The Commentariat -- March 3, 2013

The Atlantic: "In 1913, the first major national efforts [to secure women's suffrage] were undertaken, beginning with a massive parade in Washington, D.C., on March 3 -- one day before the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson. Organized by Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the parade, calling for a constitutional amendment, featured 8,000 marchers, including nine bands, four mounted brigades, 20 floats, and an allegorical performance near the Treasury Building.... Marchers were jostled and ridiculed by many in the crowd. Some were tripped, others assaulted. Policemen appeared to be either indifferent to the struggling paraders, or sympathetic to the mob. Before the day was out, one hundred marchers had been hospitalized." The linked page has terrific photos. ...

... Here's the Library of Congress page on the parade. ...

... Speaking of women's equality, Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast: "this week we've seen a great deal of hue and cry about Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, the new poster child for corporate assholery, and her demand that telecommuting employees show up at the office. What's bothersome is that this has become less a debate about the relative merits of telecommuting for employer and employee, and more a debate about child care and 'family-friendly' policies."

New York Times Editors: "A commemoration of the [Bloody Sunday] march  [March 7, 1965] is scheduled to begin Sunday in Selma, led by [Rep. John] Lewis and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., and will end in Montgomery on Friday. Its urgent purpose is to underscore why the Supreme Court must uphold a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, which is now under challenge in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder." ...

Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: "Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Friday that he was 'absolutely shocked' to hear Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia describe a key piece of the Voting Rights Act, one of the most significant achievements of the civil rights movement, as a 'perpetuation of racial entitlement' earlier this week." Clyburn is the third-ranking Democratic leader in the House. ...

... Chief Justice Roberts Gets It Wrong. Nina Totenberg of NPR: "At the voting rights argument in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Chief Justice JohnRoberts tore into Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, grilling him on his knowledge of voting statistics. The point the chief justice was trying to make was that Massachusetts, which is not covered by the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act, has a far worse record in black voter registration and turnout than Mississippi, which is covered by Section 5 of the act. But a close look at census statistics indicates the chief justice was wrong, or at least that he did not look at the totality of the numbers.... Census officials say, and it is really not possible to compare states because those with relatively low minority populations have a much higher margin of error."

Scott Wilson & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Obama ... is taking the most specific steps of his administration in an attempt to ensure the election of a Democratic ­controlled Congress in two years. 'What I can't do is force Congress to do the right thing,' Obama told reporters at the White House on Friday after a fruitless meeting with Republican leaders to avert the country's latest fiscal crisis, known as the sequester. 'The American people may have the capacity to do that.' Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president."

The NRA Goes from Worse to Worst. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "The National Rifle Association (NRA) is increasing its outreach to African Americans with a new campaign that links the Civil Rights struggle and nonviolent resistance to gun ownership, arguing that blacks need firearms to protect themselves from the government":

Ilya Shapiro of the libertarian Cato Institute: "... the Cato Institute has joined the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) on an amicus brief [in Hollingsworth v. Perry, now before the Supreme Court,] that focuses on supporting marriage equality under the Equal Protection Clause."

Maureen Dowd interviews Coim Toibin, an Irish writer who pontificates on the ex-pontiff, among other topics. CW: I don't think I've ever noticed before how choppy Dowd's writing is & what a terrible interviewer she is. But some of Toibin's remarks are worth reading & they touch on that sacrifice thing we discussed in the Comments section a few days ago. ...

... AND since it's Sunday & we're doing Roman Catholic stuff, let's here from Brother Douthat, the New York Times' emissary to the Vatican (sorry, MoDo; despite your seniority, that's a job not open to girls), who says that Joe Ratzinger "stabilized" the Church while he had the top job. ...

... WAIT, WAIT, There's More -- most via Steve Benen's "This Week in God":

Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "In 1859, the Italian village of Isola found itself under attack. Two dozen soldiers occupied the village and ... set about torching, raping, and generally terrorizing. Then [Gabriel Possenti,] a twentysomething student at a nearby Catholic seminary, pulled out two knockoff Colt Navy Model .36 caliber revolvers and ended the hostilities ... by sizing up a lizard 20 paces away and blasting it to bits. The invaders fled. At least, that's how John Snyder tells it. Snyder, 73, is the founder of the Saint Gabriel Possenti Society, an organization dedicated to getting Possenti, who was canonized in 1920, officially certified as the 'patron saint of handgunners.' Wednesday is St. Gabriel Possenti Day -- an annual event that this year coincides with the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on assault weapons. The problem, according to Catholic authorities: ... the entire incident never even happened." ...

... Mark Oppenheimer of the New York Times: "... in 2007, Texas passed a law requiring school districts to pay attention in their curriculums to religious literature, including the Bible, and its 'impact on the history and literature of Western Civilization.' ... Since 2006, public schools in four other states -- Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee -- have passed laws similar to the one in Texas, and North Carolina is considering such a bill." Many schools have ministers teaching their, um, Bible literature & history classes. Surprise! There's proselytising going on there. CW: Most of the "teaching" would be unconstitutional, of course -- if we had a different Supreme Court.

... MEANWHILE, in EvangelicalLand, friend-of-Pat-Robertson-&-Jack-Abramoff Ralph Reed is upset that Congress is helping to foot the bill for repairs to the earthquake-damaged National Cathedral. Reed's problem? Oh, noes. The National Cathedral performs same-sex marriages! Rob Boston of Wall of Separation: "There is one thing that could have stopped taxpayer aid from propping up the National Cathedral -- the separation of church and state. Reed has spent nearly his entire professional life laboring to undermine that principle. Thanks in part to his nefarious schemes, tax money is now flowing to a church that has policies with which he disapproves." ...

... When Woolite Won't Do. Reed's old friend Pat Robertson has advice for how you can get rid of any demons that have attached themselves to the sweaters you bought at the GoodWill.

Congressional Race

Josh Israel of Think Progress: "Massachusetts State Rep. Dan Winslow (R), one of three candidates for his party's nomination in the upcoming special election to fill Secretary of State John Kerry's Senate seat, won a GOP straw poll Saturday.... After giving his speech to the party faithfuls, Wilson tried to disassociate himself from the event's location, the Danversport Yacht Club.... 'They gave us three minutes to speak today; three minutes is longer than I ever wanted to spend in a yacht club,' Winslow said.... [Never mind that] he served on the board of directors for the Pamet Harbor Yacht & Tennis Club. Both Danversport and Pamet Harbor could well benefit from HD1965, Winslow's proposed bill to repeal the sales tax on the sale of boats built or rebuilt in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Joseph Frank, whose magisterial, five-volume life of Fyodor Dostoevsky was frequently cited among the greatest of 20th-century literary biographies, alongside Richard Ellmann's of James Joyce, Walter Jackson Bates's of John Keats and Leon Edel's of Henry James, died on Wednesday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 94 and lived in Palo Alto."

AP: "A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who's now 2½ and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection. There's no guarantee the child will remain healthy, although sophisticated testing uncovered just traces of the virus' genetic material still lingering. If so, it would mark only the world's second reported cure."

AP: "U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday rewarded Egypt for President Mohammed Morsi's pledges of political and economic reforms by releasing $250 million in American aid to support the country's 'future as a democracy.' Yet Kerry also served notice that the Obama administration will keep close watch on how Morsi, who came to power in June as Egypt's first freely elected president, honors his commitment and that additional U.S. assistance would depend on it."

Guardian: Britain Queen Elizabeth "has been taken to hospital for the first time in 10 years after symptoms of gastroenteritis led her to cancel a visit to Rome this week. She is expected to remain in the King Edward VII hospital, central London, for assessment after being admitted on Sunday afternoon."

Washington Post: "Well-known political opposition figures stayed away from meetings with visiting Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Saturday.... Kerry encouraged Egypt's Islamist-led government to take politically difficult economic steps that are crucial to securing international loans and outside investment. President Mohamed Morsi, whom Kerry will see Sunday, has been unable to marshal support for such economic measures. His opponents accuse him of reneging on pledges of political and religious openness." ...

... Washington Post: 'Concerned about Egypt's political instability and the U.S. budget crunch, a growing number of American lawmakers are challenging the wisdom of providing $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Cairo, arguing that the policy is overdue for a wholesale review. Lawmakers say that Washington's largess, which includes large fleets of M1A1 tanks and F-16 fighter jets, could backfire, given the unpredictability of Egypt’s Islamist-led government and its fraught relationship with Israel." CW: leading the "concerned lawmakers" is Jim Inhofe, while John McCain "has taken a more moderate view," so I'd view their "concerns" with some skepticism. ...

... AP: "Egypt's ousted President Hosni Mubarak will face a new trial beginning April 13 on charges related to the killings of protesters during the uprising against him, a court ruled Sunday. Mubarak and his former interior minister were sentenced to life in prison in June for failing to prevent the killing of protesters during the 18-day revolution in 2011 that ended his 29-year rule. In January, an appeals court overturned the sentences and ordered a retrial."

New York Times: "The Las Vegas Sands Corporation, an international gambling empire controlled by the billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson, has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that it likely violated a federal law against bribing foreign officials." CW: gee, I wonder if Willard, the Newt, et al., will return the millions in filthy lucre they got from Sheldon. Imagine the kind of uproar we'd be hearing if Sheldon had contributed to Democrats.

New York Times: "Chad's military said Saturday that its soldiers in Mali had killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of the January seizure of an Algerian gas plant that left at least 37 foreign hostages dead."

AP: "A privately owned Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering a ton of supplies with high-flying finesse after a shaky start to the mission. The Dragon's arrival was one day late...."

The Commentariat -- March 2, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

... Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "Barack Obama signed an order on Friday night to implement $85bn in spending cuts, a move he described as 'dumb' and 'arbitrary' and that he blamed on the intransigence of Republicans in Congress." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama and Congressional leaders emerged from a White House meeting on Friday without resolution to the budget impasse, meaning that the across-the-board spending cuts that take effect Friday could remain in place for weeks if not months. Speaking to reporters after the hourlong meeting, Mr. Obama called the cuts 'just dumb,' and criticized Republicans for their refusal to negotiate a package that includes some new revenue to balance those cuts. 'The only thing we've seen from Republicans so far in terms of proposals is to replace this set of arbitrary cuts with even worse arbitrary cuts,' said Mr. Obama":

     ... Here's a transcript of the President's remarks & the Q&A. ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "President Obama is obviously sick and tired of the widely peddled notion that the sequester and all other budget failures are ultimately his fault because he's the president. His frustration made for a surprisingly lively news conference this morning... The Constitution always envisioned Congress, not the president, as the real locus of government power, particularly with regard to the budget. For any voter who doesn't like it, the entire House of Representatives will be up for election in just 20 months." ...

... ** David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "The idea that spending cuts are morally and politically superior to revenue increases is so ingrained the Village political press that to even put the shoe on the other foot creates an unthinkable scenario. This is one of Ronald Reagan's most baleful legacies: a Washington establishment that can't stop believing it's the 1980s or early 1990s." BUT, in his deficit reduction proposal, Obama "advocates lots of cuts and a few tax increases. The other side advocates only cuts. It's hard to blame just the press for implicitly placing cuts on a higher moral pedestal." ...

... CW: one thing nobody ever mentions is the fact that the Village People are all financially comfortable. We tend to think of journalists as underpaid idealists, but the syndicated columnists, the think tank boys, the "influential Washingtonians" are all well-to-do, & they all have (or had) jobs with benefits. If taxes go up, if loopholes are closed, their taxes will go up & their loopholes will close. And if government services decrease, so what? They do not, for the most part, think Social Security & Medicare are crucial to their retirement years, & they do not qualify for most of programs that benefit children. They are a natural low-tax constituency. ...

... Steve Benen Tries to Explain Governance & Compromise to John Boehner: As he left the meeting with President Obama, Boehner said (hardly for the first time):

Let's make it clear, the president got his tax hike on January 1st. The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over.

      ... Which, Benen notes, "makes exactly as much sense as this sentence":

Let's make it clear, Republicans got their spending cuts in 2011. The discussion about spending cuts, in my view, is over. ...

... New York Times Editors: "House Republicans were elated this week when their leader, John Boehner, made it clear that deep, automatic spending cuts would begin as scheduled on Friday. Incredibly, some consider the decision a victory.... Some Americans will be hurt more than others, and the people who will be hurt the most are those who are already struggling.... Why are the Republicans are so happy when they should be ashamed?" ...

... Why, just look across the page, NYT Editors. There's brilliant macroeconomist Joe Scarborough saying the sequester isn't so bad & President Obama overplayed his hand. CW: why the New York Times gives this lunkhead -- who already has a huge soapbox at MSNBC & another at Politico -- is beyond me. ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker talks with Ryan Lizza & Rick Hertzberg about "the budget fiasco":

... Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect has an excellent retrospective on What Obama Did Is Doing) Wrong. ...

... CW: The Two-Step Obama Can't Master. It has seemed to me for a long time that the only way Obama could self-correct would be to make a huge I-Wuz-Wrong confession & renounce deficit hawkery, Simpson-Bowles, & all that other belt-tightening crap. But politicians, much more presidents, have prohibitively powerful egos, so I don't think that (1) even if his deficit-cutting faith could be exorcised, (2) he could say I Wuz Wrong.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: " That the free market won't work for medicine is an economic truth by now ancient and undisputed." But for conservatives, "the market becomes not an instrument of prosperity but, rather, an icon of piety...." Therefore, when private service costs more & delivers less than can the government, well -- God bless private enterprise!

Pedro Nicolaci da Costa of Reuters: "Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that pulling back on aggressive policy measures too soon would pose a real risk of damaging a still-fragile recovery."

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Military prosecutors announced on Friday that they had decided to try Pfc. Bradley Manning on the most serious charges they have brought against him and seek a sentence that could be life without parole, despite his voluntary guilty plea to 10 lesser charges that carry a maximum total sentence of 20 years."

Friday Afternoon News Dump. Juliet Eilperin & Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday, suggesting the project would have little impact on climate change. Canada's oil sands will be developed even if President Obama denies a permit to the pipeline connecting the region to Gulf Coast refineries, the analysis said. Such a move would also not alter U.S. oil consumption, the report added."

Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: researchers from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum "have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945. The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington."

Right Wing World

Do Not Challenge "Washington's Reporter Emeritus." Kathleen Parker, one of the many conservative columnists for the Washington Post, is just as apoplectic about White House muscle as is Bob Woodward: "... the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script.... But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger."

News Ledes

AP: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived in Egypt to press bickering Egyptian leaders and opposition politicians to forge a political consensus that will allow the country to emerge from economic crisis. Kerry meets Saturday with a number of opposition figures along with Egypt's foreign minister before seeing President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday. U.S. officials say Kerry is particularly concerned that Egypt takes the reforms necessary to qualify for a $4.5 billion IMF loan package."

Washington Post: "Bonnie Franklin, the spunky, ginger-haired stage performer who became best remembered as the independent-minded divorcee with two teenage daughters on the long-running sitcom 'One Day at a Time,' died March 1 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 69."

The Commentariat -- March 1, 2013

Abdication! Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "As the president and Congressional Democrats have tried to force [House Speaker John] Boehner back to the table for talks to head off the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on Friday, Mr. Boehner has instead dug in deeper, refusing to even discuss an increase in revenue and insisting in his typical colorful language that it was time for the Senate to produce a measure aimed at the cuts. 'The revenue issue is now closed,' Mr. Boehner said Thursday, before the House left town for the weekend without acting on the cuts and a Senate attempt to avert them died. Mr. Boehner said the dispute with Democrats amounted to a question of 'how much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government.'" ...

... Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein, in a Washington Post op-ed, take a very balanced approach in explaining how the sequester came about & what it means. ...

... So does Stephen Colbert:

... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times:The Senate on Thursday shot down competing bills to undo -- or at least mitigate the impact of -- across-the-board spending cuts in a desultory bit of political theater that ensured the cuts would go into force Friday with a partisan blame game in full tilt.... The Republican bill received only 38 votes out of the 60 needed to be considered for final passage, losing 9 Republican senators. The measure failed, 62 to 38, with two Democrats voting yes. The Democratic bill barely garnered a majority, 51 votes, but needed 60 under the rules adopted beforehand." ...

... The Sequester Was the Pre-game Show. Alex Altman of Time: "The White House released reams of scary economic reports. The House deferred to the Senate, which finally on Thursday staged dueling stunt votes whose failure was a foregone conclusion. At which point Congress, having barely tried to avert a crisis of its own making, skipped town for the weekend.... The two parties are already looking ahead to the next skirmish: a fight over how to fund the federal government beyond the end of the month. For the past few years, with the formal budget process broken, Congress has kept the government running with a series of stopgap funding bills, known as continuing resolutions. By March 27, lawmakers have to pass a new one or the lights go off. Unlike the effects of the sequester, whose hazards are real but not immediate, a shutdown's seismic impact would reverberate across the economy right away. ...

... Steven Dennis of Roll Call: If Democrats know how they're going to handle the likelihood of a forced government shutdown, they are not saying. Via Greg Sargent. ...

... ** Ruby Cramer & Rebecca Bird of BuzzFeed: "While lawmakers in Washington trade shots over the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, due to take effect Friday, there's a growing consensus among liberals across the country that the real threat to the social safety net isn't this fight, but the next one.... Although House Democrats signed a letter this month stating their opposition to entitlement cuts, President Barack Obama has signaled a willingness to bring such spending reductions to the table as part of a grand bargain with Republicans."

... Uncertainty. Steve Benen: "In 2009 and 2010, the single most common Republican talking point on economic policy included the word 'uncertainty.' It was a dumb talking point borne of necessity -- Republicans struggled to think of a way to blame Obama for a crisis that began long before the president took office.... Mysteriously, early in 2011, the 'economic uncertainty' pitch slowly faded away.... I have a hunch we know why: Republicans decided to govern through a series of self-imposed crises that have created more deliberate economic uncertainty than any conditions seen in the United States in recent memory.... Looking back over the last ... 22 months -- Republicans have made three shutdown threats, forced two debt-ceiling standoffs, pushed the country towards a fiscal cliff, refused to compromise on a sequester, and have lined up even more related fiscal fights in the months ahead."

John Schwartz & Adam Liptak of the New York Times: The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage in that state." The Justice Department's amicus brief is here." ...

... Shushannah Walshe of ABC News: "A growing split in the Republican Party deepened today when Clint Eastwood, the movie star who rocked the GOP convention by interviewing an invisible President Obama, joined the ranks of Republicans who are in favor of legalizing gay marriage. The support for gay marriage by Eastwood and about 100 prominent Republicans, along with budding support within the party for immigration reform, is creating an obvious divide in the party. It pits moderate Republicans and party operatives on one side against conservative activists who drive turnout in the primary elections."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he wanted the information to become public 'to make the world a better place.' ...Before reading the statement, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the huge leak, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million diplomatic cables. The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison. But the case against the slightly built, bespectacled 25-year-old -- who has become a folk hero among antiwar and whistle-blower advocacy groups -- is not over.The military has charged him with a far more serious set of offenses, including aiding the enemy and multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act...." ...

... The Washington Post story on Manning is by Julie Tate & Ernesto Londoño.

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The Republican-controlled House on Thursday approved an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act that includes new protections for gay men and lesbians, part of an effort by GOP leaders to improve their image among women after last year's poor election results. The Senate approved the measure in January and President Obama said he will quickly sign it into law.... The bill passed the House on a vote of 286 to 138, as a unified Democratic caucus joined 87 supportive Republicans.... More Republicans opposed the bill than supported it -- the third time since December that House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) has allowed legislation to move off the floor that did not have the support of a majority of his divided members." CW: way back in January that Boehner had better learn to start working with Pelosi because that was the only way he was going to get any legislation passed that could also pass the Senate. Well, case on point.

In his column today, Paul Krugman develops a theme he covered in a blogpost: "... leaders of the [austerity] consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they've been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?), while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions -- about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity -- have come true. So here's my question: Will it make any difference that Ben Bernanke has now joined the ranks of the hippies?

Both Joan Walsh of Salon (here) & Meteor Blades of Daily Kos (here) have posts contrasting Nino Scalia & John Lewis. ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "Protection against discrimination, it would seem, now counts as an entitlement -- a loaded word these days. The notion that everyone is harmed, and our system is corrupted, if any group is denied the vote seems to be missing.... The role of the Court, Scalia seems to be saying, is to step in when members of Congress are scared of being called racist. Scalia does not seem to be afraid of that."

CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.Meanwhile, the editors at Bloomberg's Business Week are horrified the unwashed unwhites are getting mortgage loans again. Business Week's actual cover -- portraying Hispanics & blacks grinning & rolling in piles of cash, much of which they're casually letting fly away or feeding to the dog, etc. -- is at left. What could possibly be wrong with that? ...

... Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review has a few answers: "The cover stands out for its cast of black and Hispanic caricatures with exaggerated features reminiscent of early 20th century race cartoons. Also, because there are only people of color in it, grabbing greedily for cash. It's hard to imagine how this one made it through the editorial process. Compounding the first-glance problem with the image is the fact that race has been a key backdrop to the subprime crisis."

Matt Yglesias publishes Business Week's non-apology apology:

Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret. Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we'd do it differently. -- Josh Tyrangiel

That is, the management regrets you people object to racist pictures. -- Constant Weader ...

... Yglesias, in a follow-up post, reports that the feature article accompanying the cover "says nothing in particular about minority homeowners," & the artist, who is Peruvian, said, "I simply drew the family like that because those are the kind of families I know. I am Latino and grew up around plenty of mixed families." Yglesias writes, "... someone else on the staff should have been able to see how this was going to look in the U.S. context." Yep. ...

... Chittum also has a follow-up.

Jillian Rayfield of Salon: "Rep. Peter King of New York slammed fellow Republican Marco Rubio for fundraising in New York after voting against federal funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.... King told the New York Observer's Politicker blog, 'It's bad enough that these guys voted against it, that's inexcusable enough. But to have the balls to come in and say, 'We screwed you, now make us president'?' King said that New York donors should cut off Rubio and any other Republicans who 'threw a knife in the back in New York' by opposing the bill."

Brett LoGiurato of Business Insider: "Bob Woodward told Fox News host Sean Hannity Thursday night that he never felt 'threatened' from a White House adviser Gene Sperling's email telling him that he'd 'regret' his reporting on the sequester. But he said Sperling's email felt like a 'coded, "You better watch out." They don't like to be challenged or crossed,' Woodward said of the White House." CW: Yeah, Bob, so expertly coded nobody but a genius like you could break the code. ...

... The ever-careful Woodward, again, does not use the term 'threatened.' He merely uses other words that, together, form the definition of 'threatened.' -- Erik Wemple, Washington Post media critic ...

How to Threaten Bob Woodward

... The chart above comes from, of all places, Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post. She writes, in part, "... a number of younger reporters have leapt up to say that they get emails all the time saying much worse, from the flacks of far more threatening and imposing figures, all the time. ... [One said,] 'Sometimes ... Gene Sperling just sends me menacing GIFs of horseheads. But having grown up on the Internet, I am used to this sort of thing.'" ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon raises a point we discussed here yesterday: "If Woodward, who has generated best-seller after best-seller over many decades based heavily on anonymous sources, can't accurately convey a conversation with an email trail, should we trust the anonymous sources in the rest of his reporting?" Seitz-Wald goes to on recount some of discrepancies between Woodward's reporting & other accounts. ...

... John Cook of Gawker has an excellent takedown of Woodward, including a reminder of how Woodward tried to make a young reporter "tremble tremble." Cook also links to a post he wrote last year titled "Woodward & Bernstein Were No Woodward & Bernstein," which demonstrates the liberties Woodstein took with journalistic ethics in their Watergate reporting. ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic says very, very nicely that Woodward doesn't know WTF he's writing about, but Chait tries to get the conversation back to what it's really about -- the realities of how the sequester came about. (Seems Eric Cantor takes credit for it, for one thing. CW: Guess I shoulda read Ryan Lizza's long profile of Cantor, which I linked earlier in the week.) ...

... An excellent piece by John Cassidy on Woodward's unforced errors. (CW: Probably wrong of me to use the term "unforced errors" when Woordward's error was to accuse Obama of "moving the goalposts.") ...

Cook & Cassidy both link to this well-known 1996 Joan Didion takedown of Woodward. Didion is sort of a relative of mine, but I find her writing here & elsewhere pretty Henry Jamesian. As Edith Wharton once said to James when he was attempting to ask a man for driving directions, "Get to the point, Henry!" ...

NEW. FINALLY, Charles Pierce is "starting to think Nixon was framed." In the end, he suggests it might be best if someone should take a stun gun to Woodward.

News Ledes

AP: "The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned. The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the 'few hundred' illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process."

New York Times: "President Obama issued pardons on Friday to 17 convicted felons, making the first use of his clemency powers in his second term. Their offenses were largely small-scale crimes many years ago, and 12 of the people had not been sentenced to serve time in prison."

New York Times: "The unemployment rate in the euro zone edged up in January to a new record, official data showed Friday, as the ailing European economy continued to weigh on the job market. Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone stood at 11.9 percent in January, up from 11.8 percent in December, and from 10.8 percent in January 2012, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg."

Here's How Austerity Works, John Boehner. Reuters: "The risk that Britain is entering its third recession in four years grew on Friday with figures showing that manufacturing shrank unexpectedly last month and mortgage approvals for home buyers dropped in January. Gross domestic product fell at the end of last year, bringing Britain within sight of another recession and the latest data suggested the central bank may need to do yet more to revive the economy."

Reuters: "Italian center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani on Friday ruled out forming a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi to solve an intractable crisis after this week's inconclusive election." CW: I don't know why....

Reuters: "Silvio Berlusconi accused Italian prosecutors on Friday of threatening a senator with jail to force him to say the billionaire former prime minister paid him to join his center-right party. The bribery allegations against Berlusconi come as parties including his People of Freedom (PDL) formation maneuver to form a government after an inconclusive election that left no party with a majority in parliament. Sergio De Gregorio, a senator formerly with the Italy of Values party, joined Berlusconi's party in 2006, forcing the collapse of a coalition supporting then Prime Minister Romano Prodi."

Reuters: "With Pope Benedict XVI now officially in retirement, Catholic cardinals from around the world begin on Friday the complex, cryptic and uncertain process of picking the next leader of the world's largest church."

AND Dennis Rodman Proves Once Again How Much of a Genius He Is. AP: "Ending his unexpected round of basketball diplomacy in North Korea on Friday, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman called leader Kim Jong Un an 'awesome guy' and said his father and grandfather were 'great leaders.'"