The Commentariat -- June 20, 2013

John Broder of the New York Times: "President Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, as well as expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment, senior officials said Wednesday."

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports on reactions to President Obama's proposal "to limit American and Russian deployed strategic warheads to about 1,000 each, [which] would bring the two countries back to around the levels of 1954."

Michael O'Brien of NBC News: "FBI director Robert Mueller said Wednesday that the nation's top law enforcement bureau uses drones to conduct surveillance on U.S. soil, though only on a 'very, very minimal basis.'" ...

... New York Times Editors: "The basic justification for outsourcing government work is to get a job done better and cheaper. Outsourcing intelligence does not appear to achieve either aim.... The proliferation of private sector employees with top-secret clearances, now estimated at up to 500,000, makes breaches more likely.... The revolving door between government intelligence agencies and private-sector contractors ... conflates public and private interests and entrenches the status quo.... While it may still make sense to outsource specific projects, the practice of outsourcing vast swaths of national security, with little or no attempt to develop the needed expertise inside government, has gone on for too long with too little scrutiny." ...

... Glenn Greenwald: "Top secret documents obtained by the Guardian illustrate what the Fisa court actually does -- and does not do -- when purporting to engage in 'oversight' over the NSA's domestic spying. That process lacks many of the safeguards that Obama, the House GOP, and various media defenders of the NSA are trying to lead the public to believe exist.... Under [the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008], which was just renewed last December for another five years, no warrants are needed for the NSA to eavesdrop on a wide array of calls, emails and online chats involving US citizens.... The decision to begin listening to someone's phone calls or read their emails is made exclusively by NSA analysts and their 'line supervisors'. There is no outside scrutiny, and certainly no Fisa court involvement." ...

... Leakers' Solidarity. Ned Resnikoff of NBC News: "'We are in touch with [Edward] Snowden frequently, and we are involved in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland,' Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said on a Wednesday press conference call. Also featured on the call were Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and previous National Security Agency leaker Thomas Drake. The joint gathering was an unusual show of solidarity from three men who have all found themselves under attack by the United States government for disclosing classified information."

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said on Wednesday that the central bank intended to reduce its monetary stimulus later this year -- and end the bond purchases entirely by the middle of next year -- if unemployment continued to decline at the pace that the Fed expected." ...

... Here's the Fed's statement. ...

... As Ed Kilgore notes, the statement indicates that "the Fed had decided to stand absolutely pat on monetary stimulus at its latest policy meeting. Whoever drafts their deliberately tedious statements even tried to use the same language as in previous announcements, clearly to stress there was no news to worry about.... But then Ben Bernanke held his traditional press conference, and let himself get talked into speculating about the future conditions under which these stimulative efforts would be slowly curtailed. Even as he spoke, stocks started to slide, and now it looks like you'd never know the Fed actually did nothing." ...

... Inyoung Hwang & Katie Brennan of Bloomberg: "The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index retreated the most in two weeks as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank may reduce bond purchases later this year as the economy strengthens."

** David Dayen in Salon: "Bank of America's mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification -- but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.... It is a testament to the corruption of the federal regulatory and law enforcement apparatus that we're only hearing evidence from inside Bank of America now, in a civil class-action lawsuit...." Read the whole article. CW: a friend of mine -- a very persistent, savvy friend -- was a victim of this runaround. I believe every word of the allegations.

Thomas Edsall in the New York Times on "our broken social contract." The remarks of Alan Krueger, who is the head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, are worth reading. Charles Murray & David Brooks -- not so much.

This. Burns. Me. Up. Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post: Facing a tight withdrawal deadline and tough terrain, the U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment as it rushes to wind down its role in the Afghanistan war by the end of 2014. The massive disposal effort, which U.S. military officials call unprecedented, has unfolded largely out of sight amid an ongoing debate inside the Pentagon about what to do with the heaps of equipment that won't be returning home. Military planners have determined that they will not ship back more than $7 billion worth of equipment -- about 20 percent of what the U.S. military has in Afghanistan -- because it is no longer needed or would be too costly to ship back home."

Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) yesterday followed Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.) to became the third Republican in the U.S. Senate to come out in favor of marriage equality. While her powerful statement was a testament to a politician willing to rethink a fraught policy position, it also is a clear expression of her conservative ideals. And that's a good thing. One I hope will be mirrored by the Supreme Court soon, maybe even today." CW: Capehart highlights this line from Murkowski's statement: "I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government." Uh-huh. Alaska receives more than $15,000 per annum per capita from the federal government. If she'd like the rest of us taxpayers to pull back some of that intrusive overreach, we'd be glad to.

Erica Werner & David Espo of the AP: "White House-backed immigration legislation is gaining momentum in the Senate, where key lawmakers say they are closing in on a bipartisan compromise to spend tens of billions of dollars stiffening the bill's border security requirements without delaying legalization for millions living in the country unlawfully.... Under the emerging compromise, the government would grant legal status to immigrants living in the United States unlawfully at the same time the additional security was being put into place. Green cards, which signify permanent residency status, would be withheld until the security steps were complete." ...

Right Wing World

... Dana Milbank: At a Washington rally (or press conference or some combination thereof), Tea Party members & their stalwarts in Congress trod on their former heartthrob Marco Rubio. Milbank doesn't mention it, but the remarks from Heritage Foundation "scholar" Robert Rector were pretty rich in light of the fact that the Congressional Budget Office -- where the green shades know how to weigh the data without putting their thumbs on the scale -- just totally refuted an earlier Heritage Foundation claim that immigration reform would bring a net cost to the U.S. ...

... More details of the rally (or whatever) from Emma Dumain of Roll Call: House "Speaker John A. Boehner ... met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Wednesday and hopes to cure his party's huge demographic challenge with Hispanics by passing an immigration overhaul this year. But the tea party energy on display outside the Capitol, which catapulted him into power in 2010, has turned on the speaker." ...

... Steve Benen: "... consider yesterday's event in the larger context: what have Republicans shown the nation lately? There was a Tea Party rally this week, which followed a big fight over an anti-abortion bill that can't pass. In the states, we see a focus on culture-war issues, including state-mandated, medically-unnecessary ultrasounds. On Capitol Hill, most Republican lawmakers are running around talking about 'amnesty' and 'illegals,' which is every bit as insulting as their rhetoric about women. Yesterday, we even heard talk about 'takers,' as if the '47 percent' video never happened. And on the horizon, many in the GOP are already planning another debt-ceiling crisis."

Ed Kilgore: "If ... Kansas and North Carolina are currently operating as sort of right-wing policy 'laboratories' thanks to the highly-focused ideological nature of their Republican state legislative majorities, then my own home state of Georgia might be viewed as sort of a petri dish, where wingnuts don’t necessarily wield great power but do exert an immoderating influence on the GOP." CW: as far as I can tell, Georgia's wingers think sex is icky. ...

Father Knows Best. You know, maybe part of the problem is we need to go back into the schools at a very early age, maybe at the grade school level, and have a class for the young girls and have a class for the young boys and say, 'You know, this is what's important. This is what a father does that is maybe a little different, maybe a little bit better than the talents that a mom has in a certain area. And the same thing for the young girls, that, you know, this is what a mom does, and this is what is important from the standpoint of that union which we call marriage. Of my three daughters and one daughter-in-law, they all work. They all work, some of them full-time, some of them part-time. But they're still there as moms. And when they come home and take over that responsibility, they need a shared partner, and that partner is that partner for life. And I'm talking about, of course, the father. -- Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), who is, BTW, an obstetrician, speaking on the House floor in support of the Defense of Marriage Act ...

... Steve Benen: "Is it possible Republicans are trying to make the gender gap worse? Are politicians like Gingrey embracing misogyny as some kind of deliberate campaign tactic?" ...

... Maybe So. Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "I mean, really, if he's going to say that boys and girls should be taught traditional gender roles from a young age, why not go all the way and say it was a mistake to allow women to vote? That great constitutional scholar Ann Coulter favors repeal ('If we took away women’s right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president'), as do such conservatives as National Review's Michael Walsh ('."let's just observe that without it Barack Obama could never have become president. Time for the ladies to take one for the team'"), Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, and Vox Day." ...

... Sorry I missed this one, which James S. referred to in the Comments a couple of days ago ...

     ... Fetuses Just Wanna Have Fun. Kate McDonough of Salon: "Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said on Monday that he supports the proposed federal ban on abortion at 20 weeks because he has personally witnessed male fetuses with their hands 'between their legs' pleasuring themselves at 15 weeks. 'There is no question in my mind that a baby at 20-weeks after conception can feel pain. The fact of the matter is, I argue with the chairman because I thought the date was far too late. We should be setting this at 15-weeks, 16-weeks,' said the former OB-GYN during the House Rules Committee debate on the 'Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.'” Like Phil Gingrey (& Ron Paul), Burgess is an OB-GYN.

Here's obnoxious Food Network host Paula Deen appearing with Michelle Obama in 2008:

... AND here's Deen with Oprah Winfrey (apparently Oprah's network OWN produced a special on Deen):

... AND this makes you wonder what Deen said about Obama & Winfrey when the cameras weren't rolling.

Local News

CW: Yes, yes, I know this is an incredibly competitive contest, but Chris Hayes is coming down on the side of my highly-qualified contestant. Thanks, Chris! Screw you, Rick:

Tim Buckland of the New Hampshire Union Leader: "A man was arrested and two people, including a Concord police officer, were allegedly assaulted during a rally Tuesday in a clash between a gun control group and gun rights supporters. The event had people supporting the Mayors Against Illegal Guns movement, founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reading the names of those 'killed with guns' since the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.... Witnesses said Daniel Musso, 52, of Brentwood was asked by police to move. He placed his hand on an officer, was tasered and arrested." CW: not sure why this story is getting national attention, but it is. ...

... Okay, here's one reason. Philip Bump of the Atlantic: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg's organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns organized an event in Concord, New Hampshire, yesterday, during which the names of victims of gun violence since Newtown were read for several hours. Included among those names: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing suspect killed during a shoot-out with police." Mayors Against Illegal guns issued a statement saying Tsarnaev's name should not have been on the list. Bump explains how it got there.

News Ledes

Orlando Sentinel: " Six women, all but one of them white, will decide whether Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in a case that sparked widespread outrage and prompted civil rights marches. They will begin their work -- listening to testimony and evaluating evidence -- Monday morning."

Los Angeles Times: "A panel of federal judges on Thursday ordered Gov. Jerry Brown to immediately begin releasing inmates from the state's crowded prisons. In a 52-page order..., the court ordered Brown to expand good-time credits that allow inmates to finish their prison terms early. The judges demanded that the state take such steps 'commencing forthwith' and regardless of any laws that might prevent those releases."

Washington Post: "The stock market plummeted on Thursday, posting its biggest one-day drop since 2011, rocked by investor concern that the Federal Reserve is getting closer to pulling back on its stimulus program and by poor economic news from China." New York Times story here.

NBC News has some details of James Gandolfini's death.

AP: "Dozens of homes were evacuated near Denver as a wind-driven wildfire flared, one of many in the western states where hot and windy conditions were making it easy for the wild land blazes to start and spread."

AP: " The Afghan Taliban are ready to free a U.S. soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their senior operatives imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay as a conciliatory gesture, a senior spokesman for the group said Thursday."

Washington Post: "A new virus responsible for an outbreak of respiratory illness in the Middle East may be more deadly than SARS, according to a team of infectious disease specialists who recently investigated a set of cases in Saudi Arabia."

New York Times: "... at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the tale of [Giovanni Palatucci's] heroic exploits is being removed from an exhibition after officials there learned of new evidence suggesting that, far from being a hero, he was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator involved in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz."

The Commentariat -- June 19, 2013

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Congressional budget analysts ... said Tuesday that legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration system would cut close to $1 trillion from the federal deficit over the next two decades and lead to more than 10 million new legal residents in the country. A long-awaited analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the benefits of an increase in legal residents from immigration legislation currently being debated in the Senate -- which includes a pathway to citizenship -- would outweigh the costs.... The report ... came just hours after Speaker John A. Boehner raised potential new obstacles for the bill, saying he would not bring any immigration measure to the floor unless it had the support of a majority of House Republicans." CW: okay, let's see how serious Republicans are about reducing the deficit. ...

... Steve Benen: obviously, action immigration reform will not pass if Boehner insists that "a majority of the majority" must approve whatever bill reaches the floor. "... just two weeks ago, nearly every member of the House Republican caucus voted to deport Dream Act kids."

Mark Landler & Peter Baker of the New York Times: President Obama's "main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties." ...

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "Trying to tamp down concerns about government over-reach, President Barack Obama on Wednesday defended U.S. Internet and phone surveillance programs as narrowly targeted efforts that have saved lives and thwarted at least 50 terror threats. 'This is not a situation in which we are rifling through ordinary emails' of huge numbers of citizens in the United States or elsewhere, the president declared during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He called it as a 'circumscribed, narrow' surveillance program." ...

... Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Challenged personally by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about American intelligence programs that monitor foreigners' communications without individualized court orders, President Obama said Wednesday that German terrorist threats were among those foiled by such operations worldwide -- a contention that Mrs. Merkel seemed to confirm." ...

... Stephen Brown & Noah Barkin of Reuters: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel told U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday that government monitoring of Internet communications needed to remain within proper limits. 'I made clear that although we do see the need for gathering information, the topic of proportionality is always an important one and the free democratic order is based on people feeling safe,' Merkel said at a joint news conference with Obama."...

... New York Times Editors: "If the president is serious about declassifying some secrets, he should have said he would start with the [FISA] court. And at the top of the list should be its opinion that broadened the Patriot Act to allow the collection of every phone record, a power that surprised even the Republican lawmakers who wrote the act." ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Top national security officials on Tuesday promoted two newly declassified examples of what they portrayed as 'potential terrorist events' disrupted by government surveillance. The cases were made public as Congress and the Obama administration stepped up a campaign to explain and defend programs unveiled by recent leaks from a former intelligence contractor."

John Harwood of the New York Times piles on, suggesting that the country would be more "united" if Obama had visited North Dakota & other red states. CW: might be nice if Harwood recalled the great success of Richard Nixon, who campaigned in all 50 states in 1960. (He "wound up wasting valuable time visiting states that he had no chance to win, or that had few electoral votes and would be of little help in the election, or states that he would almost certainly win regardless.") Harwood also fails to mention that Obama has visited all 50 states, if you include the year before he became president. And Harwood makes a big deal about Obama's not visiting Mississippi, but Michelle Obama has been there at least twice since her husband became president. ...

... MEANWHILE, contributor MAG highlights this piece by Charles Pierce: "Everybody thought his main job would be to disenthrall the country from the policies of George W. Bush. It has turned out that his main job has been to disenthrall -- haltingly, slowly, maddeningly discursively -- the country from the policies of the last previous Democratic president, and if there's been a more towering irony in American politics over the past several decades, I don't know what it is." ...

... CW: "Towering irony?" Not really. Pierce has ignored rudimentary American political history here. We have political, social and bureaucratic systems which dictate that change occurs slowly. (No, I don't like it, either.) Ike did not undo the New Deal and neither did Nixon. The fact that Obama & Congressional Democrats were able to undo so many of Clinton's failures -- failures of a generation ago -- is about par for the course. Pierce did not mention, BTW, that Obama also "undid" Clinton's failure to pass a health insurance law or that Obama somewhat undid some of Clinton's catastrophic financial-sector "reforms," too. Presidents -- and their contemporaneous Congresses -- seldom reverse the course of history; they only modify it. And what they modify is not likely to be the previous administration's errors but ones from a time long past. The New Deal may seem like the exception, and in some ways it was, but in fact, Roosevelt & Congressional Democrats were undoing longstanding Republican policies, not just Hoover's policies. Change in the U.S. tends to be generational. And that explains the changes Pierce does mention -- especially the Clinton-era anti-gay policies & laws. Americans elect people who represent their "values," and those values are slow to evolve.

Trust Us, Ctd. Charlie Savage & Michael Schmidt: "... from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 'subjects' and wounded about 80 others -- and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records.... The last two years have followed the same pattern: an F.B.I. spokesman said that since 2011, there had been no findings of improper intentional shootings. In most of the shootings, the F.B.I.'s internal investigation was the only official inquiry. In the Orlando case, for example, there have been conflicting accounts about basic facts like whether the Chechen man, Ibragim Todashev, attacked an agent with a knife, was unarmed or was brandishing a metal pole. But Orlando homicide detectives are not independently investigating what happened." Includes links to documents obtained by the Times.

Cummings Comes Through. Josh Hicks of the Washington Post: "The House Oversight Committee's top Democrat on Tuesday released the full transcript of a congressional interview that he said 'debunks conspiracy theories' about the IRS targeting controversy. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member of the committee, produced a complete interview transcript in which an IRS manager in Cincinnati said he elevated the first tea party case that led the agency to begin singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny." Here's Part 1 of the transcript (pdf). Here's Part 2 (pdf). Democrats have posted what they think are key pages of the transcript. ...

... Greg Sargent: "... Cummings had previously insisted Issa release the full transcript himself, arguing it would show that the Republican chairman's claims of White House involvement are false, and that Issa's own selective release of testimony was misleading the public. Issa refused, insisting that releasing full transcripts would damage the investigation. Cummings then asked Issa to detail what specifically in the transcript would do this, and demanded an answer by yesterday. According to Cummings..., Issa has yet to reply -- hence the decision to go forward with the release today."

The "New" GOP. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the most restrictive ban on abortion considered by Congress in a decade, a largely symbolic vote that laid bare the deep ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans.... Just six Republicans voted against the bill; six Democrats voted for it." CW: worth reading Peters' piece to get a feel for the histrionics -- & for those of you who associate "histrionics" with female caterwauling, the term is apt here -- after passing the bill out of committee with not a single female vote, Republicans pushed their female members to do most of the speaking during debate on the House floor Tuesday." ...

... Parity! Katie Hiler of the New York Times: A class of eight astronaut trainees -- "the first NASA has named in four years, and the first group to include equal numbers of men and women -- were selected from 6,300 applicants and will start training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in August, the space agency said Monday." ...

... CW: For the second day in a row, we see the stark contrast in treatment of women between a male-dominated government entity -- this time NASA -- and Congressional Republicans. I won't call our GOP Congresscritters Neanderthals, as I think that might be unfair to Neanderthals. ...

... OR, as David Atkins writes in Hullabaloo: "In the constant internal GOP tug-of-war between 'tone it down to appeal to sane voters' and 'ramp it up for the wingnut base', guess which side is winning? ... Republican misogyny may doom them faster than their racism."

Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: "The Internal Revenue Service is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses despite an Obama administration directive to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts enacted this year, according to a GOP senator. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says his office has learned that the IRS is executing an agreement with the employees' union on Wednesday to pay the bonuses. Grassley says the bonuses should be canceled under an April directive from the White House budget office. The directive was written by Danny Werfel, a former budget official who has since been appointed acting IRS commissioner.... The IRS said it is negotiating with the union over the matter but did not dispute Grassley's claim that the bonuses are imminent." ...

... CW: I hope IRS employee Lou Montoya gets a piece of the action. After both my financial adviser & my accountant told me I needed an attorney to get a new tax ID number (which they said I needed to defrost a bank account) & that it would take weeks to obtain, Montoya got me the new number in 20 minutes. And he was very nice about it.

Ben Smith of BuzzFeed remembers investigative reporter Michael Hastings. (See also Tuesday's News Ledes.)

Isaac Chotiner of The New Republic interviews Politico founders John Harris & Jim VandeHei. CW: I'm not sure why. I think we're supposed to get some insights into a couple of guys who eschew insights (tho they claim they're about to launch "a division devoted to 'deep, magazine-style journalism.'" Probably whatever Harris & VandeHei think "deep" and "journalism" mean is different from your concepts of the terms. ...

... Ed Kilgore figures "Harris and VandeHei think length will be the main and perhaps the only differentiator of the new long-form outlet"; that is, they reckon "deep journalism" = "more words." ...

... John Cole of Gawker: Harris & VandeHei both criticized Nate Silver. "Of course Silver wasn’t the lifeline for Politico - Silver basically said for months that Obama was going to walk away with the election, while the Politico staff needed a horse race so they could write the ten thousand inside baseball faux drama bullshit that they churn out every day just hoping for a link from Drudge or a call from the Morning Joe booking staff." ...

... Charles Pierce has a few choice words, beginning with "Fk you, you smug little prick." Pierce goes on: "But, by far, my favorite part of the interview comes when the Two Presiding Geniuses decide to pick another fight with Nate Silver that they have no hope of winning. You may recall that, at the end of the campaign, TBOTP [Tiger Beat on the Potomac] decided that Silver's fancy scienco-math wasn't for them, because it disagreed with what everybody was saying at John Harris's dinner table the night before. So they took off after him, and then Silver and the American electorate combined to kick their insidery asses all around the block." ...

... Nate Silver: "It's striking how preoccupied Harris and VandeHei are with the perception that Politico is too 'insidery'.... The perceptions of Beltway insiders, which Politico echoes and embraces, are not always very insightful or accurate. In other words, the conventional wisdom is often wrong, especially in Washington.... It would be one thing if Politico were to describe the conventional wisdom and then hold it up to a critical examination.... But in most ... pieces..., there's a lack of perspective -- in particular, a lack of perspective about the role that Politico plays in formulating the conventional wisdom which they then 'report' upon.... Harris and VandeHei seem to lack very much curiosity for the world outside of the bubble."

Maureen Dowd on Johnny 'The Executioner' Martorano, who turned government witness and copped to killing 20 men and women as part of Whitey Bulger's Winter Hill Gang." Read Gemli's comment. ...

... Shelley Murphy, et al., of the Boston Globe have a straight report on Tuesday's testimony. CW: like Gemli, I haven't been following the trial, but for those of you who want to up-to-the-minute details, the Globe has a liveblog, which is rich in 140-character "reporting." Here's Katharine Seelye's report for the New York Times on Martorano's testimony.

News Ledes

New York Daily News: "James Gandolfini, the New Jersey-bred actor who delighted audiences as mob boss Tony Soprano in 'The Sopranos' has died following a massive heart attack in Italy, a source told the Daily News." ...

     ... Update: Gandolfini's New York Times obituary is here.

Washington Post: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday suspended negotiations with Washington over a security agreement that would regulate the presence of U.S. troops here beyond 2014, apparently angered by the U.S.-backed initiative to start formal peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "In a diplomatic scramble to keep alive the possibility of peace talks with the Taliban, American officials on Wednesday pressed the insurgents to backtrack on their effort to present themselves as essentially an alternative government at the office they opened Tuesday in Qatar, Afghan officials said."

AP: "Al-Qaida-linked militants detonated multiple bomb blasts and breached the main U.N. compound in Mogadishu, [Somalia,] on Wednesday, sparking gun battles with security forces that killed at least 12 people. U.N. personnel who reached the compound's secure bunker all survived, though officials hinted not all reached that bunker."

Reuters: " A lone, silent vigil by a man in Istanbul inspired copycat protests on Tuesday, as police detained dozens of people across Turkey in an operation linked to three weeks of often violent demonstrations against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Overnight in Ankara, riot police used teargas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of people who had gathered in and around the government quarter of Kizilay. But in stark contrast to the recent fierce clashes in several cities, hundreds of protesters merely stood in silence in Istanbul, inspired by a man who lit up social media by doing just that for eight hours in the city's Taksim Square on Monday."

Los Angeles Times: "The Los Angeles county coroner's office had yet to determine Tuesday night whether a body recovered from a fiery car crash was that of award-winning journalist Michael Hastings."

     ... Update: The L.A. Times has a newer story up now, with some details about the car crash.

The Commentariat -- June 18, 2013

Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald: "The Obama administration Monday lifted a veil of secrecy surrounding the status of the detainees at Guantánamo, for the first time publicly naming the four dozen captives it defined as indefinite detainees -- men too dangerous to transfer but who cannot be tried in a court of law. The names had been a closely held secret since a multi-agency task force sifted through the files of the Guantánamo detainees in 2009 trying to achieve President Barack Obama's executive order to close the detention center. In January 2010, the task force revealed that it classified 48 Guantánamo captives as dangerous but ineligible for trial because of a lack of evidence, or because the evidence was too tainted. They became so-called 'indefinite detainees,' a form of war prisoner held under Congress' 2001 'Authorization for Use of Military Force.' The Defense Department released the list to The Miami Herald, which ... had sued for it in federal court in Washington, D.C. The Pentagon also sent the list to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on Monday, a Defense Department official said. According to the list, the men designated for indefinite detention are 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, 3 Saudis, 2 Kuwaitis, 2 Libyans, a Kenyan, a Moroccan and a Somali."

Stephen Castle of the New York Times: "Tensions over how to deal with the widening conflict and growing humanitarian crisis in Syria have dominated the two-day [G-8] meeting in Northern Ireland that ends Tuesday." ...

... Former NATO commander Wes Clark, in a New York Times op-ed, likens Obama's tentative arming of Syrian rebels to the West's use of force as a leverage to diplomatic solution for Kosovo in 1999. ...

... Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "President Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, failed to resolve on Monday their significant differences over how to bring about an end to Syria's civil war, as each leader steps up military support for opposite sides in the worsening conflict. Meeting for two hours on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit, Obama and Putin discussed shared economic interests, the recent Iranian elections and global security issues that have put the leaders at odds in the past."...

     ... CW: Of greater interest to most Americans, President Obama failed in an aborted attempt to wrest from Mr. Putin's finger the Super Bowl ring which the Russian president stole from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Pollsters predicted an immediate dip in Mr. Obama's favorability numbers. Sen. Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas) interrupted his floor speech deploring immigration reform to remark, "It is now obvious to the American people that Barack Obama is not a Patriot. A Fox "News" panel concluded the incident proved Obama was a communist sympathizer. Several panel members identified Putin as president of the Soviet Union.

... Actually, the President's poll numbers are diving. Gloria Borger of CNN looks at why that is: "... the public's view of the Obama administration's handling of civil liberties is beginning to eerily resemble what the public thought about Bush: Forty-three percent in a new CNN/ORC poll say the administration has gone too far in restricting some civil liberties in order to fight terrorism. In 2006, 39% thought Bush had gone too far.... The president ... seems, at least right now, to be losing the benefit-of-the-doubt factor he has enjoyed because people think he's an honest guy who tries to do the right thing. The latest CNN/ORC polling shows that while 49% of Americans consider the president to be 'honest and trustworthy,' that's down 9 points -- in one month. And his approval rating has fallen 8 points to just 45%. The unkindest drop ... comes from Obama's stalwarts, younger voters. A huge 17-point decline among the under-30 set has got to be some sort of wake-up call." ...

     ... Update. OR, Maybe Not. Mark Blumenthal & Ariel Edwards-Levy of the Huffington Post say the CNN poll exaggerates the sudden drop in Obama's approval ratings. His poll numbers have been dropping steadily since January 2013; they didn't just plummet.

The Ed Snowden Story
Starring Ed Snowden

Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned that the 'truth' about the extent of surveillance carried out by US authorities would emerge, even if he is jailed or murdered. In a live Q&A with Guardian readers from a secret location in Hong Kong, Snowden did not directly answer a question about whether he had more unpublished material. But he said: 'All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.'" ...

With Glenn Greenwald, Who Plays Himself

Here's the livechat. Greenwald: "Snowden ... with the help of Glenn Greenwald -- take[s] your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything." ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "In the last few days..., Mr. Snowden's leaks have taken a questionable turn.... Revealing that [the NSA] was monitoring the computer traffic of foreign countries, and listening to their leaders, sheds no particularly useful light on the N.S.A.'s mission, or what most people believed its activities to be.... Apparently he believes that the United States shouldn't engage in spying except for countries with which it is at war.... What exactly was it he believed the intelligence world did when he first started making money by working for it?" ...

... Zeke Miller of Time: "Snowden's answers to 18 questions from readers demonstrated that he is not simply concerned about potential government monitoring of American citizens; he is an extreme skeptic of government surveillance of all sorts. In that sense, Snowden is emerging as an heir to Julian Assange.... Snowden's comments today make clear his agenda goes beyond protecting Americans from snooping by their own government.... Snowden also clarified one of his most explosive claims -- that even a single low-level intelligence analyst could pull up records on any American at a whim, a claim top current and former intelligence officials have strongly denied. Snowden said there was no technical impediment to such an action, merely a policy one. 'It's important to understand that policy protection is no protection -- policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens,' he said, voicing another tenet of the free-information movement for which he has become an avatar." ...

... BuzzFeed: in an interview with Charlie Rose, President Obama defends the NSA surveillance, claiming it is "transparent." (CW: Because, um, a secret court hold a secret hearing & secretly approves all the secret spying.) Link is to a partial transcript of the interview. ...

     ... Update. Here's a clip, via Aaron Blake of the Washington Post, who highlights "the 9 most important quotes" from the interview:

     ... The full video is here, on Rose's site. ...

... Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation, in the Washington Post: "We cannot accept a paternal pat on the head, with Americans and the Congress told to leave this to the professionals. At stake is the very heart of the Constitution and the democracy." ...

... Bill Moyers interviews Larry Lessig, who is terrified by Snowden's revelation that NSA analysts have the authority to surveil anybody (the government, BTW, has specifically denied this claim). Via Digby:

... Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire, in a New York Times op-ed: "Seventy percent of America's intelligence budget now flows to private contractors.... In 2000, thanks in part to an advisory committee led by James R. Clapper Jr., now the director of national intelligence, the N.S.A. decided to shift away from its in-house development strategy and outsource on a huge scale.... First, it is dangerous to have half a million people -- the number of private contractors holding top-secret security clearances -- peering into the lives of their fellow citizens.... Second, with billions of dollars of government money sloshing around, and with contractors providing advice on how to spend it, conflicts of interest and corruption are inevitable.... Third, we've allowed contractors to conduct our most secret and sensitive operations with virtually no oversight.... Finally, there's the revolving door -- or what President Dwight D. Eisenhower called 'undue influence.'" ...

... Anna North of Salon on what makes whistleblowers blow. Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the link.

David Rogers of Politico: "The White House warned Monday that it would veto the House farm bill as it now stands and signaled strongly that the fastest path to some compromise this summer would be by taking savings from crop insurance to offset Republican-backed cuts from food stamps."

Drip, Drip, Drip. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has continued to release only select portions of committee interviews with key Internal Revenue Service staffers despite calls to make the full transcripts public." He has been giving some reporters sneak peeks at portions of the interviews. CW: I can't think of a better way to prove that your "investigation" is a sham.

Lolita Baldor of the AP: "Military leaders are ready to begin tearing down the remaining walls that have prevented women from holding thousands of combat and special operations jobs near the front lines. Under details of the plans obtained by The Associated Press, women could start training as Army Rangers by mid-2015 and as Navy SEALs a year later."

The "New" GOP. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "... many Republicans in Washington and in state capitals across the country seem eager to reopen the emotional fight over a woman's right to end a pregnancy. Their efforts will move to the forefront on Tuesday when House Republicans plan to bring to the floor a measure that would prohibit the procedure after 22 weeks of pregnancy -- the most restrictive abortion bill to come to a vote in either chamber in a decade.... Republican leaders acknowledge that its purpose is to satisfy vocal elements of their base.... Beyond Washington, advocates on both sides of the issue say the chance to limit abortion in the near future is very real." ...

     ... CW Worth Noting: compare Baldor's story to Peters' stories & look what you get: the military -- a conservative, male-dominated hierarchical fiefdom -- is less sexist & misogynistic than the democratically-elected Congressional GOP. ...

     ... Office of the President: "The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1797, which would unacceptably restrict women's health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman's right to choose. Women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care, and Government should not inject itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor.... If the President were presented with this legislation, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto this bill." (pdf "pretty damned fine")

... The "New" GOP. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Ted Cruz didn't wait long to mount a legislative response to the Supreme Court's ruling against Arizona's voter registration rule. An amendment submitted by the Texas senator on Monday afternoon to the Senate's immigration bill would 'permit states to require proof of citizenship for registration to vote in elections for federal office.' Cruz's measure would amend the National Voter Registration Act." ...

... The "New" GOP. Erica Werner of the AP: "A key committee in the Republican-led House is preparing to cast its first votes on immigration this year, on a tough enforcement-focused measure that Democrats and immigrant groups are protesting loudly.... The House enforcement bill, by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., would empower state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws, make passport and visa fraud into aggravated felonies subject to deportation, funnel money into building more detention centers, and crack down on immigrants suspected of posing dangers." ...

... The "New" GOP. Alexander Bolton of the Hill reports that as prep for his presidential bid, Li'l Randy has offered several amendments to gut Senate immigration reform legislation. No specific mention of alligators, moats or deadly electric fences. ...

     ... Wait, Wait, Leave That to John Thune. Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner: "The Senate Tuesday will vote on four amendments to the comprehensive immigration reform bill, including one that would require a double-layer, 700-mile fence along the southern border before any of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants could apply for green cards. The amendment by John Thune, R-S.D., would require construction of at least 350 miles of the fence before any illegal immigrants would be awarded legal status. The remaining 350 miles would have to be built for legalized immigrants to be able to apply for a green card." ...

... CW: How's that vow to "expand your base" going, guys?

Gubernatorial Race

Joann Kenen of Politico: "A former top Obama administration health official, Don Berwick, formally announced Monday that he is running for governor of Massachusetts. Berwick, a Democrat, is a physician and health policy expert who ran the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for President Barack Obama. But amid the heated politics of health reform, Republicans refused to confirm him to the position atop CMS. They said his comments praising Britain's health care system suggested he favored rationing, an interpretation he disputed."

News Ledes

Rolling Stone: "Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33."

AP: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced at a ceremony on Tuesday that his country's armed forces are taking over the lead for security nationwide from the U.S.-led NATO coalition. The handover of responsibility is a significant milestone in the nearly 12-year war and marks a turning point for American and NATO military forces, which will now move entirely into a supporting role. It also opens the way for their full withdrawal in 18 months." ...

... Reuters: "Afghanistan will send a team to Qatar for peace talks with the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition launched the final phase of the 12-year war with the last round of security transfers to Afghan forces."

... Related New York Times story here.

     ... New York Times Update: "The Taliban signaled a breakthrough in efforts to start Afghan peace negotiations on Tuesday, announcing the opening of a political office in Qatar and new readiness to talk with American and Afghan officials, who said in turn that they would travel to meet insurgent negotiators there within days. If the talks begin, they would be a significant step in peace efforts that have been locked in an impasse for nearly 18 months...."

AP: "In some of the biggest protests since the end of Brazil's 1964-85 dictatorship, demonstrations have spread across this continent-sized country and united people from all walks of life behind frustrations over poor transportation, health services, education and security despite a heavy tax burden. More than 100,000 people were in the streets Monday for largely peaceful protests in at least eight big cities."

Washington Post: "Several U.S. Naval Academy football players will soon face charges in connection with the alleged rape of a female midshipman at an off-campus party more than a year ago, officials at the elite service academy in Annapolis said Monday. The rape allegations, along with accusations that Navy investigators and academy brass had dragged their feet, exploded into public view just as Congress was debating changes to the way the military handles sexual assault cases."

Desperately Seeking Jimmy. AP: "The FBI saw enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain's tip to once again break out the digging equipment to search for the remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, last seen alive before a lunch meeting with two mobsters nearly 40 years ago. Tony Zerilli told his lawyer that Hoffa was buried beneath a concrete slab in a barn in a field in suburban Detroit in 1975. The barn no longer exists, and a full day of digging Monday turned up no sign of Hoffa. Federal agents were to resume the search Tuesday."