The Commentariat -- Jan. 13, 2013

An Extraordinary White House Friday Afternoon News Dump. Tim McDonnell of Mother Jones: "The National Climate Assessment is produced by the US Global Change Research Program, which is tasked with collating climate research from a wide variety of federal agencies and, every few years, distilling it into one major report. The latest, a first draft, is the third such report (the last was in 2009), product of a 1990 law that requires the White House to produce semi-regular updates on climate science to Congress. Today's report echoes the themes of earlier editions, and paints a picture that is all the more grim for being an unsurprising confirmation of the dangers we've come to know all too well." McDonnell lists the report's major findings. ...

... John P. Holdren & Jane Lubchenco explain the purpose of the report on the White House blog. It's all about "expanding the conversation."

... Ben Geman of The Hill: "A major draft federal report concludes that climate change is already affecting U.S. residents through heat waves, droughts and other changes, and warns that temperatures could increase as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit if global carbon emissions keep soaring. The third National Climate Assessment, released Friday, said there's 'unambiguous evidence' that earth is warming, and that climate change over the past 50 years is driven primarily by human activity, especially from burning fossil fuels.

The Eisenhower Presidency, Redux. Maureen Dowd, after dissing a number of the country's most successful female leaders (because that's what she does), Dowd get it right this time in this week's takedown of President Obama: "It's passing strange that Obama, carried to a second term by women, blacks and Latinos, chooses to give away the plummiest Cabinet and White House jobs to white dudes.... Word from the White House is that the president himself is irritated, and demanding answers about the faces his staff is pushing forward. Unfortunately, he has only a bunch of white guys to offer an explanation of why the picture looks like a bunch of white guys."

I agree with practically everything Ross Douthat writes in his column today. I do.

Daniel Drezner in Foreign Affairs: "During the Cold War, the party of Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Reagan was strongly anticommunist, but these presidents took foreign policy seriously and executed their grand strategies with a healthy degree of tactical flexibility. Since 9/11, however, Republicans have known only one big thing -- the 'global war on terror' -- and have remained stubbornly committed to a narrow militarized approach. Since the fall of Baghdad, moreover, this approach has produced at least as much failure as success, leading the American public to be increasingly skeptical of the bellicosity that now defines the party's foreign policy.... The 2012 election was the nadir of the GOP's decadelong descent.... Since the knee-jerk Republican response has been to call for military action anywhere and everywhere trouble breaks out, the American people have tuned out the GOP's alarmist rhetoric." ...

... It's 'I Like Ike" Day! James Joyner, a self-described Eisenhower Republican, agrees with Drezner. So does Susan Eisenhower: "Ike's granddaughter and a Republican foreign policy leader in her own right, argues that 'the impact of the [Chuck] Hagel nomination could well be about the future of the Republican Party.... The Republican Party is now at a crossroads. Over the last decade moderate Republicans have felt increasingly out of place in its ranks. If the GOP confirms Hagel, it could bolster the idea of a 'big tent' Republican Party. A GOP-led rejection of a Republican war hero with impeccable centrist credentials, however, could well be a fatal blow to that concept, along with some of the party's longest and most successful traditions."

Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit. -- Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department

Now What? ... if we didn't have some history here I might be confident that the administration knows what it's doing. But we do have that history, and you have to fear the worst. -- Paul Krugman, earlier

There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills, or it can fail to act and put the nation into default. Congress needs to do its job. -- Jay Carney, White House press secretary, in a statement

The White House insists that it is absolutely, positively not going to cave or indeed even negotiate over the debt ceiling -- that it rejected the coin option as a gesture of strength, as a way to put the onus for avoiding default entirely on the GOP. -- Paul Krugman, later

Here's Krugman on Bill Moyers' show, which aired Friday:

New York Times Editors: "... prematurely forcing through a COLA cut [in Social Security payments, as the Obama administration apparently plans to do,] would be unnecessary and unwise." Read the whole piece. CW: Krugman may think he's really influential, but once again Obama isn't listening. It looks here as if Obama & Jon Stewart got their economics training at the same school (see Infotainment).

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior administration officials and lawmakers said last week."

First They Cheat You, Then They Cheat You. Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: often when banks make settlements for their own wrongdoing, they reduce their tax liability by deducting the cost of the settlements as business expenses. "Taxpayers, therefore, will likely lighten the banks' loads.... Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, [said] You can be sure the Wall Street banks consider tax consequences in negotiations and the government should, too. Any portion of a settlement that's intended to be a penalty should include language clarifying it isn't deductible.'"

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog makes the case that James Yeager, the Tennessee guys who threatened to "start killing people" if President Obama expanded gun control, may not get his carry permit back. I hope he's right ...

... BUT I'm with Imani Gandy on this one: "If James Yeager had been Jalal al Yeager or Tyrone Yeager, who wants to wager that the response to his roid tantrum this week would have been vastly different?" ...

... Update: Apparently on the advice of his lawyer, Yeager has decided not to "start killing people," after all. According to his latest video, embedded on the linked Raw Story page, Yeager only plans to kill people when he gets angry. He says it is not time for violent action [against the government]. Perhaps he'll let us know when it is time.

... ** AND that leads to this fascinating read by Prof. Adam Winkler, writing in the Atlantic: "The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership -- and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers -- the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement." ...

... Joel Achenbach, et al., of the Washington Post: "How NRA’s true believers converted a marksmanship group into a mighty gun lobby."

"Don't Just Make a Living; Make a Mark." Robert Hooker of the Tampa Bay Times: "Eugene Patterson, a journalist who crusaded for civil rights in American society and higher standards in America's newsrooms, died Saturday after a long illness. The former editor, chairman and chief executive officer of the Times was 89. During his 41 years in journalism, Mr. Patterson won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors...." The Tampa Bay Times has more here. The New York Times obituary is here. ...

... Patterson's most famous column, published in the Atlanta Constitution September 16, 1963, was titled "A Flower for the Graves," & is republished here.

John Schwartz of the New York Times: "Aaron Swartz, a wizardly programmer who as a teenager helped develop code that delivered ever-changing Web content to users and later became a steadfast crusader to make that information freely available, was found dead on Friday in his New York apartment. An uncle ... said that Mr. Swartz had apparently hanged himself.... At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, the nearly ubiquitous tool that allows users to subscribe to online information. He later became an Internet folk hero, pushing to make many Web files free and open to the public. But in July 2011, he was indicted on federal charges of gaining illegal access to JSTOR, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals, and downloading 4.8 million articles and documents, nearly the entire library." ...

... Digby: "I'm pretty sure that one of the main [reasons for Swartz's suicide] was the fact that he was being pursued with single-minded, Javert-like obsession by the US Justice department over an alleged crime that hurt no one and which was not even being pursued by the alleged victim.... As we've seen with RIAA, the Manning case and Wikileaks, the government seems to be overreacting to 'computer crime' much like the authorities in the Salem Witch trials overreacted to some hysterical teen-age behavior.... We are supposed to be a democracy in which the government works for us, not the commercial enterprises and national security apparatus that apparently has the government obsessively chasing citizens who have the talent and the ideals to expose their crimes and shortcomings. This is a very ugly, very shameful episode." ...

... Taylor Berman of Gawker posts more commentary from Swartz's friends, along the same line.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee toots its own horn. And rightly so. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. Meanwhile, in ...

Right Wing World

Algebra Has a Well-Known Liberal Bias

Algebra Textbook: Distributive Property states that the product of a number and a sum is equal to the sum of the individual products of the addends and the number. That is, a(b + c) = ab + ac.

Eric Bolling of Fox "News": ... some textbooks are pushing the liberal agenda. [Holding up a Scholastic Books algebra worksheet above designed to "give students insight into the distributive property as it applies to multiplication."] Distribute the wealth! Distribute the wealth with the lovely rich girl with a big ole bag of money, handing some money out.

Kimberly Guilfoyle of Fox "News," responding: My son is in kindergarten.... We're on high alert especially after this inappropriateness.

Constant Weader: Isn't it great that kindergartners are learning algebra?

News Ledes

Washington Post: "U.S. military fighter jets provided backup support to a failed French hostage rescue mission in Somalia, the White House announced Sunday in a rare public acknowledgment of American combat operations in the Horn of Africa. In a letter to Congress, President Obama said U.S. combat aircraft 'provided limited technical support' to French forces late Friday as they attempted to rescue a French spy who had been held captive for more than three years."

Washington Post: "Police in the northern Indian state of Punjab said Sunday that they have arrested seven men in the gang rape of a 29-year-old woman who was traveling alone on a bus, less than four weeks after the brutal rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus created a national outcry about the safety of women in public places."

Reuters: "Japan Airlines Co (JAL) said on Sunday that a Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner jet undergoing checks in Tokyo following a fuel leak at Boston airport last week had leaked fuel during tests earlier in the day."

New York Times: "An Egyptian appeals court on Sunday overturned the life sentence of former President Hosni Mubarak for directing the killing of protesters and ordered a new trial, a ruling that could prolong a politically fraught legal battle over the fate of Egypt's deposed autocrat two years after he was ousted." Al Jazeera story here.

New York Times: "Israeli security forces evicted scores of Palestinian activists before dawn on Sunday from a tent encampment they had set up set up two days earlier in a strategic piece of Israeli-occupied West Bank territory known as E1, east of Jerusalem, where Israel says it plans to build settler homes." ...

... Al Jazeera Update: "Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has pledged to move ahead with building a Jewish settlement in a strategic area of the West Bank, speaking just hours after Israeli troops dragged anti-settlement protesters from the site marked for construction. The planned settlement, known as E1, would deepen east Jerusalem's separation from the West Bank, both war-won areas the Palestinians want for their state."

AP: "The battle to retake Mali's north from the al-Qaida-linked groups controlling it began in earnest Saturday, after hundreds of French forces deployed to the country and began aerial bombardments to drive back the Islamic extremists. At the same time, nations in West Africa authorized the immediate deployment of troops to Mali, fast-forwarding a military intervention that was not due to start until September." ...

     ... Update: "French fighter jets bombed rebel targets in a major city in Mali's north Sunday, pounding the airport as well as training camps, warehouses and buildings used by the al-Qaida-linked Islamists controlling the area, officials and residents said."

Al Jazeera: "At least 17 Pakistani soldiers have been killed and 11 wounded after a roadside bomb hit a military convoy in a northwestern lawless tribal area, officials said. The attack happened on Sunday in Dosali village in the North Waziristan tribal district, a stronghold of Taliban fighters."

AP: "Police said Sunday they have arrested six suspects in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India, four weeks after a brutal attack on a student on a moving bus in the capital outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws."

New York Times: "Thousands of Russians marched on Sunday in condemnation of the Russian Parliament's move to ban adoption of Russian children by American families, an event dubbed a 'March Against Scoundrels,' where participants chanted, 'Take your hands off children,' and carried posters showing the faces of lawmakers stamped with the word 'Shame.'"

Reuters: "The Vatican newspaper on Sunday stressed that children should be raised by a father and a mother after Italy's top appeals court granted a gay mother custody of her son.... The court ruled it was 'mere prejudice' to think that a child could not be brought up normally by homosexual parents.... Gay rights group Arcigay hailed the decision as a 'historic ruling' in Italy, where it is illegal for gay couples to adopt...."

The Commentariat -- Jan. 12, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

Greg Sargent: "In a move that will significantly ratchet up the brinksmanship around the debt ceiling, the four members of the Senate Democratic leadership are privately telling the White House that they will give Obama full support if he opts for a unilateral solution to the debt ceiling crisis, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me. The four Democratic leaders -- Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Patty Murray -- have privately reached agreement that continued GOP intransigence on the debt ceiling means the White House needs the space to pursue options for raising it that don't involve Congress...."

... Brett LoGiorato of Business Insider has a copy of the Democratic leaders' letter to the President. The Senators don't offer an opinion on what steps Obama should take but LoGiorato hears they prefer a 14th Amendment solution. ...

... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "Republicans, of course, believe the Senate Democratic letter is an outrage, but ... over here in the real world, the letter is nothing but common sense. In fact, it's so obvious that it's common sense that even though we have already reached the debt limit, nobody complained when the .. treasury secretary informed Congress he was taking extraordinary measures to avoid default.... President Obama has not become Hitler and he hasn't become Stalin.... He hasn't even become FDR.... This isn't what dictatorship looks like: this is what a president with a tea party Republican House looks like.... Extraordinary measures will give way to superextraordinary measures. But as long as it is legal, it's exactly what the president should and must do."

Harry Enten of the Guardian: "There is much discussion that acting by executive order would be seen as a 'totalitarian' action and provoke a backlash. Nonsense, so long as the order is supporting a measure the public favors." Enten points out that when Obama effected a modified "Dream Act" by executive order -- after years of Congressional failure to pass a bill -- public opinion, which has previously favored the central element of the bill, did not change. Ergo, he could do the same for gun regulations that already have majority public support. ...

... CW: what we're seeing in the President's "end runs around Congress" are attempts to put in place measures which the majority favors but which a minority in Congress has blocked. Obama's "totalitarian" moves more closely represent democratic principles than do Congress's continuing efforts to subvert the public will. I would argue that even his most unpopular achievement -- the Affordable Care Act, which of course did pass Congress but was/is unpopular -- is still closer to what the public wanted than the Big Fat Nothing that preceded it. The fact is that the public is pretty much against every Republican policy. ("Lower taxes" doesn't count.) Congressional Republicans are not just obstructing Obama & Democrats; they are obstructing the majority of the people. ...

... BUT Jessica Dye & Rachelle Younglai of Reuters: "The White House would be taking a risk if it tries to make a constitutional end-run around Congress' authority to raise the debt ceiling, legal experts said." CW: The story concentrates on the 14th Amendment argument. It doesn't mention the President's obligation to pay bills incurred under Congressional spending acts & authorizations. The potential failure here is not the President's but the Congress's. In view of the consequences of the failure to ensure the full faith & credit of the U.S., the President should honor the laws that authorized the spending, not the petulance of irresponsible hostage-takers who would stiff U.S. creditors.

Michael Cooper of the New York Times: "As Washington focuses on what Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will propose next week to curb gun violence, gun and ammunition sales are spiking in the rest of the country as people rush to expand their arsenals in advance of any restrictions that might be imposed." ...

     ... CW: this means the country is overrun with paranoid nuts & conspiracy theorists and/or gangsters. No normal, law-abiding person who thought he might need a new hunting rifle one of these days would rush out & buy it now in fear that Joe Biden was going to shut down gun & ammo sales. ...

... Dick Cavett: "One of the worst things said in the awful succeeding days ... came, surprisingly, straight from the White House. I was appalled to see the president ruin a movingly delivered statement about the shooting of the kids by closing with, 'God has called them all home.' Talk about not blaming the shooter. So it was God who did it. It's not hard to imagine a kid hearing the president's words and asking, 'Mommy, is God going to call me home?'" Read the whole column; Cavett covers a lot of ground.

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: sorry, Drudge, Hitler did not collect everybody's gun; rather, he liberalized the Weimar Republic's strict gun laws. Thanks to contributor Barbarossa for the link. ...

... David Edwards of Raw Story: James Yeager, "the CEO of a Tennessee company that specializes [in] weapons and tactical training, is threatening to 'start killing people' if President Barack Obama moves forward with gun control measures." CW: somebody explain to me, please, why the feds have not arrested this guy for assault, inciting violence & treason (and whatever else), jailed him & confiscated his firearms & ammo. There is something wrong with a government which considers this "free speech." ...

... Okay, a tiny step in the right direction. Newschannel 5, Nashville: "Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has suspended the handgun carry permit of a local man who threatened to 'start killing people' to protect his Second Amendment right. In a statement released Friday officials said they had suspended the handgun carry permit of James Yeager, CEO of Tactical Response based on 'material likelihood of risk of harm to the public'."

Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with Steve Coll & Jane Mayer to discuss President Obama's national security nominations — John Kerry, Chuck Hagel & John Brennan:

... Ray McGovern in Common Dreams: "... there is at least a hope that Brennan's confirmation hearing might provide an opening for the Senate Intelligence Committee to force out the secret legal justifications and the operational procedures for the lethal drone program that has expanded under Obama.... Former CIA colleagues who served with Brennan before and during the war with Iraq assert that there is absolutely no possibility that Brennan could have been unaware of the deliberate corruption of intelligence analysis." Read the whole column. Thanks to Kate Madison for the link. ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "... the last time [Brennan']s name came up for the job [of CIA director], after Obama won in 2008, he didn't get it because he seemed so close to the torture program perpetrated while he was a senior official at the C.I.A. If he has greater distance now, it is only because more time has passed, not because there has been any true accounting; if anything, we have slid into an odd state of complacency about the torture in the Bush years, watching it in movies and wondering whether it worked, rather than asking who might be culpable." ...

... Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy read up on Brennan and shares what he learned. A long, informative read.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the scion of the Rockefeller family who established himself as a liberal voice in Congress, said on Friday that he would retire in 2014 at the completion of his fifth term in the Senate." ...

Right Wing World

** ... Never mind 2014. Let's move along. Charles Pierce: "The people who worship at the crypt of David Broder now meditate deeply on the possibility that [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie, a career bully, may be the guy who ends this terrible era of 'partisanship' and 'divisiveness' -- for which, of course, the blame must always be placed on Both Sides, and not on the fact that one of our political parties is demented."

For those of you who cannot believe anyone would really say what Doctor/Congressman Phil Gingrey said about rape -- story linked in yesterday's Commentariat -- Steve Benen has the audio tape:

Meanwhile, Kate Madison's former ward, little Kenny Cuccinelli, now the Virginia AG, has taken a bold stand in favor of (other people's) civil disobedience. Alexander Burns of Politico: "Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the presumptive GOP gubernatorial nominee and a rising national figure on the right, told an Iowa-based radio show Wednesday night that opponents of a federal mandate for contraception coverage should be willing to 'go to jail' to fight the law." Kenny, a Roman Catholic, told his bishop he should go to jail to fight contraception access. Kenny didn't suggest he'd join the bishop. He's the attorney general, for Pete's sake!

Charles Pierce: as "the nation's courtier press already is desperate for a Republican candidate in 2016 who boldly will seem to seize the banner of Not Insane, they eventually will cast their eyes southward again to 'Bobby' [Jindal] who, we are relentlessly told, represents some sort of 'moderate' form of Republicanism," and who now is relentlessly pursuing the idea of shifting the tax burden of the Bayou State to its poorest residents. Jindal proposes to eliminate both state income & corporate taxes & shift to a hefty, regressive sales tax. That's what passes for "moderate" in Right Wing World. ...

... ** Ed Kilgore: "... just beneath the surface of a generation of anti-tax rhetoric has lurked a powerful desire to raise taxes on the non-wealthy in order to cut them for 'job creators.' It has been implicit for years in various 'flat tax' schemes or consumption tax 'reform' schemes, and of course in the ill-suppressed rage over the 'lucky ducky' working poor with no income tax liability.... Jindal's tax increase gambit should help put to rest the loose and easy talk we keep hearing about Republican governors offering their party a new and moderate face. Jindal is often touted in such talk, and between his tax 'ideas' and his cutting-edge school voucher program designed to shovel public dollars to conservative evangelical madrassas, his image as a pragmatic 'centrist' is becoming less credible each day."

Steve Benen: "Jim DeMint, taking the 'think' out of 'think tank." 

AND, if one reads closely, one might think former Alaska Half-Gov. Sarah Palin has been palling' around with terrorists. One of her possible terrorist pals is going to prison for 26 years for "plotting to stockpile illegal weapons and take violent action against the government."

AP: "More than 34,000 people have signed an online petition calling on the Obama administration to build the 'Star Wars' inspired super-weapon ['Death Star'] to spur job growth and bolster national defense. But in a posting Friday on the White House website, Paul Shawcross, an administration adviser on science and space, says a Death Star would cost too much to build -- an estimated $850 quadrillion -- at a time the White House is working to reduce the federal budget. Besides, Shawcross says, the Obama administration 'does not support blowing up planets.'" CW: I think $850 quadrillion looks like this: $850,000,000,000,000,000. Ill bet the GOP's national defense plan has room for at least some Death Star R&D -- say, one measly quadrillion.

News Ledes

ABC News: "House Speaker John Boehner has invited President Barack Obama to deliver the State of the Union speech on Feb. 12.... The White House says it has accepted the invitation."

Reuters: "New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a public health emergency on Saturday, giving pharmacists permission to administer flu vaccinations to more people as officials seek to stem the worst flu outbreak in that state in several years."

AP: "French airstrikes overnight in Mali drove back Islamist rebels from a key city and destroyed a militant command center, the French defense minister said Saturday, as West African nations authorized the immediate deployment of troops to the country. The al-Qaida-linked militants, who have carved out their own territory in the lawless desert region of northern Mali over the past nine months, recently pressed closer to a major base of the Malian army, dramatically raising the stakes in the battle for the vast West African nation." ...

... Reuters: "Niger will send 500 soldiers to join an international military campaign in Mali led by West African regional bloc ECOWAS to quash advances by Islamist rebels, Foreign Minister Mohamed Bazoum told Reuters on Saturday."

AP: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a 'shoddy piece of craftsmanship.'"

ABC News: "A former Army staff sergeant who helped repel one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan will receive the Medal of Honor. Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha, 31, becomes only the fourth living recipient of the nation's highest award for valor from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

USA Today: "Lance Armstrong plans to make an admission about doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey scheduled to tape Monday at his home in Austin, Texas, a person with knowledge of the situation said."

The Commentariat -- Jan. 11, 2013

The New York Times eXaminer has several excellent columns up on WikiLeaks/Bradley Manning.

OMG. OB/GYN Phil Gingrey, who also happens to be a Congresscritter (R-Ga.), tells the Marietta Daily Journal that former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) was "partially right" about "legitimate rape" because women who are "tense and uptight" often cannot ovulate. (Gingrey does add a caveat: "a woman may have already ovulated 12 hours before she is raped, you're not going to prevent a pregnancy there ... because the horse has already left the barn, so to speak.") See, ladies, if you do get pregnant as the result of rape, there's a good chance you really wanted it. So it was consensual. And that makes you a slut.

"Mint That Coin!" Paul Krugman explains the debt ceiling & the trillion-dollar coin to shut-ins. ...

... Jamelle Bouie of the American Prospect sees the trillion-dollar-coin as a powerful negotiating tool. It tells Republicans that, ultimately, President Obama has all the leverage. He can ignore any & all of their demands, not just because he has the public (& the business community) on his side, but also because he always has the coin as a legal go-around. ...

... Hey, look -- Fox "News" is as stupid as Congress. Bet you're all surprised. Screenshot via Jed Lewison of Daily Kos:

... CW: Brian Beutler of TPM gets into a lot of tea-leaf-reading in this post on GOP debt-ceiling strategy, but his bottom line is what's important: "John Boehner will have a small margin for error. And if he misses, it will leave him more or less where he was after his fiscal cliff Plan B fell apart, and he'd be the one forced to choose between surrender and economic havoc." For all his bluster, Boehner knows that he cannot count on his caucus to go along with any deal that recognizes real-world exigencies. It isn't just back-stabbing backbenchers, either; Boehner's top two lieutenants & some committee heads voted against the tax-&-spending deal.

Julie Pace & Erica Werner of the AP: Vice President "Biden is scheduled to meet with video game representatives Friday as the White House explores cultural factors that may contribute to violent behavior." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will present President Obama with proposals for stemming gun violence by Tuesday, setting in motion legislative and executive actions that will encompass guns, ammunition, mental health services and violent images in popular culture.... Mr. Biden did not say whether he would recommend a renewal of the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. But he cited several other measures, including efforts to limit the availability of high-capacity magazines and the need for what he called 'near universal background checks' that would go beyond doing checks at gun shows." ...

It is unfortunate that this administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation's most pressing problems. We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen. -- NRA statement, issued after its representatives met with the Vice President ...

... Reid Epstein of Politico: "President Barack Obama is trying an end run around the NRA -- rallying groups as varied as churches, medical organizations, retailers and the Rotary Club to build support for new gun regulations." ...

... Steve Holland of Reuters: "More than a hundred scientists from virtually every major U.S. university told Biden's task force in a letter that research restrictions pushed by the NRA have stopped the United States from finding solutions to gun violence. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cut gun safety research by 96 percent since the mid-1990s, according to one estimate. Congress, pushed by the gun lobby, in 1996 put restrictions on CDC funding of gun research. Restrictions on other agencies were added in later years." ...

... Contributor Mushiba recommends this post by Joan Chittister of the National Catholic Reporter re: the Newtown massacre. Chittister is in error when she writes, "In the United States 88.8 people per 100 own a gun." I know this because I made the same mistake. That is the approximate rate of guns/population in the U.S., but the percentage of adults who live in households with guns is far less than that -- about 47 percent. That is, for a lot of gun owners, one is not enough. Nonetheless, Chittister punchline is beyond reproach, IMHO.

... Robbie Brown of the New York Times: Keith "Ratliff's passion for firearms made him something of a celebrity on the Internet, where he helped make scores of videos about high-powered and exotic guns and explosives. His YouTube channel, called FPSRussia, became the site's ninth largest, with nearly 3.5 million subscribers and more than 500 million views. But last week..., the police in northeast Georgia found him dead at his office on Jan. 3, shot once in the head. He was surrounded by several guns, but not the one that killed him. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is treating it as a homicide." ...

Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country. -- Former President Bill Clinton, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9 (CW: I linked a story on this yesterday)

... the available data shows that Clinton was way off-base in his assertion, making an exaggerated claim -- which his office would not even defend. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post

** Banks. Always. Win. Jessica Silver-Greenberg: "Federal banking regulators are trumpeting an $8.5 billion settlement this week with 10 banks as quick justice for aggrieved homeowners, but the deal is actually a way to quietly paper over a deeply flawed review of foreclosed loans across America, according to current and former regulators and consultants."

Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "Banks and other lenders will be prohibited from making home loans that offer deceptive teaser rates or require no documentation from borrowers, and will be required to take more steps to ensure that borrowers can repay.... The rules, being laid out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and taking effect next January, will also set some limits on interest-only packages or negative-amortization loans, where the balance due grows over time." ...

... New York Times Editors: "... the rules ... include some features that could hurt lower-income borrowers." ...

... Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "As part of a fervent lobbying effort, banks warned repeatedly that strict regulations could crimp lending at a time when the housing market was just starting to get back on its feet. Regulators seemed to give some credence to that concern. Citing the 'fragile state' of the housing market, the bureau said it would allow new mortgages to meet more flexible standards for affordability during a phase-in period of up to seven years."

President Obama nominates Jack Lew to be Secretary of the Treasury (see also yesterday's Commentariat for some details:

... Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won't be voting to confirm Jack Lew. He says why here. ...

... Paul Krugman will appear on Bill Moyers' PBS show this evening. Here's a preview in which he talks about the position of Treasury Secretary:

"Behold, the New Democratic Chutzpah." Dave Weigel makes that case that Republicans in both Houses finally may have jumped the shark. The latest over-the-top remarks come from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Budget Committee: "Jack Lew must never be secretary of the Treasury." Weigel says Sessions' statement boils down to this: "Barack Obama's nominee ... [has] a dangerous amount in common with Barack Obama." Ergo, Weigel writes, "Every time a Republican threatens an Obama nominee, their job gets easier." Weigel sees the same thing happening elsewhere: Jay Carney's refusal to rule out the trillion-dollar coin, Joe Biden's announcing the likelihood of executive action on gun regulation. CW: let's hope Weigel is right. ...

... Robert Reich: "... when the nation is jeopardized -- whether in danger of defaulting on its debts or succumbing to mass violence -- a president is justified in using his authority to the fullest. The mere threat of taking such actions ... could be useful in pending negotiations with congressional Republicans. They have not shied away from using whatever means available to them to get their way. The President should not be reluctant to play hardball, either."

Reed Abelson & Julie Creswell of the New York Times: "The conversion to electronic health records has failed so far to produce the hoped-for savings in health care costs and has had mixed results, at best, in improving efficiency and patient care, according to a new analysis by the influential RAND Corporation."

Kevin Drum on "runaway" Medicare costs: "First, our population is aging and we're going to pay for that. Deal with it. Second, Medicare is going to have some excess growth above that, and we should look for ways to get that under control. But that excess growth is fairly modest.... Healthcare is a problem. But it's not an insurmountable one.... Our future is not the budgetary nightmare that conservatives keep trying to make it out to be." With a chart to prove it. ...

... CW: pundits usually neglect to point out that there is an easy way to cover almost all of the additional costs of Medicare: hire more workers and pay workers more. The payroll tax is a percentage of income & the tax for Medicare has no cap. The more workers earn, the more they'll pay in. I am pretty sure that the main reason for the Medicare shortfall is income inequality.

New York Times Editors: "An authoritative report issued by the Institute of Medicine this week found that, on average, Americans experience higher rates of disease and injury and die sooner than people in other high-income countries. That is true at all ages between birth and 75 and for even well-off Americans who mistakenly think that top-tier medical care ensures that they will remain in good health.... Likely explanations include a large uninsured population and more limited access to primary care, two problems that should be mitigated by the health care reforms that will kick in next year; higher levels of poverty and income inequality in this country; weaker safety net programs; sedentary lifestyles and obesity; higher rates of drug abuse and traffic accidents that involve alcohol; and greater use of firearms in acts of violence." CW: and Republicans think "cutting entitlements" is a damned good idea.

Sarah Lyall of the New York Times: "... climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds." Lyall & her fellow reporters list a string of weather horrors. ...

... David Sirota has an excellent post in Salon titled "Your Weatherman Probably Denies Global Warming." Research shows that weather forecasters could educate millions of confused climate-change deniers; of course they won't be doing so if they're deniers themselves. Also, Sirota includes this fun figure, one I've been wanting to know: "... thanks to the U.S. Senate filibuster, lawmakers representing just 11 percent of the population can kill almost any national legislation." ...

... For all the good it will do, Gene Robinson has a reminder for fiscal conservatives/climate-change deniers: "... we're going to deal with climate change whether we like it or not. We're going to spend many billions of dollars over the coming years providing disaster relief in the wake of hurricanes and other destructive weather events. If we're a bit smarter, we'll spend even more to protect our coastal cities from storm surges of the kind that devastated parts of New York.... But if we were really smart, we'd be talking about how to mitigate the ultimate damage by weaning ourselves from coal, oil and other energy sources that produce carbon emissions."

Local News

Sydney Lupkin of ABC News: "Planned Parenthood will face a judge on Friday in Texas, trying to overturn a massive defunding of the family planning nonprofit in the state. They say they're not the only ones suffering. Women like Landon are left scrambling for new doctors, and even non-Planned Parenthood linics find themselves at a crossroads."

Jack Healy of the New York Times: "Nearly six months after a mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater..., and with last month's killings at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School..., Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado called Thursday for universal background checks on all gun sales in the state ... in his annual State of the State address.... Democrats, who now control both houses of Colorado's Legislature, rose to their feet and applauded the governor's proposal while Republicans sat silently.... Mr. Hickenlooper, however, stopped short of proposing a ban on assault weapons or outlawing high-capacity ammunition magazines, which are being pursued in New York."

Right Wing World

Ted Cox of DNAinfo Chicago: "Tea Party favorite Joe Walsh [who lost his bid for re-election] says conservatives are losing the 'war' for U.S. voters and encouraged his backers at a South Loop rally to engage in civil disobedience to defy the Affordable Care Act or new gun regulations. At his most aggressive, he told dozens of supporters to 'defy and or break the law and engage in civil disobedience' if faced with federal health care law restrictions or new gun laws." ...

... Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Lawmakers in two states, Wisconsin and South Carolina, have proposed legislation to arrest any official caught trying to implement Obamacare. In South Carolina, the legislation proposed a possible five-year prison sentence for federal employees or contractors who attempt to enforce the law."

News Ledes

Presidents Obama & Karzai joint press conference:

... New York Times: "President Obama ... said Friday that beginning this spring American forces would play only a supporting role in Afghanistan, which opens the way for a more rapid withdrawal of the troops. Though Mr. Obama said he had not yet decided on specific troop levels for the rest of the year, he said the United States would accelerate the transition of security responsibilities to the Afghans, which had been set to occur at the middle of the year, because of gains by Afghan forces."

AP: "Charting the course for a war's end, President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai meet Friday at the White House to discuss the future of the U.S. role in Afghanistan and the 66,000 American troops in harm's way. The two leaders plan a joint afternoon news conference."

Washington Post: "The CIA has opened the year with a flurry of drone strikes in Pakistan, pounding Taliban targets along the country's tribal belt at a time when the Obama administration is preparing to disclose its plans for pulling most U.S. forces out of neighboring Afghanistan."

Washington Post: "The Pentagon will impose a freeze on hiring civilians, slash operating costs on military bases and take other immediate steps to trim spending in preparation for the possibility that Congress will fail to reach a deal to avert billions of dollars in additional cuts, defense officials said Thursday. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he ordered the cutbacks as a precautionary measure because he has grown pessimistic that Congress and the White House will reach agreement."

ABC News: "In a ruling that comes as little surprise, the judge overseeing the Aurora, Colo., theater massacre has ordered that there is enough evidence against James Holmes to proceed to a trial."

AP: "Islamic militants seeking to topple President Bashar Assad took full control of a strategic northwestern air base Friday in a significant blow to government forces, seizing helicopters, tanks and multiple rocket launchers, activists said. The Taftanaz air base in the northern Idlib province is considered the biggest field in the country's north for helicopters used to bomb rebel-held areas and deliver supplies to government troops."

New York Times: "British police and the country's leading children's charity drew a horrific picture on Friday of almost six decades of accusations of sexual abuse of children as young as eight by television host Jimmy Savile, and prosecutors admitted for the first time that they could have brought him to trial before his death but failed to do so." The Guardian story is here: "The report paints a stark picture emphasising the tragic consequences of when vulnerability and power collide. His offending footprint was vast, predatory and opportunistic." The Guardian lists key findings here. The pdf of the actual report is here.

New York Times: "Boeing's newest and most sophisticated jet, the 787 Dreamliner, suffered more mishaps on Friday, when All Nippon Airlines of Japan reported incidents involving planes on two domestic flights." ...

... AP: "The Federal Aviation Administration is undertaking a comprehensive review of the critical systems of Boeing's 787s, the aircraft maker's newest and most technologically advanced plane, after a fire and a fuel leak earlier this week, the agency said Friday."

New York Times: "Senior United States and Russian diplomats met on Friday with Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League special envoy, to discuss possible mechanisms for ending the Syrian conflict but with little sign that an agreement was close."