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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Jan032011

The Commentariat -- January 4

Before we let Nino Scalia & Darrell Issa get us down, let us take a nonsense break:

Liz Goodwin of Yahoo News: "Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in a recently published interview that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment does not prohibit discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.... The equal protection clause states:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1971 that the clause protected women from discrimination." [CW: emphasis mine] Here's the California Lawyer interview of the supremely excrable Scalia.

Hypocrisy Watch. Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast: the tea party's complete disinterest in foreign policy conflicts with (1) their stated reverence for the Constitution, which they interpret to give the President & central government hardly any power, and (2) their hatred of the deficit & big government, inasmuch as military & security spending accounts for more than half of the federal budget.

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "The incoming Republican majority in the House is moving to make good on its promise to cut $100 billion from domestic spending this year, a goal eagerly backed by conservatives but one carrying substantial political and economic risks.... The reductions that would be required ... would be roughly 20 percent on average" for domestic programs. ...

... Michael O'Brien of The Hill: "The Senate's top Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), wrote incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Monday warning the new GOP House against advancing legislation that would undo the sweeping healthcare overhaul.... Democrats in the House, meanwhile, are already beginning to organize efforts to throw procedural wrenches into the repeal effort."

(1) Steve Benen: former House Majority Leader Tom "DeLay resigned in disgrace and was convicted on money laundering charges, but the new Republican leadership team has hired DeLay's old team to help run the chamber.... Corporate lobbyists have been brought on to shape policy; and the K Street project that Boehner swore to leave in the past is looking reconstituted. Given the spectacular failures of the last Republican majority, getting the old gang back together isn't exactly encouraging." ...

(2) ... Richard E. Cohen of Politico: "In another statement of the new House Republican majority’s commitment to the Constitution, aides to incoming Speaker John Boehner plan to take their oath of office Tuesday morning — a day before the same oath is administered to the 435 House members of the new Congress. At Boehner’s request, Chief Justice John Roberts will preside over the staff ceremony...."

(3) ... CW: so here you have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appearing to publicly endorse the continuity of Congressional Republican sleaze. Notice, too, how Cohen writes this little fluff piece about Boehner's "commitment to the Constitution" without irony.

Ken Vogel & Marin Cogan of Politico: incoming House freshman Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) will host a lavish fundraiser tonight from which some of the Repubican leadership is pretending to distance itself. Some conservatives are criticizing the event as inconsistent with stated Republican "austerity" goals. CW: no kidding.

Manu Raju of Politico: "The first day of the new Congress was supposed to mark the beginning of the end of how the filibuster has been regularly used to kill legislation on the Senate floor. But Democrats who have been complaining for two years about Republican obstruction are struggling to unite behind a single filibuster reform plan...."

Erik Wasson of The Hill: "Liberal groups say they are increasingly worried that President Obama will strike a [backroom] deal with Republicans on Social Security reforms in exchange for a 'yes' vote on increasing the nation's debt ceiling":

What I am really afraid of is another deal behind closed doors. At least with President Bush, he went around the country on a tour and presented his plan, and people didn’t like it. -- Nancy Altman of Social Security Works

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Obama’s legal advisers, confronting the prospect of new legal restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, are debating whether to recommend that he issue a signing statement asserting that his executive powers would allow him to bypass the restrictions."

Julianna Goldman & John McCormick of Bloomberg News: "President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level White House post, possibly as his chief of staff...." ...

... Ben Smith of Politico: "A Daley appointment would be an early signal of Obama's confidence that the party's left will ultimately have no choice but to show up and vote for him in 2012." ...

... Update. Howard Fineman: "President Barack Obama is in what appears to be the final stages of choosing a new White House Chief of Staff from among the following candidates, in approximate descending order of likelihood, according to a very highly placed administration source: Acting Chief of Staff Pete Rouse, former Clinton Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle and -- a dark horse candidate -- Agriculture Secretary and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack." CW: Vilsack would be a great choice: he can flash-fire people, then say he's sorry he acted precipitously.

Law Prof. Geoffrey Stone in a New York Times op-ed: "THE so-called Shield bill, which was recently introduced in both houses of Congress..., would amend the Espionage Act of 1917 to make it a crime for any person ... to disseminate ... classified information.... Although this proposed law may be constitutional as applied to government employees ..., it would plainly violate the First Amendment to punish anyone who might publish or otherwise circulate the information after it has been leaked."

On December 26, the editors of the New York Times wrote, "... the many who are struggling have no progressive champion. The left have ceded the field to the Tea Party and, in doing so, allowed it to make history. It is building political power by selling the promise of a return to a mythic past." ...

... Ralph Nader responds: "... have your public editor look into why flagrant, often bigoted right-wingers are given so much time and space compared with fact-based progressive leaders committed to the 'equality and welfare' that your editorial espouses."

Miguel Helft of the New York Times: "With its $500 million infusion from Goldman Sachs and other investors, Facebook ... [now has] the financial muscle it needs to compete with better-heeled rivals like Google.... The deal ... [gives Facebook] the ability to delay an initial public offering. That would allow it to remain free of government regulation and from the volatility of Wall Street. It would also allow Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, to retain near absolute control over the company he co-founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004."

"All Politics Is Local"? Not Any More. Nate Silver: "... elections in the United States have become increasingly nationalized in recent decades."

"The Personality of an Oyster." Joshua Green of The Atlantic profiles Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in an article aptly titled "Strict Obstructionist." ...

... In case you just can't get enough of McConnell, here's an op-ed he wrote in the Washington Post advising Democrats to obey him or something. CW: I didn't read it.

Mark Thompson of Time remembers John Wheeler, a former Pentagon official & advocate for veterans, whose body was found in Delaware on December 31.

Michael Crowley of Time recommends Greg Jaffe's heartbreaking dispatch to the Washington Post on some troops fighting in Afghanistan. CW: instead of reading novels on his Hawaiian vacation, President Obama would have done better to read Jaffe's report on real life and death in Obama's war. Crowley also recommends the film "Restrepo" by Outpost Films. As part of the film project, this 14-minute video centers on the actions that led to Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta's receipt of the Medal of Honor. Giunta is the first living recipient since the Vietnam War:

... Read more about the Outpost documentary film, "Restrepo" by Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington.

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