The Commentariat -- April 9, 2014

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday signed two executive measures intended to help close longstanding pay disparities between men and women as Democrats seek to capitalize on their gender-gap advantage at the ballot box in a midterm election year":

The GOP Celebrates Equal Pay Day in Its Special Way

Greg Hilburn of the Monroe, Louisiana, News Star: "U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister’s top aide said the congressman will send a letter to House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday morning requesting an FBI investigation concerning the leak of a video from a security camera in McAllister's Monroe District Office. The video, which was publicly posted Monday, showed the married congressman sharing a passionate embrace and kiss with former staffer Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, who also is married. Peacock has since resigned." CW: Gee, Vance, maybe the leaker isn't the person with the problem here. But, please, feel free to waste taxpayers' money finding out who caught you kissing Mrs. Santa Claus. It's the Christian thing to do, I guess. ...

... Resigned? See this follow-up piece by Hilburn: "Adam Terry, McAllister's chief of staff, said Peacock was taken off of the payroll during the past 24 hours." Oh. Fired. ...

... Chris Frates & Curt Devine of CNN: "The husband of the woman caught making out with Rep. Vance McAllister said the Louisiana Republican destroyed his life and marriage." ...

... Adam Weinstein of Gawker: "Melissa Anne Hixon Peacock, and her husband Heath were longtime family friends of McAllister's and had backed his campaign with sizable donations." ...

... ** Dana Milbank: "On the eve of ... [Equal Pay Day,] a small newspaper in Louisiana ... reported that its congressman, Republican Rep. Vance McAllister, had been videotaped making out with a low-paid staffer.... The woman, a part-timer paid less than $22,000 a year who also received $300 from McAllister to clean out his campaign office? She was terminated as the story broke.... It takes chutzpah to observe Equal Pay Day by sacking the low-wage employee you've been snogging." ...

Consider Paul Ryan's budget, which the House is debating this week. Among those functions of government the Republican congressman from Wisconsin would cut, many disproportionately benefit women, according to the National Women's Law Center.... By contrast, government payments that go disproportionately to men -- active-duty military and veterans -- are relatively untouched. The highest earners, who are disproportionately male, benefit most under Ryan's tax proposal, while those receiving low-income tax credits, often families headed by women, would fare poorly. -- Dana Milbank

... See also stories on Breitbart's depiction of Nancy Pelosi, linked below. ,,,

,,, Wait, Wait, There's More. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Most Senate Republicans are expected to unite on Wednesday to block the [Paycheck Fairness Act], which would allow workers to compare salaries without the threat of retaliation, force companies to explain pay disparities between men and women and allow those discriminated against to seek punitive damages.... The GOP seems perfectly comfortable killing the bill, risking legions of negative headlines and coordinated Democratic attacks on the GOP as a party out of touch with women."

Katie Thomas of the New York Times: "People who signed up early for insurance through the new marketplaces were more likely to be prescribed drugs to treat pain, depression and H.I.V. and were less likely to need contraceptives, according to a new study that provides a much-anticipated look at the population that signed up for coverage under the new health care law." ...

... Reed Abelson & Sarah Cohen of the New York Times: "A tiny fraction of the 880,000 doctors and other health care providers who take Medicare accounted for nearly a quarter of the roughly $77 billion paid out to them under the federal program, receiving millions of dollars each in some cases in a single year, according to the most detailed data ever released in Medicare's nearly 50-year history." ...

... Peter Whoriskey, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Medicare program is the source of a small fortune for many U.S. doctors, according to a trove of government records that reveal unprecedented details about physician billing practices nationwide. The government insurance program for older people paid nearly 4,000 physicians in excess of $1 million each in 2012, according to the new data. Those figures do not include what the doctors billed private insurance firms." ...

     ... The Post has some interesting charts here including a facility to "find your doctor" to see if s/he is a high Medicare biller. My primary care doctor got $362K from Medicare in 2012; $122K of it went into her pocket.

... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "For all the challenges still facing Obamacare and its supporters, conservative health wonks are increasingly cautioning Republicans that the politics of the issue have changed in the wake of the 7 million initial sign-ups. Simply repealing the law is no longer an option, they warn, even if Republicans gain the power to do so." ...

... Brian Beutler, now of the New Republic: The Wall Street Journal editors Tuesday attacked " GOP members who are furious about party leaders doing anything at all to facilitate implementation of the law.... The conservative position is slowly shifting from repeal and replace, to replace and repeal." ...

... Digby: "At some point [conservatives] are going to start taking some of the credit for [the ACA]. After all, it's a program that tracks closely with certain policies pushed by conservative health care wonks in the not too distant past and it was passed though an arduous negotiation between representatives of the health care industry and conservative members of congress. The conservative Supreme Court then came along and made it possible to partially gut the one major expansion of the government's commitment to serve the poor.... And, as with most heavy government lifts, the conservatives let the Democratic Party to do all their dirty work after which they came along and reaped the electoral rewards from the public's nervousness about big change. They do the same thing with 'deficit reduction.'"

Krissy Clark, in Slate, with another reminder of how you're subsidizing big business: "Walmart is likely the biggest single corporate beneficiary of SNAP, but it's not just Walmart. A growing number of stores have baked food stamp funding into their business models.... The tally of stores authorized to accept food stamps has more than doubled since the year 2000, from big-box stories like Target and Costco to 7-Elevens and dollar stores. It's a paradox that the more people are struggling to get by, the more valuable food stamps become for business." ...

     ... CW: Not a paradox maybe, but a disturbing irony. WalMart pays its employees so little they must rely on food stamps, which they use to buy food at WalMart. So, the Waltons double-dip; they make money by (a) underpaying their employees, and (b) collecting gummit money -- your money -- in food-stamp profits they "earn" directly from the underpaid employees. That's the rich robbing from the poor AND from the middle class. Neat. Thanks to Dave S. for the link.

Chief Justice Roberts continually shows a desire to downplay the significance of his rulings, and ostensible political naivete is now part of the path to get there. -- Political Scientist Richard Hasan ...

... Tom Edsall: "After the so called Sheldon primary, when four potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination went to Las Vegas over the last weekend in March to court the casino owner Sheldon Adelson, it took a heavy dose of audacity on the part of Chief Justice John Roberts to claim on April 2 that 'ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption.' Read the whole post. Thanks to Ken W. for the link.

"You Don't Want to Go There, Buddy." Eric Holder blows up at Louie Gohmert. Via Igor Bobic of TPM:

Catherine Thompson of TPM: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, "the chair of the Democratic National Committee, on Monday called a Breitbart News ad portraying House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 'disgusting' and urged Republican leaders to condemn the conservative outlet. Breitbart News launched a new vertical focused on California politics with an ad campaign that included a Miley Cyrus-referencing image of Pelosi in a nude bikini with her tongue lolling out.... 'It is a disgusting new low and would be reprehensible against any woman -- regardless of party. It's no wonder the Republicans are having problems appealing to women,'" Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. ...

... Dylan Scott of TPM: "House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) sided on Monday with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over Breitbart News, requesting that his column be pulled from the news outlet's new California website."

Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "A flaw has been discovered in one of the Internet's key security methods, potentially forcing a wide swath of websites to make changes to protect the security of consumers. The problem was first discovered by a team of Finnish security experts and researchers at Google last week and disclosed on Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, a number of large websites, including Yahoo, Facebook, Google, and Amazon Web Services, said they were fixing the problem or had already fixed it."

"I'm a Cat." James Barron of the New York Times on the "nine lives" of Al Sharpton.

Presidential Election

Maureen Dowd considers Jeb (not his real name) for President. "Jeb thinks Republicans have lost their way. He may soon learn that a lot of conservatives think they have found their way -- and it's not the joyful, loving, government-can-be-a-force-for-good way. It's the mean, cruel, gut-the-government way. When this crowd thinks of A Thousand Points of Light, they're thinking of torches as they march toward the Capitol."

News Ledes

Washington Post: " The pro-Russian militants who have put [Ukraine] on the brink by seizing buildings and declaring independent republics in the east appeared to be ready to soften their tactics Wednesday, and politicians saw an opportunity to promote a deal. A new regional poll showed very limited support for the building occupations, and even pro-Russian party leaders began to suggest that the agitators should call it a day."

AP: "A doctor says some victims of a multiple stabbing at a high school near Pittsburgh have suffered injuries classified as life-threatening, though all are expected to survive. Dr. Chris Kaufman says two victims were in the operating room and one was awaiting surgery at Forbes Regional Medical Center, a few miles from Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville.... The suspect, a male student, was taken into custody and being questioned." ...

     ... Los Angeles Times Update: "A 16-year-old Pennsylvania student has been charged as an adult in the early morning knife attack on at least 21 people at Franklin Regional Senior High School near Pittsburgh on Wednesday. The suspect, Alex Hribal, was charged with four counts of attempted homicide, 21 counts of aggravated assault and one count of bringing a weapon on school property, said his attorney, Patrick Thomassey. Hribal was being held without bail at Westmoreland County Juvenile Detention Center."

The Commentariat -- April 8, 2014

Internal links, graphics & related text removed.

Ramsey Cox, et al., of the Hill: "The Senate approved a five-month extension of federal unemployment benefits on Monday in a 59-38 vote that saw six Republicans break ranks and vote in favor of the legislation. The bill now goes to the House, where Senior House Republicans have felt little pressure to act on jobless benefits. Although they won't say so directly, they are likely to ignore the Senate bill." ...

... ** Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "Since the early 1990s, politicians have deliberately shifted funds away from those perceived to be the most needy and toward those perceived to be the most deserving.... Since the mid-1990s, the biggest increases in spending have gone to those who were middle class or hovering around the poverty line. Meanwhile, Americans in deep poverty ... saw no change in their benefits in the decade leading up to the housing bubble. In fact, if you strip out Medicare and Medicaid, federal social spending on those in extreme poverty fell between 1993 and 2004."

Michael Shear & Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday will call attention to what he has said is an 'embarrassment' in America: the fact that women make, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns. But ... a study released in January showed that female White House staff members make on average 88 cents for every dollar a male staff member earns.... [Press Secretary Jay Carney] said that the 88-cent statistic was misleading because it aggregates the salaries of White House staff members at all levels, including the lowest levels, where women outnumber men. Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, said the 77-cent statistic that Mr. Obama has often cited was misleading for the same reason, because it aggregates salaries for the American workforce." ...

     ... CW: Guess what? Boehner's guy is right. Wouldn't it be fabulous if the Times writers would tell us this rather than present an easily-verifiable statistic in their traditional he-said/he-said format?

Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "The White House has defended a four-fold increase in the deportation of undocumented immigrants for minor crimes such as driving offences, insisting it is simply complying with 'administration priorities' by removing foreign law-breakers from the country." CW: Think about the logic there: We're just following our own policy, so it's okay.

Aamer Madhani of USA Today: "President Obama on Monday announced the winners of his Youth CareerConnect program, part of his long-touted goal of reshaping high schools to make sure students are properly prepared for the rigors of college and a rapidly evolving job market.

Adam Serwer of NBC News: "The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from a New Mexico photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony because of her religious beliefs, which the state supreme court found violated New Mexico's anti-discrimination law. If the Supreme Court had taken the case, 'all of public accommodations anti-discrimination laws would have been up for grabs,' said Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union. 'Drawing the line here is a huge victory.'"

Julian Hattem of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday declined an initial challenge to the National Security Agency's (NSA) bulk collection of information about the public's telephone calls. The high court passed on a chance to review a lower court ruling that found the controversial program 'almost Orwellian,' which means the case will go through the normal appeals process as lawmakers battle over reform proposals."

I am not a crook. -- Richard Nixon

Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon, and now John Roberts has absolved him. History is written by the winners, but for a while anyway, the losers know better. -- Constant Weader ...

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "... according to an opinion Chief Justice John Roberts handed down last week, most of the Nixon Administration's shadiest efforts to raise campaign funds do not qualify as 'corruption.'" ...

     ... Charles Pierce: "Richard Nixon didn't hand Gordon Liddy a bag of hundreds and tell him to bug Larry O'Brien's phone so, according to the Chief Justice, there was no corruption there at all." ...

... As the Worm Turns. Constant Weader: Under his "new rules," Chief Justice Roberts also has effectively granted pardons to all of the Keating Five (Charles Keating just died), since a quid pro quo was never specified between Keating & any of the five U.S. senators. Ironically, John McCain, one of the five, was so humiliated by his complicity in the Keating scandal that he began actively supporting campaign finance reform; ergo, McCain-Feingold -- the very law that the Roberts court further eviscerated in the McCutcheon v. FEC ruling.

New York Times Editors: "... the pro-Russian secessionists who seized the local administration building in Donetsk, the center of the industrial Donets Basin, are following the script laid down in Crimea to the letter. They have declared the region's independence from Ukraine and called for a referendum by May 11 on joining Russia.... The United States and Europe have said time and again that further Russian aggression would prompt a stern and painful response. Now is the time to prepare it." ...

... Ignorance Breeds Belligerence. Kyle Dropp, et al., in the Washington Post: "We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine's actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force." CW: Maybe if somebody had given Dick Cheney a map, all would be right with the world.

The accusations are not true. Some people called it torture. It wasn't torture. If I would have to do it all over again, I would. The results speak for themselves. -- Dick Cheney, last week, defending the CIA's use of waterboarding against a Senate report's "accusations" that waterboarding is torture

I was stunned to hear that quote from Vice President Cheney. If he doesn't think that was torture, I would invite him anywhere in the United States to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through, one of them a hundred and plus-odd times.... This was torture by anybody's definition. -- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Intelligence Committee, which wrote the report

David Corn of Mother Jones: "Last week..., former Vice President Dick Cheney took a shot at Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). But Paul is not likely to be fazed by criticism from Cheney, for several years ago the Kentucky senator was pushing the conspiratorial notion that the former VP exploited the horrific 9/11 attacks to lead the nation into war in Iraq in order to benefit Halliburton, the enormous military contractor where Cheney had once been CEO."

Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate Democrats ripped former CIA Director Michael Hayden on Monday for describing Sen. Dianne Feinstein as 'emotional,' calling Hayden's remarks both a 'baseless smear' and condescending.... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Hayden's comments are emblematic of 'Republicans' disregard for women as displayed here in Washington.'"

Juan Cole: "Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday blamed the Palestinians for the collapse of peace negotiations that began last August under the auspices of Secretary of State John Kerry." Cole lists "the top ten things Israel did to cause the negotiations to falter."

Bush conservative Michael Gerson slams ObamaCare, not necessarily for the wrong reasons, but of course he goes awry by claiming "conservatives have serious alternatives to Obamacare." He never acknowledges the elephant in the room: single-payer would solve almost all of ObamaCare's problems. One point he does make though is crucial: Americans have a right to health care, & conservatives must come to recognize that.

Steve Ohlemacher of the AP: "Rep. Dave Camp set a [Way & Means] committee vote for Wednesday on whether to refer Lois Lerner, who used to head the agency's tax-exempt division, to the Justice Department 'for possible criminal prosecution.'"

Joan Walsh of Salon takes issue with Jonathan Chait's piece on racism, linked in yesterday's Commentariat.

At the Minnesota DFL Humphrey-Mondale fundraiser, Elizabeth Warren takes on Paul Ryan & Ted Cruz:

Gosh, Another Conservative Christian/Family Values Politician Is Caught on Tape. John Bresnahan & Jake Sherman of Politico: "Freshman GOP Rep. Vance McAllister (La.) - who ran as conservative Christian - has been caught on video in a romantic encounter with a woman believed to be on his congressional staff just before Christmas. The Ouachita Citizen, a newspaper based in West Monroe, La., posted a Dec. 23 surveillance video purportedly from inside McAllister's district office in Monroe.... McAllister won the special election on Nov. 16 to replace Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.). McAllister won in the heavily Republican district by playing up his conservative credentials, including his Christian faith and his 16-year marriage. McAllister's Washington office door was locked on Monday. He issued a statement in the afternoon apologizing for the incident and asking for forgiveness." The video is here.

Beyond the Beltway

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Maryland embraced President Obama's call to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour on Monday, the second state to do since Connecticut acted last month. The Maryland General Assembly voted for the pay raise on the last day of its 2014 regular session, giving Gov. Martin O'Malley a victory on his top priority this year. The governor, in his last year in office, has staked out a consistently liberal record as he weighs running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.... The governor also said he would sign a bill passed Monday that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana."

     ... CW: President Obama mentions Maryland's minimum wage effort in his speech, embedded above.

Scott Raab of Esquire: "Esquire has learned from sources close to the investigation that David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who helped plan and execute the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, is now cooperating with Paul Fishman, the federal prosecutor investigating the soon-to-be-ex-governor and his minions for criminal conduct. Fishman has also increased the number of investigators at work on the case, and has begun presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury in Newark."

AP: "Charlotte, N.C.'s council has chosen a state senator to be the city's new mayor to replace Patrick Cannon [D], who resigned last month in a public corruption scandal. Members on Monday picked Dan Clodfelter [D] to finish the two-year term Cannon only started in December."

Jim Efstathiou Jr. of Bloomberg News: "There have been more earthquakes strong enough to be felt in Oklahoma this year than in all of 2013, overwhelming state officials who are trying to determine if the temblors are linked to oil and natural gas production.... As fracking expanded to more fields, reports have become more frequent from Texas to Ohio of earthquakes linked to wells that drillers use to pump wastewater underground." But, hey, "The number of earthquakes with suspected connections to injection wells is a small fraction of the number of wells, according to America's Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group in Washington."

... CW: Okay then. Or as Hamilton Nolan of Gawker writes, "Could blasting water into cracks in the earth with incredibly high pressure be related to an explosion of earthquakes? Who's to say? In the meantime, strap yourself in -- for energy savings!" A commenter to Nolan's post has an explanation: "Those aren't earthquakes at all. It is simply Mother Earth quivering with pleasure from getting fucked so hard by humans." ...

... Griff Witte & Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "Ever since Russian forces took hold of Crimea last month, the British prime minister [David Cameron] has been leading a chorus of conservative politicians and energy executives in a refrain they believe will spark a shale gas revolution in Europe: Frack, baby, frack."

Smoking Gun: Al Sharpton was once an informant for the FBI & NYPD. "Beginning in the mid-1980s and spanning several years, Sharpton's cooperation was fraught with danger since the FBI's principal targets were leaders of the Genovese crime family, the country's largest and most feared Mafia outfit. In addition to aiding the FBI/NYPD task force, which was known as the 'Genovese squad,' Sharpton's cooperation extended to several other investigative agencies. TSG's account of Sharpton's secret life as 'CI-7' is based on hundreds of pages of confidential FBI affidavits"

CW: As a UW-Madison alum, I am super-proud of my old college for offering a women's studies course that included this informative handout, ca. 1988: "When You Meet a Lesbian: Hints for the Heterosexual Woman." Much of it concerns girl-on-girl etiquette (though not exactly like the advice we got from our housemother at Elizabeth Waters Hall, who was coincidentally a lesbian). For instance, Rule 1: "Do not run from the room. This is rude." I'm going to try to remember that for next time.

Congressional Races

Earmarker-in-Chief. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "In the post-earmark era, using the party's control of the federal bureaucracy to deliver local projects or delay new regulations that might stifle jobs has become a critical part of Democratic efforts to maintain control of the Senate. In close races, particularly in less populated states such as Alaska and Montana, incumbents are hoping that a few favorable agency decisions might secure the backing of key constituencies."

Presidential Election

Presidential aspirant Ted Cruz responds to presidential heir Jeb Bush on immigration reform:

Digby, in Salon: In the "Tea Party's great dunce-off...,Ted Cruz is quietly kicking Rand Paul's butt."

John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "Whatever else you do this week, carve out half an hour to read my colleague Ryan Lizza's piece about Chris Christie and New Jersey politics. It's Robert Penn Warren meets Carl Hiaasen on the west bank of the Hudson. By the time you get to the end of it, I bet you'll find yourself asking the same question I did: How could we ever have taken this bully seriously as a Presidential candidate?"

News Ledes

New York Times: "Arthur Smith, a country musician known for the hit 'Guitar Boogie' and for 'Feuding Banjos,' a bluegrass tune that became 'Dueling Banjos' in the film 'Deliverance,' died on Thursday at his home in Charlotte, N.C. He was 93."

AFP: "US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday blamed approval of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem for derailing peace talks with Palestinians, a charge that pricked Israeli officials and sent aides into damage control." CW: Which is what Juan Cole said yesterday. See today's Commentariat.

AP: "The defense chiefs of China and the U.S. faced off Tuesday over Beijing's escalating territorial disputes in the region, with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and telling his Chinese counterparts they do not have the right to unilaterally establish an air defense zone over disputed islands, with no consultation."

Reuters: "Deputies in the Ukrainian parliament brawled in the chamber on Tuesday after a communist leader accused nationalists of playing into the hands of Russia by adopting extreme tactics early in the Ukrainian crisis." With video.

The Commentariat -- April 7, 2014

"The Color of His Presidency." Jonathan Chait writes a long piece for New York on the invidious racism that continues to pervade American politics, writ large during the Obama era. "Once you start looking for racial subtexts embedded within the Republican agenda, they turn up everywhere. And not always as subtexts.... Conservatives are fixated on race, in a mystified, aggrieved, angry way...."

Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "This week, the president will sign an executive order that would prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their pay with each other. The prohibition on the wage 'gag rules' is similar to language in a Senate bill aimed at closing a pay gap between men and women. That legislation is scheduled for a vote this week, though it is not likely to pass. In addition, Obama on Tuesday will direct the Labor Department to adopt regulations requiring federal contractors to provide compensation data based on sex and race. The president will sign the executive order and the presidential memo during an event at the White House where he will be joined Lilly Ledbetter, whose name appears on a pay discrimination law Obama signed in 2009."

Ginger Thompson & Sarah Cohen of the New York Times: "... a New York Times analysis of internal government records shows that since President Obama took office, two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases involve people who had committed minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all. Twenty percent -- or about 394,000 -- of the cases involved people convicted of serious crimes, including drug-related offenses, the records show.... Mr. Obama came to office promising comprehensive immigration reform, but lacking sufficient support, the administration took steps it portrayed as narrowing the focus of enforcement efforts on serious criminals. Yet the records show that the enforcement net actually grew, picking up more and more immigrants with minor or no criminal records."

Erin Delmore of NBC News: "President Obama will attend a memorial Wednesday for the victims of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer confirmed on CBS's Face the Nation...."

Dylan Stableford of Yahoo! News: "Ahead of the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that is expected to say the CIA misled the government and the American people about its interrogation techniques, Nancy Pelosi is placing the blame squarely on former Vice President Dick Cheney. 'I do believe that during the Bush-Cheney administration, Vice President Cheney set a tone and an attitude for the CIA," Pelosi said in an interview with CNN's 'State of the Union' broadcast Sunday.... Pelosi said she thinks Cheney, who has long defended the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques, is proud of the CIA's misrepresentation." ...

... ** Dianne Feinstein Is a Crybaby Girl. Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: Former CIA Director Michael Hayden tells Fox "News"'s Chris Wallace that the Senate report on CIA torture is the product of girly emotions. So, not serious. "... if the intelligence community thinks that the controversy over our legacy of torture is just the result of some silly girlish feelings, then we haven't even begun to deal with the consequences of those years."

Katie Valentine of Think Progress: "Eight [Democratic] members of Congress sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Tuesday, asking her to reopen investigations into water contamination in the three states. The EPA investigations in Pavillion, WY, Dimock, PA and Parker County, TX were all called off between mid-2012 and mid-2013, before the agency determined for sure what had caused each region's contamination."

"Oligarchs & Money." Paul Krugman: " I'm increasingly convinced that our failure to deal with high unemployment has a lot to do with class interests.... Modestly higher inflation, say 4 percent, would be good for the vast majority of people, but it would be bad for the superelite. And guess who gets to define conventional wisdom.... What's good for oligarchs isn't good for America." ...

... Brad DeLong: "The top 0.01% ... have not been enriched by the post 2008 era. What they have gained via a higher capitalization via low safe interest rates has been offset by what they have lost as a result of depressed profits, depressed by a low level of economic activity, a depression which has not been completely offset by downward pressure on wages. The top 0.01% would not be poorer absolutely (although they would be poorer relatively) in a high-pressure higher-inflation economy." ...

     ... CW: DeLong doesn't understand why the .01% want a depressed economy. I do: they want to continue to increase the economic distance between them & us. They want us to envy them, something we won't much bother to do if we're fat & happy ourselves. ...

... E. J. Dionne: "It's a shame that the Republican majority on the Supreme Court doesn't know the difference between an oligarchy and a democratic republic.... Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his four allies always side with the wealthy, the powerful and the forces that would advance the political party that put them on the court. The ideological overreach that is wrecking our politics is now also wrecking our jurisprudence." CW: I think Roberts, et al., do know the difference. And they prefer oligarchy.

Richard Escow in Nation of Change: In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Charles "Koch cites the following line [from a letter by Thomas Jefferson]: 'The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.' ... Jefferson wasn't saying that the government takes your liberty, but that liberty is lost when citizens become passive in the face of infringements on their rights.... Charles Koch may not understand Thomas Jefferson, but Thomas Jefferson would have understood Charles Koch very well. It was Jefferson, after all, who said the following: 'I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.'"

Ben Terris of the Washington Post: "About 600 of George H.W. Bush's closest friends, administration officials, political allies and family members headed to his presidential library in [College Station,] Texas this past weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his presidency. Familiar faces such as former secretary of state James Baker, ex-chief of staff John Sununu, and onetime vice president Dan Quayle spent the time reminiscing about their glory days, eating heaping plates of barbecue and listening to live country music played by Clay Walker and Garth Brooks."

Bruce Smith of the AP: "In a little-known chapter of American history, a federal judge who was the son of a Confederate soldier and presided in the city where the Civil War began was the first judge in the nation to write that segregated schools are unequal schools since separate but equal became the law of the land. U.S. District Judge Waites Waring's opinions in cases ranging from opening the South Carolina Democratic primary to blacks, to equal pay for teachers and school desegregation made him a pariah in his hometown in the segregated South. A cross was burned in his yard, bricks were thrown through his windows and he received death threats."

David Carr of the New York Times has some questions for Comcast as its reps appear before a Senate committee to defend Comcast's proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable.

What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true? -- Chemist Sherwood Rowland, ca. 1970s ...

... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker: "At a meeting in Yokohama, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest update on the looming crisis that is global warming. Only this time it isn't just looming.... Composed in a language that might be called High Committee, the report is nevertheless hair-raising.... Currently, instead of discouraging fossil-fuel use, the U.S. government underwrites it, with tax incentives for producers worth about four billion dollars a year.... The fact that so much time has been wasted standing around means that the problem of climate change is now much more difficult to deal with than it was when it was first identified."

Presidential Race

Hamlet, Enters Right. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "...Jeb Bush signaled on Sunday the kind of campaign he would mount if he ran for president: one arguing against ideological purity tests while challenging party orthodoxy on issues like immigration and education.... He said he would decide by the end of the year, in part on whether he thought that with a 'hopeful' message, he could avoid 'the vortex of a mud fight.'" ...

... Philip Rucker & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: Meanwhile, other GOP presidential hopefuls are "study[ing] up on issues and cultivat[ing] ties to pundits and luminaries from previous administrations." ...

... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker has a long piece on this guy:

... Here Steve Peoples of the AP looks at what the prettiest boy in the GOP beauty contest -- Marco Rubio -- is doing to bolster his presidential creds.

Congressional Races

Juan Williams in the Hill: "Republicans want this year’s elections to be a repeat of 2010, a referendum on Obama and ObamaCare. They have no Plan B.... Meanwhile, Democratic messaging is picking up speed by forcing Republicans to cast votes against raising the minimum wage and blocking efforts to help the long-term unemployed. The top political prognosticators have rightly said this looks like a bad year for Democrats on Capitol Hill. But between the early success of the ACA and the introduction of the punishing Ryan budget, the GOP had a tough 24 hours on April Fools' Day. Early reports of the Democrats' demise are starting to look like hype."

Beyond the Beltway

Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic interviews/spars with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Steven M. Mazzacane of the Branford Seven: Sources say "... Ted Kennedy Jr. will run for [Connecticut's] 12^th district [senate] seat, a seat now held by Democrat Ed Meyer. Meyer is retiring."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Under the watchful eye of Russian state television, several hundred pro-Russian demonstrators in the city of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, a region of millions, declared on Monday that they were forming an independent republic and urged President Vladimir V. Putin to send troops to the region as a peacekeeping force, even though there are no obvious threats to peace in the area." ...

... Washington Post: "In Washington, the Obama administration expressed deep skepticism that the scattered uprisings and building takeovers in cities such as Donetsk and Kharkiv have been spontaneous. 'There is strong evidence suggesting some of these demonstrators were paid,' said Jay Carney...." ...

... AP: "Secretary of State John Kerry agreed Monday to meet with top diplomats from Russia, Ukraine and the European Union in a new push to calm tensions in eastern Ukraine, as the White House threatened further sanctions if Moscow intervenes."

War at Sea. AFP: "China showed off its new aircraft carrier to US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday, allowing him a first-hand look at a symbol of its growing military prowess. Hagel arrived in the port city of Qingdao, kicking off a three-day tour of China with a visit to the carrier at Yuchi naval base. He was the first foreigner allowed aboard the vessel by the often secretive People's Liberation Army (PLA), officials said." ...

... AP: "The U.S. will deploy two additional ballistic missile defense destroyers to Japan by 2017 as part of an effort to bolster protection from North Korean missile threats, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday."

New York Times: "Mickey Rooney, the exuberant entertainer who led a roller-coaster life -- the world's top box-office star at 19 as the irrepressible Andy Hardy, a bankrupt has-been in his 40s, a comeback kid on Broadway as he neared 60 -- died on Sunday. He was 93 and lived in Westlake Village, Calif.

Washington Post: " An Australian navy vessel searching for a missing Malaysian passenger jet has picked up deep-sea acoustic signals 'consistent' with those emitted by an airplane's black box, the leader of the multinational search operation said Monday."

AFP: "Last-ditch talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on salvaging a teetering, US-brokered peace process ended without a breakthrough Sunday, Palestinian sources told AFP."