The Commentariat -- Dec. 7, 2014

Internal links, photo removed.

Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The White House signaled Friday that it still favors going ahead next week with the release of a long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation practices many view as torture, despite indications of a last-minute move by Secretary of State John Kerry to put off the release due to concerns about possible retaliation against American forces and hostages overseas. 'The president has been clear that he wants the executive summary of the Committee's report to be declassified as expeditiously as possible, and we welcomed the news from the Committee that they plan to do so next week,' National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said Friday afternoon in a statement to Politico. "The precise timing is up to Senator [Dianne] Feinstein and the Committee."

Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year. They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow: For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority -- 27 -- of attorneys general's offices." CW: Working with? "The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt [said] ... federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.... The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma's biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon's chief of lobbying."

Andrew Siff of NBC New York: "Staten Island's top prosecutor did not ask grand jurors to consider a reckless endangerment charge in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a source familiar with the case told NBC 4 New York. District Attorney Daniel Donovan only asked grand jurors to consider manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges against NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo...."

Redditt Hudson, a former St. Louis Police officer, in a Washington Post op-ed: "I won't say all, but many of my peers were deeply racist.... The problem is that cops aren't held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there's a different criminal justice system for civilians and police. Even when officers get caught, they know they'll be investigated by their friends, and put on paid leave. My colleagues would laughingly refer to this as a free vacation. It isn't a punishment. And excessive force is almost always deemed acceptable in our courts and among our grand juries. Prosecutors are tight with law enforcement, and share the same values and ideas. We could start to change that by mandating that a special prosecutor be appointed to try excessive force cases. And we need more independent oversight, with teeth." ...

... Vivian Yee & Kirk Johnson of the New York Times: "... even as [police] departments have started adopting [body cams], questions remain about how much it can actually prevent violent encounters with citizens or clarify the boundaries of appropriate police response."

Katie Glueck of Politico: "Hillary Clinton had several opportunities to distance herself from the Obama administration during an appearance Friday before a heavily pro-Israel crowd, but she didn't take them. Instead, she defended President Barack Obama's dealings with the Jewish state at a time of tense U.S.-Israel relations, insisting the White House is committed to Israel's security and supporting America's nuclear talks with Iran."

God News

This Explains a Lot. Public Religion Research Institute: "White evangelical Protestants are much more likely to attribute the severity of recent natural disasters to the biblical 'end times' (77%) than to climate change (49%)." CW: Ergo, climate change cannot be "man-made"; it is God's work. Via Steve Benen.

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "Maryland and six other states still have articles in their constitutions saying people who do not believe in God are not eligible to hold public office. Maryland's Constitution still says belief in God is a requirement even for jurors and witnesses. Now a coalition of nonbelievers says it is time to get rid of the atheist bans because they are discriminatory, offensive and unconstitutional. The bans are unenforceable dead letters, legal experts say, and state and local governments have rarely invoked them in recent years. But for some secular Americans, who are increasingly visible and organized, removing the bans is ... a test of their growing movement's political clout."

Simon Brown of Americans United schools Rick Santorum on the history of separation of church & state, which Santorum opined was a communist Soviet idea. "Roger Williams was talking about church-state separation in 1644. More than 100 years later, key founders like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson championed the idea. Madison, who is widely considered to be the 'father of the Constitution,' was a primary drafter of the First Amendment. In a document known as the 'Detached Memoranda,' Madison wrote, 'Strongly guarded ... is the separation between religion & Gov't in the Constitution of the United States....' Here's a newsflash for Santorum: Williams, Jefferson and Madison were not communists." Read the whole post. Via Benen.

Caitlin MacNeal of Think Progress: "A federal judge last week rejected a newly-elected Republican Colorado state representative's claim that the U.S. navy violated his religious freedom. Gordon Klingenschmitt, who once tried to perform an exorcism on President Obama, claimed that he was wrongfully dismissed as a Navy chaplain for attending a politicized religious event in uniform." Via Benen. ...

... Yeah But. Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch: "Klingenschmitt, however, insisted that he was fired [from the Navy] because he used the name of Jesus in his prayers and therefore was a victim of anti-Christian persecution.... Klingenschmitt, who has built his entire career as a political activist on this claim of religious persecution, is now receiving support from the right-wing outlet WorldNetDaily, which implies today that the judge only ruled against Klingenschmitt because she is a lesbian." The headline is a laffer: "Lesbian Judge Takes on Jesus in Court."

Nick Squires of the Telegraph: Pope Francis has fired the head of the Swiss Guard. "In a dispassionate one-sentence notice, the Vatican's official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, announced on Wednesday that Daniel Anrig will no longer serve as the commandant of the 500-year-old corps after the end of next month. No official explanation was given for the decision, but it was widely rumoured that the Argentinean Pope ... found the commander's manner overly strict and 'Teutonic'."

Congressional Elections

Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Republicans put the finishing touches on a triumphant midterm election by picking up a ninth Senate seat Saturday when Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) defeated Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) in a runoff election.... With most precincts reporting, Cassidy led Landrieu by about 14 percentage points. The Associated Press called the race for Cassidy shortly after polls closed in the evening." The Times-Picayune story, by Cole Avery, is here.

Diana Samuels of the Times-Picayune: "Republican Garret Graves is headed to Washington to represent Louisiana's 6^th Congressional District. And four-time former governor and ex-convict Edwin Edwards -- a Louisiana icon, both beloved and reviled -- has lost his first, and likely last, political race at the ballot box."

Roll Call: "Republican physician Ralph Abraham defeated Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, a Democrat, in a runoff for Louisiana's 5th District. He will now officially succeed outgoing GOP Rep. Vance McAllister. Abraham led Mayo, 66 percent to 34 percent, with two out of 845 precincts reporting when the AP called the race."

News Ledes

AP: "Chlorine gas sickened several people and forced the evacuation of thousands of guests from a suburban Chicago hotel early Sunday, including many dressed in cartoonish animal costumes for an annual furries convention who were ushered across the street to a convention center hosting a dog show.... he source of the gas was apparently chlorine powder left in a ninth-floor stairwell at the hotel, according to the Rosemont Public Safety Department. Investigators believe the gas was created intentionally and are treating it as a criminal matter." CW: Yes, apparently there's an international convention for people who like to dress up as bunnies & foxes.

AP: "Four of the remaining nine USS Arizona survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack are vowing this year's anniversary won't be their last reunion. The men in their 90s gathered for a news conference Tuesday in a building overlooking the memorial that sits on top of the Arizona, a battleship that sank in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack. Even though it's the last official survivor gathering of the USS Arizona Reunion Association, the men said they still plan to get together, even if not in Hawaii."

New York Times: "The United States transferred six detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison to Uruguay this weekend, the Defense Department announced early Sunday. It was the largest single group of inmates to depart the wartime prison in Cuba since 2009, and the first of the detainees to be resettled in South America. The transfer included a Syrian man who has been on a prolonged hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention without trial, and who has brought a high-profile lawsuit to challenge the military's procedures for force-feeding him. His release may moot most of that case, although a dispute over whether videotapes of the procedure must be disclosed to the public is expected to continue."

Note to Commenters

December 6: Problem resolved. Fortunately, no one's e-mail address was compromised. It is safe -- turns out it always was safe -- to include your e-mail address in your posts.

December 5: Please remove your e-mail address from future comments. That is, remove it from the box titled "Author Email."

A reader has identified what looks to me like a security breach. I've notified my host Squarespace, but until they get this fixed, I'm concerned that your e-mail identity could be compromised.

As far as I am aware, no one's ID has been compromised yet but there has been one close call.

I am almost certain this is a programmer error, not a hacking incident.

Marie

Update, December 6: This problem is ongoing. Squarespace has not deigned to respond to my multiple alarms. Their technical service used to be fair-to-middling. Now it completely sucks.

The Commentariat -- Dec. 6, 2014

Internal links removed.

White House: "In this week's address, the President highlighted the good news in Friday's jobs report -- that American businesses added 314,000 new jobs this past month, making November the tenth month in a row that the private sector has added at least 200,000 new jobs":

Gail Collins: "Our institutions cheerfully refuse to restructure themselves to reflect the fact that most families do not contain a non-working parent. Congress has been debating early education programs for more than 40 years and it has hardly made a dent. A great many of our employers don't bother to make jobs more family-friendly; they don't even bother to make modest arrangements to accommodate their pregnant workers. Everybody thinks this is extremely unfortunate, but almost nobody does anything about it because there is not a lot of political or financial reward for siding with working mothers."

John Eligon of the New York Times: "... the recent high-profile deaths of black people at the hands of police officers in Ferguson, New York, Cleveland and elsewhere — and the nationwide protests those deaths spurred -- have exposed sharp differences about race relations among friends, co-workers, neighbors and even relatives in unexpected and often uncomfortable ways. Put bluntly, many people say, they feel they are being forced to pick a team."

Sari Horwitz & Jerry Markon of the Washington Post: "As the Obama administration prepares to announce new curbs on racial profiling by federal law enforcement, government officials said Friday that many officers and agents at the Department of Homeland Security will still be allowed to use the controversial practice, including while they screen airline passengers and guard the country's southwestern border."

Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View: "Secretary of State John Kerry personally phoned Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Friday morning to ask her to delay the imminent release of her committee's report on CIA torture and rendition during the George W. Bush administration, according to administration and Congressional officials. Kerry was not going rogue -- his call came after an interagency process that decided the release of the report early next week, as Feinstein had been planning, could complicate relationships with foreign countries at a sensitive time and posed an unacceptable risk to U.S. personnel and facilities abroad. Kerry told Feinstein he still supports releasing the report, just not right now." ...

... Dan Froomkin of the Intercept: "The net effect of a delay would be to wrest the decision from Feinstein’s hands and give it to incoming Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), who has called the report a 'flawed and biased' piece of fiction." ...

When this report is declassified, people will abhor what they read. They're gonna be disgusted. They're gonna be appalled. They're gonna be shocked at what we did. But it will lay a foundation whereby we don't do this in the future. That's been my goal. That's been my mission.... I have made it clear over the last couple of weeks -- if the report is not declassified in a way that's transparent and shines a bright light on what we did, then I will consider using all and any options. -- Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado)

... Scott Rabb of Esquire publishes a portion of his interviewof Mark Udall. The whole interview will appear in the January edition of the magazine. Udall had better hurry with those "all & any options." In less than a month he will become "former Senator Mark Udall."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will review whether Texas's rejection of a proposed license plate featuring the Confederate flag violated the free speech rights of the group that wanted the special plates. Courts are divided over whether government may choose among the political messages requested for state-issued plates or whether such messages should be recognized as the speech of the motorist and entitled to more protection.... The Supreme Court has not decided whether to hear a second, similar appeal from North Carolina. A federal appeals court in that case blocked the state from issuing plates saying 'Choose Life' because the state would not grant a request to issue a plate with a message in favor of abortion rights."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "A group of 20 states that filed a federal lawsuit this week against President Obama's executive action on immigration could face difficult legal and factual hurdles, legal experts said, because federal courts have been skeptical of similar claims in the past." CW: Let's hope so.

Annals of "Justice," Ctd.

Rocco Parascandola & Oren Yaniv of the New York Daily News: "While Akai Gurley was dying in a darkened stairwell at a Brooklyn housing development, the cop who fired the fatal bullet was texting his union representative, sources told the Daily News. Right after rookie cop Peter Liang discharged a single bullet that struck Gurley, 28, he and his partner Shaun Landau were incommunicado for more than six and a half minutes, sources said Thursday." Readt the whole story. ...

... Tasneem Nashrulla of BuzzFeed: The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association disputes the Daily News account.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.

Richard Perez-Pena & Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "Rolling Stone magazine acknowledged on Friday that it now had reservations about an article it published that made startling and detailed allegations of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. The magazine said that its trust in the sole source for the article, Jackie, the woman making the allegations, was misplaced.... The fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, released a statement on Friday in which it denied the assault took place.... The fraternity said that the chapter had no event scheduled on the weekend in question. While the article said the initiator of the assault was a fraternity member who worked as a lifeguard at a university aquatic center, Phi Kappa Psi said ... that no member of the fraternity worked there during the time in question." ...

... Rees Shapiro of the Washington Post: "A group of Jackie's close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to her, but they also have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.... The Washington Post has interviewed Jackie several times during the past week and has worked to corroborate her version of events, contacting dozens of current and former members of the fraternity, the fraternity's faculty adviser, Jackie's friends and former roommates, and others on campus." ...

... Will Dana of Rolling Stone: "In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account." ...

... CW: I guess I'm naive about what a fact-checker does. Wouldn't s/he at least check to verify there was a venue where the rape could have happened? Wouldn't s/he at least find out if the alleged rapist was an actual person? This is making George Will look pretty good.

Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "This disaster is the sole property of editors and a reporter."

Hanna Rosin of the Atlantic, in Slate: "Rolling Stone did a shoddy job reporting, editing, and fact-checking the story and an even shoddier job apologizing."

November December Elections

Till the Last Blue Dog Dies. Bruce Alpert of the Times-Picayune: "Louisiana's most expensive U.S. Senate race is in the hands of voters. Polls will be open Saturday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. as three-term Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu faces her Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge. Two House races also are on Louisiana ballots: For the 6th District seat now held by Cassidy, Republican Garrett Graves, a former coastal restoration adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal, faces Edwin Edwards, the Democratic former governor who served prison time for his role in the riverboat licensing scandal. In the 5^th District, incumbent Vance McAllister, R-Swartz, who was caught on a leaked surveillance video kissing a former aide, didn't make the runoff. His replacement will be Republican physician Ralph Abraham or Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, a Democrat." ...

... Paul Lewis of the Guardian: "Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, the last remaining Democratic senator in the south, appeared to be on the cusp of a painful electoral defeat on Saturday. A victory by Landrieu's Republican opponent, Bill Cassidy, would solidify the GOP's control over the Senate when Congress reconvenes in January. As voters went to the polls in the state's runoff race -- thanks to neither candidate securing sufficient votes in November's midterm elections -- Landrieu trailed Cassidy by more than 17% in public polls."

Presidential Election(s)

Peter Baker & Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "What Mrs. Clinton leaves out about her time as first lady is her messy, sometimes explosive and often politically clumsy dealings with congressional Republicans and White House aides. Now, the release of roughly 6,000 pages of extraordinarily candid interviews with more than 60 veterans of the Clinton administration paints a more nuanced portrait of a first lady who was at once formidable and not always politically deft." ...

... Laura Bradley of Slate: "The video does not appear to be a joke. According to the [Washington] Post, the super PAC [that produced it] 'is the project of Daniel Chavez, a longtime Democratic political operative, and media producer Miguel Orozco, who wrote a series of Latin-flavored songs celebrating Barack Obama in the 2008 election.'" Here's the Post story. ...

(... One of Orozco's 2008 creations, "Viva Obama," was a favorite of mine. The music & lyrics aren't so bad, & the hats are fabulous! [if you can stomach stereotyping]:)

... As James S. observed at the end of yesterday's commentary, "My problem with Hillary is a mechanical one. She creates chaos not organization, as witnessed in her 2008 primary campaign (and her healthcare reform way before that). And, as a result of such turmoil, I don't think she's capable of running a successful presidential campaign; I don't think she's electable."

David McCabe of the Hill: "Aides to Mitt Romney's presidential team in 2012 are airing their frustrations with the campaign, alleging that tweets had to be approved by nearly two dozen people by the end of the race. 'So whether it was a tweet, Facebook post, blog post, photo -- anything you could imagine -- it had to be sent around to everyone for approval,' former Romney campaign aide Caitlin Checkett told Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication in a new academic paper.... The paper lays bare some of the difficulties Romney's campaign had in keeping up with the demands of the 21st-century campaign, which requires candidates to push their message on an ever-growing list of online platforms." ...

     ... CW: Sounds like the model for a Hillary campaign. Which would be duller? Hillary v. Jeb or Hillary v. Mitt?

Beyond the Beltway

Olé, L.A. Christopher Hawthorne of the Los Angeles Times: "The redesign [of Broadway in Los Angeles] suggests just how many politicians and policymakers in Southern California are finding inspiration in Latino Urbanism, a term that describes the range of ad hoc ways in which immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America have remade pockets of American cities to feel at least a little like the places they left behind. Planners are adding parks and bike lanes to major streets but also pushing to loosen outdated restrictions, so that murals can be painted in the arts district and street vendors selling tortas or sliced fruit can operate legally. Temporary events like the popular CicLAvia open-streets festival, patterned after a program in Bogota, Colombia, are spurring permanent urban-design changes that challenge the dominance of cars."

News Ledes

AP: "Acid reflux is responsible for the sore throat President Barack Obama has complained about for the past couple of weeks, the White House said Saturday, shortly after the president returned from undergoing diagnostic tests at a nearby military hospital."

Washington Post: "Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter detained in Iran for more than four months, was officially charged Saturday in a day-long proceeding in a Tehran courtroom, according to a source familiar with the case. The nature of the charges were not immediately clear, at least to those not present in the courtroom."

New York Times: "Two hostages, including an American journalist, who were being held by Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen were killed during a rescue attempt by United States commandos early Saturday, American officials said. In a statement, President Obama said the hostages had been 'murdered' by militants belonging to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula during the rescue operation. A senior United States official said that the American, Luke Somers, 33, was badly wounded when commandos reached him. By the time Mr. Somers was flown to a United States naval ship in the region, he had died from his injuries, the official said Saturday. The other hostage was identified as Pierre Korkie, a South African citizen, according to a brief statement posted on the website of Gift of the Givers, a disaster relief organization that was trying to negotiate his release." The Washington Post story is here.

Time: "When the commander of U.S. armed forces in Africa confirmed the presence of what he described as training camps linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) in Libya this week, he threw a spotlight on a growing source of anxiety in the Middle East: namely the erosion of the Libyan state and its consequences for both Libyans and the wider region as militants fill the vacuum."