The Commentariat -- Sept. 7, 2013

"In his weekly address, President Obama makes the case for limited and targeted military action to hold the Assad regime accountable for its violation of international norms prohibiting the use of chemical weapons." -- White House

... Secretary of State John Kerry makes the moral case for a limited Syrian strike in a Huffington Post op-ed. ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "Warning that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has barely put a dent in his chemical weapons stockpile, President Obama's new envoy to the United Nations [Samantha Power] said on Friday that a failure to intervene in Syria would 'give a green light to outrages that will threaten our security and haunt our conscience' for decades to come." ...

... ** Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "With the United States threatening to attack Syria, U.S. and allied intelligence services are still trying to work out who ordered the poison gas attack on rebel-held neighborhoods near Damascus. No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward. While U.S. officials say Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons strike even if he did not directly order it, they have not been able to fully describe a chain of command for the August 21 attack in the Ghouta area east of the Syrian capital." ...

... Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "A senior State Department official said on Friday that the military strike the United States is planning would not fundamentally alter the military balance in Syria and would likely be followed by a prolonged 'war of attrition' among the Syrian combatants." ...

The fact is [Syrian President] Bashar Assad has massacred 100,000 people. The conflict is spreading.... The Russians are all in, the Iranians are all in, and it's an unfair fight. And no one wants American boots on the ground. Nor will there be American boots on the ground because there would be an impeachment of the president if they did that. -- John McCain, at a townhall meeting Thursday ...

... To Strike or Not to Strike...." Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: President Obama "wants an answer to his question: What, after nearly a dozen years of war, is the country willing to bear?" ...

... Chris Cillizza & Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "A majority of House members are now on the record as either against or leaning against authorizing President Obama to use military force against Syria, according to the latest whip count from the Washington Post." ...

... Dan Nowicki of the Arizona Republic: "Sen. John McCain felt the heat of opposition to U.S. military intervention in Syria on Thursday during a town-hall meeting in Phoenix that exposed the emotions and ethic and religious tensions connected to crisis in the Middle East." ...

... Charles Pierce has a good anti-war column masquerading as a grand slam against Michael Gerson, WashPo columnist & former Bush scribe. CW: One would think that Bushies would have the sense to keep their mouths shut about the wisdom of military intervention in the Middle East, what with how things turned out when they tried it. (In fact, Bush & Cheney have not commented on the plans to attack Syria.) But Gerson is of the impression that we should read & heed his words of wisdom & prognostications on the proposed strike against Syria. ...

Philip "Gourevitch and John Cassidy join host Dorothy Wickenden on this week's Political Scene podcast to discuss how we got to the brink of intervention and what other options might still be available to the President":

Mark Hosenball: "U.S. spy agencies said on Friday that the latest media revelations based on leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden will likely damage U.S. and allied intelligence efforts." ...

... Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor: "The New York Times has come under fire in the past for agreeing to government requests to hold back sensitive stories or information, but it bucked such requests in publishing a front-page article in Friday's paper. The executive editor, Jill Abramson, told me that while she and the managing editor Dean Baquet went to Washington to meet with officials and gave them 'a respectful hearing,' the decision to publish was 'not a particularly anguished one.' ... The encryption article -- an important story, published courageously -- is a very welcome development." ...

... ** Kevin Drum: "Snowden Disclosures Finally Hit 12 on a Scale of 1 to 10.... [the Times decryption story] is truly information that plenty of bad guys probably didn't know, and probably didn't have much of an inkling about.... But now that's all changed. Now every bad guy in the world knows for a fact that commercial crypto won't help them, and the ones with even modest smarts will switch to strong crypto techniques that remain unbreakable. It's still a pain in the ass, but it's not that big a pain in the ass. For what it's worth, this is about the point where I get off the Snowden train.... It's not clear to me how disclosing NSA's decryption breakthroughs benefits the public debate much." ...

... BUT Ryan Cooper of Washington Monthly: "Instead of even a token effort to target their surveillance to suspected bad guys, [NSA personnel] just take as much as they can possibly get and say 'trust us.' As I said previously, most of these efforts involve weakening crypto implementation protocols throughout the entire internet and building backdoors into commercial software. People might believe the NSA won’t abuse that capability, but I think history shows no one is to be trusted with that kind of secret power. Furthermore, there's no reason in principle that the security holes the NSA is blasting everywhere will only be used by them.... So I think the tradeoff here was definitely worth it." ...

... Simon Romero of the New York Times: "President Obama said Friday that he was seeking to ease tensions with the leaders of Latin America's two largest nations, Brazil and Mexico, over reports that the National Security Agency had spied not only on their nations, but on them and their inner circles as well." ...

... Craig Timberg of the Washington Post: "Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday. The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry.... Google's encryption initiative, initially approved last year, was accelerated in June as the tech giant struggled to guard its reputation as a reliable steward of user information amid controversy about the NSA's PRISM program...."

Ylan Mui & Amrita Jayakuma of the Washington Post: "Americans are participating in the workforce at the lowest level in 35 years..., as lackluster job growth fails to offset the droves of people who have given up looking for work. According to the Labor Department, the economy added a disappointing 169,000 jobs in August. In addition, the government lowered its estimate of the number of jobs created in June and July by 74,000 positions.... Government data showed that only 63.2 percent of working-age Americans have a job or are looking for one, the lowest proportion since 1978. Nearly 90 million people are now considered out of the labor force, up 1.7 million from August 2012." ...

... Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: "Ignore the headlines...; in almost all the particulars, you can find signs that this job market is weaker than it appeared just a few months ago, and maybe getting worse." ...

     ... CW: if you didn't read Krugman on this yesterday, read his column now: "... U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure." (BTW, I see a "Stop Summers" subtext here.) ...

... ** Joe Stiglitz, in a New York Times column, does not rely on subtext when he explains why President Obama should nominate Janet Yellin as Fed chair instead of Larry Summers. Read this. Send it to Obama (I think it appears only in the Times online). Obama may not know much about economics (and really, he doesn't), but he can grasp the compelling case Stiglitz makes.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., has a bold plan to reverse organized labor’s long slide: let millions of nonunion workers -- and perhaps environmental, immigrant and other advocacy groups -- join the labor federation."

New York Times Editors: "The Group of 20 nations on Friday took an important step toward curbing tax avoidance by committing to exchanging information automatically on tax matters by the end of 2015."

The more I read and the more I listen, the more apparent it is that our society suffers from an alarming degree of public ignorance. -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (thanks to James S. for the link)

... CW: There is a simple partial solution to this, & I don't know that anyone has ever suggested it: require students to pass the same test non-citizens must pass to become citizens. (ironically, the current test has mistakes in it -- a few "correct" answers are actually incorrect, but you would still pass with flying colors if you got these questions "wrong.") Many states require students to take competency tests in several fields -- math, reading comprehension, writing, etc. -- to graduate from high school. Just add civics. ...

... OR, the kids could watch "Law & Order" ...

The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable search & seizure. It doesn't say anything about being neat. -- Det. Joe Fontana (a/k/a Dennis Farina, RIP), in an old episode of "Law & Order," to a suspect complaining about the mess detectives were making during their search of his home

Of course Fontana's signature line -- 'We're authorized' -- just might give the kids the wrong impression. -- Constant Weader ...

... Maryclaire Dale of the AP: Justice Ruth Bader "Ginsburg said equality has always been central to the Constitution, even if society has only applied it to minorities -- be they women, blacks or gays -- over time. 'So I see the genius of our Constitution, and of our society, is how much more embracive we have become than we were at the beginning,' Ginsburg said in a far-ranging discussion of her work at the National Constitution Center ..." in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Texas Republican Rep. Bill Flores said at a town hall forum Thursday that if the House of Representatives had an impeachment vote, President Obama would be impeached. Flores said such a vote would be futile because it would fail in the Senate." ...

... Hunter of Daily Kos: "If this sounds very familiar it's because it is: Texas (of course) Republican (duh) Blake Farenthold said much the same thing only a few weeks ago. Since then we've had Rep. Kerry Bentivolio saying that he's held meetings with lawyers about impeachment and is all set to go, except for the knowing what to impeach him for part, eternal crackpot Sen. Tom Coburn ... has told voters that Obama is 'getting perilously close' to impeachment, and Canadian man with obvious presidential ambitions Sen. Ted Cruz mused that it is 'a good question.' If only there weren't so many pesky Democrats who wouldn't vote for it, and so many damn members of the press asking what exactly was the impeachable part, they would have this in the bag." (Links, expect the first, are original.)

Senatorial Race

Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: "Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, the Democratic candidate for United States Senate in New Jersey, is cutting all ties to an Internet start-up that he founded with money from well-connected figures in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, his campaign announced on Friday. Mr. Booker's association with the Internet firm, Waywire, had become an embarrassment for him even as he seems poised to capture the Senate seat in a special election next month."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Voters on Saturday delivered a stinging defeat to the Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, bringing an end to six tumultuous years of leadership and ushering into power a strong conservative Liberal-National coalition. The opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who made his name as a relentless critic of the policies of Mr. Rudd and his predecessor, Julia Gillard, is now in line to become Australia's 27th prime minister when he is sworn in next week...."

Washington Post: "Rochus Misch, who spent five years as Adolf Hitler's square-jawed bodyguard, courier, telephone operator and all-around attendant and was widely believed to be the last surviving veteran of the Nazi leader's bunker as the Soviet army closed in on Berlin, died Sept. 5 at 96."

Washington Post: "NASA's newest robotic explorer rocketed into space late Friday in an unprecedented moonshot from Virginia. The LADEE spacecraft soared aboard an unmanned Minotaur rocket a little before midnight." ...

     ... Space.com Update: " After a near-perfect launch late Friday (Sept. 6), NASA's newest moon probe has encountered its first glitch on the road to Earth's nearest neighbor.... Although the launch was nearly flawless, LADEE ran into some trouble right after its separation from the Minotaur V. The probe's onboard computer shut down LADEE's reaction wheels, which are used to stabilize the attitude of the probe in space, after noticing that they were drawing too much current. But there's no reason to panic, NASA officials said."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 6, 2013

Peter Baker & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "President Obama ran into an impasse in his bid to rally international backing for a military strike on Syria as world leaders wrapped up a summit meeting here Friday deeply divided over the right response to what the Americans have called the deadliest nerve gas attack in decades." ...

... ** In his news conference, President Obama said he would be addressing the American people from the White House re: Syria. Sounds as if he's planning a strike sooner rather than later. ...

... Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit here Friday, as the U.S. leader used the final day of the summit to seek broader international support for a U.S.-led military strike on Syria, backing that he hopes would help legitimize military action in the minds of U.S. lawmakers and the American public."

No Surprise Here. Nicole Perlroth, et al., of the New York Times, with ProPublica & the Guardian: "The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents. The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world..." ...

... James Ball, et al., of the Guardian: "US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden." ...

... Worse than the NSA. Martha Mendoza of the AP: "Attorneys suing Google say the firm violates privacy and takes personal property by electronically scanning the contents of people's Gmail accounts and then targeting ads to them." CW: Plus, I see I'm a co-conspirator in this scam as Google g-mails the comments to Reality Chex. Yesterday P. D. Pepe wrote, in part, "@Unwashed: It's from the Latin which literally means to whom (is it) a benefit? Let's all take a guess at whose wheels would be greased." So I guess she should expect to start getting ads for bar soap, Berlitz, tires & STP. Sorry.

David Sanger & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad has been moving troops and equipment used to employ chemical weapons while Congress debates whether to authorize military action. Mr. Obama, officials said, is now determined to put more emphasis on the 'degrade' part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria -- to 'deter and degrade' Mr. Assad's ability to use chemical weapons. That means expanding beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list developed with French forces...." ...

     ... Update: President Obama said in his presser of this piece, "That report is inaccurate." ...

... Stuart Williams of AFP: "World leaders at the G20 summit on Friday failed to bridge their bitter divisions over US plans for military action against the Syrian regime, as Washington slammed Moscow for holding the UN Security Council 'hostage' over the crisis. Despite not being on the original agenda of the summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Saint Petersburg, the leaders discussed the Syria crisis into the early hours of the morning over dinner amid the splendour of a former imperial palace." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama arrived at the Group of 20 summit [in St. Petersburg, Russia,] on Thursday on the defensive as he sought international support for a strike on Syria and confronted the meeting's host and chief skeptic, President Vladimir V. Putin, after a period of deepening tension between the two." ...

... Philip Rucker & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: President "Obama will be doing outreach to key lawmakers on Capitol Hill during his two-day visit to Russia for the Group of 20 summit, deputy national security adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes told reporters here Thursday. On Wednesday, during his visit to Sweden, Obama made five calls to a bipartisan group of senators as part of the administration-wide effort to lobby lawmakers on Syria, Rhodes said." ...

... Richard Simon of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama's hopes of winning congressional approval for a U.S. military strike on Syria could come down to the persuasion skills of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal who was a leading critic of the war in Iraq." ...

... Kasie Hunt of NBC News: "Lawmakers were shown a gruesome video depicting dozens of people killed by nerve gas as part of a classified, closed-door briefing Thursday laying out the Obama administration's case for action against Syrian President Bashar Assad." ...

... ** Tim Egan: "You may think George W. Bush is at home in his bathtub, painting pictures of his toenails, but in fact he's the biggest presence in the debate over what to do in Syria." Read the whole post.

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "... watching Republican pols and conservative pundits get on their high horses about Syria has been pretty nauseating. These are guys who mostly have never met a war they didn't like, and until a few months ago were practically baying at the moon to demand that that President Obama stop diddling around and get serious about aiding the rebels and taking out the monstrous Bashar al-Assad. But now? ... They talk piously about the value of multilateral support; the need to give diplomacy a chance; the perils of regional blowback; the lessons of Iraq; and the fear of escalation if Assad retaliates. You'd think they'd all just returned from a Save the Whales conference in Marin County."

... AFP: "Three Russian warships crossed Turkey's Bosphorus Strait Thursday en route to the eastern Mediterranean, near the Syrian coast, amid concern in the region over potential US-led strikes in response to the Damascus regime's alleged use of chemical weapons. The SSV-201 intelligence ship Priazovye, accompanied by the two landing ships Minsk and Novocherkassk passed through the Bosphorus known as the Istanbul strait that separates Asia from Europe, an AFP photographer reported."

... Michael Holden of Reuters: "Britain has new evidence that chemical weapons were used in an attack on the Syrian capital Damascus, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday. Cameron said scientists at Britain's Porton Down military research facility had analyzed samples taken from an alleged gas attack on a rebel-held Damascus neighborhood on August 21 and concluded they had tested positive for the sarin nerve agent." ...

** Paul Krugman: "Right now, Washington seems divided between Republicans who denounce any kind of government action -- who insist that all the policies and programs that mitigated the crisis actually made it worse and Obama loyalists who insist that they did a great job because the world didn't totally melt down. Obviously, the Obama people are less wrong than the Republicans. But, by any objective standard, U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure."

If you want to know the real reason Republicans oppose ObamaCare, Charles Pierce will enlighten you. It's an existential threat! ...

... Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post: "As new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation" finds that under the ACA insurance exchanges, 'premiums will vary significantly across the country..., [but] they are generally lower than expected.'"

CW: I know it's difficult to win the prize for Biggest Hypocrite in Congress, but I'd give it to Stephen Fincher (RTP-Tenn.), a strong opponent of food stamps, which are authorized via the omnibus farm bill, because -- sez he -- lazy people who "are unwilling to work" shouldn't eat, and "The role of citizens, of Christianity, of humanity, is to take care of each other, not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country." Steve Benen: "Fincher collected nearly $3.5 million in taxpayer-financed farm subsidies from 1999 to 2012, including roughly $70,000 just last year in the form of direct payments from Washington."

Presidential Election 2012

Mitt Romney Was Right about Everything! McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: "... Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet. From his widely mocked warnings about a hostile Russia to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate's canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication -- and remorse -- to Romney's friends, supporters, and former advisers." ...

... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos lays to rest the Romney-Was-Right meme. CW: In addition, I'd ask -- Who besides the Voice of the Angel Moroni could possibly have predicted that Putin would continue to be an asshole, that there would be trouble in the Middle East & Africa or that ObamaCare would be difficult to implement? ...

... "Mitt the Prophet." Ed Kilgore: "... please, don’t pretend that the heavily financed mendacious shuffle which the Romney campaign represented from beginning to end was in fact some sort of prophetic stance." CW: Yeah, if you flip-flop on every issue, some of your flips or flops are bound to be right. "All of the above" does not a soothsayer make.

Rose-Colored Ronnie

I know that President Reagan would have never let this happen. He would stand up to this. And President Obama -- the only reason he is consulting with Congress, he wants to blame somebody for his lack of resolve. We have to think like President Reagan would do and he would say chemical use is unacceptable. -- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee ...

... Steve Benen: "... Reagan ... did largely the opposite of what Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said he did with regards to the use of chemical weapons.... Indeed, after Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, Reagan dispatched ... wait for it ... Donald Rumsfeld to help solidify the relationship between the Reagan administration and the brutal, murderous Iraqi dictator. Rumsfeld gladly shook hands with Hussein after he used chemical weapons to kill Iraqi dissidents." Read the whole post for a recap of Reagan's looking the other way when our Friend in Baghdad used chemical weapons to commit genocide.

One Way to Get Paid Vacations. Ann Marimow & Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: "Over the past 12 years, John C. Beale was often away from his job as a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency. He cultivated an air of mystery and explained his lengthy absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work, including for the CIA. For years, apparently, no one checked. Now, Beale is charged with stealing nearly $900,000 from the EPA by receiving pay and bonuses he did not deserve. He faces up to three years in prison."

News Ledes

Bloomberg News: "Payrolls in the U.S. climbed less than projected in August after smaller gains the prior two months, indicating companies are being deliberate in their hiring as they wait for a pickup in demand. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell as more people left the labor force. The gain of 169,000 workers last month followed a revised 104,000 rise in July that was smaller than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today...."

AP: "An Arizona woman who has spent more than two decades on death row after being convicted of having her 4-year-old son killed for an insurance payout is expected to be released on Friday while she awaits a retrial of the case that made her one of the state's most reviled inmates. Judge Rosa Mroz of Maricopa County Superior Court set Debra Milke's bond at $250,000 a day earlier, saying there's no direct evidence linking her to her son's death other than a purported confession to a detective. And, the judge said, the validity of that confession is in doubt."

AFP: "Suspected Taliban in Afghanistan shot dead Indian author Sushmita Banerjee, whose book about her dramatic escape from the militants in the 90s became a Bollywood film, police said on Thursday. Police in insurgency-hit Paktika province, in the east of Afghanistan, said they found the body of the 49 year old on Thursday morning, after the militants dragged her out of her husband's home late in the night and shot her repeatedly."

The Commentariat -- Sept. 5, 2013

** Alex de Waal & Bridget Conley-Zilkic of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts, in a New York Times op-ed: "What's missing [in the Obama plan to strike Syria] is a political effort to seek peace. No talks are scheduled. The regional power brokers -- Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the rebels, and Iran, which backs Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad -- are at odds. American military action without a peace process involving all actors would only intensify the two-year-old war.... The only aim of intervention should be peace...." The authors incorporate the writings of William Harcourt, a/k/a "Historicus," who argued against British intervention in the American Civil War. ...

... ** Fareed Zakaria in Time: " What exactly is the goal of this military action? The Administration says it is simply to reinforce a global norm against the use of chemical weapons.... The reality is, the U.S. has now put its credibility on the line. It will find it extremely difficult to keep its actions limited in a volatile situation. And were it to succeed in ousting Assad, it would be implicated in the next phase of this war, which would almost certainly lead to chaos and the slaughter or ethnic cleansing of the Alawite sect (to which Assad belongs) and perhaps of other minorities, as happened in Iraq." Read for the last graf on George Bush Pere. ...

... C. J. Chivers of the New York Times: "... many rebels have adopted some of the same brutal and ruthless tactics as the regime they are trying to overthrow. As the United States debates whether to support the Obama administration’s proposal that Syrian forces should be attacked for using chemical weapons against civilians, [a] video [showing rebels killing soldiers in cold blood], shot in April, joins a growing body of evidence of an increasingly criminal environment populated by gangs of highwaymen, kidnappers and killers." CW: The page includes what I surmise is the video; I didn't click on it. ...

... Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Top intelligence officials in two Middle East countries said they have examined the potential for bioweapons use by Syria, perhaps as retaliation for Western military strikes on Damascus. Although dwarfed by the country's larger and better-known chemical weapons program, Syria's bioweapons capability could offer the Assad regime a way to retaliate because the weapons are designed to spread easily and leave few clues about their origins, the officials said." ...

... Rick Gladstone of the New York Times: "In the shadow of a confrontation over whether Syria's government had attacked civilians with internationally banned chemical munitions, a rights group, [Human Rights Watch,] reported Wednesday that Syrian armed forces had repeatedly used cluster bombs, another widely prohibited weapon, in the country's civil war." ...

... Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking House Democrats for more input in the Syria debate. In a 'Dear Colleague' letter to her caucus -- Pelosi's second in as many days -- the Democratic leader urged lawmakers to voice their concerns about President Obama's proposal for military strikes against the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Pelosi's request is part of a broader effort to formulate a resolution for Syrian intervention that can pass through the House in the face of widespread misgivings from rank-and-file members on both sides of the aisle." ...

... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "A divided Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday approved an authorization of force against the Syrian government, setting up a showdown next week in the full Senate on whether President Obama should have the authority to strike. The 10-to-7 vote showed bipartisan support for a strike, but bipartisan opposition as well. Republicans voting yes included Senators John McCain of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Democrats against the authorization included Senators Tom Udall of New Mexico and Chris Murphy of Connecticut. The Senate's newest member, Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, voted present.... The committee's bipartisan leaders pressed forward with a resolution limiting the duration and nature of military strikes, while Mr. McCain demanded more -- not less -- latitude for the military to inflict damage on the government of President Bashar al-Assad." ...

... Sahil Kapur of TPM: "Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) -- the congressman who yelled 'you lie' during President Obama's 2010 State of the Union speech -- asked Wednesday if the administration's decision to attack Syria was made to distract from other 'scandals' like Benghazi and the IRS." ...

     ... CW: over there on supposedly MSM CNN, supposedly straight reporter Jessica Yellin (Mrs. John King) defended Wilson as a MOC who genuinely mistrusted the President. ...

     ... Steve Benen: "Now, I can appreciate a wild-eyed conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but even by House GOP standards, this is just stark raving mad. First, the 'scandals' Wilson believes in don't exist; things are going fairly well for the Affordable Care Act; and sequestration was Republicans' fault." Benen notes that Wilson was joined by all-around conspiracy loon Jeff Duncan (RTP-S.C.). ...

     ... Charles Pierce comments on Duncan. ...

... Dana Milbank: "Officials say the evidence is incontrovertible that Assad used sarin gas against his people. Lawmakers emerging from secret, classified briefings seem to agree. But while members of Congress are coming around to an attack on Syria, the American public remains skeptical. Why? Maybe it's because the government won't let them in on the secret." ...

... CW: Peter Baker of the New York Times didn't mention this in the story I linked yesterday re: President Obama's joint presser in Stockholm, but it is important. Peter Nicholas & David Gautier-Villars of the Wall Street Journal: "Mr. Obama said on Wednesday that he could order strikes against Syria even if Congress doesn't authorize them, but that 'we will be stronger as a country in our response if the president and Congress does it together.'"

Elections Matter. Jeremy Herb of the Hill: "The Obama administration will begin providing veterans benefits to same-sex couples after the Justice Department said Wednesday it would not enforce a law restricting them. Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that the Justice Department would not enforce a federal statute providing benefits only to opposite-sex spouses. The administration's decision is being made in response to the Supreme Court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in June."

Explainer-in-Chief. Jason Millman of the Politico: "Former President Bill Clinton, recruited by the White House to explain the misunderstood health law, is looking to play Obamacare peacemaker. In a highly-anticipated speech from his presidential library, Clinton challenged Republicans to finally work with Democrats to improve on President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement instead of constantly trying to undermine it."

... New York Times Editors: "A new Census Bureau report documents the alarming percentages of people in Texas and Florida without health insurance. Leaders of both states should hang their heads in shame because they have been among the most resistant in the nation to providing coverage for the uninsured under the Affordable Care Act, the law that Republicans deride as 'Obamacare.'" CW: Almost all Floridians will pay for the bad behavior of America's Second-Worst Governor & his cohort, first because they have unleashed the insurance industry from rate regulation, & second because calculated into those new, higher rates will be a surcharge to cover Flordians on the George Dubya Bush Emergency Room-Only Plan. (Scott did want to accept Medicaid aid; the doofuses in the state legislature said no.)

Linda Greenhouse on a little-known Oklahoma abortion case that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this term, this one threatening early-first-term "medication abortions." CW: every time I read about men passing anti-abortion laws "to protect women," I get furiouser & furiouser.

Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post: "Current and former White House officials wary of [Larry] Summers have been reluctant to criticize him, leaving the field open for his active team of supporters. But as it becomes increasingly clear that the president is willing to nominate Summers in the face of intense opposition, that reluctance is fading.... Obama and others in the White House who support Summers were deeply impressed by his ability to navigate the financial crisis. Administration officials who endured the tumultuous crisis period -- and many people who didn't -- assume the next crisis is a matter of when, not if. Obama has confidence that Summers would be effective in handling such a crisis, while he barely knows [Janet] Yellen." CW: these "former senior officials" need to be willing to put their names to their Larry-Is-a-Dick remarks if they want me to cite them. ...

... Atrios: "If you think another financial crisis is inevitable, you're doing it wrong. They aren't earthquakes. They aren't 'acts of God.' They're a product of the system. If they're inevitable, it's because you (the people in charge) are presiding over a system that makes them inevitable."

Wednesday "President Obama participate[d] in an event at the Great Synagogue in Stockholm honoring Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat and honorary U.S. citizen who worked courageously to save lives while serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest during World War II":

     ... AFP Update: "US President Barack Obama will ask Moscow what happened to Swedish Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg after he was taken into Soviet custody and disappeared in 1945, Wallenberg's family told Swedish media."

The Baby-Cam Is Spying on You. Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission took its first action to protect consumers from reckless invasions of privacy, penalizing a company that sells Web-enabled video cameras for lax security practices. According to the F.T.C., the company, TRENDnet, told customers that its products were 'secure,' marketing its cameras for home security and baby monitoring. In fact, the devices were compromised. The commission said a hacker in January 2012 exploited a security flaw and posted links to the live feeds, which 'displayed babies asleep in their cribs, young children playing and adults going about their daily lives.'"

Local News

Michelle Smith of the AP: "Gov. Lincoln Chafee is not running for a second term, he said Wednesday in an announcement that surprised his political opponents and closest advisors alike and takes him out of what was expected to be a fierce primary in his new Democratic Party. The governor, who became a Democrat in May, has struggled with poor approval ratings and is a reluctant fundraiser, although he said on Wednesday he liked being governor and thinks he would have won re-election. But he described campaigning as hugely time-consuming, and said the state faces so many serious challenges that he wouldn't be able to effectively be governor and run for governor at the same time."

David Ferguson of the Raw Story: "Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R)'s family and business partner have been receiving payments from a secret Political Action Committee called Real PAC. Half a million dollars of the money donated to the PAC has come from corporate health care interests which -- like the governor and Georgia state Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens -- oppose the implementation of the Affordable Care Act ... According to investigative reporter Jim Walls of Atlanta Unfiltered, the PAC hasn’t filed taxes or the required financial disclosures in two years, and the information it did file for 2011 was incorrect. Contributors to Real PAC include Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross, United Health care and other interests that want to keep health insurance premiums and other costs as high as possible." ...

     ... CW: Thanks to contribution James S. for the lead. Here's my favorite sentence in the story: " The PAC's treasurer, former state ethics chairman Rick Thompson, protested that the PAC money is not just for Deal's re-election, but for 'Republican causes.'" (Emphasis added.) The part about Hudgens boasting that he is doing everything he can to obstruct ObamaCare makes me think it's high time the DOJ file charges him & other flagrantly obstructionist officials for failing to comply with federal law. They would squeal to the heavens, but they probably would start enforcing the law.

CW: Gail Collins discusses the New York City mayoral candidates, paying scant attention to Anthony Weiner, who is running 4th in a field of four, if I'm not mistaken. Fortunately, Weiner doesn't need Collins' help in calling attention to himself. ...

... Happy New Year! Kaili Joy Gray of Wonkette has a hilarious take on this "Talmudic dialogue" between Anthony Weiner & a citizen who called Weiner a scumbag, to which Weiner responded that the citizen was a jackass, etc., etc.:

     ... Update. "Married to an Arab": In today's Comments, Haley S. writes that the AP reports, "In another video, released by the Weiner campaign later Wednesday, the man can be heard saying 'married to an Arab,' presumably a reference to Weiner's Muslim wife, Huma Abedin...." I located & listened to a tape posted by TPM, which is here. The confrontation begins at 3:45 min. in. Somebody definitely says "... married to an Arab," but I'm not 100 percent sure it was the same heckler who made the remark. At the moment the remark was made, the heckler was paying his bill, so he might have made the comment to the clerk. But later, during the confrontation, the guy expresses sympathy for Weiner's wife. Weiner himself, notably, vociferously defends himself but never defends his wife, so it's also not clear he heard the "married to an Arab remark," especially since he was leaving the bakery at the time, it was noisy, he was some distance from the heckler & had his back to him. There are three sides to every story.

Gubernatorial Race

Washington Post Editors: Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (RTP) is lying about his poast sponsorship of anti-contraception, "personhood" legislation.

News Ledes

Al Jazeera America: "Thousands of Walmart employees are striking Thursday in cities across the United States, demanding better pay and protesting the firing of those who previously demonstrated against the company -- the country's largest private employer, with 1.3 million American workers. The strike comes just one week after fast-food workers staged walk-outs at fast-food restaurants in 60 U.S. cities to call for hourly pay of $15 instead of minimum wage. According to strike organizers, many Walmart workers earn the minimum wage, which varies from state to state but typically hovers near $7 to $8 per hour."

Al Jazeera America: "The gigantic Rim Fire raging in and around Yosemite National Park began when a hunter allowed an illegal fire to escape, investigators from the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Investigations and Tuolumne County District Attorney's Office reported Thursday."

Reuters: "The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms surged in August to their highest in half a year, with industrial goods manufacturers the hardest hit, a report on Thursday showed. Employers announced 50,462 layoffs last month, up 33.8 percent from 37,701 in July...."

AFP: "Iran will support Syria 'until the end' in the face of possible US-led military strikes, the chief of Iran's elite Quds Force unit was quoted Thursday by the media as saying. Iran is Syria's main regional ally and some analysts believe a wider goal of US President Barack Obama's determination to launch a strike against the Damascus regime is to blunt Tehran's growing regional influence and any consequent threat to Washington ally Israel."

AP: " A 'large' explosive targeted the convoy of Egypt's interior minister Thursday in Cairo's eastern Nasr City district, the first attack on a senior government official since a coup toppled the country's Islamist president two months ago. The minister, Mohammed Ibrahim, survived the attack, which damaged the convoy's cars and injured at least eight people, including two policemen and a child seriously. There were no fatalities."