The Commentariat -- June 10, 2013
** E. J. Dionne: "... too many politicians are making decisions on the basis of a grand, [libertarian] utopian theory that they never can -- or will -- put into practice. They then use this theory to avoid a candid conversation about the messy choices governance requires. And this is why we have gridlock." Read the whole column.
... Glenn Greenwald, et al., of the Guardian: "The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. 'I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,' he said." The Washington Post story, by Aaron Blake & Greg Miller, is here. ...
... Snowdon -- Seeking Asylum from a Repressive Regime. Timothy Lee of the Washington Post: "... our courts defend constitutional rights less zealously today than they did in [Daniel] Ellsberg's day. Snowden wasn't crazy to question whether he'd be treated fairly by the American justice system. ...
... Gillian Wong of the AP: "China, which has long chafed at U.S. accusations that it carries out extensive surveillance on American government and commercial operations, may now have to make a decision on how to deal with the problem presented by the 29-year-old Edward Snowden, who has come out as the source of the leaks." ...
... Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "In choosing Hong Kong as an initial place to take refuge from the United States government, the National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged leaking documents has selected a jurisdiction where it may be possible to delay extradition but not avoid it, legal and law enforcement experts here said." ...
... Barton Gellman & Jerry Markon of the Washington Post profile Snowdon. ...
... Daniel Ellsberg, in the Guardian: "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material -- and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an 'executive coup' against the US constitution." ...
... Charles Pierce: "We are not the country we say we are. What we are arguing about is the distance between the two." ...
... Binyamin Appelbaum & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Edward J. Snowden's employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the United States.... The government has sharply increased spending on high-tech intelligence gathering since 2001, and both the Bush and Obama administrations have chosen to rely on private contractors like Booz Allen for much of the resulting work.... 'The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and turned over to contractors,' said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that studies federal government contracting. 'This is something the public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters.'" CW: Sorry, libertarians, those horrible people reading your e-mails & snooping through your phone bills are not conniving bureaucrats & tools of the Obama administration; they're capitalists! ...
... ** Tim Shorrock in Salon, on the same subject: "With about 70 percent of our national intelligence budgets being spent on the private sector -- a discovery I made in 2007 and first reported in Salon -- contractors have become essential to the spying and surveillance operations of the NSA." ...
... NSA Director James Clapper's "Facts on the Collection of Intelligence...." (pdf) ...
... Congress Likes Spies. Pete Kasperowicz of the Hill: "... while many are outraged at the existence of the NSA program itself, [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor indicated that Congress will focus on whether Snowden broke any laws when he revealed its existence. Cantor said programs like the one run by NSA are needed to help thwart ongoing terrorist threats against the United States."
Congress Likes Big Banks. M. J. Lee of Politico: "When [Senators] Sherrod Brown and David Vitter introduced a bill in April to crack down on big banks, it was met with great fanfare and excitement from reform advocates eager to see Washington take another whack at Wall Street. But more than a month later, the bill has attracted little support in Congress, even from senators sympathetic to its overarching goal."
Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) became the fifth Republican to endorse the comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Senate began considering on Sunday, telling CBS' Face The Nation that the measure is a 'thoughtful bipartisan solution to a tough problem.' She predicted that Republicans won't filibuster the legislation, dealing a blow to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), who are seeking to undermine the effort." ...
... Pretend-President Paul Is Also King of Congress. Megan Wilson of the Hill: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Sunday that his Senate colleagues would have to go through him in order to win support from the House to successfully pass comprehensive immigration reform. 'What they have in the Senate has zero chance of passing in the House,' Paul said on Fox News Sunday.... The libertarian senator has said he wants to bolster border security measures, a rallying cry for many Republicans. 'I am the conduit between conservatives in the House who don't want a lot of these things and more moderate people in the Senate who do want these things,' he said. 'They're going to have to come to me and they're going to have to work with me to make the bill stronger if they want me to vote for it.'" CW: I wonder if he thinks this is how to make friends in Washington. ...
... Seung Min Kim & Jake Sherman of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner ... is beginning to sketch out a road map to try to pass some version of an overhaul in his chamber -- a welcome sign for proponents of immigration reform.... The speaker wants House committees -- Judiciary has primary jurisdiction -- to wrap up their work on a version of immigration legislation before the July 4 recess. And he would like immigration reform to see a House vote before Congress breaks in August." CW: sure hope Boehner is coordinating everything with Li'l Randy.
Those pansy librul New York Times Editors don't think terrorists should enjoy Second Amendment freeeedoms: "In his final months in Washington, Senator Frank Lautenberg was resolute in reintroducing a favorite measure of his: a gun safety proposal that would close a gaping loophole in the law that allows people on the government's terrorist watch list to buy guns and explosives from licensed dealers.... Such is the power of the gun lobby, which, among other contrived arguments, sees the measure as an infringement on Second Amendment rights.... Mr. Lautenberg's ... Senate colleagues ... could honor him ... by letting his bill,S. 34, see the light of floor debate. A companion measure in the House, H.R. 720, has been offered repeatedly by Representative Peter King of New York and similarly bottled up. It is tragic that lawmakers show more fear of the gun lobby than of suspected terrorists...."
Libertarian Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic: "Measured in lives lost, during an interval that includes the biggest terrorist attack in American history, guns posed a threat to American lives that was more than 100 times greater than the threat of terrorism. Over the same interval, drunk driving threatened our safety 50 times more than terrorism.... It is not rational to give up massive amounts of privacy and liberty to stay marginally safer from a threat that, however scary, endangers the average American far less than his or her daily commute."
Meghashyam Mali of the Hill: "The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Sunday said the scandal over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of Tea Party groups was 'solved,' and that he was ready to 'move on.' ... Cummings said that interviews with IRS employees had shown that no one at the White House had a role in pushing for the higher scrutiny on Tea Party groups, citing the testimony of an IRS employee who described himself as a 'conservative Republican.' ... Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) called [Cummings'] statements urging an end to the probe 'extreme and reckless.'" CW: Issa is making an ass of himself. Cummings is an extraordinarily cautious, moderate speaker -- one of the wise old men of Washington:
Obama 2.0. James Mann, in a Washington Post op-ed, looks into Samantha Power 's writings to glean what kind of U.N. ambassador she will be.
Obama 2.0. Matt Spetalnick of Reuters: "President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate longtime adviser Jason Furman to be his new chief White House economist, an administration official said. Furman, who will replace economist Alan Krueger as chair of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and has advised Obama since his 2008 election campaign. Furman has been instrumental in formulating administration policies on taxes, the response to the U.S. recession, the formulation of a sweeping healthcare overhaul and efforts to avoid a 'fiscal cliff' at the end of last year." ...
... Paul Krugman: "I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like the sudden intellectual collapse of austerity economics as a policy doctrine. But while insiders no longer seem determined to worry about the wrong things, that's not enough; they also need to start worrying about the right things -- namely, the plight of the jobless and the immense continuing waste from a depressed economy. And that's not happening. Instead, policy makers both here and in Europe seem gripped by a combination of complacency and fatalism.... So here's my message to policy makers: Where we are is not O.K. Stop shrugging, and do your jobs." ...
... Abenomics. Joe Stiglitz, in the New York Times: "In the five years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy, a favorite warning of those who have urged forceful government action, myself included, has been that the United States risked entering a long period of 'Japanese-style malaise.' Japan's two decades of anemic growth, which followed a crash in 1989, have been the quintessential cautionary tale about how not to respond to a financial crisis. Now, though, Japan is leading the way. The recently elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has embarked on a crash course of monetary easing, public works spending and promotion of entrepreneurship and foreign investment.... The new policies look to be a major boon for Japan. And what happens in Japan, which is the world's third-largest economy and was once seen as America's fiercest economic rival, will have a big impact in the United States and around the world."
Bill Keller: "I've come to think there may be a better way to accomplish diversity [on college campuses]: namely, by shifting attention from race to class."
News Ledes
Guardian: "Ratings agency Standard & Poor's has upgraded its outlook for the US economy [to] stable from negative, two years after its controversial downgrade caused a political and economic firestorm."
CBS News/AP: "Moved by the Assad regime's rapid advance, the Obama administration could decide this week to approve lethal aid for the beleaguered Syrian rebels and will weigh the merits of a less likely move to send in U.S. air power to enforce a no-fly zone over the civil war-wracked nation, officials told The Associated Press Sunday."
NBC News: "A fifth victim of the horrific shooting spree in Santa Monica, Calif., was confirmed dead Sunday as law enforcement officials revealed the name of the suspected gunman. John Zawahri, 23, was identified by police as the heavily armed man who rampaged through a mile-long stretch of the coastal city Friday, dressed head to toe in black and carrying an AR-15 assault rifle as well as a duffel bag stuffed with as much as 1,800 rounds of ammunition.... Law enforcement officials also confirmed that the two of the gunman's victims -- a pair found dead in a burning house fewer than 20 blocks away from the campus where the shooting spree came to a bloody climax -- were Zawahri's 55-year-old father, Samir, and 24-year-old brother, Christopher. Zawahri ... allegedly murdered the two men before setting his father's house ablaze just before 12 p.m. and fleeing the scene on foot...."
AP: "Seven heavily armed Taliban fighters launched a pre-dawn attack near Afghanistan's main airport Monday, apparently targeting NATO's airport headquarters with rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and at least one large bomb. Two Afghan civilians were wounded and all the attackers were killed after an hours-long battle."
AP: "The two Koreas will hold their highest-level talks in years Wednesday in an effort to restore scrapped joint economic projects and ease animosity marked by recent threats of nuclear war."
Reuters: "The [U.S.] government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidant of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War Two. A preliminary U.S. government assessment reviewed by Reuters asserts the diary could offer new insight into meetings Rosenberg had with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders, including Heinrich Himmler and Herman Goering. It also includes details about the German occupation of the Soviet Union, including plans for mass killings of Jews and other Eastern Europeans."