The Commentariat -- December 21

New York Times: "The House of Representatives gave final approval on Tuesday to a long-awaited modernization of the nation’s food safety laws, voting 215 to 144 to grant the Food and Drug Administration greater authority over food production." The bill earlier passed the Senate, which added exemptions for small producers. The President has said he would sign the bill as amended.

Wall Street Journal: "A Senate deal to fund the federal government until early March doesn't include money to enact the health-care overhaul or stepped up regulation of Wall Street, boosting Republican efforts to curb key elements of President Barack Obama's domestic agenda."

Washington Post: "New Internet access rules approved by federal regulators on Tuesday prohibit network operators from meddling with Web traffic into American homes but do not extend to the fast-growing market for smartphones and tablet computers. The regulations passed the Federal Communications Commission along party lines, with two Democratic commissioners reluctantly siding with agency Chairman Julius Genachowski in a 3-2 vote."

Eating or defeating your own is a form of sophisticated cannibalism. -- Arlen Specter, in his Senate farewell speech, or as he characterized it, his "closing argument" ...

... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The Pennsylvania Republican-turned-Democrat [Sen. Arlen Specter] berated his colleagues for stripping the 'world's greatest deliberative body' of its collegiality. In a bitter, at times angry, speech, Specter accused leaders of both parties of abusing the Senate's 'cerebral procedures' in the service of partisan rancor and gridlock."

CW: the other day Fox "News"" Shep Smith called out senators for opposing the 9/11 responders' bill but he didn't mention their names, nor did he identify them all as Republicans. Here, Smith gets specific:

... And here's Smith today, identifying Sen. Tom Coburn, who vows to block the first responders' bill, because the sponsoring senators say they have the votes to pass it:

     ... Alex Seitz-Wald has the story at Think Progress. ...

     ... Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal: "Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn will not allow a proposal that would cover health-care costs for Ground Zero workers to go through the Senate before Christmas, a Coburn aide told Washington Wire [WSJ] this morning." CW: remember "Dr. No" is a medical doctor.

Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy lets Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) have it in a pretty funny series of questions about DeMint's assertion that it's "sacriligious" for Congress to work on legislation during the Christmas season. Enjoy.

Statistics come to life when Swedish academic Hans Rosling graphically illustrates global economic development & life expectancy over the last 200 years. Thanks to Peter S. for finding this video:

In a New York Times op-ed, Larry David, who is rich, says "Thanks for the tax cut! ... Life was good, and now it’s even better. Thank you, Republicans. And a special thank you to President Obama and the Democrats. I didn’t know you cared."

Dana Hedgpeth of the Washington Post: "Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors.... But lawmakers, auditors and national security experts question whether the government is too quick to embrace technology as a solution for basic security problems and whether the TSA has been too eager to write checks for unproven products."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Justice Department has shut down a wave of high-profile investigations of members of Congress over the past few months, drawing criticism that the government’s premier anticorruption agency has lost its nerve after the disastrous collapse last year of its case against former Senator Ted Stevens." ...

... Hah! Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "When the Federal Election Commission voted last month to close an investigation into a $96,000 payment to Senator John Ensign’s former lover, it overrode the findings of its own staff lawyers, documents made public Monday showed. Lawyers at the F.E.C. counsel’s office said in a confidential report in March that Mr. Ensign’s parents and his campaign treasurer appeared to have violated campaign finance law when the parents made the payment to the family of the mistress, Cynthia Hampton, who worked for his campaign."

Dan Roem of the National Journal: "One of Pres. Obama's biggest supporters in the Senate in the past week is not even a member of his own party: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Murkowski supported the president's position on the Senate's four biggest votes since last Wednesday. She and fellow Alaska Sen. Mark Begich (D) voted in favor of the tax cut compromise and to invoke cloture on New START treaty, the Dream Act and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Both senators also voted in favor of the final repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell on Saturday. No Senate Republican voted for all four bills other than Murkowski."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "... while public opinion has changed in favor of gay rights over the past two decades, those attitudes are often not reflected in public policy, because the views of lawmakers, polls suggest, lag behind the public, and not just among social conservatives who have long opposed elements of the gay rights agenda on moral grounds.... Yet the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, first proposed in the Clinton years, remains stuck on Capitol Hill, in part because lawmakers are squeamish about language in it that would protect transgender employees. The 'don’t ask, don’t tell' repeal bill nearly died the week before it was passed." ...

... Jonathan Chait of The New Republic: "The progress of gay rights in the United States ... has been intoxicatingly rapid.... In part this reflects changes in the Republican Party, which is now dominated almost entirely by defenders of the economic prerogatives of the rich and barely pretends to care about the Christian right's agenda any more. In part it's a wildly successful effort by Hollywood to normalize homosexuality."

Hope Yen of the AP: "If government estimates hold true, the closely watched 2010 census will show America's once-torrid population growth dropping to its lowest level in seven decades. In Congress, the steady migration to the South and West should be a boon for Republicans, with GOP-leaning states led by Texas picking up House seats."

Aaron Lucchetti & Sarah Muñoz of the Wall Street Journal: "U.S. regulators are considering whether to require large financial firms to hold onto a chunk of executive pay to discourage the excessive risk-taking that contributed to the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the situation. Giant companies such as Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley that are considered critical to the U.S. economy, could be forced to award half or more of their executives' pay in the form stock or other deferred compensation, instead of up-front cash."

David Streitfeld of the New York Times: a new California law designed to protect victims of impending foreclosure from swindlers disallows attorneys from receiving payment prior to obtaining loan modifications; that sounds good, but it has meant that attorneys say they can't afford to take on clients who wish to contest foreclosure proceedings.

I just don’t remember it as being that bad. I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.... I was there with some of my friends.... We wanted to hear him speak.... I don’t really remember [what he said]. The truth is, we couldn’t hear very well. We were sort of out there on the periphery. We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do. We paid more attention to the girls than to King. -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, believed to be considering a run for President, reminisces on halcyon days of the civil rights movement ...

... The Weekly Standard interview, by Andrew Ferguson, is here. Holly Bailey of Yahoo! News writes a follow-up story. ...

... Matthew Yglesias puts some actual historical perspective on Barbour's remembrances of the Yazoo City Citizens Counsel, "town leaders" whom Barbour credits with kicking out the Ku Klux Klan. Yglesia writes, "The Citizens’ Councils were ... the respectable face of white supremacist political activism." ...

... Jonathan Chait has more on Ferguson & Barbour's profoundly inaccurate depiction of history. CW: they of course get it ass-backwards. I don't agree with Chait's conclusion that Barbour can turn his murky history of race relations into a plus, & if he can, this country is worse than I thought. ...

... This Is Amazing. Conservative Jim Geraghty of the National Review agrees with me. He bases his opinion of Barbour's reported 1982 watermelon "joke."

... To read how really "upstanding" the Yazoo City Citzens Council was, see Charles Bolton's The Hardest Deal of All. The Yazoo City story is highlighted, but scroll down at bit to see all of it. Indirectly, via Ben Smith. ...

     ... Update, via Greg Sargent: After 24 hours of attacks from right & left, Haley Barbour tries to walk back his remarks about those swell fellows on the Citizens Councils. CW: too little, too late.