The Commentariat -- Sept. 9, 2014

Internal links removed.

Jonathan Weisman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday will begin laying out his case for an expanded military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria when he faces congressional leaders who are averse to taking an election-year stand but are being pushed by lawmakers who want a say in matters of war. Mr. Obama's meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders on Tuesday in the Oval Office will be the first of several between White House officials and lawmakers as the administration tries to persuade Congress to embrace the president's plan to halt the momentum of the Sunni militant group known as ISIS." ...

... Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama is pushing congressional leaders to authorize a $5 billion counterterrorism fund that could be used to support operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Approving the fund could allow the White House and congressional leaders to escape a tougher vote on authorizing or funding military action before the midterm elections but still achieve the 'buy in' the president has said he wants from Congress." ...

... Hmm. Let's see how the GOP will decide what to do. Al Kamen & Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post: "The leading architect of the Iraq war will be on Capitol Hill for a private chat with House Republicans on Tuesday, just as Congress is grappling again with how involved the United States should be in the region's snowballing unrest. Yes, ... Dick Cheney ... was invited by the GOP's campaign arm to speak at its first weekly conference meeting since Congress's five-week break...." ...

... Steve Benen: "Republicans are concerned about the threat posed by ISIS? The group's existence is largely the result of the disastrous war Cheney helped launch under false pretenses. Republicans are outraged that the White House is completing a plan for the next phase of the U.S. counter-terrorism policy? Cheney's the guy who helped invade Iraq without a plan for what would happen after the war began.... During Cheney's tenure, the U.S. policy in Iraq was incoherent -- the Republican White House couldn't figure out what to do about the terrorist threat, parts of which they inadvertently helped create, picked Maliki to run the country almost at random and struggled to understand the value of political solutions." ...

... Oh, And This. (Gaffe Alert.) It's an election year.... Republicans don't want to change anything. We like the path we're on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long. -- Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) on why Republicans don't want to vote on a use-of-force resolution ...

Now, that's putting your country before your party, Jack. Thank you for your service. -- Constant Weader

Jonathan Topaz of Politico: "A spokesman for Steven Sotloff's family contends the slain American journalist was sold to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant by Syrian rebels and says the Obama administration 'could have done more' to save him. Appearing on CNN Monday evening, Barak Barfi said that his sources in the region have told him one or more of the Syrian rebels sold Sotloff to ISIL for $25,000-$50,000. He referred to them as 'so-called moderate rebels, that people want our administration to support,' a jab at lawmakers and political figures -- including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and many others -- that have suggested arming the Syrian rebels.... Barfi, a research fellow at the [nonpartisan] New America Foundation, reserved stronger criticism for the Obama administration...."

Burgess Everett of Politico: "Several Senate Republicans joined Democrats on Monday to advance a constitutional amendment that would give Congress and the states greater power to regulate campaign finance. But the bipartisanship ends there. Many of the Republicans only voted for the bill to foul up Democrats' pre-election messaging schedule, freezing precious Senate floor time for a measure that ultimately has no chance of securing the two-thirds support necessary in both the House and Senate to amend the Constitution."

... The text of the proposed amendment (S.J. Res. 19) is here.

... Mitch McConnell in a Politico op-ed: "... Democrats who control the Senate say they're more interested in repealing the free speech protections the First Amendment guarantees to all Americans. Their goal is to shut down the voices of their critics at a moment when they fear the loss of their fragile Senate majority. And to achieve it, they're willing to devote roughly half of the remaining legislative days before November to this quixotic anti-speech gambit." ...

... CW: Not once in his little essay does Mitch mention that the Democrats "quixotic anti-speech gambit" is a constitutional amendment to allow the Congress to enact campaign finance legislation.

digby in Salon: Antonin Scalia "claims that he could not be a judge if he thought his participation in the death penalty was immoral and yet he does not believe it matters under the Constitution if the state executes innocent people. How on earth can such a depraved person be on the Supreme Court of the United States? On what basis can our country lay claim to a superior system of justice and a civilized moral order when such people hold power?" ...

... CW: digby writes that the execution of an innocent person "is as horrifying as the brutal slaying of the victim." I would say the execution is worse than the crime the condemned person did not commit. Heinous crimes are, almost by definition, committed by deranged people. Often the crimes are unplanned, often the perpetrators are drunk or drugged. By contrast, those who mete out "justice" -- police, prosecutors, expert witnesses, juries, judges, justices -- are supposed to be rational, deliberative, unbiased & working within the law. Executions are systematic, cold-blooded killings. There are no mitigating circumstances in a crime of dispassion.

Robert O'Harrow & Michael Sallah of the Washington Post write the third of a three-part series on "Search & Seize." CW: I hope many of you have been reading this series. The cases the writers cite are horrifying. Besides being stopped for "looking suspicious," many of these innocent people don't get all or even most of their lawfully-obtained money back. And most are carrying large amounts of cash because they have "lived their lives in cash economies, paying for everything from food to rent and business expenses with hard currency." When I travel long distances, as I often do, I have some of the same "indicators" that cause these cops to pull over drivers: tinted windows (in the back of my vehicle), sunglasses, food wrappers on the floor & energy drinks (well, tea & coffee). It's true I don't travel with much cash, so I don't have to worry about the police seizing my life's savings, but the main wonderful, fabulous personal traits that have saved me from being pulled over for nothing: I'm an Old White Lady. Somebody tell me how that represents "equal justice under the law."

"Twenty-Eight Pages." Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker: In 2002, the Bush administration classified a 28-page report, part of the report by the Joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11. "President Bush said then that publication of that section of the report would damage American intelligence operations, revealing isources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.' 'There's nothing in it about national security,' [Rep.] Walter Jones [R-N.C.] ... contends. 'It's about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.' [Rep] Stephen Lynch [D-Mass] ... told me that the document ... offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda's attack on America.... Another congressman who has read the document said that the evidence of Saudi government support for the 9/11 hijacking is 'very disturbing.'... Now, in a rare example of bipartisanship, Jones and Lynch have co-sponsored a resolution requesting that the Obama Administration declassify the pages. The Saudis have also publicly demanded that the material be released.... The effort to declassify the document comes at a time when a lawsuit, brought ten years ago on behalf of the victims of the attacks and their families, along with the insurers who paid out claims, is advancing through the American court system."

Marie's Sports Report

Ken Belson of the New York Times: "The National Football League's handling of a domestic violence case is under renewed scrutiny after a graphic video emerged Monday, leading to the termination of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice's contract and his indefinite suspension from the league. The video shows Rice punching his fiancée, who is now his wife, in the face, leaving her motionless on the floor of a hotel elevator in Atlantic City in February. He then dragged her unconscious body from the elevator.... The Ravens had not previously disciplined Rice in any public way, and after the episode, the team said on Twitter: 'Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.' The post was deleted Monday afternoon." ...

... CW: Just another example of "both sides do it": Here, an athlete punched his fiancee in the face, knocking her out cold, but only after she put her face in proximity to his fist. She should deeply regret that. ...

... UPDATE. Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "In an Instagram post, [Janay] Rice defended her husband and marriage and railed against the price she and the couple is paying for the incident in February in an Atlantic City casino elevator.... 'No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted options [opinions??] from the public has caused my family.'" CW: Dr. Ben Carson (see his insights below) was right about one thing: this woman needs help. ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "... what did people think it looked like when a football player knocked out a much smaller woman? Like a fair fight?" ...

... Greg Rosenthal of NFL media: "'We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator. That video was not made available to us and no one in our office has seen it until today,' the [National Football] league said in a statement released to NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport." (Emphasis added.)...

... "Someone Is Lying." Barry Petchesky of Deadspin: Several sports reporters, including Peter King of Sports Illustrated, reported earlier, as King did in July 2014, that "the NFL and some Ravens officials have seen, from the security camera inside the elevator at the time of the physical altercation between Rice and his fiancée." Petchesky: "Privately, top reporters were told in no uncertain terms that the video existed, that the NFL had seen it, that it showed Janay Palmer acting violently toward Rice, and that, if released, it would go some way toward mitigating the anger against him. One of the league's most devoted mouthpieces described the video for us on an off-the-record basis, going off what his sources had told him. The implication was clear: If you saw this video, you'd know why Rice only got two games." ...

     ... Marcy Wheeler: "... the scandal of the video -- in addition to the fact that they appear to be lying about having considered it in their discussion of Rice's punishment -- is they believed that because Janay swung at Rice he was justified in swinging back. Even assuming that was their logic, though, remember that Roger Goodell was at this same time giving long, long punishments to various people for doing the harmless thing of smoking dope." ...

... Eliot Shorr-Parks on NJ.com: "TMZ's Harvey Levin said that the website has more information about the incident, and that come Tuesday morning, they will prove that the NFL knew about the video and decided to turn a blind eye." ...

     ... Update. TMZ: "Multiple sources tell TMZ Sports ... the casino made a copy of the elevator surveillance video for police. We're also told Rice's lawyer had a copy of the video, which he got in the criminal case. An NFL source tells us they requested 'any and all information' from law enforcement in the criminal case but got nothing because it was a pending case. But the NFL had other options ... namely going to the casino or Rice's lawyer -- but the NFL never bothered to ask." ...

... Katie McDonough of Salon with a reminder: "Ray Rice [was] fired -- but every other terrible person associated with the Ravens still has a job." ...

... Yeah, and how 'bout that prosecutor. Charles Curtis on NJ.com: "The Atlantic County[, New Jersey,] Prosecutor's Office ... stood by its decision not to pursue jail time -- or even probation -- and allow Rice to enter a diversion program instead. 'Mr. Rice received the same treatment by the criminal justice system in Atlantic County that any first-time offender has, in similar circumstances,' Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office Jay McKeen said in an email.... 'The decision was correct.'" ...

Olbermann!

... Juliet Macur of the New York Times: "Of course the video made the assault seem worse, and naturally it sparked a tidal wave of revulsion from the public.... But the facts alone should be enough in any domestic violence case. ...

AND Now, the Word from the Right ...

Worse Than the NFL & Ravens Management. David Edwards of the Raw Story: "The hosts of Fox & Friends on Monday turned video of NFL player Ray Rice punching his then-girlfriend unconscious in an elevator into a joke, saying that in the future she should 'take the stairs.'" Via Charles Pierce, who has almost nothing to say about the Rice video. CW: Pierce, a former sports reporter, once again shows he's no feminist. ...

     ... Update. "Fox Show Clarifies Ray Rice Comments." Kendall Breitman of Politico: "The comments faced backlash throughout the day." So NOW "Fox & Friends" say "domestic abuse is a very serious issue to us." CW: Yeah, right. ...

     ... Update 2: Charles Pierce weighs in: "Commissioner Roger Goodell was exposed as either a liar, or as someone who should not be allowed to count his own money. (Olbermann's right. He's got to go, but he won't, because most of the NFL owners think he's handled the whole thing splendidly.) The Ravens organization was exposed as a rat's nest of soulless, profit-driven drones. (And I hope nobody in the head offices of either the NFL or the Ravens misled the local prosecutors, who now also look like idiots on the national stage, and very likely are looking for someone to blame.)" Pierce contrasts Rice's treatment with that of Federal District Judge Mark Fuller, who got similar treatment from prosecutors for beating his wife, but gets to go back to his day job, with full pay & benefits, judging other people.

Let's not all jump on the bandwagon of demonizing this guy. He obviously has some real problems, and his wife obviously knows that, because she subsequently married him. So they both need some help. So rather than just jumping on a punitive bandwagon, let's just see if we can get some help for these people. -- Ben Carson, neurosurgeon, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush & a potential GOP presidential candidate

I wanna know, where is the President on this one? .. My question is ... this is a White House that seems to bring up a 'war on women' every other week. A White House that's very concerned about the NFL, concussions, etc., prescription drugs in locker rooms. -- Fox "News" host Andrea Tantaros

... CW: Not sure if Tantaros means this is all President Obama's fault or all this sissy-talk about concussions is just pandering to domestic violence perps. Or just, you know ... Obama!!!

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania. Matt Bonesteel of the Washington Post: "Citing 'significant progress toward ensuring its athletics department functions with integrity,' the NCAA announced Monday that it is restoring Penn State's postseason eligibility immediately and will allow the Nittany Lions' football team to offer a full complement of scholarships beginning next season. In the wake of the child sex-abuse scandal involving former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, the NCAA in 2012 levied unprecedented penalties on Penn State, banning the Nittany Lions from bowl games for four years, cutting 40 football scholarships over four years and fining the school $60 million."

Congressional (and Other) Races

Emily Cahn of Roll Call: "The final primary night of the midterms takes place Tuesday, with consequential contests across New England and Delaware." ...

... Here's more from Politico staff.

Margaret Hartmann of New York: New York statewide primaries are today (Congressional primaries were in June). "The biggest race is the Democratic gubernatorial primary, in which Andrew Cuomo faces Fordham Law School Professor Zephyr Teachout.... A recent Quinnipiac University poll found Cuomo has a 78 percent favorability rating among Democrats, while 85 percent said they hadn't heard enough about Teachout to form an opinion of her. Also, she's raised only $541,000 to the governor's $35 million." ...

... Steve Myrick of the Martha's Vineyard Times: "Massachusetts voters will decide several hotly contested statewide and district primary races when they go to the polls on Tuesday, September 9. With the departure of Governor Deval Patrick after two terms in office, three candidates hope to carry the Democratic banner into the November general election."

Stu Rotherberg of Roll Call: "While the current Rothenberg Political Report ratings don't show it, I am now expecting a substantial Republican Senate wave in November, with a net gain of at least seven seats. But I wouldn't be shocked by a larger gain."

Beyond the Beltway

Yes, Virginia, There Are Lots of Scrooges (Who Don't Care if You Get Sick & Die). Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "After fuming at state lawmakers and threatening unilateral action, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia took only modest steps on Monday to extend health care to the poor and disabled.... Mr. McAuliffe, who in June ordered his cabinet to devise a plan for unilateral action by Sept. 1, in the face of what he called Republican 'demagoguery' and 'cowardice,' announced that only 25,000 uninsured Virginians would be receiving coverage, far fewer than the 400,000 he has said are eligible if the state expands Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.... The governor reportedly consulted legal experts on how much he could accomplish by executive action. The modesty of his orders on Monday reflected the reality of a State Constitution that forbids any spending without the legislature's approval."

Frances Robles of the New York Times: "... the Ferguson City Council said Monday that it would establish a citizen review board to provide guidance for the Police Department. It also announced sweeping changes to its court system, which had been criticized as unfairly targeting low-income blacks, who had become trapped in a cycle of unpaid tickets and arrest warrants. Municipal court fines are the city's second-highest source of revenue, leading many critics to argue that the authorities had a financial incentive to issue tickets and then impose more fees on those who did not pay. Young black men in Ferguson and surrounding cities routinely find themselves passed from jail to jail as they are picked up on warrants for unpaid fines, one of the many simmering issues here that helped set off almost two weeks of civil unrest after the teenager, Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a white Ferguson officer on Aug. 9."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 8, 2014

Internal links, graphic & related text removed.

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Obama will use a speech to the nation on Wednesday to make his case for launching a United States-led offensive against Sunni militants gaining ground in the Middle East, seeking to rally support for a broad military mission while reassuring the public he is not plunging American forces into another Iraq war." See also video of Chuck Todd's interview of the President in yesterday's Commentariat.

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "As the Middle East disintegrates and a vengeful cynic in the Kremlin invades his neighbor, Obama has offered no full and clarifying foreign-policy vision.

His opponents and would-be successors at home have seized the chance to peashoot from the sidelines. What do they offer? Unchastened by their many past misjudgments, John McCain and Lindsey Graham go on proposing escalations, aggressions, and regime changes. Rand Paul, who will likely run for President as a stay-at-home Republican, went to Guatemala recently and performed eye surgeries as a means of displaying his foreign-policy bona fides.

Julie Davis & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "What had once looked like a clear political imperative for both parties -- action to grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants -- had morphed instead into what appeared to be a risky move that could cost Democrats their majority.... [Angus] King, a Maine independent who is a member of the Democratic caucus, warned Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, [that] ... unilateral action by the president might undermine the prospects for bipartisan agreement on a broad immigration overhaul for years to come. It was that concern..., White House officials said, that ultimately prompted the president to break the promise he made on June 30 in the Rose Garden to act on his own before summer's end to fix the immigration system."

Lobbying Tanks. Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors' priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.... Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.... The line between scholarly research and lobbying can sometimes be hard to discern.... The think tanks ... have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law...."

The Mind of Mitt. There’s no question in my mind that I think I would have been a better president than Barack Obama has been.... I think the president is really out of touch with reality when it comes to what's happening in the world.... I don't know whether you can't see reality from a fairway, but the president has not seen the reality internationally and domestically.... No question ... in my mind [that I would make a better president than Hillary Clinton].... Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are two peas in the same pod. -- Mitt Romney on "Fox 'News' Sunday"

William Finnegan of the New Yorker: A "Berkeley-University of Illinois study, commissioned by Fast Food Forward (a workers' association), found that American fast-food workers receive almost seven billion dollars a year in public assistance.... According to the progressive think tank Demos, fast-food executives' compensation packages quadrupled, in constant dollars, between 2000 and 2013.... Their front-line workers' wages have barely risen in that time, and remain among the worst in U.S. industry. The differential between C.E.O. and worker pay in fast food is higher than in any other domestic economic sector -- twelve hundred to one.... In Denmark McDonald's workers over the age of eighteen earn more than twenty dollars an hour -- they are also unionized -- and the price of a Big Mac is only thirty-five cents more than it is in the United States."

Charles Blow: "A damning report released by the Sentencing Project last week lays bare the bias and the interconnecting systemic structures that reinforce it and disproportionately affect African-Americans.... As the Sentencing Project report makes clear, the entire government and media machinery is complicit in the distortion.... The effects of these [mis]perceptions and policies have been absolutely devastating for society in general and black people in particular.

Jonathan Chait: The worst government in the U.S. is local government. "... police militarization bore only the faintest responsibility for the tragedy in Ferguson.... Old-fashioned policing tools were all the Ferguson police needed to engage in years of discriminatory treatment, to murder Michael Brown, and to rough up journalists covering the ensuing protests. Police militarization was a largely unrelated problem that happened to be on bright display. Over the ensuing days, it grew apparent that demilitarizing the police might save the government some money but would not address the crisis's underlying cause, and the momentary consensus evaporated.... The town of Ferguson, while tiny in scale, is an Orwellian monstrosity. Its racially biased Police Department is the enforcement wing of a predatory system of government...."

Robert O'Harrow & Michael Sallah of the Washington Post continue the Post's fascinating -- and disturbing -- series on "Stop & Seize." "A cornerstone of Desert Snow's instruction rests upon two 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decisions that bolstered aggressive highway patrolling. One decision affirmed the police practice of using minor traffic infractions as pretexts to stop drivers. The other permits officers to seek consent for searches without alerting the drivers that they can refuse and leave at any time."

David Cole, in the New York Review of Books, reviews Zephyr Teachout's Corruption in America. "Teachout's important new book reminds us that corruption -- in its more expansive sense of excessive private interest undermining public virtue -- poses very real risks to a functioning democracy, risks that were foreseen at the founding, and that have preoccupied politicians, statesmen, and jurists for the entire course of our nation's history. Today's Court has sought to deny those concerns through a definitional strategy that cannot be squared either with that history or with the actual effects of money on our politics.... Only when the Court begins to grapple with the full extent of the dangers of corruption will its campaign finance jurisprudence truly reflect the competing values at stake." Teachout is running in the Democratic primary against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a poster-boy for enabling political corruption. The primary is tomorrow; Cuomo -- who tried unsuccessfully to keep Teachout off the ballot -- is expected to win by a landslide.

Paul Krugman: "I have a message for the Scots [who will be voting on a referendum next week for independence from Great Britain]: Be afraid, be very afraid. The risks of going it alone are huge. You may think that Scotland can become another Canada, but it's all too likely that it would end up becoming Spain without the sunshine.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.

Driftglass writes a lovely remembrance of yesterday's morning shows. ...

... AND Driftglass reflects on receding local and state government reporting, which fits in nicely with Jonathan Chait's post, linked above. As Chait writes,

Since 1910, state house elections almost perfectly track U.S. House elections. The correlation, to be precise about it, is 0.96. Which is to say virtually none of us -- even those of us who bother to vote -- form judgments of any kind regarding our state legislators.

... Support your local newspaper!

Marie's Sports Report

Andrew Keh of the New York Times: "Bruce Levenson, who has led the ownership group of the Atlanta Hawks since 2004, informed N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver on Saturday that he intended to sell the team, effectively cutting short a league investigation into an email that Mr. Levenson sent two years ago to fellow Hawks executives detailing his thoughts on how the team could attract more white fans." ...

... Margaret Hartmann of New York takes a cynical view of Levenson's "self-reporting." Want to spend more time with your family AND make wads of money? Just dig up one of your old racist e-mails!

Congressional Election

Elizabeth Drew of the New York Review of Books: "Whether or not the Republicans take control of the Senate, the ground there has already shifted to the right." CW: This is a long piece which provides an excellent review of "where we're at" politically. Drew is a master of the form. Her assessment of Hillary Clinton's critique of President Obama's Middle East policy is noteworthy.

A discouraging -- but not surprising -- note from Greg Sargent: "The new NBC/Marist polls released over the weekend put Mitch McConnell up over Alison Grimes by 47-39 and Tom Cotton over Dem Senator Mark Pryor by 45-40 in Arkansas, while Dem Senator Mark Udall leads GOPer Cory Gardner by 48-42 in Colorado."

Beyond the Beltway

Kimberly Kindy & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Instead of telling grand jury members what charges they believe police officer Darren Wilson should face [in the killing of Michael Brown, St. Louis county prosecutors] are leaving it open-ended for now and involving the grand jury as co-investigators. The prosecutor's office is also presenting evidence to the grand jury as soon as it receives it, rather than waiting until the St. Louis County Police Department and the FBI have completed their investigations. Police probes are typically completed before a case is presented to a grand jury, county officials said." (Link missing).

Jon Swaine of the Guardian reviews the differing accounts of the police killing of John Crawford III in a WalMart in Beavercreek, Ohio. Ronald Ritchie, the "witness" who called 911, has a credibility problem. State AG Mike DeWine (R) has refused to release surveillance video to the public, although Ritchie says he has seen it, & the Crawford family & their attorney also have viewed it. Another shopper, Angela Williams, died of heart failure after collapsing during the melee inside the WalMart that followed the shooting.

Kenneth Lovett of the New York Daily News: "In what many say is an alarming first, a private eye hired by Assembly Republicans placed a GPS device on a Long Island assemblyman's car for two months in an unsuccessful effort to prove the pol didn't live in his district. According to court transcripts, investigator Adam Rosenblatt said he was hired in March by attorney James Walsh, repping the Assembly Republican Campaign Committee, to find out where Assemblyman Edward Hennessey (D-Suffolk) actually lives. Walsh that same month was paid $3,000 by the GOP campaign committee.... State police say placing a GPS device on a vehicle is legal in mostcases...."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Under huge international and domestic pressure, Iraq swore in a new government on Monday, opening the way for an expansion of U.S. military support to fight Islamic extremists in the country. The vote to approve a new cabinet came during a fiery late-night parliamentary session. Key positions, including those of the defense and security chiefs, were left open amid controversy over who would fill them. Now confirmed as prime minister, Haider al-Abadi said he would name candidates for those positions within a week."

Washington Post: "Hospitals in Colorado, Missouri and potentially eight other states are admitting hundreds of children for treatment of an uncommon but severe respiratory virus. The virus, called Enterovirus D68, causes similar symptoms to a summer cold or asthma: a runny nose, fever, coughing and difficulty breathing. But the illness can quickly escalate and there are no vaccines or antiviral medications to prevent or treat it."

Guardian: "US warplanes have carried out five strikes on Islamist insurgents menacing Iraq's Haditha dam, witnesses and officials said, widening what President Barack Obama called a campaign to curb and ultimately defeat the militants.... The leader of a pro-Iraqi government paramilitary force in western Iraq said the air strikes wiped out an Isis patrol trying to attack the dam -- Iraq's second biggest hydroelectric facility that also provides millions with water."

What About Bob?

Update below.

In trying to understand Bob McDonnell's motivations, I came upon this blogpost by Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press.

In Graham's view, McDonnell reasoned that during his trial "he’d turn federal prosecutors into overreaching partisans, not only beating the rap against the corruption charges, but using it as the basis for a political comeback, talking openly with reporters during breaks in his trial about his plans to run for governor in 2017, if he didn’t somehow end up on the national Republican Party ticket in 2016."

I couldn't find any other references to McDonnell's chats with reporters during breaks, so I contacted Graham re: his source. Graham said he heard it from a local reporter, who mentioned it on-air when reporting the verdict. 

Graham's assertion makes sense, assuming the local reporter wasn't blowing smoke, & there's no reason to think s/he was. McConnell didn't take the plea deal because a felony conviction obviously would have put the kibosh on his future political plans. No presidential candidate is going to choose a convicted felon as his running mate, and Virginia voters might take note of his criminal record, too.

So McDonnell figured, as Graham hypothesizes, that he would "beat the rap," and that an acquittal in a failed prosecution would make him seem like an avenging hero -- the vindicated victim of government overreach. It fits right into the Reagan/GOP "government is the problem" philosophy.

The strategy might have worked, too, if McDonnell had not opted for a defense that exposed him as a cruel husband & extraordinary phony. Since the gifts themselves were legal under Virginia law, all Bob had to do was demonstrate that there was no quo for the quid in the quid pro quo -- that his acceptance of the gifts had nothing to do with the minor and ordinary efforts he made on giftor Jonnie Williams' behalf. After all, promoting Virginia businesses was part of the governor's job.

As for the appearance of impropriety, it's easy to believe that a governor working his heart out to serve his constituents would drop the ball on some personal matters -- like family finances & even adequate communication about them with his wife. "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying enough attention to this stuff," and "I didn't give Maureen enough support & guidance when she tried to take up the slack" might be a lame defense, but it's one with which we can all identify.

The truth may be that Bob saw himself as a victim of his wife's greed and carelessness. Incapable of accepting any personal blame for the debacle, Bob scapegoated the wife he already held in low esteem. Blaming Maureen wasn't entirely beyond the pale, anyway. It appears she was indeed a grasping, unhappy, unstable person who initiated & exploited the relationship with Williams.

One of the rules of life & politics is that you keep your marital problems to yourself. It's implied right there in the marriage vows. Secular law, to some extent, also recognizes this principle. In most circumstances, one cannot be forced to testify against her or his spouse in a criminal trial. Bob & Maureen were in just such a circumstance. But instead of asserting the spousal privilege, Bob did just the opposite -- he used the trial to savage his wife.

His testimony & that of the witnesses the defense called constituted a long-running demonstration of psychological spousal abuse. If this is the way he treats his wife on the public record, some jurors must have felt, then he probably treated her a lot worse in private. (The testimony of one of the McDonnell daughters suggested as much.) Intuitively, some of the jurors -- especially the women -- probably blamed Bob for being a prime cause of his wife's instability. I do.

The low regard in which he held his wife is not all that surprising, BTW. It was pretty clear to many women, even while he was maintaining his family-man pretense, that Transvaginal Bob holds all women -- except maybe the mythic Virgin Mary -- in low regard.

For years, Bob followed the marriage rules. He mugged with Mo for the cameras. He featured his family in campaign ads. He spoke and wrote about Christian family values. He appeared to be a partner in a normal, loving marriage. If the marriage was indeed a sham, it was a sham both Bob & Maureen kept secret. But all that seems to have changed when, in Bob's view, Maureen did something so egregious she got Bob in big trouble. The criminal charges seem to have pushed Bob over the edge. His long-simmering rage against his wife boiled over. He used his criminal trial as a vehicle to make public what he viewed as his personal trials.

As the AP reported, "Bob McDonnell's attorney, Henry Asbill, said his client did not receive a fair trial and will appeal. Asbill reiterated his previous statement that prosecutors sought to criminalize routine political behavior."

The appeal may be successful. His lawyers will likely argue -- as they did before the trial judge -- that the judge's jury instructions defined "criminal corruption" & conspiracy too broadly. An appellate court could agree. But in my view, it was not Bob who didn't get a fair trial. It was Maureen.

The final irony, of course, is that Bob was so blind in his hatred for his wife & so raw in his denunciation of her that his courtroom performance ended his political career. Oddly, he never saw that coming. Oblivious to the damage he caused himself, Bob McDonnell was still planning future political triumphs right up till the moment a court clerk read the first "guilty" verdict. The trouble is, more than half of voters are women voters. Women are not going to vote for Bob McDonnell again. Ever.

Update. What the Manicurist Says. Rosalind Helderman & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post go behind the scenes to reconstruct how the McDonnell prosecution came about: "Six months before the McDonnells were charged, the first lady made a stark prediction: Her husband would go to jail, she said, and it would all be her fault."