The Ledes

Thursday, September 19, 2024

New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”

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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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Wednesday
Mar042015

The Commentariat -- SCOTUS Edition

Internal links removed.

Illustration by Dana Verkouteren for the AP.

Here's the transcript of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in King v. Burwell (pdf).

The stock market foresees a government win; hospital stocks surge on the strength of Justice Kennedy's questioning of the plaintiffs' attorney.

Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "One of the most important functions of oral argument in the Supreme Court is that it can strongly shape the next round: the private deliberations among the nine Justices as they start work on a decision. The much-awaited hearing Wednesday on the stiff new challenge to the Affordable Care Act strongly suggested that Topic A in private could well be: how bad will we make things if we rule against the government?"

Dahlia Lithwick: "... To the extent that anyone believed that Chief Justice John Roberts was the only one to watch in this appeal, this morning Kennedy gave them someone else to talk about: Kennedy."

Jeff Toobin unpacks the one substantive question Chief Justice Roberts asked & explains why it might bode well for the government. He acknowledges that neither Roberts nor Kennedy really tipped his hand, so the outcome is very much up in the air.

It's No Slam-Dunk, People. David Nather of Politico: "Still, legal experts point out that both sides got tough questions, that Chief Justice John Roberts' views are a big mystery, and that oral arguments aren't always decisive in the Supreme Court, anyway."

Daniel Strauss of TPM: "Michael Carvin, the attorney arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case, said this challenge is different because the argument against the law centers on a statute that was 'written by white women and minorities.' Carvin's comments were published in a Wall Street Journal profile of him on Tuesday, a day before oral arguments began in the King v. Burwell lawsuit." ...

     ... CW: Who could have guessed that opposition to ObamaCare is based, at least in part, on racial & gender animus? Oh, everybody who knows the entire confederate movement is based in large part on racial & gender animus. This case, like so many "controversial" subjects, gets down to a core issue of equal protection. Most of the grand old white boys know enough to use "politically correct" language like "freeeedom" & "limited government" to justify their exclusionary policy positions, but the dirty little not-so-secret is that the party of Lincoln has become a club for angry, deranged bigots. ...

... Dave Weigel: "The irony is that Carvin's joke demonstrates one of the defendants' best arguments: The people who wrote the law are still with us, and can explain what they thought. Whenever they've been asked, the Democrats (and it was all Democrats) who passed the ACA explained that the language in the bill that reserves subsidies for plans purchased 'exchange established by the state' was never meant to deny subsidies. The federal exchange was always intended as a stopgap.... New York Representative Joe Crowley, who attended Wednesday's arguments, said the same thing.... Crowley, while not a woman or minority, was in the room, looking at the justices. Calvin was arguing that the intent expressed by people like him did not matter when one read the law itself."

Dana Milbank got a bad seat at the spectacle. "The conservative majority could still knock down the law, of course, but given the ambiguity exposed Wednesday, it would now be a breathtaking surprise for the justices to cause such massive upheaval -- taking health-care immediately from 8 million and causing a death spiral for the rest of Obamacare -- based on such a slender legal reed."

Amy Howe of ScotusBlog describes the arguments "in plain English."

Jonathan Cohn & Jeffrey Young of the Huffington Post highlight ten key moments in the arguments -- and one that didn't happen.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed bitterly divided during heated arguments over the fate of President Obama's health care law. As expected, the court's four liberal members voiced strong support for the administration's position. But the administration must almost certainly capture the vote of either Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. or Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to prevail. The chief justice said almost nothing." ...

... Here's the Washington Post report, by Robert Barnes. ...

... CW: Until today, I would have labeled Justice Scalia "mostly corrupt." Unless he decides for the government, I revise my observation to "completely corrupt."

Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "When [plaintiffs' attorney Michael] Carvin argued that there was no legislative history to support the 'death spiral' concern regarding the federal subsidy, Sotomayor shot back that it was 'the entire point of the legislation.' Kagan described the 'draconian choice' Carvin's argument would have states make, asking why the court should believe this is the most logical reading of the statute when 'it took a year and a half' for this issue to be raised."

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Obamacare is not out of the woods yet, and neither are the millions of people who will lose coverage or the thousands who will die if this case goes badly for the government. After Wednesday's argument, however, those individuals have good reason to be optimistic. At least one of the Court's Republicans appears to have come to work wearing his judicial robe, and not his partisan hat."

Mark Stern of Slate: "ObamaCare dangles by a single vote, again."

ScotusBlog will not liveblog the King v. Burwell arguments. CW: I couldn't find any other news outlet that will. If you find one, please share. The New York Times says it "will have updated coverage throughout the day," but it has no liveblog. If you want to keep checking back & don't have a Times subscription, open the front page in a private browser window. If you access more than nine stories, you'll have to close the private window & open a new one.

Hey, the NYT is liveblogging the Boston Marathon bombing trial. Weird.

The Washington Post has been deadblogging the hearing. They're posts are now (at 11:55 am ET) an hour-and-a-half behind the action. Update: the Post deadblog has been updated to cover the entire hearing.

But for a Preposition, the Case Was Lost. Post Liveblog: "11:12:Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked [Solicitor General Donald] Verrilli 11:12: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked Verrilli what seemed to be the toughest question for him to answer: Why does the law use those four words, 'established by the State,' if it meant federal exchanges could substitute? Why not say exchanges established 'in the state?'"

Here's the "first mid-argument update" from ScotusBlog. CW: I assume this means ScotusBlog will post more such updates. Kennedy sounds squishy. Update (2): The original "first mid-argument update" has been updated! Kagan seems to have got the better of the petitioners' lawyer on the "context" point. Update (3): Now the original post has been re-titled "Mid-argument updates," and there's a third update. CW: So I think it's safe to stick with the post linked at the top of this graf. Keep refreshing the page. "Kennedy ... pointed out that, under petitioners' reading, the federal government would be all but forcing states to create their own exchanges.... Justice Scalia attempted to respond on petitioners' behalf.... " Update (4): Roberts "asked no questions to the petitioners and seemed skeptical of Justice Ginsburg's efforts to question standing when the government stood up to give its case. ...

... ** Wait, Wait. There's a new blogger at ScotusBlog: Here's his first update of oral arguments. This is a different link. This post has been updated. And again at 11:33 am. "Scalia seemed to be drawing an even harder line than the petitioners." CW: Shameful asshole. ...

... Here's a new ScotusBlog post on Kennedy's concerns.

** The Wall Street Journal is liveblogging the hearing, and it is not subscriber-firewalled. Thanks to Akhilleus. It's self-refreshing. 11:28 am: Chief Justice Roberts made a little crack that suggested -- ever so obliquely -- that he might side with the plaintiffs.

Arguments are over, but the bloggers are still blogging.

Tea Leaves. Greg Sargent has some suggestions on what to look for in the conservative justices questions & comments in the oral hearing. Not that we'll know what those questions & comments were until later in the day.

Washington Post Editors: "WHEN THE Supreme Court examines the Affordable Care Act again Wednesday, it will have several logical, principled paths to avoid tearing apart a law that has slowly but surely found its footing. It should take at least one of them.... The justices need not rule based on any feared or preferred policy result. They only need to read the law reasonably."

Jeff Shesol in the New Yorker: "The Supreme Court v. Reality."

The Stealth Campaign to Destroy "Liberal" Jurisprudence. Nina Martin of ProPublica: "For more than 30 years, the Federalist Society has worked behind the scenes to shape Supreme Court outcomes to a conservative agenda. In King v. Burwell, its influence could eliminate health insurance subsidies for millions of people."

Brian Beutler: "You have to be delusional or dishonest to claim that Congress imposed a huge condition on the subsidies, or that we can't know what Congress was trying to accomplish. Yet a swing justice could decide that 'by the State' does not equate to 'by the federal government on behalf of the State' -- to ignore the fuller context.... That would be a huge coup for diction scolds and people who get angry at the thought of poor people going to the doctor. It would also reflect a conscious decision to ignore the clarity of the law's purpose. If that's the thin reed on which the Supreme Court interprets Obamacare, in defiance of the democratic process that brought it into existence, something will have gone very, very wrong."

Jonathan Bernstein: "Just how stupid does Paul Ryan think we are? The Wisconsin Republican and two other House committee chairmen claim in an op-ed [Tuesday] that they are just about ready to propose an Obamacare 'off-ramp' if the Supreme Court decides in King v. Burwell to destroy the federal health-insurance markets in more than half the states.... [They give us] a 'working group' and another promise that their plan is in the mail. C'mon."

... CW: Yo, Bernstein. The Ryan, et al., op-ed is about giving the Supremes cover to gut the ACA; it's not even about fooling a gullible public.

Mitch McConnell Is Not Cooperating with the Plan. Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Senate Republican leaders wouldn't commit Tuesday to having health care legislation ready by June to avert a potential crisis if the Supreme Court wipes out Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans.... TPM asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at his weekly Capitol press conference if the GOP would have bill ready to mitigate the potential health care crisis. The short answer: We're working on it, but won't commit to anything."

Robert Schlesinger of US News looks at all the horrible consequences of a ruling in favor of King in a column titled, "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid."

Pancakes! Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post explains King v. Burwell to homemakers: "... you shouldn't read one part of a law in isolation any more than you should read one part of a recipe -- because, just like the Joy of Cooking, the Affordable Care Act allows for substitutions." CW: Thanks, Jonathan! And thanks, Irma Rombauer!

Comments Off

Reader Comments (6)

I'm re-posting some comments from the March 4 Commentariat here. These comments relate to the King v. Burwell case.

Marie

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

WSJ is liveblogging the arguments from SCOTUS:

There's some discussion of standing... (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/04/live-blog-supreme-court-hears-king-v-burwell-health-law-case/)

RBG got right into the issue of standing. Alito, predictably, has set out his nicest tea tray with refreshments for the challengers. He's doing his best to make them feel at home and couldn't agree more with their lawyers about that nasty Obama. Kagan and Sotomayor are insisting on rationality. This won't go over well with the dwarfs...

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

Akhilleus (Unregistered) added The Commentariat -- March 4, 2015:

This is why these cases should be streamed live. Video would be nice, but I'd settle for an audio feed perhaps with a background moderator letting listeners know who is speaking. Naturally, they would never have to mention the words "Clarence Thomas" unless he keeled over, and it wouldn't be hard to pick out the haughty snark-bark of the Dark Lord, but not everyone knows what Donald Verrilli sounds like or the lawyer for the plaintiffs.

I mean, what the hell, it's only the future of the country at stake.

But no, we have to wait for reporters to dash out into the hall and jot down what's happening so they can rush back in again.

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

It sounds as if there is an ongoing willful misreading of the intent of the law as to the federal government "coercing" states who don't want healthcare for their citizens, into setting up exchanges on their own, which is completely ass backwards (the government will step in and do it). If Johnny and the dwarfs decide to use this willful ignorance as the fulcrum over which to break the back of the law, this really will be a stunning victory for "moops" logic.

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Akhilleus wrote,

Akhilleus (Unregistered) added The Commentariat -- March 4, 2015:

The usual 'bagger dolts are hippity-hopping around outside waving signs reading "Hands off my healthcare" to which any sensible person could respond "What healthcare, moron? Without the ACA millions would have NO healthcare." Such idiots. It looks like most of the signs have been professionally printed (a good sign of an organized demonstration, nothing grass-rootsy) which dramatically lowers the likelihood of all those embarrassingly misspelled signs like "Get a brain, moran!"

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Marvin Schwalb wrote,

Only in America. So we are having a debate over whether or not citizens are entitled to stay alive. Well some are but not everyone.

March 4, 2015 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns
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