The Commentariat -- March 2, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

... Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "Barack Obama signed an order on Friday night to implement $85bn in spending cuts, a move he described as 'dumb' and 'arbitrary' and that he blamed on the intransigence of Republicans in Congress." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama and Congressional leaders emerged from a White House meeting on Friday without resolution to the budget impasse, meaning that the across-the-board spending cuts that take effect Friday could remain in place for weeks if not months. Speaking to reporters after the hourlong meeting, Mr. Obama called the cuts 'just dumb,' and criticized Republicans for their refusal to negotiate a package that includes some new revenue to balance those cuts. 'The only thing we've seen from Republicans so far in terms of proposals is to replace this set of arbitrary cuts with even worse arbitrary cuts,' said Mr. Obama":

     ... Here's a transcript of the President's remarks & the Q&A. ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "President Obama is obviously sick and tired of the widely peddled notion that the sequester and all other budget failures are ultimately his fault because he's the president. His frustration made for a surprisingly lively news conference this morning... The Constitution always envisioned Congress, not the president, as the real locus of government power, particularly with regard to the budget. For any voter who doesn't like it, the entire House of Representatives will be up for election in just 20 months." ...

... ** David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "The idea that spending cuts are morally and politically superior to revenue increases is so ingrained the Village political press that to even put the shoe on the other foot creates an unthinkable scenario. This is one of Ronald Reagan's most baleful legacies: a Washington establishment that can't stop believing it's the 1980s or early 1990s." BUT, in his deficit reduction proposal, Obama "advocates lots of cuts and a few tax increases. The other side advocates only cuts. It's hard to blame just the press for implicitly placing cuts on a higher moral pedestal." ...

... CW: one thing nobody ever mentions is the fact that the Village People are all financially comfortable. We tend to think of journalists as underpaid idealists, but the syndicated columnists, the think tank boys, the "influential Washingtonians" are all well-to-do, & they all have (or had) jobs with benefits. If taxes go up, if loopholes are closed, their taxes will go up & their loopholes will close. And if government services decrease, so what? They do not, for the most part, think Social Security & Medicare are crucial to their retirement years, & they do not qualify for most of programs that benefit children. They are a natural low-tax constituency. ...

... Steve Benen Tries to Explain Governance & Compromise to John Boehner: As he left the meeting with President Obama, Boehner said (hardly for the first time):

Let's make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.

      ... Which, Benen notes, "makes exactly as much sense as this sentence":

Let's make it clear, Republicans got their spending cuts in 2011. The discussion about spending cuts, in my view, is over. ...

... New York Times Editors: "House Republicans were elated this week when their leader, John Boehner, made it clear that deep, automatic spending cuts would begin as scheduled on Friday. Incredibly, some consider the decision a victory.... Some Americans will be hurt more than others, and the people who will be hurt the most are those who are already struggling.... Why are the Republicans are so happy when they should be ashamed?" ...

... Why, just look across the page, NYT Editors. There's brilliant macroeconomist Joe Scarborough saying the sequester isn't so bad & President Obama overplayed his hand. CW: why the New York Times gives this lunkhead -- who already has a huge soapbox at MSNBC & another at Politico -- is beyond me. ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker talks with Ryan Lizza & Rick Hertzberg about "the budget fiasco":

... Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect has an excellent retrospective on What Obama Did Is Doing) Wrong. ...

... CW: The Two-Step Obama Can't Master. It has seemed to me for a long time that the only way Obama could self-correct would be to make a huge I-Wuz-Wrong confession & renounce deficit hawkery, Simpson-Bowles, & all that other belt-tightening crap. But politicians, much more presidents, have prohibitively powerful egos, so I don't think that (1) even if his deficit-cutting faith could be exorcised, (2) he could say I Wuz Wrong.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: " That the free market won't work for medicine is an economic truth by now ancient and undisputed." But for conservatives, "the market becomes not an instrument of prosperity but, rather, an icon of piety...." Therefore, when private service costs more & delivers less than can the government, well -- God bless private enterprise!

Pedro Nicolaci da Costa of Reuters: "Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that pulling back on aggressive policy measures too soon would pose a real risk of damaging a still-fragile recovery."

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Military prosecutors announced on Friday that they had decided to try Pfc. Bradley Manning on the most serious charges they have brought against him and seek a sentence that could be life without parole, despite his voluntary guilty plea to 10 lesser charges that carry a maximum total sentence of 20 years."

Friday Afternoon News Dump. Juliet Eilperin & Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday, suggesting the project would have little impact on climate change. Canada's oil sands will be developed even if President Obama denies a permit to the pipeline connecting the region to Gulf Coast refineries, the analysis said. Such a move would also not alter U.S. oil consumption, the report added."

Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: researchers from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum "have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington."

Right Wing World

Do Not Challenge "Washington's Reporter Emeritus." Kathleen Parker, one of the many conservative columnists for the Washington Post, is just as apoplectic about White House muscle as is Bob Woodward: "... the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script.... But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger."

News Ledes

AP: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Egypt to press bickering Egyptian leaders and opposition politicians to forge a political consensus that will allow the country to emerge from economic crisis. Kerry meets Saturday with a number of opposition figures along with Egypt's foreign minister before seeing President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday. U.S. officials say Kerry is particularly concerned that Egypt takes the reforms necessary to qualify for a $4.5 billion IMF loan package."

Washington Post: "Bonnie Franklin, the spunky, ginger-haired stage performer who became best remembered as the independent-minded divorcee with two teenage daughters on the long-running sitcom 'One Day at a Time,' died March 1 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 69."

The Commentariat -- March 1, 2013

Abdication! Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "As the president and Congressional Democrats have tried to force [House Speaker John] Boehner back to the table for talks to head off the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on Friday, Mr. Boehner has instead dug in deeper, refusing to even discuss an increase in revenue and insisting in his typical colorful language that it was time for the Senate to produce a measure aimed at the cuts. 'The revenue issue is now closed,' Mr. Boehner said Thursday, before the House left town for the weekend without acting on the cuts and a Senate attempt to avert them died. Mr. Boehner said the dispute with Democrats amounted to a question of 'how much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government.'" ...

... Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein, in a Washington Post op-ed, take a very balanced approach in explaining how the sequester came about & what it means. ...

... So does Stephen Colbert:

... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times:The Senate on Thursday shot down competing bills to undo -- or at least mitigate the impact of -- across-the-board spending cuts in a desultory bit of political theater that ensured the cuts would go into force Friday with a partisan blame game in full tilt.... The Republican bill received only 38 votes out of the 60 needed to be considered for final passage, losing 9 Republican senators. The measure failed, 62 to 38, with two Democrats voting yes. The Democratic bill barely garnered a majority, 51 votes, but needed 60 under the rules adopted beforehand." ...

... The Sequester Was the Pre-game Show. Alex Altman of Time: "The White House released reams of scary economic reports. The House deferred to the Senate, which finally on Thursday staged dueling stunt votes whose failure was a foregone conclusion. At which point Congress, having barely tried to avert a crisis of its own making, skipped town for the weekend.... The two parties are already looking ahead to the next skirmish: a fight over how to fund the federal government beyond the end of the month. For the past few years, with the formal budget process broken, Congress has kept the government running with a series of stopgap funding bills, known as continuing resolutions. By March 27, lawmakers have to pass a new one or the lights go off. Unlike the effects of the sequester, whose hazards are real but not immediate, a shutdown's seismic impact would reverberate across the economy right away. ...

... Steven Dennis of Roll Call: If Democrats know how they're going to handle the likelihood of a forced government shutdown, they are not saying. Via Greg Sargent. ...

... ** Ruby Cramer & Rebecca Bird of BuzzFeed: "While lawmakers in Washington trade shots over the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, due to take effect Friday, there's a growing consensus among liberals across the country that the real threat to the social safety net isn't this fight, but the next one.... Although House Democrats signed a letter this month stating their opposition to entitlement cuts, President Barack Obama has signaled a willingness to bring such spending reductions to the table as part of a grand bargain with Republicans."

... Uncertainty. Steve Benen: "In 2009 and 2010, the single most common Republican talking point on economic policy included the word 'uncertainty.' It was a dumb talking point borne of necessity -- Republicans struggled to think of a way to blame Obama for a crisis that began long before the president took office.... Mysteriously, early in 2011, the 'economic uncertainty' pitch slowly faded away.... I have a hunch we know why: Republicans decided to govern through a series of self-imposed crises that have created more deliberate economic uncertainty than any conditions seen in the United States in recent memory.... Looking back over the last ... 22 months -- Republicans have made three shutdown threats, forced two debt-ceiling standoffs, pushed the country towards a fiscal cliff, refused to compromise on a sequester, and have lined up even more related fiscal fights in the months ahead."

John Schwartz & Adam Liptak of the New York Times: The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage in that state." The Justice Department's amicus brief is here." ...

... Shushannah Walshe of ABC News: "A growing split in the Republican Party deepened today when Clint Eastwood, the movie star who rocked the GOP convention by interviewing an invisible President Obama, joined the ranks of Republicans who are in favor of legalizing gay marriage. The support for gay marriage by Eastwood and about 100 prominent Republicans, along with budding support within the party for immigration reform, is creating an obvious divide in the party. It pits moderate Republicans and party operatives on one side against conservative activists who drive turnout in the primary elections."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he wanted the information to become public 'to make the world a better place.' ...Before reading the statement, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the huge leak, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million diplomatic cables. The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison. But the case against the slightly built, bespectacled 25-year-old -- who has become a folk hero among antiwar and whistle-blower advocacy groups -- is not over.The military has charged him with a far more serious set of offenses, including aiding the enemy and multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act...." ...

... The Washington Post story on Manning is by Julie Tate & Ernesto Londoño.

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The Republican-controlled House on Thursday approved an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act that includes new protections for gay men and lesbians, part of an effort by GOP leaders to improve their image among women after last year's poor election results. The Senate approved the measure in January and President Obama said he will quickly sign it into law.... The bill passed the House on a vote of 286 to 138, as a unified Democratic caucus joined 87 supportive Republicans.... More Republicans opposed the bill than supported it -- the third time since December that House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) has allowed legislation to move off the floor that did not have the support of a majority of his divided members." CW: way back in January that Boehner had better learn to start working with Pelosi because that was the only way he was going to get any legislation passed that could also pass the Senate. Well, case on point.

In his column today, Paul Krugman develops a theme he covered in a blogpost: "... leaders of the [austerity] consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they've been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?), while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions -- about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity -- have come true. So here's my question: Will it make any difference that Ben Bernanke has now joined the ranks of the hippies?

Both Joan Walsh of Salon (here) & Meteor Blades of Daily Kos (here) have posts contrasting Nino Scalia & John Lewis. ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "Protection against discrimination, it would seem, now counts as an entitlement -- a loaded word these days. The notion that everyone is harmed, and our system is corrupted, if any group is denied the vote seems to be missing.... The role of the Court, Scalia seems to be saying, is to step in when members of Congress are scared of being called racist. Scalia does not seem to be afraid of that."

CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.Meanwhile, the editors at Bloomberg's Business Week are horrified the unwashed unwhites are getting mortgage loans again. Business Week's actual cover -- portraying Hispanics & blacks grinning & rolling in piles of cash, much of which they're casually letting fly away or feeding to the dog, etc. -- is at left. What could possibly be wrong with that? ...

... Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review has a few answers: "The cover stands out for its cast of black and Hispanic caricatures with exaggerated features reminiscent of early 20th century race cartoons. Also, because there are only people of color in it, grabbing greedily for cash. It's hard to imagine how this one made it through the editorial process. Compounding the first-glance problem with the image is the fact that race has been a key backdrop to the subprime crisis."

Matt Yglesias publishes Business Week's non-apology apology:

Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret. Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we'd do it differently. -- Josh Tyrangiel

That is, the management regrets you people object to racist pictures. -- Constant Weader ...

... Yglesias, in a follow-up post, reports that the feature article accompanying the cover "says nothing in particular about minority homeowners," & the artist, who is Peruvian, said, "I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know. I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families." Yglesias writes, "... someone else on the staff should have been able to see how this was going to look in the U.S. context." Yep. ...

... Chittum also has a follow-up.

Jillian Rayfield of Salon: "Rep. Peter King of New York slammed fellow Republican Marco Rubio for fundraising in New York after voting against federal funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.... King told the New York Observer's Politicker blog, 'It's bad enough that these guys voted against it, that's inexcusable enough. But to have the balls to come in and say, 'We screwed you, now make us president'?' King said that New York donors should cut off Rubio and any other Republicans who 'threw a knife in the back in New York' by opposing the bill."

Brett LoGiurato of Business Insider: "Bob Woodward told Fox News host Sean Hannity Thursday night that he never felt 'threatened' from a White House adviser Gene Sperling's email telling him that he'd 'regret' his reporting on the sequester. But he said Sperling's email felt like a 'coded, "You better watch out." They don't like to be challenged or crossed,' Woodward said of the White House." CW: Yeah, Bob, so expertly coded nobody but a genius like you could break the code. ...

... The ever-careful Woodward, again, does not use the term 'threatened.' He merely uses other words that, together, form the definition of 'threatened.' -- Erik Wemple, Washington Post media critic ...

How to Threaten Bob Woodward

... The chart above comes from, of all places, Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post. She writes, in part, "... a number of younger reporters have leapt up to say that they get emails all the time saying much worse, from the flacks of far more threatening and imposing figures, all the time. ... [One said,] 'Sometimes ... Gene Sperling just sends me menacing GIFs of horseheads. But having grown up on the Internet, I am used to this sort of thing.'" ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon raises a point we discussed here yesterday: "If Woodward, who has generated best-seller after best-seller over many decades based heavily on anonymous sources, can't accurately convey a conversation with an email trail, should we trust the anonymous sources in the rest of his reporting?" Seitz-Wald goes to on recount some of discrepancies between Woodward's reporting & other accounts. ...

... John Cook of Gawker has an excellent takedown of Woodward, including a reminder of how Woodward tried to make a young reporter "tremble tremble." Cook also links to a post he wrote last year titled "Woodward & Bernstein Were No Woodward & Bernstein," which demonstrates the liberties Woodstein took with journalistic ethics in their Watergate reporting. ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic says very, very nicely that Woodward doesn't know WTF he's writing about, but Chait tries to get the conversation back to what it's really about -- the realities of how the sequester came about. (Seems Eric Cantor takes credit for it, for one thing. CW: Guess I shoulda read Ryan Lizza's long profile of Cantor, which I linked earlier in the week.) ...

... An excellent piece by John Cassidy on Woodward's unforced errors. (CW: Probably wrong of me to use the term "unforced errors" when Woordward's error was to accuse Obama of "moving the goalposts.") ...

Cook & Cassidy both link to this well-known 1996 Joan Didion takedown of Woodward. Didion is sort of a relative of mine, but I find her writing here & elsewhere pretty Henry Jamesian. As Edith Wharton once said to James when he was attempting to ask a man for driving directions, "Get to the point, Henry!" ...

NEW. FINALLY, Charles Pierce is "starting to think Nixon was framed." In the end, he suggests it might be best if someone should take a stun gun to Woodward.

News Ledes

AP: "The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned. The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the 'few hundred' illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process."

New York Times: "President Obama issued pardons on Friday to 17 convicted felons, making the first use of his clemency powers in his second term. Their offenses were largely small-scale crimes many years ago, and 12 of the people had not been sentenced to serve time in prison."

New York Times: "The unemployment rate in the euro zone edged up in January to a new record, official data showed Friday, as the ailing European economy continued to weigh on the job market. Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone stood at 11.9 percent in January, up from 11.8 percent in December, and from 10.8 percent in January 2012, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg."

Here's How Austerity Works, John Boehner. Reuters: "The risk that Britain is entering its third recession in four years grew on Friday with figures showing that manufacturing shrank unexpectedly last month and mortgage approvals for home buyers dropped in January. Gross domestic product fell at the end of last year, bringing Britain within sight of another recession and the latest data suggested the central bank may need to do yet more to revive the economy."

Reuters: "Italian center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani on Friday ruled out forming a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi to solve an intractable crisis after this week's inconclusive election." CW: I don't know why....

Reuters: "Silvio Berlusconi accused Italian prosecutors on Friday of threatening a senator with jail to force him to say the billionaire former prime minister paid him to join his center-right party. The bribery allegations against Berlusconi come as parties including his People of Freedom (PDL) formation maneuver to form a government after an inconclusive election that left no party with a majority in parliament. Sergio De Gregorio, a senator formerly with the Italy of Values party, joined Berlusconi's party in 2006, forcing the collapse of a coalition supporting then Prime Minister Romano Prodi."

Reuters: "With Pope Benedict XVI now officially in retirement, Catholic cardinals from around the world begin on Friday the complex, cryptic and uncertain process of picking the next leader of the world's largest church."

AND Dennis Rodman Proves Once Again How Much of a Genius He Is. AP: "Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an 'awesome guy' and said his father and grandfather were 'great leaders.'"

The Commentariat -- Feb. 28, 2013

Obama 2.0. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Senate on Wednesday easily and, for the most part, affably confirmed President Obama's pick for Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, just one day after the president's nominee for defense secretary narrowly survived a highly politicized confirmation vote." ...

... Martin Crutsinger of the AP: "Jacob Lew is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday as Treasury secretary and will have to hit the ground running. He is taking over the job just a day before huge automatic government spending cuts are set to take effect. He's likely to be involved with any negotiations to reverse the cuts, and also in budget talks next month to continue funding the government." ...

... Mark Felsenthal of Reuters: "President Barack Obama intends to name Edith Ramirez the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, a White House official said on Thursday. Ramirez has been an FTC commissioner since April 2010. She was a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in business litigation before joining the commission."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court's more conservative members. Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a 'perpetuation of racial entitlement.' Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist than those in the North. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked how much longer Alabama must live 'under the trusteeship of the United States government.'" ...

... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court's conservative justices strongly suggested Wednesday that a key portion of the Voting Rights Act is no longer justified and the time had come for Southern states to be freed from special federal oversight." ...

... Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog recaps the Justices' remarks in the Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. ...

** Dana Milbank: "For a quarter-century, Antonin Scalia has been the reigning bully of the Supreme Court, but finally a couple of justices are willing to face him down. As it happens, the two manning up to take on Nino the Terrible are women: the court’s newest members, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan." ...

... ** Washington Post Editors: "Congress is empowered to write legislation enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. But if Justice Scalia doubts the purity of lawmakers' motives, then apparently this power is limited. We wonder how the justice is able to discern what lay within the hearts of these 98 senators. We also wonder how many challenged acts of Congress would survive if the court saw fit to strike down any that were enacted by lawmakers considering, in part, their reelection prospects." CW: I thought Scalia's remarks about the intent of the Congress was even more outrageous than his claim that the Voting Rights Act is a "racial entitlement," & that's nearly as outrageous as one can get. His premise is that if he just doesn't like a law, he can change or void it. This is a flagrant violation of the Constitutional separation of powers.

... Racial discrimination is totally over, but state discrimination is horrible. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "Scalia worried that Section 5, and its unjustifiable discrimination against states, would continue in 'perpetuity.' But with the bailout provision, it's a relatively simply matter to escape the Section 5. To quote Roberts in a case striking down a school integration program, 'the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.' Maybe instead of trying to gut the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County should try that." ...

... New York Times Editors: "If the Supreme Court substitutes its judgment for Congress’s, it will enable state and local governments to erode nearly half a century of civil rights gains." ...

The Racially Entitled. See Scalia.

... Are You Ready for Some Irony? Stephanie Condon of CBS News: "President Obama joined members of Congress today to unveil a new statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. With the full-length statue placed in the Capitol Building's Statuary Hall, Parks takes her 'rightful place among those who shaped this nation's course,' Mr. Obama said." ...

... Here's a brief AP video:

... Here's the whole ceremony, which I found quite moving. Even Mitch McConnell was okay:

Zachary Goldfarb & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "In a meeting planned for Friday, President Obama will push Republican congressional leaders to accept higher tax revenue in order to avoid deep spending cuts set to take effect on the same day." ...

... Andrew Taylor of the AP: "Across-the-board spending cuts all but certain, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are staging a politically charged showdown designed to avoid public blame for any resulting inconvenience or disruption in government services. The two parties drafted alternative measures to replace the cuts, but officials conceded in advance the rival measures were doomed." ...

... David Dayen, now with Pacific Standard (???): yes, there are things the Obama administration could do to mitigate the cleaver approach the sequester takes, but they aren't gonna do it, at least not in the short term "Because making clear the impact of forced austerity may offer the best hope for discrediting and reversing it." Via Greg Sargent. ...

... In agreement with what we noted here the other day, Willie Herrmann, BuzzFeed's "data scientist," writes, "In terms of total reductions outlined in each report, the states facing the worst cuts skew heavily Republican. As a proportion of federal dollars received by each state (as detailed in a 2007 study), 11 of the 12 hardest-hit states -- and 17 of the top 25 -- went for Romney in last fall's election. Many states in the Southeast and portions of the Midwest will experience the worst damage, in addition to Alaska and Hawaii." ...

... ** Andy Sullivan of Reuters: "On paper, there's ... $85 billion in budget savings at a time when Washington continues to bleed red ink. In reality, the so-called 'sequester' is likely to yield less than half that much in the short term. In part, that has to do with the complex way the government handles its money. But it also reflects the probability that the spending cuts will hurt the economy, which in turn will lower tax revenue and drive up the costs of social safety-net programs like unemployment insurance. On top of that, federal agencies -- especially the Pentagon -- will have to pay penalties to suppliers if the sequester forced them to cancel contracts. Add it up, and the actual savings could be a lot less than budget hawks envision."

... Matt Yglesias States the Obvious. Deficit scolds -- David Brooks, Ron Fournier of the National Journal, etc. -- who seem to think "the president of the United States has ... the ability to pull a Jedi mind trick and force congressional opponents to agree to deals they don't favor.... It is Boehner, not Obama, who must lead and find a way to a solution. It is Boehner, not Obama, who has the ability to move Washington beyond the endless stale debate, and it is Boehner, not Obama, who is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of policymaking in the 113th Congress." ...

... Brendan Nyhan of the Columbia Journalism Review agrees with Yglesias & also prominently mentions what a bunch of dicks Brooks, et al., are. (Probably doesn't use the word "dicks." But that's what he means.) ...

... Paul Krugman has a funny take on the WashPo editorial, which both Yglesias & Nyhan cite. ...

... E. J. Dionne: "The air of establishment Washington is filled with talk that Obama must 'lead.' But Obama cannot force the House Republican majority to act if it doesn't want to. He is (fortunately) not a dictator. What Obama can do is expose the cause of this madness, which is the dysfunction of the Republican Party. Journalists don't like saying this because it sounds partisan. But the truth is the truth, whether it sounds partisan or not." Read his whole column. ...

... BUT forget about Brooks, Fournier, et al. It's All About Bob! Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "Woodward has been making the rounds to cable TV and print outlets accusing a 'very senior person' [probably Gene Sperling] in the administration of threatening him last week ahead of an op-ed he later published in the Washington Post attributing the idea for the automatic spending cuts to President Obama." Here's the "threat":

... CW: I don't usually recommend a story by Mike Allen & Jim VandeHei of Politico, & this one is full of bullshit, but it is a good indication of how right-wing reporters feel about the Obama White House. Reading how they & Woodward think the White House is "thin-skinned" is grounds for a chuckle. I loved the part where Bob says he wears big boy pants but such an ominous threat would cause lesser reporters to "tremble tremble." ...

     ... Update: Allen has now posted the e-mails between Sperling & Woodward. See if you think a cub reporter would "tremble tremble" upon reading Sperling's e-mail. Do read Woodward's response to Sperling.

... Ben Smith of BuzzFeed, who first IDed Sperling as the "threatening official": "Officials often threaten reporters that they will 'regret' printing something that is untrue, but Woodward took the remark as a threat." CW: For your own safety, Bob, no more midnight meetings in dimly-lit parking lots. Oh, wait. You haven't done that for decades. ...

     ... Max Read of Gawker: Bob's "reporting" is "now mostly just writing down what important people tell him in his kitchen. 'There is nothing less important about 'the sequester' than the question of whose idea it originally was,' Salon's Alex Pareene wrote yesterday. 'So, naturally, that is the question that much of the political press is obsessed with, to the exclusion of almost everything else.' Not everything else: also the question of the proper tone in which one is allowed to speak to Bob Woodward." ...

... Steve Benen: Woodward "repeated the claim on CNN, insisting, 'It was said very clearly, you will ''regret'' doing this.' And at it was this very moment when Bob Woodward put his credibility as a journalist on the line -- and lost.... He took a few words out of context in order to look like a victim of heavy-handed White House pressure, but now that the email itself is available, it's clear there was nothing threatening about Sperling's message and Woodward's efforts to suggest otherwise were deliberately deceptive. Indeed, in case facts still matter, what Sperling argued happened to be true -- Woodward had several key facts wrong."

Paul Krugman notes that in his testimony before Congress, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke agreed with Krugman's assessment of the impact of federal spending cuts in a weak economy. "... these remarks should give pause to all the people who imagine that 'nobody' except me and a couple of other crazies think that we're paying far too much attention to short-term deficits." CW: hate to tell you, Paul, but Joe Scarborough does not follow Fed Chair Congressional testimony.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The A.F.L.-C.I.O. ... has issued an apparent endorsement of the Keystone XL pipeline -- apparent because it enthusiastically called for expanding the nation's pipeline system, without specifically mentioning Keystone.... The labor federation's embrace of the pipeline, even with some ambiguity, will give President Obama some political cover as he weighs whether to approve the pipeline...."

Thomas Edsell takes another look at racial prejudice in the U.S. Some studies show that the "Obama Effect" was to dramatically reduced white prejudice against blacks, but it appears the effect may last only as long as a campaign does.

Congressional Race

Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: Massachusetts "Republicans and Democrats are bracing for bruising primaries over the next few weeks as five candidates begin to campaign in earnest to fill the United States Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry's departure to become secretary of state."

Marin Cogan of The New Republic on "the psycho-sexual ordeal of [women] reporting in Washington." No, female reporters usually are not anxious to "date" their sources, & when they express interest in their subjects during interviews it's because during interviews the reporters ask questions. Via Greg Sargent.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age "occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth's climate." Not meticulous enough for Jim Inhofe. They drive cars in D.C. & it still snows there.

AP: "A self-described pimp was arrested Thursday in Los Angeles, ending a manhunt that began after a vehicle-to-vehicle shooting and spectacular, fiery crash that killed three people on the Las Vegas Strip a week ago, police said. Ammar Harris, 26, surrendered to a team of police and federal agents who found him inside a North Hollywood apartment after a woman answered the door, authorities said."

Reuters: "Pope Benedict left the Vatican on Thursday and headed to the papal summer residence where he will become the first pontiff in six centuries to resign instead of ruling for life."

fell more than expected last week, suggesting some traction in the labor market recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 344,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday." ...

... BUT Reuters: "The U.S. economy barely grew in the fourth quarter although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate that showed an economic contraction. Gross domestic product expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, missing the 0.5 percent gain forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll."

AP: "The Obama administration said Thursday that it will provide the Syrian opposition with an additional $60 million in assistance and -- in a significant policy shift -- will for the first time provide nonlethal aid like food and medical supplies to aid rebels battling to oust President Bashar Assad."

Reuters: "Two major Chinese military websites, including that of the Defense Ministry, were subject to about 144,000 hacking attacks a month last year, almost two-thirds of which came from the United States, the ministry said on Thursday."

AP: "Pope Benedict XVI promised his 'unconditional reverence and obedience' to his successor in his final words to cardinals Thursday, a poignant and powerful farewell delivered hours before he becomes the first pope in 600 years to resign."