The Commentariat -- September 27

Glenn Thrush of Politico: Vice President Biden tells the Democratic base to "stop whining"; base yells back, "'Stop whining" is a hell of a rallying cry."

Bob Woodward talks to Diane Sawyer of ABC News about his book Obama's Wars. Updated report, with audio of the President:

The first of three articles adapted from Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward. AND Steve Luxenberg of the Washington Post outlines the major points in the book.

** "The revolution Will Not Be Tweeted." Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker: Gladwell contrasts the organization of the civil rights movement with the networking facilitated by Twitter, Facebook, etc., & concludes that major social movements require strong, usually hierarchical organization, whereas "Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires."

Mama Grizzlies. Lisa Miller of Newsweek: Sarah Palin dubbed "mama grizzlies" women who "rise up" & protect their young. BUT. "With few exceptions, [Palin's designated] grizzlies have been disinterested in the issues and policies that their political opponents say are good for children — despite new numbers from the census showing that rising numbers of America’s children are poor. Most of these candidates have vowed to fight to repeal President Obama’s health-care plan, for instance, and [Michele] Bachmann and Nikki Haley have taken special aim at CHIP, a federal program aimed at helping low-income kids get health insurance."

Republican "Pledge" = Survival of the Fittest. Robert Reich links the current Republican agenda to that of President Herbert Hoover & industrialist Andrew Mellon, proponents of Social Darwinism. "The basic idea is force people to live with the consequences of whatever happens to them." ...

... Neil King & Janet Hook of the Wall Street Journal: both political parties think they can campaign on -- or against -- the Republican "Pledge." ...

... Shane D'Aprile of The Hill: "Vulnerable House Democrats are working hard to create distance between themselves and their party’s leadership in Washington on the airwaves." CW: they're making a big mistake.

Michael Crowley of Time feels Obama's pain as the President imposes far-reaching restrictions on civil liberties.

Lincoln Caplan of the New York Times: "The message of Justice [Stephen] Breyer’s book [Making Our Democracy Work] is that the court jeopardizes its legitimacy when it makes such radical rulings and that, in doing so, it threatens our democracy. That message is powerful, ominous, and very useful."

Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "Nearly 600 mayors nationwide, led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York..., are mounting a new campaign to single out states with lax gun laws and push for tighter restrictions to prevent the trafficking of guns used in crimes. A study due to be released this week ... concludes that the 10 worst offenders per capita, led by Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky, supplied nearly half the 43,000 guns traced to crime scenes in other states last year." Here's a draft of the study (pdf).

NEW. Damien Paletta of the Wall Street Journal: "Former Federal Research Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at the Federal Researve Bank of Chicago on Thursday, and instead delivered a blistering, off-the-cuff critique leveled at nearly every corner of the financial system. Standing at a lectern with his hands in his pockets, Volcker moved unsparingly from banks to regulators to business schools to the Fed to money-market funds during his luncheon speech."

Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: presented with evidence that mortgages didn't meet basic underwriting standards, Wall Street firms sold them to unsuspecting investors anyway. AND here's Gretchen Morgenson's New York Times story.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Hoping to overshadow last month’s rally led by Glenn Beck that drew thousands of Tea Party advocates and other conservatives, a coalition of liberal groups plan to descend on Washington on Saturday to make the case that they, and not the ascendant right, speak for America’s embattled middle class.

David Streitfeld of the New York Times: Library Systems & Services, "a private company in Maryland, has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system. Now the company ... has been hired for the first time to run a system in [Santa Clarita, California,] a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy." CW: a friend of mine asks, "How far a leap will it be from for-profit libraries to ones that decide not to stock certain books?"

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Marc Lacey of the New York Times: U.S. Fish & Wildlife officers are ticketing Americans who leave water bottles for illegal immigrants on desert routes. The U.S. Court of Appeals has overturned one conviction, but the issue remains unsettled, & some hardliners are destroying the bottles.