The Commentariat -- April 15, 2014

Internal links removed.

** Tax Day. Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times: "In recognition of Uncle Sam's payday, it's only proper to take note of some of the most egregious corporate tax loopholes and some unexpected beneficiaries." ...

... Susan Page of USA Today: "The Internal Revenue Service is prepared to rewrite a proposed rule regulating the political activities of non-profit groups to address complaints from the right and left that it goes too far, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Monday. 'In all likelihood we will re-propose a redefined rule and ask for more public comment,' Koskinen told USA TODAY's Capital Download. It's a process he predicts will take 'until the end of the year and beyond' to complete. The proposed regulation of groups known as 501(c)(4)s drew a record 150,000 comments before the deadline in late February." With video. ...

... Benjamin Soskis of the New Yorker on paying taxes v. giving voluntarily. ...

... CW: Let me ask you this: what community-spirited citizen wants to see children go hungry or want for other necessities? My guess: hardly any. So if volunteerism worked to resolve our most pressing social problems, it would end (or nearly end) child poverty in the U.S., right? Certainly we would not have the situation Matt Bruenig outlines in the linked story below. ...

... Writing on the single-mother/child-poverty myth, Matt Bruenig of Demos finds that high rates of child poverty in every family type are U.S. policy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a file on the long, despicable career of Frazier Glenn Miller a/k/a Cross, the Kansas shooter. Thanks to James S. for the link. ...

... Tina Moore, et al., of the New York Daily News elaborate. ...

... More on the shooting from Laura Bauer, et al., of the Kansas City Star. ...

... Ian Lovett of the New York Times: "Although the shooting suspect, Frazier Glenn Miller, was a known racist and anti-Semite with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, the victims who were gunned down on Sunday were all Christians, devoted to their families, to their churches and to serving their Kansas City communities." ...

... CW: When he was a student at Duke 33 years ago Robert Satloff interviewed Miller, who was then the head of the North Carolina KKK. The worst part of Satloff's account for me is not Miller, but this:

[After the interview,] we drove straight into town to talk to locals and find out what they thought of the Klan living right next door. Sgt. Randy Cooke of the nearby Benson police department summed up what we heard about Glenn Miller: 'I'd call him the good-neighborly type,' he said.

     ... It's all too easy to dismiss Miller/Cross as some rare, aberrant monster without confronting the truth that millions of Americans view his ilk as "the good-neighborly type."

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post: "The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers' debts to the government that are more than 10 years old. The action comes after The Washington Post reported that the government was seizing state and federal tax refunds that were on their way to about 400,000 Americans who had relatives who owed money to Social Security. In many cases, the people whose refunds were intercepted had never heard of any debt, and the debts dated as far back as the middle of the past century."

Greg Sargent: "Jeb Bush's comments about immigration ... have produced a seminal moment in this debate, because they lay bare the fundamental difference between the two parties...: Most Democratic lawmakers want the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country to become a part of American society, while most Republican lawmakers want them to (at best) remain in the shadows of illegality or (at worst) leave." ...

... Nate Silver: "Like Bush, many Republicans are moderate on immigration." Via Paul Waldman.

Philip Bump of the Atlantic: "The Congressional Budget Office has reduced its estimate for how much Obamacare will cost and increased its estimate of how many people will be covered.... One of the interesting developments in Obamacare enrollment spotted by researchers from RAND is that the number of people covered by employers has increased — the opposite of what was expected to happen.... The CBO also [found that] ... 'the ACA’s overall effect would be to reduce federal deficits.'" ...

... "The Right's New Scam: Feigning Anger on Behalf of People They Encouraged to Skip Obamacare." Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... now that [ACA] enrollment is closed, [Republicans wa]re clamoring to flood the existing insurance markets with high-cost beneficiaries and send premiums skyward. Failing that, they want the people who didn't enroll -- including those who didn't enroll on the advice of ACA opponents -- to be angry at Obamacare for leaving them out in the cold."

CW: Why you should support every Democratic candidate for Senate, even if you think s/he's a jerk: Jonathan Chait: Suppose Republicans do gain control of the Senate, as the odds now suggest. "It may seem implausible that Republicans would simply refuse to allow Obama to appoint any justice [at all].... But such a confrontation is not only a logical outcome but the most logical outcome. Voting to flip the Supreme Court would be, if not a political death warrant for a Republican Senator, then certainly taking one's political life into one's own hands." So Mark Pryor? Yay! Mary Landrieu? You go, girl!

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "The United States needs to enact a major climate change law, such as a tax on carbon pollution, by the end of this decade to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, according to the authors of a report released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But aggressive efforts to tackle climate change have repeatedly collided with political reality in Washington, where some Republicans question the underlying science of global warming and lawmakers' ties to the fossil fuel industry have made them resistant to change. The rise of the Tea Party in recent years has also made a tax increase unlikely." ...

... CW: When they're not killing Americans who need health care or killing people in unnecessary wars, Republicans are killing the whole planet. There is nothing good to say about the GOP. Nothing.

The League of Greedy Bastards. Joe Nocera: "CEO pay goes up, up and away!"

Lucy Nicholson of Reuters: "Google Inc updated its terms of service on Monday, informing users that their incoming and outgoing emails are automatically analyzed by software to create targeted ads. The revisions more explicitly spell out the manner in which Google software scans users' emails, both when messages are stored on Google's servers and when they are in transit, a controversial practice that has been at the heart of litigation."

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "The Washington Post won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, including the prestigious public-service medal for a series of stories that exposed the National Security Agency's massive global surveillance programs. A team of 28 Post journalists, led by reporter Barton Gellman, shared the public-service award with the British-based Guardian newspaper, which also reported extensively about the NSA's secret programs. Gellman and Glenn Greenwald, then the Guardian's lead reporter on the NSA pieces, based their articles on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who has fled to exile in Russia, lending a controversial edge to this year's awards." The AP has the complete list of winners here.

Crazier & Crazier

Everything Is a Conspiracy. Sahil Kapur of Think Progress: "Call them the shoe truthers. Some conservative media figures are openly wondering if Hillary Clinton staged an incident during a speech in Las Vegas on Thursday in which a woman in the audience threw a shoe at her.... The reported thrower, Alison Michelle Ernst, was booked by the authorities. A blog post published Monday at the website of Fox News commentator Bernard Goldberg speculated that Clinton probably 'calculated it beforehand,' as is 'almost always true' with things that happen to her.... Rush Limbaugh entertained the same idea...." ...

... CW: Apparently Hillary also controls the feds, who have brought criminal charges against Ernst (see today's Ledes). That is one powerful woman.

We Block Equal Pay Laws Because We Favor Women's Rights. Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Sunday insisted that even though Republican Senators blocked the Democrats' equal pay bill last week, her party is fighting for women's rights.... 'It is Republicans that have led the fight for women's equality. Go back through history, and look at who was the first woman to ever vote, elected to office, go to Congress, four out of five governors.' ... Blackburn voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009." ...

... As Salvatore Aversa points out here, Blackburn has argued that women don't want equal pay laws. Because freeeedom.

Beyond the Beltway

Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Monday addressed the conflict between the federal authorities and anti-government activists over a Nevada cattle rancher's self-proclaimed right to graze his animals.... 'Well, it's not over,' Reid told Las Vegas TV station KRNV. 'We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over.'" ...

... In case you forgot what this was all about, Charles Pierce has a good summary. Here's part of it: "Pretty soon, there was an armed standoff as men with guns assembled around the ranch. The BLM people wisely backed off, and there was a great cock-a-doodle-do'ing all over the right, because Cliven Bundy's inalienable right to get something for nothing from the rest of us had been upheld with Second Amendment enthusiasm. Bear in mind that Bundy's entire position is that he can not pay his bills, and that he can ignore a federal judge, because he feels the federal government is illegitimate." ...

... AND here's more on the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity's support for Bundy's sedition. ...

I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada, I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing. -- Cliven Bundy, said cattle rancher

... Matt Ford of the Atlantic: Bundy & his militia buddies are also violating the Nevada constitution, written before the Bundy family arrived in Nevada, which specifies the people of Nevada owe "paramount allegiance" to the U.S.:

... whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority. -- Article 1, Section 2, Nevada Constitition

... CW: As far as I can tell, there's big contingent of wingers, aided & abetted by the billionaire Kochs & Fox "News" hosts like Sean Hannity, not to mention a few GOP lawmakers, who paradoxically equate "patriotism" with rejecting the very existence of the United States.

Zack Ford of Think Progress: "This weekend, the Nevada Republican Party voted to strip opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion from its party platform. Previously, the platform had included the beliefs that marriage should be 'between a man and a woman' and described the party as pro-life/against abortion, but this year, the both planks were left out entirely. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, this was an attempt to make the party more inclusive."

News Ledes

Boston Globe: The Boston Marathon finish line has been evacuated after suspicious packages were discovered. ...

... Washington Post: "Boston and its surroundings braced for an emotional week that begins Tuesday with a large ceremony honoring the victims, first responders, medical personnel and others affected by [last years Boston Marathon bomb] attack. It will be a chance to mourn the dead and remember the bloodshed, but also to proclaim that what is perhaps the world's most famous footrace will continue for a 118th year, and to marvel at the way events have brought this community together."

Los Angeles Times: "President Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of a drug convict, correcting a mistake that had extended his prison time by more than three years and could not be fixed by the courts."

Even in Canada. AP: "Five people were killed and the son of a police officer is in custody after multiple stabbings at a house party attended by university students near the University of Calgary, the police chief said, calling it the worst mass murder in Calgary's history."

CNN: "A new video shows what looks like the largest and most dangerous gathering of al Qaeda in years. And the CIA and the Pentagon either didn't know about it or couldn't get a drone there in time to strike." With video.

Detroit Free Press: "Two members of General Motors' senior leadership team are leaving the company three months after a transition to a new CEO and amid a crisis over the automaker's failure to fix an ignition switch defect."

AP: "Federal authorities have lodged two criminal charges against a Phoenix woman accused of throwing a shoe at Hillary Rodham Clinton while she gave a convention speech at a Las Vegas Strip resort."

New York Times: "After days of failing to enforce its own ultimatums, the Ukrainian government on Tuesday began what the president called a military operation to confront pro-Russian militants in the east of the country." ...

... Washington Post: "... Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Ukraine was descending into civil war." ...

     ... Update: "The Ukrainian government said its forces had repelled an assault by pro-Russian militiamen at a military airfield, hours after announcing the start of a staged counteroffensive Tuesday to reclaim control of the eastern part of the country."

BBC News: "Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi must do one year's community service over tax fraud, a Milan court has ruled. He was convicted of tax fraud last year in connection with TV rights purchased by his firm Mediaset in the 1990s. The alternative to community service had been house arrest. It is not yet clear what form his community service will take."

The Commentariat -- April 14, 2014

Internal links removed.

Paul Krugman: "... society is devoting an ever-growing share of its resources to financial wheeling and dealing, while getting little or nothing in return.... There is a clear correlation between the rise of modern finance and America's return to Gilded Age levels of inequality. So never mind the debate about exactly how much damage high-frequency trading does. It;s the whole financial industry, not just that piece, that's undermining our economy and our society." P.S. Chris Christie is a jerk.

** Bernie Sanders brings the reality of inequality to the floor of the Senate:

Philip Elliott of the AP: "An overhaul to the nation's broken immigration system remains stalled because 'the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism,' the head of the House committee to elect Democratic lawmakers said Sunday. Rep. Steve Israel's comments are in line with those from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi earlier this week, in which she blamed racial issues for the GOP's failure to act on comprehensive immigration legislation.

Seung Min Kim & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Republicans hope to turn Sylvia Mathews Burwell's nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services -- announced by President Barack Obama on Friday -- into a proxy war over Obamacare.... [Despite the Senate's unanimous vote for her confirmation as OMB director last year,] the Republican message, according to one senior aide: 'We would argue that there is no person on earth capable of making this horrible law work.'" ...

... Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Outgoing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she was 'flat-out wrong' to believe that HealthCare.gov was ready to go on Oct. 1, 2013.... Sebelius did not mince words when describing the pressure of last fall, calling October and November a 'dismal time.'" ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Sebelius leaves the office having enrolled some 10 million people in health care coverage. This was only possible because she convinced numerous Republican lawmakers in bright red states to extend health care coverage to the poorest Americans. No one is talking about it, but it is her biggest and most impressive achievement as secretary."

Anemona Hartocollis of the New York Times: "... New York State, almost from the start, has provided a textbook lesson in how to make the Affordable Care Act work.... New York has signed up more than 900,000 people for commercial or government plans, lured 16 insurance companies onto its exchange, provided subsidies for most customers and reduced premiums across the board.... But New York also took some aggressive and unpopular steps that few other states have taken, by creating a highly centralized system limiting consumer choice, essentially giving insurance seekers little incentive to shop off the exchange. As a result, most New Yorkers who are not insured through an employer are effectively barred from choosing any doctors or hospitals they want."

Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: Virginia "hospitals, the state chamber of commerce and corporate leaders have been calling, writing, visiting and buttonholing, pushing what they call 'the business case' for expanding coverage to thousands of uninsured under the health-care law, with the federal government promising to pay most of the cost." But Republican state legislators -- united behind opposition to ObamaCare -- are unmoved. ...

     ... CW: This would be a good time to highlight a few Virginia tragedies like the horrifying story of the death of Floridian Charlene Dill (see Beutler's piece below). ...

... Brian Beutler of the New Republic thinks Democrats should exploit this story: "On Wednesday, the Orlando Weekly published the explosive and infuriating story of Charlene Dill, a struggling, 32 year old mother of three who collapsed and died on a stranger's floor late last month. According to Weekly reporter Billy Manes, Dill suffered from a treatable heart condition. She also fell into what policy experts call the Medicaid coverage gap -- a hole the Supreme Court punctured in the health safety net when seven of its justices rendered the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion entirely voluntary." ...

     ... CW: Beutler is right. However, using Dill & similar victims to tell the story of GOP obstructionism, Koch money & Supreme Court stupidity (six other justices voted with Roberts) must be done with exquisite consideration for victims & their families. But the know-nothing public has a crying need to know what state GOP legislators, aided & abetted by the entire anti-Obama coterie, are doing to end and/or ruin the lives of the most vulnerable Americans. The GOP has convinced the voting public that ObamaCare is about expanding bureaucracy, depriving innocent Americans of their wonderful, cheap insurance policies & giving free health insurance to lazy bums of the darker complexions. The public should find out its about negligent homicide on a massive scale.

Chris Wallace is sick of the IRS "scandal". Via Josh Israel of Think Progress:

"Hate of an Ancient Vintage." David Von Drehle of Time on the murders at the Jewish centers in Overland, Kansas. ...

... Chicago Tribune: "The suspect in the Passover Eve killings of three people at two Jewish community centers in the Kansas City area was scheduled to appear in court Monday to face murder charges. Police said it was too early to determine if Sunday's killings were motivated by anti-Semitism, but a leading anti-hate group [the Southern Poverty Law Center] said the suspect was a former senior member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan movement."

Parade of Horribles. Janet Allon of AlterNet, in Salon, picks the seven worst right-wing moments of last week. It's hard to pick a favorite. ...

... CW: I'd add an 8th: the decision of Miami-Dade County Board of Elections supervisor John Mendez & a deputy county attorney to ban voters from using restrooms at polling places. Patrizia Mazzei of the Miami Herald: "Emails from a deputy elections supervisor and an assistant county attorney say Miami-Dade voters are banned from using restrooms at polling places. But the chief deputy elections supervisor pooh-poohed the notion." (I suspect the pun was intended.) The reputed reason? Some precincts are located in private buildings that have bathrooms that don't meet federal ADA standards. If the disabled can't pee, no one can pee.

Ben Fox of the AP: "... two separate but related events are forcing [the secret Camp 7 of the Guantanamo prison] into the limelight." ...

There's no way to explain the security measures that they use from the perspective of the safety of the guards or the safety of the detainees, beyond that they must be hiding something. -- Suzanne Lachelier, an attorney for Camp 7 inmate Ramzi Binalshibh

Presidential Race

Jill Lepore of the New Yorker reviews Elizabeth Warren's oeuvre, including Warren's new book, an autobiography titled A Fighting Chance, which "only adds to the speculation that Warren is considering challenging [Hillary] Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. And, even if Warren doesn't run, this book is part of that race." My favorite bit of the review:

In the spring of 2009, after the [bailout oversight] panel [on which Warren sat] issued its third report, critical of the bailout, Larry Summers took Warren out to dinner in Washington and, she recalls, told her that she had a choice to make. She could be an insider or an outsider, but if she was going to be an insider she needed to understand one unbreakable rule about insiders: They don't criticize other insiders.'

... CW: That, people, is how the Very Serious People operate. It is among the reasons our government is so dysfunctional.

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "... three Republicans who are considering a run for the White House -- Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor -- pitched their views on Saturday for how conservatives can retake power in Washington.... The event was the Freedom Summit, a gathering of several hundred put together by two of t.he most influential groups on the right, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Citizens United. And what unfolded on stage in a conference center next to the regional airport [in Manchester, New Hampshire,] was a display of today's Republican Party in all its dynamism, division and sometimes strange spectacle." ...

I'm beginning to think there's more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States. When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position, people put hands all over me, and I have to provide photo ID and a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane -- but if I want to go vote I don't need a thing. -- Mike Huckabee

Mike, we will all be happy when you move to North Korea to soak up all that great freeeedom. -- Constant Weader

... Margaret Hartmann of New York: Rand Paul's advice for Jeb (Not His Real Name) Bush: "Voters might get the wrong idea if you don't immediately explain how you'd crack down on that 'act of love.'" (That's Hartmann's interpretation. Close enough.)

News Ledes

New York Times: "In a new sign of desperation, Ukraine’s acting president asked the United Nations on Monday to send peacekeeping troops to the east of the country, where pro-Russia militias have seized government buildings and blocked major highways with seeming impunity. A deadline set by the Ukrainian government for the militants to vacate occupied buildings passed earlier Monday without any signs of an effort to enforce it, while militants, in an apparently coordinated strategy, used the day to seize another police station in an eastern town, then hoist a Russian flag over the building." ...

... Reuters: "U.S. President Barack Obama told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that Russia's actions in Ukraine were not conducive to a diplomatic solution of the crisis in that country, and the White House warned that Moscow would suffer further costs for its behavior. Obama spoke to Putin at the Russians' request, a senior administration official said, describing the call as 'frank and direct,' a diplomatic construction that usually means tense."

AP: "Megan Huntsman ... told police she either strangled or suffocated [six of her babies] immediately after they were born. She wrapped their bodies in a towel or a shirt, put them in plastic bags and then packed them inside boxes in the garage of her home south of Salt Lake City. What's not clear is why."

The Commentariat -- April 13, 2014

Internal links, obsolete videos removed.

** David Sanger of the New York Times: "... President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should -- in most circumstances -- reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday. But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for 'a clear national security or law enforcement need,' the officials said.... The White House has never publicly detailed Mr. Obama's decision, which he made in January.... There is no evidence that the N.S.A. had any role in creating Heartbleed, or even that it made use of it.... But documents released by Edward J. Snowden ... make it clear that two years before Heartbleed became known, the N.S.A. was looking at ways to accomplish exactly what the flaw did by accident."

Oops. Missed This. Jennie Matthew of AFP: "US reporter Glenn Greenwald returned to his homeland Friday for the first time since he helped expose Washington's vast electronic spying network, warning that more revelations are yet to come. Greenwald, who maintains regular contact with fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, flew into New York with filmmaker Laura Poitras to receive a journalism award for their coverage. Greenwald and Poitras had feared they could be detained upon arrival but told reporters at a Manhattan hotel that, while US officials 'deliberately created' a sense of risk, they faced no problem."

Tom Hamburger & Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "... Google -- once a lobbying weakling -- has come to master a new method of operating in modern-day Washington, where spending on traditional lobbying is rivaled by other, less visible forms of influence. That system includes financing sympathetic research at universities and think tanks, investing in nonprofit advocacy groups across the political spectrum and funding pro-business coalitions cast as public-interest projects.... Nine years ago, the company opened a one-man lobbying shop, disdainful of the capital's pay-to-play culture. Since then, Google has soared to near the top of the city's lobbying ranks, placing second only to General Electric in corporate lobbying expenditures in 2012 and fifth place in 2013."

Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "The countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical, experts appointed by the United Nations reported Sunday, and only an intensive worldwide push over the next 15 years can stave off potentially disastrous climatic changes later in the century. It remains technically possible to keep planetary warming to a tolerable level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found, according to a report unveiled here. But even in parts of the world like Europe that have tried hardest, governments are still a long way from taking the steps that are sufficient to do the job, the experts found."

Breaking! Maureen Dowd has found someone to love: Stephen Colbert. It's uncanny -- not a dollop of snark for Colbert (but plenty for other late-nite comics). ...

... Here's Dowd on the "Colbert Report," ca. 2005:

... Okay, so Ben Collins of Esquire loves Colbert too.

Mary Walsh of the New York Times: "Multiemployer pensions are not only backed by federal insurance, but they also were thought to be even more secure than single-company pensions because when one company in a multiemployer pool failed, the others were required to pick up its 'orphaned' retirees. Today, however, the aging of the work force, the decline of unions, deregulation and two big stock crashes have taken a grievous toll on multiemployer pensions, which cover 10 million Americans. Dozens of multiemployer plans have already failed, and some giant ones are teetering -- including, notably, the Teamsters' Central States pension plan, with more than 400,000 members. In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal multiemployer insurer would run out of money in seven years, which would leave retirees in failed plans with nothing."

Harold Meyerson: "... if reciprocal credit is due for the landmark legislation of LBJ's presidency, so reciprocal blame should be placed for the tragedy of Vietnam. It's clear from the tape recordings that Johnson made of his private phone calls 50 years ago this spring that the new president viewed the prospect of going to war in Vietnam with trepidation.... And yet, many of the key players who had been with him on civil rights -- the Republicans, the AFL-CIO and his own advisers -- were urging him to plunge in.... In the end, of course, Johnson took just enough of their counsel to wreak havoc on Vietnam, the United States, his political party and his presidency. The blame is his but, as with the credit, there's plenty left over to go around."

Valerie Miller, et al., of the New York Daily News: The woman who threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton is extremely crazy. CW: But of course the Secret Service let her into a supposedly closed event.

As James Singer the Science Winger pointed out yesterday, the Earth is the center of the universe! Or so say some actual wingnuts who have produced a slick Bible-consistent "documentary" film -- with real scientists! (who are mortified they got suckered into the project). Steve Benen reports.

Sex & the GOP

Scott Keyes, in the Washington Post: "In cooperation with the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, socially conservative politicians have been quietly trying to make it harder for couples to get divorced. In recent years, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills imposing longer waiting periods before a divorce is granted, mandating counseling courses or limiting the reasons a couple can formally split. States such as Arizona, Louisiana and Utah have already passed such laws, while others such as Oklahoma and Alabama are moving to do so.... Making divorce less accessible harms women most.... Women today are twice as likely as men to ask for a divorce...." ...

... CW: The SOBs cannot stay out of your bedroom, even if that bedroom is occupied by two people in a miserable marriage. I think the high-minded moral principles behind this latest intrusive movement are (1) to hell with what the wife wants, & (2) married women vote Republican. Also maybe: if a couple is unhappy, they are less likely to have sex with each other, and sex is a dirty, dirty thing.

Elsewhere Beyond the Beltway

Freeeeedom! Liz Fields of ABC News: "A Nevada cattle rancher appears to have won his week-long battle with the federal government over a controversial cattle roundup that had led to the arrest of several protesters. Cliven Bundy went head to head with the Bureau of Land Management over the removal of hundreds of his cattle from federal land, where the government said they were grazing illegally." ...

... Here's some background from CBS Las Vegas/AP: "A group of Republican Arizona lawmakers are upset with a brewing showdown in Nevada between the federal government and a rancher who claims rights to graze his cattle in a remote area about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.... Federal officials say Bundy has racked up more than $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees over the years while disregarding several court orders to remove his animals. [Rep. Bob] Thorpe says lawmakers aren't arguing over whether Bundy has broken laws or violated grazing agreements. They're more concerned with what they perceive as government heavy-handedness and how officials are restricting protesters to 'free speech zones' near the closed off federal land."

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Bundy, for his part, claims that 'our Constitution didn't provide for anything like the federal government owning this land.' He's wrong. The Constitution provides that '[t]he Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.'" ...

... Digby weighs in. ...

... CW: As for me, I'm tired of subsidizing the methane-gas producers. Can't the government garnish Bundy's cattle sales?

Katie Fretland of the Guardian: "Oklahoma officials on Friday said the state had obtained manufactured pharmaceuticals from a secret supplier for use in the executions of two men later this month, avoiding concerns over the use of compounded drugs but leaving unanswered questions about how it obtained them."

Re: the discussion in today's & yesterday's Comments:

News Ledes

AP: "A man in his 70s opened fire Sunday outside of a Jewish community center [in Overland Park, Kansas,] and nearby retirement community, killing three people, authorities said."

Extremely Creepy News. ABC News: "A woman has been arrested on six counts of murder after authorities found the bodies of seven infants packed into separate cardboard boxes at a home in Utah, police said. Police arrested Megan Huntsman, 39, of Pleasant Grove, on Saturday following a gruesome discovery at a residence formerly occupied by the woman who they say moved out in 2011."

Washington Post: "Ukrainian authorities launched an 'anti-terrorist' campaign Sunday morning against pro-Russian gunmen who had occupied a police headquarters in a small city in the tense eastern part of the country. Simultaneous assaults on government buildings in several towns in the restive region on Saturday had led officials in Kiev to believe that a coordinated operation directed by Russia was underway." ...

It's professional, it's co-ordinated, there is nothing grass-roots-seeming about it. The forces are doing, in each of the six or seven cities they've been active in, exactly the same thing. Certainly it bears the tell-tale signs of Moscow's involvement. -- Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations

     ... AP Update: "Ukrainian special forces exchanged gunfire with a pro-Russia militia in an eastern city Sunday, according to the interior minister, who said one Ukrainian security officer was killed and five others were wounded." ...

... Reuters: "U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Kiev on April 22, to demonstrate high-level U.S. support for Ukraine, the White House said on Saturday after expressing concern about escalating tensions in the eastern part of the country. The White House warned Russia against further military action in Ukraine...."

Guardian: "The war crimes trial of two sons of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi begins amid tight security in Tripoli on Monday, in a case causing sensation at home and controversy among rights groups. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his younger brother Saadi are accused of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture and bombardment of civilians during Libya's eight-month civil war in 2011."

AFP: "Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are to convene on Sunday in the latest attempt to save teetering peace talks, a Palestinian official told AFP."