The Commentariat -- March 18, 2013
** Michael Luo of the New York Times: "The National Rifle Association and its allies are challenging states' efforts to take guns away from domestic violence offenders who have been served with civil protection orders.... In statehouses across the country, though, the N.R.A. and other gun-rights groups have beaten back legislation mandating the surrender of firearms in domestic violence situations.... Intimate partner homicides account for nearly half the women killed every year, according to federal statistics." Read the whole article. This is a situation where the NRA has persuaded state & federal legislators to effectively grant licenses to kill (mostly) women. ...
... Benjamin Goad of The Hill: "A growing number of states are moving forward with legislation to exempt them from new federal gun controls and, in some cases, brand as criminals anyone who tries to enforce them. While many of the bills are considered symbolic or appear doomed to fail, the legislative explosion reflects a backlash against legislative and regulatory efforts in Washington to tamp down on gun violence."
Paul Krugman: "The really striking thing, during the run-up to the [Iraq] war, was the illusion of consensus. To this day, pundits who got it wrong excuse themselves on the grounds that 'everyone' thought that there was a solid case for war. Of course, they acknowledge, there were war opponents -- but they were out of the mainstream.... What we should have learned from the Iraq debacle was that you should always be skeptical and that you should never rely on supposed authority. If you hear that 'everyone' supports a policy, whether it's a war of choice or fiscal austerity, you should ask whether 'everyone' has been defined to exclude anyone expressing a different opinion. And policy arguments should be evaluated on the merits, not by who expresses them...."
Obama 2.0. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama plans to announce Monday that he will nominate Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, to be the next secretary of labor, a choice that promises to provoke a debate with Republicans about voting rights and discrimination."
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "In Congress, Republicans are pushing an agenda that is almost identical to the one that their party lost with in November, with no regrets and few efforts to reframe it even rhetorically. The House will vote this week on the third iteration of Mr. Ryan's budget, which would again try to turn Medicare into a subsidy for private insurance purchases, slash the top income tax rate and cut deeply into programs the president campaigned to protect. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans forced a vote to eliminate financing for the president's health care law. The effort failed, 52-45, but it was at least the 54th time that one chamber or the other had voted on a proposal to repeal all or part of the law, which was enacted three years ago.... Which raises the question: What are elections for?" ...
... AND. Greg Sargent watched the Sunday shows: "The GOP position, with no exaggeration, is that the only way Republican leaders will ever agree to paying down the deficit they say is a threat to American civilization is 100 percent their way; they are not willing to concede anything at all to reach any deal involving new revenues to reduce the deficit, or to get the entitlement reform they want, or to avert sequestration they themselves said will gut the military and tank the economy But ... but ... but Obama needs to lead and prove he's Serious by offering still more entitlement cuts than he already has!"
... BUT -- Lipstick on an Elephant. AP: "The Republican National Committee will formally endorse immigration reform on Monday and outline plans for a $10 million outreach to minority groups -- gay voters among them -- as part of a multi-step roadmap designed to make the GOP more 'welcoming and inclusive' for voters who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2012." ...
... Update: the report is here. ...
... Zeke Miller of Time: "More than anything, [the report] is a rejection of the politics of 'arithmetic,' as RNC Chairman Reince Priebus will say when he announces the report's recommendations in a thinly veiled shot at Mitt Romney's 47 percent comments. 'The RNC cannot and will not ..write off any demographic, community, or region of this country.'"
... UH-OH. Alexander Burns of Politico: "An outside group aligned with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has commissioned a report that warns conservatives against adopting an all-spending cuts, all-the-time message, and suggests that leaders on the right put a heavier emphasis on less abstract issues such as education and gas prices. The poll, commissioned by the nonprofit YG Network and obtained by Politico, shows that even Americans concerned about deficits and debt are far more concerned with their own personal economic well-being."
Fire Ed DeMarco. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "Prominent state attorneys general are calling on President Obama to fire the acting director[ Edward J. DeMarco] of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and name a new permanent director, arguing that current policies are impeding the economic recovery. Under ... DeMarco, the F.H.F.A., which oversees the bailed-out mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has refused to put in place a White House proposal to reduce the principal on so-called underwater mortgages.... Led by Eric T. Schneiderman of New York and Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, the attorneys general argue that writing down the principal on underwater mortgages ... would aid the recovery. They note that write-downs were a central part of a multibillion-dollar mortgage settlement that 49 state attorneys general negotiated with five major banks a year ago."
I tend to agree with Glenn Greenwald's column, published last week, on President Obama's penchant for secrecy. ...
... BUT Driftglass's note of caution is worth heeding: "Mr. Greenwald does have the litigator's fetish for framing every sentence in the most aggressively dichotomous way possible down cold. Ordering dessert with him must be a bitch; 'Are you going to order the tiramisu or are you objectively pro-Hitler?' Because in Glennview there are always two-and-only-two acceptable positions on all issues: agreeing with Glenn 100% right down the line and worse-than-Cheney." Read all of Driftglass's post.
Charles Pierce responds to this BBC report, which I linked this past weekend & thought was a very big deal, but which received little attention here in the Good Ole U.S.A.: "There were 22,000 more Americans who died in Vietnam after Nixon sabotaged the peace talks in order to win an election."
CNN Feels Really Sorry for Rapists. David Edwards of Raw Story: "CNN broke the news on Sunday of a guilty verdict in a rape case in Steubenville, Ohio by lamenting that the 'promising' lives of the rapists had been ruined, but spent very little time focusing on how the 16-year-old victim would have to live with what was done to her":
... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "CNN continued with this awful slanted reporting throughout the afternoon ... even after a storm erupted on social media, condemning their coverage. The sheer contempt they showed for their audience, and for the victim of this terrible crime, was breathtaking." ...
... Mallory Ortberg of Gawker: "It's perfectly understandable, when reporting on a rape trial, to discuss the length and severity of the sentence; it is less understandable to discuss the end of two convicted rapists' future athletic and academic careers as if it were somehow divorced from the laws of cause and effect. Their dreams and hopes were not crushed by an impersonal, inexorable legal system; Mays and Richmond raped a girl and have been sentenced accordingly.... That isn't how rape trials ought to be discussed by professional journalists." ...
... Charles Pierce monitors the Sunday shows, including CNN's poor-little-rapists marathon.
Right Wing World *
Has-Beens Bickering. Sahil Kapur of TPM: Palin & Rove take swipes at each other. AND more from David Edwards of Raw Story.
E. J. Dionne asks if conservatives "believe in American greatness.... Conservatives ... need to consider where the strong America they honor came from in the first place."
"At CPAC, the Marriage Fight is Over." Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "Opponents of gay rights spoke to a nearly empty room, while supporters had a standing room-only crowd:"
Joe Coscarelli's story on the son of the New York City Fire Chief -- who is apparently in line to become an FDNY firefighter -- is not the type of local story I usually link, but it's disgusting enough to read. And you know the little Nazi (perfectly apt term here) is gonna get the job.
* Where there is sometimes good news.