The Commentariat -- Sept. 16, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

CW: I am happy to report that here in the U.S. of A., Tuesday was a day without any serious political news. Ergo, most of today's Commentariat borders on -- or crosses over into -- the silly. Most of the "news" is speculation about how the candidates will fare in tonight's debates.

David Herszenhorn & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown on Tuesday, with Republicans threatening to block a budget deal if it includes financing for Planned Parenthood, as President Obama prepared to join the fight by pushing Republicans to scrap a multibillion-dollar tax advantage for private equity managers.... The so-called carried interest provision ... [is] a tax break ... that the president has repeatedly proposed eliminating, and it is a favorite bête noire of Democrats condemning income inequality. Its repeal has little chance of passing a divided Congress, but it has gained new political potency in recent days, with two Republican presidential candidates, Donald J. Trump and Jeb Bush, endorsing it."

Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "President Obama is weighing in on the discussion over political dialogue on college campuses, saying students shouldn't be "coddled" from opposing views:

It's not just sometimes folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues who sometimes aren't listening to the other side. And that's a problem, too. I've heard of some college campuses where they don't want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative. Or they don't want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I've got to tell you, I don't agree with that either. I don't agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of views.

     ... President Obama's full speech is here. ...

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "After decades of stiff resistance, the CIA is preparing to pull back the curtain -- to an extent -- on one of the most vaunted rituals in the intelligence world: the daily briefing delivered to American presidents on world events and global threats. At a conference in Austin, Texas Wednesday, the spy agency is set to release about 2,500 President's Daily Briefs and similar reports delivered to President John F. Kennedy and then to President Lyndon Johnson during a nearly-eight-year span in the 1960s. The briefings detail the evolution of the war in Vietnam and responses to events like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Six-Day War in the Middle East."

... Jonathan Chait: "One of the problems with p.c. culture is that it allows the likes of Donald Trump to pass off their bigotry as opposition to political correctness (just as communists used McCarthyism to discredit all anti-communism).... Political correctness is most closely associated with campus life, because the academy is one of the few institutions in the United States where the left has the ability to impose its hegemony.... The right's inability to conduct rational internal debate is on daily display and has had disastrous consequences for the country and the world. The impingement of this illiberal political culture on mainstream left-of-center debate is a problem of nontrivial scale." ...

... Libby Nelson of Vox: What engendered President Obama's remarks on political correctness was a student's asking him "to respond to Republican presidential contender Ben Carson's proposal to cut off funding to colleges that demonstrate political bias.... 'I have no idea what that means, and I suspect he doesn't either.... The idea that you'd have somebody in government making a decision about what you should think ahead of time or what you should be taught, and if it's not the right thought, or idea, or perspective or philosophy, that person would be -- they wouldn't get funding, runs contrary to everything we believe about education,' he said. 'That might work in the Soviet Union, but that doesn't work here. That's not who we are.'"

Rachel Bade of Politico: "Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn [R], a former Texas attorney general and Texas supreme court justice, asked [Attorney General Loretta] Lynch in a Tuesday morning letter to appoint a special counsel" to investigate Hillary Clinton's e-mail usage. CW: Thanks for your concern, Senator. Now go away.

** James Carroll of the New Yorker: "Rather than seeing [Pope Francis] as a cult-worthy personality who represents something wholly new in Catholicism, it is better to understand Francis, even in his stylistic deviations, as the culmination of a slow, if jerky, recovery on the part of the Church from its self-defeating rejection of modernity." CW: Sorry to interrupt the nonsense with something worth reading.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Special Halperin Edition. Ed Kilgore: "I guess this is Trump Panic Day..., and the best sign of that is not so much the reports of angst on Wall Street as the reaction of everybody's favorite Insider Journalist, Bloomberg Politics' Mark Halperin, who has written a piece mainly remarkable for its analysis of the GOP race as a death match where Donald Trump gets 'killed' or everybody dies! Right from the get-go, Halperin gets his thug on.... You get a mental image of Halperin sitting in a half-lit Italian restaurant with the members of Murder, Inc., planning their next hit. It's pretty hilarious, but that's how tense it's getting in the Republican side of the Village.... If it weren't for the real-life consequences, it would be tempting to cheer Trump on, if only for the comedic value of what he does to people like Halperin and his sources." ...

... Steve M.: "We've now entered the stage of this presidential race in which gullible reporters not only retransmit Donald Trump's nonsense but actually believe it themselves." Enter right, Mark Halperin. "Halperin has a narrative and he's sticking to it.... I guess the only people dumb enough to believe Trump's BS are Republican voters and mainstream political journalists." ...

... Charles Pierce: "America's cable-news executives ... lap up [Donald Trump's] every word these days like hogs going for the last corn husk on doomsday. You know the sucking up has reached critical mass among the elite political press when the inexcusably employed Mark Halperin begins slurping so loudly you can hear him from space.... This is a completely and self-evidently ridiculous man and the idea that cable news executives feel compelled to televise every waking minute of his campaign requires that they be flogged out of the business." ...

... Wait, Wait! We need to hear from Bill Kristol on this! Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "The Weekly Standard Editor told CNN on Monday that he would be unable to back the real estate mogul. 'I doubt I'd support Donald. I doubt I'd support the Democrat,' Kristol said. 'I think I'd support getting someone good on the ballot as a third-party candidate.' Kristol told CNN that he would like to see former Vice President Dick Cheney or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) run as independents in 2016." CW: You see, it is possible to be even more ridiculous than Halperin.

Presidential Race

Paul Waldman: "The big policy headline [Tuesday] comes from the Wall Street Journal, which delivers this alarming message: Price Tag of Bernie Sanders' Proposals: $18 Trillion.... Holy cow! He must be advocating for some crazy stuff that will bankrupt America!... While Sanders does want to spend significant amounts of money, almost all of it is on things we're already paying for; he just wants to change how we pay for them. In some ways it's by spreading out a cost currently borne by a limited number of people to all taxpayers.... And ... fully $15 trillion of it comes not from an analysis of anything Sanders has proposed, but from the fact that Sanders has said he'd like to see a single-payer health insurance system.... Since Sanders hasn't released a health care plan yet, we can't make any assessment of the true cost of his plan.... Given the experience of the rest of the world, there's a strong likelihood that over the long run, a single-payer plan would save America money." ...

... CW: Waldman closes with a truism too often lost on a lazy-minded electorate: "The question when it comes to government should always be not what we're spending, but what we're getting for what we spend."

Greg Sargent makes a strong case that Hillary Clinton should push for more Democratic presidential debates.

Dana Milbank turns to StopBullying.gov for advice on how to deal with Donald Trump. By substituting StopBullying.gov's advice for how to deal with a bullying "child" to "candidate," Milbank discovers that the advice on the site could be quite effective against the Donald.

Maggie Haberman & Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times announce that over recent weeks Donald Trump has become a "better candidate"; i.e., he is beginning to follow some of the established campaign rituals like relying on prepared notes for his speeches & doing rope lines. CW: Could explain why his latest poll numbers are stagnant.

Kevin Liptak of CNN: "Donald Trump's campaign remarks about Mexican immigrants represent a play to the worst parts of society, Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday. Speaking at a reception marking Hispanic Heritage Month, Biden laid into the businessman turned GOP front-runner -- naming him twice -- as reverting to 'xenophobia' in a play for votes.":

Daniel Strauss: "The conservative group the Club for Growth unveiled its upcoming barrage against Donald Trump set to air later this week: a pair of 30-second ads that will air in Iowa and peg the real estate mogul as just another politician who supports liberal policies.... 'We have an amazing tax plan,' Trump said Sunday. 'We're going to be reducing taxes for the middle class, but for the hedge fund guys, they're going to be paying up.'" ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "When we last checked in on one of many of Donald Trump's feuds, the Club for Growth was having a hard time finding takers for an ad campaign it was proposing against The Donald. It seems that 'some top GOP financiers' were worried that such an effort could 'backfire' since every person or thing that got sucked into a Trump fight loses. That's still a concern for many Republicans, but not all, apparently. CfG has managed to scrape together $1 million to run two ads in Iowa attacking Trump for being a closet liberal: "Which presidential candidate supports higher taxes, national health care and the Wall Street Bailout? It's Donald Trump," one of the ads intones.

Would Don Draper Ever Make a Mistake Like This? Can't We Get Better Ad Agencies? Eliza Collins & Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Jeb Bush's super PAC Right to Rise used stock video images from England and Asia for its new video, which seeks to contrast the former Florida governor's optimism about America's future with Donald Trump's pessimism about its present.... 'If we get a few big things right, we can make lives better for millions of people in this nation where every life matters and everyone has the right to rise,' he says. The only problem: The sun is rising over a field in Cornwall, England -- a clip available for between $19 and $79 on Shutterstock." CW: O, to be in England now that September's there. ...

... It's Morning in America Someplace All Over Again:

... AND Jeb! himself, according to Jonathan Chait, "has made a huge mistake": "When Marco Rubio proposed his massive tax-cut plan a few months ago, he left the details so vague it could not be analyzed.... The incoherence has been a boon to Rubio, who has been able to portray his plan as a departure from Republican orthodoxy, without any hard numbers that could (and surely would) disprove his spin.... But Bush has filled in enough details that his plan's impact could actually be measured. Citizens for Tax Justice has run the numbers, and it turns out a whopping 53 percent of the benefit of Bush's plan would accrue to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.... 'Most of your tax cut goes to the richest 1 percent' is a really damaging attack line, especially when you're personally a very rich person named Bush." ...

Beyond the Beltway

AP: "The death-row inmate Richard Glossip maintained his innocence on the eve of his execution in Oklahoma on Tuesday, while his attorneys went to court with what they said was new evidence supporting claims that he was framed. Glossip, 52, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday afternoon at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was convicted of ordering the 1997 beating death of Barry Van Treese, who owned the motel where Glossip worked."

AP: "A university instructor told police he killed his girlfriend at the home they shared in Mississippi, where investigators found a note that said 'I am so sorry' and gave no hints that he was already headed a few hundred miles north to kill a colleague, police said Tuesday."

CW: Excellent news for writers. Under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, you can write "FUCK YOUR SHITTY TOWN BITCHES" on your speeding tickets.

Way Beyond

William Booth & Robert Samuels of the Washington Post: "Blocked by Hungary's new border fence, the river of migrants and refugees began to change course Wednesday and move west toward Croatia in a desperate gambit to forge a new route to Western Europe. 'Barbed wire in Europe in the 21st century is not an answer, it's a threat,' complained Croatia's prime minister, Zoran Milanovic, in a direct jab at the blockades by neighboring Hungary. He told lawmakers in Zagreb that Croatia would 'accept and direct' the migrants to transit the country -- comments that are likely to ripple through the social media networks used by the refugees and increase the march toward Croatia."

News Ledes

New York Times: "A Cuomo administration lawyer who was shot in the head during a predawn celebration before the West Indian American Day Parade last week died on Wednesday evening, according to a family friend. The lawyer, Carey W. Gabay, 43, was a bystander caught in a shootout in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that the police believe to have been between gangs."

Washington Post: "Flash flooding in Utah has claimed the lives of 18 people, including 12 who died after two vehicles packed with families that had gone to watch torrential waters ran into a 'wall of water' filled with debris on Monday. Six Zion National Park visitors also died in the flooding, and one person who was at the park is still missing, ...."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 15, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "Researchers knew California's drought was already a record breaker..., but they were surprised by what they discovered: It has been 500 years since what is now the Golden State has been this dry."

"The Ignorant Villagers," Now Playing. Sarah Ferris of the Hill: "Congressional Republicans say they are determined to shut Planned Parenthood down, regardless of whether it broke any laws. In more than two months of investigations, members have yet to turn up evidence that Planned Parenthood acted illegally, the same conclusion reached by a half-dozen state investigations. The Department of Justice has so far declined to launch a formal probe." ...

... "The Ignorant Villagers," The Prequel. Which reminds Steve Benen of a scene from "Monty Python & the Holy Grail": "The villagers decide they want to burn a suspected witch, and John Cleese offers proof of her evil ways: 'She turned me into a newt!' It's obvious, of course, that he's not a newt, leading Cleese to say, 'I got better.' To which the ignorant villagers exclaim, 'Burn her anyway!' Congressional Republicans decided they want to defund Planned Parenthood as a result of the health group's crimes. They then realized there's no evidence that Planned Parenthood committed any crimes. To which GOP lawmakers exclaim, 'Defund it anyway!'"

... Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post on Louisiana's attempt to rescind its Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood: "One, Republicans officials apparently don't care enough about women's health to make the effort to really understand it, since some seem to think women get pap smears from their dentists.... Two, this is a preview of what might happen if congressional Republicans succeed in their attempt to hold the federal budget hostage unless Planned Parenthood is defunded nationwide.... And three, it's probably also an indication of how well thought-through Republicans' plans to dismantle other major health-care programs are. If this is what repealing-and-replacing Obamacare would look like, be very afraid."

Here's a problem Charles Pierce notices: Our top spies, in the persons of John Brennan (CIA) & James Clapper, (NSA) don't understand why nobody likes them. They chalk it up to "cynicism" and "misunderstanding" "fueled by our adversaries." Pierce seems to think it's something about democracy.

AND, speaking of threats to our democracy, Simon Lazarus of the New Republic explains in short order how Bush II appointee Rosemary Collyer has "broken new ground" in pursuit of blowing up any remaining shards of our fractured federal government. You fans of Jonathan Turley should take note. It was he who thought up this radical idea & gave Collyer permission to copy it down & turn it from theory to practice.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. The 2000 Election All Over Again. Matt Yglesias of Vox: "... reading mainstream political reporters characterize the Jeb tax plan as 'populist' or some kind of break with conservative orthodoxy paired with endless front-page coverage of every new micro-development in the Hillary Clinton email inquiry is giving me a very uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.... America's collective journalistic manpower has spent a lot more time and energy on scrutinizing Clinton's emails than on scrutinizing the content of Bush's economic policy. And that's a lucky thing for him, because what he's put out there is an appalling edifice of flimflam based on three claims that don't withstand cursory examination." ...

... Kevin Drum has the obvious answers to Yglesias's wonderment about the media's attention to Hillary's e-mails & inattention to Jeb!'s tax plan: (a) tax plans are boring (like Jeb!), & (b) there's no narrative: Hillary's e-mails have that and-then-and-then-and-then advantage over the release of a stupid tax plan: "You can't keep writing the same story over and over based on nothing more than yet another liberal saying that big tax cuts are stupid and won't do anything to help the economy." ...

... CW: I'd add this: to most people, words like "taxes" and "budget" have highly-negative connotations. People don't like to pay taxes & they hate having to live within budgets. They don't want to think about them. Besides, most people aren't very good at arithmetic, so the complexities of federal budgets seem way too hard to even contemplate. As for the public's understanding of macroeconomics, well, HA! Moreover, "plan," as in "tax plan" seems too abstract to bother with. Yesterday during the Q&A session following Bernie Sanders' speech at Liberty University, he mentioned the Republicans' "immoral" budget. The moderator brushed aside Sanders' remark, saying something like, "I don't know much about budgets." I'm sure that's true. And it's a problem. Voters have no idea that at the legislative level, budgets & appropriations are policy. They determine not only how much you pay in taxes but where those tax dollars go. A legislator can speak "Populist" incessantly, but if she votes for a tax bill like the one Jeb! proposes or for a budget to Li'l Randy's liking, her supposed populism is a sham. Most voters absolutely, positively don't get any of this. It's much more fun to contemplate whether or not Hillary Clinton is a criminal/traitor who sent coded messages to Russian spy-hackers in her now-deleted yoga schedules.

Presidential Race

Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday took the lectern at Liberty University, an evangelical Christian college, and repeatedly sought to build what he called 'common ground' with students, beginning with the foundations of Christianity itself: the Bible": ...

... Here's the full text of Sanders' speech, via Chris Cillizza of the WashPo. ...

... Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed calls the speech "Sanders’ Peak Progressive Dreamboat Moment," & relishes Sanders telling "12,000 evangelicals what morality is." ...

... ** Ezra Klein: "Why Bernie Sanders's rise is more impressive than Donald Trump's." And why Bernie could have a more positive, & more enduring effect than Trump will.

Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "Hillary Rodham Clinton is suffering rapid erosion of support among Democratic women -- the voters long presumed to be her bedrock in her bid to become the nation's first female president. The numbers in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll are an alarm siren: Where 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters said in July that they expected t vote for Clinton, only 42 percent do now, a drop of 29 percentage points in eight weeks." ...

... The Unknown Works of a Fracking Queen. Mariah Blake of Mother Jones: "Under [Hillary Clinton's] leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe -- part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which has been linked to drinking-water contamination and earthquakes at home, could wreak havoc in countries with scant environmental regulation. And according to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officials -- some with deep ties to industry -- also helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the program actually serves."

Super-Doofus!... Nick Gass of Politico details how all the GOP presidential candidates have been trying to "out-Reagan one another." ...

     ... Charles Posner, et al., of the Center for American Progress: "... at critical moments on critical issues, Reagan took positions that are anathema to the leaders of today's Republican Party -- advancing sensible immigration reform, supporting pollution control, curbing nuclear arms, closing tax loopholes for the wealthy, and advocating gun background checks. As president, Reagan passed immigration reform with a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. He also passed a landmark treaty on the climate and raised taxes 11 times. He even negotiated with America's main adversary, the Soviet Union, signing a treaty with the communist nation to reduce nuclear weapons."

Flim-Flam Men. Nicholas Riccardi of the AP: "Jeb Bush went to Detroit and talked about leveling the playing field. Marco Rubio wrote a book about helping the working class. Rand Paul is promising to expand the Republican Party beyond its traditional base. Yet all three Republican presidential candidates have offered tax proposals that would, for reasons such as nomination politics and tax rate realities, benefit overwhelmingly the wealthiest." ...

... CW: AND here's a dirty little secret that no one has been mentioning. Pundits criticized Jeb!'s tax proposal, for instance, because it would significantly raise the deficit. But that's actually a feature of GOP tax plans: (1) raise the deficit; (2) blame some outside factor -- say, Democrats; (3) cut safety net programs because they "are too expensive," & "are robbing our grandchildren." The plans, then, however bad the pundits say they are, are actually worse, because the longterm goal is to take even more from the poor & middle class when the resulting deficits "necessitate" "belt-tightening."

Donald Does Dallas. Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times: Trump holds a raucus campaign rally in Texas. On the hardship of being a Big Star: "Like most Trump outings in recent weeks, the campaign stop doubled as a television event of sorts, a reality that Mr. Trump clearly relished during a characteristically meandering speech that lasted over an hour. Turning to the cameras assembled before him, he said that, unlike other candidates, he was required to produce fresh material for every stump speech. 'Every time I speak they put me on live television,' he said, 'so I have to make different speeches.'... He appraised himself as an unrivaled builder, a self-funder unencumbered by political 'blood money' and an all-around winner of the highest order." ...

... California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor, "welcomes" Donald Trump to California for the GOP presidential debate at the Reagan Library:

Joe Miller in Salon: It isn't just Trump "University." Miller exposes a Ponzi scheme that Trump fronted for years -- until the Wall Street Journal asked him about the millions he made from the Ponzi-modeled company. "Immediately he had nearly all traces of himself removed from its website. 'I know nothing about the company,' Trump told the paper. 'I'm not familiar with what they do or how they go about doing it, and I make that clear in my speeches.'... This is a blatant lie, and the truth behind it reveals something very dark in his character. At best, it shows that he's for sale. Worse, it betrays an utter disregard for those who would trust him...." ...

... Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: "Trump appears to be reinforcing, and validating, the anxieties of a sizable tranche of conservatives who fear that the world they've known, once neatly organized to favor white males, is slipping away.... There is no way for Republicans to give resentful conservatives what they want while simultaneously expanding the party to include more Hispanics and Asians (blacks will probably remain out of reach). If your goal is a whiter country, a less white political party must seem a very curious means for achieving it." ...

... Calling Doctor Carson. Steve M.: Wall Street, according to Politico, is "terrified" that Donald Trump might become president. Steve suggests that instead of being bewildered & frightened by Trump's rise in the polls & hoping Super-Doofus there will swoop in to save the day, the Streeters should get behind Ben Carson: "Unlike your current champions, he actually seems popular. And unlike Trump, he seems as if he'd be happy to pursue your agenda -- he certainly doesn't seem to have one of his own, apart from generalized right-wing revanchism and a distaste for 'political correctness.' But he's somewhat less rabid on immigration than Trump. He acknowledges that gay marriage is the law of the land.... On taxes, he likes tithing, which would be a huge tax windfall for the rich."

The Dull Boy. Anna North of the New York Times: According to family & friends, Jeb!'s reputation as "the smarter brother" stems more from his lack of social skills & his humorless demeanor than from any measure of intelligence.

Never Let the Facts Get in the Way. Jamelle Bouie: Scott "Walker's underlying idea -- that unions are deleterious to American well-being -- is unfounded. Yes, there are union abuses and union corruption. On the whole, however, the opposite is true: Unions have been an important ally for middle-class workers, and the fall of labor has widened the gap between productivity and pay, and increased income inequality.... Taken together, [his proposal] is an incredible change to American labor law -- a transformation that would greatly alter the relationship between employers and employees." ...

... Charles Pierce: "... reeking of desperation and flop sweat, [Scott] Walker has decided to appeal to that portion of the electorate which is nostalgic for the days of the breaker boys, starvation wages, and large-scale industrial accidents." ...

... CW: As for me, I just wish Scottie would sink into an ice-fishing hole at a pristine pond near Eau Claire & never again remind me that spawned in Wisconsin was a boy who would grow up to blow up that institution where Prof. Lovejoy once revealed that the Puritans were not all about making friends with the natives, & inspired my shocked realization that those public school history books which I had taken on faith were bigger cons than Santa Claus. Of course the Professors Lovejoy of this world are exactly the sorts of truthtellers that the Scotties of said planet have every reason to whack.

Beyond the Beltway

James Higdon & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "... a gay couple successfully obtained a marriage license [in Rowan County, Kentucky,] just before 11 a.m. -- putting an end to days of speculation about whether clerk Kim Davis would block the licenses. Shannon and Carmen Wampler-Collins quietly filled out forms as supporters of Davis, the clerk who was jailed over her refusal to issue marriage licenses, jeered at them about the 'sin' of homosexuality.... Deputy clerk Brian Mason handed the couple their completed paperwork, with gay rights supporters shouting, 'Thank you, Brian!'" ...

... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "On Monday, [Kim] Davis said that she wouldn't stop her deputies from granting licenses, but she also suggested that marriages certified by mere deputies might not be legally valid.... Not too long ago, it was all but unquestioned that, in cases like these, civic obligation trumped religious expression.... But the broader conservative movement had other ideas.... Now Davis is seeking to extend the concept of accommodation [to religious beliefs] even more -- to government officials, like her, who want to pick and choose which legal obligations to honor. It's one thing to allow cafeteria citizenship; Davis wants cafeteria government."

Way Beyond

Helene Bienvenu & Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: Hungary declared a state of emergency along its border with Serbia early Tuesday, threatening to prosecute and imprison migrants trying to enter the country illegally from Serbia.The Hungarian measures were a harsh new element in the European Union's struggle with the influx of migrants, as the bloc's cherished principle of open borders continued to fray." ...

... Maher Samaan & Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "For those who remain in Syria, life is a nightmare."

Eliza Collins of Politico: "Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wished Jews a happy new year on Sunday, a notable contrast from the clerical regime's long history of anti-Semitic statements. The tweet, which did not appear in Rouhani's Farsi account, according to the Associated Press, said 'May our shared Abrahamic roots deepen respect & bring peace & mutual understanding. L'Shanah Tovah. #RoshHashanah.'... Rouhani's boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has a history of making inflammatory statements about Israel and Jews. Last week, Khamenei said that Israel would cease to exist within 25 years."

Anna Fifield of the Washington Post: "North Korea Tuesday announced that it had restarted its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and was ready to use nuclear weapons 'any time' against the United States.... While Kim's regime is known for its bellicose rhetoric, Tuesday's claims are consistent with American analysts' interpretation of recent satellite imagery."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Five fraternity members from Baruch College in Manhattan will face murder charges in Pennsylvania for their involvement in the death of a freshman who was hazed during a rural retreat in 2013, officials said on Monday. A grand jury in Monroe County, Pa., recently recommended that five people face third-degree murder charges and that a total of 37 would face a range of criminal charges, including assault, hindering apprehension and hazing in Chun Hsien Deng's death."

Love in an Age of Gun Violence. New York Times: "A professor at Delta State University who was suspected of fatally shooting his companion and then another professor at the school was found dead Monday night, apparently with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The suspect, Shannon S. Lamb, who taught geography and social science education at the university, was pulled over around 10:30 p.m. by the local police in Greenville, Miss., about 35 miles to the west of the campus in Cleveland, Miss., the university's police chief, Lynn Buford, said in a phone interview early Tuesday. According to Chief Buford, Dr. Lamb ran into a wooded area. The local police followed him and, while waiting for backup, heard a gunshot. They found Dr. Lamb, who was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 14, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Presidential Race

Nick Corasanti of the New York Times: "... Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will take his populist, progressive message to Liberty University, the Christian school in Virginia founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and deliver a convocation address on Monday morning." CW: The link wasn't working right when I tested it -- got a blank page -- but it's the only link there is, so maybe the Times will fix it.

Bradford Richardson of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is up by double-digits on former secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to a poll released by CBS News on Sunday. The senator is drawing 43 percent support in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, besting Clinton by 10 points. Sanders is also drawing 52 percent support in New Hampshire, almost doubling Clinton, who sits at 30 percent support in the Granite State. Clinton, however, doubles-up Sanders in South Carolina, drawing 46 percent compared to the senator's 23 percent. Vice President Biden, who is considering a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, places third in all three states, drawing 10 percent support in Iowa, 9 percent support in New Hampshire, and a strong 22 percent backing in South Carolina." ...

... Charles Blow makes an important point here: Bernie "Sanders's ability to win Obama's supporters may have been made difficult by his associations. On Saturday, Sanders campaigned with Dr. Cornel West, who recently issued an endorsement of Sanders. West's critique of the president has been so blistering and unyielding -- he has called Obama 'counterfeit,' the 'black face of the American empire,' a verb-ed neologism of the n-word — that it has bordered on petulance and self-parody." ...

... Nancy Letourneau of the Washington Monthly: "I would also suggest that one of the reasons Sander's message fails to connect with African Americans is that - even in the midst of economic conditions that were much worse than today - Ellis Cose pointed out in 2011 that African Americans are the country's 'new optimists.'.... To the extent that optimism has dimmed more recently - it is in response to the shootings of unarmed Black men (often by police officers) and the lack of a 'just response' from our justice system. No matter how hard Sanders tries to tie that one to his message about income inequality and economics, it will fall short of connecting to the souls of African Americans."

Greg Sargent: "Today the Center for American Progress will release a new report that makes a detailed case that the GOP presidential candidates are all well to the right of [Ronald] Reagan, and actually represent a break from core aspects of his approach to the presidency." ...

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "An immigration reform group backed by business, political and religious leaders plans to air a hard-hitting television commercial that juxtaposes the words of three Republican presidential candidates against those of a revered GOP figure: former president Ronald Reagan. The National Immigration Forum Action Fund will air the ad in the coming days on CNN before, during and after the presidential debate that the network is hosting Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California."

Michael Grunwald of Politico: "... Donald Trump has scrambled the politics of crime by running as a pro-cop, anti-thug 'law-and-order' candidate, denouncing rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson, vowing to 'get rid of gang members so fast your head will spin.'" And as with immigration, his rivals are echoing his appeals to the angry id of their party's white base, distancing themselves from bipartisan reform. His brash pronouncements, brazen insults and absurd promises are not only dominating the 2016 political discussion, they're also driving the Republican policy agenda. And while most of the commentary about Trump ... has focused on his potential impact on the campaign, as well as the long-term future of the Republican Party, criminal justice is just one example of an issue currently pending in Washington that Trump could affect right now." ...

... Reuters: "... Donald Trump on Sunday said high salaries paid to chief executives were a 'joke' and a 'disgrace', often approved by company boards stacked with friends of such CEOs.... In particular Trump mentioned Macy's, which in July stopped selling his menswear line after he described migrants from Mexico as drug-runners and rapists." ...

... Emma Brown of the Washington Post: "In three pending lawsuits, including one in which the New York attorney general is seeking $40 million in restitution, former students [of Trump "University"] allege that the enterprise bilked them out of their money with misleading advertisements. Instead of a fast route to easy money, these Trump University students say they found generic seminars led by salesmen who pressured them to invest more cash in additional courses. The students say they didn't learn Trump's secrets and never received the one-on-one guidance they expected." CW: We've covered this before, but it bears repeating. It's easy to argue that these "students" were silly, greedy people, but conning the gullible -- and not just for votes! -- is sleazy. ...

... Nick Gass of Politico: "Ben Carson ... [said] he was not questioning [Donald Trump]'s faith but rather talking about his own. And he does not blame Trump for retaliating. 'I said something that sounded like I was questioning his faith. I really wasn't, I was really talking more about mine. But it was said in an inappropriate way, which I recognized and I apologized for that. It's never my intention to impugn other people,' the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Monday."

Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "... the National Federation of Republican Women's annual conference" in Phoenix, Arizona, Ted Cruz courts the ladies. "His timing may be opportune: As front-runner Donald Trump has come under fire for a string of comments many see as anti-women, Cruz is trying to seize the moment to retain and expand his foothold in the GOP electorate.... Cruz wasn't the only presidential contender who saw the importance of the conference. But he was the only man. Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina addressed the group Friday night. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee sent his wife, Janet. Other candidates dispatched staffers." ...

... CW: Your modern Republican party: Fifteen or 16 presidential candidates, & only two of them, one a woman, bother to show up for the annual meeting of some of the most active & influential women in their party. It isn't just that Republican men have no respect for women; they have no respect for their own women, even ones who dedicate their time to support & work for these men. Pretty astounding. ...

... Katie Glueck of Politico: Carly Fiorina "won the straw poll at this weekend's National Federation of Republican Women convention, organizers announced on Sunday. The victory came after she kicked off the conference on Friday by mocking Trump's apparent criticism of her appearance. Fiorina pulled in 27 percent of the vote at the event held in Scottsdale, Arizona. Ted Cruz was the only other candidate to address the conference in person, speaking Saturday. He finished second, with 20 percent." CW: Yeah, the ladies like to be noticed.

Scott Bauer of the AP: "... Scott Walker on Monday will call for sweeping restrictions on organized labor in the U.S.... At a town hall meeting in Las Vegas, Walker will propose eliminating unions for employees of the federal government, making all workplaces right-to-work unless individual states vote otherwise, scrapping the federal agency that oversees unfair labor practices and making it more difficult for unions to organize." CW: When it comes down to it, Scottie is just a hideous human being.

Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: Chris Christie "said on NBC the media should 'stop blathering' about Bridgegate and insisted what mattered was how he reacted to it, and said it had not left 'a stain on my administration'.... 'What really matters, as Hillary Clinton is finding out, is how you react to a crisis,' Christie said. 'Not that there ever will be any crisis ... what did I do? When we had a crisis the next day I went out and took questions for an hour and 15 minutes, no holds barred. Let's wait and see if Mrs Clinton ever does one fifth of that on her crisis.'"

Beyond the Beltway

Jack Pearson of the AP: "Former tennis star James Blake, whose caught-on-camera takedown by a plainclothes New York City police officer prompted apologies from the mayor and police commissioner, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the officer who wrongly arrested him should be fired."

AP: "Despite his boss' objections to gay marriage, a deputy county clerk in eastern Kentucky says he'll continue issuing marriage licenses. Deputy clerk Brian Mason had previously said that if he has to, he would disobey his boss, county clerk Kim Davis, and issue licenses rather than refuse the orders of U.S. District Judge David Bunning. Monday was Davis' first day back to work after Judge Bunning jailed her for refusing to issue marriage licenses. Reading from a statement, Davis said she's not going to interfere with her deputies issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but she says she isn't authorizing them and questions whether they're valid." CW: So if Mason takes a day off, people can't get marriage licenses in Rowan County??? This is not exactly a solution. ...

... @8:08 am ET, CNN is running a crawl which says Kim Davis won't issue marriage licenses to applicants, but she won't interfere with clerks who do. ...

... Justin Moyer of the Washington Post: Kim "Davis will return to work Monday morning as legal questions linger -- and a billboard in Morehead, Ky., where her office is located, openly mocks her.... 'We put up this billboard just kind of reminding her that from a religious perspective, the definition of marriage has been constantly changing, and this isn't actually about religion,' Davis Hammit, operations director of Planting Peace, told Reuters." ...

... Kevin Conlon of CNN: Rowan County, Kentucky, Kim Davis's attorney "Mat Staver said [Sunday] his client was fully aware of the law and of the court's ruling, but that she was still undecided about what she'll do if a same-sex couple applies for a marriage license in Rowan County. 'We'll find out what Kim does when she goes to work on Monday.'"

David Eggert of the AP: "Two disgraced tea party Republicans are gone from Michigan's Legislature, but their troubles may not be over as attention turns to a criminal investigation of misconduct including a plot to conceal their extramarital affair with an email of false and explicit claims."

Way Beyond

Rod McGuirk of the AP: "Australia's beleaguered prime minister was ousted from power in an internal party ballot on Monday as the ruling conservative party attempts to win back a disenchanted public by replacing the nation's polarizing, gaffe-prone leader with his more moderate rival. Prime Minister Tony Abbott lost a leadership ballot by members of his party, who voted 54 to 44 to replace him with former Liberal Party leader and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull...."

Paul Krugman: "On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest [within Britain's Labour party] was that every candidate other than [winner Jeremy] Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government's austerity policies. Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit.... The Corbyn upset isn't about a sudden left turn on the part of Labour supporters. It's mainly about the strange, sad moral and intellectual collapse of Labour moderates."

Melilla Eddy & Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands introduced border controls on Monday, as Germany's decision over the weekend to set up checks began to ripple across a bloc struggling to deal with the influx of migrants coming to the Continent. In Hungary, the authorities said that a near-record 5,353 migrants had crossed into the country from Serbia before noon on Monday -- even as Budapest continued to try to seal off that border, which is being reinforced with the construction of a 109-mile fence made with razor wire."

Melissa Eddy, et al., of the New York Times: "With record numbers of migrants pouring across the Hungarian border and rushing west, Germany, the country that had been the most welcoming in Europe, suddenly ordered temporary border restrictions on Sunday that cut off rail travel from Austria and instituted spot checks on cars. The German move came just one day before European ministers were scheduled to meet in Brussels to discuss a plan to distribute tens of thousands of migrants across Europe, with many governments, particularly in Eastern Europe, bristling at being forced to accept more migrants than they wish to take."

News Ledes

Reuters: "A Mississippi college professor was shot and killed in his campus office on Monday, and police said a fellow Delta State University teacher was 'a person of interest' in the shooting. Authorities said they were searching for geography and social science instructor Shannon Lamb in connection with the killing of Ethan Schmidt, an assistant professor of American history. Lamb was also a suspect in the death of a woman in Mississippi earlier on Monday, according to news reports."

AP: "Some 400 homes were among the hundreds of structures destroyed as fast-moving wildfires raged through communities in Northern California, leaving at least one person dead and sending residents fleeing along roads where some buildings and vehicles were still in flames."

New York Times: "Russia is using an air corridor over Iraq and Iran to fly military equipment and personnel to a new air hub in Syria, openly defying American efforts to block the shipments and significantly increasing tensions with Washington."

Washington Post: "An altercation between inmates that lasted about two minutes resulted in the death of four prisoners, the company that runs the Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Okla., said Sunday."