The Commentariat -- December 9, 2015
Internal links & defunct video removed.
Kimberly Kindy of the Washington Post: "The FBI's system for tracking fatal police shootings is a 'travesty' and the agency will replace it by 2017, dramatically expanding the information it gathers on violent police encounters in the United States, a senior FBI official said Tuesday. The new effort will go beyond tracking fatal shootings and, for the first time, track any incident in which an officer causes serious injury or death to civilians, including through the use of stun guns, pepper spray, and even fists and feet."
NEW. Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said Wednesday that the couple who waged a shooting rampage in San Bernardino, Calif., last week had been talking of an attack as far back as two years ago, while they were still dating. 'Our investigation to date shows that they were radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online,' Mr. Comey said, 'and as early as the end of 2013 were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and married and were living in the U.S.' The couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were married in the United States in 2014. Mr. Comey said that the F.B.I. believes they were inspired by foreign extremist groups.... They are not believed to have had any accomplices, although investigators are suspicious about what family members and friends may have known about the couple's plans." ...
... Missy Ryan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal authorities believe the Facebook posting from one of the attackers who killed 14 people here last week was made on behalf of both shooters, according to several senior U.S. law enforcement officials.... The FBI remains keenly interested in a former neighbor who provided the military-grade rifles used by Syed Rizwan Farook ... and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, during the massacre that killed 14 people and injured 21 others." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... James Koren of the Los Angeles Times throws cold water on speculation that the $28,000 deposit in the San Bernardino shooters' bank account came from Daesh. The deposit was a loan through a third-party broker called Prosper: "People familiar with the industry say it's exceedingly unlikely that Prosper or similar platforms, such as Lending Club, could be used in that way." ...
... BUT. Richard Serrano, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: The couple may have used the loan to "acquire last-minute firearms, ammunition and components to build explosives, two federal officials said Tuesday." ...
... AND. Pamela Brown of CNN: "Investigators believe San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook may have been plotting a [2012] attack in California with someone else, two U.S. officials said.... One official said the two decided not to go through with the earlier attack after a round of terror-related arrests in the area. 'They got spooked,' the official said."
Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "As Republicans squabbled over Donald Trump's controversial proposal to bar all Muslims from traveling to the United States, the House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill imposing new restrictions on a visa waiver program that currently permits roughly 20 million people to enter the country each year. The bill, which was approved on a 407 to 19 vote, would increase information sharing between the United States and the 38 countries whose passport holders are allowed to visit the country without getting a visa, while also attempting to weed out travelers who have visited certain countries where they may have been radicalized.... But there are key differences between the House's bill and a measure from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), which has not yet been scheduled for a vote...."
Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post on some 120 Republican House members vote "no" on bills they hope will pass with Democratic votes.
Michael Mann, in a New York Times op-ed, on the attempts by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, to intimidate climate scientists. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
NEW. Wendy Davis (D), in a Politico Magazine opinion piece, apologizes for supporting Texas's open-carry law when she ran for governor in 2014. She urges lawmakers not to make the mistake she did.
German Lopez of Vox: Don't listen to what your uncle told you he read in the Right Wing News about gun/murder statistics. Those are junk studies that don't control for other factors. "'Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,' David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health."
** Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "A closely divided Supreme Court on Tuesday struggled to decide 'what kind of democracy people wanted,' as Justice Stephen G. Breyer put it during an argument over the meaning of the constitutional principle of 'one person one vote.'... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ... seemed attracted to counting only voters.... The Constitution requires 'counting the whole number of persons in each state' for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives among the states. Justice Elena Kagan said it struck her as unlikely that a different rule should apply for purposes of drawing state districts." ...
... "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Rick Hasen, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "... as compelling as [Roberts'] argument may sound in the abstract, it's not practicable. And it seems doubtful these justices would be willing to mandate a standard that would cause so much upheaval, not only in the states, but at the Supreme Court itself, which would see a new flood of cases clarifying the standard." ...
... ** David Gans of the New Republic: "The case was initiated by activists who seek to empower certain voters at the expense of the entire population, which in Texas would tilt power toward more rural and, yes, conservative areas of the state. But the Constitution settles this question, and Evenwel should begin and end with the text and history of the Constitution." ...
... Amy Howe of ScotusBlog tries to read the justices on the Arizona redistricting case. ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "The Supreme Court Looks Poised To Blow Up Everything You Think You Know About Redistricting." ...
... Charles Pierce: "... this week could be high noon of John Roberts's Day Of Jubilee." CW: Just for fun, read Pierce's description of the plaintiffs.
... CW: AND this, my knuckleheaded friends, is why you vote for Hillary Clinton whether you like her or not. Donald Trump may curtail Muslim civil rights, but certain members -- perhaps a majority -- of the Supreme Court are inclined to make "nonpersons" of children of all stripes, Latinos, blacks, legal noncitizen residents, disenfranchised felons & every lazy adult who can't drag his sorry ass to the polls. One, two or three more Ninos on the court will obliterate the last shreds of democracy for generations to come. (The upside: if you're a white Christianist voter [and the courts don't rescind your franchise on some other excuse], you will be a wee American prince, a card-carrying member of the Voter Caste.)
Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times: "Imports from China by Walmart ... eliminated or displaced over 400,000 jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2013, according to an estimate by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research group that has long targeted Walmart's policies. The jobs, mostly in manufacturing, represent about 13 percent of the 3.2 million jobs displaced over those same years that the study attributes to the United States' goods trade deficit with China. Walmart's Chinese imports amounted to at least $49 billion in 2013, according to the study, which was based on trade and labor data. Over all, the United States' trade deficit with China hit $324 billion that year." ...
... CW: A spokesman for the Walton family said they are personally helping the U.S.-China balance of trade by not buying any of the cheap Chinese crap WalMart sells. "People of the Waltons' means do not shop at WalMart, for Pete's sake," the spokesman added. The Waltons also suggest that, in the spirit of the holiday season, Americans contribute to the WalMart employee food bank, which helps underpaid WalMart employees feed their hungry children. The Waltons invite you to drop donations into the colorful holiday bins they have placed conveniently near the check-out stands at WalMarts & Sam's Clubs. "From your pocket to ours," is a concept pioneered by our beloved dad Sam, the heirs said through their spokesman.
James Risen of the New York Times: "When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday..., one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine's rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs. But the credibility of the vice president's anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine's ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Time chooses Angela Merkel as its Person of the Year.
Presidential Race
"She's Got Some Balls, You Know." Thomas Edsall: "A late November YouGov survey conducted after the attacks in Paris but before San Bernardino found that Hillary Clinton stood apart from Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina as the only candidate a majority of voters believe 'is ready to be Commander in Chief. She is the only one about whom as many people express confidence in her ability to handle an international crisis as say they are uneasy.'"
Juliet Eilperin & Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to block all Muslims from entering the United States 'disqualifies him from serving as president.'... The press secretary noted that while several GOP elected officials and presidential hopefuls had not embraced the controversial policy proposal, 'Today the newly-elected speaker of the House said he would vote for Donald Trump for president if he's the party's nominee. They should say right now that they will not support him for president,' Earnest added." ...
... CW: Earnest added that all Republican presidential candidates who stand by Trump also have disqualified themselves. I can't recall any administration ever having made a similar statement. I can't say Earnest's condemnation of Trump is unprecedented (because I don't know), but it might be. ...
... Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Republicans on Capitol Hill strongly denounced a proposal from Donald Trump -- their party's frontrunner in the presidential race -- for a 'total and complete' ban on Muslims entering the United States. But the two leading Congressional Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), both stopped short of saying they would reject Trump were he to lead their party's ticket in 2016." ...
... Paul Waldman: "So in other words, he's a bigot and a race-baiter who spits on fundamental American values, but if he gets the nomination ... Go Trump!" ...
... Here's why. Susan Page of USA Today: "... 68% of Trump's supporters say they would vote for ... [him] if he ran as an independent rather than a Republican just 18% say they wouldn't. The rest were undecided." ...
... Dana Milbank: "Trump's chin-out toughness, sweeping right-hand gestures and talk of his 'huge' successes and his 'stupid' opponents all evoke [Benito Mussolini]'s style.... Trump uses many of the fascist's tools: a contempt for facts, spreading a pervasive sense of fear and overwhelming crisis, portraying his backers as victims, assigning blame to foreign or alien actors and suggesting only his powerful personality can transcend the crisis." ...
No Surprise. Brian Beutler: When large swaths of the conservative movement resisted the notion that the GOP needed to widen its appeal to minorities, and could win by appealing to a broader base of whites, it was liberals who warned that these voters would drag the party into a racial abyss. Trump is the fulfillment of that prophecy. Better than any Republican candidate in recent memory, he intuits the mood of the disaffected Republican electorate. Or rather, because he's almost entirely uninterested in straddling party factions, he gives voice to their paranoia and racism without massaging it the way the pretenders to his lead do." ...
... Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump on Tuesday defended his call to block all Muslims from entering the United States, casting it as a temporary move in response to Islamic State terrorism, and invoking President Franklin D. Roosevelt's actions toward Japanese, German and Italian aliens during World War II as precedent.... In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation apologizing to and compensating more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps in World War II." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump has widened his lead in New Hampshire.... A CNN/WBUR survey found that 32 percent of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire support Mr. Trump, up from 26 percent in September. In second place was Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, at 14 percent, followed by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at 9 percent and Jeb Bush at 8 percent. The poll follows a spate of terrorist attacks around the world and the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., that have made national security a central issue in the 2016 race, but it was taken after Mr. Trump's provocative proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States." ...
... James Downie of the Washington Post: "In President Obama's speech Sunday, he told Americans that 'just as it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americans, of every faith, to reject discrimination.' Afterward, on Fox News, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ... [asked] 'Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims?' Senator, allow me to introduce you to Donald Trump. You may recognize him as the man who has been trouncing you in the polls for months.... Trump has -- and there's no other way to put this -- embraced an unconstitutional, fascist-like approach. And there's no question that the Islamic State wants Americans to embrace -- or at least tolerate -- Trump's ideas.... For the national security of the country, [Republicans] must reject supporting him if he is the nominee." ...
... CW: Really, Marco? If you can't find "widespread evidence" of "discrimination against Muslims," he might ask his oppo team to monitor a Trump rally. Or, like, read stuff. ...
... Ah, I see Jonathan Chait is equally dumbfounded by Marco's (feigned?) ignorance: "It is unclear what sort of evidence Rubio would accept. According to FBI statistics, hate crimes against Muslim-Americans, which spiked in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, have settled in at an elevated level five times higher than before 2001. If Rubio considers these dry statistics too abstract, he could look to current Republican poll leader Donald Trump." And he goes on, also citing remarks by Marco's rivals & by Marco hisself. Read the whole post. ...
... MEANWHILE, in Trumpsylvania. Michael Matza of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Philadelphia police, the FBI, and the city's Human Relations Commission launched investigations Monday after a worker at a North Philadelphia mosque found a severed pig's head outside its door. Surveillance video outside the Al Aqsa Islamic Society..., showed a red pickup truck drove past the building twice just before 11 p.m. Sunday.... On its second pass, the video shows, someone extended an arm from the passenger window and tossed something that rolled to a stop near the mosque's front door." CW: A pickup truck, of course. Probably a gun rack behind the seats. And if you home in on the rear bumper, chances are you'll find a Trump for President sticker. Make American Great Again. Thanks to Ophelia M. for the lead.
NEW. Alana Wise & Patricia Zengerle of Reuters: "Senator Ted Cruz ... said on Tuesday that he introduced legislation to give governors the ability to opt out of refugee resettlement programs." ...
... Greg Sargent: "Ted Cruz's clever scheme to reap the benefits of Trump's Islamophobia." CW: Cruz is what Trump would look like if Trump were smarter & more devious.
Leonard Burman, et al., of the Tax Policy Center analyze "Jeb Bush's tax proposal. It would reduce individual and business marginal tax rates, curtail tax expenditures, and convert the corporate income tax into a cash-flow consumption tax. The proposal would cut taxes at all income levels, reducing federal revenues by $6.8 trillion over its first decade before considering macro feedbacks. The plan would improve incentives to work, save, and invest, but unless accompanied by very large spending cuts, it could increase the national debt by as much as 50 percent of GDP by 2036, which would tend to put a drag on the economy. ...
... Jeb!'s Extremely Extremist Tax Plan. Dylan Matthews of Vox: "The analysis also shows how much more extreme Republican tax policy has gotten since Bush's brother was president. The sticker price of George W. Bush's 2001 tax cuts was $1.35 trillion.... The cuts were rightly considered one of the most dramatic reductions in federal taxes in modern American history. But their $1.7 trillion total estimated cost at passage (they ended up costing less after the recession led incomes to plummet) is only one-fourth the size of what Jeb is proposing. Jeb is trying to position himself as a responsible, establishment Republican.... That he thinks he can do that while proposing four times more in tax cuts than his brother passed is extraordinary, to say the least." ...
... Being Jeb! Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Being Jeb Bush these days means coping with a series of petty humiliations. At a weekend conference in Miami, fundraisers questioned the direction of the campaign and worried it's too late for a rebound. During a foreign policy speech in Washington, people slipped out of the room to go see rival Chris Christie instead. The jebbush.com domain was redirected to Donald Trump's website because the Bush campaign failed to lock it down. And on the campaign trail, the press corps following the former Florida governor is dwindling and focused mostly on his terrible polling numbers, now mired in the low single digits."
McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: Cranky old Ron Paul is jealous of his boy Li'l Randy & doesn't like the kid.
Beyond the Beltway
Reuters: "A 22-year-old man [Matthew Riggins] suspected of burglarizing homes in Florida was killed and partially eaten by an 11ft (3.4-meter) alligator after he waded into a lake, apparently to avoid detection by law enforcement officers pursuing him, police said on Tuesday." CW: Riggins should have read Elmore Leonard's Maximum Bob, which is set nearby. Better to be in the pokey than to become an alligator snack like Bob's dog Pokey. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond
... CW: Thanks to Akhilleus for linking the video above. The negative comments unsuspecting people recorded here are fairly measured. I would love to see someone in the U.S. try this out. I don't think we'd hear so many mild responses.
News Ledes
Guardian: "A 23-year-old man from Strasbourg, eastern France, has been identified as the third attacker involved in the terrorist assault at the Bataclan music hall in Paris, police sources have said. Foued Mohamed Aggad went to Syria with his brother and a group of friends at the end of 2013, according to a source close to the investigation. Most of the others were arrested in spring last year after returning to France but Aggad stayed on in Syria, the source said."
New York Times: "Douglas Tompkins, a noted conservationist and the founder of the clothing brands North Face and Esprit, died on Tuesday after a kayaking accident on General Carrera Lake in the Patagonia region of southern Chile. He was 72."