The Commentariat -- December 16

Andy Rosenthal, the New York Times editorial pages editor, writes a number of posts opposing the "National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama has indicated he’ll sign." You can start here and "back into" the earlier posts. CW: I'm not sure how a guy who seems so cognizant of and sensitive to the erosion of Constitutional rights and other important issues could be the same guy who hired Frank Bruni, Ross Douthat & Joe Nocera. I do think the publisher must have had a heavy hand in those personnel decisions. ...

     ... Update. "Politics over Principle." The Times editorial: "This is a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency. To start with, this bill was utterly unnecessary. Civilian prosecutors and federal courts have jailed hundreds of convicted terrorists, while the tribunals have convicted a half-dozen. And the modifications are nowhere near enough." (CW: we're seeing a lot of "politics over principle" coming out of the White House, aren't we?) ...

.. Here's Glenn Greenwald, way unsurprised by President Obama's decision to sign the bill into law, with a long exposition on how terrible & terrifying is this law against "terrorists." ...

... If you think "So What? It Can Never Happen to Me," read this story by James Grimaldi of the Washington Post. It nearly happened to the Speaker of the House: "The [FBI] considered a sting operation against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich after sifting through allegations from a notorious arms dealer that a $10 million bribe might get Congress to lift the Iraqi arms embargo. The FBI ended up calling off the operation in June 1997. It decided there was no evidence that Gingrich knew anything about the conversations the arms dealer was secretly recording with a man who said he was acting on behalf of Gingrich’s then-wife, Marianne, according to people with knowledge of the investigation." All the feds "had" on Newt was an assertion about by an arms dealer about Newt's wife. If the same sort of assertion were made about you or your spouse, you can bet you'd be locked away for safekeeping till somebody got through sorting stuff out. ...

... You can read the original story here, by Joseph Trento of DC Bureau. Please at least click on the link to give Trento a hit. The Post describes the author of the scoop as "a nonprofit journalist" and provides no link. It wasn't hard to find because other for-profit writers aren't so stingey, but why can't the Post handle competition from nonprofits and give credit where credit is due?

Bernie Sanders talks to Al Sharpton about class warfare by the rich against the rest of us and on his proposed Constitutional Amendment to reverse Citizens United. The petition on the amendment is here (I also posted a link a short time ago):

Ilyse Hogue of The Nation: "... the speed of [Lowe's] surrender to an extreme group peddling outright bigotry should give us pause and force a closer look at how the landscape has shifted in a country that claims religious tolerance as a founding principle. Simply put, the bigots won way too easily." (See earlier Commentariats for more background, though Hogue includes the basics in her essay.)

John Sides of the New York Times on how the rich are different from the rest of us when it comes to politics. A Gallup study found that "The 1 percent cares more about deficits than the economy"; the 1 percent want government spending cuts while most of the 99 percent do not think spending cuts alone are the way to cut the deficit; "the 1 percent is vastly more politically active." CW: so now you know why Washington -- especially President Obama -- spent a year talking about nothing but "belt-tightening" (and he still is). The belt-tighteners are not speaking for you. The motivation has been attributed to "inside-the-Beltway pressure." No, it was Wall Street/big corporate pressure.

Prof. Gar Alperovitz, a friend of a friend, in a New York Times op-ed, suggests that the U.S. could move toward a bold new economic form: a kind of cross between capitalism & socialism, wherein governments at all levels, as well as individual citizen co-ops, would become the owners of a large percentage of big businesses. There are already quite a few such companies in existence or in the works.

Writer & personality Christopher Hitchens died yesterday. See links to obituaries in today's Ledes. Here's the Vanity Fair page on Hitchens, which includes a remembrance by Graydon Carter, video & links to some of his writings. Slate links here to some of Hitchens' best pieces for them. Here's a brief remembrance by Jacob Weisberg of Slate. And a funny one from novelist Julian Barnes. (The novel in question, BTW, was Metroland.) The Atlantic has a page of links to Hitchens' writings for them here. The Atlantic's literary editor Benjamin Schwartz has a remembrance here.

Fred Kaplan of Slate writes a post-mortem on the Iraq War that was.

Jim Fallows of The Atlantic: "... airlines and the FAA were engaged in a form of 'safety theater,' with their insistence that 'everything with an On-Off switch must be in the OFF position' on taxi, takeoff, descent, and landing." With lots o'links.

Right Wing World

The New York Times does a spot-fact-check of last night's GOP presidential candidates' debate. Here's the Washington Post's quick fact-check. ...

... NEW. Charles Pierce has as good a take as any on the debate, because it's mostly good for laughs.

** Paul Krugman: Rep. Ron "Paul [R-Texas] has maintained his consistency by ignoring reality, clinging to his ideology even as the facts have demonstrated that ideology’s wrongness. And, even more unfortunately, Paulist ideology now dominates a Republican Party that used to know better. I’m not talking here about Mr. Paul’s antiwar views or his less well-known views on civil and reproductive rights, which would horrify liberals who think of him as a good guy. I’m talking, instead, about his views on economics." CW: This really is a must-read, because Krugman so succinctly explains why Ron Paul is a disaster waiting to happen. Short version: "Great Depression, here we come." ...

... Steve Kornacki of Salon: "... if you need further proof that Ron Paul is starting to make Republican elites uneasy, here’s Exhibit A: Sean Hannity went after him hard on Wednesday night.... Hannity’s preferred strategy has been to ignore Paul, so it’s telling that less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses he felt the need on Wednesday to bring Bill Bennett on his show for a segment of unsaturated Paul-bashing."

... William Broad of the New York Times: Newt Gingrich is ready to carry his Armageddon scenarios & sciencey-fictiony stuff into the policy arena. He's up for nuclear war, which he will "pre-empt" by attacking nuclear-armed countries! That's the plan. Help!

** Liar for Hire. Jim Rutenberg & Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "As [Newt] Gingrich runs for president, he is working to appeal to Republican primary voters suspicious of big-government activism, especially in the realm of health care. But interviews and a review of records show how active Mr. Gingrich has been in promoting a series of recent programs that have given the government a bigger hand in the delivery of health care, and at the same time benefited his clients. During the Bush administration, he was a leading Republican advocate for the costly expansion of Medicare, which many in his party now regret. And he and his center pushed some policies that are reflected in Mr. Obama’s health care record — a record Mr. Gingrich regularly criticizes on the campaign trail. All the while, his center functioned as a sort of high-priced club where companies joined him in working the corridors of power in Washington and in state capitals."

** Matt Yglesias of Slate: "Paul Ryan’s Medicare Scheme. His new proposal is less radical than his last one, and it just might pass if Obama loses." CW P.S.: Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is co-sponsoring the newest Ryan Medicare scheme, is a dangerous loose cannon -- a "progressive" who can be had. He's another politico who fancies himself a "big thinker" a la Gingrich, but Wyden's thinking is pretty fuzzy-headed and often counter-productive and wildly impractical, especially when he allows Republicans to help him "tweak" his plans. ...

... NEW. Sam Baker of The Hill: "Democrats and their allies quickly united against the Medicare proposal introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). As he introduced the plan Thursday morning, Wyden insisted that there was plenty for Democrats to support. But lawmakers, the White House and healthcare interest groups took a hard line against the proposal, even linking it to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich."

Local News

AP: "Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s boundary-pushing foray into Arizona’s immigration enforcement over the last six years met its most bruising criticism when the U.S. Justice Department said the lawman’s office carried out a blatant pattern of discrimination against Latinos and held a 'systematic disregard' for the Constitution." ...

... NEW. The New York Times story, by Marc Lacey, is here. ...

... Jeff Biggers in Salon: "... a real clock may be finally ticking for the countdown of the nearly 20-year reign of America’s self-proclaimed 'Toughest Sheriff.' One federal department is not even waiting: Within hours of the DOJ announcement, the Department of Homeland Security terminated Maricopa County’s access to immigration status data under the federal Secure Communities program."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought civil actions against six former top executives at the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying that the executives did not adequately disclose their firms’ exposure to risky mortgages in the run-up to the financial crisis.... The agency filed complaints against three former executives at Fannie Mae – its chief executive, Daniel H. Mudd; chief risk officer, Enrico Dallavecchia; and executive vice president, Thomas A. Lund. Freddie Mac’s former chief executive, Richard F. Syron; Patricia Cook, its chief business officer; and its executive vice president, Donald J. Bisenius, were also named in a separate complaint."

New York Times: "Retreating from their harsh partisan sniping, and perhaps fearing public rebuke, Congressional leaders said Thursday that they had agreed on a large-scale spending measure to keep the government running for the next nine months. But an accord on extending a payroll tax holiday set to expire at the end of the month remained elusive, with Democrats weighing a possible short-term extension, setting the stage for another fight with Republicans over how to pay for it." ...

     ... Update: "As the House headed toward a vote on a $1 trillion spending measure that would avert a government shutdown, Speaker John A. Boehner said Friday that House Republicans would insist on including the Keystone XL oil pipeline in any legislation that extended the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits."

ABC News: "Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary said today that he did not actually witness former coach Jerry Sandusky penetrating a young boy in the shower, but saw activity he believed was sexual and told as much to head coach Joe Paterno.... McQueary was the first of five witnesses that will testify today in a hearing before District Judge William C. Wenner to determine what Penn State officials knew about Sandusky's alleged child sexual abuse on the Penn State campus." ...

     ... New York Times update here.

New York Times: "The leading Republican presidential candidates largely shelved their contentious attacks on one another to deliver their closing arguments on Thursday night at the final debate before the nominating contests begin, but Newt Gingrich did not escape sharp questions about his record in and out of government and his ability to defeat President Obama."

New York Times: "Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62." Washington Post obituary here. Guardian obit here.

President Obama announced yesterday that he has assured, by executive order, that home healthcare workers would now be included in the same minimum wage and overtime protections afforded to other workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act. CW: This is a progressive move Congress has refused to make. If you think it doesn't matter who's in the White House, here's as good an example as any of why that's wrong-headed:

... Here's some background that's pretty sweet: