The Commentariat -- June 18

President Obama's weekly address celebrates fathers:

     ... AP story by Erica Werner here.

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. With the Anthony Weiner story behind us, here's hoping this site will no longer be a magnet for predators. I'll be on the road, so I may not be available to immediately control the comments. If a serious problem develops, I'll just have to shut down comments altogether till I get where I'm going & can more closely monitor the comments pages.

"It Isn't 'Hostilities' if the People You're Bombing Don't Shoot Back." Amy Davidson of the New Yorker joins the crowd of opinionators who can read English sentences and are appalled at the Obama Administration's twisted claims that the Libyan conflict is not subject to the War Powers Resolution. ...

... Ha! Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization.... Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to 'hostilities.' Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20. But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of 'hostilities.'”

Say What? John Aravosis of AmericaBlog: White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells Netroots Nation that a well-known 1996 questionnaire in which Barack Obama said he favored gay marriage "was actually filled out by someone else, not the President." With video of Pfeiffer making his unbelievable assertion and this reproduction of the "fake" questionnaire:

     ... CW: See Answer to Question 6. That sure does look like Obama's signature to me. ...

... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Liberal activists gave White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer a chilly reception on Friday at an online political conference as he tried to defend the Obama administration’s policies on gay marriage, Afghanistan and tax cuts. To heckling and some loud boos, Pfeiffer drove home two themes to activists attending the Netroots Nation conference: change is hard and installing a Republican in the White House would be much worse than reelecting President Obama." ...

... Here's a related report from Michael O'Brien of The Hill.

Associated Press: it's suddenly pretty difficult to tell where the AARP stands on Social Security, which comes as a shock to other advocates for the elderly.

Just Plain Mean. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: The "last extension of unemployment benefits — typically received in weeks 80 through 99 of unemployment — is paid for entirely with federal money and does not affect state budgets. But because of ideological opposition and other legislative priorities, Arizona and a handful of other states, like Wisconsin and Alaska, have not" made a minor change to their existing statutes which would "keep the program going."

David Carr & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "For the last two years, David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor who spent three decades fighting to prove the innocence of others, has been locked in a battle to do the same for himself. It hasn't gone as well." Here's an outline of the cases of those freed because of the work of Protess & his students.

CW: I have not been covering the controversy over a study, released by the ostensibly nonpartisan McKinsey and Co., mostly because the details of what's wrong with the study are (a) a deep, dark secret and (b) get pretty much into the weeds. (I did write a comment to Tom Friedman, who relied on the McKinsey report, to the effect that his commentary was intrinsically flawed, inasmuch as the study on which he based his analysis was subject to serious question. Not surprisingly, my comment was buried on a back page.) Anyway, Steve Benen demonstrates why the McKinsey controversy matters: conservatives who know the study results may be bogus are using it anyway to "prove" the Affordable Care Act is a bad deal.

News Ledes

Speaker John Boehner & President Obama on the course at Andrews AFB today. AP photo via ABC News.

President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Vice President Biden & Ohio Gov. John Kasich will play golf today. Washington Post story here. Update: here's the play-by-play from Politico.

New York Times: "President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan launched a broadside against his coalition allies on Saturday, saying the motives behind their presence were suspect and even complaining that their weaponry is polluting his country." Guardian: "The US and other foreign powers are engaged in preliminary talks with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the war in Afghanistan, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said. It is the first official confirmation of US involvement in such negotiations." Story has been updated. ...

... Guardian: "The Afghan government will struggle to pay its bills 'within a month' after the International Monetary Fund rejected proposals for resolving the Kabul Bank scandal, western officials have warned."

Reuters: "Oracle is seeking between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion in a patent lawsuit against Google over the lucrative smartphone market, according to a court filing.Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes upon Oracle's Java patents."

From the Heartland

Earlier today, a reader sent me the following in an e-mail. With the writer's permission, which I just obtained, I'm publishing the letter. It provides something of an antidote, I think, and an answer, to issues we've been dealing with these past few days on Off Times Square. -- Constant Weader

Yesterday was Flag Day. Several times throughout the day I thought about the times at my country school when all the classes (K - 8) would go outside first thing in the morning, raise the flag up the flag pole, and say the Pledge of Allegiance. There were two teachers and no para's with around 50 children. The older helped with the younger when that was needed. We learned to learn from our older and wiser peers, and then to help teach the younger children when we were the older and hopefully wiser ones. We valued the education we received. We learned well, played hard, and grew up in that two room school house.

At home, I learned that neighbors helped out each other for the big jobs like shelling ear corn, working the livestock, driving the cow herd to and from summer pasture, and doing an injured or sick farmers harvest in one day with 20 or more families working to get that crop in! All of this involved sharing your turn as well as those bountiful noon meals (dinner's) jointly cooked and consumed from heaping, mounded plates.

Church was a social as well as religious event. Singing was a big, big part of the process. I tolerated having to go every Sunday, but did not mind the choir practice on Wednesday nights because we had a good leader. She made us feel good about ourselves by working hard and learning how to sound decent. My Mother served countless meals in the church for all of the funerals. Each family that could, would provide the food and drink, knowing that at some point as time marched onward, the favor would be returned.

Our neighborhood garden club kept one of the historical markers along the railroad right of way (something to do with the Oregon Trail ) decent looking throughout the summer. This involved adults and children pulling weeds and watering. Sweat and toil for no pay.

There was no pay for any of this other than to know you were doing the right thing and making things better. That is what I felt when I grew up on the farm and in the small community where many of my relatives had always lived. Security. Friendship. Struggles. Caring. Learning.

None of this had to do with how much cash a person earned. Sweat. Harvest. Praying. Sharing.

That is what the Flag representing country and community meant to me then and continues to mean to me now.

I am From-the-Heartland.

The Commentariat -- June 17

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. There's lots to talk about.

New York Times Editors: "Partisan brinkmanship or not, Mr. Obama ... needs to go to Congress and make his case. Congress then needs to authorize continued American support for NATO’s air campaign over Libya."

Former President Jimmy Carter, in a New York Times op-ed, reminds us that before President Reagan's "war on drugs," the U.S. had developed a sensible drug policy. Carter cites his own 1977 articulation of that policy, which he says was "widely accepted at the time." He concludes, "... the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy." CW: See also Rep. Hansen Clarke's remarks in the videopost in yesterday's Commentariat. In the long list of ways Ronald Reagan turned this country in the wrong direction, the war on drugs is a huge -- and too seldom-mentioned -- one.

Another Way Ronald Reagan Turned the Country in the Wrong Direction. OR Ronald Reagan -- Still Making Us Miserable. Stephanie Pappas of Live Science: Income inequality is costing Americans their happiness. "Americans are happier in times when the gap between rich and poor is smaller, a new study finds. The reason, according to research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, is that when the income gap is large, lower- and middle-income people feel less trusting of others and expect people to treat them less fairly. The study also provides a potential explanation for why American happiness hasn't risen along with national wealth in the last 50 years. 'Income disparity has grown a lot in the U.S., especially since the 1980s,' study researcher Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia said in a statement."

Michael Grunwald of Time: "I’m thrilled the Senate voted to kill the [ethanol] industry’s fiscally and ecologically ludicrous tax credit. But it was galling — if not too surprising – to hear Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, complain that the 'ill-advised' vote would 'pull the rug out from under industry.' That’s the whole point!" Grunwald elaborates.

David Brooks writes a pretty good article about James Johnson and the Fannie Mae crisis. Since this is a Democratic scandal, he would. But the fact that Democratic paw-prints are all over it, does not make the behavior of Johnson, Barney Frank (and the unmentioned Barack Obama, who appointed Johnson to head his vice-presidential search committee) and other Democratic "leaders" any less disgusting. I hope this story, which Brooks borrows from Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner's new book Reckless Endangerment (because Brooks' columns are essentially rewrites of other people's stuff), gets more coverage in left-leaning media.

Ezra Klein: "The right way to cut Medicaid costs" is sure as hell not the Republican way.

New York Times Editors: "There is no excuse for Mr. Weiner’s behavior, but it is worth noting the cynical way lawmakers from both houses and both parties piled on to demand his resignation."

Prof. Sara Lipton, in a New York Times op-ed: "For most of Western history, the primary and most valued characteristic of manhood was self-mastery. Late antique and Roman writers, like Plutarch, lauded men for their ability to resist sexual temptation and control bodily desire through force of will and intellect. Too much sex was thought to weaken men...."

For a Feel-Really-Good post, do read Tim Egan's essay on the Canyon de Chelly.

So, here's the lede in the top story in the Chicago Sun-Times: "Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday defended the decision by his handpicked school board to cancel 4 percent pay raises for Chicago teachers, arguing that teachers have gotten two types of pay raises since 2003 while students got 'the shaft.'” ...

... AND here's a top headline from yesterday's Chicago Tribune: "Mayor Rahm Emanuel moved more than $1.8 million out of municipal bonds and into more broad-based funds in the months before he announced his run for office, according to disclosure records released Thursday that show assets between $6.2 million and $16.6 million." ...

... CW: I did not used to be prejudiced against millionaires & billionaires who ran for public office. I thought noblesse-oblige was okay. I've changed my mind. Not every millionaire or billionaire is isolated from reality. But so many of 'em are it tends to disqualify the very, very few who might know what it means to need a job or worry in your old age that you may die of starvation. In the news, we have millionaire Emanuel telling teachers an effective raise of 4% over eight years is swell, millionaire John Edwards asking billionaire Bunny Mellon to give him some more millions & millionaire Mitt Romney jokingly complaining he's unemployed:

I’m also unemployed. -- Mitt Romney, to some unemployed Floridians ...

... William Gibson of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "Romney was speaking light-heartedly, but Democrats called [the remark] a clueless and insensitive reference in a state with a double-digit unemployment rate." ...

... Joshua Green of The Atlantic: "Mitt Romney's Weirdness" is becoming the conventional wisdom that will likely haunt the candidate. ...

... BUT. Michael Scherer of Time is more forgiving. He also provides the provenance of the "I'm unemployed" joke, which is a little funnier, completely appropriate, and obviously prepared & vetted by Romney's staff:

It’s nice to be so warmly recognized. I’m not always recognized where I go, by the way. The other day I made a phone call. I was trying to dial for dollars, trying to help some of our friends around the country. I called a big executive’s office. His assistant answered the phone. I said, ‘I’m Mitt Romney, can I talk to’ what-his-name-was. And she said, ‘What’s the name of your company?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m currently unemployed.’ -- Mitt Romney, speaking at a New Hampshire campaign event

... AND. Ezra Klein: Romney's analysis of the economy is worse than his jokes about the economy. ...

... ALSO. Matt Yglesias makes perhaps the most obvious, but otherwise unmentioned, point of all: "Mitt Romney Is Not Unemployed." Yglesias explains why. CW: the important distinction Yglesias makes is one that I'm not sure Mitt -- or many national politicians -- get. At all.

... MEANWHILE, Karen Garcia finds the first draft of Barack Obama's Dinner with the President sweepstakes announcement. ...

BUT ... Looks as if the President Isn't All Bad. Peter Wallsten & Jia Lynn Yang of the Washington Post: It was supposed to be the White House’s latest make-nice session with corporate America — a visit by Chief of Staff William M. Daley to a meeting with hundreds of manufacturing executives in town to press lawmakers for looser regulations. But the outreach soon turned into a rare public dressing down of the president’s policies with his highest-ranking aide. One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals." CW: so what I'm thinking is that if these guys -- who could not care less about the environmental impact of their factories and even less about the economic impact of their cheesy wages -- are unhappy, then Obama is doing something right. ...

... BUT, BUT. Matthew Jaffe of ABC News: "The frustrations and the fears that progressives feel about President Obama were on full display Thursday as thousands of them flocked to Minneapolis for the sixth annual Netroots Nation conference." ...

... Read more about the Netroots Nation conference here. They're livestreaming a good chunk of the proceedings.

On seizing debate opportunity re: healthcare: Me 0, Mitt 1. On doing healthcare reform the right way as governor: Me 1, Mitt 0
-- Tim Pawlenty, always ready with a pithy, tweety comeback -- four days later

Local News

Do you want to drink pee? -- Portland, Oregon, Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff, on why the bureau drained a city reservoir after a man was caught on camera urinating into it

News Ledes

Washington Post: "The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking into allegations that a CIA official in the Bush administration was asked to gather personal information on [Prof. Juan Cole,] a prominent critic of the Iraq War, in order to discredit and 'get' him.... 'The Committee is looking into this,' Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the intel committee, said in a statement.... 'Depending on what we find, we may take further action.'”

AP: "Syrian security forces fired on thousands of protesters Friday, killing a teenage boy and at least 15 other civilians as accounts emerged of more indiscriminate killing and summary executions by the autocratic regime of President Bashar Assad, activists said." Al Jazeera print, video stories here.

Reuters: "The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are 'playing with fire' unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits." ...

... Washington Post: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed down Friday from insisting that private investors be made to shoulder part of any further bailout for Greece, easing fears of an imminent Greek default but raising the possibility that she could face rebellion at home."

AP: "The United Nations endorsed the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people for the first time ever Friday, passing a resolution hailed as historic by the U.S. and other backers and decried by some African and Muslim countries. The declaration was cautiously worded, expressing 'grave concern' about abuses because of sexual orientation and commissioning a global report on discrimination against gays."

** AP: "The Southern Baptist Convention has passed a resolution advocating a path to legal status for illegal immigrants. The resolution was passed on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the nation’s largest protestant denomination in Phoenix. It also calls on Southern Baptists to reject bigotry and to minister to all people, regardless of immigration status. The language is similar to the immigration reform principles President Obama has outlined." CW: this is revolutionary. And it could matter.

Reuters: "U.S. regulators could file civil fraud charges against some credit-rating agencies for their role in developing mortgage-bond deals that helped bring about the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The Journal said the Securities and Exchange Commission was reviewing the conduct of companies including McGraw Hill's Standard and Poor's and Moody's Investors Service owned by Moody's Corp on at least two mortgage-bond deals."

AP: "Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou replaced his finance minister Friday in a broad cabinet reshuffle to counter widespread anger over tough new austerity measures essential to prevent Greece from a disastrous default. The critical position which has been held by George Papaconstantinou since the debt crisis began in late 2009, will now be taken over by Evangelos Venizelos, a Socialist heavyweight who challenged Papandreou for the party leadership four years ago."

New York Times: "Syria’s most powerful businessman, a confidant and cousin of President Bashar al-Assad, announced on Thursday that he was quitting business and moving to charity work, Syrian television said. The move, if true, would suggest that Mr. Assad was so concerned about the continuing protests that he would sacrifice a relative to public anger."

The Sleaziest Man Alive. Or Ever. ABC News: "Just weeks before federal prosecutors charged John Edwards in a six-count felony indictment, ABC News has been told, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate requested millions of dollars from Rachel 'Bunny' Mellon, the banking heiress whose financial support of Edwards is at the center of the criminal case."

Wall Street Journal: police removed a heckler who works for shock jock Howard Stern from Anthony Weiner's press conference yesterday & issued a disorderly conduct summons to a freelance photographer previously convicted of manslaughter.