The Commentariat -- Jan. 27, 2013

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on a New York Times piece by reporters Jeff Zeleny & Jonathan Weisman in which the writers discuss how the GOP is doing some soul-searching. I zero in on Bobby Jindal's "soul."

Prof. Erin Hatton, in the New York Times, on "The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy": "American employers have generally taken the low road: lowering wages and cutting benefits, converting permanent employees into part-time and contingent workers, busting unions and subcontracting and outsourcing jobs. They have done so, in part, because of the extraordinary evangelizing of the temp industry, which rose from humble origins to become a global behemoth.The story begins in the years after World War II, when a handful of temp agencies were started, largely in the Midwest."

Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly." The issue will most likely come before the Supreme Court.

Obama 2.0

Franklin Foer & Chris Hughes of The New Republic interview President Obama. The part of the interview that seems to be getting the most attention is this: "I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence."

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "By nominating [Mary Jo] White, a former federal prosecutor, to head the S.E.C. last week, President Obama appeared to send a message that Washington was finally going to get tough with financial wrongdoers. Tough enforcement has been pretty much AWOL on his watch. Maybe Ms. White can change that with a new, aggressive approach." Morgenson gives White a to-do list. For more on White, see links in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "While everybody deserves a proper legal defense, even overpaid Wall Street C.E.O.s, it seems a bit peculiar for a President who has repeatedly pledged to crack down on Wall Street wrongdoing to pick as one of his top financial cops a figure who has spent much of the last decade defending senior bankers.... But if White actually is the fearless and fearsome slayer of Wall Street wrongdoers that the White House and her old mentor Senator Charles Schumer are building her up to be, then she may well have been appointed to the wrong job.... The federal agency crying out for a big bad financial prosecutor is the Justice Department, which has yet to bring criminal charges against any senior Wall Street figures for anything having to do with the subprime blowup." ...

... Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a Politico op-ed on the Wall Street-Washington revolving door: "Transition is afoot in Washington, and if the right people go back and forth, the country will develop smarter, stronger rules. But if the wrong people make the shuffle, then Washington will be rigged even more for Wall Street -- and every middle-class family will pay the consequences."

Wingers Find New Way to Waste Their Money. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: "A brand new conservative group calling itself Americans for a Strong Defense and financed by anonymous donors is running advertisements urging Democratic senators in five states to vote against Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee to be secretary of defense, saying he would make the United States 'a weaker country.' Another freshly minted and anonymously backed organization, Use Your Mandate, which presents itself as a liberal gay rights group but purchases its television time through a prominent Republican firm, is attacking Mr. Hagel as 'anti-Gay,' 'anti-woman' and 'anti-Israel' in ads and mailers. Those groups are joining at least five others that are organizing to stop Mr. Hagel's confirmation, a goal even they acknowledge appears to be increasingly challenging."

Noam Scheiber of The New Republic, writing in the Washington Post, has a balanced, informative take on "Five Myths about Tim Geithner." ...

... Scheiber has more in The New Republic, in a short article titled "Tim Geithner, A Good Hire -- Who Stayed about Three & a Half Years Too Long."

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: Obama campaign guru David Plouffe left his White House job Friday. "And so it is now that President Obama has tapped as his new senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer," who has been Obama's communications director. ...

An ad from the online "Junior Shooters" magazine. Via the New York Times. I deleted the sales-contact info.Gunz 4 Kidz. Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "Threatened by declining participation in shooting sports, gun makers and sellers have poured millions into a campaign to get firearms into the hands of more, and younger, children. The industry's strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for 'junior shooters' and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers."

Ron Charles of the Washington Post: "Best-selling author Stephen King has just released a passionate call for greater gun control, titled 'Guns.' In a coup for Amazon, the essay is available only through its Kindle Store for 99 cents." the Amazon page for "Guns" is here.

Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dumb

Art by DonkeyHotey.Samuel Knight in the Washington Monthly: "... neither the President nor any other Democrats need to portray [Paul] Ryan as 'cruel and unyielding' [as Ryan claims] because his policies do a fantastic job of that on their own. Ryan has time and time again demonstrated that he isn't interested in paying down the national debt or in 'reforms to protect and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid,' as he claimed on Saturday. He's interested in turning Medicare into a voucher program and in slashing Medicaid's budget by over a trillion dollars." And he's still talking about "keep[ing] the bond markets at bay" even though "interest rates are about as low as they can be and aren't expect to rise, and demand for U.S. Treasury bonds is robust." CW: Ryan either really has no idea what he's talking about or he's just making up more excuses for cutting social safety programs.

Art by DonkeyHotey.Boehner Sorry He's Not More of a Jerk. Russell Berman of The Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is sharing his regrets about his 'fiscal-cliff' strategy, less than a month after the House bitterly swallowed a last-minute deal hatched in the Senate."

Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who was the chief elections officer when the state experienced massive voting problems in 2004, is planning to lead a national effort to rig the electoral college in favor of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate." CW: sounds sensible. Blackwell already has excellent state-level experience in election-rigging. ...

... Keyes, again: "In 2004, Republicans fervently opposed manipulating the Electoral College when the Democratic candidate stood to benefit. A decade later, after Obama won his second term and pundits discuss a long-term electoral realignment, Republicans are abandoning that principled stand in an attempt to rig future presidential elections."

Hania Mourtada & Anne Barnard of the New York Times on the tensions and disputes between (and among) Syrian secular activists & jihadists. CW: The post-Assad period is going to be a mess.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Egypt's new government lost control of a major city, Port Said, on Saturday as rampaging soccer fans attacked the main jail, drove police officers from the streets and cut off all access to the city.... By evening, fighting in the streets had left at least 30 people dead, mostly from gunfire, and injured more than 300."

Washington Post: "The United States is significantly expanding its assistance to a French assault on Islamist militants in Mali by offering aerial refueling and planes to transport soldiers from other African nations, the Pentagon announced Saturday night." ...

... New York Times: "French special forces took control of the airport in the Islamic rebel stronghold of Gao, the French government said Saturday, meeting 'serious resistance' from militants even as they pressed northward. Gao is one of three main northern cities in Mali that has been under rebel control for months, and the capture of the main strategic points in Gao represents the biggest prize yet in the battle to retake the northern half of the country." ...

... Al Jazeera: "Mali forces backed by French troops are advancing towards the northern key town of Timbuktu after seizing the rebel stronghold of Gao, French officials have said. French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault issued the statement on Sunday after French airstrikes forced out the al-Qaeda-linked fighters from northern areas, clearing the way for the ground offensive."

Al Jazeera: "At least 200 people have been killed in a nightclub fire caused by a pyrotechnics show in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria, local media reports. Bodies were still being removed from the Kiss nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria, according to Major Gerson da Rosa Ferreira, who was leading rescue efforts at the scene for the military police. Ferreira said the victims died of asphyxiation or from being trampled, and there were as many as 500 people inside the club when the fire broke out."

The Commentariat -- Jan. 26, 2013

AP: "Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says he will not seek re-election in 2014. The 73-year-old Harkin tells The Associated Press in an interview, 'It's just time to step aside,' because by the time he would finish a sixth term, he would be 81. Harkin said it would also allow a new generation of Democrats to seek higher office. The announcement comes as a surprise, considering he had $2.7 million in his campaign war chest and was planning a fundraiser next month."

Obama 2.0
Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the U.S.S. Mammon

"President Obama discusses his nomination of Mary Jo White to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission and Richard Cordray to continue as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." Transcript here:

** BUT Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone: "If Barack Obama wanted to send a signal that he's getting tougher on Wall Street, he sure picked a funny way to do it, nominating [Mary Jo White,] the woman who helped [a future Morgan Stanley CEO] John Mack get off on the slam-dunkiest insider trading case ever to cross an SEC investigator's desk.... Irrespective of the Mack incident, which incidentally really was about as bad as it gets in terms of 'regulatory capture,' America's top financial cop should be someone who doesn't owe his or her nest egg to the world's biggest banks." Thanks to contributor MAG for the link. ...

... AND here's Eliot Spitzer on Mary Jo White. He's agnostic:

... Wal-Mart in the White House. Mike Allen & David Rogers of Politico: "Sylvia Mathews Burwell, a respected veteran of the Clinton White House budget and Treasury operations, is expected to be tapped by President Barack Obama as the next director of the Office of Management and Budget, administration sources said. Burwell, president of the Walmart Foundation, was chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and came over to OMB as deputy director when Jack Lew moved up to head the budget office in the last years of the Clinton administration."

White House photo.... BTW, the President does have plenty of female advisors. Above is a photo from January 10. The caption: "President Barack Obama talks with Felicia Escobar, Senior Policy Director for Immigration, left, and Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the Domestic Policy Council, at the end of a meeting with advisors in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Jan. 10, 2013. Pictured in the background are: Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Nancy-Ann DeParle; Acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jeffrey Zients; National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling; Rob Nabors, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs; and Kathryn Ruemmler, Counsel to the President." These women do not get the coffee.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The National Labor Relations Board has been thrown into a strange legal limbo -- with the possibility that more than 300 of its decisions over the last year could be nullified -- as a result of a federal appeals court ruling on Friday that President Obama's recess appointments to the board were invalid." ...

... CW: I agree with comments Ken Winkes made in yesterday's thread. The D.C. Court's ruling is a disaster. Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money, in a post titled "Neoconfederate Judges Rule NLRB Recess Appointments Unconstitutional": "The opinion is an atrocity, classic 'hack originalism for dummies,' relying heavily on the fact that recess appointments during nominal sessions of the Senate are a relatively recent phenomenon (although there's precedent going back to 1867, and '[t]he last five Presidents have all made appointments during intrasession recesses of fourteen days or fewer'), without considering that the Senate systematically refusing to consider presidential nominees is also a contemporary phenomenon." Read the whole post, especially the part about Obama's "strange inattention to federal judicial appointments," making him "the first president in at least 50 years not to get a single nominee confirmed to the D.C. Circuit." ...

... Charles Pierce: "... the federal appeals court of the District Of Columbia ... today laid down the most singular piece of partisan hackery to come out of a court since Antonin Scalia picked the previous president.... This, children, is what you get when you operate politically under the theory that They're All The Same. You get 20 or 30 years of primarily Republican judges ... drawn from the legal chop-shops in the conservative movement bubble, and doing their partisan duty like performing seals.... David Sentelle, [who wrote the opinion]..., is [a] career Tenther who believes the Constitution [w]as written on a napkin at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Small wonder he went batty on people appointed to the NLRB. This is a guy who thinks the NLRB itself is constitutionally illegitimate.... He doesn't think the agencies should exist." ...

Donovan Slack of Politico: "White House press secretary Jay Carney, who blasted the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling as 'novel and unprecedented,' said that he did not expect any broader application. 'It's one court, one case, one company,' Carney said. Carney said ... the ruling Friday 'contradicts 150 year of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations.... So we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.' Carney declined to say if the administration planned to appeal, referring questions about next steps to the Department of Justice. Justice Department officials did not outline their plans, saying only,'We disagree with the court's ruling and believe that the President's recess appointments are constitutionally sound.'" ...

... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "The court's position would invalidate the vast majority of recess appointments made by Republican and Democratic presidents over the course of the last century.... If the decision holds, then Senate Republicans just acquired even more power to block presidential appointments than they already had. Good thing the Democrats decided to cave almost entirely on filibuster reform just a day earlier." ...

... Take That, Harry Reid. New York Times Editors: "Democrats could have ... curb[ed] filibuster abuses this week, particularly on high-level presidential appointments, but they squandered the opportunity. The court's decision demonstrates how their timidity is being used against them. With no sign that Republicans are willing to let up on their machinations, Mr. Obama was entirely justified in using his executive power to keep federal agencies operating." ...

... The reliable Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog has a sober assessment. ...

... The McConnell Camp Dances the Filibuster Fandango. Alexandra Jaffe of The Hill: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) campaign is touting what it characterizes as the senator's work to stop filibuster reform in a new fundraising pitch that proclaims, "We beat the liberals. A group of the Senate's most liberal senators, fueled by left-wing groups like MoveOn, have been pushing a dangerous scheme to change the rules of the United States Senate...," the email, written by campaign manager Jesse Benton, reads. He goes on to declare that McConnell 'stopped that scheme dead in its tracks.'"

** Bob Lewis of the AP: "The prospects appear doomed in Virginia this year for Republican-backed legislation that would replace the state's winner-take-all method of apportioning presidential electoral votes with one that awards one vote to the winner of each congressional district.... The Virginia legislation survived a state Senate subcommittee on a 3-3 vote this week, but two Republicans on the full committee said Friday they would oppose the bill when it comes up for a committee vote next week, effectively killing it. And should it clear the legislature, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Friday he opposes it." CW: did Gov. Transvaginal, now that he wants to be POTUS, have a Transfusion, or what??? Maybe he figures he can carry Virginia, & he wants those Northeastern Virginia Electoral College votes. I dunno. ...

... Humorist Paul Bibeau: "Last election, Barack Obama won 51.16% of the vote. Under the new bill he would have won four of the states [sic] electoral votes. And do you know how much it counts an Obama voter as? (It's 4/13 divided by 51.16%. I'll wait. Do it. Get a calculator. You'll crap yourself.) IT IS ALMOST EXACTLY THREE FIFTHS. This bill counts an Obama voter as 3/5 of a person. I don't know if that fraction rights a bell with you." Thanks to contributor Lisa for the link. ...

... CW: I don't think the two Virginia Republican senators' opposition to the bill offers serious relief to Democrats. Here's why, from the AP story: "Republican [State] Sen. Jill Vogel..., a former Republican National Committee election lawyer, said she saw no problem with the bill's legality, but objected to the image it creates for her party so soon after Obama's victory last fall. 'It's the timing of it,' she said. 'It's just an awful impression it makes.'" I do believe Virginia Republicans will find a better time to re-introduce & pass the bill -- closer to the 2016 election, when it's too late for Democrats to, say, get a suit through the courts challenging the gerrymandered districts, which effectively make every Virginia Democratic voter 3/5ths of a person. If that suits Gov. McConnell, as well it might, he'll sign the bill.

Rosalind Helderman & David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad principles for overhauling the nation's immigration laws, representing the most substantive bipartisan effort toward major legislation in years. The three Democrats and three Republicans, who have been meeting quietly in recent months, plan to announce a final agreement as early as next Friday." The group members are Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) & Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). "Two others, Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), have also been involved in some of the discussions."

Ryan Lizza & Rick Hertzberg discuss the President's inaugural speech & how it may predict his second term with host Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker:

Bad Lip-Reading the Inauguration:

CW: Gail Collins goes limericky on the fiscal cliff. Apparently she does read Akhilleus & me.

David Gonzalez of the New York Times: "The planned closing of Blessed Sacrament School in the Bronx -- a haven amid the housing projects in the Soundview neighborhood -- has left many parents and graduates upset. That includes the valedictorian of the class of 1968 ... Sonia Sotomayor.... The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced this week that it would close 24 schools, including 7 elementary schools in the Bronx." Gonzalez interviews Justice Sotomayor about the closing. Includes cute anecdote.

Romney, a few days after the 2012 election.The Last Ha-Ha. "I'm Not Going Away." Anna Palmer of Politico: Mitt "Romney told top Washington bundlers, donors and senior campaign leadership in a meeting Friday morning that he would help out GOP candidates for governor in 2013, during the upcoming midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race, according to two people who attended the meeting. Romney also made clear his ambition for elected office has ended, according to another source present.... Romney will also attend Alfalfa Club's annual dinner Saturday night."

So Long to Another Dirtbag. Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), one of the Republicans most vulnerable to a conservative primary challenge, will retire in 2014 rather than seek a third term." CW: bear in mind that Georgia will probably elect a senator who is worse than Chambliss. Maybe former Rep. Joe Walsh (RTP-Ill.) should move to Georgia & run for Chambliss's seat. Like Chambliss, Walsh is good at mocking the sacrifice of war veteran amputees. ...

... Jeff Zeleny & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times go soul-searching with leaders of the Stupid Party (hey, that's Stupid Bobby Jindal's label, not mine). ...

... ** Jamelle Bouie in the Washington Post: "... there are no real reformers among the leadership class of the Republican Party.... At most, these leaders offer a whitewash: Underneath all the new rhetoric of change and inclusiveness lurk the same unpopular policies and priorities skewed in favor of the rich and against the middle class and poor." ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "The backlash from Gov. Bobby Jindal's decision to cut hospice care from the state's Medicaid program as of Feb. 1 has been loud and sustained. Loud and strong enough to force Jindal to reverse that decision."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Obama administration is debating how much more aid it can give the French military forces who are battling Islamic militants in Mali, weighing the benefit of striking a major blow to Qaeda-linked fighters in Africa against concern about being drawn into a lengthy conflict there."

AP: "The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago 'a line was crossed.' The hackers say they've infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public."

AP: "Residents from Newtown, Conn., are joining a march on Washington for gun control on Saturday with parents, pastors, survivors of gun violence and Education Secretary Arne Duncan."

AP: "An Egyptian court sentenced 21 people to death Saturday on charges related to one of the world's deadliest incidents of soccer violence, touching off an attempted jailbreak and a riot that killed 16 in the Mediterranean port city that is home to most of the defendants."

AP: "Algeria's foreign minister acknowledged that security forces made mistakes in a hostage crisis at a Saharan gas plant in which many foreign workers were killed by Algerian military strikes.Mourad Medelci, in an Associated Press interview, also conceded that Algeria will need international help to better fight terrorism. Algeria's decision to refuse foreign offers of aid in handling the crisis, and to send the military to fire on vehicles full of hostages, drew widespread international criticism."

Al Jazeera: "At least six garment workers have been killed and 10 others injured in a factory fire in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, according to fire fighters and witnesses. The blaze on Saturday comes just two months after the country's worst factory fire that killed 112 workers."

The Commentariat -- Jan. 25, 2013

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on David Brooks' "The Great Migration." Thanks for your comments today on the same. I had a hard time writing this one; there was so much wrong with Brooks' arguments I just couldn't hit 'em all.

Nedra Picker of the AP: "President Barack Obama has chosen longtime trusted adviser and national security expert Denis McDonough as his fifth chief of staff. A White House official said Obama will announce McDonough's appointment Friday in the East Room. McDonough, 43, will take over the key West Wing role from Jack Lew, Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary." ...

     ... New York Times Update by Peter Baker: "President Obama shook up his White House staff on Friday, installing a new team largely made up of familiar faces moved to different positions as he gears up for an intense push on sweeping legislation early in his second term. Mr. Obama named Denis R. McDonough, a longtime aide and currently the principal deputy national security adviser, as his new White House chief of staff, and shuffled around a series of other officials in the West Wing." ...

"Deficit Hawks Down." Paul Krugman hails the end of the era of deficit hawks. CW: I hope he's right -- that the President at long last gets it -- but I'm not as confident as Krugman. Krugman bases his optimistic assessment on the fact that Obama "barely mentioned the budget deficit" in his inaugural address. But Obama did say this: "We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit." Deficit reduction is not exactly an inspirational theme for a speech destined to go down in the history books, so it is hardly surprising that the President "barely mentioned" it. But the State of the Union Address, which Obama will deliver on February 12, is just the right place to repeat his "belt-tightening" meme. ...

... Meanwhile, here's an excellent example of how "well" austerity works. David Milliken & Olesya Dmitracova of Reuters: "Britain's economy shrank more than expected at the end of 2012..., pushing it perilously close to a 'triple-dip' recession.... The news is a blow for Britain's Conservative-led government, which a day earlier defended its austerity program against criticism from the International Monetary Fund." The Guardian story is here.

Stupid Senate Tricks. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have largely accepted the recommendations from a bipartisan team of senior senators that the chamber needs to streamline its operations but not throw out rules that give the minority more rights than in any legislative body in the world. Reid and McConnell are presenting the draft proposal to their caucuses Thursday afternoon, and if they get a positive response, the changes could come to a vote by the end of the day." (Emphasis added.) ...

     ... UPDATE: "The Senate approved a deal Thursday that will keep the chamber’s long-standing 60-vote threshold for halting a filibuster but streamline some of the chamber’s more cumbersome procedures."

... Ezra Klein: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have come to a deal on filibuster reform. The deal is this: The filibuster will not be reformed.... What will be reformed is how the Senate moves to consider new legislation, the process by which all nominees — except Cabinet-level appointments and Supreme Court nominations — are considered, and the number of times the filibuster can be used against a conference report.... But even those reforms don’t go as far as they might." ...

There should not be 60 votes in the Senate. -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, 2010

I'm not personally, at this stage, ready to get rid of the 60-vote threshold.... With the history of the Senate, we have to understand the Senate isn't and shouldn't be like the House. -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, 2013

... Steve Benen: "Reid says he's concerned about 'the history of the Senate,' but the Senate functioned quite well for 200 years while remaining a majority-rule institution....That's no longer true, and today's modest reforms won't even try to fix that problem.... The Founding Fathers considered making the Senate a supermajority chamber, but they decided against it." ...

... Greg Sargent: "Today’s reforms do nothing to discourage, or extract any price whatsoever for, precisely the type of unprecedented and destructive party-wide obstructionism that launched the push for reform in the first place." ...

... Dave Dayen: "... there's a very direct and determined hatred of democracy [in the Senate]. Tom Harkin is pretty much the only Senator who dares to say this, but if the nation decides to elect a particular majority, that majority should have the ability to enact an agenda, and if the public doesn't like it afterward they can vote them out. That's basically how it works, or rather how it should work.... (my top 5 Senate reforms are actually 1) abolition, 2) turning it into the House of Lords and making it irrelevant, 3) majority rule, 4) the "talking filibuster" or 5) shifting the burden on the minority)...." ...

... David Waldman of Daily Kos sees a couple of upsides. CW: I see them, too; I think the fact that people organized & mobilized around something as arcane as Senate rules is a thing of beauty.

"A Crisis of Arithmetic." Paul Krugman: "The government really is an insurance company with an army; if you demand rapid deficit reduction without raising taxes or cutting military spending, you have to cut deeply into programs that the public values. Republicans have, for the most part, managed until recently to skate over this reality, simultaneously calling for lower spending in the abstract while posing as the defenders of seniors against Obama’s Medicare cuts. They’ve been aided in this by pundits and reporters unwilling to seem 'unbalanced' by pointing out the realities."

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Democratic lawmakers formally reintroduced a bill Thursday that would ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, the most ambitious — and politically risky — element of proposals unveiled by President Obama to limit gun violence. The 'Assault Weapons Ban of 2013' is a much more far-reaching proposal than the federal ban that expired in 2004." ...

... Brad Plumer of the Washington Post on how the new bill is different from the old law: "The new ban would cover more firearm models than the 1994 ban did.... The new bill broadens the definition of 'assault weapon' slightly.... The new ban would tighten regulations on existing assault-weapons and high-capacity magazines.... The bill would also require current assault-weapons owners to 'safely store their firearms.' ... States and localities could conduct 'voluntary buy-back programs.' ... The new ban wouldn’t sunset after 10 years."

President Obama nominates Richard Cordray to continue as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Mary Jo White as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Rick Rothacker & Jonathan Spicer of Reuters: "As U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner prepares to step down on Friday, former colleagues are posing awkward questions about an allegation he leaked information on a planned interest rate cut when he led the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Several former officials said the allegation, if true, suggests a likely violation of agency rules since interest rate discussions are confidential, and one said the central bank should have investigated the matter. Whether it did is unclear." CW: don't worry about Timmy, folks. This will only help him get a better job on the Street.

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the AP: "The Affordable Care Act ... allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1. For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums." ...

Evidently Steve Rattner is hoping to ride Geithner's coattails. Rattner, in the New York Times: "... it was [Geithner's] superb judgment, deep well of experience and extraordinary work ethic that ultimately extinguished the conflagration of 2007-9." Do not read on a full stomach.

Tim Egan: The country is not "necessarily ... more 'liberal.' But..., at the least..., the center has moved, and Republicans have not.... Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, spoke more political truth in one sentence than Boehner and McConnell have in four years of speeches. 'The public is not behind us,' he said, 'and that’s a real problem for our party.'"

Jonathan Bernstein makes a very good argument against E. J. Dionne's idea -- column linked yesterday -- that Obama is striving to be "the liberal Reagan," a transformative president. Bernstein reminds us Reagan was no transformative president. CW: That's one of the many right-wing myths Obama buys. Contra Bernstein, however, it's a good idea to bear in mind that mythologizing always takes a while; being assassinated in office speeds it up, of course. ...

... Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller, one of a handful of conservative pundits who occasionally engage their brains, asks, "Obama’s collectivist ideology might trump an 'every man for himself' philosophy — but can Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton beat a young conservative selling a mainstream, family-friendly message?" My answer to that is, "no." I love Joe, & Hillary has been a tireless secretary of state, but my generation is too old to be president. Obama won twice partly because he was Not the Rich Old Out-of-Touch Fart. Democrats need a vibrant young candidate in 2016, like the vibrant young candidate we had in 2008 & 2012. ...

... ** BUT it may not matter who the Democratic presidential candidate is. Nia-Malika Henderson & Errin Haines of the Washington Post: "Republicans in Virginia and a handful of other battleground states are pushing for far-reaching changes to the electoral college in an attempt to counter recent success by Democrats." Under the election-rigging scheme, "President Obama would have claimed four of [Virginia's] 13 electoral votes in the 2012 election, rather than all of them.... No state is moving quicker than Virginia, where state senators are likely to vote on the [election-rigging] plan as soon as next week." ...

... ** Think Progress has a "Grand Theft Election" overview.

You Can't Make Up this Stuff. Laura Bassett of the Huffington Post: "A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial. House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for 'tampering with evidence.'" CW: Cathrynn, dear, your crazy ploy is unconstitooshunal.

A commenter to today's thread thought Boehner looked drunk here. You be the judge: