The Commentariat -- May 16, 2013

Your Daily Scandal Sheet

Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "It was often said of Bill Clinton that he was blessed in his enemies, and to a degree the same may be true of Barack Obama." ...

... Gail Collins: "It's been quite a week, what with the I.R.S. scandal, the Benghazi controversy and revelations about the Justice Department's sweep of The Associated Press's phone records. Plus, the Russians came up with an alleged American spy in a bad wig who they said was caught carrying a compass, an atlas of Moscow and a ridiculous traitor-recruitment letter." ...

... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "President Obama announced Wednesday night that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service had been ousted after disclosures that the agency gave special scrutiny to conservative groups. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., meanwhile, warned top I.R.S. officials that a Justice Department inquiry would examine any false statements to see if they constituted a crime. Speaking in the White House's formal East Room, Mr. Obama said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew had asked for and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner, Steven Miller, who as deputy commissioner was aware of the agency's efforts to demand more information from conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status in early 2012.... Mr. Holder's warning came as lawmakers stated unequivocally that I.R.S. officials had lied to them in failing to disclose the added screening despite being pressed repeatedly."

... Michael Hiltzig of the Los Angeles Times writes what for me is the definitive analysis of the IRS "scandal." I don't see why everybody else is having so much trouble with this. ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos gets it: "... while the politics is heating up, some important context is emerging, like the fact that liberal groups were targeted as well, and in fact the only group to have its application denied was a liberal group." ...

... David Kay Johnston of the Columbia Journalism Review makes several salient points., including about how inaccurate some news reporting has been (New York Times). ...

... Eric Holder tells Darrell Issa that the way he conducts himself is "inappropriate" and "shameful":

... Igor Bobic of TPM: "Attorney General Eric Holder testified Wednesday that his recusal from a criminal investigation into an administration leak of classified information last year was not done in writing." CW: sounds a little like a convenient, retroactive recusal. ...

... Dana Milbank: "Recusal is no excuse." ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Under fire over the Justice Department's use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential.... It is not clear whether such a law would have changed the outcome of the subpoena involving The A.P." ...

... Kevin Drum: "In 2010, such legislation was introduced, and died when it was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate. More generally, media organizations have been lobbying for a federal shield law for decades, and Congress has been resolutely unwilling to pass one.... Politically, Obama is basically daring Republicans to put their money where their mouths are. You want to make the DOJ leak investigation into an issue of executive overreach? Fine. Then rein it in. Pass a law making it clear what DOJ can and can't do in leak investigations."

Yeah, I Knew It: It's All David Petraeus's Fault. Michael Shear & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "E-mails released by the White House on Wednesday revealed a fierce internal jostling over the government's official talking points in the aftermath of last September's attacks in Benghazi, Libya, not only between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, but at the highest levels of the C.I.A. The 100 pages of e-mails showed a disagreement between David H. Petraeus, then the director of the C.I.A., and his deputy, Michael J. Morrell, over how much to disclose in the talking points, which were used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in television appearances days after the attacks.... The White House released the e-mails to reporters after Republicans seized on snippets of the correspondence that became public on Friday to suggest that President Obama's national security staff had been complicit in trying to alter the talking points for political reasons. While the e-mails portrayed White House officials as being sensitive to the concerns of the State Department, they suggest Mr. Obama's aides mostly mediated a bureaucratic tug-of-war between the State Department and the C.I.A." Here are the e-mails. Now you too can release snippets to suit your own purposes. ...

... ** Greg Sargent publishes an excellent response to the Benghazi hysteria from Tommy Vietor, former "spokesman for the National Security Council. He was intimately involved in coordinating the interagency debate over what to say publicly about the attacks." One thing Vietor explains is why the White House had its finger in the pie in the first place -- um, it's the law -- the law which of course Congress passed. ...

... Ain't Democracy Great? Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "PPP's newest national poll finds that Republicans aren't getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton's +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March. ... 41% [of Republicans] say they consider [Benghazi] to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment.... One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don't actually know where it is. 10% think it's in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess." By contrast, in a PPP survey conducted in August 1998, 87% who said they considered the Monica Lewinsky affair the biggest political scandal in American history were able to pinpoint the location of President Clinton's penis. Another 10% pointed to Clinton's head (also a correct answer). Only 3% were not sure. PPP survey via Charles Pierce.

Business as Usual. Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators have agreed to soften a rule intended to rein in the banking industry's domination of a risky market. The changes to the rule, which will be announced on Thursday, could effectively empower a few big banks to continue controlling the derivatives market, a main culprit in the financial crisis.... Just five banks hold more than 90 percent of all derivatives contracts." CW: Republicans on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission naturally wanted to water down the regs. The deciding vote came from a Democratic commissioner who went along with the Republican commissioners & the banks: his name is Mark Wetjen, & before he got his current sinecure, he was a staffer for Harry Reid. Read the full article; it's going to get worse when commission chairman Gary Gensler, whose term is up, leaves.

Harry Reid Is Still Dithering. Brian Beutler of TPM: "If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to change the Senate filibuster rules -- either broadly, or more narrowly to fast track presidential nominees -- he'll need a strong case. Part of that case will rest on whether Republicans make good on their threat to block confirmation of Richard Cordray -- President Obama's non-controversial nominee to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- unless and until Democrats agree to weaken his agency's regulatory power.To that end, he'll hold a vote on Cordray's nomination next week."

Paul Krugman on the "debt crisis" that isn't: "To the millions of Americans who are out of work and may never get another job thanks to premature fiscal austerity, the VSPs would like to say, 'oopsies!' ... Correspondents tell me that at VSP Central, aka The Washington Post -- where deficit panic has pervaded the news pages as well as the opinion section -- the stunning new [CBO] deficit report is buried as a small item deep inside the paper. And Bowles and Simpson, who are now 26 months into their prediction of fiscal crisis within two years, will continue to be treated as revered gurus." CW: I caught a bit of NPR coverage of the new CBO numbers. I was encouraged that they had Dean Baker on to explain the facts; then -- at their he-said/she-said best -- they had Pete Peterson's No. 1 hackess (isn't that the term for a girl hack?) on to explain why the debt is still a MAJOR PROBLEM which can only be resolved by killing old people. Or something.

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "On Thursday, Mr. Obama will meet with senior Pentagon officials to discuss legislative responses to the sexual assault crisis. Also on Thursday, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, the New York Democrat who has made this her signature issue this year, will introduce legislation that would give military prosecutors rather than commanders the power to decide which sexual assault cases to try. Ms. Gillibrand's goals are to increase the number of people who report crimes without fear of retaliation and to give legal power to military prosecutors. "

In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat. If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House. New York and California are for the foreseeable future unalterably Democrat. If Texas turns bright blue, the Electoral College math is simple.... The Republican Party would cease to exist. We would become like the Whig Party. Our kids and grandkids would study how this used to be a national political party. 'They had Conventions, they nominated Presidential candidates. They don't exist anymore.' -- Ted Cruz. Yup, that Ted Cruz. ...

... Thomas Edsall, in the New York Times: "A group of Democratic operatives ... is determined to bring Texas back into the Democratic column. [The operation,] Battleground Texas, has put the fear of God into the Texas Republican Party."

Ken Ward, Jr., of the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette: "Today's Gazette story by Kate White about the Monday explosion that injured two workers at the Airgas facility in Putnam County included this bit of news: 'Members of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration arrived at the scene.' As best I can tell, this is the first time anyone from OSHA has ever visited this particular facility. OSHA data includes no record of the agency ever inspecting the site.... Unlike the nation's coal mines, other workplaces are not required to be inspected periodically by federal safety officials.... As the AFL-CIO explained in its latest Death on the Job report, at the current rate, it would take OSHA's small office in West Virginia -- they've got just 8 inspectors -- more than 100 years to inspect every workplace in the state." CW: Via Charles Pierce. Bear in mind, OSHA ignores these dangerous workplaces not because OSHA inspectors are lazy bureaucrats but because Congress limits the agency's funding (8 inspectors in the whole state of West Virginia). Employers are free to violate common-sense safety standards because that's the way Congress wants it.

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: Mark Sanford is back in Congress.

Maureen Dowd Dislikes Women & Democrats. I didn't link MoDo's column yesterday because I thought it was stupid. Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog does a nice job of explaining why.

The Commentariat -- May 15, 2013

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "... the government’s annual deficit is shrinking far faster than anyone in Washington expected, and perhaps even faster than many economists think is advisable for the health of the economy. That is the thrust of a new report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimating that the deficit for this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, will fall to about $642 billion, or 4 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, about $200 billion lower than the agency estimated just three months ago." ...

... Steve Benen: "Thanks in large part to higher taxes on the wealthy, which Republicans said would not reduce the deficit, deficit reduction is picking up speed at a pace few could have predicted. We're now looking at over $400 billion in deficit reduction in just one year, and about $800 billion in deficit reduction since President Obama took office.... It's fair to say this problem has been largely fixed.... Let's also not forget that Republican talking points on fiscal policy have effectively been left in tatters, and every conservative political figure who's declared 'Socialist Obama is turning America into Greece!' looks incredibly foolish right now." ...

... Paul Krugman in the New York Review of Books on "how the case for austerity has crumbled." A long piece, and review material for Krugman readers.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "An inspector general's report issued Tuesday blamed ineffective Internal Revenue Service management in the failure to stop employees from singling out conservative groups for added scrutiny. Congressional aides, meanwhile, sought to determine whether the Obama administration's knowledge of the effort extended beyond the I.R.S.... The report by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration offered new details on the scope and duration of the I.R.S. targeting effort.... The I.R.S. headquarters in Washington was far more involved in the effort than initially portrayed.... The inspector general did seem to back up the Obama administration's portrayal of a roguelike operation in Cincinnati flouting the wishes of senior I.R.S. officials in Washington." The IG report is here. ...

... Charles Pierce: "Now, because of the enforced toothlessness of the FEC, we have the IRS tasked de facto with the job of regulating campaign spending, which is a bad idea in theory and now looks even worse in practice." (CW: I linked the Confessore piece, on which Pierce comments, here yesterday.) ...

... Rick Hasen of Slate: "This is all about the failure of Congress to require the disclosure of donors who bankroll groups designed to influence elections.... Congress should set clear rules to require any entity, regardless of its tax status, to disclose donors whose money pays for federal election ads." CW: so, um, Republicans in Congress are outraged that they -- and Supreme Court conservatives -- set up the IRS for a massive fail, & the IRS (supposedly) obliged.

Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post: "Republicans Are Mad that DOJ Carried Out Probe of Media that They Demanded Last Year." ...

... Washington Post Editors are outraged at Justice's sweep of the AP's phone records, natch, but they too add, "The investigation of AP began in response to Republican outrage about the purported fact that White House officials were leaking secret information and spinning it to make President Obama look good for reelection purposes. In response, the Obama administration launched the present investigation, on top of the six (mostly unsuccessful) ones it had attempted previously -- which, judging on costs and benefits visible to date, was probably six too many." ...

... Michael Crowley & Zeke Miller of Time: "The New GOP Case against Obama: He's Cheney!" ...

... New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers." ...

... Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money: "The subpoena of phone records is probably legal. I wouldn't say anything definitive until we know all the details, but under existing law the First Amendment doesn't provide a shield for journalists and Congress hasn't created a statutory shield. A subpoena, unlike a search warrant, doesn't require judicial approval." ...

... Alex Pareene of Salon: "The real scandal is, it was probably all legal." ...

... Jeff Toobin piles on: "It's what society chooses not to punish that tells us most about the prevailing ethical standards of the time. Campaign finance operates by shaky, or even nonexistent, rules, and powerful players game the system with impunity. A handful of I.R.S. employees saw this and tried, in a small way, to impose some small sense of order. For that, they'll likely be ushered into bureaucratic oblivion."

Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday evening ordered the armed services to immediately 're-train, re-credential and re-screen' tens of thousands of military recruiters and sexual-assault prevention officers as the revelation of another sex-crime scandal rocked the Pentagon. Hagel's order came in response to the Army's disclosure on Tuesday that a sergeant first class responsible for handling sexual assault cases at Fort Hood, Tex., had been placed under criminal investigation over allegations of abusive sexual contact and other related offenses. The Army investigation comes just 10 days after a lieutenant colonel in charge of the Air Force's sexual assault programs was arrested in Arlington County on charges that he groped and battered a woman in a parking lot. That incident, along with fresh statistics showing that sex crimes have become endemic in the military, sparked a furious response from lawmakers on Capitol Hill and President Obama." ...

... AP: "A soldier assigned to coordinate a sexual assault prevention program in Texas is under investigation for 'abusive sexual contact' and other alleged misconduct and has been suspended from his duties, the Army announced Tuesday.... The Army said a sergeant first class, whose name was not released, is accused of pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates. He is being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command. No charges have been filed."...

... Craig Whitlock: "Military recruiters across the country have been caught in a string of sex-crime scandals over the past year, exposing another long-standing problem for the Defense Department as it grapples with a crisis of sexual assault in the ranks. In Alaska, law enforcement officials are fuming after a military jury this month convicted a Marine Corps recruiter of first-degree sexual assault in the rape of a 23-year-old female civilian but did not sentence him to prison. In Texas, an Air Force recruiter will face a military court next month on charges of rape, forcible sodomy and other crimes involving 18 young women he tried to enlist over a three-year period. Air Force officials have described the case as perhaps the worst involving one of its recruiters. In Maryland, Army officials are puzzling over a murder-suicide last month, when a staff sergeant, Adam Arndt, killed himself after he fatally shot Michelle Miller, a 17-year-old Germantown girl whom he had been recruiting for the Army Reserve. Officials suspect the two were romantically involved, something expressly forbidden by military rules."

Benghazzzzi! Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "There was a cover-up in Watergate, and people went to jail for it. There was a cover-up in Iran-Contra -- Oliver North, currently appearing on Fox News to express outrage at the Obama administration, perjured himself before Congress and shredded incriminating White House documents to hide the Reagan administration's illegal and morally abhorrent scheme. That's a cover-up. Editing talking points? Not even close."

Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Democrats frustrated with the GOP's blocking of a string of President Obama's nominees are seriously weighing a controversial tactic known as the 'nuclear option.' The option -- which would involve Democrats changing Senate rules through a majority vote to prevent the GOP from using the 60-vote filibuster to block nominations -- was raised during a private meeting Wednesday involving about 25 Democratic senators and a group of labor leaders."

Stanley Fish tries to figure out if the NRA's advocacy for armed rebellion against tyrants (Obama) is maybe unamerican. His answer: yes and no. If you think you are smarter than a celebrated intellectual, you are.

Wherein Pablo Pantoja, the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, becomes a Democrat. Thank you, Jim DeMint, for reaching out. Via Charles Pierce.

AND in More First Amendment Controversies -- Thomas Jefferson, Founding Nazi. Or something. Thanks to Kate M.:

... Mr. Irkfart there might like to know that one advocate for separation of church & state was his imaginary friend Jesus. (Mark 12:17) Another adherent to this view -- Martin Luther: "God has ordained the two governments: the spiritual, which by the Holy Spirit under Christ makes Christians and pious people; and the secular, which restrains the unchristian and wicked so that they are obliged to keep the peace outwardly." Jefferson might have got his idea from Rhode Island founder Roger Williams: "When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world, God hathe ever broke down the wall it selfe, removed the Candlestick, & and made his Garden a Wildernesse." But Jefferson more likely relied on the thinking of John Locke -- "I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other," and/or Denis Diderot -- "The distance between the throne and the altar can never be too great." When the U.S. Supreme Court (in 1947) first embraced the phrase "separation of church & state," they cited Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. Oh, and Hitler? Never said it. In short, Mr. Irkfart is an idiot (although when caught, he did walk back his ridiculous "history lesson," suggesting it was a metaphor [or something]). But you knew that.

Local News

Patrick Condon of the AP: Minnesota "Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday signed a bill making gay marriage legal in Minnesota, the 12th state to take the step, as thousands of onlookers cheered."

New York Times Editors: Florida's "indisputably defective death penalty system is made more horrifying by attempts to rush inmates to execution. There is a strong chance that [a current death-row inmate] will become the 25th death-row inmate exonerated in Florida since it reinstated capital punishment in 1973. More death-row inmates have been exonerated in Florida than in any state." Gov. Rick Scott should veto "the Timely Justice Act, a grotesquely named bill passed by the Florida legislature ... [which] would require a governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court, and the state would be required to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant."

Thank You, "Low-Level" IRS Agents

With outrage erupting from every corner, pundits & politicians seem to be missing the point of the IRS exercise: to ferret out applicant organizations which had primarily political agendae & would therefore be ineligible for the tax-exempt status for which they were applying. Fox News reported,

The internal IG timeline shows ... that list of criteria drastically expanding.... It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to 'make America a better place to live.' It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of 'how the country is being run.' By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in 'limiting/expanding government,' education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.

I don't see how an organization interested in "expanding government" or in "social economic reform" or in "making America a better place to live" is necessarily conservative.

In fact, "The IRS says that 300 groups were set aside for extra review. About 75 of them had the words 'tea party' or 'patriot.'" That is, about 25 percent of the groups who received closer scrutiny identified themselves as tea party or "patriot" groups. Since the tea party was expanding rapidly during the time frame in question, it is possible that the IRS under-"targeted" conservative groups.

The so-called scandal does not appear to be an effort to "intimidate political groups," as everyone is braying, but rather an effort to separate true charitable groups from political organizations which might have been trying to obtain undeserved tax-exempt status.

Maybe all these Congressional investigations will reveal some politically-motivated scheme. But right now I don't see any IRS intimidation. I see IRS employees following the law and protecting the government -- and the honest taxpaying public -- from potential tax cheats. I see IRS agents doing their jobs.