The Commentariat -- August 4

Karen Garcia recommends this Al Jazeera video -- "Fault Lines" --  and so do I:

"Hope Is Not a Plan." Paul Krugman: the Obama Administration keeps saying the economy is better (or is getting better) than it is, which does nothing but "squander its credibility.... Do they think the markets will be reassured? Do they think consumers will be reassured? ... Spin is part of politics. But sometimes you have to know when to stop." ...

... Pick Your Universe. Conservative David Frum: Krugman is consistently right about the economy; the Wall Street Journal editors are consistently wrong.

Barack Wall Street Obama. Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "About a third of the money [President Obama's] top fundraisers have brought in this year has come from the financial sector, suggesting that strained relations with Wall Street have not hurt the president’s ability to attract donations there for his reelection campaign, according to data released Friday by the Center for Responsive Politics."

A Little More Monday-Morning Quarterbacking on the Deficit Law:

Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "Health-care and defense lobbyists are quickly gearing up for a major lobbying and public relations campaign in response to this week’s debt-limit deal, which could force hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts for two of Washington’s most powerful industries.... The [super committee/trigger] approach appears tailor-made to produce a frenzy on K Street, where major lobbying firms and trade groups are already laying out strategies for protecting their interests." ...

... Law Prof. Daniel Markovits in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "... the debt deal represents a substantial success for President Obama and the Democrats. It does indeed impose cuts that will slow the economic recovery and unjustly burden working Americans. But the deal is much nearer an affirmation of the president's core commitments than a surrender. Moreover, the deal that the president got is much, much less bad, from the progressive point of view, than a coldly rational observer would have predicted. The reason the president beat the odds is simple: The Republicans blinked." ...

... James Fearon of the Monkey Cage agrees with Markovits: "Seems to me that [President Obama] has very little bargaining power to begin with in a legislative situation like this one. And this is not so much because the economy is terrible and his favorability ratings are low, but because the U.S. Constitution has it that Congress organizes its own procedures and makes the laws, basically." He asks his readers to respond, & a very good discussion ensues. ...

... Kevin Drum noted the precipitous drop in Monday's stock market & wonders if  "America has the stupidest goddamn investors on the planet.... Has Wall Street really been sitting idly by during the whole debt ceiling debacle and has only now realized what it really means? Can they really be so steeped in the Fox News fantasyland that it never occurred to them until now that cutting federal spending during an economic downturn wasn't really a great idea? Seriously?" ...

... AND Actor Matt Damon on the debt/deficit deal:

** David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal: "Two big sectors of the U.S. economy have been on steroids: finance and health care. If anything is crowding out more productive activities, it's them, as [Prof. Paul] Romer argued in a recent National Academy of Sciences lecture. The bloated financial sector — all those brains lured by big bucks who might otherwise have been employed in science, software, engineering or other fields — has harmed the U.S. economy more than any of our post-World War II communist adversaries did. The American health system costs more per person than any other, but isn't delivering the world's healthiest people.... Profit-seeking players in finance and health care have captured Congress, resisted regulation that would curb their excesses and exploited antiquated rules and policy for private gain."

Fred Kaplan of Slate: "... The Pentagon budget on the table for next year — not including the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — amounts to $553 billion, shy by just over 3 percent. (Including the costs of those wars shoots the figure up to $671 billion, or 17 percent higher than the Cold War peak, i.e., 17 percent more money than the largest sum [adjusted for inflation] the United States ever spent in one year on the military since the Korean War.) ... The Defense Department is as much a bureaucracy as any other federal agency.... It's time to start setting priorities...."

Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post: "Everything you need to know about the FAA shutdown in one post." CW: Matthews is right; his post contains more info than I found from reading several long news stories.

Eliot Spitzer in Slate: "Last week, a conservative panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit's Court of Appeals — the second-most important court in the land — struck down an effort to inject a tiny bit of democracy into corporate governance." The issue: the SEC had imposed a regulation requiring corporations to allow certain shareholders to nominate their own slate of directors; the D.C. court decided that was too much of an imposition on the poor, put-upon corporations. Read the whole article.

AND Matt Damon explains to dumb reporter & dumber camera man why teachers teach. (That's Damon's mother standing beside him; she's a teacher):

Frank Bruni celebrates two films by and about women: "The Help," based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett, & "Bridesmaids." Here's the trailer for "The Help":

Aah, what the hell, let's do "Bridesmaids," too:

Local News

Voter Fraud, Koch Bros. Style. David Catanese of Politico: the Koch-backed astroturf group "Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date. The fliers, obtained by Politico, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk 'before Aug. 11.'" ...

     ... Update: AFP claims it was a "printing mistake." Uh-huh. "The Wisconsin Democratic Party has already filed a formal complaint with the state’s Government Accountability Board over the misdated absentee ballots. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is also calling for an investigation."

News Ledes

Politico: "House and Senate leaders on Thursday brokered a 'bipartisan compromise' over Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, ending — if only temporarily — a two-week standoff that had sidelined 4,000 FAA employees as well as 70,000 construction workers involved in airport improvement projects and cost the government tens of millions of dollars in uncollected revenue from the airline industry.... Under the arrangement, the Democratic-controlled Senate on Friday will pass by unanimous consent a bill the Republican-led House passed in July that temporarily allows the FAA to conduct its business and slashes $16 million from the budget for subsidies paid to rural airports. That would allow the FAA to recall its furloughed employees and get up and running again at full strength -- at least until Sept. 16, when the temporary extension would expire. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood could then use his authority to grant waivers to any rural airports faced with losing the subsidy."

AP: "Stocks are plunging in another broad sell-off as investors grow concerned about an economic slowdown in the U.S. and Europe. The Dow Jones industrial average dove more than 350 points, erasing its gains for the year." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Stocks around the world fell sharply Thursday on intensifying investor fears about a slowdown in global economic growth and worries about Europe’s ongoing debt crisis, which is centered now on Italy and Spain. Stock market indexes in the United States and Europe dropped more than 4 percent as Japan intervened to weaken its currency and the European Central Bank began buying bonds to try to calm markets."

Reuters: "Authorities issued a lockdown on Thursday at the campus of Virginia Tech, site of a 2007 mass shooting that killed 32 people, after a man suspected of carrying a gun was seen on campus, the school said."

Bloomberg News: "U.S. Senate leaders ended an impasse over stalled free-trade agreements, agreeing to vote after the August recess on benefits for workers who lose their jobs because of overseas competition, then take up the trade deals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pledged action yesterday to pass the agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office and Republican House Speaker John Boehner praised the compromise, signaling all sides concur on the process."

Washington Post: "Greeting 2,400 cheering supporters who paid as much as $35,800 to get inside the campaign fundraising party, [President] Obama took the stage at the Aragon Entertainment Center after an introduction from his former chief of staff, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), and a birthday song from performers Jennifer Hudson, Herbie Hancock and OK Go." Chicago Tribune story here.

New York Times: "Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary and dean of President Obama’s economic team, is expected to stay through the president’s term after intense White House pressure, according to officials familiar with the discussions. But Mr. Geithner has not yet notified the White House of his intentions, and family considerations could still win out, advisers say."

Politico: "Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) made his resignation official Wednesday, clearing the way for a special election to succeed him."

Al Jazeera: "The trial of Egypt's former interior minister, Habib al-Adly, and six senior security officials, has resumed. The accused all face charges related to their involvement in the killing of protesters during the revolution earlier this year, which toppled the government of the former president, Hosni Mubarak."

The Commentariat -- August 3

I've posted an Open Thread for today Off Times Square.

"Washington Chain Saw Massacre." Maureen Dowd sees "the gory, Gothic melodrama on the Potomac [as] a summer horror blockbuster — without the catharsis."

And for the next storyline in the continuing soaper "As the Capitol Turns," Greg Sargent begins the speculation derby on what legislators will be appointed to the deficit-reduction super committee. The good news: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi "came close to endorsing the idea" that she would only appoint members who would hold the line on liberal prioities. The bad news: ConservaDem Sen. Mark Warner is angling for a seat on the committee. ...

... Steve Benen: "I hope folks are ready to live with those triggers included in the deal, because the likelihood of the Super Committee reaching some kind of consensus that can (a) be approved by a majority of its members; (b) pass the House and Senate; and (c) earn President Obama’s signature, is already extremely low." ...

... Karen Garcia has two excellent posts on the aftermath of the Swampy Horror Picture Show here and here. Or just go to her site here. ...

... AND Michael Scherer of Time games "the sequestration." Sounds dull, but it's pretty interesting. It doesn't bode well for comity. But then, what does in D.C.? ...

... Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner writes an op-ed for the Washington Post:

Blah blah blah ... compromise ... blah blah blah ... fiscal sustainability ... blah blah blah. It is not enough for Congress to have prevented a disaster it brought on itself. Lawmakers should return in September prepared to act to strengthen the economy and get more Americans back to work. Doing so will help repair the damage this fractious debate inflicted on an economy that was already slowing, not just here but around the world. ...

... Jared Bernstein: Sen. Mitch McConnell has promised that every time the President asks for the debt ceiling to be raised, we can expect another one of these crises. "To understand how nonsensical Sen McConnell’s ... position is, you have to appreciate that Congress knows when they pass their budget whether it will breach the debt ceiling or not, just like you know when you order your lunch whether you’ll be able to pay for it." ...

... Ezra Klein: "Hearing McConnell’s comments last night, economist Jared Bernstein was shocked. 'This is not the way of great nations,' he wrote. I disagree.... This is certainly the way of great nations. It’s the way they fall." ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate elaborates.

CW: like me, Matt Taibbi here and Glenn Greenwald here, do not buy the memes that Obama is a "weak negotiator" or was "forced" by Tea Party incalcitrance to make a bad deal for ordinary Americans. As Greenwald writes, "Obama's so-called 'bad negotiating' or 'weakness' is actually 'shrewd negotiation' because he's getting what he actually wants (which, shockingly, is not always the same as what he publicly says he wants)."

... Robert Reich: "With the hostage crisis behind him, the President is now ready to talk about the nation’s real problem": unemployment. But the deal he cut with Congress, and the radical right Congress in general, will not allow any spending on jobs programs. Reich echos Drum (& Bernstein): "The radical right has not only captured the federal budget. In convincing so many Americans the problem is the size of government rather than their shrinking paychecks and growing economic insecurity, the radical right has also captured the American mind." ...

... AND Ben Smith shows why Obama's announcement that his Administration will now "pivot to jobs" is another repeat of an old refrain without substance.

** Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "The public ... mostly aren't on our side. They think deficits are bad, they don't trust Keynesian economics, they don't want a higher IRS bill (who does, after all?), and they believe the federal government is spending too much on stuff they don't really understand. Conservatives have just flat out won this debate in recent decades.... I blame the broad liberal community for our failures, not just President Obama. My biggest beef with Obama is ... that he's never really even tried to move public opinion in a specifically progressive direction." ...

The Case for the Obama Approach. We didn't lose this fight. Barack Obama was in law school when this fight was lost. The role of Democrats should not be to convince people that government is great; it should be to help people reach their potential -- and government is a tool to do that. There has been a strain of skepticism about the government in the American character since the founding. Only the New Deal changed that significantly, but we have been returning to the norm ever since then. -- a "Senior Democrat," to Ben Smith

... Joan Walsh of Salon: President Obama is mistaken in his wager that "independents" will support him in 2012 because he's such a good compromiser. "Obama's best hope for re-election is the fact that Generic Republican won't win nomination; he'll be running against either a Tea Party extremist or Mitt Romney, and in most polls he beats both of them." ...

Giant Hanging Icicle. Derek Thompson of The Atlantic borrows four graphs from Calculated Risk: "... they compare key recession indicators as a share of their pre-recession peaks. The outcome reveals each recession in the last 50 years as a kind of hanging icicle. Ours is by far the longest, and we don't yet know when we'll trace our way back to the 2007 [level]."

Right Wing World *

President Krugman, I Presume. CW: I know Newt Gingrich is a big fat liar, so one might assume he was just lying here. But I don't think so. I am thinking he is genuinely clueless.

Art via Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller."The Mittness Protection Program." Maybe you didn't notice he was gone, but Ben Smith notes that Mitt has been MIA. "Romney’s absence has been particularly pronounced in the heat of the budget debate. His last event in either an early state or Washington, D.C. was on July 15.... Romney has been acting more as a full-time fundraiser and occasional candidate, and many of his stops — like the most recent two in Los Angeles and Ohio — are tacked on to his fundraising schedule."

Frances Martel of Mediaite: "... given [Pat] Buchanan’s record of questionable comments, it’s hard not to find something off-color about his debate with [MSNBC host Al] Sharpton today [Tuesday], where, discussing the debt, he argues that 'your boy,' President Obama, was 'whipped' by Sen. Mitch McConnell, and adds a 'briar patch' reference for good measure." Here's the video:

     ... CW: I think Buchanan has found his match in Sharpton. Note: I don't see where anyone has commented on it, but Buchanan also calls Rep. Emanuel Cleaver [D-Missouri], who is black, "your boy." He just can't stop. ...

... Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "Pat Buchanan has a long history of bigotry." ...

... Fox Nation (my absolutely favorite source for news): "Buchanan "forced to apologize for 'your boy' quip."

* Where the leaders are (1) nitwits, (2) liars, or (3) nitwits & liars. Oh, and they're all white.

More on D. B. Cooper from Pierre Thomas of ABC News: "A woman claiming to be the niece of infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper has spoken to ABC News in an exclusive interview about her role in the recently re-ignited 40-year-old cold case that has haunted the FBI for years. Marla Cooper told ABC News that she has provided the FBI with a guitar strap and a Christmas photo of a man pictured with the same strap who she says is her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "After months of inaction, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday issued its first formal condemnation of Syria for its use of force against civilians during a bloody crackdown that has killed as many as 2,000 anti-government protesters. The action came as Syrian authorities severed telephone lines, electricity and water supplies to the besieged city of Hama."

AP: "A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq. The lawsuit lays out a dramatic tale of the disappearance of the then-civilian contractor, an Army veteran in his 50s whose identity is being withheld."

AP: "The bruising debt fight behind him for now, President Barack Obama is planning a Midwest bus tour later this month that will focus on jobs."

President Obama speaks to the press before his Cabinet meeting:

... Politico: "President Barack Obama says his 'expectation' is that a partial shutdown at the Federal Aviation Administration will be resolved this week. The crisis at the FAA, which started July 23, has put 75,000 people out of work, stalled construction projects across the country and has forced safety inspectors to cover their own travel expenses while working without pay." Washington Post story here.

New York Times: "Hosni Mubarak, who served longer than any ruler in modern Egypt’s history..., faced charges of corruption and killing protestors Wednesday before a court in Cairo."...

... The Guardian is liveblogging the trial & related news. Includes livefeed of trial. Guardian raw video: "Hosni Mubarak arrived in court in Cairo on a stretcher, charged with the unlawful killing of pro-democracy protesters in the uprising against him earlier this year. He is also accused of profiteering by abusing his position of power and exporting gas to Israel for prices lower than international market rates. Sentences for these charges range from five years in prison to the death penalty." ...

... Al Jazeera's liveblog is here. Includes video. Lead story: "Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak has denied charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of protesters at the start of his historic trial in Cairo."

Reuters: "Syrian tanks occupied the main square in central Hama Wednesday after heavy shelling of the city, residents said, taking control of the site of some of the largest protests against President Bashar al-Assad." Al Jazeera story here.

Guardian: "Stock markets took fright on Wednesday as fears grew over the health of the global economy and the ongoing European debt crisis. There was heavy selling in London when trading began, sending the blue-chip FTSE 100 index falling by 91 points, or 1.6%, to 5626. There were also heavy losses across Europe, The French CAC and German DAX indices were down 1.6% and 1.1% respectively." New York Times story here.

New York Times: the U.S. Air Force is replacing the aged U-2 spy planes with the Global Hawk, a surveillance drone. "Since 2001, the cost of the Air Force program has more than doubled, and the service recently cut its planned fleet of Global Hawks to 55 from 77. That lifted the total estimate for each plane, including the sensors and all the research and development, to $218 million, compared with $28 million for the Reaper, the largest armed drone."

The Commentariat -- August 2

The President speaks moments after the Senate passed the debt/deficit bill. He has since signed the bill into law:

C-SPAN image.

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square.

For you serious wonks, here's the text of the debt/deficit bill. It's 74 pages. CW: I won't be reading it. ...

... CW: this commentary (mind you, this is analysis, not straight reporting) by John Schoen of NBC News is a good example of what's wrong with the MSM. Look at this sentence:

Consumers, investors, and business owners and executives have watched in horror as their government used the threat of an unprecedented default as a political bargaining chip.

    ... "the government used the threat of ... default as a bargaining chip"? The government? No, it was not the government. It was the Republican party. Fucking irresponsible.

... The Obama presidency in a nutshell by the best nutshell scribe ever, Rick Hertzberg (read his entire commentary):

Obama’s seeming refusal to hold [the Fourteenth Amendment] in reserve ('like the fire axe on the wall,' in Garrett Epps’s words) is emblematic of his all too civilized, all too accommodating negotiating strategy—indeed, of his whole approach to the nation’s larger economic dilemma, the most disappointing aspect of his Presidency. His stimulus package asked for too little and got less. He has allowed deficits and debt to supersede mass unemployment as the emergency of the moment. He has too readily accepted Republican terms of debate, such as likening the country to a household that must 'live within its means.' (For even the most prudent householders, living within one’s means can include going into debt, as in taking out a car loan so that one can get to one’s job.) He has done too little to educate the public to the wisdom of post-Herbert Hoover economics: fiscal balance is achieved over time, not in a single year; in flush times a government should run a surplus, but when the economy falters deficits are part of the remedy; when the immediate problem is what it is now — a lack of demand, not a shortage of capital — higher spending is generally more efficacious than lower taxes, especially lower taxes on the rich.

     ... Hertzberg will conduct a live chat on the debt ceiling at 3:00 pm ET today.

... ** Nate Silver: in view of the substantial majority of Representatives who voted for the debt/deficit bill, it is evident that "Mr. Obama could have shifted the deal tangibly toward the left and still gotten a bill through without too much of a problem. For instance, even if all members of the Tea Party Caucus had voted against the bill, it would still have passed 237-to-193, and that’s with 95 Democrats voting against it. Specifically, it seems likely that Mr. Obama could have gotten an extension of the payroll tax cut included in the bill, or unemployment benefits, either of which would have had a stimulative effect." ...

... Paul Krugman: "... what we’ve witnessed pretty much throughout the western world is a kind of inverse miracle of intellectual failure. Given a crisis that should have been relatively easy to solve — and, more than that, a crisis that anyone who knew macroeconomics 101 should have been well-prepared to deal with — what we actually got was an obsession with problems we didn’t have."

... Jackie Calmes & Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times have a blow-by-blow on high-level negotiations on the debt-deficit deal over the past several days. ...

... The New York Times has a chart that outlines how the deficit reduction would work unde the bill the Senate should pass today. ...

... Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "While Tea Party groups and members of the Tea Party caucus in the House loudly insisted that they would not support any increase in the debt limit, many rank-and-file Tea Party voters did support it. In interviews and in recent polls, many voters said they backed the Tea Party in the midterm elections because they wanted a change from the status quo, or because they felt that the government spent too much money, but not because they considered reducing the federal debt the nation’s biggest concern." ...

... Joe Nocera has a pretty good column on what a terrible effect the Tea Party hostage deal will have on the economy: "America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse." ...

You need to set a thief to catch a thief. -- President Franklin Roosevelt, on his appointment of Joe Kennedy as S.E.C. chairman ...

... Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times on the revolving door between the S.E.C. & the Wall Street firms the S.E.C. is supposed to police. CW: looks like that revolving door is hitting the rest of us in the ass.

Prof. Tera Hunter on the real story of slave families in the American South. (CW: near the end of her essay, I think Hunter confuses Bachmann with Palin. It was Bachmann, not Palin, who insisted the founders fought against slavery. Update: e-mailed back-&-forth with Hunter, & she says Palin makes the claim in her latest book. If you don't think being a scholar is tough, consider that -- Hunter had to read Palin's book!)

CW: I haven't read it yet, but this long New Yorker piece by Nicholas Schmidle on "Getting bin Laden" looks interesting.

AND, just because we deserve some fun:

FBI artist's rendition of D. B. Cooper, via the Seattle P. I.Casey McNerthney of the Seattle Post Intelligencer: "The FBI has what it calls 'our most promising' lead to date for a suspect in the infamous 1971 D.B. Cooper case – the nation's only unsolved commercial airplane hijacking. The name of a man not previously investigated was given to the FBI, and an item that belongs to him was sent for fingerprint work at the agency's Quantico, Va...." ...

     ... Update: "The man investigated as a suspect in the D.B. Cooper case ... has been dead for about 10 years, and a forensic check didn't find fingerprints on an item that belonged him, an FBI spokesman told seattlepi.com Monday." ...

     ... Update 2. Katharine Seelye & Charlie Savage of the New York Times have the story here.

News Ledes

New York Times: "After dealing with the debt crisis, Senate negotiators tried and failed Tuesday to end a stalemate over temporary funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, leaving 4,000 F.A.A. employees out of work and relying on airport safety inspectors to continue working without pay. The partial F.A.A. shutdown, which began July 23 and is likely to continue at least through Labor Day, has also idled tens of thousands of construction workers on airport projects around the country."

C-SPAN says the Senate is to vote at noon on the debt/deficit bill. No link. But if you want to watch the vote, C-SPAN is airing the Senate session here. At 12:15 pm ET, the Senate is voting. Update: the voting is still ongoing @ 12:34 pm ET, but C-SPAN reports that the Senate has passed the bill. CW: An interesting mix of "no" votes from the far right & the left (including Gillibrand of New York who is certainly positioning herself for a run for higher office). Update 2: at about 12:40 pm ET, Dick Durbin declared the bill passed. ...

     ... Update 3: at 2:00 pm ET Jay Carney just reported that President Obama has signed the debt/deficit bill into law. ...

     ... Update 4: here's the Washington Post story.

Reuters: "The 'Great Recession' was even greater than previously thought, and the U.S. economy has skated uncomfortably close to a new one this year. New data on Friday showed the 2007-2009 U.S. recession was much more severe than prior measures had found, with economic output declining a cumulative of 5.1 percent instead of 4.1 percent. The report also showed the current slowdown began earlier and has been deeper than previously thought, with growth in the first quarter advancing at only a 0.4 percent annual pace. The data indicated the economy began slowing in the fourth quarter of last year before high gasoline prices and supply chain disruptions from Japan's earthquake had hit, suggesting the weakness is more fundamental and less temporary than economists had believed."

AP: "The legislation [to raise the debt limit], which easily passed the House on Monday, is virtually assured to clear the Senate shortly after noon Tuesday by a bipartisan tally. The White House promises Obama will sign the measure into law." CW: the AP now characterizes the bill as "bipartisan legislation." Here's the New York Times story, which has been updated to reflect the Senate's passing the bill.

** Two Victories for Equal Rights:

     New York Times: "The Obama administration issued new standards on Monday that require health insurance plans to cover all government-approved contraceptives for women, without co-payments or other charges. The standards, which also guarantee free coverage of other preventive services for women, follow recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences and grew out of the new health care law."

     AP: "An incredulous federal judge on Monday rejected the state's claim that a new Kansas statute that denied Planned Parenthood federal funding did not target the group, ruling that the law unconstitutionally intended to punish Planned Parenthood for advocating for abortion rights and would likely be overturned." CW: read this for the state's essentially pejurious defense of the law.