;)
The Commentariat -- July 31, 2014
Internal links removed.
NEW. Ken Dilanian of the AP: "CIA Director John Brennan is apologizing to Senate intelligence committee leaders after his inspector general found that CIA employees acted improperly when the CIA searched Senate computers earlier this year. Agency spokesman Dean Boyd said in an email to The Associated Press that Brennan has convened an accountability board that will investigate the conduct of the CIA officers and discipline them, if need be. The Justice Department has so far declined to pursue criminal charges against the employees, who searched the computers for information gathered in the course of an investigation into the CIA's interrogation techniques."
** Harold Meyerson: "Who is a company?"
Paul Kane & Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "House Republicans voted to proceed with a lawsuit against President Obama on Wednesday, saying that his executive actions are so extreme that they violate the Constitution. The nearly party-line vote -- all Democrats voted against it, and all but five Republicans voted for it -- further agitated an already polarized climate on Capitol Hill as both parties used the pending suit to try to rally support ahead of the November elections." ...
This isn't about this lawsuit. This is about the road to impeachment. -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), during a briefing immediately after the lawsuit vote
... Amie Parnes of the Hill: "President Obama asked Republicans to stop 'hating' and 'being mad all the time' during a Wednesday speech in Kansas City, Mo., focused on the economy. The president accused GOP lawmakers of needlessly suing him, instead of doing their jobs":
... Gail Collins on impeachment & the House suit against the President: "Republicans tried to improve their legal prospects by picking a particular executive order. They settled on the one postponing enforcement of part of Obamacare that requires businesses to provide health coverage for their employees.... 'Not a single one of them voted for the Affordable Care Act,' said Louise Slaughter, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee. 'They spent $79 million holding votes to kill it. And now they're going to sue him for not implementing it fast enough.' We will look back on this moment in Washington as The Week That Irony Died." ...
... Dana Milbank: "For procedural reasons, Republicans opted to bring the lawsuit bill to the floor paired in debate with a measure to deregulate pesticides. Linking the two under the same debate rules was fitting, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) judged, because 'one is as ridiculous as the other.' Also, both would make the environment more toxic." ...
... CW: We should probably be more worried that our dangerous, irresponsible "representatives" want to deregulate pesticides than that they are about to sue the President in an election-year stunt. I have a feeling Boehner will slow-walk the suit right past November 4. ...
... Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times: "Republicans hoped that by filing a lawsuit against President Obama ... they would mobilize conservatives eager for a confrontation with the White House. But so far it appears to be rallying Democrats at least as much as Republicans. Warning that the lawsuit is just the first step toward impeachment, Democrats have turned the GOP strategy into their own fundraising and motivational tool, flooding supporters with emails in recent weeks." ...
... Thanks, Orange Man. Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Here's the big difference between impeaching President Obama and suing him: The former is a pipe dream being pushed by far-right conservatives, while the latter has the full support of the Republican establishment.... In the fall campaign, it will be much easier for Democrats to tether Republican candidates in key races to the push for a lawsuit than it will to tie them to impeachment calls. That's why it could be a bigger problem [for Republicans].... Why do it? Polls had already shown that the Republican base was more enthusiastic about voting in the fall than Democrats. Democrats have desperately been searching for ways to get their voters to go to the polls this fall. Republicans may have just inadvertently handed them a big one." ...
... Jonathan Capehart: "At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) delivered remarks so aggressive about how President Obama has 'exceeded his authority' that they are bound to fan the fervor for his impeachment among his fellow Republicans.... It is this kind of high-octane rhetoric that is going to make it all but impossible for Boehner to avoid the political hara-kiri that would be Obama's impeachment, that is, once his raucous caucus realizes that the lawsuit they are expected to approve late this afternoon will either never get a hearing or won't have any impact on Obama whatsoever. For many of them, publicly punishing the president is paramount." ...
... Dave Weigel looks at the history of the Impeach Obama movement, which started "early in the Obama presidency." The new Republican party line is that "Democrats at the White House" started the "impeachment scam," but it ain't so: "The conservatives who wanted to impeach Obama are acting like it was never their idea."
** Jake Sherman & Seung Min Kim of Politico: "House Republicans will vote to rein in the Obama administration's power to halt deportation for undocumented immigrants -- a surprise move that comes as they struggle to attract support for their bill to address the crisis at the border. The new plan, described by multiple GOP aides Wednesday evening, comes as House Republicans were unable to lock up 218 GOP lawmakers to vote for the $659 million emergency funding package.... The new House GOP tack takes a page from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)" ...
... Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) ... will meet with a group of House Republicans Wednesday to urge them to oppose House Speaker John A. Boehner's plan to stem the flow of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to several House members who plan to attend the 7 p.m. gathering at Cruz's office.... Boehner unveiled legislation Tuesday to make it easier to deport Central American minors who have entered the United States illegally, provide $659 million to federal agencies through the end of the fiscal year, and change a 2008 anti-trafficking law. The funding would be significantly less than the $3.7 billion that President Obama has requested from Congress and less than the $1.5 billion initially floated by Boehner and his allies earlier this month -- a figure that was cut due to conservative opposition." ...
... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "The White House formally threatened to veto House Republicans' border funding supplemental for the child migrant crisis, saying it 'could make the situation worse, not better.' ... Even if it passes, the bill is going nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, which is trying to pass a separate $3.6 billion supplemental package which does not change immigration laws." ...
... Ted Barrett of CNN: "The Senate voted on Wednesday to take up a $2.7 billion Democratic spending bill to address the southern border crisis. Lawmakers voted 63-33 on a procedural vote to begin debate on the emergency measure prompted by the deluge of migrant youth from Central America who have entered the country illegally this year."
Julie Pace of the AP: "The Obama administration condemned the deadly shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza Wednesday, using tough, yet carefully worded language that reflects growing White House irritation with Israel and the mounting civilian casualties stemming from its ground and air war against Hamas. The U.S. frustrations were compounded by a flurry of Israeli media reports this week that appeared aimed at discrediting President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent days trying to negotiate an unsuccessful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. In unusually blunt language, a State Department spokeswoman on Wednesday repeatedly described one of the reports as 'complete crap.'" ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker comments on Israel's bombing of shelters to which they had advised Palestinian civilians to go. ...
... Dana Milbank assesses Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to broker an end to hostilities in Israel/Gaza: "His predecessor, Hillary Clinton, preserved her political prospects by showing a preference for social media over international hotspots. But Kerry has risked his standing repeatedly, personally leading negotiations over Sudan, Ukraine, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan.... Kerry deserves credit for trying. But his nearly 18 months on the job are a lesson in humility -- not just for Kerry but for those in Congress who smugly second-guess the officials they oversee. Leading the world is harder than it looks." ...
... Meanwhile, one of the Washington Post's top wingnuts (they have a stable-full) Jennifer Rubin says Kerry should resign. CW: I didn't read her post & I'm not linking it. I'm sure it's "complete crap." ...
... Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: Anti-Israel protests springing from the current attacks on Hamas are troubling to German authorities & to the growing Jewish population, as some protesters are making anti-Jewish remarks.
Ferdous Al-Faruque of the Hill: "A series of management failures at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services led to the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov and $840 million in costs, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. 'CMS undertook the development of HealthCare.gov and its related systems without effective planning or oversight practices,' wrote William Woods, GAO director of acquisition and sourcing management, in testimony prepared for a Thursday hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee."
Jonathan Chait: The plaintiffs in the anti-ACA Halbig case argued that "Democrats in Congress made a typo when you wrote Obamacare, so ha-ha, you lose. The card says 'Moops':
... BUT "The Gruber video encouraged conservatives to suddenly invent a new and more sweeping argument.... It was Congress's actual plan to deny tax credits to customers on the federal exchanges.... It is exactly as if conservatives are now insisting not just that we must follow the misprint on the card, but that the people who invaded Spain in the eighth century were actually called 'the Moops.'" ...
... Paul Waldman gives credit where credit is due -- to Simom Maloy of Salon for coming up with the "Moops" analogy. Maloy, who also embedded the "Seinfeld" video, wrote last week that "Republicans [were] gloat[ing] over an Obamacare court case that poached its legal reasoning from "'Seinfeld.' No joke."
CW: House Ways & Means Committee Chair Dave Camp releases some e-mails that he says demonstrate former IRS official Lois Lerner's "disgust with conservatives." While Lerner should not have been using her IRS account for what was evidently a personal contact with a non-IRS employee (IMHO), it's absolutely clear from the context that she was talking about far-right nut jobs who were buy[ing] ammo & food & prepar[ing] for the end." Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP reports on the latest fake "smoking gun" e-mails. Included in his report: "A May 2013 report by the agency's inspector general blamed mismanagement by IRS officials for the way tea party applications were handled. But the report did not provide any proof of political bias on the part of agents. In fact, the report noted that Lerner tried to stop the targeting once she learned that tea party and other conservative groups were being improperly singled out." Of course it will rile the extremist base that Lerner called them "assholes." And Camp -- who is supposed to be a relatively moderate conservative & is retiring -- sure is playing to the assholes.
Rather than letting our faith dictate our politics, we've gotten to the point for many of us where we're letting our politics -- typically what the Republican Party says -- dictate our faith. Caring about God's creation and caring about God's people is entirely consistent with caring for your neighbor. -- Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and a climate scientist at Texas Tech
... Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times: "The E.P.A. on Wednesday ended two days of public hearings on its proposed regulation to cut carbon pollution from power plants, and mixed in with the coal lobbyists and business executives were conservative religious leaders reasserting their support for President Obama's environmental policies -- at a time when Republican Party orthodoxy continues to question the science of climate change. More than two dozen faith leaders, including evangelicals and conservative Christians, spoke [in favor of the regulation] at the E.P.A. headquarters in Washington by the time the hearings ended."
CW Where's the Outrage? Charles Pierce is as disgusted as I by the FBI's "incompetence or worse," as reported by Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post (& linked here yesterday). Yet Hsu's story has received very little attention. Maybe people just can't see themselves as ever being the victims of FBI malfeasance, or maybe it's so horrifying people don't want to think about it. But the government's putting people to death on the basis of false evidence which the government itself produced is the ultimate crime against humanity. In a just world, Hsu's report would put an end to the death penalty.
David Frum says he is very sorry he falsely accused major news outlets of staging photos of Palestinian victims of the Israeli-Gaza conflict: "These images do appear authentic, and I should not have cast doubt on them." Then he excuses himself for his "skepticism.... There is a long history in the region of the use of faked or misattributed photographs as tools of propaganda."" Never mind that he didn't tweet that he was "skeptical" of the photos' authenticity; he asserted without qualification that they were "faked photos" -- see link in yesterday's Commentariat.
Evan Thomas reviews two books on the Nixon tapes for the Atlantic: "Remarkably, we still do not know who ordered the June 1972 Watergate break-in that led to Nixon's downfall. There are lots of theories, including CIA plots and convoluted conspiracies about sex rings, but no conclusive evidence. There is, however, recorded proof of Nixon ordering a different break-in -- at the Brookings Institution in 1971."
Beyond the Beltway
Jason Stein & Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Gov. Scott Walker's signature labor legislation Thursday, delivering an election-year affirmation to the governor in just one of the three major rulings issued by the court on union bargaining, election law and same-sex couples.... The court also upheld the state's voter ID law and a 2009 law providing limited benefits to gay and lesbian couples. The state court's decisions on the voter ID and domestic partner registry could still be overtaken by decisions in separate but related cases in federal court. But after more than three years of litigation, the court's seven justices on Thursday put to rest the last of the major legal disputes over Act 10, the 2011 law repealing most union bargaining for most public employees. The decision was 5-2, with Justice Michael Gableman writing the lead opinion, which found that collective bargaining is not a fundamental right under the constitution but rather a benefit that lawmakers can extend or restrict as they see fit."
Laura Vozzella, et al., of the Washington Post: Jonnie R. Williams, Sr., "the man key to proving federal corruption charges against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, began his testimony late Wednesday afternoon, explaining how he lavished the first family with gifts." ...
Williams testified that he 'sat there and listened, and she said to me, "I have a background in nutritional supplements, and I can be helpful to you with this project with your company. The governor says it's OK for me to help you, but I need you to help me with this financial situation."' She said McDonnell asked specifically for a $50,000 loan and another $15,000 to cover costs at her daughter's wedding.
... New Lede: "The wheeling-and-dealing Richmond businessman at the center of the corruption case against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife stepped into public view Wednesday with a pivotal assertion: For $65,000, he testified, Maureen McDonnell said she would help his company, with her husband's blessing." ...
... The Washington Post is liveblogging testimony & developments here.
Susanne Craig, et al., of the New York Times: "In an escalation of the confrontation between the United States attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over the governor's cancellation of his own anticorruption commission, Mr. Bharara has threatened to investigate the Cuomo administration for possible obstruction of justice or witness tampering. The warning, in a sharply worded letter from Mr. Bharara's office, came after several members of the panel issued public statements defending the governor's handling of the panel, known as the Moreland Commission.... At least some of those statements were prompted by calls from the governor or his emissaries...."
Congressional Races
Peyton Craighill & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "Pretty soon, the country's top pollsters will make a subtle change that even some political junkies won't process: They will shift from reporting results of registered voters to only those most likely to vote in the 2014 election -- a.k.a. 'likely voters.' For those who follow polling closely the distinction between the two is key to understanding the true state of play in a race. It's also likely to cause an apparent shift -- almost certainly in the GOP's favor -- that some will misinterpret as newfound momentum."
News Ledes
Washington Post: A "confluence of worries sent the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling more than 300 points, its worst one-day drop since February. The plunge snapped a string of five straight monthly gains, and pushed the blue-chip index to a slight loss for the year. But it wasn't just stocks that suffered. Oil fell to its lowest level since March, gold dropped and even Treasurys edged lower."
New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that he would not agree to any cease-fire proposal that does not allow the Israeli military to complete its mission of destroying Hamas's tunnel network in Gaza." ...
... ** Washington Post Update: "Israel and Hamas have agreed to an unconditional, 72-hour humanitarian truce to begin Friday morning, diplomats from the United States and the United Nations announced Thursday, potentially paving the way for an end to the 24-day-old conflict. In a joint statement, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said both sides in the conflict are sending delegations to Cairo for negotiations aimed at reaching a lasting cease-fire."
USA Today: "Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in a prisoner swap with the Taliban two months ago, will meet next week with the senior Army officer investigating the circumstances of his capture in Afghanistan, his lawyer said Wednesday. Bergdahl, who spent five years in captivity, plans to meet with Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, the investigating officer, in San Antonio, where Bergdahl is stationed, according to lawyer Eugene Fidell."
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Reader Comments (13)
Where's the outrage? Lost in all the other things to be outraged about.
Israeli shelling of a shelter that they told people to go to. The IDF is supposed to be competent. I doubt that. Armies of occupation seldom improve.
Suing the President. I propose a class-action lawsuit against the House for dereliction of duty.
Idiots shooting down a civilian airliner. "Duuhh Igor what's this here red button for?" And the behavior of the rebels at the crash site.
I could go on and on, but I'm outraged out. With the 24-hour news cycle, every day brings something else.
In the ABC report on Rep Camp's take on Lois Lerner's Blackberry correspondence, it becomes clear that when Lerner or her correspondent refer to "a$$holes" or "crazies", Camp immediately assumes that they are referring to "conservatives."
Whose problem is that?
The Republicans are suing President Obama. This is NOT the will of the people, so why should these Republicans be allowed to spend the people's money executing this folly? Is there no way to make them pay for it out of their own lined pockets? Can't we sue John Boehner?
@ Nancy: The Congress is not obligated to legislate the "will of the people." The whole idea of representative democracy is that we choose representatives to make decisions for us. If we lived in a pure democracy, of the type you imply, every proposed measure would come up for a popular referendum. We certainly wouldn't have the ACA, & there are thousands of other good laws (and bad) we wouldn't have if the public got to vote on every one. In fact, states that have a generous referendum scheme built into their constitutions (California, Florida) have trouble governing on account of stupid popular policies.
I'm not suggesting that Congress is wiser than the public here; I'm trying to explain our basic form of government.
So, yeah, you can sue John Boehner. But you won't win.
Marie
@Barbarossa: I was afraid I didn't didn't do a very good job of making my point, & I didn't. Of course the matters you cite are outrageous, but they do not rise to the level of the U.S. government's having a system that fraudulently takes the lives of possibly innocent people.
I don't object to the level of outrage over the NSA's maybe indiscriminately reading our e-mails, but there is some legal redress here if we find out about it. The NSA isn't killing you; it's just illegally invading your privacy.
Once the government has killed you, you're just dead. In my mind, a system of government-sponsored murder is more heinous than person-on-person murder. And it is certainly more outrageous than Boehner's stupid lawsuit.
Yet when I look at what's "trending," I'm seeing very little interest in Hsu's report & a lot of hoohah about Boehner's suit & other comparatively trivial matters. (The one place there is some interest in the Hsu report -- the black press -- I think is dispositive of why there's so little response among the rest of the press.)
Marie
The New York Review of Books looks at how the Roberts court has become the anti-court Supreme Court, a reference to its aversion to allowing citizens to bring complaints against big business, big banks, big anything before a court for purposes of redress for violation of rights or even personal injury or death. In the Roberts world, you're on your own. Unless you're a big business like Hobby Lobby. Then they're there to hold your hand and wipe all the cares away from your furrowed, bigoted brow.
But the opening of the piece is particularly chilling. I often rant against counterfactual arguments, but this is a look at what might have happened had the Rehnquist court acted on the conservative belief that courts should leave certain things to play out and not get involved. They most emphatically did not do that in 2000, instead, they relied on a spurious application of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (an amendment conservatives typically despise) which, they claimed, would be used "this one time only", to install, by fiat, George W. Bush as king, er, president. The author, David Cole, law professor at Georgetown, continues:
"Bush was reelected in 2004, ...[and he] not Al Gore or a successor, had the privilege of appointing two new justices and shaping the Court for years to come. Had a Democratic president been able to replace Rehnquist and O’Connor, constitutional law today would be dramatically different. Affirmative action would be on firm constitutional ground. The Voting Rights Act would remain in place. The Second Amendment would protect only the state’s authority to raise militias, not private individuals’ right to own guns. Women’s right to terminate a pregnancy would be robustly protected. The validity of Obamacare would never have been in doubt. Consumers and employees would be able to challenge abusive corporate action in class action lawsuits. And Citizens United...would have come out the other way."
Indeed.
I take issue with some of the findings in the books reviewed, especially the idea that the decisions of the conservative judges are not especially political. They could not be more political. And trying to sweep some of their more egregious decisions under the rug of "reasonable legal interpretation" is disingenuous at best.
A review of a biography of Scalia concludes, unsurprisingly, that he is, in fact, a dick. But it also floats the idea that Scalia has been largely ineffective in moving the court his way. He may not always get the decisions he wants, but when you read the type and tenor of questions he flings out, thunderbolt-like, from the bench at those he considers enemies of conservatism, you can't help but wonder if he hasn't been sliding the whole enterprise slowly and inexorably rightward.
But read it and see what you think.
The Supreme Court has, for the last 100 years or so, become an increasingly important player in national events. The Roberts Court, especially, is attempting to remake the country to align with ideological and politically conservative goals. It will discount all real world considerations if it gets them what they want, and because movement conservatives have faith that they will, many more times than not, issue rulings in their favor, we will see a gathering tsunami of appeals to the high court to continue its mission of revanchist and judicially activist decisions.
The current issue also has an excellent piece on Robert Gates that investigates how "Gates Got Away With It". It's not free online, but if you have a good local bookstore or newspaper/magazine stand that carries NYRB, pick it up.
The Jonathan Capehart piece in WaPo, linked above, holds within the body of its story another huge piece of evidence (I know, I know, coals to Newcastle) pointing to the intellectual depravity of the Republican Party:
"Later, Ryan would admit that the tussle between the speaker and the president 'doesn’t rise to high crimes and misdemeanor levels,'"
So let me get this straight, and we'll leave alone the lie that no Republican has been calling for impeachment. Before making this assertion, Ryan laid out a plethora of examples that attempt to prove the wild-ass, unconstitutional, out of control and lawless nature of Barack Obama, but none of that supposed malfeasance rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors".
But a blow job does?
Also, talking about intellectual depravity, Republicans gloating over being able to use the shameful and wholly debased George Costanza Moops Defense in Halbig, wherein they willfully attempt to try to win on the basis of inexact wording, is the fucking height of perfidy.
These people are devoid of morals, scruples, common decency, and lack the brainpower necessary to light a single tiny Christmas bulb.
I found this passage from the Capeheart article particularly intriguing:
"Ryan said he would vote for the bill authorizing the Boehner lawsuit against Obama because the speaker is “trying to stand up for Congressional prerogatives” and “because we want to show that we are not going to take this lying down.” He is especially perturbed by the House’s inability to check executive authority by exercising power of the purse, “which is being denied us because the Senate has chosen to stand up for the executive branch not the legislative branch.” Ryan is the chairman of the House Budget Committee, by the way."
It seems that Ryan's beef is not just with the President but also with the Senate. So why doesn't the House file a lawsuit against the Senate as well as Obama? I say, bring it on - and pass the popcorn.
Also, it is interesting that Ryan only sees HIS view of policy choices as legitimate: the will of the Senate and the Executive Branch do not matter at all.
CW: I'm outraged about the FBI and its malfeasants, too. It's a scary thought that anyone, yes, anyone might be convicted based on shoddy forensics.
I'm also outraged at the death penalty. There is no reason for it in the 21st century, unless the objective is to be more like Saudi Arabia, China, or Iran.
Stop the presses! Or the bits and bytes.
In a stunning turn of events, the Do Nothings in the GOP, famed for doing, well, nothing, today signaled their intention to do even LESS!
Holy entropy, Batman.
So a little while ago, House Republicans killed a bill on border security they themselves wrote and sponsored.
I kid you not.
Ladies and gents, I give you the new and improved GOP. They used to just do nothing. Now they do LESS than nothing. Sounds unpossible, don't it? They can do anything. Rather, can't do anything. Even less than anything. Republicans. The negative integer candidates.
What border bill?
@AK Yeah. I think the failure of the border bill is the signature achievement of this Republican controlled House. And I wouldn't be surprised if a large swath of the voting public feels the same way. If nothing else, it exposes the complete disarray within the party and a disinterest in dealing with national problems, of putting politics above policy.
James,
It's actually much worse than disarray, which suggests that things that were once in array, in other words, operated according to some kind of plan which has somehow been derailed.
These jamokes don't have the vaguest, most evanescent ephemera of a plan. They are a pack of unschooled, ahistorical, and intemperate buffoons who, when confronted with the most minute issues (should I wear my baseball cap backwards for a Time photo-op?) don't know whether to shit or go blind.
Then they have career con men like Boehner, Priebus, Rove, et al, attempting to write a book of rules for anarchists, and throwing ten kinds of fits when that querulously Quixotic quest augurs in.
We are approaching the limits of idiocy, but these charlatans are still accorded massive respect by an enormous body of media outlets. It's like crowning a collection of village idiots as philosopher kings.
Calling them clowns is an insult to real circus clowns who at least have professional standards and an appreciation of their role in life.
They, at least, know they're play acting at being fools.
@Ak: Apropos of your mention of philosopher kings brought to mind this from
THE RECKLESS MIND: Mark Lilla-
"Plato set sail for Syracuse in 368 with misgivings- a decadent city=However he learned the tyrant ruler Dionysus the Elder had died and his son, D.the younger,the new ruler. It is an old myth that Plato schemed to institute the rule of “philosopher Kings” in Greek cities and his “Sicilian Adventure” was a first step toward realizing his ambition. When Heidegger returned to teaching in 1934 after his shameful tenure as Nazi rector of Freiburg University, a colleague, meaning to heap more shame on his head quipped, “Back from Syracuse?” As a bon mot this can hardly be bettered."
" Short of a miracle, in which philosophers would become kings or kings would turn to philosophy, the most that can be hoped for in politics is the establishment of a moderate government under a stable rule of law."
Wouldn't that be loverly~~~~~~~~~~