The Commentariat -- Oct. 29, 2013

Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "A federal judge in Texas on Monday blocked an important part of the state's restrictive new abortion law, which would have required doctors performing the procedure to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The decision, one day before the provision was to take effect, prevented a major disruption of the abortion clinics in Texas. It was a victory for abortion rights groups and clinics that said the measure served no medical purpose and could force as many as one-third of the state's 36 abortion clinics to close. But the court upheld a second measure, requiring doctors to use a particular drug protocol in nonsurgical, medication-induced abortions that doctors called outdated and too restrictive." Here's the text of the ruling. ...

... P.S. Rick Perry is still a jerk. ...

... Jeffrey Toobin & Jake Tapper of CNN discuss the judge's ruling:

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: Today House Republicans will question Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development & implementation of Healthcare.gov. ...

... Kevin Drum points out that the "sticker shock" sometimes associated with ObamaCare -- when people discover their new policy will cost more than their old policy -- is often deceiving. The new policy costs more because it provides more coverage. Drum cites a pregnant woman who complained of her premiums almost trebling, but her old policy most certainly didn't cover her pregnancy & delivery; the new policy does. And must. ...

     ... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: AND under the new law, the woman's pregnancy cannot be used against her as a "pre-existing condition," something insurance underwriters have been doing for years. Volsky has more. ...

... Kate Pickert of Time: "The Obama Administration released a report late Monday showing that a significant share of young, single Americans will be able to get inexpensive coverage under the [ACA], sometimes for less than $50 a month. But the report's conclusions only apply to subset of the uninsured young people, leaving unanswered the overall effect of the law." ** CW: The report is here. Hilariously, as of 9 am today, the HHS report was not readable (all except the first letter of every line of text is off the page), likely because of a coding error.

... Joan McCarter on the right's new War on Sick People. Coming soon to a town hall near you. ...

... Michael Scherer of Time: "A security flaw in the original design of HealthCare.gov that could have disclosed e-mail and other account information to hackers was eliminated Monday during an overnight fix...." ...

I'm concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That if you're poor, somehow you're shiftless and lazy. You know what? The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A. -- Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), speaking of Republican lawmakers

John Judis of the New Republic predicts the Tea Party is done for & its adherents will drift toward other nutso groups. Judis writes, "I would estimate that the people who actively participate in Tea Party groups number no more than 75,000 -- considerably less than 1 percent of likely Republican voters." CW: If he's correct, that's astounding -- that 75,000 bitter, ignorant loons could jam up an entire nation. ...

... Anna Palmer of Politico: "Mitch McConnell ... stood up over the weekend and said he wanted to address the 'elephant in the room' at a fundraising retreat in Sea Island, Ga. Speaking before roughly 300 K Streeters and big donors, McConnell said Republicans will not come close to defaulting on the nation's debts or shutting down the government early next year when stop-gap government funding and the debt ceiling are slated to be voted on again.... McConnell and [Sen. John] Cornyn [R-Texas] were very specific about directing their fire at groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, whom they believe have actively misled donors about what is legislatively achievable in order to raise money off of their frustrations, according to another attendee." CW: McConnell is facing a Tea Party challenger in 2014; Cornyn has no serious winger opposition. ...

... NEW. Mario Trujillo of the Hill: "A group of Senate Democrats is slated Tuesday to introduce a plan allowing the president to raise the debt ceiling without the approval of Congress -- a tactic dubbed the "McConnell Rule." The plan hinges on a solution devised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) during the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff that saddled President Obama with ultimate responsibility for raising the limit. It was used again in the deal to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government earlier this month. While Congress would be able to halt the borrowing increase by a vote of disapproval, it would be subject to a presidential veto and have little chance of gaining the necessary supermajorities to override it." CW: This is something we discussed here in Comments on Reality Chex a few weeks back; I'm glad to see Democrats are taking my advice & proposing to extend the "McConnell Rule."

... Tim Egan: "Real Americans, the wind-chapped toilers so often invoked by politicians in a phony froth, lost real money from the real pain inflicted on their livelihoods by the extortionists in Congress this month.... So, who pays? ... The economic hit on millions of Americans didn't come from government -- it came from one political faction in the House of Representatives.... The states hit hardest by the shutdown, it now appears, were those where Republicans prevail." Americans can't sue the government, can't sue the Tea Party, can't sue Ted Cruz -- for the income they lost during the shutdown. The only place they can make the Congressional miscreants pay is at the ballot box.

CW: Rand Paul Is Still Insane. Here's the headline on Philip Elliot's AP story: "Rand Paul warns eugenics on horizon unless conservatives stand up against abortion rights." I rest my case. (The story also covers the McAuliffe-Cuccinelli race for governor of Virginia.) ..

... It seems Dr. Randy gets his science education (and his fear of the future) from the movies. ...

... CW: I thought Akhilleus was kidding us. (See today's Comments.) Let's be clear -- you cannot reason with these people.

Posner for the (Self-)Defense. In a New Republic piece, Judge Richard Posner says all his critics misunderstood him when he suggested he made a mistake in approving Indiana's voter suppression law. Of course he skips the important criticism -- that he placed the onus on the wrong party. Pretty pathetic. And his claim that he had no evidence is bogus; see Justice Souter's dissent (linked in the October 27 Commentariat) in the Supreme Court case for a thorough reading of the evidence. ...

... AND More Weasling. Jack Gershman of the Wall Street Journal: The Huffington Post asked Posner, "So do you think that you and the court got this one wrong?" (speaking of the Indiana case). Posner replied, "Yes, absolutely." Now Posner is claiming maybe he didn't hear the question or misinterpreted it or the dog ate his brain. This guy is a judge! He would laugh a lawyer out of court for claiming that "yes, absolutely" means "not really." ...

... Dahlia Lithwick: Those voter suppression laws the GOP is so fond of may suppress the votes of more conservative women than of liberal women. Why? Because conservative women are more likely than liberals to change their names when they marry. CW: The Texas law is astounding: "... the new Texas voter ID law demands that 'constituents show original documents verifying legal proof of a name change, whether it is a marriage license, divorce decree, or court ordered change.' Photocopies will not be accepted. If you don't have those original documents, you must pay a minimum of $20 for new copies. So in some states, female voters face two hurdles -- showing they are who they claim to be and producing original documents indicating that they really are married and divorced." Ladies, do you know where your original divorce papers are? I'm not sure I ever had mine. Have you got an original marriage license handy? I don't. But, hey, it doesn't matter. I do have a certified birth certificate, & what with being a socialist-commie-liberal & all, the name on it is Marie (Middle Name) Burns. Ha!

Scott Wilson & Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "In the midst of the controversy over U.S. surveillance this summer, top intelligence officials held a briefing for President Obama at the White House -- one that would provide him with a broad inventory of programs being carried out by the National Security Agency. Some of those programs, including the collection of e-mails and other communications from overseas, had already been disclosed because of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. But Obama was also informed of at least one program whose scope surprised him: 'head of state collection.'" CW: Stories about what Obama knew & when he knew it have been flying around for the past 36 hours or so, but Wilson & Gearan's piece seems about as definitive as these things get, UFN. Definitely need Darrell Issa to get on this, tho. Also, I would like to have a head-of-state collection. Perhaps of the bobble variety. Thank god the shelf life of the Berlusconi model has expired; I'm not sure which head bobbles on that one. ...

... Update. Or Not. Ken Dilanian & Janet Stobart of the Los Angeles Times: "The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping. Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies." John McCain wants an investigation: 'Obviously, we're going to want to know exactly what the president knew and when he knew it,' McCain told reporters in Chicago," [CW:] beating Darrell Issa to the punch. Thanks to cowichan for the link. ...

     ... Or Not. Later in the L.A. Times story, there's this bit: "Obama may not have been specifically briefed on NSA operations targeting a foreign leader's cellphone or email communications, one of the officials said. 'But certainly the National Security Council and senior people across the intelligence community knew exactly what was going on, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.'" ...

     .. CW: I'm not sure why intel "people are furious" at President Obama since the WashPo story specifically states that the President doesn't fault them. What we have here are dueling CYA stories. The White House story, whether true or not, is justified. The intel leaders are crybabies, less interested in national security than in themselves -- or in harming Obama. They are the kinds of so-called whistleblowers I wouldn't mind seeing prosecuted, & I'd say the same thing if Dubya were still president. On something like this, the POTUS should be allowed plausible (or implausible) deniability. If the story comes out after s/he's out of office, there's little harm done to national security. This isn't waterboarding, for Pete's sake. It's gathering intel on world leaders whose interests are different from ours. Ed Snowden, BTW, is still a fucking traitor, & the leakers here aren't a helluva lot better. ...

... Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "President Obama is poised to order the National Security Agency to stop eavesdropping on the leaders of American allies, administration and congressional officials said Monday, responding to a deepening diplomatic crisis over reports that the agency had for years targeted the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The White House informed a leading Democratic lawmaker, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, of its plans, which grew out of a broader internal review of intelligence-gathering methods, prompted by the leak of N.S.A. documents by a former contractor, Edward J. Snowden.... The crossed wires between the White House and Ms. Feinstein were an indication of how the furor over the N.S.A.'s methods is testing even the administration's staunchest defenders.... The White House said Monday evening that no final decision had been made on the monitoring of friendly foreign leaders. But the disclosure that it is moving to prohibit it signals a landmark shift for the National Security Agency, which has had nearly unfettered powers to collect data on tens of millions of people around the world, from ordinary citizens to heads of state...." ...

... Basta. Jeremy Herb of the Hill: "Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Monday called for a 'total review' of all intelligence collection programs as she criticized the National Security Agency for spying on foreign leaders.... Feinstein has been one of the NSA's staunchest congressional defenders amid the uproar over its phone records surveillance, but she said that the spying on foreign leaders without President Obama's knowledge was a 'big problem.'" ...

... Gene Robinson on "the out-of-control NSA."

Joe Drape of the New York Times: "Penn State has agreed to pay $59.7 million to 26 sexual abuse victims of the former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky in exchange for an end to their claims against the university, the school announced Monday."

Gubernatorial Race

Laura Vozzella & Peyton Craighill of the Washington Post: "Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened a double-digit lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli II in the race for Virginia governor, in a new poll capturing increasing dissatisfaction among voters with Cuccinelli's party and his conservative views." CW: Now let's see if Virginia's new voter suppression law will help out Li'l Kenny. It might. But probably not enough.

News Lede

Washington Post: American forces are assisting local troops in African nations in an effort to capture Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army..., which "has spent years kidnapping and killing villagers ... across a wide swath of central Africa."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 28, 2013

... Buh-bye, ObamaCare Girl. Tal Kopan of Politico: the face of Healthcare.gov changes -- to an interactive graphic. ...

... The Slate staff imagine what Healthcare.gov might look like if the major tech companies had designed it, which many critics suggest is the way HHS should have gone. Here's Slate's take on the Google design; go to the link to see the other mock-ups:

... Paul Krugman: "Obamacare is an immense kludge -- a clumsy, ugly structure that more or less deals with a problem, but in an inefficient way. The thing is, such better-than-nothing-but-pretty-bad solutions have become the norm in American governance. As Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University put it in a recent essay, we've become a 'kludgeocracy.' And the main reason that is happening, I'd argue, is ideology." ...

** Michael Lind in Salon: "... the worst features of Obamacare are the very features that conservatives want to impose on all federal social policy [i.e., Medicare, Social Security]: means-testing, a major role for the states, and subsidies to private providers instead of direct public provision of health or retirement benefits. This is not surprising, because Obamacare's models are right-wing models -- the Heritage Foundation's healthcare plan in the 1990s and Mitt Romney's 'Romneycare' in Massachusetts." CW: Krugman makes the same point about Paul Ryan's plan for replacing "Medicare as we know it" in his column today. Last week I read the Konczal piece to which Lind refers -- it's here -- & didn't link it because it's a bit hard to follow unless you read closely. However, you don't have to be a genius to read it. The bottom line of all three pieces -- Lind's, Krugman's & Konczal's -- is that what people won't like about ObamaCare is the part that conservatives imposed. ...

... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic provides an honest, balanced look at how the ACA will affect health insurance premium rates -- a rundown you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. ...

We nearly killed ObamaCare. It's not dead yet, but we're not done beating on it either. -- Rep. Steve King (RTP-Iowa)

... Heather of Crooks & Liars: "You hear it on the lips of every single one of the Republican talking heads on every single Sunday news show: President Obama promised that if you liked your healthcare, you could keep it and HE LIED!!! ... Millions of Americans found out that they've been dropped from their healthcare! ... David Gregory has never come across a Republican talking point that he didn't love, embrace and swallow up whole to faithfully regurgitate to the masses. So he dutifully confronts Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida CEO Patrick Geraghty about the news that 300,000 Floridians have found their policies dropped because they fall below the minimum standards of coverage set by Obamacare. Problem was, Geraghty wasn't going to play Gregory's gotcha game with people's healthcare:

We're not cutting people. We're actually transitioning people. What we've been doing is informing folks that their plan doesn't meet the test of the essential health benefits; therefore, they have a choice of many options that we make available through the exchange. And, in fact, with subsidy, many people will be getting better plans at a lesser cost. This really is a transition. In fact, the 300,000 figure is the entire year. So it's really 40,000 people for January 1, and we're walking them through that transition.

Steve Coll of the New Yorker on the decline of the Republican party: "The Tea Party's anti-intellectualism reflects a longer, deeper decline in the Republican Party's ability to tolerate a diversity of ideas and public-policy strategies, and to adapt to American multiculturalism." ...

... ** Greg Sargent makes an important point: Tea Party Republican's idea "is that the demand that Republicans enter into conventional policy discussions is itself a political trap! ... There is probably nothing that could result from normal governing compromises between Republicans and Democrats that the Tea Party wing can ever accept." CW: Calling Tea Party radicals the Crazy Caucus is not derogatory; it's a statement of fact.

Every Fucking Bad Thing Is Obama's Fault. Steve M. of NMMNB: "... I thought I'd share this response from a Free Republic commenter to the death of Lou Reed:

The ObamaCare Death Panels in New York wouldn't give him a liver transplant so he got it done in Ohio instead. Typical liberal hypocrisy. Death Panels for thee but not for me.

     ... "I'm not quite sure how 'ObamaCare Death Panels' could kill Reed given that (a) Reed was old enough for Medicare, (b) Obamacare hasn't been fully implemented, and (c) Ohio, like New York, is part of the United States, and Obamacare is federal law, but whatever."

ABC News & the AP: "U.S. officials responded Sunday night to a report that the National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders only after an internal Obama administration review started this summer exposed the operation. An unnamed senior official told The Wall Street Journal that the White House 'cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders. Other programs have been slated for termination but haven't been phased out completely yet.'" CW: So if the project to spy on Merkel began in 2002 & Obama ended it, then I guess this one is George Bush's fault. ...

... Sarah White & Emma Pinedo of Reuters: " The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) recently tracked over 60 million calls in Spain in the space of a month, a Spanish newspaper said on Monday, citing a document which it said formed part of papers obtained from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

A Reminder from E. J. Dionne: "... here is the tea party’s greatest victory: It has made the wrong problem the center of policymaking. The wrong problem is the deficit. The right problem is sluggish growth and persistent unemployment.... By putting so much effort into negotiating a failed 'grand bargain' with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011 and subsequently agreeing to the sharp, across-the-board cuts of the 'sequester' to get out of a crisis, Obama contributed to the deficit chorus. Because of the fiscal tightening, our unemployment rate is probably a point higher than it would have been otherwise. We've done a heck of a job on the deficit, reducing it from about 10 percent of the economy in 2009 to 4 percent now. We've done badly by the jobless."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post on the strong Clinton-McAuliffe friendship. "Bill and Hillary, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, are leveraging their popularity in an all-out push to help [Terry] McAuliffe win the governorship of Virginia. On Sunday, Bill kicked off a four-day, nine-city tour of Virginia with McAuliffe, while Hillary will raise money for him this week in California." CW: Hey, McAuliffe's opponent Ken Cuccinelli has Rick Santorum (who seems to be on the campaign trail to hawk a Christianist movie he produced or something).

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker has a long piece on the assassination of President Kennedy: "An assassination should be significant for more than its atmospherics. Kennedy's should also matter for people who weren't there, because something happened in America that would not have happened had Kennedy lived."

Sarah Duggin of the National Constitution Center has a good piece on the Constitutional meaning of "natural-born citizen."

... More Fishing News from Wyoming, the State that Fined Liz Cheney for Lying about her Residence Status on Her Fishing License Application. Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) lied about their relationship when he said that the two had gone fishing. Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney, is challenging Enzi in the Wyoming Republican Senate primary." CW: How big was that fish you caught, Mike?

News Ledes

Politico: "The Obama administration is attributing Sunday outages on HealthCare.gov to technical failures by Verizon Terremark, the company operating the federal data hub."

AFP: "A South African court began sentencing Monday 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country. The 'Boeremag' organisation had planned a right-wing coup in 2002 to overthrow the post-apartheid government. The trial lasted almost a decade until the organisation's members were convicted in August last year -- the first guilty verdicts for treason since the end of apartheid in 1994."

AP: "International observers gave their stamp of approval to Georgia's presidential election on Monday, characterizing it as 'clean' and 'transparent.' Sunday's election was won easily by Giorgi Margvelashvili, a 44-year-old former university rector with limited political experience." CW: The article of course is not about the U.S. state of Georgia, which has a voter ID law requiring photo identification.

The Commentariat -- Oct. 27, 2013

CW: There are a handful of stories out there like this one by Mike Dorning of Bloomberg News: "The rocky debut of the insurance exchanges at the heart of President Barack Obama’s health-care law poses risks to his political agenda and the activist role for government that he has championed for his second term."

When a small group of folks in Congress shuts down our government to try to shut down Obamacare, and we watch as our President stands strong, that's not just some political fight in Washington -- it is a battle about our most fundamental values and aspirations. -- Michelle Obama, speaking at the Women's Leadership Forum Conference in Washington, D.C.

... AND speaking of the First Lady, it seems she is totally responsible for the Healthcare.gov debacle because a former BLACK classmate of hers is a top executive at CGI, one of the companies that is responsible for coding the troubled Website & that, ah, gave more to Congressional Republicans -- Darrell Issa -- than to Democrats & whose executives gave twice as much to Mitt Romney as to Barack Obama. Steve M. of NMMNB seems less than impressed with the Daily Caller's big "scoop." Also, the CGI exec Michelle Obama may or may not know is still BLACK. ...

... A Tax the GOP Loves. Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: "GOP senators balked when Democrats proposed delaying a new temporary fee on everyone covered by health insurance. So employers, insurance companies and other health plan sponsors are in line to pay $63 a person next year for everyone who has coverage.... The temporary fee on people with health insurance is designed to raise $25 billion over the next three years. The money will provide a cushion for insurers from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering previously uninsured people with medical problems.... GOP senators complained the delay was basically a favor for labor unions...."

Darlene Superville of the AP: "The Obama administration is stressing that information submitted while signing up for coverage under the new health care law will not be used to enforce immigration law. That's always been the practice, but lingering fear among some immigrants that personal details could be used against them led the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to clarify."

Teabaggers Say the Darnest Things

There was absolutely no reason, whatsoever, for this administration to block access to the World War Two Memorial or the Lincoln Memorial. It's never ever been done in a government shutdown prior to this administration doing so. -- Rep. Paul Broun (RTP-Ga.), running for U.S. Senate *

* The Lincoln Memorial was closed in the last government shutdown (1995). The WWII was completed in 2004, 9 years after the last shutdown. Thanks to Barbarossa for the link.

GOP Tea Party Push-Back

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "As he seeks a third term in the U.S. Senate, Lamar Alexander [R-Tenn.] is doing something few other incumbent Republicans have tried recently: Instead of running scared of the tea party, he's running hard against it.... Independent analysts and strategists in both parties think Alexander has a good chance of winning his primary against a low-profile state representative.... [Rather than following the usual GOP playbook of running away from his conservative votes,] he has mounted a vigorous defense of recent votes in which he joined with Democrats to approve a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws and a farm bill that spends billions on food aid for poor people and some cash payments for farmers and farming conglomerates...." ...

... Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "A Republican congressman from a heavily Hispanic district is breaking ranks from his party to join Democrats in an eleventh-hour push for a broad immigration overhaul before the end of the year. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) plans to sign on as the lone GOP member with 185 Democrats to co-sponsor a plan that would give millions of unauthorized immigrants the chance to attain citizenship."

Kim Barker of ProPublica, in Salon: "Two dark money groups linked to conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have paid a record $1 million in fines to California to settle allegations that the combined $15 million they spent on two ballot proposals in the state was not properly disclosed. The civil settlement, announced Thursday afternoon in Sacramento, caps a year of investigation into the activities of the two Arizona groups, Americans for Responsible Leadership and the Center to Protect Patient Rights."

Lisa Carricaburu of the Salt Lake Tribune: "Voter-suppression laws that aim to undermine coalitions like those that elected President Barack Obama are the No. 1 issue facing Americans, the president of the nation's largest civil rights organization said Friday.... Benjamin Jealous, NAACP president and chief executive..., said the nation's power structure has observed the way blacks, Latinos and students of all colors are voting and 'they realize quite simply that the clock is running out on their strategy for power.'" ...

... Judge Posner Regrets. Jealous's speech brings to mind this excellent piece by law professor Fran Quigley on Indiana's voter ID law, declared constitutional by the U.S. Seventh Circuit & upheld by the Supreme Court. Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the opinion in 2007 now says he was wrong. But Quigley says, rightly, that Posner is weaseling. Also weaseling, Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the decision to uphold the law & now says he was right then but wrong now (tricky!). Quigley makes the point, articulated in the Seventh Circuits dissent by Judge Terence Evans & in the Supreme Court dissent (begins on pdf page 31) of Justice David Souter, that "the right to vote is so fundamental that a new voting restriction should not be approved unless the government can show it is necessary to serve important governmental interests." Instead the courts placed the burden of proof on the ACLU to show harm, which, BTW, they did, as Souter recounts. This summary by Jesse Wegman of the New York Times is good, too. Also, here's Paul Smith of the American Constitution Society on the Posner weasel.

Alina Selyukh & Greg Savoy of Reuters: "Protesters marched on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday to protest the U.S. government's online surveillance programs, whose vast scope was revealed this year by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.... Estimates varied on the size of the march, with organizers saying more than 2,000 attended. U.S. Capitol Police said they do not typically provide estimates on the size of demonstrations." ...

Angela's Secrets. AFP: "US President Barack Obama was personally informed of mobile phone tapping against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which may have begun as early as 2002, German media reported Sunday. Bild am Sonntag newspaper quoted US intelligence sources as saying that National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander had briefed Obama on the operation against Merkel in 2010.... The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported Saturday that Obama had told Merkel during their call that he had been unaware of any spying against her. It did not cite its sources." ...

... Gregor Schmitz of Der Speigel on Merkel's "delicate dance" re: U.S. spying on her & on other allies. ...

... Bryan McManus of AFP: "German spy chiefs will travel to the United States next week to demand answers following allegations that US intelligence has been tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone, as a row over US snooping threatened to hurt transatlantic ties."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: President Obama & National Security Advisor Susan Rice set a more modest U.S. agenda for dealing with the Middle East. "The president's goal, said Ms. Rice, who discussed the review for the first time in an interview last week, is to avoid having events in the Middle East swallow his foreign policy agenda, as it had those of presidents before him."

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: The pending $13 billion settlement between JPMorganChase & federal agencies "is a refresher course in how far-off the rails our largest financial institutions veered in the years leading up to the mess. It also stands as a reminder that not enough has been done to fix the flawed incentives in our sprawling and powerful financial system. This applies to both the private sector -- the mighty banks -- and their supposed minders, the regulators." ...

CW: Morgenson's "refresher course" & "lessons learned" are quite general. Matt Taibbi, on the other hand, tells it like it is. A very good read. ...

... Doing God's Work. Susan Craig of the New York Times: Goldman Sachs is "polishing its reputation" with charitable projects. ...

... Steven Perlstein of the Washington Post introduces Marty Sullivan, corporate tax policy wonk.

Steve Benen has the religious hits of the week in his post "This Week in God." ...

... AND there's this from Kerry Eleveld in Salon: "Evangelicals ... are fast becoming the fringe of the GOP, based on recently released research from focus groups conducted by Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Erica Seifert for Democracy Corps.... Both moderate and Tea Party Republicans view the Evangelical agenda as a total distraction."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Syria submitted a formal declaration of its chemical weapons program and plans for destroying its arsenal three days ahead of the deadline, the international chemical weapons watchdog said on Sunday."

New York Times: "Lou Reed, the singer-songwriter and guitarist whose work with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s had an impact on generations of rock musicians, and who remained a powerful if polarizing force for the rest of his life, died on Sunday at his home in Southampton, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 71." Reed's Rolling Stone obituary is here. An "American Masters" program on Reed is here.

Mystery Barge. CNET: "Something big and mysterious is rising from a floating barge at the end of Treasure Island, a former Navy base in the middle of San Francisco Bay.... It's unclear what's inside the structure, which stands about four stories high and was made with a series of modern cargo containers.... Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But ... it's all but certain that Google is the entity that is building the massive structure that's in plain sight, but behind tight security." ...

     ... UPDATE. From the Oct. 23 Portland, Maine Press Herald: another Mystery Barge, this one in the Portland, Maine harbor, also speculated to be a Google site. Apparently Portland is not the barge's final destination. Thanks to Janice K. for the link. ...

AFP: "An Afghan soldier shot and injured two NATO coalition troops before being killed in a dispute at a flagship officer-training academy near Kabul that only opened a week ago, officials said Sunday. NATO officials confirmed the shooting at the British-run Afghan National Army Officer Academy, which has been set up to produce a new generation of professional military leaders as the Afghan army takes on the Taliban."

Reuters: "Iran has not halted its most sensitive uranium enrichment work, a senior Iranian parliamentarian said, contradicting a statement by another lawmaker last week."

AFP: " Social Democrats edged out a new populist party to win Czech elections on Saturday as voters angered by years of right-wing graft and austerity veered left, full results showed. However, the fragmented outcome of the two-day ballot leaves few options for a stable majority government, analysts warned, and the parties will have to embark upon coalition talks."

AFP: "Georgia voted in a presidential poll Sunday with a loyalist of billionaire Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili favourite to replace his larger-than-life nemesis Mikheil Saakashvili at the helm of the ex-Soviet state. The vote heralds the end of pro-Western Saakashvili's second and last term and a year of his painful political cohabitation with bete noire Ivanishvili, who has promised to also step down in the coming weeks." ...

     ... New York Times UPDATE: "Georgian voters chose a new president on Sunday, but with billionaire Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili planning to step down shortly in favor of an unnamed successor, it remained unclear who would hold the prime minister's post, now the most powerful political office in the country. In balloting to replace President Mikheil Saakashvili, who catapulted to fame as leader of the peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003, Mr. Ivanishvili's handpicked candidate, Giorgi Margvelashvili, a former deputy prime minister and education minister, was headed to a decisive victory, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls commissioned by the country's two main television stations."