The Commentariat -- July 6, 2013

** Joe Stiglitz, in the Guardian: "... it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free trade area between the US and Europe, and another between the US and much of the Pacific (except for China), are not about establishing a true free trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime – managed, that is, to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the west... We have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent. The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans' interests is low. The outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker."

Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "Yes, the sequester is affecting the job market." Rampell explains, in part, how. ...

... ** Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge: "In June, the household survey reported that part-time jobs soared by 360,000 to 28,059,000 - an all time record high. Full time jobs? Down 240,000.  And looking back at the entire year, so far in 2013, just 130K Full-Time Jobs have been added, offset by a whopping 557K Part-Time jobs. And there is your jobs "quality" leading to today's market euphoria (if only for now)." (Emphasis original.) CW: why am I reading these figures for the first time? -- and not in the MSM? P.S. I don't get Durden's headline; I don't see what this has to do with Obamacare, unless means "Obama doesn't care." ...

     ... Update. Credit Annie Lowrey of the New York Times for (a) covering the rise in part-time jobs, & (b) clearing up Durden's ObamaCare dig: "The June jobs report saw a surge in part-time workers, and the health care law that starts coming into full effect next year might be in part responsible.... The Affordable Care Act gives employers an incentive to hire part-time workers rather than full-time workers, as they might be compelled to offer health coverage to the latter, but not the former. That’s why a number of big employers have started offering more temporary or part-time positions." The delay of the employer mandate may slow the shift from full- to part-time. ...

     ... CW: if we had Medicare-for-All or even a public option, corporations at least would have to come up with some other excuse to screw their workers. ...

... CW: maybe Obama doesn't care. In a White House blogpost, Alan Krueger, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, is pretty happy about the great jobs numbers. No mention of part-time v. full-time. I wrote to Alan about that. I'm sure I'll be hearing back any day now.

Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "America’s post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why?" ...

... Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who is believed to have spent the past two weeks at a Moscow airport evading US attempts to extradite him. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daneil Ortega, made the asylum offers on Friday, shortly after they and other Latin American leaders met to denounce the diversion of a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, due to suspicions that Snowden might have been on board." ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "... Edward J. Snowden has applied for political asylum in six additional countries, according to his associates at WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization. But the names of those six countries are being kept, um, secret, the group said on Friday." CW: yes, a New York Times reporter wrote "um" in a straight news report.

A Coup by Any Other Name. Peter Baker of the New York Times: When is a coup not a coup? Hmm, apparently when the U.S. State Department would rather not say. ...

... Peter Hart of FAIR: OR, maybe when the New York Times would rather not say. "... it's interesting to note the similarity between the U.S. government's public position on this question and the Newspaper of Record." ...

... Ed Kilgore has an excellent takedown of David Brooks' "reasoning" on the Egyptian coup. Carrying Brooks' theory to its logical conclusion, Brooks seems to favor a coup against the Tea Party. CW: well, okay, Brooksie! Where do I sign up? ...

... Marty Kaplan, in the Huffington Post, goes there: "Writing about Middle Eastern fanatics, Brooks says 'Islamists ... lack the mental equipment to govern.' Does he really not get that this diagnosis nicely fits the Tea Partiers, enabled by simpering colleagues fearful of right-wing primary challenges, who have ground our own government to a halt?" ...

... Another good argument by Max Read of Gawker. After illustrating why Brooks doesn't make sense -- at least if you care about democracy -- Read adds, "Shall we note here, the day after Independence Day, that it took the United States of America 13 years after rejecting monarchy to settle on a stable constitutional form of government?" ...

... David Sirota of Salon says what has to be said about Brooks: he has written, and the Times has published a column that makes an "argument that reads like a[n] unhinged manifesto from a 19th century eugenicist.... Once you get into deriding entire populations as intrinsically lacking the cognitive capacity for self-governance, you’ve jumped into the ugliest, most discredited and vile kind of invective of all — the kind of bigotry that insinuates whole populations are genetically, culturally or otherwise inherently deficient."

The Re-emergence of Dubya? Dianne Solis of the Dallas Morning News: "George W. Bush ... will deliver opening remarks at an citizenship ceremony and immigration forum at the Dallas presidential center bearing his name, where it’s expected he will talk about how immigration reform will be good for America.... It’s unclear whether the ex-president will stick to generalities during his remarks at the citizenship ceremony, or elevate the conversation with details about the super-sized immigration bill now being debated in Congress." ...

... Gail Collins: "Illegal immigration across the Mexican border is ... hardly the worst threat we’ve got out there. Last month, Rolling Stone had a long and terrifying article about how rising sea levels could begin to overwhelm Miami within the next couple of decades. Next time you see Senator Rubio [R-Fla.], be sure to ask him about this. If we can afford to pay border agents to catch three people a year [which is about the average per agent now], shouldn’t we at least be looking at getting the Miami nuclear reactors onto higher ground?" ...

... CW: in case you can't wait to find out what a discharge petition is (Collins teases it at the end of her column), Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post explains: "The discharge petition allows an absolute majority of the House of Representatives (218 lawmakers) to force a floor vote on a bill, even if the leadership, who usually controls what legislation makes it to the floor, is opposed. The opposition party can, in theory, use the technique to hijack the legislative agenda on an issue that divides the majority." Sounds like a plan, but it's only happened twice since 1986.

New York Times Editors: "The three Republicans on the [Federal Elections] Commission appear ready to take advantage of a temporary vacancy on the three-member Democratic side to push through 3-to-2 votes for a wholesale retreat from existing regulations.... The proposals are being pushed by Donald McGahn, the Republican vice chairman of the commission who has engineered repeated 3-to-3 standoff votes to stymie approval of staff recommendations for penalties against campaigners found in violation of the law. Mr. McGahn, a former ethics adviser to Tom Delay...." CW: Oh, let's just stop there.

Francis v. the Old Beanies Club. Hans-Jürgen Schlamp of Der Spiegel: "It appears Pope Francis truly wants to change the Catholic Church. He's reforming the Vatican Bank first, but he's also circumventing the old guard wherever he can. The establishment is up in arms."

The Commentariat -- July 5, 2013

The Well-Trained Hacker. Christopher Drew & Scott Shane of the New York Times: Edward "Snowden’s résumé ... provides a new picture of how his skills and responsibilities expanded while he worked as an intelligence contractor. Although federal officials offered only a vague description of him as a 'systems administrator,' the résumé suggests that he had transformed himself into the kind of cybersecurity expert the N.S.A. is desperate to recruit, making his decision to release the documents even more embarrassing to the agency.... Mr. Snowden's ability to comb through the networks as a lone wolf -- and walk out the door with the documents on thumb drives -- shows how the agency's internal security system has fallen short, former officials say." ...

... Timothy Heritage & Steve Gutterman of Reuters: Russian "Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia had received no request for political asylum from Snowden and he had to solve his problems himself after 11 days in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.... Moscow also has made clear that Snowden is an increasingly unwelcome guest because the longer he stays, the greater the risk of the diplomatic standoff causing lasting damage to relations with Washington." ...

... Surprise, Surprise. Steven Erlanger of the New York Times: "Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, Le Monde newspaper disclosed on Thursday that France has its own program of massive data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France." ...

... Juan Karita of the AP: "South America's leftist leaders rallied to support Bolivian President Evo Morales after his plane was rerouted amid suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board and demanded an apology from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Suriname, Venezuela and Uruguay joined Morales in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba late Thursday to address the diplomatic row. Morales used the gathering to warn that he would close the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia if necessary." ...

... Kate Connolly, et al., of the Guardian: "Germany and the US will begin talks as soon as Monday, to address mounting European concerns over internet surveillance that are threatening to overshadow trade negotiations and damage Silicon Valley exports." ...

... Julian Pecquet of the Hill: "Revelations of U.S. spying on Chinese universities and businesses risk undermining cybersecurity talks with China scheduled for next week. The Obama administration had hoped to press China on the issue during the fifth round of the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue. Instead, it finds itself on the defensive amid former contractor Edward Snowden's allegations...." ...

... Gene Robinson of the Washington Post: "I don't believe government officials when they say the National Security Agencys (NSA) surveillance programs do not invade our privacy.... It pains me to sound like some Rand Paul acolyte.... I just wish our government would start treating us like adults -- more important, like participants in a democracy -- and stop lying. We can handle the truth." ...

... Andrew Leonard of Salon: "Shrinking costs. Growing efficiency. That’s the 'frictionless' society, baby! Everybody gets empowered by the Internet. 'We' get easy access to all the world's information and all these neat new services and 'they' get easy access to us. Awkward! ... Maybe Edward Snowden's greatest contribution to society will end up being the way in which his leaks crystallized our previously vague sense that something was awry.... If we know the price, we can start to figure out if what we are gaining is worth what we have lost."

Joan Biskupic of Reuters: "At age 80, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leader of the Supreme Court's liberal wing, says she is in excellent health, even lifting weights despite having cracked a pair of ribs again, and plans to stay several more years on the bench. In a Reuters interview late on Tuesday, she vowed to resist any pressure to retire that might come from liberals who want to ensure that Democratic President Barack Obama can pick her successor before the November 2016 presidential election. Ginsburg said she had fallen in the bathroom of her home in early May, sustaining the same injury she suffered last year near term's end."

CW: last week I complained about Tim Egan's laundry list of mostly petty complaints about President Obama. But this critique by Walter Bello, excerpted in Salon, is substantive & well-reasoned. The title of the piece is "Obama Should Have Listened to Paul Krugman"; however, Bello doesn't limit himself to Obama's policy mistakes, but goes into his fundamental political failures. Or, as I might put it, Americans -- including many Republicans -- voted for a liberal, & what we got instead was a cautious, mealy-mouthed conservative.

Tim Egan: young men are dying to save people's property -- homes they built in high-fire areas.

The Fake IRS Scandal, Ctd. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Two months of investigation by Congress and the I.R.S. has produced new documents that have clouded much of the controversy's narrative. In the more complicated picture now emerging, many organizations other than conservative groups were singled out: 'progressive' organizations, medical marijuana purveyors, organizations formed to carry out President Obama's health care law, and open source software developers who create software tools for computer code writers and distribute them free of charge." ...

... Jamelle Bouie in the Washington Post: "Today's story from the New York Times on IRS 'filtering' should be the final word on whether this was political targeting or a more mundane instance of mistakes and misjudgments from overworked bureaucrats.... Despite widespread evidence this wasn't politically motivated -- as well as signs it may have been justified -- Republicans have continued to hold the controversy up as an example of government overreach and 'Nixonian' behavior from the Obama White House (which, as of this writing, has not been implicated in the scandal).... We should expect Republicans to run hard on the IRS controversy in elections across the country, even as proof accumulates that this 'scandal' isn't very political at all."

Alex Pareene of Salon: "Basically the 'border surge' [provision of the Senate immigration bill] is a very expensive new expansion of a massive government program only it's the sort that conservatives like because it involves detaining people instead of giving them healthcare or something."

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times has a long piece on a "deficit owl" named Warren Mosler. Even though Mosler is really rich, "his prescriptions for economic policy make him sound like a warrior for the 99 percent. When the recession hit, Mr. Mosler said, the government should have spent and spent until unemployment came down to a comfortable level. Forget saving the banks through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Washington should have eliminated the payroll tax, given every state $500 per resident and offered a basic job to anyone who wanted one." CW: weirdly, Lowrey does not address a matter she mentions in her second sentence: "Mr. Mosler lives [in the U.S. Virgin Islands] for tax reasons." Apparently Mosler's zeal for radically liberal tax policy does not extend to actually paying U.S. taxes himself. Virgin Island residents pay taxes to the V.I., not to the federal government, & there are lotsa loopholes -- no doubt those tax reasons for Mr. Mosler's V.I. residency.

CW: I wish I believed this. Paul Krugman: "... we are still, in a deep sense, the nation that declared independence and, more important, declared that all men have rights."

... Josh Levs of CNN: "Lady Liberty reopened her doors to the huddled masses Thursday, a sign of recovery from Superstorm Sandy's devastation. The Statue of Liberty's reopening was a big bright spot for an Independence Day dampened by soaking rains in much of the country and limited by the across-the-board federal budget cuts known as the sequester, which left numerous military bases without annual fireworks displays." ...

Independence Day???

A sign in a Lakewood, Ohio, public park. Via Business Insider.

Contributor MAG has sent along the revised, updated, federally-approved & finalized official Lakewood Parks July 4 sign:

News Ledes

The Orlando Sentinel summarizes the day's testimony & other events in the George Zimmerman trial.

New York Times: Egyptian "security officials said at least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded in political violence nationwide, with half the deaths in Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city. The Muslim Brotherhood, which organized the protests, said at least 17 of its supporters were killed. Witnesses said they saw at least five pro-Morsi demonstrators killed and many more wounded in gunfire outside the Republican Guard compound in Cairo where Mr. Morsi was believed to be detained...." ...

... New York Times: "The top human rights official at the United Nations, Navi Pillay, expressed concern on Friday at the reported detention of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt and called on military authorities there to make clear the basis on which they are being held or release them." ...

... Washington Post: Muslim "Brotherhood-allied leaders [in Egypt] responded by calling for a 'day of resistance' on Friday, with nationwide protests planned after the traditional midday prayers. Although organizers called on supporters to remain peaceful, such rallies in the past have led to deadly clashes, and residents of Cairo and other areas braced for more chaos. Egypt's new president, a virtual unknown named Adly Mansour, vowed to include all sections of society, including Islamists, in an interim coalition government shortly after he was sworn in Thursday. But even as he spoke, an arrest warrant was issued for Mohammed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood's 'supreme guide.'" ...

... Al Jazeera: "Thousands of supporters of Mohamed Morsi have gathered in Nasr City in the Egyptian capital to protest against his ouster as the country's president in a military coup. The crowds are expected to swell further after Friday afternoon prayers in response to the call by a coalition of Islamist groups led by the Muslim Brotherhood for demonstrations against the coup. The coalition on Thursday urged people to take part in a 'Friday of Rejection' protest following weekly prayers. The call is being seen as a test of whether Morsi still has a support base in the country, and how the army will deal with it." ...

... Al Jazeera has a rundown of international reactions to Morsi's outster.

AP: "Another solid month of hiring in June could signal the start of a stronger second half of the year for the U.S. economy. Economists predict that the government will report Friday that employers added 165,000 jobs last month, roughly in line with May's increase. The unemployment rate is expected to stay at a still-high 7.6 percent." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "The economy added 195,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department reported Friday morning, slightly more than analysts had been expecting and suggesting steady growth.... The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey from the one that tracks jobs, remained at 7.6 percent, unchanged from May." The writer, Nelson Schwartz, suggests how the report might influence Fed action.

AP: "Residents of a small mountain community northwest of Las Vegas were ordered to evacuate Thursday as firefighters continued to battle searing heat and rugged terrain while fighting a large blaze.The mandatory evacuation of Trout Canyon, a small community of about 21 homes, was issued late in the afternoon as a precaution...."

AP: "Pope Francis has cleared John Paul II for sainthood, approving a miracle attributed to his intercession. Francis also decided Friday to canonize another pope, John XXIII, even though there has been no second miracle attributed to his intercession. The Vatican said Francis approved a decision by cardinals and bishops."

The Commentariat -- July 4, 2013

... ABC News: "When he was invited to sing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' before Game 3 of the NBA finals Tuesday night, he donned his mariachi outfit and wowed the crowd inside the San Antonio Spurs’ AT&T center with his rendition of the national anthem. Online, however, Sebastien was torn apart by Twitter users who erupted in outrage about the sight of a Mexican-American boy singing the national anthem dressed in a traditional Mexican outfit. 'This kid is Mexican why is he singing the national anthem #yournotamerican #gohome,' wrote on[e] user, @Gordon_Bombay24. Includes a good video report of the story.

... AND, since this is a day when revolutions are on our minds, it might be useful to reflect on what Canadian Paul Pirie, in a Washington Post op-ed, says about ours -- it was a flop. CW: what Pirie doesn't address is the obvious: most of our problems & backwardness come at the behest of the South. The U.S. would be as functional & progressive as Canada (which ain't perfect -- ask a Quebecois) if not held back by Southern politicians & their patriarchal values. The war I thought was a flop was the Civil War.

** Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "... Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States -- about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images." This program, together with a long-standing "mail cover" program, "show that snail mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail."

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "Two US senators on the panel overseeing the National Security Agency said intelligence officials were 'unable' to demonstrate the value of a secret surveillance program that collected and analyzed the internet habits of Americans. Senators Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon) and Mark Udall (Democrat, Colorado), the chief inquisitors of US intelligence officials during the current surveillance scandal, added a sharp warning late Tuesday that senior intelligence officials 'are not always accurate' in their public statements about the scope and utility of their wide-ranging surveillance efforts.... Senior intelligence officials told the Guardian that the program..., [which] that gathered and analyzed bulk internet 'metadata' records from Americans, such as the subject lines of their email communications and their internet protocol (IP) addresses..., ended in 2011." ...

     ... . The New York Times story, by James Risen, is here: "Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado said the Internet surveillance was discontinued only after administration officials were unable to provide evidence to them, in closed-door hearings in 2011, that the program was useful." ...

... Angelika Gruber & Emma Farge of Reuters: Bolivia accused the United States on Wednesday of trying to 'kidnap' its president, Evo Morales, after his plane was denied permission to fly over some European countries on suspicion he was taking fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden to Latin America.... The White House declined to comment...."

... Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "The United States has yet to comment, but the longer it remains silent, the stronger suspicions will be that it leaned on France, Spain, Portugal and Italy to deny permission for [Bolivian President Evo] Morales's plane to fly through their airspace, in effect putting the hunt for US whistleblower Edward Snowden above international law and the rights of a president of a sovereign nation." ...

... CW: This column by Glenn Greenwald is a perfect example of what I've written about Greenwald's methodology. He makes some valid, important points, but he dilutes them with incessant, sneering invective against the clueless Paul Krugman & everyone else who isn't totally on board with -- Glenn Greenwald. I find Greenwald's perpetual snit annoying & tedious -- and ultimately counterproductive, to the extent that he excites & frightens well-meaning but unsophisticated readers & discourages reasoned discussion.

Jamelle Bouie in the Washington Post: parts of the Affordable Care Act, like the employer mandate, need fixing, but that won't happen as long as the GOP controls the House. Republican "indifference guarantees that -- when the administration hits roadblocks in implementing the Affordable Care Act -- it will have no choice but to power through them, even when legislation is a better option."

In an AlterNet piece republished in Salon, Les Leopold argues that a financial transaction tax should fund college tuitions. CW: Sounds good to me.

President Obama said Monday his government makes decisions on aid to Egypt based on that government's respect for democracy and the rule of law. The record suggests otherwise.

Josh Rogin & Eli Lake of the Daily Beast: "President Obama said Monday his government makes decisions on aid to Egypt based on that government's respect for democracy and the rule of law. The record suggests otherwise. In nearly every confrontation with Congress since the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the White House has fought restrictions proposed by legislators on the nearly $1.6 billion in annual U.S. aid to Egypt. Twice in two years, the White House and the State Department fought hard against the very sorts of conditions for aid that Obama claimed credit for this week."

Nitaska Tiku of Gawker: "ExaroNews a British investigative web site, has just published the full transcript of a secretly recorded meeting between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the staff of The Sun, a U.K. tabloid owned by News Corp., in which Murdoch admitted that he was aware for decades that journalists from his newspapers had been bribing both police and public officials." ...

... The New York Times story, by Alan Cowell, is here. ...

... Nancy Tartaglione of Deadline: "British Labour Party MP Tom Watson, a vocal and enduring Rupert Murdoch critic, has called on the News Corp boss to be questioned by police following yesterday' s revelations about comments he made to Sun staffers last March."

Paul Krugman is influential!

Local News

Lynn Bonner & Craig Jarvis of the Raleigh News & Observer: "The [North Carolina state] Senate, after a long debate that invoked faith, constitutional rights and health statistics, approved a bill that would restrict abortions by stepping up requirements for clinics and doctors. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 29-12 as opponents filled the gallery above and hundreds more waited outside. The bill now goes to the House. After the vote, people in the hall began chanting, 'Shame, shame, shame.' ... The provisions [were] tacked onto an unrelated bill about Islamic law" late Tuesday." ...

... Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress has more. ...

... Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post: even "Republican Gov. Pat McCrory [expressed] concern that the Senate had unfairly rushed the amendments on Tuesday night."

News Ledes

Guardian: "Belgium's King Albert II announced his abdication from the throne on Wednesday, ending months of speculation about an early end to his 20-year reign which has been marked by political strife between northern Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking southern Wallonia."

New York Times: in Egypt, "Adli Mansour, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, was sworn in as the acting head of state in a ceremony broadcast live on state television, news reports said." ...

     ... New Lede: "Egyptian prosecutors escalated what appeared to be a widespread roundup of top Muslim Brotherhood members on Thursday, acting hours after the military deposed Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist who became the country's first democratically elected president just a year ago." ...

... The New York Times The Lede is liveblogging developments in Egypt.

... New York Times: "... with no prior presence on Egypt's political or public scene, many experts said, Mr. Mansour could serve as little more than a figurehead." Here's Al Jazeera's brief profile.

... Al Jazeera's main story here. ...

... Guardian: "Egypt's new military rulers have issued arrest warrants for up to 300 members of the Muslim Brotherhood hours after ousting the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and taking him and his aides into military custody. The morning after a momentous night in Cairo has revealed the full extent of the military overthrow, with key support bases of the Muslim Brotherhood, including television stations, closed down or raided. A focal point for Morsi's supporters in the east of the city was approached by troops who fired into the air near angry Brotherhood members on Wednesday night." ...

... The Guardian's liveblog is here. ...

... President Obama's statement on Egypt. ...

     ... The Hill: "President Obama late Wednesday declared himself 'very concerned' by the Egyptian military's overthrow of the country's democratically elected president and said his administration was reviewing U.S. military aid as a result. In his first statement since the Egyptian army and the opposition overthrew President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government, Obama repeated that the United States was not taking sides in the dispute and avoided using the word 'coup.' He called on the military to quickly restore power to a 'democratically elected civilian government.'"

Denver Post: "Authorities Wednesday located the body of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall's brother, Randy, who was reported missing on a solo backpack trip to the Wind River Range in Wyoming. The body of the 61-year-old Carbondale resident was found at 10,700 feet, his poles still in his hand, his sister, Dodie Udall of Boulder, said. Randy appeared to have died from a medical condition, she said."