The Commentariat -- February 4, 2015

Internal links removed.

Marina Koren of the National Journal: "Like Loretta Lynch, Ashton Carter is not a controversial Obama administration cabinet nominee. And like Lynch, Carter presented himself as a partner to the Senate committee that will help determine whether he is confirmed as the country's 25th secretary of defense.... Members of the committee appeared to appreciate Carter's opening testimony, which focused on the need to combat terrorism abroad and end hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, to U.S. military funding.... But this confirmation hearing, like the one for Lynch for attorney general held last week, is not about Carter. It's about President Obama's handling of foreign policy in the late years of his presidency, and the Department of Defense that current secretary Chuck Hagel will leave behind."

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked Republicans from taking up a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security but roll back the President Obama's recent executive actions on immigration, setting up a showdown over the agency -- and the administration's immigration policies -- before money for the department runs out at the end of the month." ...

... Mike Lillis of the Hill: House "Republicans, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), are vowing to hold the line on tying funding for the Homeland Security Department to language reversing Obama's executive actions on immigration -- even after Senate Democrats blocked their bill from being considered in the upper chamber. 'There's not a Plan B, because this is the plan,' Scalise said minutes after the Senate vote, according to Fox News's Chad Pergram. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) echoed that message, saying 'many of us agree that we should stand behind the one bill that we sent over there.' CW: Sure sounds like the House is threating a government shutdown."

Fifty-six: Let's see, that's two score and 16. It's 4.5 dozen. But no matter how you add it up, it has to be some sort of world record in political futility. -- Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) ...

... Dana Milbank: "In Tuesday's repeal effort by House Republicans -- their first of this Congress and their 56th overall -- it became clear that they had succeeded at one thing: They had bored even themselves into a slumber. For much of the debate Tuesday afternoon, no more than a dozen seats were occupied on the pro-repeal side of the House. More than once, the GOP had nobody available to speak.... Proponents of the law had the passion." ...

... Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times: The House's 56th vote to repeal ObamaCare Tuesday could have serious repercussions if the Supreme Court is paying any attention. If the Houses fails "to address in advance the consequences of the court's overturning ACA subsidies, a court majority may conclude that the consequences are just too dire, and uphold the subsidies." ...

... Never fear. The House is coming up with a plan this very minute:

"The House GOP's Most Awesomest Wish List For An Obamacare Replacement." Sahil Kapur of TPM: "House Republicans want a health care plan that lowers costs, covers pre-existing conditions, grows the number of insured and lets people keep their plans and doctors -- all while 'eliminating job-killing policies and regulations.' The extraordinary wish list is written into the House legislation to repeal Obamacare [passed Tuesday]. It's another sign of how far Republicans are from having a viable alternative to Obamacare even as they insist on it being repealed. The guidelines seem not to grapple with the difficult policy tradeoffs at play, such as raising spending versus letting Americans go uninsured or imposing mandates versus letting insurers refuse to cover sick people." ...

... CW: TPM tries to do serious reporting. It really does. But sometimes a writer just can't help but jot down "Most Awesomest Wish List." ...

... Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, acknowledged that 'there has not been a unified Republican position' on how to replace the health care law or respond if the Supreme Court upholds the challenge to subsidies in states using the federal insurance exchange.... If the Supreme Court rules in favor of plaintiffs challenging the subsidies -- a decision is expected this year -- 'it will destroy health insurance exchanges in 30-odd states in the blink of an eye,' Mr. Cole said...." (Emphasis added.)

... digby, in Salon: "With this week's insanity, it's time to call GOP's health care approach what it is: a death trap for the non-rich."

... Republican "Leaders" Are No Longer Pretending to Be Sane.

Zandar of Balloon Juice: "Newly minted North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis will see your ant-vaxxer nonsense and raise you the freedom from having to wash your hands....":

In Right Wing World, the Chef Will Piss in Your Soup. Brendan James of TPM: "In a week packed with news over concerns for public health, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) described his own history of opposing certain health and hygiene regulations, including those that require employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom." Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead:

... Digby: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the feces of patriots and tyrants." ...

... CW: It isn't often that New York Times editors weigh in on toilet practices, but the page's top dog couldn't help it today. ...

... Hunter of Daily Kos: "Thom Tillis is not, however, a true libertarian. He is a fraud, because he thinks maybe you should be able to serve food with occasional human feces on it so long as you post a sign somewhere saying so. That's not actually saving any regulation, that's just shifting the regulation from an anti-poop regulation to a poop-neutral regulation." ...

... Paul Waldman: "Sometimes, you have to put up with one onerous regulation -- mandating a posted sign -- to taste the sweet nectar of freedom -- not having to wash your hands between going to the bathroom and preparing food for others. This is the kind of nuanced understanding of liberty that only a tea party senator can offer to the country." ...

... CW: I shall be wanting Tillis's friend & colleague, the gentleman from Kentucky; to wit, Li'l Randy -- to weigh in on this. Tillis's support of awful offal in your coffee is the logical next step along the path of Paul's Freeedom Trail.

Edward-Issac Dovere & Jake Sherman of Politico: "Vice President Joe Biden won't commit to attending Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to a joint meeting of Congress next month. He's not the only one. Dozens of House Democrats are privately threatening to skip the March 3 address, according to lawmakers and aides, in what's become the lowest point of a relationship between the Israeli prime minister and President Barack Obama that's never been good.... 'We defer to Democratic members if they'd like to attend or not,' a White House aide said Tuesday." ...

... CW: Just Don't Go was my first visceral thought upon hearing of the Boehner-Netanyahu scheme. My second: Democratic MoCs won't have the guts. So we'll see.

We in the Democratic Party raised millions out of poverty into the middle class, and made them so comfortable they could become Republicans. -- the late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill

... Ah, the Merely Affluent. Thomas Edsall: "Middle-class populism ... raises a host of problems for the Democratic Party. When the middle-class populist message is turned into actual legislative proposals, the costs, in the form of higher taxes, will be imposed on the affluent. Such a shift in the allocation of government resources threatens the loyalty of a crucial Democratic constituency: well-off socially liberal voters.... They are not eager to see their taxes raised.... If such a simple and straightforward proposal as the shift of government dollars from affluent families to far less advantaged families scraping to pay college tuition [the 529 college savings tax break] gets an instantaneous thumbs down from Pelosi, Schumer and Van Hollen, the realistic prospects for a middle-class agenda, if the Democrats return to power, are marginal at best."

William Baude, in a New York Times op-ed: The Supreme Court makes thousands of decisions every year that are issued in complete secrecy. "The court is in the spotlight more and more. Transparency in all its decisions is vital to its continued legitimacy."

Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Judging from her e-mails, Jill Kelley was star-struck by the big-name military commanders rotating between the war zones in the Middle East and her home town of Tampa. And they were equally smitten with her.... Now, a glimpse into Kelley's relationship with military commanders has emerged from another, previously undisclosed batch of e-mails.... The Washington Post requested the e-mails in November 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act. More than two years later, after numerous unexplained delays, the Pentagon released 238 pages of heavily censored documents." ...

... CW: One does have to wonder what the government is censoring. If these are "innocent" e-mails between military personnel & a groupie, why would they contain any material -- other than perhaps references to others not involved in the scandal -- that had to be redacted for, um, national security reasons?

It Depends on What the Meaning of "Pandering" Is. Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: Sarah Kliff of "Vox reported Monday afternoon that candidate Obama had 'pandered to anti-vaxxers in 2008' by questioning 'the validity of vaccines.'" Several other news outlets followed up with similar stories, even as other reporters were disproving the claim. But Ezra Klein of Vox is sticking to Kliff's misleading story. Kliff has updated her story. A little. But the "pandering" headline remains. ...

... CW: I get that reporters make mistakes, & Kliff was relying on Brendan Nyhan -- a reputable journalist as well as on an old (and shortly thereafter revised) Washington Post fact-check -- in issue her "pandering" charge. Other outlets tweaked their stories to get closer to the facts. Klein is embarrassing himself here by insisting Obama's willingness to be polite to a voter, while still disagreeing with him/her, amounted to "pandering."

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia's royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, has received a diagnosis of mental illness but was found competent to stand trial on terrorism charges. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 and is held in the most secure prison in the federal system, in Florence, Colo.... In a statement Monday night, the Saudi Embassy noted that the national Sept. 11 commission had rejected allegations that the Saudi government or Saudi officials had funded Al Qaeda."

The "Urban" Vote. Annie Karni & Celeste Katz of the New York Daily News: "President Obama was shocked and irritated by Mitt Romney's concession call in the 2012 presidential election and claimed Romney insinuated that Obama won only by getting out the black vote, according to a new book by presidential campaign strategist David Axelrod. Obama was 'unsmiling during the call, and slightly irritated when it was over,' Axelrod writes. The president hung up and said Romney admitted he was surprised at his own loss, Axelrod wrote. "'You really did a great job of getting the vote out in places like Cleveland and Milwaukee,' in other words, black people,'" Obama said, paraphrasing Romney. 'That's what he thinks this was all about.'" Romney is white. CW: He probably still thinks he lost the election to those free ObamaPhones.

Eliza Berman of Time: "Fifty years ago, the debate centered not on whether to vaccinate babies, but whether a pregnant woman infected with the virus should be able to decide whether to have the baby in the first place.... A growing movement calling for legalized abortion would declare victory with Roe v. Wade eight years later, but until then, women seeking abortions would either be denied or undergo the procedure in secrecy. A small number of doctors, however, chose to deliberately defy the law and perform abortions on women whose fetuses had been exposed to the German measles, also known as rubella." Thanks to Julie for the link. ...

... A great commentary by Akhilleus in today's thread on the libertarian's fetish for "freedom" to flout good public health practices.

Ishan Taroor of the Washington Post: "There's no Western statesmen -- at least in the English-speaking world -- more routinely lionized than Winston Churchill. Last Friday marked a half century since his funeral.... But there's another side to Churchill's politics and career that should not be forgotten amid the endless parade of eulogies. To many outside the West, he remains a grotesque racist and a stubborn imperialist, forever on the wrong side of history. Churchill's detractors point to his well-documented bigotry, articulated often with shocking callousness and contempt.... Churchill's racism was wrapped up in his Tory zeal for empire.... As a junior member of parliament, Churchill had cheered on Britain's plan for more conquests, insisting that its 'Aryan stock is bound to triumph.'" Read the whole article.

Presidential Race

The Anointed One. Part of me looks back and thinks that maybe God put me and my family through [union-bashing, leading to claimed death threats against him] all this for a purpose - and it wasn't just to get things done in Wisconsin, and it wasn't just to win all those elections in a state that normally doesn't go Republican. Maybe it was to set us to ... help get our country on the right track. -- Gov. Scott Walker, in an Iowa conference call Tuesday

... Ed Kilgore: "Walker's getting into a real groove in using the 'death threats' he and his family supposedly received as a sign of the martyrdom -- a sort of stigmata -- Christian conservatives are expected to confess these days. Sarah Palin couldn't do it better." ...

... Steve M. "Scott Walker has his script memorized." Looks like he can plug it in to any "conversation." "The key to beating Walker is going to be to knock him off script." ...

... CW: This was readily apparent when Martha Raddatz asked him about how to deal with ISIS. He used the word "aggressive" & attached it actually or implicitly to the phrase "around the world" three times in, what?, a one-minute exchange. That's his foreign policy in toto: "act aggressively around the world." Raddatz, in fact, did knock him off his limited script when she asked him what that meant. Because, he hadn't thought about that. If you don't hear Scottie repeating "act aggressively around the world" numerous times in the coming months, that means he got a new scriptwriter.

NEW. Amy Davison of the New Yorker: "There are so many people who consider Chris Christie a true friend, according to Chris Christie. This isn't just a matter of love but of legality, because New Jersey's ethics rules stipulate that the state's governor has more leeway in accepting gifts from his personal friends than from, say, businessmen with an interest in the Port Authority, or from the king of a Middle Eastern country." One wonders "whether Christie believes his own excuse -- that his wealthy hosts take disinterested pleasure in his company -- or is offering it cynically. The first suggests a delusional faith in his own charm (and that of his stepfather, mother-in-law, etc.), the other an openness to trading on his office. Neither is good, and both make him vulnerable."

Caitlin MacNeal of TPM: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday said he believes children should be vaccinated, but he said he supports exemptions for people with certain religious beliefs.... Cruz told reporters that the controversy over vaccines is 'largely silliness stirred up by the media,' according to Politico.... 'Nobody reasonably thinks Chris Christie is opposed to vaccinating kids other than a bunch of reporters who want to write headlines,' he said."...

... CW: Right, and the words flowing from the mouths of elected officials had nothing to do with it. Also, note that one has to have "certain" religious beliefs to be worthy of an exemption. I would guess Pastafarianism is not one of Ted's approved belief systems. And what about the religious beliefs of waiters whose faith eschews ritual handwashing? Any thoughts on that, Teddo? Ah, well maybe Thom Tillis's filthy extremism is nothing but silliness stirred up by the media.

Stump the Reader. The fellow on the left, who would never want to be referred to as "the fellow on the left," is likely to run for POTUS. This is his official portrait. Good luck guessing who he is. ...

... "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." Oh, crap, following is an update, via Politico, from Jindal's chief-of-staff Kyle Plotkin. Kendall Breitman of Politico: "Plotkin then began retweeting examples of what he described as 'liberals who are trolling me and think that the Governor looks insufficiently brown in the painting.' Jindal's office continued to accuse liberals of being 'fixated on race' on Wednesday." AND the newly-defined "official portrait" is such an excellent work of art:

Hey @CenLamar-that's not the official portrait. Constituent loaned it.This 1's official. Thx 4 ur race-baiting tweet pic.twitter.com/wx2SBY3ZBQ

— Kyle Plotkin (@kjplotkin) February 4, 2015

CW: Re: a comment in today's thread, I found the two images to the right side-by-side in a Google image search. The painting on the left is a portrait of the guy on the right. I have to say, in Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner's (R-Wis.) defense, he is way better at choosing artists to paint his official portrait than is the fellow portrayed above:

Beyond the Beltway

Annals of "Justice," Ctd. "If You Can't Fix It, Hide It." Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "Amid the recent rash of high-profile screw-ups in executions, new cover-up measures have been passed in more than a dozen states, allowing departments of corrections to increasingly refuse to disclose where their execution drugs come from, how and if they were tested, and whether corrections officers are qualified to administer them correctly. In response to these clampdowns on information about how tax dollars are being spent and how prisoners are being executed in their citizens' name, lawsuits have been filed by capital defense attorneys, civil liberties groups, and news organizations in Oklahoma, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Arizona." ...

... Lithwick cites C. J. Ciaramella of the Daily Beast (January 2015): "America’s neurotic position of keeping the death penalty legal, while also requiring it to be as bloodless and sterile as possible, has led to a situation where states are relying on experimental combinations of drugs that are vetted by a quick glance at popular reference websites and purchased in secret from anonymous, barely regulated pharmacies with significantly less reliable products than major pharmaceutical companies." ...

... CW: Huh. In the view of Lithwick & Ciaramella -- & that busybody Sonia Sotomayor -- "a quick glance" at "WikiLeaks or whatever it is" or drugs.com does not constitute "research." And I thought when I relied on "WikiLeaks or whatever it is" this morning to ascertain the meaning of "rotflmao," I was doing topnotch scholarly research.

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "The question before Pennsylvanians is this: Is Kathleen G. Kane [D], the first woman to be elected as the state's attorney general, the victim of angry men who targeted her after she exposed their pornography habits? Or are Ms. Kane's problems -- she stands accused by a grand jury of a bevy of crimes -- the self-imposed travails of a political comet who rose from obscurity to eminence, only to be undone by her own temperament and inexperience?"

Richard Leiby of the Washington Post: "About a month after a white officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., the city's assistant police chief, Al Eickhoff, took to Google and searched under the words 'less lethal.'... Browsing a California company's Web site, Eickhoff found pictures and videos of a ... device docked on a normal handgun barrel. When a bullet fired, it melded with an attached projectile ... that flew with enough force to knock a person down, maybe break some ribs, but not kill him, the product's makers said -- even at close range.... This week, five Ferguson police instructors will train to use the device; the department plans to introduce it to the entire force of 55 officers."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Walter Liedtke, who served for 35 years as a curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was a renowned scholar on Vermeer and the Delft School, died on Tuesday, one of six victims of the crash of a Metro-North commuter train in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 69."

WFAA Dallas-Fort Worth: "One of the infamous 'Texas 7' fugitives was executed by the State of Texas Wednesday night. Donald Newbury was put to death for his role in the murder of an Irving police officer on Christmas Eve in 2000. He was declared dead by lethal injection at 6:25 p.m."

Washington Post: "Jordan's King Abdullah II vowed Wednesday that his military forces would hit Islamic State militants with 'relentless' strikes upon 'their own homes,' an escalation that could place Jordan in the middle of the Syrian civil war. The king huddled with his security cabinet and top generals Wednesday just hours after Jordan hanged two convicted terrorists in retaliation against the Islamic State, which posted a video Tuesday of its fighters burning alive a captured Jordanian pilot in a cage."

Bloomberg: "The founder of the Silk Road website faces life in prison for running an underground Internet emporium that catered to hackers and drug traffickers. Ross Ulbricht, 30, who used the moniker 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' offered people the chance to anonymously buy illegal merchandise and services by using bitcoins. On Wednesday, a jury took about three hours to find him guilty on all seven federal charges."

New York Times: "A crowded Metro-North Railroad train passing through Westchester County at the height of the evening rush on Tuesday slammed into a sport-utility vehicle on the tracks at a crossing, creating a fiery crash and explosion that killed seven people, injured a dozen and forced the evacuation of hundreds. On Wednesday, federal transportation safety officials were prepared to travel to New York to investigate the crash, the deadliest in Metro-North's history." See also yesterday's Ledes.

The Commentariat -- February 3, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

** Brooks Boliek, et al., of Politico: "On Thursday, [FCC Chair Tom] Wheeler[, a former cable company lobbyist,] is expected to present to the commission a set of rules that would treat broadband providers like utilities, effectively denying them the right to charge companies a premium for faster access to consumers and holding them accountable for any attempt to secretly impede the flow of data. When the commission finally approves them -- a vote is scheduled for late February -- it will mark the most significant rewrite of the rules of the road for the Internet in more than a dozen years and affect the competitive playing field for generations to come.... The origins of his dramatic pivot on this issue: an intense and relatively brief grass-roots lobbying campaign that targeted two people -- him and President Barack Obama." ...

... Thank you, John Oliver:

... And another big thanks to this Big Guy (Nov. 10, 2014):

David Sanger of the New York Times: "A year after President Obama ordered modest changes in how the nation's intelligence agencies collect and hold data on Americans and foreigners, the administration will announce new rules requiring intelligence analysts to delete private information they may incidentally collect about Americans that has no intelligence purpose, and to delete similar information about foreigners within five years."

Bill Curry in Salon: "Democrats are supposed to be the party of change but life in the bubble taught them to resist change.... As it is now organized and led, the Democratic Party is a corrupt and empty husk of an institution. But for all its patent defects I believe it offers the most direct path to progressive governance." Curry thinks progressives are too divided & must have a "conversation" that brings us all together in the way the Tea party movement brought the confederates together.

Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "The fight over immigration policy shifts to the Senate on Tuesday, with Democrats confident that they can block a homeland security financing bill that would reverse President Obama's directives to ease the threat of deportation against millions of undocumented immigrants. By using a filibuster to prevent a debate on the legislation, which has been passed by the House, Democrats are hoping they can force the new Republican majority to drop the immigration provisions and send the $40 billion spending bill to the president."

Justin Sink of the Hill: "The White House is looking to counter-program a vote by House Republicans to repeal ObamaCare by inviting a group of Americans who have benefitted from the law to meet President Obama. 'Today's meeting comes as Republicans in the House of Representatives vote to repeal the law and take these benefits away from millions of Americans,' a White House official said." ...

... Russell Berman of the Atlantic: "House Republicans will vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act again on Tuesday. It'll be the 56th shot they've taken at the law, and just like every other time they've tried to erase President Obama's signature achievement, this attempt is doomed to fail. Republicans have nowhere near the veto-proof majority they'd need to kill Obamacare.... They're doing it for the freshmen -- that is, the 47 House Republicans who just took office a month ago and have never had the high honor and privilege of voting to repeal Obamacare. By holding the vote, these lawmakers can head back to their districts and tell their constituents that yes, they did everything they could to get rid of the reviled law." ...

... Jennifer Haberkorn & Manu Raju of Politico: "The Supreme Court could be months away from blowing a huge hole in Obamacare -- and Republicans on Capitol Hill are at odds over how they'll respond if their side wins.... Some conservatives say the party should do everything in its power to kill the law if the Supreme Court rules their way. If Republicans in Congress try to preserve a crucial element of the law, conservatives say, it will be an all-out war within the GOP." ...

... Brian Beutler: "In a brief to the Supreme Court, dozens of public health scholars, along with the American Public Health Association, detail the harm the Court would create by ruling for the challengers in King vs. Burwell.... "'Using the national estimate that 8.2 million people can be expected to lose health insurance in the absence of subsidies on the federal marketplace, this ratio equates to over 9,800 additional Americans dying each year.'" CW: Let's see how many Supreme Court justices are willing to kill some 10,000 people a year in service of their political theology. Will it be four? Or five? I'm going to hope the Supremes are all lovely people, & not a one of them -- on the slender thread of one semantic slip-up -- is so craven as to knowingly & purposely jeopardize the lives & health of millions of Americans, in the process killing off thousands of them. I just might be wrong. ...

You're Not the Boss of Me. Josh Marshall of TPM: "... for older Americans, support for mandatory immunizations is overwhelming. And it just got lower and lower and lower the younger you go - with what looks like a steep turning points somewhere in the mid-30s. This is not good news." ...

... Presidential Race

Today in Crazy. Featuring GOP Presidential Contenders.

Calling Dr. Christie. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie walked back comments he made [outside a vaccine lab in Cambridge, England,] Monday morning calling for 'balance' on the measles vaccine debate to allow for parental choice, asserting that 'there is no question kids should be vaccinated.'... Christie also took the unusual step of criticizing the president on foreign soil, saying Obama had been a poor negotiator, specifically regarding the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership." ...

... Charles Pierce: "This is like running a campaign on Teach The Controversy regarding Creationism, or a campaign based on the fact that 9/11 was an inside job." ...

... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "In an October 2009 interview with Fox Business Network's Don Imus, Christie defended the concerns of parents who believe in the theory that vaccines caused their children to develop autism. That belief stems from a now-debunked study linking vaccines to the disorder. "We need to look at all the different things affecting autism in New Jersey because we have the highest rate in the country, not just the environmental concerns but vaccinations,' Christie said. 'Parents of children with autism need to be heard, they need a seat at the table to be talking about these issues.'" ...

... Benjy Sarlin of NBC News: "Louise Kuo Habakus, an anti-vaccination activist who runs the site FearlessParent.org, provided a letter to MSNBC Monday in which Christie purportedly wrote that he understood their concerns about ties between vaccine mandates and autism -- long discredited by public officials -- and supported their push for parental choice. She shared a photo showing Christie meeting with her and what she said were other anti-vaccination activists with her organization, the NJ Vaccination Choice Coalition, as well as other autism groups at a meeting they organized with the then-candidate in August 2009.... The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog called out then-presidential candidates Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton in 2008 for suggesting the science around the issue was unsettled despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary." ...

... Scott Lemieux in LG&M: "Conservatives making vaccinating your kids a conspiracy liberal elitists inflict on your kids, like global warming or evolution, is just going to be awesome if you like lots of unnecessary death and suffering."

... Turns out the lab facility Christie visited in England is American-owned. AND, Steve M.: "as The Telegraph reports, Christie is in Cambridge, in part, 'to highlight New Jersey's pharmaceutical industry." (Also linked below.) So he's not just reinforcing superstition, he's insulting the industry he's there to promote. What an embarrassment."

... Also see digby on press secretary Josh Earnest's "milquetoast" response to a question about measles vaccines, way last week. "I'd guess they are afraid of people saying the state is intruding into the affairs of the family. But they do this all the time. The state forces people to use those car seats, after all. What's so different about this? And in this case, it's really not a matter of individual choice, is it? By failing to vaccinate, parents aren't just endangering their own kids they're endangering other people's kids. Even libertarians should have to take a big breath before they claim that's ok ... This is a very strange debate. These aren't obscure new protocols. They've been around forever and we literally have hundreds of millions of people walking around who lived to tell the tale." ...

... Steve M. pushes back against the rap on Obama & Hillary Clinton: "By September 2008...,Obama was angering the anti-vaxx community by telling an vaccine-skeptic blogger that he supported vaccination.... An anti-vaxx blog recently called Clinton 'the mother of the autism epidemic' because, in the first year of her husband's administration, she pushed for a law intended to increase childhood vaccination rates.... Oh, and a major focus of the Clinton Foundation is speeding up the rollout of new vaccines." ...

     ... UPDATE: See Michael Hiltzig's thorough vetting of Obama's statements on vaccinations. He shreds the "Obama-was-against-it-before-he-was-for-it" false storyline that has crept into mainstream media stories, like the one I cited above.

The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. -- Hillary Clinton, in a tweet Monday evening

Calling Dr. Paul (Who Is a Real, Self-Certified Doctor, BTW). Freeeedom! Jonathan Chait: "... the scent of crazy in the air inevitably attracted Rand Paul, who gave a disturbing interview to CNBC. ...

... Carrie Dann of NBC News: "Republican Sen. Rand Paul is standing by his statement that most vaccinations should be 'voluntary,' telling CNBC that a parent's choice not to vaccinate a child is 'an issue of freedom.' In an interview with the network Monday, Paul said that vaccines are 'a good thing' but that parents 'should have some input' into whether or not their children must get them. And he gave credence to the idea - disputed by the majority of the scientific community - that vaccination can lead to mental disabilities. 'I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,' he said." (Emphasis added.) CW: That kind of makes Li'l Randy the Michele Bachmann of 2016. ...

... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "For more than two decades, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was a member of a group, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, that advocated a link between vaccinations and autism, among other conspiracy theories. The AAPS, as Kentucky's Courier-Journal noted in a 2010 article on Paul's association with it, opposes mandatory vaccinations and promoted discredited studies, which linked the vaccine-component thimerosal to autism in children.... An adviser for the senator told BuzzFeed News that he does not know if Paul is still a member, but that the senator does not support all the group's views." ...

... Apparently Rand Paul has decided to go the Christie Bully route. Besides interrupting interviewer Kelly Evans several times, twice at the end of the interview he lectured her for being "slanted," "argumentative" & asking questions based on "distortions." In fact, Evans was only repeating information that was common knowledge &/or had been previously reported. ...

... ** Charles Pierce: "... I will decline to refer to what Paul did there as 'mansplaining,' and instead, fall back on the old standby, 'Jesus, what an dickhead.'"

Philip Rucker & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Medical experts reacted with alarm Monday as two top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination appeared to question whether child vaccinations should be mandatory -- injecting politics into an emotional issue that has taken on new resonance with a recent outbreak of measles in the United States.... Seth Mnookin, a professor at MIT who has written a book on the vaccination debate called 'The Panic Virus,' called the comments from Christie and Paul 'incredibly, incredibly irresponsible.' Such remarks, he said, 'basically fail at the first duty of a politician, which is to calm his constituents in moments of irrational crisis.'"

McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: Christie "isn't the only prospective Republican presidential candidate making that argument. Carly Fiorina made similar remarks in an interview with BuzzFeed News a week ago. Asked whether a recent measles outbreak that has spread across 14 states signals further proof that children need to be vaccinated, Fiorina said, 'I think parents have to make choices for their family and their children.'... She went on, 'I think vaccinating for measles makes a lot of sense. But that's me. I do think parents have to make those choices. I mean, I got measles as a kid. We used to all get measles .. I got chicken pox, I got measles, I got mumps.'"

When Ben Carson Is the Sane Guy in the Room. Steven Yaccino of Bloomberg Business: "'Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society,' [Ben] Carson, a well-known neurosurgeon and conservative speaker, wrote in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg Politics. 'Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country and we should not allow those diseases to return by foregoing safe immunization programs, for philosophical, religious or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them.'" ...

     ... UPDATE, via the New York Times: "Asked about the measles vaccine controversy on Monday, a spokesman for [former Texas Gov. Rick] Perry affirmed his commitment to 'protecting life' and pointed to efforts by his administration to increase immunization rates.... Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, also a possible 2016 candidate, was asked on Sunday about vaccinations on the ABC News program 'This Week,' and insisted that the science was clear and convincing. 'Study after study has shown that there are no negative long-term consequences,' he said. 'And the more kids who are not vaccinated, the more they're at risk and the more they put their neighbors' kids at risk as well.'" The Times story also cites Mike Huckabee as favoring vaccinations, but that was based on a 2010 post by Huckabee; the increasingly loony Huckabee might have changed his mind since.

David Graham of the Atlantic: "A world in which support or opposition to vaccination could become a partisan litmus test would be a dangerous one. It's not that hard to imagine -- just look at climate change, once a relatively uncontroversial issue that has shifted to the point that Republican officeholders widely reject it."

Many states (including California) make it relatively easy to refuse vaccination for 'philosophic' reasons. This does not, I suspect, mean that people are reading Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill; it means they are consuming dodgy sources on the Internet. -- Conservative WashPo columnist Michael Gerson

His Highness, King Christopher I. Kate Zernicke & Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: Chris Christie "shot to national prominence as a cheese-steak-on-the-boardwalk Everyman who bluntly preached transparency and austerity.... But throughout his career in public service, Mr. Christie has indulged a taste that runs more toward Champagne at the Four Seasons. He has also quietly let others pay the bills. That tendency ... has put him in ethically questionable situations, taking benefits from those who stand to benefit from him.... He made it clear when he campaigned for Mr. Romney in 2012 that he would do out-of-state events only if he was given a private plane, even during the primary, when the candidate's wife was still flying commercial to save money.... A Justice Department report after he left office found that he was the [federal] prosecutor who most often exceeded the charges allowed for hotel stays in different cities...." ...

... CW: It's true that Americans want their president to behave like royalty (unless he's black), but I doubt most Americans want a president who is as self-indulgent as a two-year-old: Christie eats too much, spends too much, vents too much, boasts too much. He's just too much.

Rachel Cohen of the American Prospect: "... compared to 'Bridgegate'..., Christie's [October 2010] veto of the new rail tunnel [under the Hudson River] is a far more serious scandal. For the sake of short-term political gain, Christie sacrificed the long-term interests of his state and the nation. The story of the blocked tunnel is also evidence of a wider problem: Republican leaders' refusal to deal with failing infrastructure for fear of raising taxes and antagonizing anti-tax groups on the right."

Dude! Don't worry about Rand Paul's wackadoodle views about freeeedom from vaccines, people. The real problem Paul has is the outfit he wore to the Koch brothers shebang. Also, he slouches. Ken Vogel & Tarini Parti of Politico: "Some attendees commented that Paul's appearance was 'cavalier'.... 'Jeans might work for a younger audience,' said another attendee, 'but these are old bulls who put on a tie every day to go to the office.'" CW: I like Paul's sartorial choice, though the jacket is a bit too dressy & the jeans look like they've seen the hot side of an iron.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast on GOP presidential candidates: "... despite all this spin from conservatives* about what a strong field this is, as usual the opposite is the truth. It's an astonishingly weak field, unified not only in their opposition to Barack Obama and the federal government but also in their hostility to actual ideas that might stand a chance of addressing the country's actual problems.... I finally sat myself down and watched that Scott Walker speech from last week that everyone is raving about.... It was little more than a series of red-meat appetizers and entrees: Wisconsin defunded Planned Parenthood, said no to Obamacare, passed some kind of law against 'frivolous' lawsuits, and moved to crack down on voter 'fraud' -- all of that besides, of course, his big move, busting the public-employee unions. There wasn't a single concrete idea about addressing any of the major problems the country faces.... Walker is even more vacuous on foreign policy, as Martha Raddatz revealed yesterday, twisting him around like a pretzel with a couple of mildly tough questions on Syria." ...

     ... * CW: And from the press! ...

... John Amato of Crooks & Liars: in the Raddatz Q&A, Walker "reminded me of a certain Alaskan governor who saw Putin's house from her home and didn't know what magazines she reads." ...

... BUT Kevin Drum of Mother Jones thinks Scottie is a quick study: "Walker still has a ways to go before he's ready for prime time. But I'll bet he gets there. He'll learn from his mistakes, and he's just about the only Republican candidate who has potential appeal to both tea partiers and mainstream voters. Six months from now minor early stumbles like this will be ancient history, and he'll have his campaign schtick much more finely honed. He remains a serious contender." ...

... PLUS, this just in from Steve M.: It looks as if Walker is Drudge's favorite, something that will matter in the primaries. Steve adds that it doesn't hurt that Scottie plays hardball & cites a few examples of what a dirty rotten scoundrel he is. ...

... AND Paul Waldman: "If you asked the same questions of Republicans who are supposedly more knowledgeable and experienced on foreign affairs, they'd give you the same empty, vague answers. Syria is a situation with no good options for the United States, but conservative dogma says that any international challenge can be solved if we show sufficient strength, toughness, and resolve.... So yes, chances are that Scott Walker's ideas about foreign policy are ill-informed and overly simplistic.... But that isn't because he's a governor, it's because he's a Republican politician." ...

... CW: In fact, that's exactly what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) did Sunday, calling for 10,000 American troops to fight ISIS (also linked here yesterday). Graham fancies himself not just presidential timbre but a foreign policy expert. He has made numerous trips to the Middle East, including one where he & fellow Amigos John McCain & Joe Lieberman embraced Gaddafi.

Joshua Spivak, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, explains why the GOP has so many presidential contenders this year.

CW: I was intending to save this for the weekend, but Amy Davidson's New Yorker post on Republicans' papal problems is getting a good deal of attention, so here it is.

One Super Bowl Story. Ian Crouch of the New Yorker asks, "Did we just watch Julian Edelman play through a concussion?" Crouch lays out the symptoms of a concussion that Patriots wide receiver Edelman exhibited after being knocked down in "what appeared to be an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit" during the fourth quarter of Sunday's totally inconsequential game (and I mean that). Despite showing symptoms when he was hit, as well as during subsequent plays, Edelman finished the game. "After the game, when he was asked about the hit, Edelman said, 'We’re not allowed to talk about injuries.'" CW: That's right: cover-up is the rule. ...

... ESPN: "New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman was tested for a concussion and cleared to finish Super Bowl XLIX after taking a big hit in the fourth quarter, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press. The person said Monday that Edelman, who caught the winning 3-yard touchdown pass, was checked on the New England sideline by medical staff and an independent neurologist.... On Monday, coach Bill Belichick was asked whether Edelman was checked for a concussion but largely sidestepped the question.

I'm a coach and I had a deal with our trainers and doctors. They're the medical experts and they don't call plays, and I'm the coach and I don't get involved in the medical part. When they clear players to play, then if we want to play them, we play them. The plays we call, I don't have to get approval from them. It's a good setup. -- Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, responding to a question about whether or not Julian Edelman suffered a concussion during the Super Bowl

Apparently coaches are "not allowed to talk about injuries," either. Cover-up is the rule. And you wonder why I'm not a sports fan. -- Constant Weader

Beyond the Beltway

Joe Fletcher of Addicting Information: "The Detroit Free Press recently ran an article [linked yesterday on the Commentariat] that told the story of James Robertson, a man who walks 21 miles a day to work, five days a week. The story went viral and the internet responded brilliantly. A GoFundMe fundraiser was created to try to raise enough money to buy a car for Robertson. In only seven hours, the crowdfund has not only reached the initial goal of raising $25,000, but has blown past it bringing in over $29,000 at the time this article was written. The crowdfund was started by Evan Leedy. Leedy is trying to get in contact with car dealerships, Ford, Chrysler, or GM to try to get a car." CW: If you contributed to the fund for Mr. Robertson, thank you very much. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... Sarah Larimer of the Washington Post has more. Contributions to the fund were up to $67,000 at the time of publication. ...

... Also from Bill Laitner of the Detroit Free Press, who wrote the original story about Robertson's arduous commute to work.

News Ledes

New York Daily News: "At least seven people were killed and at least 12 others were seriously injured when a Metro-North train hit a Jeep on the tracks in Westchester Tuesday and burst into a wild inferno, authorities said. The dead included the driver of the car and at least five train passengers, a police source said."

New York Times: "Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a request for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into his death said Tuesday. The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman's apartment, also sought the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina's foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman's accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing."

New York Times: "In a new show of brutality for a group already known for displays of violence, the Islamic State released a video on Tuesday purporting to show the execution of a captive Jordanian pilot by burning him alive. The lengthy footage shows clips of Jordan's involvement in the United States-led airstrikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. At the end, the pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, stands inside of a cage and is set on fire by an unidentified militant who uses a torch to ignite flammable liquid that has drenched the pilot's clothing." ...

... Washington Post: "The Islamic State's release on Tuesday of a video showing its fighters burning alive a captured Jordanian pilot sparked street protests calling for vengeance and threatened to draw this country's usually low-key monarch toward ever more direct confrontation with radical Islam. The Jordanian military, a close ally in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, vowed 'punishment and revenge' for the killing, which it said had probably been carried out in early January. The Associated Press reported late Tuesday that a Jordanian government spokesman confirmed that two prisoners had been executed." ...

... New York: "Just hours after ISIS released a video showing the execution-by-fire of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kassasbeh, his government has pledged to avenge his death by expediting the execution of Sajida al-Rishawi, the woman militants tried to trade for Japanese journalist Kenji Goto." ...

... Reuters Update: "Jordan executed by hanging on Wednesday a jailed Iraqi woman militant hours after Islamic State fighters released a video appearing to show a captured Jordanian pilot being burnt alive in a cage, a security source and state television said. The militants had demanded the release of the woman, Sajida al-Rishawi, in exchange for a Japanese hostage who was later killed.... Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi al Qaeda operative, who was convicted in 2008 for killing a Jordanian, was also executed at dawn, said the security source...."

Let This Be the Last We Hear of This Guy. AP: "Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong hit two parked cars with an SUV after a night of partying in Aspen, Colorado, but agreed to let his longtime girlfriend take the blame to avoid national attention, police reports show."

The Commentariat -- February 2, 2015

Internal links removed.

President Obama discusses his proposed budget. Gee, he sounds like Krugman!:

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "President Obama will propose a 10-year budget on Monday that stabilizes the federal deficit but does not seek balance, instead focusing on policies to address income inequality as he adds nearly $6 trillion to the debt. The budget -- $4 trillion in fiscal 2016 -- would hit corporations that park profits overseas, raise taxes on the richest of the rich and increase the incomes of the middle class through new spending and tax credits. Mr. Obama will challenge the Republican Congress to answer his emphasis on wage stagnation...." ...

... Steven Mufson & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The massive document is a blueprint for what Obama has been calling 'middle-class economics,' but congressional Republicans are likely to view it merely as the president's opening bid in a contentious process designed to forge a tax and spending plan for the new fiscal year." ...

... Juliet Eilperin & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "President Obama's budget request set for release Monday includes plans for a six-year, $478 billion public works program that would be paid for with a one-time 14 percent tax on overseas corporate profits." ...

... Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "The battle over the budget that President Obama will submit Monday is emerging as a proxy for the 2016 presidential election debate on national security, an area that for now appears to be Obama's and Democrats' greatest vulnerability. The president will ask Congress to break through its own spending caps -- commonly referred to as 'sequestration' -- and allocate about $561 billion for Pentagon expenditures, about $38 billion more than is currently allowed under the law." ...

... Paul Krugman slams Bowles, Simpson & their coterie of "craven & irresponsible" ninnies. "So it's important to understand who's really irresponsible here. In today's economic and political environment, long-termism is a cop-out, a dodge, a way to avoid sticking your neck out. And it's refreshing to see signs that Mr. Obama is willing to break with the long-termers and focus on the here and now." ...

... CW: Remember that it was Obama himself who appointed Bowles & Simpson to head up the Catfood Commission. Around that time or shortly thereafter, I (among others) begged Krugman to sit Obama down & explain some sense into him. Krugman said he had tried. I know Krugman & other reporters meet with Obama off-the-record fairly often. It would appear Obama is finally listening. It took long enough. I should add, I guess, that I still think the Summers School of Economics is the White House's guiding hand. So maybe Krugman has convinced Summers. ...

... Matt Yglesias of Vox: "... It would be an overstatement to call it a liberal dream budget -- left-wing Democrats could dream up plenty more -- [but] for the first time it's really Obama's dream budget. This is the end of the 'grand bargain' era, and instead an opportunity for Obama to lay out his priorities for the long term -- from transportation infrastructure to transforming child care. Rather than position himself in advance of a potential compromise, he wants to outline his vision for a future that will extend well beyond the life of his administration." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "... it is possible that nothing in [Paul] Ryan's long and distinguished career in the field of shamelessness has ever exceeded his comments in yesterday's New York Times on the Obama budget. Ryan's complaint is that Obama's economic policies have exacerbated the gap between the rich and the poor.... Notably, Ryan opposed every single one of these changes [which would have reduced inequality]: the higher taxes for the rich, and the lower taxes and more generous transfers to middle- and working-class Americans. In addition to opposing all of Obama's inequality-reducing policies, Ryan advocated, along with Mitt Romney, a tax reform plan that would have necessarily increased taxes for the non-rich in order to finance tax cuts for the rich...." ...

     ... CW: Democrats need to learn to say this, & they need to learn to say it forcefully. So far, effectively countering Republican lies is a skill few Democrats have learned. ...

... Conservative Reihan Salam, in Slate, nails the upper middle class. CW: See also John Judis's post, linked under Presidential Race. The upper middle class very much influences Judis's middle-class voters, voters who can reasonably aspire to moving on up to the next rung & who watch the teevee where upper-middle-class pundits like David Brooks explain why Republicans are awfully reasonable.

Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama defended his campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in an interview airing Monday, saying the U.S. was 'doing exactly what we should be doing' to fight the terror network. Obama said critics of his strategy would have the U.S. redeploy tens of thousands of U.S. troops, but that ultimately such an effort would prove ineffective without local support." ...

... Oh, here's a critic now. Kristina Wong of the Hill: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is considering a 2016 presidential bid, said on Sunday it would require 10,000 American 'boots on the ground' to stop the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria. Coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria won't destroy the group, but do help in some regard, Graham said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.'"

Marin Kogan of New York: Ron "Klain is leaving the temporary gig [as Ebola response "czar"] less than four months [after taking it on] to pretty good reviews. The pundits, to the extent to which they've commented on it at all, have generally copped to being too alarmist about the threat to the United States, and that the government response was better than they'd initially feared it would be. Republicans, meanwhile, haven't turned him into a partisan punching bag, which is as good as a compliment by today's standards of Congressional-executive branch interaction."

Michael Gordon & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "... after a series of striking reversals that Ukraine's forces have suffered in recent weeks, the Obama administration is taking a fresh look at the question of military aid."

Annals of "Justice," Ctd. Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times: Federal judges have accused California of turning a blind eye to an "epidemic" of prosecutorial misconduct. "A 2010 report by the Northern California Innocence Project cited 707 cases in which state courts found prosecutorial misconduct over 11 years. Only six of the prosecutors were disciplined, and the courts upheld 80% of the convictions in spite of the improprieties, the study found.... [A] January hearing in Pasadena, posted online under new 9th Circuit policies, provided a rare and critical examination of a murder case in which prosecutors presented false evidence but were never investigated or disciplined.... 'I understand why they do that,' [9th Circuit Judge Kim] Wardlaw said. 'They are elected judges. They are not going to be reversing these things.'"

This Is Slightly Heartening. Timothy Jost in Balkanization: "The thirty [amicus] briefs [favoring the government in King v. Burwell] were filed by an extraordinary assemblage of states and state legislators, members of Congress, leading legal scholars, academics from a variety of other disciplines offering a wide range of perspectives, insurers, providers, and patients and their advocates. By contrast the twenty-one amicus briefs filed last month by the challengers are far more limited in scope. The challengers submitted briefs signed by a few Republican Congressmen, seven states, and a handful of conservative and libertarian legal scholars. The rest of their amici were right-wing advocacy groups." Via Greg Sargent.

When he called Code Pink protesters "low-life scum" during a Senate committee hearing last week, Sen. John McCain was protecting Henry Kissinger. McCain says he isn't sorry. Just thought you'd like to know.

Annals of Journalism, Ctd. CW: I missed Steve M.'s excellent takedown of Mark Halperin, but it's not too late to read it & laugh. Nice addition by Steve's commenter Rick Massimo, too. ...

... Driftglass has a report on the lovely Andrew Sullivan/Tyler Cowan romance.

Presidential Race

John Judis of the National Journal: Middle-class Americans are trending Republican. "If Republicans are smart, they will nominate for president someone in the mold of George W. Bush in 2000 or the numerous GOP Senate candidates who won last year -- a politician who runs from the center-right, soft-pedals social issues, including immigration, critiques government without calling for abolishing the income tax and Social Security, and displays a good ol' boy empathy for the less well-to-do. Such a candidate would cater to the Republican advantage among the middle class without alienating the white working class."

"How Yet Resolves the Governor of the Town?" Philip Rucker & Ann Gearan of the Washington Post: "Republican presidential hopefuls are busy auditioning on the world stage ahead of the 2016 campaign, trying to bolster their résumés and develop expertise as their party seizes on foreign affairs as a key theme in its effort to reclaim the White House." ...

     ... CW: Sorry, but I find it downright comical that Chris Christie's idea of expanding his international policy creds includes going to a soccer match in London & watching "Henry V" at the Globe Theatre. I guess the fact that the theatre is named the "Globe" & that soccer teams play in the "World" Cup gave him the idea that a stop in London would pretty much cover everything he needed to know. ...

... Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: Londoners have no idea who Chris Christie is. Eventually, Barbaro found one guy who volunteered that he recognized Senator Christie. ...

... Steve M. is not seeing President Christie. CW: If Steve's analysis of Christie's Iowa polling is any indication, Senator Crisco had better skip the Iowa caucuses. Steve: "... he has the highest negative rating in the potential field, because the only person whose negatives are higher is a loudmouthed fraud who's never going to run, Donald Trump (68%)." And you thought Iowa Republicans might be stupid. Obviously, not entirely. ...

... Let Them Catch Measles. Philip Rucker: "The morning after President Obama urged all parents to get their kids vaccinated against measles, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie broke with the president and said the government must 'balance' public health interests with parental choice.... Christie's comments came after a laboratory tour at MedImmune, a biologics company that makes vaccines in Cambridge[, England]." ...

     ... CW: That's funny. Christie sure didn't want to "balance" personal choice when he quarantined Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox against her will & after she tested negative for the virus. The only consistency in Republican policies is public pandering. You might think that standing outside a vaccine-making lab to pander to anti-vaccine parents after touring a vaccine-making plant is kind of (a) rude & (b) anti-business. But, as cited in the Barbaro piece, Christie notes that he isn't running for anything in England. I suspect there will be no Sir Christopher.

Jeb Bush looks like he's running for president. So now we know what the Bush family means by 'no child left behind.' -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) at the annual Alfalfa Club dinner Saturday

Michael Kruse of Politico in Politico Magazine: “Sitting recently on his brick back patio [in Clearwater, Florida,], Michael Schiavo called Jeb Bush a vindictive, untrustworthy coward.... Michael Schiavo was the husband of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead woman from the Tampa Bay area who ended up at the center of one of the most contentious, drawn-out conflicts in the history of America's culture wars. The fight over her death lasted almost a decade.... 'Trying to write laws that clearly are outside the constitutionality of his state, trying to override the entire judicial system, that's very, very dangerous,' said Arthur Caplan, a New York University bioethicist who edited a book about the Schiavo case. 'When you're willing to do that, you're willing to break the back of the country.'"...

    ... CW: Although the story is balanced with comments from supporters of Jeb in this matter, it is, in toto, quite negative in its conclusion. This is a bit of a surprise, coming from a Politico writer. Thanks to contributor Bonnie for the lead. P.S. Welcome to frontrunner status, Jebbie.

David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post writes a straight report on the "self-certified" history of Rand Paul's opthamology career. Rand Paul declined to be interviewed. ...

     ... CW: Among the items which caught my eye, & which Fahrenthold never directly mentions, is the letter from Paul reproduced at the top of the story. In it, Mr. Libertarian seems to suggest that opthamologists should collude to up the price of cataract surgery. I'm not up on my antitrust law, but last time I looked, such convenient arrangements were illegal under federal law. Looks as if young Dr. Paul was not all that into the free market. P.S. Welcome to first-runner-up in Iowa status, Randy. ...

     ... (BTW, in the story a former professor of Paul's says he remembers Paul as "'Randy,' a "very nondescript ... very quiet" guy. We had it right all along, L'il Randy.)

Eric Bradner of CNN: "Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee ... called homosexuality part of a lifestyle, like drinking and swearing." ...

... Hudson Hongo of Gawker: "Predictably, Huckabee's comments were poorly received, with most media outlets using some variation on CNN's 'Huckabee Compares Being Gay to Drinking, Swearing.' Of course, Huckabee's dumb point about the gay 'lifestyle' was slightly different from -- while no less insulting than -- what that headline suggests, but it was understandably tough to parse all the stuff about drunk opera fans and Muslim dogs."

Beyond the Beltway

Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story: "Police in Davis, California are investigating an act of vandalism after fraternity members attending UC Davis woke up Saturday morning to discover Nazi swastikas spray painted on their frat house, CBS 13 is reporting."

Caroline Bankoff of New York: "In case you somehow forgot, [New York City] Mayor [Bill] de Blasio dropped the Staten Island Zoo's groundhog on Groundhog Day last year, and then the groundhog died. (Was it murder? Was there a cover-up? These questions remain hotly contested.) The zoo has since decided to bar mayors from holding groundhogs during the annual weather forecasting ritual."

How to get to work in Detroit: Walk 21 miles a day. As Digby notes, James Robertson, who makes the daily commute, is just one of those 47 percent of lazy moochers. CW: I had to walk five miles last week, partly in the dark, & I thought it was horrible. Also, it took me more than two hours.

Today in Responsible Gun Ownership. Daniel Politi of Slate: "In the latest episode of babies and handguns, a three-year-old in Albuquerque shot his mom and dad on Saturday afternoon. The boy apparently managed to get a handgun out of his mother's purse and pull the trigger while Justin Reynolds and his pregnant girlfriend Monique Villescas were getting ready to order a pizza. The boy pulled the trigger and fired a bullet that hit his father's buttock, exited through his hip and then struck the boy's pregnant mother in the right shoulder, reports NBC's local affiliate KOB. Both parents are recovering.... Reynolds says he's just glad the bullet did not hit Villescas' two-year-old daughter who was sitting next to her mother when the shot was fired." CW: Yeah, me too.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Martin Fackler of the New York Times: "When Islamic State militants posted a video over the weekend showing the grisly killing of a Japanese journalist, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted with outrage, promising 'to make the terrorists pay the price.' Such vows of retribution may be common in the West when leaders face extremist violence, but they have been unheard of in confrontation-averse Japan -- until now. The prime minister's call for revenge after the killings of the journalist, Kenji Goto, and another hostage, Haruna Yukawa, raised eyebrows even in the military establishment, adding to a growing awareness here that the crisis could be a watershed for this long pacifist country."

Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: "On Monday, [Dominique Strass-Kahn,] the man many thought would one day be president of France, will stand trial in the city of Lille in northern France. He's faced with charges he helped procure sex workers for sex parties from Paris to Brussels to Washington. Dubbed the Carlton affair because it involves the Hotel Carlton in Lille, the case stars luxury hotel managers, freemasons, Viagra, purple carpet and even a brothel owner called 'Dodo the Pimp' (Dodo la Saumure). In a charging document that runs 240 pages, French authorities said Strauss-Kahn may have helped organize the affairs, during which female attendants were allegedly paid to have sex with businessmen." ...

... Here's the Guardian story, by Angelique Chrisafis.

Joshua Partlow & Irene Caselli of the Washington Post on the likely murder of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman & on the charges he was bringing "against the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, for conspiring with Iran to cover up the culprits in the worst terrorist attack in the country's history. The 1994 van bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), a downtown community center, killed 85 people." ...

... Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker on Nisman & the case he had developed.