The Commentariat -- May 12, 2013

See also commentary from MAG & safari in yesterday's Commentariat that got spammed & is now despamified.

Obama 2.Zero. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees from moving to the next step in the confirmation process despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent. If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies."

** What Republicans Are Doing While We're Not Looking. Teresa Tritch of the New York Times: "There are two good things to say about the Working Families Flexibility Act, which passed the House this week with 220 Republican and three Democratic votes. One, the bill is bound to go nowhere in the Senate and, two, even if it did advance, the White House has threatened to veto it. The bill, in brief, is worse than meritless; it is a fraud.... The bill would amend long-standing labor law by allowing private-sector employers to offer compensatory time off in lieu of time-and-a-half pay for overtime.... There is nothing to stop an employer from discriminating against those who prefer payment by cutting back on their overtime hours. Nor would employers face any real deterrent against forcing unpaid overtime on workers who fear losing their jobs if they object. The recourse for coerced workers would be to sue, a far-fetched and unaffordable option for most people." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the heads-up. ...

... Judith Warner of Time has more.

Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration's talking points on Benghazi almost two months ago, senior administration officials said..., and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing." ...

... CW: I wish I had time to watch this discussion among Bill Maher, Joy Reid, Glenn Greenwald & Charlie Cooke on Benghazzzzzzi. I hope you do.

Lauren French of Politico: "Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew employees were singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny as early as 2011, according to a watchdog agency's report set to be released next week, POLITICO has confirmed from a congressional source. The disclosure that senior officials knew agents were flagging applications containing the words 'patriot' or 'tea party' contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. He repeatedly denied that his agency was targeting conservative groups when asked by Congress last year." CW: Keep in mind this little factoid French doesn't mention: Shulman is a Dubya appointee. But she does write this: "The disclosures are guaranteed to heighten Republican fears that the agency is targeting the administration's political enemies and hands the GOP a fresh issue to use in attacking President Barack Obama's administration." ...

... Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP writes a more balanced report.

Aqua Buddha Is Still Crazy. Ezra Klein: Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.) claims in a fundraiser e-mail that President Obama "is working with 'anti-American globalists plot[ting] against our Constitution.' This [U.N. Small Arms] treaty, [which is the subject of Paul's scary e-mail] at least as described here, is total fantasy. The hoax-busters at Snopes.com will catch you up, and just for good measure, PolitiFact gave similar claims the old pants-on-fire. This is black helicopter stuff from Paul."

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog summarizes the shocking scandals and "the dangerous Satanic power of Barack Obama." Such a quick read I have a sneaking suspicion Steve is not sufficiently scandalized.

This post by Evan McMurry of Mediate about a Koch-BuzzFeed immigration forum is mostly inside-baseball stuff, but McMurry ends with a lovely knock at the Heritage Foundation: "If you classify everything to the left of 'immigrants are inherently dumb' as amnesty, the world will indeed look like a conspiracy in favor of it."

Judge John d'Amico, writing in Salon, notes that the Tea Party doesn't seem to understand our founding documents.

Gail Collins on corrupt state legislatures. Pathetic &, as usual, funny.

The Commentariat -- May 11, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     The transcript is here.

Why Jim Inhofe Isn't Funny Any More. Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years." ...

... GOP Climate Change Civil War. Coral Davenport of the National Journal: "... deep fissures are emerging between, on one side, a base of ideological voters and lawmakers with strong ties to powerful tea-party groups and super PACs funded by the fossil-fuel industry who see climate change as a false threat concocted by liberals to justify greater government control; and on the other side, a quiet group of moderates, younger voters, and leading conservative intellectuals who fear that if Republicans continue to dismiss or deny climate change, the party will become irrelevant."

Aw, Shucks. Dave Weigel: Jason (Hispanics Are Dumb) Richwine resigned his position at the Heritage Foundation, & evidently Jim DeMint graciously accepted. Plus, Richwine fan Charles (Blacks Are Dumb) Murray reacts: DeMint has no integrity, loyalty or balls. CW: that's not a news flash, Chuckie. ...

... Jonathan Chait of New York: the Richwine/Heritage/racist/nativist debacle pretty much assures the passage of immigration reform.

... CW: So is a Not-Totally-Insane wing of the GOP emerging? -- one that rejects the climate-change-as-hoax nonsense & one that sez immigrants are our friends, fer instance? I don't see how moderation of nuttiness & nastiness can happen as long as every Republican member of Congress in every Republican-leaning district is subject to a Tea Party challenge.

Soaking the Poor to Attract the Rich. John Hechinger & Janet Lorin of Bloomberg News: "U.S. colleges ... are using financial aid to lure rich students while shortchanging the poor, forcing those most in need to take on heavy debt, a report found. Almost two-thirds of private institutions require students from families making $30,000 or less annually to pay more than $15,000 a year, according to the report released today by the Washington-based New America Foundation. The research ... undercuts the claims of many wealthy colleges that financial-aid practices make their institutions affordable, said Stephen Burd, the report's author. He singled out schools -- including Boston University and George Washington University -- that appear especially pricey for poor families."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "A long-simmering dispute over the White House's account of the deadly assault on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, flared up on Friday, with a disclosure of e-mails that show the White House was more deeply involved in revising talking points about the attack than officials have previously acknowledged. The e-mails, which the administration turned over to Congress, show the White House coordinating an intensive process with the State Department, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies to obtain the final version of the talking points, used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in television appearances after the attack." ...

... Jeremy Holden of Media Matters: "ABC News is buying into right-wing scandal mongering over the tragic September 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, with an 'exclusive' report that doesn't stand up to minimal scrutiny, with flaws that are being used by the right to call for a major investigation.... None of this largely rehashed debate disproves what Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified in November: that the intelligence community signed off on the final draft of the talking points, and that references to terrorist groups in Libya were removed in order to avoid tipping off those groups." ...

... Probably You Had No Idea This Would Happen. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "The National Republican Congressional Committee is using the debate over Benghazi to raise money." ...

... Here's the original fundraiser flyer, which some draft changes Jamison Foser found. Via Jonathan Bernstein:

Oh, Crap. Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: " The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday. Organizations were singled out because they included the words 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.... Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice." CW: we are nevah, evah gonna hear the end of this. ...

... For starters, Charles Pierce points us to Michelle Malkin: "Obama IRS admits witch hunt against Tea Party, patriot groups." ...

... Good golly, Miss Malkin, you plumb forgot to mention this. Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "The IRS Commissioner at the time was Douglas Shulman, who had been appointed by President George W. Bush." ...

... Ezra Klein: "The problem wasn't that the IRS was skeptical of tea party groups registering as 501(c)4s. It's that it hasn't been skeptical of Organizing for America, Crossroads GPS, Priorities USA and Heritage Action Fund registering as 501(c)4s. The IRS should be treating all these groups equally and appropriately -- which would mean much more harshly."

Texas Injustice. New York Times Editors: "... racial bias in [the Duane Buck death penalty] case reflects a wide and disturbing pattern in death penalty prosecutions in Harris County, Tex., where Mr. Buck was tried. A recent study found that from 1992 to 1999 the county prosecutor was three times as likely to seek the death penalty for blacks in murder cases as they were for whites, and juries were twice as likely to impose capital punishment."

Sarah Mervosh, et al., of the Dallas Morning News: "Federal bomb possession charges against a [West, Texas,] paramedic Friday spurred a new state and local criminal investigation into the deadly fertilizer plant fire and explosion. But authorities said there weren't yet any indications of a connection between the blast and the arrest of a man who responded to it. Bryce Reed, 31, previously told The Dallas Morning News that he assumed radio command of the April 17 incident after the explosion killed his superiors and colleagues. He is now accused of giving a pipe bomb to an unnamed person in nearby Abbott on April 26, the day after he played a prominent role in the memorial service for 12 emergency responders killed in the blast.... [ATF] agents spent hours at the Waco home of [Reed's] in-laws. Meanwhile, West officials for the first time told the state agency that licenses paramedics that Reed was let go two days after the explosion. A reason wasn't given." Via Charles Pierce.

"Sonnet from the GOP." How do we obstruct thee? Andrew Rosenthal counts the ways.

Aw, Shucks. Dave Weigel: Jason (Hispanics Are Dumb) Richwine resigned his position at the Heritage Foundation, & evidently Jim DeMint graciously accepted. Plus, Richwine fan Charles (Blacks Are Dumb) Murray reacts: DeMint has no integrity, loyalty or balls. CW: that's not a news flash, Chuckie. ...

... Jonathan Chait of New York: the Richwine/Heritage/racist/nativist debacle pretty much assures the passage of immigration reform.

The Commentariat -- May 10, 2013

Julie Pace of the AP: " President Barack Obama is launching a new effort to rally the public around his hotly disputed health care law, a strategy aimed at shoring up key components of the sweeping federal overhaul and staving off yet another challenge from Republicans. The president will specifically target women and young people, groups that backed him overwhelmingly during his presidential campaigns. During a Mother's Day-themed event at the White House on Friday, Obama will promote the benefits of the law for women, including free cancer screenings and contraceptives, and ask moms to urge their uninsured adult children to sign up for the health insurance 'exchanges' that open this fall."

Zeke Miller of Time: "President Barack Obama's campaign-style, jobs-focused swing through the Texas technology core on Thursday was notable mainly for what it left out -- any plan for putting his proposals into law." CW: okay, pundits say President Obama should publicly promote his agenda even though he can't get Congress to do squat. So when he does that, Miller complains that he doesn't have "a plan for putting his proposals into law." What, exactly, would that plan be? Taking House Republicans hostage & incarcerating a half-dozen GOP Senators? Sounds feasible. ...

... AND what about this, Mr. Miller? Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama announced Thursday an executive order creating three ... manufacturing hubs using $200 million from the budgets of five agencies: the Departments of Defense, Energy and Commerce, and the National Science Foundation and NASA. White House officials said the president would continue to push for Congress to finance the remaining hubs."

Douglas Brinkley interviews Joe Biden for Rolling Stone.

Paul Krugman discusses recent talk about a bond bubble and/or a stock bubble in the manner of Harry Truman's economists: "On the one hand...; on the other hand."

Stupid Republican Tricks, Ctd. -- The "Pay China First Act." Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "The House voted Thursday to allow the Treasury to continue to make payments to foreign and domestic federal creditors and Social Security recipients in the event of a stalemate over the government's statutory borrowing limit, digging in for another debt ceiling standoff, which is looming in the fall.... Even if the Treasury could pull off the difficult task of managing incoming taxes and outgoing payments on a daily basis, about 25 percent of the government would have to shut down for lack of money.... Tony Fratto, a Treasury and White House spokesman in the Bush administration..., called the bill 'technically impossible and politically disastrous.'" ...

... Stupid Republican Tricks, Ctd. Sahil Kapur of TPM: "The top two Republicans in Congress informed President Obama on Thursday that they will refuse to fulfill their duty under the Affordable Care Act to recommend members of a new board with the power to contain Medicare spending.... In a letter to President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) noted their original opposition to Obamacare, reiterated their intent to repeal it entirely, and declared that they would not make any appointments to the Independent Payment Advisory Board." ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "That Medicare 'raid' [McConnell & Boehner complain of] is the same raid Paul Ryan included in his budget, the budget that actually does destroy Medicare by privatizing it into a crippled voucher system. To save money. Which is the point of the IPAB, reducing Medicare costs. But McConnell and Boehner don't want to reduce Medicare spending by making it more efficient. They want to reduce Medicare spending by privatizing it and making seniors pay for their own damned health care."

Erica Martinson & Darren Goode of Politico: "President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency is in jeopardy after Republicans formed a united front Thursday to deny her a vote in committee. Democrats erupted in frustration at the GOP 'obstructionism' [yes, do put that in quotation marks because a Republican boycott is in no way "real obstructionism."] and vowed to find a way to push Gina McCarthy's nomination through the Environment and Public Works Committee, despite the last-minute Republican boycott of the vote. But even then, McCarthy could still face a filibuster on the Senate floor -- and won't have the 60 votes she needs, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told his Democratic allies Thursday morning. He pleaded with the Senate to finally heed liberals' pleas to change the filibuster rules so that nominees can be confirmed through majority vote." ...

... Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones: "The blockade on McCarthy is even more noteworthy because ... she worked for Mitt Romney back when he was governor of Massachusetts, as well as Connecticut's Republican former Gov. Jodi Rell." CW: Wow! McCarthy was in one of those binders full of women!

Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg News: the Internet -- which often raises to national prominence local stories of horrible gun deaths -- may trump the NRA. CW: I like Wilkinson's definition of "responsible gun owners":

... many gun owners are not paragons of probity. Some are drunks, drug addicts, wife-beaters, criminals or simply reckless, stupid, irresponsible humans with atrocious judgment. It's anybody's guess, for instance, how many of the one million concealed carry permit holders in Florida are a danger to themselves and others. (Trayvon Martin isn't around to make his guess.)

... AND Wilkinson quotes David Frum on the same:

... guns are easily available to everybody, responsible or not. It's an empty compliment even to refer to "responsible gun owners" - many of them are people who through good luck simply have not had their irresponsibility catch up with them yet."

DIY Guns. Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "Defense Distributed, the Texas-based company specializing in 3-D-printed plastic firearms, took down its downloadable files on Thursday at the request of the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Control Compliance. The company posted a blueprint for the first fully-operational printed plastic handgun, 'The Liberator,' on Monday at its site, DEFCAD; the file was downloaded more than a 100,000 times in its first three days." Also, luckily for you handy do-it-yourselfers, "the takedown notice from the DTCC has its limitations. For one thing, there are already a number of 'mirror' sites that essentially replicate DEFCAD but are not controlled by ... anyone in the United States.... You can also download the plans for the Liberator or various component parts from the Pirate Bay, the notorious Swedish file-sharing index site." CW: where's the NRA's Second Amendment outrage on this? Well, I'd say they're on the government's side, because homemade guns might cut into their sponsors' bottom line.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: FBI Director Robert "Mueller's 12-year tenure under two presidents [link fixed] is facing new scrutiny, months from his longtime plans to step down in September, as hearings begin on Capitol Hill into what happened in Boston and why.... He has always had supporters in both parties in Congress. Now, instead of coasting into retirement, Mr. Mueller will spend the final months answering tough questions about how the bombing suspects slipped away.... He became director on Sept. 4, 2001."

William Finnegan of the New Yorker: "The long-awaited immigration-reform bill written by the haplessly named Gang of Eight in the United States Senate got buried this week, not unexpectedly, by a great mudslide of amendments -- more than three hundred, at last count.... Many were malicious. Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, proposed that anyone who had ever lived illegally in the U.S. be barred for life from U.S. citizenship.... (CW: worth noting -- Cruz is the son of a Cuban immigrant.) Senator Mike Lee ... of Utah would permit undocumented immigrants to remain employed on the condition that they work in low-status, badly paid jobs, specifying 'services performed by cooks, waiters, butlers, housekeepers, governesses, maids, valets, baby sitters, janitors, laundresses, furnacemen, care-takers, handymen, gardeners, footmen, grooms, and chauffeurs of automobiles for family use.' (A pro-reform group called this the Chauffeur Carve-Out. I like the 'footmen' touch.)" ...

... The Washington Post has a list of the committee rulings -- so far -- on key amendments. ...

... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: the phony think-tank Heritage Foundation hits a speed bump built by Republicans. ...

... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "Jason Richwine, the coauthor of the conservative Heritage Foundation's controversial study on the supposed $6.3 trillion cost of comprehensive immigration reform, has received much attention and criticism for his 2009 Harvard dissertation that argued there was 'a genetic component' to racial disparities in IQ.... [At a 2008 forum,] he contended that today's nonwhite immigrants are dumber [than earlier European immigrants]. After he made his remarks in 2008, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that 'Richwine's remarks were warmly received on white nationalist blogs.' ... Richard Alba, a sociology professor at the City University of New York and an author of several books on race and assimilation, called Richwine's remarks 'appalling.'" ...

... Chris Moody of Yahoo! News: Oh, and when he's not scribbling for the Heritage Foundation, Richwine writes for the White Supremacist News. ...

... Jamelle Bouie in the Daily Beast: "... people are skeptical when anyone attributes persistent racial difference to genetics. It doesn't help that proponents of the view tend to overlap with the fringes of Western life....There's more than enough information to conclude that if the right wing is attracting racists and white supremacists, it might want to reevaluate its approach to politics." ...

... CW: What's the matter with Harvard? First we have Reinhart & Rogoff, then we have Ferguson, now we have this guy Richwine. (And let's not forget TED CRUZ.) In most major universities, Richwine's dissertation would not be accepted by his major professor, & if the professor was a crackpot who did accept it, the paper would not get past the dissertation committee.

Kayla Webley of Time: "... Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced her first piece of legislation this week, a proposal that would allow students to take out government educational loans at the same rate that big banks pay to borrow from the federal government. Under her Bank on Student Loans Fairness Act, for one year, new student borrowers would be able to take out a federally subsidized Stafford loan at 0.75%, compared with the current 3.4% student loan rate.... Her legislation is well-timed as Congress gears up to debate student loan rates, which are set to double on July 1. Unless legislators vote to extend the 3.4% rate for another year, some eight million students will be forced to pay back their loans plus 6.8% in annual interest."

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "Richard Blumenthal is a hero. Mike Lee is a lying extremist," incapable of reading 219 words. Allow Steve to demonstrate.

An excellent piece by Norm Ornstein, in the National Journal, on the limits of presidential power. A sample: President "Clinton once taught Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama a lesson, cutting out jobs in Huntsville, Ala. That worked well enough that Shelby switched parties, joined the Republicans, and became a reliable vote against Clinton. George W. Bush and Karl Rove decided to teach Sen. Jim Jeffords a lesson, punishing dairy interests in Vermont. That worked even better -- he switched to independent status and cost the Republicans their Senate majority. Myths are so much easier than reality."

All Benghazi, All the Time. Julian Pecquet of the Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) came under increased pressure Thursday to create a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack. A day after three State Department whistle-blowers criticized the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) suggested the Speaker risked becoming 'complicit' in a cover-up if he doesn't create a special panel." ...

... "The Stop Hillary 2016 Campaign." Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "In case you have any lingering doubt about the true agenda of House Republicans in [Wednesday's] Benghazi hearing, check out these numbers*:

• 15: Number of times President Barack Obama was mentioned during the hearing
• 71: Number of times fmr. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was mentioned

      If this were still before election day 2012..., those numbers would be reversed -- the president would have been the one getting five times as many mentions as Hillary." ...

... AND, look what Karl Rove has wrought (via Greg Sargent):

... Jonathan Karl of ABC News: "When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story. ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack."

... Karl also has an interesting post on an RNC-produced Benghazi attack ad against the President, which Romney nixed because he wanted to "focus on the economy." With video of the ad.

Eric Pfeiffer of Yahoo! News: "Americans really, really trust Hollywood. They are, however, far more skeptical of Washington, D.C. A new survey on the most trusted people in America finds actors taking the top three spots: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Denzel Washington. The first politician to appear on the list is former President Jimmy Carter, who comes in at number 24." ...

... Andy Borowitz: "Republican lawmakers asked increasingly tough questions today as they held another day of hearings to investigate, in the words of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), 'Hillary Clinton's suspiciously high poll numbers and what can be done to make them lower.'"

Local News

Ian Urbina, et al., of the New York Times: "Texas has always prided itself on its free-market posture. It is the only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers' compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country, Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it prohibits smaller counties from having such codes.... But Texas has also had the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities -- more than 400 annually -- for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas' more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012. "And a lot of Texans -- including, of course, Rick Perry -- like it that way. ...

... CW: I see a connection between Texans' attitudes toward unnecessary disasters caused by human failings (including & especially, greed) & Tim Egan's paean to Westerners who happily live with impending natural disasters.

AP: "A pivotal vote Thursday in the Minnesota House positioned that state to become the 12th in the country to allow gay marriages and the first in the Midwest to pass such a law out of its Legislature. The 75-59 vote was a critical step for the measure, which would allow same-sex weddings beginning this summer. It's a startling shift in the state, where just six months earlier voters turned back an effort to ban them in the Minnesota Constitution. The state Senate plans to consider the bill Monday and leaders expect it to pass there too. Gov. Mark Dayton has pledged to sign it into law." ...

... AND this, via Kate M.:

News Ledes

Reuters: "A pair of bombs targeting the offices of candidates running in this weekend's election killed three people Friday in northwest Pakistan, the latest attacks in what has been a bloody campaign. At least 130 people have been killed in attacks on candidates and party workers since the beginning of April. The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, saying the country's democracy runs counter to Islam."

Reuters: "A woman was rescued on Friday after spending 17 days trapped under the rubble of a Bangladesh factory building that collapsed on April 24, killing more than 1,000 people, police and military officials said. Bangladeshi television channels broadcast live footage of emergency service workers pulling the woman from the collapsed building, as onlookers burst into cheers."