The Commentariat -- Dec. 13, 2014

Internal links removed.

Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Sen. Ted Cruz [RTP-Texas] ... has blown up the Senate leadership's plans to have a peaceful weekend by forcing round-the-clock votes on President Obama's nominees and the $1.1 trillion omnibus.... Because of objections from Cruz and his ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the Senate will begin slogging through procedural votes on nominees starting at noon Saturday and vote to end a filibuster of the omnibus spending package at 1 a.m. Sunday morning." ...

... Ashley Parker & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The Senate on Friday struggled to pass a $1.1 trillion spending package notable for its expansive spending on military and disease fighting abroad, as well as its scaling back of financial and environmental regulations at home. In a late-night twist that is emblematic of the dysfunction plaguing the 113th Congress, partisan maneuvering in the Senate disrupted what leaders on both sides had expected to be a relatively smooth path toward final passage.... Lawmakers plan to reconvene on Saturday and work through the weekend if necessary." ...

... Dave Clarke, et al., of Politico: "Wall Street's success in using the year-end spending bill to weaken a provision of the 2010 financial reform law shows how it plans to wield its clout in the months ahead -- slowly and methodically, piece by piece, leveraging the legislative process. But the sudden uprising by liberals led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also showed that Wall Street's toxic reputation will continue to dog its efforts in Congress.... 'This is an absolute outrage,' former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the law's namesake, said of the deal. 'This is a road map for stealth unwinding of financial reform.'" ...

... Brian Beutler summarizes what "we learned from the raucous debate over the omnibus. Elizabeth Warren is a bigger powerhouse than we thought.... Democrats are divided tactically ... [and] substantively.... Republicans mostly agree ... that they shouldn't shut the government down again.... Obama's priorities are clearer.... Democrats will thus have a hard time playing populist." ...

... Gail Collins offers up an "opinion primer" so you can speak intelligently about the CRomnibus at holiday gatherings. ...

... CW: Collins doesn't mention the "pension reform" in the CRomnibus. As KPCC (NPR) reports, "If you're one of the million or so Americans who work for supermarkets, drive trucks, or build homes, your pension could shrink. Some private pensions are in trouble - they're underfunded and not enough new workers are contributing to the pool. The federal agency that bails out pension funds is also running out of money. A deal that allows these pensions to cut pensions for already retired workers was crafted by retiring Northern California Congressman George Miller, the top Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee. Critics say it opens the door to slashing pensions in other industries as well." Roll Call: "A statement from Teamsters President Jim Hoffa ... said [pension changes in the bill] would result 'in an untold number of retirees losing a substantial percentage of their fixed income should reductions be required.'" ...

... OR This. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Democrats who voted for the giant spending bill on Thursday night received, on average, twice the campaign contributions from the finance/insurance/real estate industry as their colleagues who voted against it." CW: If you think this is a coincidence, I have some swell derivatives I'll sell you. ...

... For a comprehensive review of the bad policies crammed into the CRomnibus, I'd go with David Dayen's summary for the Fiscal Times. His conclusion: "The precedent for making changes on signature issues by tucking rollbacks into must-pass legislation has been set, without much presidential objection, or indeed, with the White House's active cooperation. 'It shows that conservatives can use must-pass legislation to repeal the regulatory state,' said one GOP aide this week. And while big theatrical fights may get waged over single provisions, dozens of others can get pushed through under cover of darkness. In other words, elections have consequences." Dayen also notes that "Obama marginalized the Democratic party" & that almost all of the "policy riders ... benefiting one donor or another [which], offers a window into how Washington will operate in 2015 and beyond." ...

... AND this, from Dylan Scott of TPM: "The CRomnibus ... prohibits the Health and Human Services Department from transferring funds from other sources to fund the [risk corridor] program. The practical impact, one policy expert told TPM, is that HHS can therefore only use money brought into the program to make payouts, effectively making it revenue neutral.... Any negative effects on insurance companies -- and then, by extension, Obamacare -- are a policy win for Republicans, who have derided risk corridors as a taxpayer-funded bailouts." Thanks to Victoria D. for the link. ...

     ... CW: I don't think this is a very big deal. The risk-corridor program was designed to be self-sustaining, except perhaps in the first year or two of the program, when, with no experience history, there was a "risk" that it would have to get a public assist. If it isn't paying for itself in future years, HHS should be able to tweak the numbers to make it revenue-neutral anyway.

** Ali Soufan in the Guardian: "The Senate report exposed an orchestrated campaign of deception and lies while I was an FBI agent. But here's the worst part: the lies haven't stopped.... One of the hardest things we struggled to make sense of, back then, was why US officials were authorizing harsh techniques when our interrogations were working and their harsh techniques weren't. The answer, as the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report now makes clear, is that the architects of the program were taking credit for [the FBI's] success [in using normal interrogation techniques to gain useful intelligence]." ...

... Steven Reisner in Slate: According to "recent revelations in James Risen's new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War..., it appears that senior staff members of the American Psychological Association ... colluded with national security psychologists from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House to adapt APA ethics policy to suit the needs of the psychologist-interrogators. Now, the APA, under enormous pressure because of the allegations reported by Risen, has agreed to an independent investigation to be conducted by David Hoffman, a former inspector general and federal prosecutor.... Other major national organizations of physicians, psychiatrists, and nurses all determined that their ethical obligations prohibited their members from participating in these interrogations." ...

... "I Am Not a Doctor." Ben Kamisar of the Hill: "Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden on Thursday defended revelations from Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats that the agency used rectal rehydration on detainees. 'These were medical procedures,' Hayden said during a tense interview on CNN's 'The Lead with Jake Tapper.' He added that the method was used because detainees were dehydrated, and that giving them intravenous fluids with needles would be dangerous. 'I'm not a doctor,' he said. 'What I am told is that this is one of the ways that the body is rehydrated.'" The interview is here. Tapper was astounded: "You're really defending rectal dehydration?" ...

... Hunter of Daily Kos: "For the record, Physicians for Human Rights says that using the procedure 'without evidence of medical necessity' is in fact 'torture.' And, for the record, they are doctors." ...

Contrary to the CIA's assertions, there is no clinical indication to use rectal rehydration and feeding over oral or intravenous administration of fluids and nutrients. This is a form of sexual assault masquerading as medical treatment. -- Dr. Vincent Iacopino of Physicians for Human Rights

... CW: Both Tapper & Hayden make a big deal of the fact that the Senate staff did not talk to CIA witnesses. On that point, Daphne Eviatar of the Huffington Post: "One of the biggest criticisms of the Senate report is that it didn't interview witnesses, but the Senate committee has explained that was because many would not have been able to speak about their role while under investigation by the Justice Department." ...

... AND Nino Weighs In: Torture Is Totally Constitutional! AP: In an interview with Radio Television Suisse, conducted Wednesday after the Senate report was released, & aired Friday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said "nothing in the Constitution appears to prohibit harsh treatment of suspected terrorists." CW: Scalia uses the right's "ticking timebomb" defense of torture, which intelligent people know is an absurdist argument. Funny he didn't say anything about torture's being immoral & a violation of our international treaties (at least as reported by the AP). Worth bearing in mind: this brilliant jurist (and moral cipher) also says that the Court is okay with putting an innocent person to death. So naturally, torture is cool. ...

     ... As Paul Waldman notes, "So: torture? No problem. A mandate to buy health insurance? A horrifying affront to liberty."

Bob's Bad Day. Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "The federal agency that will play a pivotal role in guiding the sentence of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell has recommended that the onetime Republican rising star spend at least 10 years and a month in prison, according to several people familiar with the matter. The guidelines recommended by the U.S. probation office are preliminary, and even if finalized, U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer is not required to follow them. But experts said that Spencer typically heeds the probation office's advice, and judges in his district have imposed sentences within the recommendations more than 70 percent of the time in recent years."

Pete Williams of NBC News: "Attorney General Eric Holder has decided against forcing a reporter for the New York Times to reveal the identity of a confidential source, according to a senior Justice Department official. The reporter, James Risen, has been battling for years to stop prosecutors from forcing him to name his source for a book that revealed a CIA effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear weapons program.... But now, according to the Justice Department official, Holder has directed that Risen must not be required to reveal "information about the identity of his source.... The federal judge overseeing the case, Leonie Brinkema of Alexandria, Virginia, gave the government until next Tuesday to declare how much [Risen] would be required to reveal in court."

Here's Jeff Johnson's full interview of President Obama (video & transcript). David Hudson of the White House provides a transcript of excerpts regarding race relations.

Here's Colbert's interview of President Obama. Part 2 is here. A brief extended portion is here:

Danny Vinik of the New Republic on Elizabeth Warren's big week. He holds out hope she will decide to run for president.

Issa's Last Stand. Natalie Villacorta of Politico: "House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has subpoenaed MIT economist Jonathan Gruber for all documents related to his government work on the Affordable Care Act. At a committee hearing this week, which was prompted in part by his controversial comments about the passage of the ACA, Gruber refused to provide details about how much he was paid by federal and state governments for his consulting services on the health care law." CW: Issa's chairmanship of the Oversight Committee ends with this Congressional session. ...

... Barbara Morrill of Daily Kos explains why: "Saddened that his recent hearing into the Kenyan plot to destroy America by providing health care to millions was largely overlooked because of a pesky report about torture, or maybe because this is his last chance to put on a show, Republican jackass Darrell Issa is at it again." ...

... OR, as Dave Weigel of Bloomberg Politics, reports, Issa's motivation is more sinister: "It's one final pearl dive, albeit one that incoming Chairman and Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz will happily strap on the SCUBA gear for. The goal, as before, is to find Gruber gabbing about something that could bolster the legislative arguments for states to undo the ACA, and bolster the legal arguments for the Supreme Court to rule against the government and argue that state exchanges were never meant to have subsidies."

Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "With the families of slain black men and children walking with him, the Rev. Al Sharpton will guide a traditional civil rights march from downtown Washington to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, but it won't be the weekend's only demonstration. In other parts of the nation, a number of younger activists say they will gather in areas as part of a broad National Day of Resistance to protest recent grand jury decisions to not indict officers in the deaths of Eric Garner of Staten Island and Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo." ...

... Abby Ohlheiser of the Washington Post: "Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer last month, died from a 'gunshot wound of torso with injuries of major vessel, intestines and pelvis,' according to an autopsy released on Friday. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's report ruled Rice's the death a homicide." ...

... Mary Kilpatrick of Northeast Ohio Media Group: "Tamir's mother, Samaria Rice, is expected to join the Rev. Al Sharpton and the families of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin Saturday in Washington D.C. to lead a march against police brutality and excessive force."

In yesterday's commentary thread, Akhilleus pointed to a piece that's a good demonstration of all that's wrong about the right. Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "Allen West heavily plagiarized from a viral Internet story in a piece attacking the Obama administration for purportedly ignoring the deaths of law enforcement officers. West lifted at least six paragraphs (including typos) from the story, which was previously posted on sites like Yahoo! Answers, Free Republic, Facebook, and the comments section of various websites." The fabulous coda: "West concluded the column by claiming, "I write this missive because I despise hypocrisy." He previously decried plagiarism by Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) in an October 14 post." ...

... Hananoki has updated his piece, & this too is hilarious: "The following sentence has been added to the piece, just before the series of paragraphs Media Matters highlighted as originating with the viral story: 'Then I came across a widely circulated email and viral internet post about a number of stories that seem to have dropped off the radar of the mainstream media, and conveniently ignored by the Department of Justice.' That sentence replaces one from the original version in which West had credited the research in the article to himself, writing: 'I decided to do a little checking and scouring for some information. And it didn't take long to find proof of hypocrisy that reaches the highest levels -- the White House.' The post now includes italicized paragraphs where West had previously committed mass plagiarism. He has also fixed the three plagiarized typos that were originally identified by Media Matters. There is no indication in the post that it has been changed." A staff member fell on her sword for West, claiming she "inadvertently failed to transcribe the quotation marks. As Hananoki notes, her "explanation doesn't pass the smell test." ...

... CW: Not only is the entire post based on a lie (see Hananoki's piece), right-wing "ideas" are so crass & strident & fact-free they lack any originality past making up shit. West, a one-term Congressman, is now head of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), (Oxymoron Alert!) a conservative think tank, which described him as a "visionary leader." His "vision," alas, is entirely plagiarized. There is no vision on the right, unless dystopia passes for vision these days.

The Commentariat -- Dec. 12, 2014

New York Times Editors: "When the long-lost grail of bipartisan compromise finally re-emerged on Capitol Hill this week, the spending bill for 2015 turned out to be weighted with some of the most devious and damaging provisions imaginable for good government. Written in secrecy, presented as the take-it-or-leave-it alternative to a government shutdown, the bill, which narrowly passed the House Thursday night, includes two regressive 'riders' aimed at warming the big-money hearts of donors who leave Congress increasingly vulnerable to special-interest corruption." ...

... Rebecca Shabad, et al., of the Hill report on some of the arm-twisting that got the bill passed: "The bill's passage, as a result, was a remarkable victory for both Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and President Obama, who were able to cobble together the votes for passage." CW: So Boehner & Obama were "victorious" over the citizenry. Congratulations, fellas. And you wonder why the public holds these guys in low regard. ...

... Greg Sargent is fairly sanguine about the deal. ...

... Charles Pierce, not so much. ...

... Thursday @ 9:05 pm ET: MSNBC is reporting the House will vote "shorty" on the appropriations bill to fund the government. ...

     ... Update: @ 9:50 pm ET, the spending bill passed the House 219-206, with 57 Democrats voting for it. ...

... Ed Kilgore: "Hang tight for another Orange Man crisis." ...

... Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Just hours before a possible government shutdown, House leaders were struggling to shore up support for a sweeping bill to fund most of the federal government, change campaign finance laws and make it harder for the District of Columbia to legalize marijuana. The White House said President Obama supports the bill and would sign it, but also criticized lawmakers for using the 1,603-page bill to tweak financial regulations and campaign donation limits.... In a notable public break with the White House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) used a floor speech to blast Obama and Republicans for backing the bill." ...

     ... Update. New Lede: "A sweeping bill to fund most of the federal government for the next year, change campaign finance laws and make it harder for the District of Columbia to legalize marijuana passed the House on Thursday even as Congress plans to give itself more time to avert a government shutdown and complete unfinished business."

... Emma Dumain & Matt Fuller of Roll Call: "Unsure whether they have the votes to pass a trillion-dollar federal spending package, House GOP leaders on Thursday afternoon delayed a final vote on the 'cromnibus.' They did so with mere hours to go until the government is set to run out of funding, and just before the House was scheduled to vote." ...

... Mike Lillis of the Hill: "With just hours to go before a scheduled government shutdown, the Democrats launched a lobbying blitz to counter calls made by Obama and other White House officials urging passage of the bill. Leading the charge was Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, who is up in arms over the face that Obama has agreed to accept a GOP rider to undo parts of the 2010 Wall Street reform law as part of the package. 'We don't like lobbying that is being done by the president or anybody else that would allow us to support a bill that ... would give a big gift to Wall Street and the bankers who caused this country to almost go into a depression,' she said. 'So I'm opposed to it and we're going to fight it.'" ...

... Peter Schroeder & Kevin Cirilli of the Hill: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday sought to rally opposition to the $1.1 trillion government funding bill, spearheading a revolt on the left that has put her influence in the Democratic Party to the test. The Massachusetts liberal pleaded for House Democrats to withhold support for a government funding package due to a provision she said would change the Dodd-Frank financial reform law to let 'Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money.'"

Mark Mazzetti & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "John O. Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, defended the agency's use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation tactics on Thursday, sidestepping questions about whether agency operatives tortured anyone. Mr. Brennan, responding to an excoriating Senate report detailing years of brutal interrogation tactics in secret C.I.A. prisons, criticized only those officers who he said went 'outside the bounds' of the guidelines established by the Justice Department. Those guidelines allowed for waterboarding, a week of sleep deprivation, shackling prisoners in painful positions, dousing them with water, and locking them in coffin-like boxes." CW: So the Democrats' very own Dick Cheney. ...

... Rosa Brooks of Foreign Policy: "Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden and three former CIA deputy directors insist that all that waterboarding and rectal feeding wasn't pointless: 'It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives ... [and] the disruption of terrorist attacks ... [and] added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization.' Besides, they say, the SSCI report leaves out the all-important 'context' -- which is that everything the ACLU insists on calling 'torture' happened way back when things were really scary.... [But] in real life you don't get actual ticking bomb scenarios, with their certainty, simplicity, and urgency. In real life, you get ambiguity and uncertainty.... The insistence that 'torture works' just leads to more slippery slopes.... Once we start justifying immoral actions based on their utilitarian outcomes, there's no principled place to stop." ...

... Kimberly Dozier of the Daily Beast: "A top CIA official in charge of the agency's interrogation program claimed he was unaware of some of the most gruesome techniques revealed by the Senate's torture report. Working from CIA documents, the report said detainees were made to stand on broken limbs, or forced to take in food or water rectally. But Jose Rodriguez, head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center at the time, said the newly revealed abuses caught him off-guard, too.... Rodriguez's narrative of those early years of the war on terror appears to be contradicted in part by the Senate report." ...

... Putting Torture "in Context," Ctd. Matt Spetalnick & Bill Trott of Reuters: "One of the two psychologists who devised the CIA's harsh Bush-era interrogation methods said on Wednesday that a scathing U.S. Senate report on the torture of foreign terrorism suspects 'took things out of context' and made false accusations. 'It's a bunch of hooey,' James Mitchell told Reuters from his home in Florida when asked for his response to the Senate Intelligence Committee's findings released on Tuesday. 'Some of the things are just plain not true.'" CW: It sure looks like the torture proponents are all working off the same talking points memo. ...

Digby has an excellent post in Salon on another secret torture report, the "Panetta Review," a taste of which Sen. Mark Udall revealed in his Senate speech (embedded in yesterday's Commentariat). According to Udall, here's the smoking gun: "The Panetta Review found that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Congress, the president, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques." ...

     ... Driftglass: "If CIA and top White House goons and National Security officials really did conspire to create and execute torture policy while keeping the Commander-in-Chief in the dark for years, then what happened can only be described as the first coup d'etat in American history." ...

... ** Frank Rich: "Whatever credit [President Obama] deserves for shutting down our government's practice of torture is mitigated by his refusal to hold anyone accountable for the crimes committed in our country's name." Read the whole commentary.

... Tim Egan contrasts reactions from Dick Cheney & John McCain to release of the Senate torture report. "As McCain walked off the [Senate] floor, with the cautious gait of a man physically hobbled by his service nearly a half-century ago, Senator [Dianne] Feinstein kissed him on the cheek. It was a way of saying thanks to a war hero whose words, if this country believes what it preaches, will outlast the scowling remarks of a chicken hawk. ...

... Duped! Adam Serwer in BuzzFeed: "Most damningly -- and politically conveniently -- the report somehow manages to combine harrowing details of torture while exonerating nearly every top official whose job it was to prevent it from happening, and place the blame on a powerful political entity that is the most likely to emerge unscathed: the CIA itself."

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted Thursday to authorize the military campaign against the Islamic State, a party-line decision that raises difficult questions for Republicans and intensifies a debate over war powers that has split President Obama from many in his own party. The 10-to-8 vote put on display an unusual alliance between some Democrats and some Republicans as well as contemplations about morality, obligation, constitutional prerogatives and the proper balance of power between branches of government."

Rachel Bade of Politico: Republicans are planning multiple attacks on the IRS, gutting appropriations, forbidding it to do its part in administering the ACA, disallowing its regulatory oversight of PACs & cutting taxpayer services as well as audits.

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The share of prime-age men -- those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list." ...

... Amanda Cox of the Times looks at what these non-working men are doing,

"Mad as Hellas." Paul Krugman: The latest flare-up in the long-running Greek economic crisis "is what happens when an elite claims the right to rule based on its supposed expertise, its understanding of what must be done -- then demonstrates both that it does not, in fact, know what it is doing, and that it is too ideologically rigid to learn from its mistakes.... There's a real lesson in its political turmoil that's much more important than the false lesson too many took from its special fiscal woes."

Cecilia Kang, et al., of the Washington Post: "The hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment has escalated into a humiliating public crisis for the company as deeply held secrets -- including business practices, pay disparities and ugly personal feuds -- continue spilling onto the Internet in ways that experts say could damage the Hollywood studio for years to come.... The consequences for Sony have been swift and devastating since the attack became public last month, exposing the company to potential lawsuits and backlash from key Hollywood players. The inside drama revealed this week was the unraveling of a high-profile project at Sony to produce a biopic of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs -- the movie was eventually lost to a rival studio." ...

... Michael Cieply & Brooks Barnes of the New York Times: "Salaries of its top executives. Unpublished scripts. Sensitive contracts. Aliases that stars use to check into hotels. Those are just some of the disclosures from a devastating hacking attack on Sony's movie studio last month. But among all of the information that has spilled forth, perhaps nothing has riveted Hollywood more -- and laid bare the machinations at the highest levels of the film industry -- than a humiliating email exchange between Amy Pascal, Sony's co-chairwoman, and the producer Scott Rudin over Angelina Jolie and a planned Steve Jobs biopic.... Mr. Rudin referred to Ms. Jolie as 'a minimally talented spoiled brat' and pressured Ms. Pascal to shelve 'Cleopatra.' .... 'This is not about salacious emails being batted around by Gawker and Defamer,' Mr. Rudin said on Wednesday. 'It's about a criminal act, and the people behind it should be treated as nothing more nor less than criminals.'" ...

... Those Rich, White Liberal Obama Supporters Are Racists, Too. In the latest revelation, Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal & producer Scott Rudin exchanged e-mails making fun of President Obama's race, stereotyping him as someone who would prefer movies starring & about black men. Matthew Zeitlin of BuzzFeed first reported the e-mail exchange. ...

... Cecilia Kang: "Thursday, Pascal apologized, breaking weeks of silence on the building and damaging leaks." ...

... Mike Fleming of Deadline: "Producer Scott Rudin has issued a public apology for the racially insensitive comments that surfaced last night in an exchange of hacked private e-mails between him and Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Amy Pascal." ...

... If you can about Hollywood backstabbing, Sam Biddle of Gawker has the scoop on some exchanges re: the making of the Steve Jobs biopic.

Daniel Strauss of TPM: "A woman charged with shooting and killing her ex-husband and stepdaughter has strong connections to groups advocating for expanding open carry gun laws in Texas. Local news outlets on Wednesday reported that Veronica Dunnachie was arrested and charged with shooting and killing her ex-husband and step daughter." ...

... Adam Weinsten of Gawker has more.

Top model Beverly Johnson, in a Vanity Fair essay, recounts how Bill Cosby lured her to his home & drugged her in the 1980s. Johnson has not previously revealed this incident publicly.

CW: I haven't followed this because it's a stupid story, but in case you were wondering if Harvard professors are pricks, well, yeah. Clint Rainey of New York: "Harvard-educated Harvard professor Ben Edelman has now apologized for threatening legal action against Sichuan Garden for overcharging him $4, and now Boston.com, where four of the top five stories right now involve the academic, breaks the news to readers that he may have done something similar in 2010." Make that serial pricks. Here's the Boston Globe's latest, by Hillary Sargent.

Presidential Election

Joshua Green & Miles Weiss of Bloomberg Politics: "Jeb Bush has a Mitt Romney problem.... Bush's recent business ventures reveal that he shares a number of liabilities with the last nominee, Mitt Romney, whose career in private equity proved so politically damaging that it sunk his candidacy.... BH Global Aviation is one of at least three such funds Bush has launched in less than two years through his Coral Gables, Fla., company, Britton Hill Holdings. He's also chairman of a $26 million fund, BH Logistics, established in April with backing from a Chinese conglomerate, and a $40 million fund involved in shale oil exploration, according to documents filed in June.... 'Running as the second coming of Mitt Romney is not a credential that's going to play anywhere, with Republicans or Democrats,' says John Brabender, a Republican consultant and veteran of presidential campaigns. 'Not only would this be problematic on the campaign trail, I think it also signals someone who isn't seriously looking at the presidency or he wouldn't have gone down this path.'" ...

... Ed Kilgore thinks Jeb's "Mitt problem" makes Mitt look better to GOP fatcats: "f you're going to run a candidate who is perceived as 'the second coming of Mitt Romney,' why not go with the original." ...

... Ben White & Maggie Haberman of Politico: "While some people close to Romney insist he hasn’t moved from saying he has no plans to run, the 2012 Republican nominee has sounded at least open to the idea in recent conversations, according to more than a dozen people who've spoken with him in the last month. In his private musings, Romney has sounded less than upbeat about most of the potential candidates in the 2016 Republican field, according to the people who've spoken with him....

CW: Aw, c'mon, Mitt. There's this guy:

Running for the presidency's not an IQ test. -- Rick Perry, the GOP's dumb candidate, touting his bona fides.

Perry, dumb as he is, seems to be aware that a dumb Texas governor can become president. -- Constant Weader

Running a close second in the contest for dumbest GOP presidential candidate is Scott Walker, who wrote to a Jewish constituent, "Thank you for you letter regarding the Menorah Display. Yes we would be happy to display the Menorah celebrating 'The Eight Days of Chanukah' here at the Courthouse.... Thank you again and Molotov." ...

... As for Perry, he's totally cool with "the Jews":

News Lede

Guardian: "Attempts by opposition parties in Germany to bring Edward Snowden to Berlin to give evidence about the NSA's operations have been thwarted by the country's highest court. The Green and Left parties wanted the whistleblower to give evidence in person to a parliamentary committee investigating espionage by the US agency, but Germany's constitutional court ruled against them on Friday." ...

... CW: Forget Ed Snowden. The lede is an excellent example of why every newspaper should ban use of the passive voice. Using it twice in one lede is extraordinary.

The Commentariat -- Dec. 11, 2014

Internal links removed.

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Even as [President] Obama repeated his belief that the techniques constituted torture and betrayed American values, he declined to address the fundamental question raised by the report, which the committee released on Tuesday: Did they produce meaningful intelligence to stop terrorist attacks, or did the C.I.A. mislead the White House and the public about their effectiveness? That debate, after all, has left Mr. Obama facing an uncomfortable choice between two allies: the close adviser and former aide he installed as director of the C.I.A. versus his fellow Democrats who control the Senate committee and the liberal base that backs their findings." ...

... Matt Apuzzo & Jim Risen of the New York Times: "Initially, agency officials considered a path very different from the one they ultimately followed, according to the newly released Senate Intelligence Committee report.... They envisioned a system in which detainees would be offered the same rights and protections as inmates held in federal or American military prisons. Conditions at these new overseas prisons would be comparable to those at maximum-security facilities in the United States. Interrogations were to be conducted in accordance with the United States Army Field Manual, which prohibits coerced, painful questioning. Everything at the prisons would 'be tailored to meet the requirements of U.S. law and the federal rules of criminal procedure,' C.I.A. lawyers wrote in November 2001." Read the whole report. ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has urged a court to reject a request to disclose thousands of pages of documents from a Justice Department investigation into the torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency, including summaries of interviews with about 100 witnesses and documents explaining why in the end no charges were filed. The administration made the filing late Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times, hours after the Senate Intelligence Committee made public a 524-page executive summary of its own investigation into C.I.A. torture...." ...

... John Heilprin of the AP: "All senior U.S. officials and CIA agents who authorized and carried out torture like waterboarding as part of former President George W. Bush's national security policy must be prosecuted, top U.N. human rights officials said Wednesday.The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said it is 'crystal clear' under international law that the United States, which ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, now has an obligation to ensure accountability." ...

... Mark Udall Makes Good on His Threat. Lauren Fox & Dustin Volz of the National Journal: "In a career-defining speech, Sen. Mark Udall took to the Senate floor Wednesday to discuss a largely classified internal CIA investigation into the agency's Bush-era 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' and to call for the current CIA director's resignation. Udall, an outbound Democrat from Colorado, began highlighting key conclusions from the CIA's so-called Panetta Review, written in 2011 and named after then-agency Director Leon Panetta. Its critical findings, in addition to the agency's attempts to prevent the Senate from seeing it, Udall said, demonstrates that the CIA is still lying about the scope of enhanced-interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration." ...

... Richard Norton-Taylor & Ian Cobain of the Guardian: "MPs and human rights groups have demanded a judge-led inquiry into Britain’s involvement in CIA abductions of terror suspects, following the devastating US Senate intelligence committee's report. Under pressure from Britain and other allies, their role in the CIA renditions were redacted from the report." ...

... What Did the President Know & When Did He Know it? Fred Kaplan of Slate examines the question, concluding -- contra some implications in the Senate report -- that George W. Bush knew & approved the broad outlines of the torture program early on, but made an effort to retain "plausible deniability" as to the specifics. CW: And, hey, it looks as if the Most Heartless Man in America backs up Kaplan: "Contrary to the report's conclusion that Bush didn't know the extent of the CIA's efforts, [in a Fox "News" interview] Cheney said the President was involved in discussions about the interrogation techniques, and that Bush even pointed out some of those conversations in a book he wrote after leaving office." Cheney added, "I think we were perfectly justified in doing it. And I'd do it again in a minute." Notice he doesn't say "in a heartbeat." Because he doesn't have a heart. ...

... Peter Sullivan of the Hill has more: "The report says that Bush did not know the details of the techniques until 2006, years after they began, and that he 'expressed discomfort' when he learned of an incident involving a detainee chained to a ceiling and wearing a diaper. 'I think he knew certainly the techniques, we did discuss the techniques, there was no effort on our part to keep him from that,' Cheney said on Fox News. 'That the president wasn't being told is just a flat out lie.'" CW: Dick Cheney wants you to know that the buck didn't stop with him. "No effort on our part"? Who is this "we"? Cheney is acknowledging/boasting that he & unspecified others ran the whole 9/11 response -- including the torture program -- but they would occasionally report to the President on what-all they were up to & allow him to nod his approval. Now the bastards are not going to let the "Decider" off the hook. ...

... Gail Collins on James Mitchell & Bruce Jessen, the psychologists/contractors to whom the CIA outsourced our immoral, useless torture program, to the tune of $81MM, & counting. ...

... Benedict Carey of the New York Times has much more on Mitchell & Jessen's role. "'My impression is that they misread the theory,' said Dr. Charles A. Morgan III, a psychiatrist at the University of New Haven who met Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Jessen.... 'They're not really scientists.'"...

The report's full of crap. -- Dick Cheney ...

... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "In his aggressive efforts to salvage his reputation in the wake of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's use of torture, former director Michael Hayden has offered a number of defenses for the agency's conduct.... 'I mean what are they doing — trying to score my public speeches? What's that about?' he said in an interview with Politico magazine. 'You want me to go out and score [Sen.] Ron Wyden's [D-Oregon] speeches?' ... Wyden's former top spokeswoman, Jennifer Hoelzer, emailed over the following:'1. That's really fucking offensive given that all of Ron's statements are directed towards informing the American people and exposing the [intelligence community's] attempts to mislead, while Hayden's all about the lying/misleading. 2 - While I'm no longer Ron's official spokesperson, I think I speak for everyone on team Wyden, when I say 'Go the fuck ahead.'" ...

I don't believe these are torture at all.... We're not talking about anyone being burned or stabbed or cut or anything like that. We're talking about people being made to stand in awkward in positions, have water put into their nose and into their mouth. Nobody suffered any lasting injuries from this.... -- Rep. Peter King (R-NY), former IRA bagman, explaining "enhanced interrogation" ...

Okay, Petey, let's test that. We'll let the CIA stand you "in an awkward position," the way they do, preferably with one of their professional rectal-feeding implements up your ass. -- Constant Weader

... James Downie of the Washington Post: "... if the program was successful, then why hide it and lie about it? The CIA repeatedly 'impeded' oversight from Congress, the White House and even the agency's own inspector general." ...

The Feinstein report ... risks undermining the ability of our intelligence agencies to protect the nation at a time when threats abroad are rising, not falling. -- John Yoo, author of the torture memoranda, in a New York Daily News op-ed ...

... Ed Kilgore: "Bob Kerrey hasn't read the Senate Intelligence Committee's summary of the 'Torture Report.' But he's taken to the op-ed page of USAToday to condemn it. Why? '... The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.... This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.' When Republicans 'check out' of a bipartisan process because they cannot control it, it is by definition the fault of the Democrats for not finding a way to prevent it."

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post on the "CRomnibus" bill. "So, what's in the bill? We've sifted through the legislation, consulted supporting documents from Democratic and Republican aides, and called out some of the more notable and controversial elements below. (If you want to review detailed reports on all 12 parts of the spending bill, click here.) Please note: This is a fluid report that will be updated to add more detail or correct errors." ...

... Good News for Oligarchs. Ashley Parker & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "The $1.1 trillion spending agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators on Tuesday night would vastly expand the amount of money that donors can give political parties, bolstering party leaders' ability to tap into the wallets of their largest contributors and reclaiming some clout from the outside groups that can accept unlimited dollars.Depending on how the new law is interpreted by election officials, the provision could expand the amount that any one person can give to national party committees to more than $777,000 each year from what is now a maximum of $97,200.... Neither party's leaders in Congress would claim responsibility for inserting the new provision, which was tucked into the final pages of the more than 1,600-page spending bill on Tuesday evening." ...

     ... Matea Gold & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "A massive expansion of party fundraising slipped into a congressional budget deal this week would fundamentally alter how money flows into political campaigns, providing parties with new muscle to try to wrest power back from independent groups. The provision -- one of the most significant changes to the campaign finance system since the landmark McCain-Feingold measure -- was written behind closed doors with no public debate." ...

... Screw You, Working People. Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post: "A measure that would for the first time allow the benefits of current retirees to be severely cut is set to be attached to a massive spending bill, part of an effort to save some of the nation's most distressed pension plans. The rule would alter 40 years of federal law and could affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as trucking, construction and supermarkets." ...

Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan of Politico: "Nancy Pelosi and progressives aren't ready to support a carefully crafted government funding compromise, throwing the $1.1 trillion bill into doubt one day before a potential shutdown. In question are a provision that would weaken Wall Street regulation and a measure that would loosen campaign finance laws."

... Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on Democrats in the House to use their leverage and reject a bipartisan spending bill to keep the government open until a measure tucked inside rolling back a piece of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is removed. 'Who does Congress work for?' Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon. 'Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers, or does it work for all the people?'" ...

     ... The Washington Post story, by Lori Montgomery & Sean Sullivan, is here. "Meanwhile, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that 'it is certainly possible that the president could sign this piece of legislation,' even though it would undo a pillar of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul by freeing banks to more readily trade the exotic investments known as derivatives. The legislation ranks among the administration's biggest domestic achievements." ...

... Erika Eichelberger of Mother Jones: "Citigroup Wrote the Wall Street Giveaway Congress Just Snuck Into a Must-Pass Spending Bill. The bill, drafted almost entirely by Citigroup, would allow banks to do more high-risk trading with taxpayer-backed money." ...

... Dana Milbank argues that Ted Cruz has lost his ability to create havoc in the House & Senate.

Annals of "Justice," Ctd. Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times: "A federal judge has told the Obama administration to decide by next week whether it intends to force a reporter for The New York Times to testify at the trial of a whistle-blower, bringing to a head the most serious confrontation between the government and the news media in many years. The reporter, James Risen, has been fighting government subpoenas in the case since 2008, but the Justice Department has refused to abandon its effort to force him to discuss his confidential sources. In June, the Supreme Court declined to review the matter, letting stand a federal appeals court ruling that allowed the government to compel his testimony."

Timothy Phelps of the Los Angeles Times: "Opening the door for what could be a lucrative and controversial new industry on some Native American reservations, the Justice Department on Thursday will tell U.S. attorneys to not prevent tribes from growing or selling marijuana on the sovereign lands, even in states that ban the practice."

Americans Getting More Gun-Happy. Pew Research Center: "For the first time in more than two decades of Pew Research Center surveys, there is more support for gun rights than gun control. Currently, 52% say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns, while 46% say it is more important to control gun ownership. Support for gun rights has edged up from earlier this year...."

CW: Help Me! I think I agree with George Will: "The scandal of mass incarceration is partly produced by the frivolity of the political class, which uses the multiplication of criminal offenses as a form of moral exhibitionism. This, like Eric Garner's death, is a pebble in the mountain of evidence that American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post: "In their first interviews about the events of that September 2012 night, [Jackie's] three friends separately told The Post that their recollections of the encounter diverge from how Rolling Stone portrayed the incident in a story about Jackie's alleged gang rape at a U-Va. fraternity.... The friends said they were never contacted or interviewed by the pop culture magazine's reporters or editors." ...

... Hanna Rosin of Slate: "The Post story doesn't connect all the dots, but it's not hard to do. Jackie has now given her friends two different names for the man she was with that night. Neither of them was in fact with her, ever dated her, or even knew her all that well. She appears to have invented a suitor, complete with fake text messages and a fake photo, which suggests a capacity for somewhat elaborate deception.... When confronted with what appear to be so many orchestrated lies, it's getting harder to see Jackie as a person whose memory may have been shaken by trauma." CW: Again, I have to ask, WTF was the supposed fact-checker doing? It is beginning to sound as if Jackie fabricated the whole gang-rape story, perhaps to attract a young man who wasn't interested in a romantic relationship with her. Her semester-long depression, then, could have been a result of that failure, not of trauma caused by a grotesque sexual assault.

Oh Lord, no. -- Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), on whether she would run for public office again, after having lost her Senate seat in a run-off election last week ...

... What a Surprise. Anna Palmer & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Mary Landrieu may have lost her Senate seat, but the Louisiana Democrat is a hot commodity on K Street. Several headhunters, veteran lobbyists and consultants said Landrieu's status as a moderate Democrat and senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee make her a top recruit from Capitol Hill."

Nobody Loves You When You're Out. Marin Cogan of New York on Michele Bachmann's lonely good-bye. CW: I'd advise Bachmann to get a dog, but she's got Marcus.

Nicole Egan of People: "Tamara Green, a retired California attorney who says Bill Cosby drugged and groped her in 1969 or 1970, filed a defamation lawsuit against the entertainer Wednesday. In the suit, filed in Springfield, Massachusetts, not far from where Cosby has a home, Green says comments made by Cosby's representatives to The Washington Post and Newsweek this year 'impugned' her reputation and exposed her to 'public contempt, ridicule, aversion or disgrace.'" Via New York.

Presidential Election

We don't grapple with that here. -- Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas), on how he mitigates income inequality in his state (Texas "ranks fifth or sixth among states on income inequality")

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont & former chair of the Democratic National Committee, in Politico Magazine: "Hillary Clinton is by far the most qualified person in the United States to serve as President. If she runs, I will support her."

Beyond the Beltway

Nathan Bomey & Matt Helms of the Detroit Free Press: "With Detroit officially out of bankruptcy, now-former emergency manager Kevyn Orr said it's not the next couple of years he's worried about for the city, or even five years out.... Crediting [Mayor Mike] Duggan's administration as being top-tier, Orr said he worried that, if Detroit does well, starts to turn around and even reflect some of the remarkable recoveries that parts of cities like Miami and New York have seen in recent decades, Detroit leaders and residents won't remember the lessons learned." Via New York.

Dillon Thomas & Zuzanna Sitek of 5 News Fayetteville, Arkansas. "Fayetteville voters have repealed the city's Civil Rights Ordinance following a special election Tuesday.... Those in favor of repeal got 52% of the vote.... The ordinance would have prohibited local businesses and entities from discriminating against employees and customers based on gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and other factors. The Fayetteville City Council passed the ordinance in August...." CW: Fayetteville, BTW, is a university town. One might have hoped the voters would be a little more enlightened.

News Lede

Time: "The [U.S.] Department of Defense said Thursday that it had shuttered the last American detention facility in Afghanistan, bringing to an end a controversial practice of holding prisoners in the country without trial. The U.S. said it no longer had custody of detainees in Afghanistan following the transfer on Wednesday of remaining detainees from Bagram Airfield north of Kabul, which once held hundreds of detainees, Reuters reports."