The Commentariat -- Jan. 25, 2014
Internal links removed.
David Remnick, Ryan Lizza & Dorothy Wickenden discuss President Obama's final three years in office and his legacy:
White House: "In his weekly address, President Obama said that the Administration has taken another important step to protect women at college by establishing the White House Task Force on Protecting Students from Sexual Assault":
** Mean Mike. Gail Collins: "Basically, [Mike] Huckabee seems to be telling us that the Republican Party will not insult women by suggesting the federal government should require health insurance policies to include birth control pills in the prescription drug coverage. He appears confident that women will find that an attractive proposition.... He laid bare a fact that the party has always tried desperately to hide -- that its anti-abortion agenda is also frequently anti-contraception.... Over the past five years, as his party got raw and angry and mean, Huckabee got raw and angry and mean." ...
... CW: It's worth contrasting Collins' straight talk with moderate conservative & sometime-feminist Kathleen Parker's take on Huckabee's concerns about our out-of-control libidos. Apparently one must be a liberal to understand what Huckabee said. In any event, Parker totally misses Mean Mike's message. ...
... Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "... why do [Republicans] keep doing this? ... The simple answer is that they can't help themselves, but more specifically, it's a combination of ignorance, contempt, and Puritan morality that inevitably leads to these eruptions.... These kinds of statements tend to come from older conservative men who have no idea how ladyparts work, and really don't want to know.... The morality clearly reflected in these statements is that sex is inherently sinful.... Republicans think they're talking to a nation of nuns...." ...
... Digby: "... the fact that no one wants to have sex with the Mike Huckabees of the world (at least unless they are paid to do so) might just reflect badly on the men rather than the women. After all, if a man can't even be bothered to figure out how birth control works, I'm going to guess he hasn't spent a lot of time figuring out how a woman's sexual response works either." ...
... "The Speech about Women You Should Have Heard." Irin Carmon: "For anyone listening [to President Obama's remarks about protecting college students from sexual assault], this speech was profoundly radical. It accepted as a basic premise that freedom from sexual violation is a ground rule for equal participation in society. It lacked even a passing, prurient interest in drunk girls or in boys who would be boys. It proposed a higher form of masculinity that wasn't about chivalrous deference to women as gentler creatures, but about seeing women as people deserving autonomy, people for whom violence could mean that 'we're all deprived of their full potential'":
Lawrence Hurley of Reuters: "The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday that, while litigation continues, an order of Roman Catholic nuns need not comply with a part of President Barack Obama's healthcare law requiring employers to provide insurance that covers contraception. In the latest skirmish over religious objections to providing government-mandated contraception, the four-sentence court order was a partial victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Baltimore-based order of nuns that runs nursing homes, and Illinois-based Christian Brothers Services, which manages healthcare plans for Catholic groups." ...
... Lyle Denniston elaborates on ScotusBlog. ...
... Irin Carmon: "... in a one-paragraph answer to the Little Sisters' emergency appeal for a reprieve from the rule, the Supreme Court has made it even weirder."
Sy Mukherjee of Think Progress: "Chain retailer Target announced on Wednesday that it will stop offering health insurance to employees who work less than 30 hours per week, instead sending these workers to Obamacare's insurance marketplaces to buy new plans. The announcement was quickly picked up by conservative outlets as proof that the health law is giving workers short shrift. To the contrary, these part-time workers will most likely be better off under Obamacare plans, and Target's decision to shift the employees into the marketplaces is definitive proof that the health law is doing exactly what it's intended to do."
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Critics of the Affordable Care Act are seizing on a decades-old provision in Medicaid law to scare lower-income Americans from signing up for health care insurance, warning newly eligible enrollees that the federal government could take their house and other assets once they die."
Joe Nocera: For the severely mentally ill, care options are worse today than they were 30 years ago.
Zeke Miller of Time: "... the Republican National Committee passed a resolution Friday calling for an investigation into the 'gross infringement' of Americans' rights by National Security Agency programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden. The resolution also calls on on Republican members of Congress to enact amendments to the Section 215 law that currently allows the spy agency to collect records of almost every domestic telephone call."
Cameron Joseph of the Hill: "A series of changes aimed at tightening the GOP presidential primary calendar sailed through a vote at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting, giving the party new tools to control its nomination process. The new 2016 rules will make it much harder for states to cut in line in the nomination process and will help Republicans avoid a repeat of a drawn out, bloody primary many believe damaged Mitt Romney's chances in 2012 of defeating President Obama."
Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: The White House is establishing an internal political operation & has named a director.
Dana Milbank: "Apologize, then blame someone else." Hey, it's the conservative way. ...
Joe Coscarelli of New York: "[Thursday], Think Progress noted that in the first fourteen school days of 2014, there have been at least seven school shootings in the United States. That number is already out of date: One student was shot and killed this afternoon on the campus of South Carolina State University...." ...
... Here's the Think Progress story, by Adam Peck.
Senate Race
Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: The senatorial campaign of Michelle Nunn, daughter of former George Sen. Sam Nunn (D) "will test whether the rapidly changing demographics of Georgia -- where state elections data show that the white vote dropped to 61 percent of the total in 2012 from 75 percent in 2000 -- have shifted enough to return a Democrat to Washington. And it will reveal how much legacy still matters in politics."
Presidential Election 2016
"Planet Hillary." Amy Chozick has the cover story for the New York Times Magazine on All Hillary's Friends. The raw ambition is sort of sickening. The cover itself is hideous. ...
... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "The real news in on the front of Friday's [New York Times], though, and it comes from Nicholas Confessore.... [Story linked in yesterday's Commentariat.] Right now, twenty-four months before the Iowa primary, and at a point when not a single serious candidate has declared that she or he is running for President, Priorities USA, the Democratic Super PAC that raised and spent wads of cash in support of President Obama's 2012 reëlection campaign, is putting its money and expertise behind -- you guessed it -- Hillary Clinton.... The most immediate implications of the decision by Priorities USA, which was founded by two former Obama-campaign officials, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, are for anybody who is thinking of challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination ... : don't bother! This thing is already sewn up. If you go ahead with your foolhardy pursuit, you'll be crushed. Not only will you be confronting the candidate with the most experience and strongest poll numbers, you will also be going up against practically the entire Democratic establishment: the best campaign managers, the wiliest spinmeisters, the biggest of big-name endorsers, the most modern technology, and the deepest pockets."
Local News
Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record: "The Port Authority will not pick up the legal bills of a former executive at the center of an investigation into the George Washington Bridge access lane closures. On Friday morning, the agency notified David Wildstein, the agency executive who ordered the September lane closures, that it had turned down his request for indemnification, a Port Authority spokesman said. The notification said Wildstein's request 'would not be warranted' under the agency's bylaws, the spokesman said. Those bylaws state that the Port Authority will provide current and former employees with legal representation if the action in question fell within their job duties, according to its bylaws. It will not pay if there was fraud, malice, misconduct or intentional wrongdoing, the bylays state."
News Ledes
AP: "Someone armed with a gun opened fire at a busy shopping mall in suburban Baltimore late this morning and three people died, including the person believed to be the shooter, died, police said. The shooting took place at the Mall in Columbia, a suburb of both Baltimore and Washington, D.C." ...
... The Washington Post story is here.
... CW: I wonder when the governments of "normal" countries are going to start issuing travel warnings to their citizens, urging them not to travel to the U.S. because it's an unstable, dangerous place.
Guardian: "The Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, has offered two opposition leaders top government posts on Saturday, the presidential website said on Saturday, after the two sides met for talks aimed at seeking an end to a violent political crisis. Former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk would be offered the post of prime minister and Vitaly Klitschko ... would be proposed as deputy prime minister responsible for humanitarian issues, the website said."
AP: "A judge on Friday ordered a Texas hospital to remove life support for a pregnant, brain-dead woman whose family had argued that she would not want to be kept in that condition. Judge R. H. Wallace Jr. issued the ruling in the case of Marlise Munoz. John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth has been keeping Munoz on life support against her family's wishes. The judge gave the hospital until 5 p.m. CST Monday to remove life support. The hospital did not say Friday whether it would appeal."
Politico: "Jesse Ryan Loskarn, a one-time star staffer who was the former top aide to Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, was found dead Thursday afternoon following charges he possessed and distributed child pornography, according to the sheriff's office in Carroll County, Maryland. Loskarn, 35, is believed to have committed suicide."
AP: "Egyptian riot police have fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi protesting as the country marks the third anniversary of the 2011 uprising." ...
... Washington Post UPDATE: "Rival groups of demonstrators across the country were met with deadly force. Clashes between police and anti-coup protesters aligned with Mohamed Morsi, the ousted Islamist president, left 29 dead and nearly 170 injured, according to the Health Ministry, one day after six people were killed in a string of attacks on security targets in Cairo. Twenty-six of the deaths were in greater Cairo, the ministry said.