The Commentariat -- December 13

AP photo.CW: this story by John Bresnahan & Jake Sherman of Politico so peeved me that I'm linking it & posting the article's accompanying photo (above). In the pic, the President looks like a high-school boy talking to his girlfriend. Bernahan & Sherman's lede: "House Republicans don’t take power for another three weeks, but the White House is already engaged in a behind-the-scenes charm offensive designed to build relationships with incoming committee chairmen before they become powerful adversaries." ...

... BUT. Jake Sherman: "John Boehner ... is also still smarting over the president's claim that he took taxpayers hostage to secure a tax break for the rich. In an interview with Leslie Stahl of '60 Minutes'..., Boehner said Obama showed him 'disrespect' by calling him a hostage-taker." You can watch the interview here.

Washington Post: "A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation's sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama's signature domestic initiative. U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance." The opinion is here. ...

... Ryan Reilly of TPM: "Federal judge Henry E. Hudson's ownership of a stake worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in a GOP political consulting firm that worked against health care reform -- the very law against which he ruled today -- raises some ethics questions for some of the nation's top judicial ethics experts." Thanks to Jeanne B. for pointing me to the story.

Fox "News": "If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday. Appearing on 'Fox News Sunday,' Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court's decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case 'D.C. v. Heller.'" Here's the full interview, and well worth watching:

     ... You can read the Court's majority opinion as well as Justice Breyer's & Justice Stevens' dissents in D.C. v. Heller here (pdf). Justice Breyer's dissent begins on page 114; Justice Stevens' dissent on page 68.

Paul Krugman writes two superb short posts which demonstrate how the media, in this case the ever-laughable Washington Post op-ed writers, invent ahistorical narratives to fit their own fantasies. This post is on David Broder's assertion that Obama's odious tax deal marks the beginning of his resurgence and this one is on Dana Milbank's similar claim based on his pretense that the long, drawn-out healthcare debate was all the fault of libruls insiting on the public option. "So look at how the Village constructs its mythology.... The worst of it is that I suspect Obama’s memory has gone down the same hole." Krugman writes. ...

... In his column, Krugman writes: "The root of our current troubles lies in the debt American families ran up during the Bush-era housing bubble. Twenty years ago, the average American household’s debt was 83 percent of its income; by a decade ago, that had crept up to 92 percent; but by late 2007, debts were 130 percent of income." He reiterates his opposition to the Obama tax-cut deal. ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times on the Obama tax deal: "... a hefty portion of the $858 billion tax package will benefit middle- and upper-middle-income Americans — precisely the demographic that felt neglected the last two years as the White House and Congress focused on the major health care law and on helping the unemployed and people facing foreclosure." ...

... CW: compare Krugman's take in his column with Austan Goolsbee's rationale described in Herszenhorn's report. One of the two is wrong. Only time will tell which one.

"Mañana Economics." Fareed Zakaria: "What Washington is trying to do is reignite the consumption bubble - hoping to get Americans to spend money and take out loans. This plan, presidential adviser Lawrence Summers tells us, will get the economy to 'escape velocity.' ... If Americans keep spending money, using their credit cards, and buying houses, this will trigger the next technological and economic revolution. China has a different theory of how to get long-term, sustained growth. The Chinese have doubled their spending on education - with stunning results - and continue to build the world's best infrastructure." CW: which approach seems sounder?

** CW: we just can't repeat this often enough. Michael J. Moore of Bloomberg: "Wall Street’s biggest banks, rebounding after a government bailout, are set to complete their best two years in investment banking and trading, buoyed by 2010 results likely to be the second-highest ever.... The surge has come after the five banks took a combined $135 billion from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program and borrowed billions more from the Federal Reserve’s emergency-lending facilities in late 2008 and early 2009 following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Since then, the firms have benefited from low interest rates and the Fed’s purchases of fixed-income securities."

CW: I don't much care for polls, but... Steven Thomma of McClatchy News: "President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. The biggest reason for Obama's fall: a sharp drop in approval among Democrats and liberals.... At the same time, he's gained nothing among independents."

Scott Brown, Standard-Issue Sellout. Donovan Slack of the Boston Globe: "From mid-June until the Fourth of July..., the [Brown] took in $140,000 from banks and investment firms and their executives.... That is 400 percent more than the $28,000 received on average by all Republican senators during the same three weeks. As the money poured in, Brown and his Senate staff were working both publicly and behind the scenes to scuttle $19 billion in fees on the financial industry that would have paid for part of the regulatory overhaul, and to weaken a provision intended to curb certain types of investment activities by banks and insurance companies. Both efforts were successful and were adopted as part of the final bill...."

Kate Zernike of the New York Times profiles Rep. Ron Paul, whom fellow-Republicans have shunned but are now recognizing for his tea party bona fides -- and singular ideas.

** Caleb Crain for The New Yorker on the original Tea Party: "... over the past two years the history of America’s first insurgency has taken on a new pertinence, as the Tea Party movement has laid claim to its anti-tax and pro-liberty principles — and has inadvertently reproduced its penchant for conspiracy theory, misinformation, demagoguery, and even threats of violence. Furthermore, in much the way that journalists have begun to ask whether shadowy corporate interests may be sponsoring today’s Tea Party, historians have long speculated that merchants may have instigated early unrest to protect smuggling profits from British regulators—that the start of the Revolution may have been Astroturfed." CW: this is a long piece, a fine diversion for a cold winter's day. ...

... Less fun is Raffi Khatchadourian's long New Yorker piece on Julian Assange & the WikiLeaks organization. Khatchadourian obviously obviously got up close & personal with Assange & the operation.

James Grimaldi & Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border [to Mexico], the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003. A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has cracked that secrecy and uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years." The Post has traced the biggest culprit as Texas, & within Texas, Houston, and within Houston, a gun deal named Bill Carter.

David Carr of the New York Times: "... with each successive release, WikiLeaks has become more strategic and has been rewarded with deeper, more extensive coverage of its revelations."

Appearing on Fox "News," Sen. John McCain got a good laugh out of Obama's reversal on tax cuts for the rich. But Faiz Shakir Think Progress demonstrates that McCain, who supports the Obama deal, also crusaded against tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.