to undermine his main legislative achievement. But on issues including the IRS targeting flap and the Justice Department's use of subpoenas against reporters, White House officials have frequently given a variation on this theme.

"Question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?

"Answer: Not much, and about a minute ago." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama finds himself under fire on two disparate fronts these days, both for the botched rollout of his signature health care program and for the secret spying on allied heads of state. In both instances, his explanation roughly boils down to this: I didn't know. As a practical matter, no president can be aware of everything going on in the sprawling government he theoretically manages. But as a matter of politics, Mr. Obama's plea of ignorance may do less to deflect blame than to prompt new questions about just how much in charge he really is." ...

... NEW: Robert Pear: "Kathleen Sebelius ... apologized Wednesday for the frustration that millions of Americans have experienced while trying to shop for insurance on the HealthCare.gov website, even as she defended the problem-plagued rollout of President Obama's health care law and tried to explain the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of individual insurance policies." CW: The Times will likely update this story as testimony continues.

... Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is kicking back at the contractors who blamed her agency for the botched ObamaCare website rollout. Sebelius blames a 'subset' of contractors who 'have not met expectations' for the website's problems in an opening statement she'll deliver Wednesday to the House Energy and Commerce Committee." ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of the National Journal: "As Republicans in Washington prepare to grill Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday over problems a broken website is creating for accessing Obamacare, their fellow party members in a dozen-and-a-half states have added complications for people trying to access those benefits through alternate means.... Whether by fees, background checks, tests, extra training, certifications, threats of civil penalties, or delays, Republican legislatures and officials in at least 17 states across the country have thrown up all manner of bureaucratic roadblocks in front of the program. The officials say the regulations are necessary to protect consumers and their personal information, but health care reform advocates say the regulations, adopted only in states controlled by Republicans, are just part of a multipronged campaign to obstruct the implementation of the Affordable Care Act at every turn." ...

... Sarah Kliff & William Branigin of the Washington Post: "Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said: 'To the millions of Americans who've attempted to use HealthCare.gov to shop and enroll in health-care coverage, I want to apologize to you that the Web site has not worked as well as it should. We know how desperately you need affordable coverage.' She offered assurances that the Web site 'can and will be fixed' and said that already 'we are seeing improvement each week.'" ...

... Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Ms. Tavenner ... said that 'nearly 700,000 applications have been submitted to the federal and state marketplaces' in the last four weeks. But she repeatedly refused to say how many of those people had actually enrolled in health insurance plans since the federal and state marketplaces, or exchanges, opened on Oct. 1. 'That number will not be available until mid-November,' Ms. Tavenner said. 'We expect the initial number to be small.'" ...

... Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), employing traditional New Jersey rhetorical devices, contrasts the way Democrats worked to implement Medicare Part D, which they had opposed, with Republican obstruction of the ACA:

... Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee [Darrell Issa is on the case!] released documents Tuesday night showing one of the primary contractors for HealthCare.gov, CGI Federal, warned administration officials the Web site faced problems just weeks before its Oct. 1 launch. In a monthly report sent to Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Sept. 6, CGI officials wrote there were 'open risks' and 'open issues' that needed to be resolved. 'Due to the compressed schedule, there is not enough time built in to allow for adequate performance testing,' they wrote." The HHS pushback: It was a long report, which elsewhere said major milestones were on track, so concentrating on these few lines of the report is "cherrypicking." ...

     ... A pdf of the report is here. It is true that the bulk of the report lays out the good news. It's the last two pages that chart the bad news. It ain't sugarcoated. It should have caused tearing of hair & rending of garments. ...

No, we had tested the website and we were comfortable with its performance. Now, like I said, we knew all along there would be as with any new website, some individual glitches we would have to work out. But, the volume issue and the creation of account issues was not anticipated and obviously took us by surprise. And did not show up in testing. -- Marilyn Tavenner, yesterday, in testimony before a House committee

     ... As this CNN report by Joe Johns & Byron Wolf lays out, Tavenner's testimony is far less than truthful: "... the CGI document, which describes 'top risks currently open' and 'outstanding issues currently being mitigated' says the testing timeframes are 'not adequate to complete full functional, system, and integration testing activities' and lists the impact of the problems as 'significant.' Another element is listed as 'not enough time in schedule to conduct adequate performance testing' and given the highest priority." ...

... Lena Sun & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "Notices are going out to hundreds of thousands of Americans informing them that their health insurance policies are being canceled as of Dec. 31. The notices appear to contradict President Obama's promise that despite the changes resulting from the law, Americans can keep their health insurance if they like it. Republicans have seized on the cancellations as evidence that the law is flawed and the president has been less than forthright in describing its impact." ...

     ... CW: I agree with the criticism of Obama. Long after wonks like Ezra Klein pointed out that the President's "promise" wasn't true, he continued to make it. This baffled me then; it baffles me now. Once the bill became law, all he had to say was, "Most of you can keep your health insurance if you like it." Wilfully & repeatedly misinforming the public is a serious problem for a president. ...

     ... Update. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post elaborates:

... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "White House Press Secretary Jay Carney pushed back Tuesday against reports that the Obama administration knew millions of Americans would lose their health care plans under the Affordable Care Act, despite promising that people could keep their insurance if wanted to do so." ...

... ** Kate Pickert of Time: "Many Americans buying insurance coverage for 2014 may never get the chance to claim new federal tax credits to subsidize the cost of health insurance, due to an odd wrinkle in the signup process.... New tax credits, available to individuals earning less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $46,000 per year, can only be accessed through new ACA insurance marketplaces. Those who purchase coverage outside the exchanges cannot claim subsidies, even if they qualify for them." Some insurers are helping customers through the process, but some are emphasizing that the switch to the new policy is "automatic." If customers take the insurer at its word, they won't go thru the exchange to try to qualify for the tax credit. ...

... Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times: "Developments in the rollout of Obamacare are coming with dizzying speed, though not as fast as the pileup of fiction and misunderstanding created by politicians, pundits and the news media." Hiltzik offers "a list of the latest themes you're hearing on America's healthcare reform, and what they mean." CW: Quite a good Reality Chek. ...

... Brian Beutler of TPM also delivers a good response to the "rate shock" stories that Republicans are pushing & the media are dutifully "reporting": "The disruption we’re seeing in the individual insurance market is mostly by design. And it's mostly a good thing. Until October, the individual market existed to sell insurance to people who needed it least. Rates were low for healthy people precisely because their old, sick neighbors were priced or locked out of the system. They were also low because many of the policies on the market didn't actually fulfill the function of insurance, which is to hedge against financial catastrophe.... Taken together, the changes create winners and losers, but almost by definition more winners than losers.... You could counter that by any moral standard the system the Affordable Care Act creates is preferable to the one we had before, which subsidized the Ted Cruz family to the tune of thousands of dollars a year and left 50 million people without any coverage at all." ...

... AND Paul Waldman of the American Prospect debunks two examples of piss-poor reporting by NBC & CBS. In both cases, reporters interview a person who suffered "sticker shock," but neither reporter bothers to compare the "shocked" person's potential new policy with the piece of crap they now have. (Waldman doesn't say so, but the CBS "great" reporter Jan Crawford is a well-known winger.) Thanks to contributor Janice for the link.

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "... an unlikely coalition of business executives, evangelical groups and prominent conservatives [are] coming together to urge House Republicans to put broad immigration legislation on the House floor, ideally before the end of this year. On Tuesday, the group of more than 600 leaders from roughly 40 states descended on the Capitol for meetings with nearly 150 Republican lawmakers."

Obama 2.0. Brendan Sasso of the Hill: "The Senate unanimously confirmed Tom Wheeler, an investor and former industry lobbyist, to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday. The vote was delayed for two weeks by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who expressed concern about Wheeler's views on political disclosure rules. Cruz lifted his objection after Wheeler assured him in a private meeting Tuesday that tougher disclosure requirements for the donors behind political TV ads are 'not a priority' for him. The Senate also unanimously confirmed Michael O'Rielly, a staffer for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), to one of the two FCC seats reserved for Republicans. The confirmation of the two nominees returns the five-member commission to full-strength. " ...

... Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate leaders are girding for a difficult fight over President Barack Obama's nominations in the coming weeks that could again raising the specter of a possible rules change in the chamber." ...

... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senate Democrats plan to force a vote this week to fill a vacancy on the court widely considered the country's second highest, threatening to reopen the bitter fight over limiting the filibuster if Republicans follow through on their pledge to block the nomination."

Maureen Dowd has quite an interesting column on former Vice President Heart O'Darkness. The Sanjay Gupta interview of O'Darkness was news to me.

Rick Santelli of CNBC, who some credit with starting the Tea Party movement after he ranted against helping people with underwater mortgages, took on Nobel Prize-winner Eugene Fama yesterday. You could say Santelli was out of his depth. At one point, Fama told him, "There's so much confusion in what you said it's difficult to answer." With video.

Emmarie Huetteman of the New York Times: "The Capitol Hill memorial service for Thomas S. Foley, the former House speaker, brought together Republicans and Democrats who just two weeks ago were fighting about the government shutdown, but who were united in praise on Tuesday of a man who himself was a victim of partisan rancor two decades ago." CW: I listened to the whole service (while I was doing other things), & I found it fascinating, a rose-colored view of history by them that were there -- all of it shaded by the way things are now. C-SPAN has a page for the video, but it happens to be a black screen at this writing. ...

     ... Update: The CSPAN pages for the Foley memorial were still down this morning, but the memorial service is now up on this C-SPAN page.

Gubernatorial Race

Ben Pershing & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "Opposition to the tea party movement has reached a new high in Virginia, a Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll shows, kicking a key leg of support out from under Ken Cuccinelli II as he tries to win the governor's race on a strongly conservative platform. Cuccinelli (R), the state attorney general, now trails businessman Terry McAuliffe (D) by 12 percentage points among likely voters, the survey shows. And Cuccinelli's decline comes as Virginians are increasingly turned off by the movement that has backed him strongly and with which he shares many views." ...

... Oops! Don't Count Out Kenny Yet. Quinnipiac U.: "The Virginia governor's race is going down to the wire with Democrat Terry McAuliffe clinging to a slight 45 - 41 percent likely voter lead over Republican State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, and 9 percent for Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today." CW: If Cuccinelli can grab a chunk of Sarvis' vote (which so far has held pretty steady at 9 or 10 percent), it will be Governor Kenny.

Ben Goad of the Hill: "The Obama administration on Tuesday said it will seek to discourage the construction of coal plants in foreign countries through the World Bank and other multilateral development institutions. The effort marks the latest step in President Obama's initiative to combat the effects of global warming through executive power in lieu of action from the divided Congress." ...

Regional News

Michael Wines of the New York Times: "The leaders of three Pacific Coast states and British Columbia have announced a broad alliance to combat climate change, including new joint steps to raise the cost of greenhouse gas pollution, promote zero-emission vehicles and push for the use of cleaner-burning fuels in transportation.... The governors of California, Oregon and Washington and the premier of British Columbia said the compact could simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and create new clean-energy jobs.... But while California and British Columbia have already taken steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it was unclear whether legislatures in Oregon and Washington could be persuaded to endorse the plan." CW: Let's see if the laboratories of democracy can do what the U.S. Congress won't.

Local News

New York Times Editors on the Texas abortion law case [stories linked in yesterday's Commentariat]: "Unfortunately, Judge Yeakel largely upheld a second bogus 'safety' measure. He allowed to stand the provision in the law limiting medication abortions to an outmoded protocol for the use of abortion-inducing drugs. The protocol was established years ago by the Food and Drug Administration. Current medical practices now use a safer and more effective protocol."

News Lede

TPM: "Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (R) has been named president-elect of the Boy Scouts of America. Gates will serve both as a member of the Boy Scouts of America executive committee and president-elect, according to Scouting Magazine. Once Gates is approved by the voting members of the National Council of Boy Scouts he will serve for two years as the nation president effective May 2014." CW: Good. Maybe he can get the organization past its anti-gay fetish.

The Commentariat -- Oct. 29, 2013

Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A federal judge in Texas on Monday blocked an important part of the state's restrictive new abortion law, which would have required doctors performing the procedure to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The decision, one day before the provision was to take effect, prevented a major disruption of the abortion clinics in Texas. It was a victory for abortion rights groups and clinics that said the measure served no medical purpose and could force as many as one-third of the state's 36 abortion clinics to close. But the court upheld a second measure, requiring doctors to use a particular drug protocol in nonsurgical, medication-induced abortions that doctors called outdated and too restrictive." Here's the text of the ruling. ...

... P.S. Rick Perry is still a jerk. ...

... Jeffrey Toobin & Jake Tapper of CNN discuss the judge's ruling:

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: Today House Republicans will question Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development & implementation of Healthcare.gov. ...

... Kevin Drum points out that the "sticker shock" sometimes associated with ObamaCare -- when people discover their new policy will cost more than their old policy -- is often deceiving. The new policy costs more because it provides more coverage. Drum cites a pregnant woman who complained of her premiums almost trebling, but her old policy most certainly didn't cover her pregnancy & delivery; the new policy does. And must. ...

     ... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: AND under the new law, the woman's pregnancy cannot be used against her as a "pre-existing condition," something insurance underwriters have been doing for years. Volsky has more. ...

... Kate Pickert of Time: "The Obama Administration released a report late Monday showing that a significant share of young, single Americans will be able to get inexpensive coverage under the [ACA], sometimes for less than $50 a month. But the report's conclusions only apply to subset of the uninsured young people, leaving unanswered the overall effect of the law." ** CW: The report is here. Hilariously, as of 9 am today, the HHS report was not readable (all except the first letter of every line of text is off the page), likely because of a coding error.

... Joan McCarter on the right's new War on Sick People. Coming soon to a town hall near you. ...

... Michael Scherer of Time: "A security flaw in the original design of HealthCare.gov that could have disclosed e-mail and other account information to hackers was eliminated Monday during an overnight fix...." ...

I'm concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That if you're poor, somehow you're shiftless and lazy. You know what? The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A. -- Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), speaking of Republican lawmakers

John Judis of the New Republic predicts the Tea Party is done for & its adherents will drift toward other nutso groups. Judis writes, "I would estimate that the people who actively participate in Tea Party groups number no more than 75,000 -- considerably less than 1 percent of likely Republican voters." CW: If he's correct, that's astounding -- that 75,000 bitter, ignorant loons could jam up an entire nation. ...

... Anna Palmer of Politico: "Mitch McConnell ... stood up over the weekend and said he wanted to address the 'elephant in the room' at a fundraising retreat in Sea Island, Ga. Speaking before roughly 300 K Streeters and big donors, McConnell said Republicans will not come close to defaulting on the nation's debts or shutting down the government early next year when stop-gap government funding and the debt ceiling are slated to be voted on again.... McConnell and [Sen. John] Cornyn [R-Texas] were very specific about directing their fire at groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, whom they believe have actively misled donors about what is legislatively achievable in order to raise money off of their frustrations, according to another attendee." CW: McConnell is facing a Tea Party challenger in 2014; Cornyn has no serious winger opposition. ...

... NEW. Mario Trujillo of the Hill: "A group of Senate Democrats is slated Tuesday to introduce a plan allowing the president to raise the debt ceiling without the approval of Congress -- a tactic dubbed the "McConnell Rule." The plan hinges on a solution devised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) during the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff that saddled President Obama with ultimate responsibility for raising the limit. It was used again in the deal to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government earlier this month. While Congress would be able to halt the borrowing increase by a vote of disapproval, it would be subject to a presidential veto and have little chance of gaining the necessary supermajorities to override it." CW: This is something we discussed here in Comments on Reality Chex a few weeks back; I'm glad to see Democrats are taking my advice & proposing to extend the "McConnell Rule."

... Tim Egan: "Real Americans, the wind-chapped toilers so often invoked by politicians in a phony froth, lost real money from the real pain inflicted on their livelihoods by the extortionists in Congress this month.... So, who pays? ... The economic hit on millions of Americans didn't come from government -- it came from one political faction in the House of Representatives.... The states hit hardest by the shutdown, it now appears, were those where Republicans prevail." Americans can't sue the government, can't sue the Tea Party, can't sue Ted Cruz -- for the income they lost during the shutdown. The only place they can make the Congressional miscreants pay is at the ballot box.

CW: Rand Paul Is Still Insane. Here's the headline on Philip Elliot's AP story: "Rand Paul warns eugenics on horizon unless conservatives stand up against abortion rights." I rest my case. (The story also covers the McAuliffe-Cuccinelli race for governor of Virginia.) ..

... It seems Dr. Randy gets his science education (and his fear of the future) from the movies. ...

... CW: I thought Akhilleus was kidding us. (See today's Comments.) Let's be clear -- you cannot reason with these people.

Posner for the (Self-)Defense. In a New Republic piece, Judge Richard Posner says all his critics misunderstood him when he suggested he made a mistake in approving Indiana's voter suppression law. Of course he skips the important criticism -- that he placed the onus on the wrong party. Pretty pathetic. And his claim that he had no evidence is bogus; see Justice Souter's dissent (linked in the October 27 Commentariat) in the Supreme Court case for a thorough reading of the evidence. ...

... AND More Weasling. Jack Gershman of the Wall Street Journal: The Huffington Post asked Posner, "So do you think that you and the court got this one wrong?" (speaking of the Indiana case). Posner replied, "Yes, absolutely." Now Posner is claiming maybe he didn't hear the question or misinterpreted it or the dog ate his brain. This guy is a judge! He would laugh a lawyer out of court for claiming that "yes, absolutely" means "not really." ...

... Dahlia Lithwick: Those voter suppression laws the GOP is so fond of may suppress the votes of more conservative women than of liberal women. Why? Because conservative women are more likely than liberals to change their names when they marry. CW: The Texas law is astounding: "... the new Texas voter ID law demands that 'constituents show original documents verifying legal proof of a name change, whether it is a marriage license, divorce decree, or court ordered change.' Photocopies will not be accepted. If you don't have those original documents, you must pay a minimum of $20 for new copies. So in some states, female voters face two hurdles -- showing they are who they claim to be and producing original documents indicating that they really are married and divorced." Ladies, do you know where your original divorce papers are? I'm not sure I ever had mine. Have you got an original marriage license handy? I don't. But, hey, it doesn't matter. I do have a certified birth certificate, & what with being a socialist-commie-liberal & all, the name on it is Marie (Middle Name) Burns. Ha!

Scott Wilson & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "In the midst of the controversy over U.S. surveillance this summer, top intelligence officials held a briefing for President Obama at the White House -- one that would provide him with a broad inventory of programs being carried out by the National Security Agency. Some of those programs, including the collection of e-mails and other communications from overseas, had already been disclosed because of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But Obama was also informed of at least one program whose scope surprised him: 'head of state collection.'" CW: Stories about what Obama knew & when he knew it have been flying around for the past 36 hours or so, but Wilson & Gearan's piece seems about as definitive as these things get, UFN. Definitely need Darrell Issa to get on this, tho. Also, I would like to have a head-of-state collection. Perhaps of the bobble variety. Thank god the shelf life of the Berlusconi model has expired; I'm not sure which head bobbles on that one. ...

... Update. Or Not. Ken Dilanian & Janet Stobart of the Los Angeles Times: "The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping. Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies." John McCain wants an investigation: 'Obviously, we're going to want to know exactly what the president knew and when he knew it,' McCain told reporters in Chicago," [CW:] beating Darrell Issa to the punch. Thanks to cowichan for the link. ...

     ... Or Not. Later in the L.A. Times story, there's this bit: "Obama may not have been specifically briefed on NSA operations targeting a foreign leader's cellphone or email communications, one of the officials said. 'But certainly the National Security Council and senior people across the intelligence community knew exactly what was going on, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.'" ...

     .. CW: I'm not sure why intel "people are furious" at President Obama since the WashPo story specifically states that the President doesn't fault them. What we have here are dueling CYA stories. The White House story, whether true or not, is justified. The intel leaders are crybabies, less interested in national security than in themselves -- or in harming Obama. They are the kinds of so-called whistleblowers I wouldn't mind seeing prosecuted, & I'd say the same thing if Dubya were still president. On something like this, the POTUS should be allowed plausible (or implausible) deniability. If the story comes out after s/he's out of office, there's little harm done to national security. This isn't waterboarding, for Pete's sake. It's gathering intel on world leaders whose interests are different from ours. Ed Snowden, BTW, is still a fucking traitor, & the leakers here aren't a helluva lot better. ...

... Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "President Obama is poised to order the National Security Agency to stop eavesdropping on the leaders of American allies, administration and congressional officials said Monday, responding to a deepening diplomatic crisis over reports that the agency had for years targeted the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The White House informed a leading Democratic lawmaker, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, of its plans, which grew out of a broader internal review of intelligence-gathering methods, prompted by the leak of N.S.A. documents by a former contractor, Edward J. Snowden.... The crossed wires between the White House and Ms. Feinstein were an indication of how the furor over the N.S.A.'s methods is testing even the administration's staunchest defenders.... The White House said Monday evening that no final decision had been made on the monitoring of friendly foreign leaders. But the disclosure that it is moving to prohibit it signals a landmark shift for the National Security Agency, which has had nearly unfettered powers to collect data on tens of millions of people around the world, from ordinary citizens to heads of state...." ...

... Basta. Jeremy Herb of the Hill: "Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Monday called for a 'total review' of all intelligence collection programs as she criticized the National Security Agency for spying on foreign leaders.... Feinstein has been one of the NSA's staunchest congressional defenders amid the uproar over its phone records surveillance, but she said that the spying on foreign leaders without President Obama's knowledge was a 'big problem.'" ...

... Gene Robinson on "the out-of-control NSA."

Joe Drape of the New York Times: "Penn State has agreed to pay $59.7 million to 26 sexual abuse victims of the former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky in exchange for an end to their claims against the university, the school announced Monday."

Gubernatorial Race

Laura Vozzella & Peyton Craighill of the Washington Post: "Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened a double-digit lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli II in the race for Virginia governor, in a new poll capturing increasing dissatisfaction among voters with Cuccinelli's party and his conservative views." CW: Now let's see if Virginia's new voter suppression law will help out Li'l Kenny. It might. But probably not enough.

News Lede

Washington Post: American forces are assisting local troops in African nations in an effort to capture Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army..., which "has spent years kidnapping and killing villagers ... across a wide swath of central Africa."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 28, 2013

... Buh-bye, ObamaCare Girl. Tal Kopan of Politico: the face of Healthcare.gov changes -- to an interactive graphic. ...

... The Slate staff imagine what Healthcare.gov might look like if the major tech companies had designed it, which many critics suggest is the way HHS should have gone. Here's Slate's take on the Google design; go to the link to see the other mock-ups:

... Paul Krugman: "Obamacare is an immense kludge -- a clumsy, ugly structure that more or less deals with a problem, but in an inefficient way. The thing is, such better-than-nothing-but-pretty-bad solutions have become the norm in American governance. As Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University put it in a recent essay, we've become a 'kludgeocracy.' And the main reason that is happening, I'd argue, is ideology." ...

** Michael Lind in Salon: "... the worst features of Obamacare are the very features that conservatives want to impose on all federal social policy [i.e., Medicare, Social Security]: means-testing, a major role for the states, and subsidies to private providers instead of direct public provision of health or retirement benefits. This is not surprising, because Obamacare's models are right-wing models -- the Heritage Foundation's healthcare plan in the 1990s and Mitt Romney's 'Romneycare' in Massachusetts." CW: Krugman makes the same point about Paul Ryan's plan for replacing "Medicare as we know it" in his column today. Last week I read the Konczal piece to which Lind refers -- it's here -- & didn't link it because it's a bit hard to follow unless you read closely. However, you don't have to be a genius to read it. The bottom line of all three pieces -- Lind's, Krugman's & Konczal's -- is that what people won't like about ObamaCare is the part that conservatives imposed. ...

... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic provides an honest, balanced look at how the ACA will affect health insurance premium rates -- a rundown you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. ...

We nearly killed ObamaCare. It's not dead yet, but we're not done beating on it either. -- Rep. Steve King (RTP-Iowa)

... Heather of Crooks & Liars: "You hear it on the lips of every single one of the Republican talking heads on every single Sunday news show: President Obama promised that if you liked your healthcare, you could keep it and HE LIED!!! ... Millions of Americans found out that they've been dropped from their healthcare! ... David Gregory has never come across a Republican talking point that he didn't love, embrace and swallow up whole to faithfully regurgitate to the masses. So he dutifully confronts Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida CEO Patrick Geraghty about the news that 300,000 Floridians have found their policies dropped because they fall below the minimum standards of coverage set by Obamacare. Problem was, Geraghty wasn't going to play Gregory's gotcha game with people's healthcare:

We're not cutting people. We're actually transitioning people. What we've been doing is informing folks that their plan doesn't meet the test of the essential health benefits; therefore, they have a choice of many options that we make available through the exchange. And, in fact, with subsidy, many people will be getting better plans at a lesser cost. This really is a transition. In fact, the 300,000 figure is the entire year. So it's really 40,000 people for January 1, and we're walking them through that transition.

Steve Coll of the New Yorker on the decline of the Republican party: "The Tea Party's anti-intellectualism reflects a longer, deeper decline in the Republican Party's ability to tolerate a diversity of ideas and public-policy strategies, and to adapt to American multiculturalism." ...

... ** Greg Sargent makes an important point: Tea Party Republican's idea "is that the demand that Republicans enter into conventional policy discussions is itself a political trap! ... There is probably nothing that could result from normal governing compromises between Republicans and Democrats that the Tea Party wing can ever accept." CW: Calling Tea Party radicals the Crazy Caucus is not derogatory; it's a statement of fact.

Every Fucking Bad Thing Is Obama's Fault. Steve M. of NMMNB: "... I thought I'd share this response from a Free Republic commenter to the death of Lou Reed:

The ObamaCare Death Panels in New York wouldn't give him a liver transplant so he got it done in Ohio instead. Typical liberal hypocrisy. Death Panels for thee but not for me.

     ... "I'm not quite sure how 'ObamaCare Death Panels' could kill Reed given that (a) Reed was old enough for Medicare, (b) Obamacare hasn't been fully implemented, and (c) Ohio, like New York, is part of the United States, and Obamacare is federal law, but whatever."

ABC News & the AP: "U.S. officials responded Sunday night to a report that the National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders only after an internal Obama administration review started this summer exposed the operation. An unnamed senior official told The Wall Street Journal that the White House 'cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders. Other programs have been slated for termination but haven't been phased out completely yet.'" CW: So if the project to spy on Merkel began in 2002 & Obama ended it, then I guess this one is George Bush's fault. ...

... Sarah White & Emma Pinedo of Reuters: " The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) recently tracked over 60 million calls in Spain in the space of a month, a Spanish newspaper said on Monday, citing a document which it said formed part of papers obtained from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

A Reminder from E. J. Dionne: "... here is the tea party’s greatest victory: It has made the wrong problem the center of policymaking. The wrong problem is the deficit. The right problem is sluggish growth and persistent unemployment.... By putting so much effort into negotiating a failed 'grand bargain' with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011 and subsequently agreeing to the sharp, across-the-board cuts of the 'sequester' to get out of a crisis, Obama contributed to the deficit chorus. Because of the fiscal tightening, our unemployment rate is probably a point higher than it would have been otherwise. We've done a heck of a job on the deficit, reducing it from about 10 percent of the economy in 2009 to 4 percent now. We've done badly by the jobless."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post on the strong Clinton-McAuliffe friendship. "Bill and Hillary, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, are leveraging their popularity in an all-out push to help [Terry] McAuliffe win the governorship of Virginia. On Sunday, Bill kicked off a four-day, nine-city tour of Virginia with McAuliffe, while Hillary will raise money for him this week in California." CW: Hey, McAuliffe's opponent Ken Cuccinelli has Rick Santorum (who seems to be on the campaign trail to hawk a Christianist movie he produced or something).

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker has a long piece on the assassination of President Kennedy: "An assassination should be significant for more than its atmospherics. Kennedy's should also matter for people who weren't there, because something happened in America that would not have happened had Kennedy lived."

Sarah Duggin of the National Constitution Center has a good piece on the Constitutional meaning of "natural-born citizen."

... More Fishing News from Wyoming, the State that Fined Liz Cheney for Lying about her Residence Status on Her Fishing License Application. Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) lied about their relationship when he said that the two had gone fishing. Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney, is challenging Enzi in the Wyoming Republican Senate primary." CW: How big was that fish you caught, Mike?

News Ledes

Politico: "The Obama administration is attributing Sunday outages on HealthCare.gov to technical failures by Verizon Terremark, the company operating the federal data hub."

AFP: "A South African court began sentencing Monday 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country. The 'Boeremag' organisation had planned a right-wing coup in 2002 to overthrow the post-apartheid government. The trial lasted almost a decade until the organisation's members were convicted in August last year -- the first guilty verdicts for treason since the end of apartheid in 1994."

AP: "International observers gave their stamp of approval to Georgia's presidential election on Monday, characterizing it as 'clean' and 'transparent.' Sunday's election was won easily by Giorgi Margvelashvili, a 44-year-old former university rector with limited political experience." CW: The article of course is not about the U.S. state of Georgia, which has a voter ID law requiring photo identification.