The Commentariat -- Aug. 6, 2013

Mark Felsenthal & Margaret Chadbourn of Reuters: "President Barack Obama will propose overhauling the U.S. mortgage finance system in a speech on Tuesday, weighing in on a tangled and polarizing problem that was central to the devastating financial crisis in 2007-2009 and that continues to slow the economic recovery, the White House said. Obama will propose eliminating mortgage finance entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over time, replacing them with a system in which the private market buys home loans from lenders and repackages them as securities for investors, senior administration officials said." ...

... Justin Sink of the Hill: "Obama is trying to gain momentum for his economic plan ahead of the tough negotiations on the debt ceiling and federal budget that will dominate the autumn agenda. This week's multimedia push will involve the latest speech in the president's series on the middle class, his sixth appearance on 'The Tonight Show' with Jay Leno, a web chat with prospective home buyers, and a pair of events with soldiers and veterans."

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: Sen. Barbara "Mikulski [D-Md.], who legislates with two parts accommodation and one part coercion, now finds herself at the center of a spending brawl on Capitol Hill. At 77, she is the longest serving woman in Congress, the first female leader of its most august committee [the Senate Appropriations Committee] and the fulcrum in a fiscal fight that will dominate Washington this fall."

Michelle Norris of NPR interviews Jack Hanson, who as a young white man living in Cincinnati, Ohio, participated in the 1963 March on Washington, & his wife Ethel Hanson, who stayed home with their four sons. With audio. Thanks to contributor Diane for the link.

Eric Schmitt & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Time: "The Obama administration's decision last week to close nearly two dozen diplomatic missions and issue a worldwide travel alert resulted from intercepted electronic communications in which the head of Al Qaeda in Pakistan ordered the leader of its affiliate in Yemen, the terrorist organization's most lethal branch, to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday, according to American officials. The intercepted conversations last week between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of the global terrorist group, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, revealed one of the most serious plots against American and other Western interests since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, American intelligence officials and lawmakers have said." ... CW: evidently al-Zawahri & al-Wuhayshi don't read the Guardian. so were unaware that the NSA was following their chit-chats. ...

... Gene Robinson: "... U.S. foreign policy helped to create the decentralized al-Qaeda, a branch of which is believed to be trying to launch some kind of strike. The most fateful choice, and the biggest strategic error, was the decision to invade Iraq. George W. Bush's epic misadventure diverted resources and attention from the war in Afghanistan, giving a reprieve to the Taliban.... First Bush and then Obama discovered the expediency of remotely piloted drone aircraft as instruments of war. Obama has waged what amounts to a campaign of targeted assassination, decimating the ranks of the various al-Qaeda branches.... The inevitable collateral damage -- deaths of civilians, destruction of infrastructure -- helps recruit new al-Qaeda conscripts." ...

... Charles Pierce: "Almost all of the extra-constitutional atrocities attributed to the 'war' on terror have their philosophical -- and, in many cases, their literal -- roots in the equally futile 'war' on drugs.... Consider how unremarkable drug-testing without probable cause -- which is essentially both an unwarranted search and forcible testimony that might be incriminating -- has become.... Which is why the latest revelations of government spying come as no surprise.... Again, I don't recall any 'national debate' about whether or not this program, and the crimes in office on which it apparently depends, was a good idea in a self-governing democracy." (See yesterday's Commentariat for link to the underlying Reuters story.) ...

... bmaz of emptywheel says much of the Reuters reporting is not new -- some of the "revelations" appear on the DEA's Website. "The takeaway that is important from the Reuters piece is that all the frothing about, 'golly, what if those NSA capabilities bleed out of terrorism and into traditional criminal cases' is nuts. It already is, and has been for a long time." ...

CW: Yeah, I know it's "extraneous" bullshit, but Driftglass disposes of Glenn Greenwald for this tweet: "How irrational to choose Russia over the luxurious, super-max hellhole of life-long solitary confinement the US generously provides people" Driftglass counters with example before concluding: "I understand how Mr. Greenwald's incessant and often hilariously apocalyptic conflations, exaggerations and character assassinations feed his gargantuan ego and titillate the ganglia of the Spleenwald horde. What I do not understand is how it in any way advances his stated goal of ignoring all extraneous issues and maintaining a laser-like focus on stimulating open, rancor-free public debate on the important and consequential subjects of NSA surveillance and the FISA court."

** Greg Dworkin, in Daily Kos, tries to explain "libertarian populism." CW: If you're still confused, it could be because libertarian populism is internally inconsistent & often short on specifics.

Bigots, Liars & Nihilists

Steve Benen: "Can a President be a radical socialist & a Wall Street shill? ... For good or ill, Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to reach compromises with congressional Republicans, frequently offering to accept GOP policy goals that congressional Democrats find abhorrent. But because so many congressional Republicans have become post-policy nihilists, GOP officials not only reject attempts at compromise, they often announce their opposition to whatever it was they urged Obama to do in the first place."

And all the while [we are] keeping our eye focused on trying to deal with the ultimate problem, which is this growing deficit. -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Sunday on Fox "News"

Someone tell [that prevaricating dickhead] Cantor. The deficit is shrinking. -- Juliet Lapidos of the New York Times

The Life-Threatening Lies of Koch-Paid Retainers. A few days old, but worth the read: Christopher Flavelle of Bloomberg News on the realities of the "Burn Your [Nonexistent] ObamaCare Card" movement: "Opponents of Obamacare are trying to persuade people who are eligible for subsidized health insurance not to sign up. Let's consider what makes that campaign so offensive. [These right-wing groups are making their political point] on the backs of Americans with no health insurance, and no other options to obtain it." Flavelle called one of the winger-promoters of the movement, & she first claimed that getting coverage under ObamaCare doesn't guarantee access to health care. "That claim is absurd on its face." She then claimed that people could just sign up for insurance when they got sick. "But it isn't that simple. While you can't be denied coverage because you're sick, you still need to buy that coverage during the annual open enrollment period, as with employer-sponsored insurance." CW: Flavelle doesn't specifically say so, but the Koch brother's FreedomWorks is the driving force behind the scheme. Via Jonathan Cohn.

All I'm saying is that you cannot say you are against Obamacare if you are willing to vote for a law that funds it. If you're willing to fund this thing, you can't possibly say you&'re against it. -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Via Greg Sargent

The Party of Nobody But Rushbo. Alex Roarty of the National Journal: Increasingly, white voters won't vote for the Party of Bigots even if they might think Republican have the right economic ideas. (CW: Roarty makes his point much more nicely.)

AP: "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke out publicly for the first time Monday in favor of immigration reform, an issue he's been working on behind the scenes for several months. The 29-year-old billionaire made his remarks in San Francisco at the debut screening of 'Documented,' an autobiographical documentary by activist and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas. Wearing his trademark hoodie* and sneakers, Zuckerberg disputed the notion that he and other Silicon Valley leaders are just trying to secure more H1B visas for high-tech workers."

* Zuckerberg was not followed or shot dead for "looking suspicious."

Senatorial Races

Alex Roarty: "When [Rep.] Tom Cotton [R-Ark.] declares his candidacy for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, the decorated infantry veteran will be a rare consensus choice for a party with a history of destructive infighting. He has no primary opponent, no doubts about his conservative bona fides, and Republicans have little doubt he has the chops to knock off Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor."

Kevin Liptak of CNN: "All four Democrats vying for a spot on the ballot in New Jersey's special U.S. Senate election debated for the first time Monday, revealing similar stances on foreign policy but disputing Newark Mayor Cory Booker's record on education."

Gubernatorial Race, or Something

Shefali Luthra & Adam Wollner of the Texas Tribune: Texas "State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, said Monday that she will either run for re-election or for Texas governor, and that she's working hard to make her decision. Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon [in Washington, D.C.], Davis said those were the only two options, and that she's not considering joining the lieutenant governor's race.... Since the filibuster, Davis has appeared at fundraisers in Washington and spoken on national television. She has been the subject of speculation over a potential statewide run in 2014. In the final two weeks of June, Davis' campaign raised almost $1 million in donations."

Presidential Race 2016

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Monday called on CNN and NBC to rethink their decisions to shoot films about Hillary Clinton, calling each a 'thinly veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election.' Priebus also threatened, if the networks push forward with their plans, to avoid partnerships with them for any 2016 presidential debates." ...

... Zeke Miller of Time: "Republican Party officials believe the 20 GOP primary debates during the 2012 cycle hurt their party and Mitt Romney. CNN's John King, in particular, drew attacks when he questioned former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich about his prior marital infidelities in a debate before the South Carolina primary, while Republicans have long been weary of working with NBC given the liberal-leanings of its cable network MSNBC. Priebus has previously proposed a more modest 10 to 12 debates, in part to protect better-funded candidates from insurgents who capitalize on their time before the cameras." Priebus is using the Hillary movie excuse as a pretext to discourage state parties from hosting debates. ...

... Hiding Out in the Fox Hole. Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "... it's not a good idea for the GOP to threaten not to deal with the unaffiliated press. After all, that risks sending them deeper into their closed information feedback loop, in which Republicans only hear the partisan version of the news supplied by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.... This is a problem for campaigning -- or, as David Plouffe says: 'Better RNC debate plan. Held in hermetically sealed Fox studio.'"

Local News

Nick Carey & Joseph Lichterman of Reuters: "In a high-stakes hearing on Friday in Detroit's bankruptcy filing, a judge approved a city plan to form a creditors' committee of retired workers, but gave unions and pension funds that opposed the plan a measure of satisfaction by declaring an independent trustee -- and not the city -- will select committee members. Federal bankruptcy Judge Steve Rhodes' ruling on the city's effort to create a new negotiating partner independent of unions and pension funds was a key moment in a three-hour session that packed the largest courtroom in Detroit's downtown federal building."

Beauty & the Bomb. Christine McCarthy of KUTV Salt Lake City: "Miss Riverton, crowned in June and set to compete in the Miss Utah pageant, was arrested early Saturday morning along with her three friends after allegedly throwing homemade bombs at people and homes. A probable cause statement released by the Salt Lake County Jail states that Miss Riverton, Kendra Gill, as well as [others]..., admitted to buying plastic bottles, aluminum foil and household chemicals at a local store before building the bombs and throwing them from their car.... One home that was allegedly targeted was that of Stone's ex-girlfriend.... None of the bombs hurt anyone but they could have easily maimed or killed anyone they exploded near, [Fire Capt. Clint] Mecham said." CW: makes you wonder why she had planned for the talent competition.

News Ledes

AP: "The U.S. government has accused Bank of America Corp. of civil fraud, saying the company failed to disclose risks and misled investors in its sale of $850 million of mortgage bonds during 2008. The Justice Department filed a civil suit Tuesday against the bank and several subsidiaries in federal court in Charlotte, N.C. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a related suit against Bank of America there, too."

New York Times: "Nearly four years after going on a deadly shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here in 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan told a jury of senior Army officers on Tuesday that 'the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.'"

ABC News: "A gunman with a property dispute showed up at a Ross Township, Pa., supervisors' meeting and opened fire [Monday] night, shooting apparently at random before he was subdued by two attendees, a witness and Monroe County officials said. Three people were killed in the shooting rampage, and three others were wounded, including the shooter, county officials said. The suspect, who was under arrest tonight, was wounded when he was tackled by one of the township officials at the meeting."

New York Times: "After days of alarms and embassy lockdowns, the United States and Britain on Tuesday stepped up security precautions in Yemen, with Washington ordering 'nonemergency' government personnel to leave and the Foreign Office in London saying it has withdrawn its diplomatic staff in the capital Sana 'due to increased security concerns.'"

The Commentariat -- Aug. 5, 2013

Tom Toles of the Washington Post. ViaAnnie Laurie in Balloon Juice. ... Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times: "How divided are Republicans in Congress? So divided, one conservative joked, that it shouldn't be called a civil war: 'It's not organized enough for that.' ... Perhaps the biggest problem the Republicans have is one of leadership. When asked to identify the leader of the Republican Party, the first-place winner in the Pew poll was, accurately enough, 'nobody.'" ...

... ** Paul Krugman: "... Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk." ...

... They'll Be Busy While They're Sulking. Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "An array of interest groups has methodically plotted how to use the congressional recess to press causes." ...

... Oh, But They Planned for That. The AP takes a look at the House GOP's planning kit for promoting their agenda during the August recess. It's the usual "bash Washington/blame Obama" stuff. I like the part where it advises them to emphasize their accomplishments.

** Frank Rich: "Washington may be a dysfunctional place to govern, but it's working better than ever as a marketplace for cashing in. And that's thanks, more than anything, to the Democratic Establishment." CW: Thanks to MAG for the link. Rich doesn't say so, but the ONLY thing that could change Them-v.-the-Rest-of-Us is a strict Constitutional amendment requiring public financing of political campaigns & banning private financing. Since, typically, the Congress proposes amendments (state legislatures can do so, too), that clearly is not going to happen. Some have promoted the idea of a "popular amendment" since the Constitution derives from the people, but that won't happen either.

** John Shiffman & Kristina Cooke of Reuters: "A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues..., law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin -- not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.... Federal agents are trained to 'recreate' the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence -- information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.... Legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records." ...

... Brendan Sasso of the Hill: "Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed on Sunday that the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs uncovered information about current terrorist threats to the United States." Chambliss tied the closings of most of the U.S. Middle East embassies -- see News Ledes -- to a threat detected by the NSA. ...

... Barbara Starr of CNN: "An intercepted message among senior al Qaeda operatives in the last several days raised alarm bells that led to the closing of embassies and consulates Sunday across the Middle East and North Africa, CNN has learned. CNN has agreed to a request from an Obama administration official not to publish or broadcast additional details because of the sensitivity of the information." ...

... Max Ehrenfreund in Washington Monthly: "Marci Wheeler is speculating openly that these warnings might be politically motivated.... It would be premature to assume anything about the current warning, and it is partly a measure of Wheeler's cynicism that she is speculating. Not completely, though. It's also a measure of the degree to which the military and the intelligence communities have lost reporters' trust over the past ten years, beginning with the invasion of Iraq." ...

... Wheeler's post is here. CW: I have to admit the second I read that Chambliss, a Southern conservative Republican who is no fan of the administration (and has a dismal ACLU rating), went on the teevee to claim the embassy closings & travel warnings were the result of intelligence gathered "under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to intercept communications between suspected terrorists," I just thought, "Isn't that perfect!" Plus, who do you suppose Barbara Starr's source is? James Clapper's top aide? ...

... Not Exactly News. Glenn Greenwald: "... members [of Congress] who seek out basic information - including about NSA programs they are required to vote on and FISA court (FISC) rulings on the legality of those programs - find that they are unable to obtain it. Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, have provided the Guardian with numerous letters and emails documenting their persistent, and unsuccessful, efforts to learn about NSA programs and relevant FISA court rulings." Here's a LOL bit: "In early July, Grayson had staffers distribute to House members several slides published by the Guardian about NSA programs.... But, according to one staff member, Grayson's office was quickly told by the House Intelligence Committee that those slides were still classified..., and directed Grayson to cease distribution or discussion of those materials in the House, warning that he could face sanctions if he continued." ...

... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "... amid a national debate over how much the government should be able to find out about the private activities of its citizens in the name of combating terrorism, the next issue seems teed up for Supreme Court review: Cellphones." CW: courts have ruled in various ways on this, but it seems to me there's an easy answer: to protect evidence, officers should be able to confiscate cellphones found on suspects, but they should have to get warrants to access the data on a confiscated phone unless there is a compelling reason -- say, in a kidnapping case -- to review the data immediately. Ditto for people questioned but not arrested; if you're going to carry around incriminating evidence, you should expect to be incriminated. P.S. When I called up this article, it came with a Galaxy ad. Big WashPo knows I'm interested in cellphones.

Kate Taylor of the New York Times: "Cities and towns across the country are pushing municipal unions to accept cheaper health benefits in anticipation of a component of the Affordable Care Act that will tax expensive plans starting in 2018.... Cities including New York and Boston, and school districts from Westchester County, N.Y., to Orange County, Calif., are warning unions that if they cannot figure out how to rein in health care costs now, the price when the tax goes into effect will be steep, threatening raises and even jobs.... But some prominent liberals express frustration at seeing the tax used against unions in negotiations."

Richard Riordan & Tim Rutten in a New York Times op-ed: "President Obama should propose, and push Congress to establish, a public employee pension reform program..., [which] would essentially serve as an insurance agency. It would not bail out distressed local retirement plans. Instead, cities, and perhaps states, would be permitted to sell bonds to cover their pension liabilities, with the federal government guaranteeing repayment. Participants would pay fees -- a kind of insurance premium -- to finance the program, so there would be no net cost to Washington.... We must avoid demonizing public employees and their unions. "

E. J. Dionne: liberals must be more tolerant of religion so as not to alienate religious progressives. CW: I get that, but religious progressives should be more tolerant of non-religious liberals, too. There is a widespread -- and wholly erroneous notion -- that a person can't have morals or ethics unless based on faith in a higher power and/or an afterlife.

Buh-bye, Burbs? Washington Post: "In her new book, 'The End of the Suburbs,' Leigh Gallagher argues that the suburban way of life, once the epitome of the American dream, is becoming increasingly undesirable. Capital Business reporter Jonathan O'Connell, who has questioned whether Washington can grow up with its 20-somethings, chatted with Gallagher this past week about how Americans choose to live. An abridged version of that conversation follows."

"The Second Guantanamo." Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post: "The United States holds 67 non-Afghan prisoners there, including some described as hardened al-Qaeda operatives seized from around the world in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. More than a decade later, they're still kept in the shadowy facility at Bagram air base outside Kabul. Closing the facility presents many of the same problems the Obama administration has encountered in its attempt to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. Some U.S. officials argue that Bagram's resolution is even more complicated -- and more urgent. The U.S. government transferred the prison's Afghan inmates to local authorities this year. But figuring out what to do with the foreign prisoners is proving to be an even bigger hurdle to shutting the American jail. 'Is there a plan? No. Is there a desire to close the facility? Yes,' Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said in an interview."

Senate Race

Nate Cohn of the New Republic: "The last few weeks have been full of bad news for Senator Mitch McConnell. He earned a long awaited tea party challenger and, yesterday, two polls showed Allison Lundergan Grimes, the likely Democratic nominee, ahead by 1 and 2 points. As a result, Democrats are starting to believe they have a good chance in Kentucky. They shouldn't get their hopes up. Certainly not yet. Mitch McConnell is a clear favorite because he's a Republican incumbent running in a red state, assuming he wins the primary."

Election 2012

Howell Raines reviews Dan Balz's book on the 2012 election. "Dan Balz's history of the 2012 campaign ends with an astonishing scene from a post-election interview with Mitt Romney. When the reporter brings up his infamous '47 percent.' remark, Romney blurts, 'Actually I didn't say that.' He then retrieves his iPad and leads Balz, line by line, through an excruciatingly delusional exegesis of the speech that crippled his campaign. Balz ... resists the temptation to belabor the obvious. The Republican nominee just didn't understand, then or now, what happened last fall, particularly voters' mystifying insistence on verbal precision. Like his father, George, whose Republican presidential candidacy in 1968 flamed out when he said he had been "brainwashed" by the generals and others about the Vietnam War,' Mitt Romney is a master of the self-immolating quote." CW: The whole review is entertaining.

Local News

Rick Hertzberg on New York City's history of sex scandals. Highly entertaining & beautifully-written, as usual.

News Ledes

San Francisco Chronicle: "BART trains will be rolling for at least another week after Gov. Jerry Brown stepped in late Sunday night to block an impending strike, just hours before the scheduled 12:01 Monday walkout by the transit system's union workers. At the request of BART management, the governor appointed a three-member board of inquiry to investigate the stalled negotiations."

Military Times: The trial of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood & wounded 30 more (which he admits), begins today. ...

... The New York Times has a story on the uniqueness of the trial.

AP: "Prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to present lengthy closing arguments to jurors as they lay out their cases in the racketeering trial of reputed gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. Closing arguments were scheduled for Monday in U.S. District Court...."

The Commentariat -- Aug. 4, 2013

Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Fox News’s Chris Wallace challenged House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and the GOP-controlled House for failing to pass key appropriations before the government runs out of money in September, demanding to know why the party is wasting time holding its 40 Obamacare repeal vote and pursuing other highly partisan partisan measures." ...

... Igor Volsky: "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) reiterated on Sunday that the House would not bring the Senate's immigration reform bill, which includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, to the floor for debate and a vote."

Dion Nissenbaum of the Wall Street Journal: "A federal grand jury is investigating whether the company that conducted the last security background check on National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden improperly rushed cases without proper review.... At the heart of the criminal probe, which is being conducted by federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are allegations that the company improperly cut corners to boost its processing of background checks, a practice known inside USIS as 'flushing.' ... Such activity could violate the False Claims Act, which outlaws actions that defraud the U.S. government."

Socialized Medicine, Oh My!

Physicians for a National Health Program: "Upgrading the nation's Medicare program and expanding it to cover people of all ages would yield more than a half-trillion dollars in efficiency savings in its first year of operation, enough to pay for high-quality, comprehensive health benefits for all residents of the United States at a lower cost to most individuals, families and businesses. That's the chief finding of a new fiscal study by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There would even be money left over to help pay down the national debt, he said." Via Susie Madrak.

Dan Boyce of NPR: "A year ago, Montana opened the nation's first clinic for free primary healthcare services to its state government employees.... Bottom line: a patient's visit to the employee health clinic costs the state about half what it would cost if that patient went to a private doctor. And because it's free to patients, hundreds of people have come in who had not seen a doctor for at least two years." There is anecdotal evidence the clinic is improving health, too, as physicians are finding early signs of illnesses that patients otherwise would not have detected." Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the lead.<>br_/

Alex Pareene of Salon: "Ted Cruz is the right man for the decadent decline stage of the conservative movement, which has always encouraged the advancement of fact-challenged populist extremists, but always with the understanding that they'd take a back seat to the sensible business interests when it came time to exercise power. The result has been a huge number of Republican activists who couldn't figure out why the True Conservatives they kept voting for kept failing to achieve the creation of the perfect conservative state once in office. That led to an ongoing backlash against everyone in the party suspected of anything less than perfect ideological purity. Meanwhile all the crazies got rich simply for being crazy. There's no longer any compelling reason, in other words, not to act like Ted Cruz, and the result is Ted Cruz."

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: Ted Cruz says he doesn't trust Republicans, & he isn't alone. "The Republican Party has not embarked on a grand civil war, with battle lines drawn and generals appointed. It's more like one of those fights in a cartoon, with characters jumping into a swirl of limbs and dust and cowboy hats. It is a rolling ball of cheerful hate, careening downhill, uprooting trees and legislative priorities, heedless of where it, or the country, is going."

CW: In case you care about the National Popular Vote interstate compact, Rick Hertzberg has the latest: Rhode Island has signed on. I happen to think this is a loony idea that -- should it ever be invoked, which is not unlikely -- would had the Electoral College over to the Supreme Court again. For Hertzberg, it's a pet project.

Sarah Jones of Wall of Separation: "The Kentucky chapter of the American Family Association (AFA) just released a petition that declares, in no uncertain terms, that prayer in schools will take us back to Jesus and best of all, boost student test scores, lower the crime rate and even decrease the rate of HIV infection. 'After prayer was removed from our schools, teen pregnancy went up 500%, STD's went up 226%, violent crime went up 500% and SAT scores went down for 18 years in a row, opening the door for the AIDS epidemic and the drug culture,' asserts the petition. Take that, science!" Via Steve Benen.

Senatorial Campaign

Aw, Everybody's Picking on Mitch. of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell found himself under withering attack on Saturday from both his right and left as he tried to make his case for reelection before a boisterous crowd at St. Jerome Catholic Church's annual picnic and political event in far western Kentucky."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The State Department said Sunday that it was extending the closing of 19 diplomatic posts in the Middle East and North Africa through at least next Saturday because of continued fears of an attack by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates." ...

... ABC News: "On the day that almost two dozen U.S. embassies and consulates across North Africa and the Middle East are closed following the identification of a significant threat from an al-Qaeda affiliate, a senior U.S. official is providing new details about the communications intercepted from the terrorists, telling ABC News that al-Qaeda operatives could be heard talking about an upcoming attack. The official described the terrorists as saying the planned attack is 'going to be big' and 'strategically significant.'"

New York Times: "Secretary of State John Kerry has recommended that Robert S. Ford serve as the next American ambassador to Egypt, American officials said Sunday. A longtime Middle East hand, Mr. Ford is well known for his role as ambassador to Syria, where he challenged President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown before American diplomats there were pulled out for their own safety. Most recently, Mr. Ford has served as the top American envoy to the Syrian opposition."

AP: "A man condemned to death for fatally stabbing a neighbor during a Cleveland burglary was found hanged in his cell Sunday just days before his Wednesday execution. Billy Slagle, 44, was found at about 5 a.m. at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution south of Columbus and was declared dead within the hour, prison spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said."

USA Today: "John Palmer, a veteran reporter for NBC News who covered wars and Washington over a career that spanned 40 years, died Saturday at a Washington hospital."

Guardian: "The United States and Britain have expressed their concerns after Robert Mugabe was declared the winner of Zimbabwe's presidential election on Saturday with 2,110,434 votes, giving him 61% of the total and Morgan Tsvangirai 34%. The margin was enough to avoid a repeat of the runoff of 2008.... John Kerry, the US secretary of state, commended Zimbabweans for rejecting violence but added: 'Make no mistake: in light of substantial electoral irregularities reported by domestic and regional observers, the United States does not believe that the results announced today represent a credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people.' William Hague, the British foreign secretary, also expressed 'grave concerns' about the conduct of the vote."

Reuters: The Obama administration has overturned a U.S. trade panel's ban on the sale of some older iPhones and iPads, reversing a ruling that had favored Samsung Electronics Co Ltd over Apple Inc in their long-running patent battles. The U.S. International Trade Commission in June banned the import or sale of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G distributed by AT&T Inc, saying the devices infringed a patent owned by the South Korean electronics giant. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman on Saturday vetoed the ban, saying his decision was in part based on its "effect on competitive conditions in the U.S. economy and the effect on U.S. consumers." He said Samsung could continue to pursue its case through the courts."