The Commentariat -- March 20, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on journalistic standards of the New York Times. I actually have something nice to say! The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the case for NASA -- and the future of the nation:

In today's Comments, contributor P. D. Pepe refers to this editorial in today's New York Times: A "study, issued Monday by a consortium led by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, found that most states shy away from public scrutiny, fail to enact or enforce ethics laws, and allow corporations and the wealthy a dominant voice in elections and policy decisions. The study gave virtually every state a mediocre to poor grade on a wide range of government conduct, including ethics enforcement, transparency, auditing and campaign finance reform. No state got an A; five received B’s, and the rest grades of C, D or F."

Our Corrupt President & Congress. New York Times Editors: the House has passed, the Senate is about to pass & the President will sign a JOBS bill that is all about deregulation & not about jobs. "Its opponents — the current and former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the association of state securities regulators, AARP, the Consumer Federation of America, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. labor federation and unions, several big pension funds and many prominent securities experts — have presented ample evidence to show that deregulation raises the cost of capital by harming investorsand impairing markets, making it harder for legitimate companies to thrive." Why pass & sign it? "... they can all get more from corporate constituents if they cooperate to enact legislation that big donors want." CW: I just wrote to the POTUS & urged him to "Prove you're not corrupt & veto the JOBS bill." It made me feel better.

"How Obama Tried to Sell out Liberalism." Jonathan Chait of New York magazine: "... Obama’s disastrous weakness in the summer of 2011 went further toward undermining liberalism than anybody previously knew." Read Chait's analysis. We knew dribs & drabs of this last summer, & everything I read at the time was startling/dismaying. Chait nails it down. ...

... Here's the Washington Post story Chait writes about. CW: I skimmed it; too painful to read. ...

... Greg Sargent: why Obama concentrated on deficit reduction as jobs hemorrhaged: "Dems and White House officials knew that the policy justification for the pivot to deficit reduction was flimsy at best. But they decided they couldn’t win the short-term argument, and went ahead and pivoted, anyway."

... "Political Malpractice, Deficit Edition." Paul Krugman: "... the various accounts of what went wrong are converging on a very depressing picture, in which White House political 'experts' actually believed that trying to please the Washington Post editorial page was a winning political move."

Dahlia Lithwick & Raymond Vasvari in Slate: "H.R. 347, benignly titled the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, passed the House 399-3.... President Obama signed it on March 8.... Simply put, the way the bill will 'improve' public grounds is by moving all those unsightly protesters elsewhere.... The teeny cosmetic changes to Section 1752, which purport to be about new kinds of security, are really all about optics. They conflate dissent with danger, a Cold War habit which America was beginning to outgrow, but which after 9/11 seems to be a permanent part of the political landscape." CW: as I recall, contributor Dave S. first brought HR 347 to our attention.

Mary Pat Flaherty, et al., of the Washington Post: "Like many others..., Robert Bales, the Army staff sergeant being held in a massacre of 16 villagers in southern Afghanistan..., enlisted out of a sense of civic responsibility.... But Bales’s decision to join the Army also came at a pivotal point in his pre-military career — a career as a stock trader that appears to have ended months after he was accused of engaging in financial fraud while handling the retirement account of an elderly client in Ohio.... An arbitrator later ordered Bales and the owner of the firm that employed him to pay $1.4 million — about half for compensation and half in punitive damages — for taking part in 'fraud' and 'unauthorized trading.'" Bales' victim says he has not "been paid a penny" of the award. "... the finding of financial fraud adds to an increasingly complex picture of a man who ... had repeated encounters with the law, including an arrest on suspicion of drunken driving, involvement in a hit-and-run accident and a misdemeanor assault charge. In addition to those incidents, he had evidently been under financial stress. His home near Tacoma was put up for a short sale a few days before the March 11 shootings in Afghanistan." ...

... NEW. Charles Pierce on Robert Bales & Trayvon Martin. CW: I'll have something to say on this myself later today or tomorrow.

Alex Pareene of Salon: White Police Chiefs Ray Kelly of NYC & Bill Lee of Sanford, Florida, complain everybody victimizes white police chiefs. CW: every so unkindly, Pareene describes Kelly "as an officious prick on a raging decade-long power trip." I've personally encountered both Kelly & Lee, & to be fair, I'd say they are both officious pricks.

Right Wing World

Exclusive! Secret Code Names Revealed! Marc Ambinder in GQ: "GQ can reveal the [Secret Service code] names chosen by the top two GOPers: ... Mitt Romney elected to call himself 'Javelin.' And Rick Santorum chose 'Petrus.' ... 'Petrus' is a biblical allusion — as in St. Peter, the first pope. (The Latin name is derived from the Greek word for 'rock.') Perhaps 'Javelin' is a reference to the '60s muscle car made by American Motors Corporation, the company once run by George Romney."

Quote of the Day. We need a candidate who's going to be a fighter for freedom.... I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be. Doesn't matter to me. My campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. -- Rick Santorum

One way to tell a candidate has reaches his "sell-by" date: reporters start dumping their deeply-reported and analytical stories. It happened with Perry; it happened with Gingrich; and so today, as polls show Romney likely to pull out a big win in Illinois, we have THIS:

... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Over the last decade, Mr. Santorum has been a prolific writer of op-ed articles, letters to the editor and guest columns in some of the country’s largest and most influential newspapers. All the while he displayed many of the traits that define him as a presidential candidate today: a deep and unwavering Catholic faith, a suspicion of secularism and a conviction that the country was on a path toward cultural ruin." ...

... AND. Stephanie McCrummen & Jerry Markon of the Washington Post: "Within the story of how Santorum grew up and decided to run for president, there is the story of a boy who grew up to become ever more devoutly Catholic, a journey all the more relevant as Santorum has vigorously asserted a role for religious conviction in the realm of governance." Although he says he is not a member, Santorum has embraced Opus Dei, a group that "has been criticized ... by former members as 'cult-like.' ..."

After reading the fact-free comments to his column yesterday, Krugman explaiins Right Wing World: "... a large and cohesive bloc of voters lives in an alternative reality, fed fake facts by Fox and Rush — whom they listen to out of tribal affiliation — and completely unaware that it’s all fiction. It’s also, by the way, why attempts at outreach by Obama will fail. Even if he gives the GOP 95 percent of what it wants, these voters will never hear about it; they will still know, just know, that he’s a radical bent on destroying America."

Local News

Emily Bazelon of Slate: "Trayvon Martin's killer remains free" because "Florida’s self-defense laws have left Florida safe for no one — except those who shoot first."

News Ledes

At about 8:40 pm ET, NBC News projects Mitt Romney as the winner of the Illinois GOP presidential primary. Here's the New York Times page on the results.

Chicago Tribune: "Illinois primary voters head to the polls today to choose nominees for the fall in races from the White House to county courthouses after a final week of campaigning that saw the Republican presidential battle overshadow lower-level candidates seeking attention.... Democratic voters ... will decide several heated congressional contests in newly drawn districts."

AP: "Conservative Republicans controlling the House unveiled a budget blueprint Tuesday that combines slashing cuts to safety net programs for the poor with sharply lower tax rates in an election-year manifesto painting clear campaign differences with President Barack Obama. The GOP plan released by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would, if enacted into law, wrestle the deficit to a manageable size in short order, but only by cutting Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants and a host of other programs that Obama has promised to protect." Washington Post story here.

Washington Post: "Federal authorities announced Monday night that they are opening a full-scale criminal investigation into the slaying of an unarmed black Florida teenager [Trayvon Martin] whose death provoked an outcry from African American leaders and sparked calls for gun-control reforms in Florida." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "A grand jury will hear evidence next month in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black Florida teenager [Trayvon Martin] by a neighborhood watch volunteer, the state attorney’s office for Brevard and Seminole Counties announced on Tuesday."

... ABC News: "In the final moments of his life, Trayvon Martin was being hounded by a strange man on a cellphone who ran after him, cornered him and confronted him, according to the teenage girl whose call logs show she was on the phone with the 17-year-old boy in the moments before neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot him dead."

New York Times: "As Iraq prepares to showcase itself to the world next week with a highly anticipated gathering of Arab leaders, a string of suicide attacks and car bombing on Tuesday morning offered a bloody reminder that insurgent violence still wreaks havoc with the country’s tenuous stability. The attacks killed at least 43 people in a half-dozen cities across the country...."

New York Times: A major [Pakistani] parliamentary review of relations with the United States opened on Tuesday with calls for an end to drone strikes and an unconditional apology for an American attack on Pakistani soldiers last November."

AP: "A gunman who killed four people at a French Jewish school may have filmed the attack, the interior minister said Tuesday, as hundreds of police combed southern France for the killer, suspected in three other deaths."

Guardian: "North Korea has invited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to return, three years after expelling its nuclear monitors, the agency says.Without disclosing North Korea's terms, the IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said it had received the invitation on Friday.

The Commentariat -- March 19, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is titled "A Useful Idiot" and discusses Bill Keller's advice to the president on how to decide whether or not to go to war. The NYTX front page, which is full of new stuff, is here. You can contribute here.

** Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker on the Supreme Court, healthcare derangement syndrome & Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Just read it. It is a horror story masked as news commentary and a smack-you-down cautionary tale to all It-Doesn't-Matter-Who's-President lefties.

In a review of Noam Scheiber's new book The Escape Artists, John Cassidy runs a replay of President Obama's middle-of-the-road economic moves. CW: will Second-Term Obama be any bolder? Not likely.

Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "Sometime before midnight Saturday, a pair of rights groups — one Afghan, the other American — quietly posted online a report on how American authorities have continued to send detainees to Afghan prisons even though coalition forces ordered a halt to such transfers last year because of concerns about torture. The report ... added important new details about what goes on in prisons run by Afghanistan’s police and intelligence service, and about how some American agencies may be abetting torture."

James Dao of the New York Times profiles Robert Bales, the soldier accused of the unprovoked, coldblooded murders of 16 Afghans.

CW: I think this article by Sarah Hepola of the New York Times, the gist of which is -- Why is there no nw Gloria Steinem? -- is inherently stupid (it's in the Style section, so that's not surprising), but if you forget about Hepola's central thesis, she does get in some interesting history.

Paul Krugman: Republicans continue to make up lies about the Affordable Care Act. CW: I think we should recognize that they do this out of cruelty to those who will benefit or are benefiting now from provisions of the act. There is simply no good policy or political excuse for it.

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Congress is preparing to renew its bitter fight over government spending, as both parties eagerly await the arrival Tuesday of a new budget plan authored by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.)."

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The House plans to vote Tuesday on a bill that would repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a 15-member panel established as part of the health-care law that would convene in 2014 and make recommendations to Congress on how to change Medicare." Republicans call the panel "an 'unelected rationing board.' ... (Despite the GOP jab, the 2010 law explicitly bans the board from making any recommendation 'to ration health care.') The repeal legislation enjoyed notable Democratic support until last week, when GOP leaders announced plans to link it to another proposal to limit certain medical malpractice awards." CW: the board is supposed to save costs; I don't think ConservaDems know what they're doing here.

N. C. Aizenman of the Washington Post: "When the Supreme Court holds three days of hearings on the constitutionality of the law next week, supporters and opponents will be reaching for broader political targets. Backers see a moment to educate and sell Americans on a law that continues to confuse and divide them, and that has become a key issue in the presidential campaign. Opponents will direct their energy toward Congress, the potential next front in the fight if the court upholds the law."

Right Wing World

Way Before There Was Santorum.com -- Santorum? Is that Latin for asshole? -- Then Senator Bob Kerrey overheard asking another senator. Read this & 13 more "memories" about Santorum that Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker has collected

Public Policy Polling: "Mitt Romney is headed for a blowout victory in Illinois on Tuesday. He leads with 45% to 30% for Rick Santorum, 12% for Newt Gingrich, and 10% for Ron Paul."

Sarah Wheaton & Richard Oppel of the New York Times: In an us-agin-them speech, Rick Santorum told rural voters that Mitt Romney appeals to GOP voters in urban areas -- the same areas that favor Democrats.

Local News

Miriam Raftery of the East (San Diego) County Magazine: "Michael John Kobulnicky, 50, a leader in the San Diego Tea Party and former regional director of the Southern California Conservative Party, is under arrest for allegedly kidnapping and raping a local woman.... According to police, Kobulnicky offered a ride to a woman walking on Linda Vista Road around 7 p.m. on February 25. But instead of taking her home, he drove to Fiesta Island. There, the 205-pound, 6 ft. 3-inch tall suspect is accused of pulling the victim out of the vehicle and sexually assaulted the 56-year-old woman, then leaving her on the island.... According to his website, Kobulnicky  supports Christian values...." ...

... More from Lauren Steussy of NBC San Diego. "Surveillance footage of the area near the assault gave police evidence to pursue a suspect. They released a picture of the suspect to the public, and many identified the suspect as Kobulnicky." Here's part of the Tea Party statement, which should reassure you that the brutal sexual assault of women is not a Tea Party policy:

One of the things each volunteer of the Tea Party stands for is that each person is responsible for his or her own actions. This is individual responsibility.... This horrendous act of violence was perpetrated by an individual. It did not take place at a Tea party function nor would any Tea Party member or volunteer condone this act.... These allegations should never have become political in nature.

News Ledes 

New York Times: "Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, the owners of the Mets, on Monday settled the lawsuit brought against them by Irving H. Picard, the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, for $162 million. The agreement is binding. Picard had accused Wilpon and Katz of ignoring warnings that Madoff was running a fraud during their many years of investing with him. They had said they were unaware of any 'red flags' and had charged that Picard fabricated and distorted evidence against them."

New York Times: "Heavy fighting erupted early Monday between armed defectors and the Syrian Army in a wealthy and well-protected area of Damascus, according to anti-government activists and residents who described the clashes as the most intense in such a strategic area of the capital since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began a year ago." Al Jazeera story here. Al Jazeera's liveblog on Syria is here.

Guardian: "Charges against an American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians are expected to be filed within a week, and any trial would be held in the United States, according to a legal expert with the US military."

New York Times: A man opened fire outside a Jewish school in southwest France on Monday morning, killing four people, three of them children, and wounding another.... Witnesses said that a man fled the scene in Toulouse on a motorbike."

AP: "President Barack Obama raised $45 million for his re-election bid in February, bringing his total to about $300 million for this election cycle, his campaign said Monday."

As a follow-up to yesterday's Ledes, CNN reports that Mitt Romney won all 20 GOP delegates from Puerto Rico. "With about 83% of total ballots accounted for early Monday in Puerto Rico, Romney had garnered more than 98,000 votes -- or 83% of the total -- based on unofficial results obtained from local party and election officials. Rick Santorum was a distant second, at 8% with slightly more than 9,500 votes." CW: evidently telling Spanish-speaking people they have to learn English if they want to become a state (even though there's no such Constitutional requirement) is not a winning strategy.

The Commentariat -- March 18, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on the Myth of the Grand Bargain. I posted it myself as my editor is away, & couldn't figure out how to get it on the front page, so only YOU will know it's there.

... "Doonesbury" appears in Slate here.

Peterr of Firedoglake: "The Obama administration continues its caving to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, and seeks input on ways in which to continue its spelunking in the future.... HHS did not announce final rules, but put forward a 32 page proposal for comment [pdf] on religious organizations and their obligation (or lack thereof) to provide coverage for 'certain preventive services.' [allowing exemptions for religious organizations that self-insure & possibly changing the definition of "religious employers"] That 'self insurance' loophole is a huge exemption. Look for any Roman Catholic institutions that aren’t self-insured already to set themselves up that way in short order. If you wish to take HHS up on their offer to listen to comments on this proposal, page 3 of the pdf has four ways to submit your thoughts." ...

   ... CW: Peterr claims in his post that Georgetown U., which Sandra Fluke attends, will be exempted from providing students with contraceptive coverage. However, according to a Washington Post story I linked yesterday, because the Georgetown "policy is not a self-insured plan, the birth control mandate will soon apply." The New York Times report agrees, in essence, with the Post report; that is, Georgetown students will be covered. Peterr is right about this much, tho: if a religiously-affiliated institution is not self-insuring now, it is likely to do so to get out of having to provide contraceptive coverage.

New York Times Editors: "... homeowners are still bearing the brunt of the mortgage debacle. Taxpayers are still supporting too-big-to-fail banks. And banks are still not being held accountable."

Former Reagan budget director David Stockman & New York Times financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson talk to Bill Moyers about the crony capitalism that controls Washington. Thanks to contributor Dave S. for the link:

Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times reports on some of the blog entries of Karilyn Bales, wife of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers last week. "Though much of the family’s online presence appears to have been removed in recent days, the fragments that remain capture the daily travails typical of any family with a loved one stationed abroad." ...

... Jennifer Preston of the Times has more. ...

... Elisabeth Bumiller of the Times looks at the issue of high stress for troops deployed numerous times.

CW: Here's something I knew absolutely zero about. Nicholas Kristof writes that Backpage.com, "the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States, according to the National Association of Attorneys General..., is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the estimable Village Voice newspaper. the Village Voice.... The Brooklyn district attorney’s office says that the great majority of the sex trafficking cases it prosecutes involve girls marketed on Backpage."

How Not to Attract Tourists. Pilot Mark Vanhoenacker  in a New York Times op-ed: "... a 2006 survey by the U.S. Travel Association ... found that foreign travelers were more afraid of United States immigration officials than of terrorism or crime. They rated America’s borders by far the least welcoming in the world. Two-thirds feared being detained for 'minor mistakes or misstatements.'”

Right Wing World

** Rick Perlstein in Rolling Stone: conservatives have always been crazy.

Charles Babington of the AP: "The millions of dollars spent by Mitt Romney's allies on TV ads attacking his two main rivals have helped Romney pull ahead in the GOP presidential race.... Republican insiders say Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are fuming over the hard-hitting 30-second spots that sent them tumbling after they gained early leads in Iowa, Florida, Michigan and other states.... Campaign veterans say Santorum and Gingrich feel the commercials were pointedly unfair, and that's a big reason they keep fighting...."

Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times: Mitt "Romney's beginning to look a bit like a Republican version of Dukakis: a Massachusetts governor who might win the nomination by outlasting weak opponents but who may never quite win his party's heart — or the nation's. That's partly because, as Dukakis did, Romney is selling himself as a better manager for the federal government, not as the leader of a grand crusade." ...

... If Governor Romney thinks that he is the CEO of America and can run and manage the economy, he doesn’t understand what conservatives believe in. We don’t want someone in Washington, D.C. to manage the economy. We want someone who can get Washington out of our lives. -- Rick Santorum, on CNN's "State of the Nation" today

CW: Kasie Hunt & Rachel Zoll of the AP are "puzzled" that Roman Catholic Republicans are not lining up behind Rick Santorum. Maybe it's because of this: "Less than one-quarter of Catholics attend Mass weekly. Most use artificial contraception, support gay civil unions or marriage, and hold other views contrary to church teaching." Not to mention this: "Less than half of the Catholic Republicans surveyed knew Santorum's faith, the survey showed, while 11 percent of Catholic Republicans and 35 percent of white evangelical Republicans thought Santorum was an evangelical."

Fore! Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "In an article that would appear to be a poorly-executed parody of Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz’s (R) right-wing beliefs it Cruz had not posted it on his own website, the Tea Party stalwart touts a truly ridiculous conspiracy theory about George Soros secretly partnering with the United Nations to come into our cities and eliminate our right to play golf." Apparently Cruz is a viable candidate & could soon become the Honorable Senator Cruz.

News Ledes

ABC News: "President Obama opened up a 30-minute documentary on childhood bullying for Cartoon Network this evening, continuing awareness initiatives he set into motion last year."

New York Times: "Mitt Romney was the winner of the Republican presidential primary Sunday in Puerto Rico.... Mr. Romney was defeating Mr. Santorum by a wide margin in the United States territory, which has 20 delegates, with The Associated Press saying Mr. Romney was likely to take all of them."

New York Times: "Scores of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on Saturday night as police officers swept Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and closed it. Dozens of demonstrators sat down and locked arms as officers moved in about 11:30 p.m. The protesters chanted 'we are not afraid' as the police began pulling people from the crowd, one by one, and leading them out of the park in handcuffs." Reuters story here.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Crowds and chaos rattled Missouri's GOP caucuses on Saturday, threatening to put further scrutiny on a process that was already a national anomaly.... Participants in Saturday's caucuses weren't actually selecting their choice for presidential nominee. They were selecting delegates who will appear at two larger meetings in April and June, who will in turn select delegates to the national convention in Tampa."

AP: "Puerto Rico's residents cannot vote in general elections, but are set to award 20 delegates in their Sunday Republican primary."

Reuters: "Motorcycle-riding gunmen linked to al Qaeda shot and killed an American teacher in the Yemeni city of Taiz on Sunday, and Yemeni officials said government forces killed up to 14 militants in clashes and artillery attacks on their strongholds. The attacks underscore the challenges facing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who took office last month after a year of massive protests against his predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh."

Reuters: "A car bomb hit Syria's second city Aleppo on Sunday, a day after blasts killed 27 in Damascus, and security forces arrested and beat activists at a rare anti-government protest in the centre of the capital."

Reuters: "Germans resoundingly elected Joachim Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor and human rights activist from communist East Germany, as president of the European Union's largest country on Sunday, posing a potential political headache for Chancellor Angela Merkel."

Reuters: "A group of 22 Chinese authors have filed a claim against U.S. technology group Apple (APPL.O), alleging its App Store sells unlicenced copies of their books, Chinese state media reported on Sunday. The group, the Writers Rights Alliance, petitioned Apple last year to stop electronic distribution of the writers' books and had earlier persuaded Baidu (BIDU.O), China's largest search engine, to stop publishing their material on its Baidu Library product."

Blah Blah. Chicago Tribune: Romney & Santorum diss each other & the President ahead of the Illinois primary.