The Commentariat -- April 9, 2013

Obama 2.0. Peter Schroeder of the Hill: "The Senate unanimously approved Mary Jo White to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday.... The only lawmaker to oppose her nomination at any step in the process was Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who voted against her when she appeared before the Senate Banking Committee but did not block the consent request on the Senate floor."

Peter Applebome & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "In an impassioned speech that at times took on the tone of a campaign rally, Mr. Obama told an audience of 3,100 at the University of Hartford that he came to Connecticut to ensure that the deaths in the school in Newtown would not recede and to remind Americans how important their voice is as the gun debates unfold":

... MEANWHILE, Rachel Weiner & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plans to join a Republican filibuster of legislation aimed at curbing gun violence should Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) bring it to the floor." CW: Yo, Harry: blow up the filibuster. ...

... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, one of the nation's most committed and deep-pocketed gun-control proponents, is ratcheting up pressure on lawmakers by launching a new system to grade them based on their votes and statements on gun issues. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the nonprofit group financed by Bloomberg (I), will unveil a scoring system Tuesday to award lawmakers grades of A through F, much like the National Rifle Association, which has derived much of its power by deploying letter rankings against politicians at election time." ...

... Greg Sargent on why Republicans get away with opposing background checks when 90 percent of Americans favor them: "If more voters understood that Republican officials are opposed to expanding background checks to plug a hole in existing law -- even though most of those officials would probably not go so far as to say that the current background check system is a violation of Second Amendment rights -- it would be much harder to ground that opposition in the Second Amendment. But since many don't know precisely what it is Republicans are opposing, it's easy for Republican officials to keep invoking general pieties about the Constitution." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... AND Sargent highlights a nugget from this op-ed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in the Virginian-Pilot: "There are those who believe the National Rifle Association and its allies are so powerful that no legislation will pass. But the power of the organization's leadership is vastly overrated. I've run three statewide races in the NRA's home state. Its leadership campaigned vigorously against me each time, spending nearly $800,000 against me in my 2012 Senate race. I won all my races anyway."

Speaking of Mitch McConnell, as we were above, David Corn of Mother Jones obtained a tape of a meeting of McConnell campaign staffers laughing at the fun they expected to have attacking Ashley Judd -- who considered a run against McConnell -- as "emotionally unbalanced" & anti-Christian. Corn prints the highlights & embeds the full audio. ...

... McConnell, who attended the meeting but didn't say much, isn't laughing. Kevin Robillard of Politico: "'Senator McConnell's campaign is working with the FBI and has notified the local U.S. Attorney in Louisville, per FBI request, about these recordings,' McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement. 'Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell's campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished will presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.'"

What to tell your friends when they tell you deficits are B-A-A-A-D. Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post rebuts the usual arguments.

"And Then There Were Three." Jillian Rayfield of Salon: "Sen. Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, is the latest senator to say that he supports same-sex marriage, leaving just three Democrats left standing who have not.... Joe Donnelly, Ind., and Heidi Heitkamp, N.D., announced their support last week, leaving just Joe Manchin W. Va., Mark Pryor, Ark., and Mary Landrieu, La., as the only Senate Dems who have not."

Kindlier, Gentler Protests. Dana Milbank: "Taking a page from the gay-rights playbook, other causes on the left are holding fewer of the disruptive protests of recent decades and opting for persuasion over confrontation. In part, this strategy reflects the failure of recent movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and the anti-globalization demonstrations, to turn protesters' enthusiasm into enduring public support."

ALEC's Ag-Gag. Steven Hsieh, in Salon: "Farm lobbyists and supporting lawmakers want to close the shutters on video cameras exposing animal cruelty across the country.... So-called 'ag-gag' bills ... aim to make it more difficult, or in some cases, criminal, to shoot undercover factory farm footage. Last year, the statehouses of Missouri, Utah and Iowa passed ag-gag bills, bringing the total number of states with such laws to five. As Think Progress' Katie Valentine notes, many of these laws received backing from the American Legislative Exchange Council." ...

... ** Law Prof. Jedidiah Purdy, in a New York Times op-ed, suggests a great alternative: "... we should require confined-feeding operations and slaughterhouses to install webcams at key stages of their operations. List the URL's to the video on the packaging."

Paul Waldman of the American Prospect argues that the federal government can't govern because Republicans like being an obstructionist minority -- AND it's good business for Fox "News" & Rush.

Basketball Before Business. Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) delayed a vote on a judicial appointment so he could attend a college basketball game. " Even excusing McConnell's decision to place his personal needs ahead of the country, there is no good reason why the Senate cannot simply confirm [the nominee] in McConnell's absence." CW: guess that's Harry Reid being tough again. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect: Prof. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz conducted two studies in which he estimated that Barack Obama lost between 3 & 5 percent of the vote nationwide because of racial animus; in 2012, that figure was between 3.2 & 6 percent. This, Bouie points out gave McCain & Whatzizface "the equivalent of a home-state advantage throughout the country.... There's a chance that the Democratic brand is stronger than we think."

Did Margaret Thatcher Save the British Economy? Paul Krugman: "Thatcher came to power in 1979, and imposed a radical change in policy almost immediately. But the big improvement in British performance doesn't really show in the data until the mid-1990s. Does she get credit for a reward so long delayed?" ...

... A. C. Grayling, in a New York Times op-ed, on Margaret Thatcher: "The curious feature of Mrs. Thatcher's legacy is that although she struck an ax-blow deep into the heart of Britain, it is society, not the political sphere, that remains deeply divided by a widening gap between rich and poor." ...

... ** Paul Routledge of the (UK) Mirror: "I do not look back on [Thatcher's time] through the rose-tinted spectacles of her admirers. I remember instead the young lads throwing themselves off the Tyne bridges in Newcastle because they had no work. I remember instead the despair in the inner cities that triggered riots, the hopelessness of the industrial communities devastated by her policies, and the social alienation caused by her 'me first' selfish individualism. And I reflect today on the social and cultural impact of her long rule, a decade that subverted the British way of life vastly more effectively than any of her imagined 'enemies within'." ...

... Charles Pierce: "f you want to see where the Bush people got all those bright ideas about preventive detention, and drumhead tribunals, and extrajudicial assassinations, look to Margaret Thatcher's time as prime minister." ...

... Glenn Greenwald: The "demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous.... Thatcher... played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as 'terrorists', something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, 'across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted -- and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown.'" ...

... Max Read of Gawker writes, "On the other hand, she helped invent soft-serve ice cream." ...

... AND, as Annie-Rose Strasser of Think Progress points out, Thatcher was still too much of a lefty for today's U.S. Republican party. ...

... CW: as for me, I was so preoccupied with mourning Maggie that I forgot to link this. Prachi Gupta of Salon: "Although it started as cruel satire celebrating the death of former U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher, some of the Internet is reading the 'nowthatchersdead' hashtag on Twitter as 'Now That Cher's Dead.' (To be clear, Cher is not dead. Cher is very much alive.)" The whole post is amusing.

Krugman noted in a blogpost that he was "still convalescing" from his appearance on "This Week with George," so I thought I'd check it out. Looks as if it was Krugman v. Everybody, including former Reagan budget director David Stockman. I can't embed the video because ABC News videos cause problems for some RealityChex readers, but you can watch it here. (I found it to be a very slow-loader.)

Right Wing World

Jamilah King of Color Lines: how wingers have rebranded a program initiated by Ronald Reagan as "ObamaPhones" -- one of the "gifts" Obama gives to "urban people." Via Jonathan Bernstein.

Local News

Jeff Adelson of the Times-Picayune: "After months of pushing a dramatic proposal to swap the state's income and corporate taxes in favor of higher, broader sales tax, [Louisiana] Gov. Bobby Jindal is shelving his proposal. In a speech opening the 2013 legislative session, Jindal is telling lawmakers that he is taking his plan off the table..., instead asking lawmakers to develop and pass their own version of a plan to phase out the state's income tax, according to a copy of the governor's prepared remarks.... The speech is a major concession that Jindal's proposal, a complicated plan contained in a total of 11 bills, is unpopular both within and outside the Legislature. The proposal has come under increasingly heavy fire in recent weeks as business groups and advocates for the poor have assailed its effects and think tanks have questioned whether the math in the proposal adds up." Via Salon. ...

... Benjy Sarlin of TPM: "... the provisions [of Jindal's tax proposal] that inflamed the public against it overlap plenty with national GOP proposals. Namely, both plans generated complaints from economists that they would require regressive tax increases on the poor and middle class to pay for lower taxes for the wealthy." Sarlin sees national implications to Louisiana's rejection of Jindal's drastic plan. ...

... Juanita Jean: "By the way, is this the same Bobby Jindal who said that the Republicans should stop being the stupid Party? Oh dude, heal thyself."

News Ledes

AP: "A man identified by employees as a former maintenance worker opened fire Tuesday inside a Detroit medical facility, sending workers and visitors screaming and rushing for the doors just moments before the building erupted in flames. Crews digging through the gutted Park Medical Centers building hours after the fire recovered the remains of a man and a woman.... Authorities did not release the identities of the dead, pending autopsies, but police had been searching for 35-year-old medical assistant Sharita Williams and the fired maintenance worker, who relatives said was her ex-boyfriend."

Reuters: "Iran said on Tuesday operations had begun at two uranium mines and a milling plant and that Western opposition would not slow its nuclear work, days after talks with world powers made no breakthrough."

Reuters: "Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta took his oath of office on Tuesday, presenting Western states with a challenge of how to deal with a leader indicted by the International Criminal Court."

The Commentariat -- April 8, 2013

Ed O'Keefe & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Prospects for a bipartisan deal to expand federal background checks for gun purchases are improving with the emergence of fresh Republican support, according to top Senate aides.... Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a key Democratic broker, has spent the past few days crafting the framework of a possible deal with Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.). Manchin and Toomey are developing a measure to require background checks for all gun purchases except sales between close family members and some hunters...." ...

... Travis Waldron of Think Progress: "Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) Sunday became the latest senior Republican to question the 13 Republicans who have threatened to filibuster gun legislation they haven't yet seen. The blind filibuster threats, originally made by Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), have already been criticized by top GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tom Coburn, who 'bristled at the idea.'" ...

... Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker: why are members of Congress afraid to vote for legislation that has the back of 90 percent of the American people? CW: Talbot offers a number of explanations, but the obvious answer is that members of Congress don't represent 90 percent of the people & don't give a flying fuck about anyone but their constituency of one -- themselves. ...

... E. J. Dionne: "... election outcomes and the public’s preferences have ... little impact on what is happening in Washington. At the moment, our democracy is not very democratic.... This representational skew affects coverage in the media.... There is no immediate solution to the obstruction of the democratic will. But we need to acknowledge that our system is giving extremists far more influence than the voters would." ...

... Paul Krugman: conservatives are still opposing ObamaCare in the name of FREEEE-DOM, an ironical position that isn't playing so well anymore, "perhaps because the experience of losing insurance is so common...." ...

Joe Davidson of the Washington Post: the Obama administration will hit up federal employees to effect budgetary "retirement savings." ...

... CW: It's probably worth reading Michael Scherer's (Time) piece on Obama's abandonment of quasi-liberals just for a laugh. Scherer claims the President's move to the right is justified because Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that Obama was "showing a bit of leg." Apparently, Scherer is unaware that Graham is a tease: he loves to dance with the President, but he never goes home with him.

Contributor Keith Howard recommends this essay by David Graeber, published in Baffler. Consider it a short history of world revolutions.

The Never-Ending Ted Steven Case. (even though Stevens is dead & the court overturned his conviction.) Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "An administrative judge has overturned the suspensions of two federal prosecutors whom the Justice Department had tried to discipline for failing to turn over evidence that might have helped the defense in the botched corruption trial against Senator Ted Stevens."

Michael Schwirtz of the New York Times profiles Anne Smedinghoff, the young U.S. diplomat killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan Saturday.

** Frank Rich on the death throes of old media. ...

... AND speakng of old media, here's Jon Favreau, formerly President Obama's chief speechwriter, in his "debut Daily Beast column," on the sequestration cuts, & -- BTW -- the media's failure to robustly cover the issue. Favreau, we should note, took a job with the first big old-media outlet to totally fold: Newsweek.

David Cameron says his government is cracking down on welfare queens (and kings). He chose the perfect venue to publish his op-ed -- The Sun -- the tabloid owned by Cameron's pal Rupert Murdoch.

Local News

Josh Margolin & David Seifman of the New York Post: "Former Rep. Anthony Weiner is laying the groundwork for a political comeback, possibly as a startling addition to this year’s mayoral race, sources said yesterday. Political insiders were abuzz at news that Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, had granted a lengthy magazine interview for the first time since his resignation in an embarrassing sexting scandal in 2011." CW: okay, it's the Post, Not The World's Most Reliable Newspaper, so I hope it's wrong again. Anthony Weiner will forever be known for his private attributes, & I don't want to think about them. He should go quietly & become a mortician or a restaurateur, or maybe both.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Margaret Thatcher, a towering, divisive and yet revered figure who left an enduring impact on British politics, died on Monday of a stroke, her family said." The Guardian's obituary is here, with links to related stories. ...

... American women of a certain age will be more saddened by this. New York Times: "Annette Funicello, who won America's heart as a 12-year-old in Mickey Mouse ears, captivated adolescent baby boomers in slightly spicy beach movies and later championed people with multiple sclerosis, a disease from which she suffered, died on Monday in Bakersfield, Calif. She was 70."

The Commentariat -- April 7, 2013

Photos via the Huffington Post.Maureen Dowd on Hillary Clinton's run for president in 2016. ...

... MEANWHILE, Not-Hillary Bobby Jindal is faltering. Kristen Lee of the New York Daily News: "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 Republican White House contender, is struggling in his conservative home state, where his approval rating has fallen even below that of President Obama. The Republican governor's approval rating stands at 38% in the new Southern Media Opinion & Research survey, slightly lower than Obama's 43% approval....The pollsters said unhappiness about state cuts to higher education and health care contributed to Jindal's declining popularity. Also, 63% of respondents oppose Jindal's plan to eliminate state income taxes and raise sales taxes."

Bryon Tau of Politico: "President Obama's labor allies are unhappy about cuts to entitlements and benefits that are expected to be proposed by the administration in its forthcoming budget. In an email entitled 'Obama's really bad idea,' the AFL-CIO's policy director Damon Silvers blasted the leaked details of cuts to Social Security asking labor activists to 'make some noise about it.'"

Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: "On both sides of the Atlantic, democratically elected institutions have been helpless, slow or unable to act on the scale needed to protect the leading Western economies. And time and again, the central bankers -- a group of secretive, unelected technocrats -- have stood up while presidents and parliaments dithered." Adapted from his book.

Science News: "Residents of states with the highest rates of gun ownership and political conservatism are at greater risk of suicide than those in states with less gun ownership and less politically conservative leanings, according to a study by University of California, Riverside sociology professor Augustine J. Kposowa." Thanks to contributor James S. for the link. ...

... So Let's Give Guns to Sexually-Frustrated, Emotionally-Volatile Kids! Steve Benen on Liberty University, where everything is banned except guns: "At Liberty University, students are far more likely to see someone carrying a semi-automatic than carrying a bottle of beer. Mini-skirts have been deemed inappropriate, but loaded handguns have been deemed entirely appropriate. Students can see an extended magazine, but they can't see 'Django Unchained.'" ...

... Oh, Hell, Let's Give Guns to Everybody! Jonathan Allen of Politico: "Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's threat to filibuster any new gun restrictions is gathering steam, as a dozen of his Republican colleagues have now signed onto his plan." ...

... Frank Bruni goes hunting for pheasant & partridge -- on an ironically-named "bird preserve." At least he plans to eat his prey. ...

... Scott Malone of Reuters: "The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said on Friday it had revoked the federal license of a Connecticut gun retailer that sold a weapon to the mother of Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people at an elementary school in December."

If the Republicans in the Senate don't start approving some judges and don't start helping get some of these nominations done, then we're going to have to take more action. -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, threatening to change the filibuster rules

"The Manchurian Speaker." Ezra Klein: "As badly as Obama wants a budget deal, Boehner seems just as determined to keep him from reaching one. For liberals, this is close to an ideal situation. The Republican Party's brand continues to worsen. The Democratic president manages to look reasonable without ever actually signing a painful compromise into law. And Medicare and Social Security remain safe."

Manu Raju & John Bresnahan of Politico: "New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg will not return to Capitol Hill next week, and now it's unclear when -- or even if -- the veteran lawmaker will be back.... If Lautenberg were to give up his seat, under New Jersey law, Gov. Chris Christie (R) would have the power to name an interim replacement -- most likely a fellow Republican -- before a special election would be held to fill out the remainder of Lautenberg's term, which expires January 2015. But the timing of any potential Lautenberg retirement is critical."

Larry Henry of KFSM, Fort Smith, Arkansas: "U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., on Saturday (April 6) clarified his view on same-sex issues, saying he is opposed to same-sex marriage." CW: Pryor's term ends in 2015; presumably he's planning to run for re-election.

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: A "back-room bargain [between Pakistani & CIA officials], described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate.... The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike.... [Pakistan] became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war." Mazzetti adapted the article from a book he has written.

Steve Eder of the New York Times: Rutgers athletic director Tim "Pernetti is hardly the only person who watched the edited video [of men's basketball coach Mike Rice abusing team players] and still approved of keeping Mr. Rice on staff until last week. The athletic department's human resources and chief financial officer saw the video, as did the university's outside legal counsel. At least one member of the board of governors saw it. Robert L. Barchi, the university president, has said he did not see it before last week, although at least one of his senior directors asked him to watch it. Interviews ... show that when the most senior Rutgers officials were confronted with explicit details about Mr. Rice's behavior toward his players and his staff, they ignored them or issued relatively light penalties." Here's the report.

... Peter Moskowitz of Gawker: "Republican [New York] City Councilman Dan Halloran ... was best known for making false claims about city snow plow drivers purposely slowing down their work. Fortunately his reputation as a liar was recently superseded by revelations that he accepted bribes in an effort to get Democratic State Senator Malcom Smith on the Republican ticket for Mayor. But now he can be best remembered for something else: Halloran was voluntarily tied to a tree and flogged 11 times with a leather belt by the leaders of his pagan sect as punishment for an 'undisclosed act' against a female 'thrall' (probationary servant, in non-pagan-Religion-terms).... In addition to being flogged as punishment, the Post reveals that Halloran once tried to start his own sect of Theodism and attract followers away from the main group. In order to do that, he had to battle another member of the group, which involved throwing 7-foot-long tree spears at each other."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Lilly Pulitzer, the Palm Beach princess of prints who created an enduring fashion uniform for wealthy socialites and jet setters almost by accident, died on Sunday at her home in Florida. She was 81."

Reuters: "Members of the U.S. military whose homes were unlawfully foreclosed upon between 2006 and 2010 will receive about $39 million from subsidiaries of Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Thursday."

Los Angeles Times: "Coroner's officials plan to conduct an autopsy on the youngest son of Orange County Pastor Rick Warren next week to determine an official cause of death, a routine event in cases where suicide is suspected, authorities said Saturday afternoon. Matthew Warren's death at his home on Pradera Drive in Mission Viejo was reported to Orange County sheriff's officials at about 5:25 p.m. Friday, said Supervising Deputy Coroner Dan Aikin. Aikin said he could not confirm an earlier report by coroner's officials to City News Service that Warren, 27, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound."