Internal links, defunct video, discarded photo removed.
Matt Apuzzo & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The Justice Department has begun work on a legal memo recommending no civil rights charges against a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., who killed an unarmed black teenager in August, law enforcement officials said. That would close the politically charged case in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The investigation by the F.B.I., which is complete, found no evidence to support civil rights charges against the officer, Darren Wilson, the officials said."
Jake Sherman of Politico: "House Speaker John Boehner is setting up his most dramatic foreign policy confrontation with President Barack Obama to date, inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak about Iran in front of a joint session of Congress on Feb. 11. Netanyahu is a fierce opponent of the emerging U.S. nuclear agreement with the Islamic republic, and has served as Obama's foil, of sorts.... Netanyahu's speech could present a spectacle rarely seen in Washington -- the leader of another nation, standing just blocks from the White House at the invitation of Congress to rebut the United States' foreign policy. In fact, Boehner did not consult with the White House or the State Department about inviting Netanyahu -- a snub that White House spokesman Josh Earnest called 'a departure' from protocol." ...
... Dylan Scott of TPM: "... experts on American-Israeli relations expressed shock that Boehner had invited Netanyahu to address Congress on Iran next month. One described it as an effort to 'humiliate' and 'embarrass' Obama as the two sides dig in over Iran.... Netanyahu's visit would also come about a month before Israeli's March 17 elections, and he has received substantial contributions from Americans.... But as TPM's Josh Marshall noted, there is some evidence that his perch as prime minister might be precarious as voters head to the polls." ...
The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran. -- Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.)
So we're having a reasonable, calm discussion about this subject. -- Paul Waldman
... Josh Rogin & Eli Lake of Bloomberg View: "The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has broken ranks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling U.S. officials and lawmakers that a new Iran sanctions bill in the U.S. Congress would tank the Iran nuclear negotiations. Already, the Barack Obama administration and some leading Republican senators are using the Israeli internal disagreement to undermine support for the bill, authored by Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez, which would enact new sanctions if current negotiations falter." Cole also explains how disastrous a war with Iran likely would be: "more like the US war in Vietnam than Iraq." ...
... Juan Cole: "If [the right wing psychopaths in Washington DC and Tel Aviv] can over-ride Obama's veto and scuttle the negotiations, they set us up for a war down the line, as Obama warned in the SOTU. In contrast, professional Israeli intelligence analysts are warning against new sanctions and any torpedoing of the Iran talks. Because they deal in the coin of pragmatism and the real world. Readers should please let their congressional representatives know they would prefer not to be subjected to this disaster. That Netanyahu is an unreliable narrator should be obvious by now."
Sahil Kapur of TPM: "The Republican-controlled Senate voted on Wednesday to reject a symbolic provision that said human activity contributes to climate change. The vote was 50-49 for a Democratic amendment that did nothing other than declare that 'climate change is real' and that 'human activity significantly contributes to climate change.' The amendment by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) fell short of the 60 votes required to pass. The vote came shortly after Republicans surprised Democrats at the last minute by supporting an earlier amendment by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to express a 'sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.' That amendment passed 98-1 after Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) ... signed on.... The Whitehouse amendment did not take a position on whether humans play a role."
E. J. Dionne: Obama uttered "one of the more polemical passages ever offered in a State of the Union address. 'At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious,' he declared, 'that we would crush jobs and explode deficits. Instead, we've seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health-care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years.' Good news, indeed, and in telling the Republicans that all their predictions turned out to be wrong, he was also reminding his fellow citizens which side, which policies and which president had brought the country back." CW: Except as contributor Forrest M. pointed out yesterday, he used the passive voice & resisted fingering Republicans.
Jonathan Chait argues that President Obama's SOTU speech was a long-delayed correction to "his stammering first presidential debate against Mitt Romney." Chait also draws parallels between Moderate Mitt & George W. Bush's 2008 campaign promise "of a tax cut that would give the biggest share to the poor [which] was based on lies."
CW: I'm not quite sure if Heather of Crooks & Liars accused David Brooks of making a racist remark on the Nice Polite Republican public television network, but in case she didn't, I will. The notion that President Obama has to "earn" Republican comity is the way Nice Polite Republicans say, "He's black." White folks are "entitled" to deference. Black people have to continually "earn" & re-earn their positions with a lot of steppin' & fetchin'. Winning the presidency twice, in the Mind of Brooks, is not payment enough to expect Republicans to do their jobs & meet a black president halfway. One of the "broken" parts of the GOP (see Jonathan Bernstein post linked below) is its inherent, pervasive racism. To them, Barack Obama is the president only by virtue of his having given things to blah people, & he will never escape being the black president. To me, he's the president. No adjective required.
Emily Atkin of Think Progress: "The official website for House Republicans has posted on YouTube a version of President Obama's State of the Union address which cuts out comments where the President was critical of Republican rhetoric on climate change.... In the website's 'enhanced webcast' of the State of the Union speech, President Obama's comments criticizing Republicans for saying they are 'not scientists' when it comes to climate change are erased.... Update: [Speaker John] "Boehner's Press Secretary Michael Steel told ThinkProgress Wednesday afternoon that the video edits were not intentionally made. 'It was inadvertent.' Steel said via e-mail. 'We are working with YouTube to figure out what happened.'" Translation: "Never thought we'd get caught."
From the GOP Book of Etiquette. Sahil Kapur: "Republicans were irked by President Barack Obama's caustic reminder in his State of the Union speech that he defeated them twice. 'I've run my last campaign,' Obama said toward the end of the nationally televised address. Republicans in the chamber applauded derisively, which prompted the president to ad-lib a zinger which wasn't in his prepared remarks: 'I know because I won both of them.'... In the Capitol after the speech, Republicans expressed displeasure at being jabbed by the president in the same speech where he asked for their cooperation." Kapur goes on to cite some responses from "irked" Republicans. Here's the clip, via Akhilleus:. When you listen to the clip, you'll hear Republicans laughing at their clever applause. Ergo, it's hilarious when Republicans heckle the President; when he jabs back, it's "rudeness."
Manolo Merita. Doktor Zoom of Wonkette: "Sen. Joni Ernst did her best in her robotic SOTU response to let us know that she empathizes with folks facing hard times:
You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry. But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.
... "And thus was born the #breadbags hashtag." Pretty funny. Also see yesterday's SOTU comments. ...
... Meghan Keneally of ABC News: "A photo shared by Ernst's team shows the camouflage-themed high heels." Keneally says the shoes are "a military shoutout." (See JJG's comment in yesterday's SOTU post.)
... "The Bread Bags of Empathy." Paul Waldman: "... what, precisely, is the point of the bread bag story supposed to be?... The point is affinity.... There's a second part of this message..., which is that because I'm just like you, when it comes time to make decisions about the policies that will affect you, I will have your interests at heart. But there's a problem with that, because ... Joni Ernst's beliefs about economics are no different from Mitt Romney's, Jeb Bush's, or those of any other Republican whose childhood feet were shod in loafers hand crafted from the finest Siberian tiger leather. There's almost perfect unanimity within the GOP on economic issues....
And it's inspiring that someone like Joni Ernst can start life in the most modest of circumstances, fitted as a baby with tiny booties made from Hostess Twinkie wrappers, then graduate to bread bags as she learned to castrate hogs (they do help keep the blood off your one good pair of shoes), and eventually grow up to do the bidding of the nation's noblest plutocrats. It shows what's possible in this great country of ours.
... CW: It's worth noting, as others have but I have not, that back when poverty forced little Joni to wear bread bags to save her one & only pair of Sears & Roebuck saddle shoes, Ronaldus Maximus was ruling this nation of shoeless serfs.... What makes Joni as pathetic as she is wicked is that she has no idea she is being had by the masters who helped her compose her Bread Bag of Nothing speech.
Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg Politics: "The real problem preventing compromise isn't inherent in the political system. It's something particularly wrong with the Republican Party, which has become increasingly hostile to the very notion of compromise.... A broken Republican Party is dangerous as an opposition party in a Madisonian system, which requires compromise. But it might be more dangerous in a parliamentary system, which lets winners enact their agenda with little resistance. So unless something about the U.S. system is to blame for that Republican dysfunction -- and I don't think there is -- then institutional reform ... won't help and might be harmful."
GOP "Bait-and-Switch." Dana Milbank: "Just two weeks into the new Congress, they voted Tuesday afternoon to bring to the House floor their current priority: a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks.... Abortion got barely a mention in last year's campaign, which led to unified Republican control of Congress.... A Gallup poll after the election found that fewer than 0.5 percent of Americans think abortion should be the top issue, placing it behind at least 33 other issues. But instead of doing what voters wanted, House Republicans are making one of their first orders of business a revival of the culture wars." ...
... Jake Sherman: "Republican leadership late Wednesday evening had to completely drop its plans to pass a bill that bans abortions after 20 weeks, and is reverting to old legislation that prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions. The evening switch comes after a revolt from a large swath of female members of Congress, who were concerned about language that said rape victims would not be able to get abortions unless they reported the incident to authorities. The new legislation doesn't stand a chance to become law, but House Republican leadership wants to have some sort of pro-life bill on the floor Thursday when the anti-abortion March for Life comes to Washington."
** "Environmental Racism." Charles Blow: There is "inequality in the air we breathe."
Gail Collins: "Let's raise the gas tax." Even some Republicans -- but not Paul Ryan -- have conceded a gas tax hike might be doable.
Elizabeth Warren, in the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court appears poised to continue its systematic assault on our core civil rights laws. After gutting the Voting Rights Act just two years ago, the court set its sights on our country's fair housing laws when it heard oral arguments [Wednesday] in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project. As with the voting rights decision, a decision limiting the scope of the housing laws would ignore the will of Congress and undermine basic principles of racial equality. But there is even more at stake in the fair housing case, because the wrong decision would reduce economic opportunities for working families and raise the risk of another financial crisis.... Undercutting our fair housing laws also would increase the risk of another financial crisis."
Linda Greenhouse: "However the justices proceed to resolve the increasingly audacious claims of religious conscience in a post-Hobby Lobby, post-marriage equality world, it's safe to predict that politicians will be confronting these issues under the glare of a public spotlight. Republicans who expect the Supreme Court to give them a pass from having to take a stand are in for a rude surprise."
Justices Meet the Hoi Polloi. Adam Lerner of Politico: "A group of activists interrupted oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Wednesday to protest the fifth anniversary of a landmark campaign finance ruling. 'Overturn Citizens United,' shouted one woman, according to reports from inside the courtroom. 'One person, one vote,' said another person. 'We are the 99 percent,' said a third. Chief Justice John Roberts was heard muttering, 'Oh, please,' SCOTUSblog reported." ...
... Mark Walsh of ScotusBlog, in an update: "Kathleen L. Arberg, the Court's public information officer, said eight individuals were arrested in Wednesday's disturbance. Seven have been charged with violating a federal law against making 'a harangue or oration, or utter[ing] loud, threatening, or abusive language in the Supreme Court Building,' as well as with violating two Court regulations. Arberg said those seven, along with the eighth individual, were also charged with 'conspiracy-related offenses' under District of Columbia law." CW was heard muttering, "Conspiracy?? Oh, please."
We Wear the White Hats. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone: "'American Sniper' is almost too dumb to criticize." CW: You might think this review should go in Infotainment because the story is supposed to be a "human" one, not a "political" one. But no: "The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question." It is not exactly breaking news that war movies romanticize war, but Taibbi does a good job of expanding this specific example to how the genre absolves us from the burdens of critical thinking: "The movies used the struggles of soldiers as a kind of human shield protecting us from thinking too much about what we'd done in places like Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos."
Presidential Race
The Making of a Presidential Nominee 2016. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are scheduled to meet privately this week in Utah, raising the possibility that the two former governors will find a way to avoid competing presidential campaigns that would split the Republican establishment next year, two prominent party members said Wednesday night." ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York: "Will they agree to let primary voters choose between them, or will Mitt challenge the Bush clan to a high-stakes version of the annual 'Romney Olympics'? Whatever happens, we look forward to seeing the moment acted out in an HBO movie." ...
... Michael Bender of Bloomberg Politics: "... Jeb Bush tore through Washington this week, impressing the lobbyists and potential donors he met for the first time and leaning on old family friends to help raise huge sums of money as he considers a run for the White House. According to multiple Republicans in attendance at events Tuesday and Wednesday, Bush simultaneously bemoaned the cost of modern presidential campaigns -- more than $2.35 billion in 2012 -- and pledged to not be left behind in the fundraising race." CW: A pretty good read; I liked this church-lady part: "Bush also criticized a White House video on Tuesday that promoted the president's State of the Union speech as a 'BFD,' saying that kind of language doesn't bespeak a seriousness that the U.S. should be signaling."
This GOP Candidate Is a Constitutional Scholar Igor Bobic of the Huffington Post: "Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee disputed what he called the 'notion of judicial supremacy' on Tuesday, arguing states would have the final say on gay marriage regardless of whether the Supreme Court rules that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Huckabee, a conservative evangelical and potential 2016 presidential candidate, said a Supreme Court ruling, expected this year, would ultimately be moot because 'one branch of government does not overrule the other two.'" Somebody should tell Huck about Marbury v. Madison.
This GOP Candidate Is a Theologian. Ivey DeJesus of PennLive: "Devout Catholic and former presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said he sometimes finds it 'very difficult' to listen to the comments Pope Francis makes on social issues.... Santorum said that when Francis speaks in interviews, 'he's giving his own opinions, which I certainly will listen to, but from my perspective, that doesn't reflect the idea that people shouldn't be fruitful and multiply....'" The Vatican walked back Francis's off-the-cuff remark, to which Santorum was referring, that couples need not "breed like rabbits." ...
... Charles Pierce: "Hey, Papa Francesco! Have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is?... Now Rick, a devout Catholic (just ask him) and a friend to all zygotes, has a very big sad when he listens to you."
This GOP Candidate Is an Economist. John Adams of the Great Falls (Montana) Tribune: "Ohio Gov. John Kasich [R] told a small group of Montana legislative Republicans they should not oppose expansion of Medicaid on the basis of 'strict ideology.' 'I gotta tell you, turning down your money back to Montana on an ideological basis, when people can lose their lives because they get no help, doesn't make a lot of sense to me,' Kasich told Republican lawmakers." CW: Hey, he's right there, but he's still blindingly stupid: "Kasich, a possible 2016 Republican presidential contender, is touring state legislatures across the West to drum up support for a constitutional convention to modify the U.S. Constitution to include a balanced budget amendment." Ask Paul Krugman about this (here or any number of other places). Kasich has no excuse: he was chair of the House Budget Committee & should be familiar with fiat money, but he doesn't. Also, um, he was a managing director of Lehman Brothers, right up till it notoriously collapsed. Via Greg Sargent.
Beyond the Beltway
Jesse McKinley of the New York Times: "Basking in an economic rebound but faced with an array of social concerns, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo presented his annual State of the State address on Wednesday, calling on New York lawmakers to control taxes and spending while addressing criminal justice, educational reforms and upstate fiscal difficulties." ...
... Chris Smith of New York: "In the past seven days, Governor Andrew Cuomo has run the campaign he didn't run last fall. He's dashed from Uniondale to Rochester to Mount Vernon to midtown, unveiling a barrage of proposals: to cut property taxes for middle-class homeowners by $1.7 billion, to steer juvenile offenders away from the adult criminal justice system, to create a billion-dollar broadband access program upstate, to build an AirTrain to La Guardia Airport, to raise the minimum wage, among many, many other things.... The capper came this afternoon, in Albany, in the bunkerlike auditorium across from the state capitol building, where the governor delivered both his State of the State address and 2015 budget presentation, and added such headline items as an independent monitor to review grand jury decisions when police officers are not indicted in brutality cases. Whew."
William Rashbaum, et al., of the New York Times: "Federal authorities are expected to arrest Sheldon Silver, the powerful speaker of the New York State Assembly, on corruption charges on Thursday.... The investigation that led to the expected charges against Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, began after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in March abruptly shut down an anticorruption commission he had created in 2013." ...
... UPDATE: "The speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was arrested on federal corruption charges on Thursday and accused of using the power of his office for more than a decade to secure millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks and then covering up his schemes, according to court documents."
Travis Getty of the Raw Story: "An upstate New York sheriff is encouraging residents of his county to ignore the state's handgun licensing law. Sheriff Thomas Lorey told a gathering of Oath Keepers" to throw their permit renewal letters in the garbage. "Oath Keepers are made up mostly of retired or active-duty law enforcement or military personnel who have pledged not to enforce or obey gun restrictions or other laws they deem unconstitutional."
Headline of the Day: "Bigamy Trial for Florida Congressman's Wife Delayed by Leaky Breast Implants." ...
... Mike Schneider of the AP: "A trial to determine whether U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson's wife committed bigamy when she wed the congressman has been delayed because she required emergency surgery to remove breast implants. The trial had been scheduled for Thursday in Orlando but is now set for March."
Katie Mettler of the Tampa Bay Times: White vigilante tackles older black man carrying a permitted gun into a WalMart. Sheriffs arrest vigilante for battery. "'Unfortunately he tackled a guy that was a law-abiding citizen,' [sheriff's spokesman Larry] McKinnon said. 'We understand it's alarming for people to see other people with guns, but Florida has a large population of concealed weapons permit holders.' The Sheriff's Office recommends that vigilante-inclined citizens refrain from taking matters into their own hands, especially when an incident is gun-related." ...
... Tom Levenson of Balloon Juice: "What could possibly go wrong?" Good post.
Way Beyond the Beltway
Abby Ohlheiser of the Washington Post: "Lutz Bachmann [no relation to Michele (that we know of)], the German leader of 'Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West,' (PEGIDA) has resigned after a picture emerged apparently showing him dressed up and posing like Adolf Hitler. The photo, published on the front page of the German tabloid Bild, reportedly came from Bachmann's Facebook account. The BBC quotes a PEGIDA movement spokesman as saying the photo was intended as a 'joke.'... Bachmann, a convicted burglar who helped found the anti-Islamization movement in October, has served as the public face of the group since then.... The [German magazine Dresdener] Morgenpost also published an image that shows Bachmann sharing a photo of a Ku Klux Klan member, captioned in English to read, 'Three k's a day keeps the minorities away.'" ...
... Reuters: "The leader of the fast-growing German anti-Muslim movement PEGIDA resigned on Wednesday after a photo of him posing as Hitler, and reports that he called refugees 'scumbags', prompted prosecutors to investigate him for inciting hatred."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Confronted with a deepening scandal, the president of Argentina abruptly reversed herself on Thursday, saying that the death of the lead prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center was not a suicide as she and other government officials had suggested. Instead, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner suggested that the prosecutor's death was part of what she hinted was a sinister plot to defame and destroy her."
New York Times: "Wendell H. Ford, a political moderate from Kentucky who served one term as governor and four as a senator, rising to become the Democratic whip, or assistant leader, in the early 1990s, died on Thursday at his home in Owensboro, Ky. He was 90." Thanks to James S. for the link. Also, see James' comment in today's thread.
New York Times: "King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who came to the throne in old age and earned a reputation as a cautious reformer even as the Arab Spring revolts toppled heads of state and Islamic State militants threatened the Muslim establishment that he represented, died on Friday, Saudi officials said. He was 90.... Abdullah's brother and crown prince, Salman, in a statement attributed to him on Saudi state television, announced the king's death and that he had assumed the throne." ...
... Washington Post: "That put the region's most important Sunni power and America's closest Arab ally in the hands of a 79-year old who is reportedly in poor health and suffering from dementia."
Washington Post: "Yemen's Western-backed president and his cabinet resigned Thursday amid deepening turmoil that left Shiite rebels in effective control and threw into question this nation's continued participation in the U.S. fight against terrorism. As President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi succumbed to an apparent coup attempt by the rebels, a government official confirmed that he had lost control over the military and intelligence agencies that coordinate with the United States in operations against al-Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate."