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INAUGURATION 2029

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

Constant Comments

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolvesEdward R. Murrow

Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns

I have a Bluesky account now. The URL is https://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.

Tuesday
Jan142014

Bill Keller's Bully Pulpit

Last week Emma Keller, the wife of New York Times columnist and former Times executive editor Bill Keller, wrote a post for the Guardian about Lisa Adams, a young Connecticut mother who has been tweeting for years about her breast cancer treatment and the ways she has been dealing with her illness. Adams' cancer metastasized in 2012, and she has been receiving palliative treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, where she has also assisted and advocated for research efforts. Emma Keller questioned Adams' approach. As Greg Miller of the Nation explains,

Emma Keller compares it to a 'Reality TV show.' She complains that Adams posted an update on her condition that morning and then had the nerve to post another one just hours later -- and wonders if her too-many tweets are 'a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies.' And she charges: 'You can put a "no visitors sign" on the door of your hospital room, but you welcome the world into your orbit and describe every last Fentanyl patch.'

Keller also asked, "Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI?" (too much information). In fact, as Hamilton Nolan of Gawker pointed out last week, Emma Keller tried to couch her criticisms as rhetorical questions.

Readers weren't impressed. Responses to Emma's post were understandably harsh, and the Guardian -- in a rare move -- deleted Keller's post with Lisa Adams' consent because, the editors wrote, the post was "inconsistent with The Guardian editorial code." Later the editors wrote that the post had "been removed pending investigation," perhaps because Emma Keller had published, without Adams' consent or knowledge, personal e-mails between the Adams and Keller. Keller apologized for this aspect of her post, which Daniel D'Addario of Salon characterizes as "a breach of ethics of a high order," but not for its content, which researcher Zeynep Tufekci writes, "also greatly misrepresented what was happening with Lisa Adams."

There is a certain sick irony in Emma Keller's complaints about Adams. Keller herself had a double mastectomy and wrote in September that not having to go through radiation and chemotherapy (as Adams has) filled her with guilt. Keller wrote in the September Guardian post,

What I've learnt over the past year or so is that those whose lives are upended by breast cancer are constantly hunting for information about how to live with it. The best way I can contribute is to help inform.

To that end, Emma Keller hosted three Guardian live chats. So breast cancer patients are "constantly hunting for information about how to live with it," and Adams is daily relating how she lives with her advanced-stage cancer. Adams' Twitter account has quite a following, so presumably many people appreciate the "information" she provides. But. As far as I can tell, Emma Keller thinks that she should be the arbiter of taste as to how people confront their illnesses, and she should be the conduit for dispensing just "the right amount" of information.

One supposes Emma Keller would be chastened by the criticisms of her post. Maybe she was and has simply declined to say so. But comes now husband Bill Keller to her defense -- and to the offense of Lisa Adams and most of the rest of us.

Bill Keller used his platform at the New York Times to contrast Lisa Adams' "fierce and very public cage fight" with his elderly "father-in-law's calm death.... His death seemed to me a humane and honorable alternative to the frantic medical trench warfare that often makes an expensive misery of death in America." By contrast, Bill Keller writes, "Adams is the standard-bearer for an approach to cancer that honors the warrior, that may raise false hopes, and that, implicitly, seems to peg patients like my father-in-law as failures." Keller mocks Adams, suggesting she is a foolish woman who, in a "morphine haze," can't face the fact that she is dying: "Lisa Adams is still alive, still blogging, and insists she is not dying, but the blog has become less about prolonging her survival and more about managing her excruciating pain. Her poetry has become darker.... I cannot imagine Lisa Adams reaching a point where resistance gives way to acceptance." He goes on to describe just how sick she is. He seems to be rooting for the Grim Reaper.

The responses to Bill and Emma Keller's attacks on Adams were swift. Greg Mitchell records some of the early tweeted responses. The Huffington Post has more. "... what's really undignified here is a married couple idly trashing a woman with Stage 4 cancer because they have a notion of what is the proper way to die," Daniel D'Addario writes.

They seem to believe that Ms Adams is being a diva, not just for tweeting about her illness but for her desire to struggle against the disease to the very end. They advise that she should go gently into this good night instead -- much as an elderly person who has reached the natural end of his life evidently. That these privileged jerks should even venture an opinion about how someone else should deal with a life-threatening illness reveals exactly what's so wrong with our elites. It really is all about them -- even how we should die. -- Digby

Zeynep Tufekci describes Bill Keller's post as

... what I can only call cancer-shaming: Don't tweet so much. He also pretty much calls on Adams to accept her fate 'with grace and courage,' quoting someone who 'perused' Adams' blog, directly implying that Lisa Adams is neither graceful nor courageous.... Both Kellers miss every point Lisa Adams makes -- and write articles unrelated to her actual experience, or the community around her.... Emma Keller's ... piece … is about Emma G. Keller's existential anxieties....

Bill Keller, on the other hand, has something he wants to say about how end of life is perhaps unwisely prolonged in small, painful increments with massive technological intervention in this country, so he projects this situation to Lisa Adams -- except that is not applicable in this case....

Bill Keller's piece is worse [than his wife's] in other ways because instead of trying to understand why his wife's piece drew such ire, he furthers the misunderstandings which are not just wrong, but are hurtful to a gravely ill person who is not yet dead, thank you very much. Also, Bill Keller has a huge platform so he should have spent more time actually researching the piece rather than what seems like an ill-advised rush to defend his wife.

Read Tufekci's whole post. He outlines everything the Kellers got wrong about Lisa Adams. Which is, well, everything.

Molly O'Reilly writes in Commonweal: Bill Keller "seems not to have thought for very long about how a mother with kids at home, however many there are, might legitimately approach her diagnosis differently than an elderly man like his father-in-law, whose choices Keller believes are dishonored by Adams's."

... the Keller family has written a bang-up pair of obituaries for her, if obituaries were think pieces about their writers. -- Hamilton Nolan

Margaret Sullivan, the Times' public editor, who emphasizes that it is "not my job" to critique columnists' opinions, nevertheless criticizes Keller for "issues ... of tone and sensitivity." Sullivan also cites proofs that Keller was unfamiliar with Adams' writings and of her personal history. Sullivan strongly implies Keller didn't know WTF he was writing about: "Mr. Keller's views here fall within what journalists would call 'fair comment' only to the extent that they are based on facts," she writes circumspectly.

Keller himself is not repentant for using, misrepresenting and abusing Adams. He suggests to Margaret Sullivan that many readers aren't very smart; they "misread my point, and some -- the most vociferous -- seem to believe that anything short of an unqualified 'right on, Lisa!' is inhumane or sacrilegious." To justify his attack, he pretends that Lisa Adams is a public figure, thus a legitimate target: "By living her disease in such a public way, by turning her hospital room into a classroom, she invites us to think about and debate some big, contentious issues." He denies that he and his wife "slammed" Adams.

Molly O'Reilly responds to Keller's self-defense,

Here I thought we'd have to wait till next week for Bill Keller to issue an 'I'm the real victim here, but I'm being big about it' nonresponse to his many critics, but Sullivan got it out of him before the day was out. Let's see, patting himself on the back for having 'touched a nerve'? Check. Smug disparagement of Twitter as a venue for response? Check. Why, it's almost as though he doesn't feel the least bit accountable to either readers or the actual facts.

Despite Keller's attempts to cast her as such, Lisa Adams is not a public figure. She is a private individual who has chosen to share her private thoughts. Her reasons for doing so are multiple. As Meghan O'Rourke of the New Yorker remarks, Lisa Adams "may be allowing us to overhear her decisions, but she is not asking us to callously debate them as if she were not still here."

That doesn't mean one can never ridicule or criticize private citizens. I do it occasionally, as when a bunch of wealthy people claimed "hardship" that they had to pay a little more for health insurance. You don't have to be a genius to see the difference between, say, wealthy whiners and people suffering genuine hardship. Neither must you be an excessively sensitive or thoughtful person to know it is heartless and cruel to disparage a person who is coping with debilitating illness. You don't have to approve of her methods of coping, but if you don't, you keep your mouth shut and wish her well. You offer what support you can. You let her know you're on her side. You offer encouragement, sympathy, empathy. That's not extraordinary; it's common decency. Almost everybody gets that and practices it.

A bully is a person who picks on people with less power than he. Bill Keller is a bully. He used Lisa Adams to promote his wife's work when he wrote approvingly of Emma's writing about Lisa Adams and linked to Emma's (now-deleted) post. Bill Keller misrepresented Lisa Adams' personal situation and her writings. And he abused her in other ways I've tried to outline above. That he did all this from the heights of his bully pulpit at perhaps the world's most prestigious big media outlet, that he did this to a private citizen who is struggling with illness and whom his wife had already decked, is unconscionable. I'll give Digby the last word:

Why would they think that using their perches at the top of the media food chain to bully some poor woman who is dealing with a deadly disease is even slightly appropriate? It's just bizarre.


Note
: Below, I am reposting earlier comments on Bill Keller's column. Thanks to Barbarossa for bringing Keller's column to our attention.

Monday
Jan132014

The Commentariat -- Jan, 14, 2014

Internal links removed.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: " House and Senate negotiators reached accord on a trillion-dollar spending plan that will finance the government through September, reversing some cuts to military veterans' pensions that were included in a broader budget agreement last month and defeating efforts to rein in President Obama's health care law. The hefty bill, filed in the House on Monday night, neutralized almost all of the 134 policy provisions that House Republicans had hoped to include...."

Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times: "Votes are set for Tuesday in the Senate on the jobless aid package as a small group of key Republican senators emerged as a potential voting block that could form a coalition for compromise with Democrats. The nine senators, who made a new proposal late Monday, have publicly split with those hard-line conservatives in their party who see jobless aid as a handout that provides a disincentive to work.... But Democrats were cool to the proposal because they want to guarantee benefits for a longer duration, perhaps a year. Moreover, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has been reluctant to open the debate to a freewheeling amendment process out of concern that Republicans will offer partisan proposals on Obamacare or other topics...."

Bad News for the GOP Christie Defense. Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "F.B.I. investigators do not believe Internal Revenue Service officials committed crimes in the unusually heavy scrutiny of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, a law enforcement official said Monday.... I.R.S. documents show the agency gave the same scrutiny to some liberal groups, using the key words 'Progressive' and 'Occupy.' The news that criminal charges are unlikely is not expected to stop the debate over whether politics had motivated the I.R.S. scrutiny." CW: Because Darrell Issa has never let facts get in the way of a righteous witch hunt.

Bad News for Presidential Power. Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "Seeming a bit troubled about allowing the Senate to have an on-off switch on the president's power to temporarily fill vacant government posts, the Supreme Court on Monday indicated that it may yet allow just that. Even some of the Justices whose votes the government almost certainly needs to salvage an important presidential power were more than skeptical."

Michael Shear & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "People signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's federal and state marketplaces tend to be older and potentially less healthy, officials said Monday, a demographic mix that could threaten the law's economic underpinnings and cause premiums to rise in the future if the pattern persists." ...

... Alex Wayne & Mike Dorning or Bloomberg News: "The U.S. government said it would ramp up Obamacare outreach in 25 cities to lure younger people to the program after a report showed about 70 percent of the initial customers are 35 years of age or older."

Ana Marie Cox of the Guardian: The West Virginia chemical spill is "likely a bigger scandal than Bridgegate.... Both are environmental policy stories. And they both speak to the costs of letting shortsighted, local economy goals trump more global concerns. The traffic on the George Washington Bridge is, in part, as bad as it is because of the antiquated rail service between New York and New Jersey. The system needs the exact sort of overhaul that Christie scuttled as one of his first acts in office.... One sure way to foil traffic vigilantes of the future, after all, would be to deny them a hostage." ...

... Erica Martinson of Politico: "The coal-processing chemical that cut off the water supply to 300,000 West Virginians is one of tens of thousands of potentially hazardous substances that have fallen through a decades-old loophole in federal regulations, leaving authorities with little information on what dangers it poses.... The problem is that there is 'no publicly available health and safety information for the vast majority of chemicals on the market,' said Andy Igrejas, director of advocacy group Safer Chemicals Healthy Families. 'And that's clearly the case with this spill.'”

Mark Landler & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "With the United States and Iran about to embark on a critical phase of nuclear talks, President Obama is waging an intense rear-guard action to prevent Senate Democrats from supporting strict new sanctions that could upend his diplomatic efforts. Sponsors of the bill, which would aim to drive Iran's oil exports down to zero, have secured the backing of 59 senators, putting them within striking distance of a two-thirds majority that could override Mr. Obama's threatened veto. Republicans overwhelmingly support the bill. So far 16 Democrats have broken with the president, and the bill's sponsors hope to get more." ...

... USA Today Editors: The "Iran sanctions bill makes no sense. Passing it virtually guarantees ... a quick path to war.... It expresses 'the sense of Congress' that if Israel decides to attack Iran, the United States should provide military support. The provision doesn't quite outsource American war decisions to Israel; Congress would still need a second vote to turn its dubious 'sense' into action. But the implication is hard to miss."

Local News

Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "... the day [Jersey City Mayor Steven] Fulop, a Democrat, relayed word that he could not endorse the governor..., Mr. Christie's commissioners themselves called to cancel [meetings with Mayor Fulop] -- most within the space of an hour -- leaving Jersey City needing to fill its budget without money from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, its requests for help with Hurricane Sandy recovery, transportation and other issues falling on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the Democratic mayor of Harrison, who endorsed Mr. Christie, got $250 million in Port Authority money for a new transit station. The mayor of Union City, another Democratic endorser, got an increase in state aid when bigger cities were being cut off, and $3 million in Port Authority money even though the authority does not operate there. The Democratic county executive in Essex County, who brought along other mayors and black pastors with his endorsement of Mr. Christie, got $7 million in Port Authority money for a park, $4 million in state aid for a vocational school, and personal assistance from Mr. Christie...." ...

... Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record: "The prosecutor in Mercer County [incl. Trenton, N.J.] said Monday he is weighing whether to level a misdemeanor charge against a former Port Authority executive [David Wildstein] who clammed up at a legislative hearing in Trenton last week." ...

... Darryl Isherwood of NJ.com: "A new theory emerged this weekend on a possible target of the lane diversions at the George Washington Bridge that have spiraled into a full blown scandal. The theory, first postulated by MSNBC host Steve Kornacki, involves a massive development project in the heart of Fort Lee that sits quite literally in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge.... By diverting - or threatening to divert- those lanes, the value of the property and the burgeoning development would plummet.... The theory is bolstered by Christie himself who during a Dec. 2 press conference railed against the existence of the three dedicated local lanes in Fort Lee...." Both Chris Hayes & Rachel Maddow devoted segments of their shows last night to Kornacki's theory. ...

... George Packer of the New Yorker: "Christie ... is reminiscent of the President [Nixon] whose petty hatefulness destroyed him -- which is why, as NBC's newscaster said when signing off on an early report on that long-ago burglary, I don't think we've heard the last of this."

... Star-Ledger Editors: "Somehow, the right's response to Chris Christie's still-breaking Bridgegate scandal has devolved into this: Why are you writing about New Jersey traffic jams, because Benghazi!" The editors explain why one of these things -- Bridgegate -- is not like the others.


Mitt Romney
is a better dancer than Karl Rove:

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, "the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has written a rambling, deeply religious manifesto that suggests Muslims should not use violence to spread Islam -- a sharp departure from his earlier boasts of waging violent jihad against the U.S. and other non-Muslim nations."

Reuters: "A 12-year-old boy armed with a shotgun opened fire at a middle school in New Mexico on Tuesday, seriously wounding two students before a staff member persuaded him to put down the firearm, authorities said. The shooting at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell took place in a gym where students had gathered to stay warm from the frigid weather outside before the start of class, Governor Susana Martinez told reporters."

New York Times: "A State Department spokeswoman expressed outrage on Tuesday over a news report in which Israel's defense minister was said to have dismissed Secretary of State John Kerry's Middle East peace push as naïve and messianic."

New York Times: "Egyptians trundled to the polls on Tuesday for the third referendum in three years to approve a new constitution, this time to validate the military ouster of their first fairly elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Sunday
Jan122014

The Commentariat -- Jan, 13, 2014

Internal links removed.

Rubio & Ryan Are No Robin Hoods. Paul Krugman: "It's not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast additional harm if they had won the 2012 election. Moreover, G.O.P. harshness toward the less fortunate isn't just a matter of spite (although that's part of it); it's deeply rooted in the party's ideology, which is why recent speeches by leading Republicans declaring that they do too care about the poor have been almost completely devoid of policy specifics."

** Profs. Jason Stanley & Vesla Weaver in a New York Times op-ed: "... the practical reality of the criminal justice system in the United States is far from colorblind. The evidence suggests that the criminal justice system applies in a radically unbalanced way, placing disproportionate attention on our fellow black citizens. The United States has a legacy of enslavement followed by forced servitude of its black population. The threat that the political ideals of our country veil an underlying reality of racial democracy is therefore particularly disturbing. Starting in the 1970s, the United States has witnessed a drastic increase in the rate of black imprisonment, both absolutely and relative to whites."

Mark Sherman of the AP: The Supreme Court "is hearing arguments Monday in a politically charged dispute that also is the first in the nation's history to explore the meaning of a provision of the Constitution known as the recess appointments clause. Under the provision, the president may make temporary appointments to positions that otherwise require confirmation by the Senate, but only when the Senate is in recess. The court battle is an outgrowth of the increasing partisanship and political stalemate that have been hallmarks of Washington over the past 20 years, and especially since Obama took office in 2009." For context, see also the piece by Peter Shane linked in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... David Hockings of Roll Call: "The stakes for Senate Republicans are so high that the court gave them 15 minutes of argument time. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be on hand as their case is presented by Miguel Estrada. (His nomination by President George W. Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals failed to advance during seven cloture votes in 2003...) ... Legal scholars are salivating over the outcome of what they say is the most important separation of powers case in at least two decades. That's because it not only reflects the most basic argument about constitutional law (whether strict constructionist originalism is most important, or applying precedent and common sense to real world situations) but also could have the effect of theoretically invalidating thousands of decisions by dozens of recess appointees dating back more than 200 years. But for senators expecting to be around next year, it's a clear-cut case of power politics."

Greg Miller & Adam Goldman of the Washington Post: "As general counsel to the director of national intelligence, [Robert] Litt has assumed an unusually high-profile role in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks, serving as the point person in defending the massive surveillance programs to Congress and the public. He has defended spy agencies aggressively in dozens of congressional hearings and other settings. He has battled news organizations to keep some Snowden material out of news reports and fired off a steady stream of ­e-mails accusing reporters of sloppy or sensationalized work. He has also alienated some key lawmakers, including Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who for the past six months has effectively banned Litt from appearing before the panel, even behind closed doors." ...

... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker compares the break-in of & theft of documents from the Media, Pennsylvania, FBI field office in 1971 & Edward Snowden's theft of NSA documents.

Michael Gordon & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "Iran and a group of six world powers completed a deal on Sunday that will temporarily freeze much of Tehran's nuclear program starting next Monday in exchange for limited relief from Western economic sanctions. The main elements of the deal, which is to last for six months, were announced in November. But its implementation was delayed as negotiators worked out technical details. The agreement faced opposition from Iranian hard-liners and Israeli leaders, as well as heavy criticism from some American lawmakers, who have threatened to approve further sanctions despite President Obama's promise of a veto."

Andrew Bacevich in the Los Angeles Times: "The truth is something few people in the national security establishment are willing to confront: Confusing capability with utility, the United States knows how to start wars but has seemingly forgotten how to conclude them.... As a consequence, instead of promoting stability -- perhaps the paramount U.S. interest not only in the Islamic world but also globally -- Washington's penchant for armed intervention since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11, has tended to encourage just the opposite.... Fundamentally, a pronounced infatuation with armed might has led senior civilian officials, regardless of party, and senior military leaders, regardless of service, to misunderstand and misapply the military instrument." ...

... Robert Gates talks to CBS "News"'s Rita Braver about his new memoir:

... Gates tells NBC's Matt Lauer that he's disappointed reporters & pundits are accurately quoting the digs he made about top government officials. CW: Really, people, limit your reviews to citing the parts of the book where I depict myself, Bob Gates, as a genuine hero, especially as compared to the lowlifes & know-nothings I had to work with. ...

... Steve Inskeep of NPR interviewed Gates at some length. The transcript is here. The audio is here.

Presidential Election 2008

Politico Magazine publishes an excerpt of Johnathan Allen & Amie Parnes' forthcoming book on Hillary Clinton. Here they dish on Bill & Hillary Clinton's "hit list" of those who didn't but should have helped Hillary in 2008. Aides assigned each lawmaker on the list a number, based on the perceived notion of how much they helped or didn't help the Clintons.

Local News

Steven Yaccino of the New York Times: "While Republican-majority legislatures across the country are easing restrictions on gun owners, few states are putting more pressure on municipalities right now than Kansas. The new law has forced some local leaders to weigh policy conviction against fiscal pragmatism in a choice that critics say was flawed from the start: Open vulnerable locations to concealed side arms or stretch meager budgets to cover the extra security measures." Thanks to contributor Whyte O. for the link.

Coral Davenport & Ashley Southall of the New York Times: "Last week's major chemical spill into West Virginia's Elk River, which cut off water to more than 300,000 people, came in a state with a long and troubled history of regulating the coal and chemical companies that form the heart of its economy.... Critics say the problems are widespread in a state where the coal and chemical industries, which drive much of West Virginia's economy and are powerful forces in the state's politics, have long pushed back against tight federal health, safety and environmental controls."

Chris Frates of CNN: "CNN has learned that federal officials are investigating whether Christie improperly used [Hurricane Sandy] relief funds to produce tourism ads that starred him and his family. The news couldn't come at a worse time for the scandal-plagued Republican.... As bad as the bridge scandal is for Christie, if investigators find he improperly spent Sandy funds, it could get far worse, tarnishing the signature achievement that has made him a serious contender for the White House." ...

... N. R. Kleinfield of the New York Times writes a useful overview narrative of the George Washington Bridge lane closings scandalette. ...

... Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record: New Jersey "Assemblyman John Wisniewski said he plans to issue subpoenas demanding documents from the governor's former deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly and spokesman Michael Drewniak, along with other aides whose names surfaced last week in documents related to the lane closures...." ...

... Margaret Hartmann of New York: More New Jersey Democratic mayors suspect that Christie's endorsement "requests" came with strings & threats. ...

... Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News: "Prominent Republicans hit the Sunday morning talk show circuit to defend New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, comparing the possible 2016 presidential hopeful's handling of the burgeoning bridge scandal to President Barack Obama's response to the Benghazi terror attack and the IRS' targeting of conservative groups. 'Chris Christie has been totally open here,' Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said on NBC's 'Meet The Press' Sunday." CW: Sorry, Reince, we ain't buying that bridge. ...

... David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Republican strategist Karl Rove asserted on Sunday that New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie's (R) handling of the George Washington Bridge Scandal showed he had the right qualities to be president of the United States." ...

... How did President Obama not know about the IRS targeting right wing groups? ... This is what happens in political operations. I mean, people get wrong messages. It happens all the time. It happened, again, I go back to the IRS scandal. The people in the IRS though President Obama wanted them to do this. President Obama didn't want them to do this. But they got the sense because of that culture that they were supposed to target right wing groups. It was totally wrong. -- Rudy 9/11 Giuliani on ABC News's "This Week"

Of course, crack host Martha Raddatz let Giuliani get away with mischaracterizing the IRS probes, which were directed at both left- and right-leaning fake "social welfare" groups, not to mention that President Obama doesn't work out of the Cincinnati IRS office. -- Constant Weader

As you can see, the word has gone forth that the best way to deal with the Christie scandal is to whine and blubber about the bogus IRS scandal and Benghazi! -- digby

... Charles Pierce has a rundown of Sunday morning shows, where the deal is that congenial hosts welcome lying politicians & pundits with the apparent understanding that prevarication & inapt analogies will ever go unchallenged. ...

... AND David Brooks defended Christie on Friday: "If they're going to vote for Christie, they don't want a charmer. They want a big bully. And this will not hurt him, I think.... people get -- pick the rough guy when they're really fed up":

... Driftglass: "Should Christie somehow survive thanks to extraordinary political life-support measures taken by Mr. Brooks, Mark Halperin, David Gregory, Joe Scarborough and the rest of the Beltway Both Sider monkey-house, Mr. Brooks will no doubt very modestly and humbly call back to this moment as evidence of his boldly contrarian political sagacity." ...

... E. J. Dionne: "Even assuming that Christie's disavowal of complicity holds up, he faces a long-term challenge in laying this story to rest. History suggests that beating back a scandal requires one or more of these assets: (1) a strong partisan or ideological base; (2) overreach by your adversaries; or (3) a charge that doesn't fit people’s perceptions of you. Christie has trouble on all three fronts."

Lawless Lawmakers. Jordan Shapiro of the AP: "Having failed in an earlier effort to bar federal agents from enforcing gun regulations in Missouri, conservative lawmakers are trying a new tack this year: banding together with other like-minded states to defy certain federal laws at the same time. Supporters believe it will be more difficult for the federal government to shrug off such statutes if more states act together. Missouri's latest proposal, introduced this past week, would attempt to nullify certain federal gun control regulations from being enforced in the state and subject law enforcement officers to criminal and civil penalties for carrying out such policies. The state's Republican-led Legislature came one vote shy of overriding Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon's veto of such a measure last year. This year's bill adds a new twist, delaying the effective date for several years to allow time for other states to join the cause."

Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "A state assemblyman from western New York, Dennis H. Gabryszak, said on Sunday that he would step down amid mounting accusations that he sexually harassed women who worked in his office." The Buffalo News story is here. ...

... Margaret Hartmann: "Gabryszak didn't apologize in his statement.... Previous ethics investigations were dropped after the Assembly member stepped down, and the Daily News notes that after 32 years of government service, Gabryszak can collect a pension estimated to be worth $53,000 a year or more."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "On Monday, a court-martial is scheduled to begin for a Navy supervisor in connection with the deaths of [two Navy scuba divers] ... on Feb. 26 in the man-made pond at the Army's test center, in Aberdeen, Md."

New York Times: "Ariel Sharon, Israel's 11th prime minister, was eulogized on Monday as a fighter and pragmatic politician whose life was intertwined with the land of Israel whose security he defended relentlessly."

Washington Post: "After years of failing to heed U.S. advice to broaden his outreach to Iraq’s Sunni minority and to accept more U.S. counterterrorism assistance, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now appears ready to listen, according to senior Obama administration officials."

Reuters: "Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Moscow on Tuesday, the Kremlin said on Monday, and a diplomatic source said they were likely to sign a nuclear cooperation deal."