;)
The Commentariat -- Jan. 17, 2013
My column in the New York Times eXaminer, also linked yesterday afternoon, is on Maureen Dowd's & Tom Friedman's columns.
New York Times Editors: "It is past time that elected leaders did something about gun legislation without worrying, as Mr. Obama said on Wednesday, about getting 'an A grade from the gun lobby.' It has been a bipartisan betrayal of the public's safety, the fault of Democrats and Republicans, and of a string of presidents who have said mournful things after the mass murders at Columbine and Virginia Tech and Aurora and Newtown but did not act. Wednesday was the exception. One month after the Newtown, Conn., murders, Mr. Obama presented a comprehensive set of initiatives that was, for a change, structured around what needs to be done and not what political tacticians think the president could get a dysfunctional Congress to pass."
Brad Plumer of the Washington Post talks to gun & crime experts to try to determine "which of [President Obama's] proposals might have the most meaningful impact on gun violence."
Nicholas Kristof on "the role that guns too often play in our society: an instrument not of protection but of escalation."
Charles Blow: "On virtually every measure, the N.R.A.'s messaging is off. The president’s proposals, on the other hand, are very much in step with public opinion, which has shifted toward more restrictions, according to a number of polls reported Monday."
Michael Tomasky of Newsweek: "Among the moon-howling reactions to the president's surprisingly bold gun-control proposals on the right, the one that most struck me was the boiling indignation that he had the temerity to speak of, and surround himself with, school children. Rush Limbaugh led the way as usual: 'He's using these kids as human shields ... He brings these kids who supposedly wrote letters to the White House ...' And so on. It was a shocking rant, even for that flatulent pile of gelatin, and amazingly out of touch with how the country feels about what happened in Newtown.... And it made me realize: they're going to lose. Their excess outrages America, and even if they prevail for the time being in Congress, in the long run, they're cooked."
James Downie of the Washington Post relates the restrictions Republicans placed on gun research to restrictions they have placed on other scientific study. "Regardless of where one stands on gun control, or on any of these other issues, the far right's attempts to restrict scientific research should concern everyone.... President Obama's call for gun violence research is an important stand against this war on science." ...
... CW: I would go one further than Downie. As I repeatedly imply in linking to stories about Right Wing World, Republicans are waging a War on Reality. This was never more clear than during the presidential election when Mitt Romney & his campaign not only lied with impunity; they flat-out said they were running a fact-free campaign -- one that "would not be dictated by fact-checkers." Of a piece was this was the entire GOP talking machine which vigorously disputed "inconvenient" polling data, so vigorously that they smeared Nate Silver -- the statistician who got it right. Meanwhile, other candidates were using god & something they read on the Intertoobz to justify their radical anti-abortion, anti-sex, anti-women platform. Much of the anti-fact campaign is opportunistic; e.g., politicians beholden to the gas-&-oil lobby dismiss climate change science & environmental impact research as hoaxes. But some is just an unshakeable abhorrence of anything that destabilizes the fundamentalist religious beliefs which they & their constituents hold. Efforts at the state level to control science & history (& now math!) curricula & to divert public funds to religious schools is another manifestation of the anti-reality campaign. Relatedly, "think tanks" are not havens for pointy-headed academics; they are propaganda machines. Count on this getting worse before it gets better.
Ed Kilgore: "The case against Obama's right to do or propose what he is doing or proposing is ... based on a radical belief in the Second Amendment as unconditional, and as the supreme constitutional guarantee that ensures all the others. So any gun regulations, existing or potential, are suspect as 'tyrannical' in that they limit the ability of 'law-abiding Americans' to stockpile weapons against the day when 'patriots' decide being law-abiding is no longer acceptable. Those shouting epithets at Obama over his executive orders and legislative proposals are not, moreover, focusing strictly on gun issues. Many have been claiming from practically the day of his inauguration that his policy agenda ... represent[s] gross and intolerable violations of American liberties. They are prisoners of their anti-Obama rhetoric, and/or champions of the radical ideology of 'constitutional conservatism,' which defends as permanent and inalienable rights to all sorts of things like unlimited exploitation of natural resources, 'fair' (i.e., low and regressive) taxes, freedom from non-discrimination laws, and zygote personhood." ...
In case you're interested in a sane interpretation of presidential powers vis-a-vis Obama's executive orders, Greg Sargent spoke to Charles Fried, President Reagan's solicitor general. According to Fried, "These are either standard exercises of presidential power, or even more benignly, standard examples of the power of the president to exhort the public or state officials to be aware of certain problems and to address them."
Domenico Montanaro of NBC News also fact-checks GOP charges that Obama is a "tyrant" and a "dictator." Is he or isn't he? Conclusion: nope.
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: puts the NRA ad [see yesterday's Commentariat] to an objective test: "The ad gives the impression that a phalanx of armed police are guarding students, such as the Obama and Gregory children, at Sidwell Friends. But that is completely false. Far from being elitist, the relatively small force of unarmed security personnel at Sidwell is not unusual for a school of its size. Moreover, the ad also suggests that Obama rejects out of hand boosting security at schools, when in fact his proposals include provisions that would provide funding for more school security. If the NRA is also trying to count Secret Service protection for Obama's children as part of that force of armed guards, that's even more ridiculous.... Such protection is mandated under federal law -- and only exists for the president's children." ...
... Ron Fournier of the National Journal: "The ad is indisputably misleading, and is arguably a dangerous appeal to the base instincts of gun-rights activists." ...
... Conseervative Joe Scarborough thinks the NRA is helping the gun control movement because of "the NRA's bizarre choices.... Republicans really have a choice ... they can either pass a comprehensive gun control right now or they can wait two years ... and have [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi write that bill":
... Reality-based people may recognize the NRA has gone too far, but as Peter Wallsten & Tom Hamburger write in the Washington Post, "In state capitals and city halls nationwide, the National Rifle Association is demonstrating its enduring ability to thwart new firearms regulations and expand rights for gun owners -- even after a school massacre in Newtown, Conn., gave the gun-control cause new momentum."
Ezra Klein rounds up "smart" Republicans & conservatives opposed to the GOP's deficit-ceiling hostage-taking. CW: Klein, who is good at numbers but not so good at prognosticating (whatever happened to Treasury Secretary Bowles?), thinks Republicans will cave. He does make one interesting point: "The danger of the debt ceiling, in my view, is less that Republicans make a decision to breach than that they make a last-minute miscalculation or miscount the votes -- think Boehner's Plan B debacle -- and a breach happens accidentally." But Klein does not take into account an important factor -- if & when the House raises the debt limit, it will do so primarily with Democratic votes. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer & Jim Clyburn can count. Boehner only has to be able to count up to about 20. And he has 20 fingers & toes. That should work. ...
... Yes, those "smart" Republicans have a tough row to hoe. From the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:
Obama 2.0
Uh-oh, Another White Guy. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama is planning to elevate a key national security deputy, Denis R. McDonough, to White House chief of staff, administration officials said on Wednesday, making perhaps his closest foreign policy adviser the gatekeeper to the Oval Office."
** Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points. On Monday, seven Pennsylvania Republican state representatives introduced a bill to make this vote-rigging scheme a reality in their state.... both Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) and state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-PA) support the plan, so there is a real risk that Pennsylvania Republicans will try to write the voters out of the next presidential election." ...
... Here's Rachel Maddow on the same topic. (She doesn't actually get to discussing the electoral college until about 2:20 min. in.) This is serious. It's a plan that Pennsylvania Republicans tried even before the November elections. Now they are going for it again. Thanks for contributor Diane for the link to Maddow's segment:
Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "The annual compensation for Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's chief executive, was slashed in half to signal that the bank's board was a strong watchdog.... The board voted unanimously to reduce Mr. Dimon's pay to $11.5 million from $23.1 million a year earlier...."
Steven Ohlemacher of the AP: the Business Roundtable, "an influential group of business CEOs, is pushing a plan to gradually increase the full retirement age to 70 for both Social Security and Medicare and to partially privatize the health insurance program for older Americans." ...
... Richard Eskow in the Huffington Post: "The Business Roundtable was founded specifically to win political favors from the largest and most ruthless companies in America, often at the expense of smaller business, and its accomplishments read like a rap sheet." Read the whole post if you think these guys might be the "nonpartisan pragmatists" they claim to be. CW Plus: not a one of those fat cats has the foggiest idea of what it's like to do manual labor at age 60, much less 70. Plus: Americans who most need Social Security & Medicare benefits do not have longer life expectancies than did Americans way back when. ...
** Kevin Brown of Remapping Debate: "Each spring since 2010, some of Washington's A-list politicians ... submit to questions from some of the media's A-list journalists on the future of the federal fiscal policy. These interviews ... [are] conducted ... at private 'Fiscal Summits' convened by Peter G. Peterson, the billionaire former commerce secretary.... Peterson ... is now beginning his fourth decade of arguing that there is no alternative to enacting 'entitlement reform' (read: cut Social Security and Medicare) and 'tax reform' (read: raise regressive taxes and lower progressive ones) in the name of curbing the country's 'unsustainable' debt and deficits.... An essential and successful element of the Peterson strategy is to create an environment where it is widely if not universally believed that there is no alternative to his vision.... In this view, it's 'not realistic' to believe the country can afford the same programs it once did." Via Charles Pierce.
... ** Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post: "U.S. manufacturers have added a half-million new workers since the end of 2009.... And yet there were 4 percent fewer union factory workers in 2012 than there were in 2010.... The new manufacturing jobs are different from the ones that delivered millions of American workers a ticket to the middle class over the past half-century.... On balance, all of the job gains in manufacturing have been non-union.... By one measure -- average hourly earnings -- a typical manufacturing worker now earns less than a typical private-sector worker of any industry. Throughout the 30 years before the recession, the reverse was the case."
Danielle Douglas of the Washington Post: "Rules released by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Thursday ... requir[e] mortgage servicers to maintain accurate records, offer ongoing access to staff and provide options for delinquent homeowners to avoid foreclosure, among other things. They are aimed at vanquishing the unscrupulous practices that were commonplace during the financial crisis, such as 'robo-signing,' where servicers processed foreclosure documents without a proper review. The rules, which take effect in January 2014, are part of a broader reform of the mortgage market that includes limiting upfront fees and curtailing harmful practices such as interest-only payments -- provisions that were unveiled last week."
A Message to BMOC John Roberts from the Pew Research Center: "As the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision approaches, the public remains opposed to completely overturning the historic ruling on abortion. More than six-in-ten (63%) say they would not like to see the court completely overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, which established a woman's constitutional right to abortion at least in the first three months of pregnancy. Only about three-in-ten (29%) would like to see the ruling overturned. These opinions are little changed from surveys conducted 10 and 20 years ago." CW: if you want to remain popular with the girls, John -- and we know you do -- don't overturn Roe.
Gail Collins: "... once you get past the now-demolished race record, there’s not much point to Lance Armstrong, Famous Person. He has no other talents. He isn't particularly lovable.... Between 1996 and 2004, our American mail system invested an estimated $40 million in [the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team].... This would be the same Postal Service that lost $16 billion last year.... Republicans and Democrats could join together to ban the use of federal taxpayer dollars for sponsorship of sports events.... The Lance Armstrong debacle would have a point! Although, actually, Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota proposed banning the use of taxpayer money to sponsor Nascar race teams in 2011, and she was voted down, 281 to 148."
Inauguration
Fredrick Kunkle of the Washington Post: The Rev. Luis Leon, rector of Saint John's Church, which is across the street from the White House, "was picked this week to replace the Rev. Louie Giglio, a conservative evangelical minister who withdrew two days after his selection was announced because of controversy over anti-gay remarks he made more than a decade ago." Leon will deliver the closing benediction.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Pauline Phillips, a California housewife who nearly 60 years ago, seeking something more meaningful than mah-jongg, transformed herself into the syndicated columnist Dear Abby -- and in so doing became a trusted, tart-tongued adviser to tens of millions -- died on Wednesday in Minneapolis. She was 94."
MarketWatch: "New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits fell by 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 335,000 in the week ended Jan. 12, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims fell to the lowest level since January 2008, but the big drop likely stems from a seasonal-adjustment quirk whose effects could quickly fade and push the numbers back up in the next few weeks."
New York Times Update: "Kidnappers and at least some of their hostages were killed on Thursday as Algerian forces raided a gas facility where a heavily armed group of Islamist extremists was holding dozens of captives, including Americans and other foreigners, the Algerian government announced." ...
... Reuters: "Some hostages were reported to have escaped from a remote Algerian gas plant on Thursday, where dozens of foreigners and scores of Algerians were seized by Islamist gunmen demanding a halt to a French military campaign in neighbouring Mali. Governments around the world were holding emergency meetings to respond to one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, which sharply raises the stakes over the week-old French campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels in the Sahara." ...
... Washington Post: "French and Malian troops expanded their ground operations Thursday as they battled militants in the desert village of Diabaly in central Mali, senior Malian military officials said, and hundreds of French reinforcements arrived in the West African nation. The confrontations marked the first direct engagement since France launched a military assault last week to oust radical Islamists who have advanced to within 250 miles of the capital."
... AP: "The Obama administration has declared it cannot accept new terrorist sanctuaries in Mali or anywhere else and has promised to support French and African efforts to restore security. Yet after almost a year of disorder in the West African nation, Washington is still keeping the conflict at arm's length."
AP: "Lenders took possession of fewer U.S. homes in 2012 than a year earlier, as the pace of new homes entering the path to foreclosure slowed and banks increasingly opted to allow troubled borrowers to sell their homes for less than what they owed on their mortgage. All told, banks repossessed 671,251 homes last year, down nearly 17 percent from 804,423 the year before...."
Reuters: "The United States will on Thursday officially recognize the Somali government in Mogadishu, ending a hiatus of more than 20 years and opening the door to increased U.S. and international economic help for the violence-plagued African nation, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce the shift during a meeting with visiting Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud...."
AP: "The main battery beneath the cockpit of the Boeing 787 forced to make an emergency landing in Japan was swollen from overheating, a safety official said Thursday, as aviation regulators worldwide joined the U.S. and Japan in grounding the technologically advanced aircraft because of fire risk."
AP: "The IOC has stripped Lance Armstrong of his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics because of his involvement in doping, officials familiar with the decision told The Associated Press on Thursday."
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Reader Comments (12)
Re the Real Angry Party's (RAP's) very real war on reality:
Would recommend "Merchants of Doubt" by Oreskes and Conway, an account of the Right's decades-long attacks on the scientists and the science that concluded cigarettes will kill you, that DDT should not be sprinkled on breakfast cereal, that acid rain harms nothing, that the Star Wars debacle made (dollars and) sense only to defense contractors, and that climate science is just another left wing conspiracy.
Inspired by "Merchants of Doubt." have suggested to Diane Ravitch her next book document the barrage of baseless attacks on public education, often financed by those who see oodles of money to be made in the education biz if only they could destroy enough public schools to get their hands on it. What all this means is that when there's too much money behind the "science," objectivity and honesty take a powder and disappear without even waving goodbye.
Now that we hear the NRA has stymied research on anything to do with guns' social and behavioral consequences, where's the surprise? I have been hearing for years that research tells us violent videos and movies do nothing to promote violence in children or adults, but in the face of my own common sense and experience to the contrary, I remain skeptical if only because if violence sells and it does, no shortage of "experts" can be found to assert its innocuousness.
How about some research on the inverse relationship I suspect exists between money and morality? Wonder what the Heritage Foundation would conclude?
If Money's war on reality would harm only those who wage it, I could be comforted and even amused. Unfortunately, that war is being fought in the low rent districts where most of us live, and it is the common person's health, safety and future that is collaterally and directly targeted.
As you can see, I could get indignant about all this if I'm not careful...
Re-write: I mentioned Lance many comments ago as an example of the "We're right, and as long as we keep saying "we're right" we don't care what the truth of the matter is." He has finally stopped saying,"I'm right." As Marie comments today the wingers are in Lance's slipstream. I wonder if we will ever see all of them gathered together for a group confession/hug on Oprah's show?
John Howard, former conservatve (although he was to the left of today's Repugs) Prime Minister of Australia has an op-ed in today's NY Times on how he led the push to outlaw assault weapons and other types of guns. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html?ref=global-home
Interestingly, Australia doesn't have a strong central goverment, which meant that the Australia states had to be persuaded to band together to pass uniform laws. The government did buy back and melted down 700,000 guns, equivalent to over 4 million here and banned the importation of various types of guns.
The President has to get we, the people, to demand action in a loud and clear voice that Congress can't ignore. Australia showed that it can be done
In today's (1/17) Washington Post, George Will has a list of questions senators should ask Chuck Hagel. One of them asks how Hagel's thinking was shaped by the 1997 release of a taped May,1964 conversation between LBJ and McG Bundy, in which LBJ said "I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out." Will goes on to note that at that time the US had 266 dead, and eventually over 58,000 (US personnel) would die in Indochina.
It would be great if some senator carried Will's Q to Hagel, and if Hagel had the huevos to explain why LBJ couldn't "get out" -- which was his perception that if the he allowed South Vietnam to fail, the republicans who had gored democrats for years for "Losing China" and being "soft on communism" would red-bait themselves into national power for the foreseeable future, and in their victory tear down or prevent LBJ's hopes to curb poverty and racism. If the GOP track record of the time had not been so negative, I would bet that LBJ could have allowed Vietnam to unfold without investing so heavily our youth and the country's treasure -- and basically risking the people's trust in government -- because he knew a loser when he saw it.
I'm not an LBJ apologist, but I am certainly willing to lay the VN war right at the feet of the "better dead than red" GOP of the 1950's and 60s, and it would be interesting to hear if Hagel has the historical chops and the will to point out that cause. It remains a cautionary tale for our time.
@ Patrick.
And the same logic, which I also find convincing, would suggest the lengths to which President Obama has been willing to go in Afghanistan, surge and all, was dictated by what his administration saw as the political necessity of being seen as anything but "soft on terrorists." Politicians unfortunately have to play to their audiences, in our case, half of whom like to kill people and make a lot of money in so doing.
As the President indicated, the NIH has not funded gun violence research in many years. However, the US DOJ has done several studies, a lot focusing on victims, juveniles and prevention. The Bureau of Justice Statistics was a primary site for research I did for grants. I can spend the day there exploring and reading studies and research monographs. For the last 15+ years the focus on gun violence has found a more effective home in the public health arena. The medical model discourages emotionality and supports rigorous research methods.
In this area we have a nationally respected MD, Dr. Garen Wintemute, Violence Prevention Research Program, UC Davis. I had the pleasure of working with the Dr in the late 90's on a juvenile gun violence research project. Anyhoo, here's the website where you can access some of his recent research. I thought this survey: "New Study of Characteristics of Federally Licensed Firearms Retailers" (8/12) was pretty interesting. I applaud the President's push for research by NIH.
I still maintain the recent horrible murders in public venues are outliers. I believe more harm reduction would result from identifying the correlates of gun violence. The mental health piece is very very difficult to manage. It is impeded by the lack of accessibility and diagnosis and rigorous privacy protection under Federal law. I suspect that the correlation between mental illness and gun violence is quite small - but when it has occurred it is obviously horrific. In my mind, that is the most difficult piece to solve.
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp/
@Diane-
I agree that it would be very difficult to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. Not just privacy laws, but the reality that the latest mass killer procured his weapons from a supposedly non-mentally ill person, his mother, who legally had bought and registered her guns. We are able supposedly to keep diagnosed mental patients from buying guns, but that doesn't make much of a difference when they are otherwise available. What has long bothered me is how we teach our young men (and now women) in the armed forces to become trained killers. When they are exposed to the insanity of war, life can become cheap--and "the enemy" dehumanized. Any Arab (or semitic looking person) becomes a potential Al-Qaeda. I remember in Vietnam our soldiers could not tell the difference between the North and South Vietnamese, and called them all "gooks." Lots of shooting of innocents--even women and children, who were always suspected of carrying bombs.
These soldiers, full of anguish and anger, return from war and find readjustment to their previous lives fraught. There is a high rate of suicide, and also a high rate of alcohol and drug addiction, domestic violence, and for many--homelessness. We should worry about the capacity of these traumatized people to shoot and harm others every bit as much as we worry about mentally unstable people who have never seen combat.
Kate. You have certainly hit a key point in identifying mentally ill people who have the potential for violence, especially gun violence. Trauma is part of the excepted lexicon for vets. Witnessing gun violence and the related trauma is also correlated to future violence in juveniles. Unfortunately, the general public's understanding of mental illness is as misinformed and nuanced as well...maintaining that dinosaurs and people co-existed.
@Kate There were far more veterans who experienced combat in WW II and Korea, yet I don't see much evidence they went on rampages. We Vietnam combat veterans had to endure a constant flow of "crazed Vietnam vet" movies and tv. As I pointed out in this space, the Army and Marines spend time overcoming normal peoples' reluctance to kill. That said, my soldiers didn't go around randomly shooting women and children, but there were female Viet Cong who shot at us and suffered the consequences. Many Viet Cong platoons were rag tag collections of both sexes. Did My Lai happen? Yes.. Do soldiers learn to hate the enemy? Yes. However, most soldiers compartmentalize combat from civilian life
Do some of the things that happened over forty years ago still bother me? Yes. Most of the anger I felt then and still feel was directed at the politicians who sent us to fight a pointless war.
Kate, I'm not trying to insult you, nor am I angry at you.
Rand Paul, in his rant about "nullifying" the president's executive orders addressing the out of control gun violence in this country, demonstrates yet again his total ignorance of American history.
His claim that the founders fought against a monarchy is absolute, total bullshit. They fought against George III. There's a difference. There was, in fact, a sense on the part of a number of those worthies that a limited, constitutional monarchy was not out of the question. Even as important a political theorist of the early nation as Thomas Paine didn't particularly think that a republic and a limited monarchy were mutually exclusive. Hamilton considered this idea for a while as did others. Franklin was quite a fan of monarchical leadership. What none of these wanted was a hereditary monarchy with unlimited powers.
Of course, the problem they ran into was that the chronic demonizing of King George left them without any real role model to point to, which is interesting because George WAS a constitutional monarch, unlike earlier British kings.
There were many discussions of what exactly to call the first American president. Titles such as "His Highness the President", "His Mightiness" and "His Serene Majesty" were all considered (somehow "His Wicked Coolness" escaped consideration). The idea was to endow Washington with a king-like patina of greatness and power, the result of which was not lost on a number of contemporary European commentators who recognized a not so subtle attempt to drop a republican crown onto the head of the great man. Washington was approached by a number of supporters who broached the idea of a limited kingship, an idea he flatly refused. But that doesn't mean that others didn't consider it.
Think of it. These guys were attempting to create something wholly new in the world. A nation with a leader not given the thumbs up by god, not ruled by religion or a hereditary head of state. It would be highly unusual had a few of them not sought to incorporate some of what they all had grown up with.
But Rand Paul, seeing as his only connection to actual American history comes from comic books and Ayn Rand fiction, has no knowledge of any of this. One would hope that those making the laws would understand things as basic as history of the founding of the country and the many debates surrounding this audacious enterprise. Also, that they might have an idea of their powers. Correct me if I'm wrong (I have to wade through the senate rules) but I don't think Paul or any other senator can "nullify" anything.
And this guy is the odds on favorite right now to be the GOP candidate for president on the next go round.
Great. Maybe he can read a book or two not published by Regnery or Right Wing Comics over the next four years.
@Akhileus: As this column http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/the_23_executive_orders_that_weren’t/?source=newsletter
by Joan Walsh makes clear, the President issued exactly zero Executive Orders, but that doesn't preevent wingnuts from running their mouths. As my wife (clever woman, she) likes to say "talking to hear their head rattle." Even if he had issued some, EO's are considered to have the force of law. The Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution makes it clear that Federal Law is the law of the land. How can someone who has sworn to uphold the Constitution be so ignorant? Never mind, some things can't be explained.
Rand Paul's son : "The teenager was initially charged with consuming alcohol underage, disorderly conduct, and being intoxicated and disruptive, all of which are misdemeanor offenses, but initial reports did not mention the assault charge, and law enforcement officials also did not initially discuss whether Paul had been drinking on the plane."
It appears this 19 year old assaulted a stewardess, but I don't have the details. Suffice to say it sheds some bad light on the father who as Akhilleus has pointed out doesn't know diddly squat about American history, but evidently has not done such a bang up job as a parent.
Apropos of the veterans and war discussion I watched "The Invisible War" recently which is a documentary about rape in the military. It is shocking and heartbreaking and it chronicles the apathy of the military to do much about it. There have been democratic women in congress who took it to the floor––made Panetta sit down and watch it which he did and then changed one thing which was whom one could report to. I'd like to see this situation become front and center one of these years. Also the fact that we have all these suicides should also raise some red flags.