The Commentariat -- March 23, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is here. It's mostly on Gail Collins.

"President Obama announces an order to expedite a pipeline project that will help move oil more quickly and efficiently from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Encouraging oil development and infrastructure in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people is part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to develop every available source of American energy":

... Clifford Krauss & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "... the increasing production and declining consumption [of oil and gas] have unexpectedly brought the United States markedly closer to a goal that has tantalized presidents since Richard Nixon: independence from foreign energy sources, a milestone that could reconfigure American foreign policy, the economy and more. In 2011, the country imported just 45 percent of the liquid fuels it used, down from a record high of 60 percent in 2005."

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: if the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, so are Medicare & Social Security.

Steve Collender of Capital Gains & Games: "We now have some real indications that the fiscal 2013 budget plan proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is going to be as much a political albatross as a plus for Republicans.... It's hard not to wonder how hard the House Republican leadership will try to help Ryan get the budget resolution adopted when it's debated by the House. He could well be on his own." ...

... Reader MAG sees a resemblance, which I find totally unfair:

Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade: Elizabeth Warren says it's time for President Obama to "evolve" on gay marriage.

Larry Sabato rolls his crystal ball at U.S. Senate races.

Right Wing World

** Paul Krugman: "... the kind of pandering [Mitt Romney] has engaged in during his quest for the nomination matters. Whatever Mr. Romney may personally believe, the fact is that by endorsing the right’s paranoid fantasies, he is helping to further a dangerous trend in America’s political life. And he should be held accountable for his actions."

If they’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future. -- Rick Santorum

I was disappointed to hear that Rick Santorum would rather have Barack Obama as president than a Republican. -- Mitt Romney

Chris Moody of Yahoo! News: "Rick Santorum suggested Thursday that re-electing President Barack Obama would be better than electing Republican rival Mitt Romney, a statement that is arguably his toughest criticism of Romney to date.... The Santorum camp later clarified the candidate's remark, saying he didn't mean to insinuate that voters would be better off re-electing Obama than choosing Romney."

Chris Moody: Romney "campaign political director Rich Beeson wrote in the memo.  'So as Senator Santorum continues to drag out this already expensive, negative campaign it is clear that he is becoming the most valuable player on President Obama's team.'"

Brendan Nyhan of the Columbia Journalism Review on "How the media constructed another Romney gaffe — and why it is unlikely to matter." CW: we'll see.

Alec MacGillis of The New Republic: Mitt Romney's primary competition is utterly incompetent; they don't have the sense to charge a campaign intern with doing Nexis searches of Romney's past statements. Good luck in the general election, Willard.

Olivier Knox of Yahoo! News: "The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Karl Rove on Thursday in which he played down the significance of President Barack Obama's decision to order the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- and twists Bill Clinton's words ... almost beyond recognition, making him say essentially the opposite of his meaning in the film.... [and] to make it seem the former president agrees with Rove." ...

... Jeff Bercovici of Forbes: "Shocker! Karl Rove endorses Obama in Wall Street Journal op-ed." Or so it would appear, if you butchered Rove's written statements the way Rove butchered Bill Clinton's. P.S. Looks like Bercovici forced the WSJ to post a correction. ...

... David Corn of Mother Jones writes a terrific rebuttal to Rove's op-ed: "Rove, the fellow who put a president in a flight suit and had him land on an aircraft carrier where he spoke in front of a 'Mission Accomplished' banner, now contends [the decision to go after bin Laden] was no big deal. He obviously hasn't ... bothered to consider the facts."

Local News

Henry Curtis of the Orlando Sentinel: "Sanford police let George Zimmerman go home after he shot and killed Trayvon Martin last month, but Central Florida police agencies routinely make arrests for murder in 'stand your ground' cases — and then let courts decide if a killing is justified." ...

... Miami Herald: "Angela Corey, the special prosecutor Gov. Rick Scott appointed to handle the Trayvon Martin shooting case, has a reputation as a tough-on-crime state attorney who has the distinction of prosecuting the youngest murder defendant in Jacksonville history, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez." CW: thanks to reader savecristian for the input on Angela Corey. The linked post gives some background about Corey which is consistent with savecristian's comments about her.

News Ledes

"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon":

AP (via the NYT): "A Republican member of the National Labor Relations Board improperly revealed information about the agency’s private deliberations to outside parties who had cases pending before the board.... The board’s inspector general said the member, Terence F. Flynn, violated ethics rules.... A report from Inspector General David P. Berry also faulted Mr. Flynn for a 'lack of candor' during the investigation. President Obama appointed Mr. Flynn ... in January."

Elections Have Consequences. Time: "In a surprise move, President Barack Obama on Friday named Dartmouth President Dr. Jim Yong Kim as his nominee to head the World Bank." Washington Post story here. BBC News story here.

New York Times: "The Obama administration is moving to relax restrictions on how counterterrorism analysts may retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats.... The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism." Washington Post story here.

AP: "Undercover NYPD officers attended meetings of liberal political organizations and kept intelligence files on activists who planned protests around the country, according to interviews and documents that show how police have used counterterrorism tactics to monitor even lawful activities.The infiltration echoes the tactics the NYPD used in the run-up to New York's 2004 Republican National Convention, when police monitored church groups, anti-war organizations and environmental advocates nationwide."

Guardian: President "Obama announced Thursday that he was directing federal agencies to expedite a 485-mile [pipe]line from Oklahoma to refineries on Texas' Gulf Coast that would remove a critical bottleneck in the country's oil transportation system. The directive would also apply to other pipelines that alleviate choke points."

Washington Post: "A U.S. counterterrorism official ... said Thursday that [Mohammed] Merah, [the accused French terrorist killed Thursday in Toulouse] was also on the list of known or suspected terrorists prohibited from flying to the United States and had been since 2010."

AP: "The wife of Syrian President Bashar Assad will be hit with a travel ban and have her assets in the EU frozen, a European Union official said Friday. A total of four members of the Assad family, along with eight government ministers, will be targeted in the latest round of sanctions aimed at stopping the violent crackdown on members of the Syrian opposition...."

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/03/new-prosecutor-in-trayvon-martin-shooting-has-lock-kids-up-rep-charged-youngest-ever-murder-defendan.html#storylink=cpy

The Commentariat -- March 22, 2012

Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The constitutional challenge to the [Affordable Care Act]’s requirement for people to buy health insurance — specifically, the argument that the mandate exceeds Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause — is rhetorically powerful but analytically so weak that it dissolves on close inspection." News Flash: "unprecedented" does not equal "unconstitutional."

War on Women -- Supreme Edition. Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars on the Supreme's 5-4 decision yesterday to negate part of the Family Leave Act (see yesterday's Ledes): "I'll be damned if the conservatives on the Supreme Court weren't getting jealous of all the congressional and state-level battles in the war on women and decide that they needed to take up arms themselves.... First, conservatives want to make sure you get pregnant by limiting access to birth control, then force you to have the baby by limiting access to abortions, then if you get fired for taking time off to have the baby, you have no right to recourse for being fired. Great. All these things that have been litigated decades ago and established as basic rights have been inverted."

Michael Scherer of Time: "The most recent filing by Restore Our Future, the technically independent group supporting the candidacy of Mitt Romney, revealed a number of firms — a for-profit school, several payday lenders, and a chemical company – whose bottom lines have been threatened or harmed by regulations supported by the Obama Administration.... The contributions represent a clear realization of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which permitted independent spending by corporations to directly influence the outcome of elections for the first time in decades: If politicians mess with a company’s bottom line, that company now has the power to directly retaliate...."

New York Times Editors: "Stand Your Ground laws are abominations that should be repealed."

Major Garrett of the National Journal: "The White House has chosen to own the energy debate on its terms, which is to say talk about alternative energy instead of gas prices. They know Republicans want to use high pump prices as a weapon against Obama's heavy investment in solar, wind and other forms of alternative energy (even algae)." ...

... Amy Gardner & Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "The White House has launched a concerted effort to turn political weakness into strength on two critical election-year issues that have become big vulnerabilities for President Obama: rising gas prices and the controversial health-care law." ...

Daily Kos: In Illinois' 10th District, progressive Congressional candidate Ilya Sheyman loses to a ConservaDem.

Right Wing World

It's Gaffe Day in Willard's World!

Gaffe No. 1. I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch a Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again. -- Eric Fehrnstrom, longtime aide to Mitt Romney, on Romney's general election strategy

You take whatever he said and you can shake it up and it will be gone and he’s going to draw a whole new picture for the general election. Well, that should be comforting to all of you who are voting in this primary. -- Rick Santorum

Etch a Sketch is a great toy, but a losing strategy. -- Newt Gingrich, tweet ...

... Jeff Zeleny & Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "Mitt Romney sought to use the coveted endorsement of Jeb Bush on Wednesday to amplify his call for Republicans to rally behind his candidacy and get on with the mission of ousting President Obama.... The comments from Mr. Fehrnstrom followed a Romney campaign pattern of committing unforced errors after major victories. ...

... Philip Elliott of the AP: "... Mitt Romney tried Wednesday to shake accusations that he's an inconsistent conservative after a top adviser compared the campaign's shift from primary fight to general election to an Etch A Sketch.... His Republican rivals and Democrats were positively giddy over the remark, which gave them an opening to resurrect a familiar story line that the former Massachusetts governor will take any position on an issue to get elected." ...

... CW: the other connection Romney has to Etch-a-Sketch is pretty interesting:

... Steve Benen: "The knock on Romney since Day One has been that he's a shallow, unprincipled politician, willing to say anything to anyone to win. 'Etch A Sketch' is so perfect a metaphor, it's extraordinary that it came from the candidate's own communications director." ...

... CW: Ha ha. Even the New York Times Home & Garden section weighs in with a little history of the Etch-a-Sketch. This portrait of Romney is not going away. ...

Gaffe No. 2. I keep hearing the president say he's responsible for keeping the country out of a Great Depression. No, no, no, that was President George W. Bush and [then-Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson. -- Mitt Romney ...

... Jon Chait of New York magazine: Oops! "Obama’s plan is to depict Romney as continuing the failed policies of the Bush administration. Praising Bush’s economic stewardship is probably not the wisest strategy.... the Wall Street bailout is actually a huge political liability for Obama because it’s incredibly unpopular and most Americans think Obama, not Bush, signed it. So having Romney run around reminding people that Bush bailed out Wall Street is actually Obama’s prayer answered."

CW: This long New Yorker article by Louis Menand is a pretty good analysis of how Willard looks at life. Menand is a fine writer, so reading it won't make you gag, & it will help you understand why Romney is such a cold fish.

Paul Krugman: "... are people finally willing to concede that [Paul] Ryan is not now and has never been remotely serious? And — I know this is probably far too much to ask — are they going to do a bit of soul-searching over how they got snookered by this obvious charlatan?"

Local News

Norma Love (apparently her real name) of the AP: "New Hampshire lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a bill that would have made their state legislature the first one to repeal a gay marriage law, handing gay-rights supporters a key victory in the Northeast, where same-sex marriage is prevalent. The state House voted 211-116 to kill the measure, ending a push by its new Republican majority to rescind New Hampshire's 2-year-old gay marriage law. Nevertheless, both sides are pledging to continue fighting into the fall elections."

News Ledes

Reuters (via the NYT): "JPMorgan Chase quietly paid $384 million to American Century Investment Management after losing an arbitration over accusations of breaches related to the bank’s purchase of a retirement plan services business." JPMorgan wanted to buy American Century so stacked the deck to lower the company's value -- needless to say, in violation of the contract.

New York Times: "The embattled Florida police chief overseeing the investigation into the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin temporarily stepped down Thursday, a day after the Sanford City Commission voted 3-to-2 that it no longer had confidence in him. The move comes as thousands gathered in Sanford Thursday night for a rally to protest the police department’s handling of the case that [was] live-streamed." ...

... Orlando Sentinel: "Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi today appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, removing the state attorney who had been considering the case, they announced tonight. Scott and Bondi appointed State Attorney Angela B. Corey, whose office handles cases in Duval, Clay and Nassau counties. Scott today also created a task force headed by Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll to review Florida's 'Stand Your Ground'" law...."

Los Angeles Times: "Singer Whitney Houston appears to have suffered a heart episode before accidentally drowning in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel suite, according to coroner's officials who listed cocaine use as a contributing factor."

New York Times: "The Senate gave final approval on Thursday to an ethics bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress, clearing the measure for President Obama, who called for such legislation in his State of the Union address two months ago. The legislation was adopted by unanimous consent after the Senate voted, 96 to 3, to end debate on the bill, which was approved in the House last month by a vote of 417 to 2."

New York Times: "Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged on Friday with 17 counts of murder and various other charges, including attempted murder, in connection with the March 11 shooting deaths of Afghan civilians, a senior United States official said on Thursday."

New York Times: "A 23-year-old Frenchman who claimed responsibility for the killings of four men and three children died on Thursday after jumping from a balcony as security forces stormed the apartment where had been holed up for more than 30 hours, Claude Guéant, the French interior minister said."

New York Times: "A group of junior officers in the West African state of Mali, upset over the conduct of a sporadic guerilla war in the country’s north, has seized control of the country’s national television station and its presidential palace in an apparent coup attempt."

The Commentariat -- March 21, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is titled "David Brooks -- Natural-Born Killer." The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here.

Alexander Burns of Politico: "... the voters of 2012 ... appear to be wandering, confused and Forrest Gump-like through the experience of a presidential campaign. It isn’t just unclear which party’s vision they’d rather embrace; it’s entirely questionable whether the great mass of voters has even the most basic grasp of the details – or for that matter, the most elementary factual components – of the national political debate." ...

... Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic finds the Alexandra Pelosi video above offensive because the gist of it is to laugh at, not with, the voters. ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate disagrees: "There’s no shame, no journalistic crime, in finding the ignorance and pointing it out."

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Top officials in President Barack Obama's administration pushed back Tuesday on a report that they would still support a debt-reduction deal nearly reached this past August with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)."

Adam Sorensen of Time calls the 17-minute Obama campaign documentary "Gloom You Can Believe In." Video of the film is embedded in his post.

John Sides of the Monkey Cage: the conventional wisdom notwithstanding, a recent study shows that Americans may not be self-segregating in neighborhoods of like-minded political persuasions.

Public Policy Polling: "Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren leads Republican Scott Brown by 5 points, 46-41, a new poll from Public Policy Polling finds. Warren has increased her lead from 46-44 the last time PPP polled Massachusettes in September 2011." CW: a couple of polls in the last few weeks have showed Brown ahead of Warren, so this is a good thing.

In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office -- to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen. -- Then-President Jimmy Carter, farewell address ...

... Emily Yoffe of Slate: "Politicians like Newt Gingrich who cling to their old titles are pretentious, incorrect, and un-American."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports on new, strong evidence that William Rehnquist lied -- twice -- during his confirmation hearings for Justice & Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to cover his own opposition to Brown v. Board of Education, and in the process, smeared a former Justice.

Brian Ross, et al., of ABC News: "More than a year after 29 people were trapped in a fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh used by well-known American clothing brands, an ABC News investigation found the retailers right back in business at the factory. And labor groups say dangerous conditions such as locked gates and shoddy wiring persist.... In advance of the ABC News report, the company that produces the Tommy Hilfiger line announced it would be the first company whose clothes were being made during the deadly blaze to demand changes -- committing to spend more than $1 million to enforce a set of safety reforms demanded by labor rights groups."

Right Wing World

     ... From Americans United for Change.

Following is some analysis & commentary on the Republican House's proposed budget. Also, be sure to see the comments in yesterday's Commentariat. Our contributors really hit the essentials.

... Ezra Klein: "Here’s the basic outline of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget in one sentence: Ryan’s budget funds trillions of dollars in tax cuts, defense spending and deficit reduction by cutting deeply into health-care programs and income supports for the poor." ...

... Edwin Park of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: "House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new budget again proposes to radically restructure Medicaid by converting it into a block grant and to slash federal funding by about one-fifth over the next decade (as well as to repeal health reform’s Medicaid expansion). All told, it would add tens of millions of Americans to the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured." ...

... Igor Volsky & Travis Waldron of Think Progress list the five worst things about Ryan's budget. ...

... Steve Benen: "... some of the more offensive elements of the plan -- forcing seniors to pay more for health care; cutting coverage for the elderly and disabled; eliminating coverage for 30 million Americans; giving a big tax cut to the wealthy; cutting the safety net while increasing Pentagon spending -- and it's worth appreciating the fact that the American mainstream doesn't support any of this.... Last April, just four House Republicans voted against the Ryan plan. This year, I suspect that number will go up, not down." ...

... AND this from Benen, another post worth reading in its entirety: "I realize there's nothing I can say to convince the political establishment to stop treating Paul Ryan like a Very Serious Person and start treating him like an Ayn Rand-loving con man, but his budget plan is a bad joke."

... Ed Kilgore of the Washington Monthly: "... if you want to know how Ryan’s proposal is likely to affect you without looking at a lot of charts or believing a lot of phony assurances, just ask yourself: are you part of a demographic or economic category that tends to vote Republican? You’ll probably do okay, and you’ll do much better the wealthier and/or the more dependent you are on robust defense spending. Otherwise, look out!"

Public Policy Polling: "Callista Gingrich is actually pretty unpopular, with an 18/44 favorability rating. But it's at least better than her husband's 28/61."

Local News

Carl Hiaasen in the National Memo: "Among its dubious achievements this year, the Florida legislature passed a law authorizing random drug tests for state workers. Guess who's exempt? Lawmakers themselves. So now the clerk down at the DMV gets to pee in a cup -- but not the knuckleheads in Tallahassee who control $70 billion in public funds. Whom do you think is more dangerous to the future of Florida?" CW: this is a fabulous column by a superb writer, which I comment to you to read for the fun of it.

Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake City Tribune: "Utah Gov. Gary Herbert [R] signed legislation Tuesday requiring women to wait 72 hours before receiving an abortion, giving the state the longest waiting period in the country.... Marina Lowe, an attorney with the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which urged the governor to veto the bill, said the new Utah law raises serious constitutional questions."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Outrage over the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, in central Florida continued to grow across the country, with more than a thousand people rallying Wednesday night in New York City and civil rights leaders planning more demonstrations in other cities in the coming days. In Sanford, Fla., on Wednesday night, the city commission passed a vote of “no confidence” in Police Chief Bill Lee Jr."

New York Times: "The JOBS bill, which would make it easier for small companies to raise money from investors, is now scheduled for a vote on Thursday, after the Senate considers two Democratic amendments to tighten proposed rules on how companies raise financing online and to strengthen other provisions that were approved by the House."

New York Times: "Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to effective lawyers during plea negotiations, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in a pair of 5-to-4 decisions that vastly expanded judges’ supervision of the criminal justice system. The decisions mean that what used to be informal and unregulated deal making is now subject to new constraints when bad legal advice leads defendants to reject favorable plea offers." ...

... New York Times: "By a 5-to-4 vote that split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that state workers may not sue their employers for money for violating a part of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. The decision prompted the term’s first dissent read from the bench, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said the justices in the majority had made it harder for women 'to live balanced lives, at home and in gainful employment.'”

New York Daily News: "Cops rousted about 300 Occupy Wall Street protesters camped out in Union Square Park early Wednesday. One person was arrested. The demonstrators moved into the camp on Saturday, continuing the protest against economic inequality that started this summer in Zuccotti Park."

New York Times: "Mitt Romney swept to victory in the Illinois Republican primary on Tuesday, using the full force of his campaign and an argument that he has the best chance of defeating President Obama to overcome doubts among the more conservative voters at the heart of his party." ...

... The Chicago Tribune's complete election coverage of the Illinois primaries. Most notable, besides Romney's big win: "Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth won the Democratic primary tonight in the 8th Congressional District. Duckworth had 66 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Raja Krishnamoorthi, a former deputy state treasurer with about 60 percent of the vote in.... Duckworth will challenge Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, the conservative firebrand.... Walsh is seeking re-election on mostly new turf in northwest Cook and northeast DuPage counties."

ABC News: "The Florida police department handling the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by a self-appointed neighborhood watch leader admitted to ABC News tonight that investigators missed a possible racist remark by the shooter as he spoke to police dispatchers moments before the killing.... On a tape of one of Zimmerman's 911 calls the night of the shooting, he is heard saying under his breath what sounds like 'f**ing coons.' Seconds later he confronted Martin and after a brief scuffle shot him dead.... It's the latest in a series of possible police missteps uncovered by ABC News."

Washington Post: "The Senate will move ahead later this week with the House version of a congressional ethics package, including a formal ban against insider trading on Capitol Hill, but jettisoning tough provisions that had won bipartisan approval in the Senate.Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), in a Tuesday afternoon floor speech, announced that he would not compel a conference committee to hash out the differences between the two chambers’ approaches to the STOCK Act, setting up likely final passage of the legislation by early next week."

New York Times: "Hundreds of elite police officers surrounded a multifamily residence in Toulouse early on Wednesday and were negotiating with a 24-year-old man suspected in the killings this week of three young children and a rabbi at a nearby Jewish school, French officials said." The Guardian has a good liveblog of the unfolding story.

New York Times: "The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Tuesday that medical tests that rely on correlations between drug dosages and treatment are not eligible for patent protection."

Reuters: "Little Rock, Arkansas renamed its airport to honor two of its most famous citizens -- former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the airport commission said on Tuesday."