The Commentariat -- March 1, 2013

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

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

... So does Stephen Colbert:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... Chittum also has a follow-up.

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

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

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

How to Threaten Bob Woodward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News Ledes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Commentariat -- Feb. 28, 2013

Obama 2.0. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Senate on Wednesday easily and, for the most part, affably confirmed President Obama's pick for Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, just one day after the president's nominee for defense secretary narrowly survived a highly politicized confirmation vote." ...

... Martin Crutsinger of the AP: "Jacob Lew is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday as Treasury secretary and will have to hit the ground running. He is taking over the job just a day before huge automatic government spending cuts are set to take effect. He's likely to be involved with any negotiations to reverse the cuts, and also in budget talks next month to continue funding the government." ...

... Mark Felsenthal of Reuters: "President Barack Obama intends to name Edith Ramirez the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, a White House official said on Thursday. Ramirez has been an FTC commissioner since April 2010. She was a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in business litigation before joining the commission."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court's more conservative members. Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a 'perpetuation of racial entitlement.' Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist than those in the North. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked how much longer Alabama must live 'under the trusteeship of the United States government.'" ...

... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court's conservative justices strongly suggested Wednesday that a key portion of the Voting Rights Act is no longer justified and the time had come for Southern states to be freed from special federal oversight." ...

... Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog recaps the Justices' remarks in the Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. ...

** Dana Milbank: "For a quarter-century, Antonin Scalia has been the reigning bully of the Supreme Court, but finally a couple of justices are willing to face him down. As it happens, the two manning up to take on Nino the Terrible are women: the court’s newest members, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan." ...

... ** Washington Post Editors: "Congress is empowered to write legislation enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. But if Justice Scalia doubts the purity of lawmakers' motives, then apparently this power is limited. We wonder how the justice is able to discern what lay within the hearts of these 98 senators. We also wonder how many challenged acts of Congress would survive if the court saw fit to strike down any that were enacted by lawmakers considering, in part, their reelection prospects." CW: I thought Scalia's remarks about the intent of the Congress was even more outrageous than his claim that the Voting Rights Act is a "racial entitlement," & that's nearly as outrageous as one can get. His premise is that if he just doesn't like a law, he can change or void it. This is a flagrant violation of the Constitutional separation of powers.

... Racial discrimination is totally over, but state discrimination is horrible. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "Scalia worried that Section 5, and its unjustifiable discrimination against states, would continue in 'perpetuity.' But with the bailout provision, it's a relatively simply matter to escape the Section 5. To quote Roberts in a case striking down a school integration program, 'the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.' Maybe instead of trying to gut the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County should try that." ...

... New York Times Editors: "If the Supreme Court substitutes its judgment for Congress’s, it will enable state and local governments to erode nearly half a century of civil rights gains." ...

The Racially Entitled. See Scalia.

... Are You Ready for Some Irony? Stephanie Condon of CBS News: "President Obama joined members of Congress today to unveil a new statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. With the full-length statue placed in the Capitol Building's Statuary Hall, Parks takes her 'rightful place among those who shaped this nation's course,' Mr. Obama said." ...

... Here's a brief AP video:

... Here's the whole ceremony, which I found quite moving. Even Mitch McConnell was okay:

Zachary Goldfarb & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "In a meeting planned for Friday, President Obama will push Republican congressional leaders to accept higher tax revenue in order to avoid deep spending cuts set to take effect on the same day." ...

... Andrew Taylor of the AP: "Across-the-board spending cuts all but certain, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are staging a politically charged showdown designed to avoid public blame for any resulting inconvenience or disruption in government services. The two parties drafted alternative measures to replace the cuts, but officials conceded in advance the rival measures were doomed." ...

... David Dayen, now with Pacific Standard (???): yes, there are things the Obama administration could do to mitigate the cleaver approach the sequester takes, but they aren't gonna do it, at least not in the short term "Because making clear the impact of forced austerity may offer the best hope for discrediting and reversing it." Via Greg Sargent. ...

... In agreement with what we noted here the other day, Willie Herrmann, BuzzFeed's "data scientist," writes, "In terms of total reductions outlined in each report, the states facing the worst cuts skew heavily Republican. As a proportion of federal dollars received by each state (as detailed in a 2007 study), 11 of the 12 hardest-hit states -- and 17 of the top 25 -- went for Romney in last fall's election. Many states in the Southeast and portions of the Midwest will experience the worst damage, in addition to Alaska and Hawaii." ...

... ** Andy Sullivan of Reuters: "On paper, there's ... $85 billion in budget savings at a time when Washington continues to bleed red ink. In reality, the so-called 'sequester' is likely to yield less than half that much in the short term. In part, that has to do with the complex way the government handles its money. But it also reflects the probability that the spending cuts will hurt the economy, which in turn will lower tax revenue and drive up the costs of social safety-net programs like unemployment insurance. On top of that, federal agencies -- especially the Pentagon -- will have to pay penalties to suppliers if the sequester forced them to cancel contracts. Add it up, and the actual savings could be a lot less than budget hawks envision."

... Matt Yglesias States the Obvious. Deficit scolds -- David Brooks, Ron Fournier of the National Journal, etc. -- who seem to think "the president of the United States has ... the ability to pull a Jedi mind trick and force congressional opponents to agree to deals they don't favor.... It is Boehner, not Obama, who must lead and find a way to a solution. It is Boehner, not Obama, who has the ability to move Washington beyond the endless stale debate, and it is Boehner, not Obama, who is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of policymaking in the 113th Congress." ...

... Brendan Nyhan of the Columbia Journalism Review agrees with Yglesias & also prominently mentions what a bunch of dicks Brooks, et al., are. (Probably doesn't use the word "dicks." But that's what he means.) ...

... Paul Krugman has a funny take on the WashPo editorial, which both Yglesias & Nyhan cite. ...

... E. J. Dionne: "The air of establishment Washington is filled with talk that Obama must 'lead.' But Obama cannot force the House Republican majority to act if it doesn't want to. He is (fortunately) not a dictator. What Obama can do is expose the cause of this madness, which is the dysfunction of the Republican Party. Journalists don't like saying this because it sounds partisan. But the truth is the truth, whether it sounds partisan or not." Read his whole column. ...

... BUT forget about Brooks, Fournier, et al. It's All About Bob! Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "Woodward has been making the rounds to cable TV and print outlets accusing a 'very senior person' [probably Gene Sperling] in the administration of threatening him last week ahead of an op-ed he later published in the Washington Post attributing the idea for the automatic spending cuts to President Obama." Here's the "threat":

... CW: I don't usually recommend a story by Mike Allen & Jim VandeHei of Politico, & this one is full of bullshit, but it is a good indication of how right-wing reporters feel about the Obama White House. Reading how they & Woodward think the White House is "thin-skinned" is grounds for a chuckle. I loved the part where Bob says he wears big boy pants but such an ominous threat would cause lesser reporters to "tremble tremble." ...

     ... Update: Allen has now posted the e-mails between Sperling & Woodward. See if you think a cub reporter would "tremble tremble" upon reading Sperling's e-mail. Do read Woodward's response to Sperling.

... Ben Smith of BuzzFeed, who first IDed Sperling as the "threatening official": "Officials often threaten reporters that they will 'regret' printing something that is untrue, but Woodward took the remark as a threat." CW: For your own safety, Bob, no more midnight meetings in dimly-lit parking lots. Oh, wait. You haven't done that for decades. ...

     ... Max Read of Gawker: Bob's "reporting" is "now mostly just writing down what important people tell him in his kitchen. 'There is nothing less important about 'the sequester' than the question of whose idea it originally was,' Salon's Alex Pareene wrote yesterday. 'So, naturally, that is the question that much of the political press is obsessed with, to the exclusion of almost everything else.' Not everything else: also the question of the proper tone in which one is allowed to speak to Bob Woodward." ...

... Steve Benen: Woodward "repeated the claim on CNN, insisting, 'It was said very clearly, you will ''regret'' doing this.' And at it was this very moment when Bob Woodward put his credibility as a journalist on the line -- and lost.... He took a few words out of context in order to look like a victim of heavy-handed White House pressure, but now that the email itself is available, it's clear there was nothing threatening about Sperling's message and Woodward's efforts to suggest otherwise were deliberately deceptive. Indeed, in case facts still matter, what Sperling argued happened to be true -- Woodward had several key facts wrong."

Paul Krugman notes that in his testimony before Congress, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke agreed with Krugman's assessment of the impact of federal spending cuts in a weak economy. "... these remarks should give pause to all the people who imagine that 'nobody' except me and a couple of other crazies think that we're paying far too much attention to short-term deficits." CW: hate to tell you, Paul, but Joe Scarborough does not follow Fed Chair Congressional testimony.

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The A.F.L.-C.I.O. ... has issued an apparent endorsement of the Keystone XL pipeline -- apparent because it enthusiastically called for expanding the nation's pipeline system, without specifically mentioning Keystone.... The labor federation's embrace of the pipeline, even with some ambiguity, will give President Obama some political cover as he weighs whether to approve the pipeline...."

Thomas Edsell takes another look at racial prejudice in the U.S. Some studies show that the "Obama Effect" was to dramatically reduced white prejudice against blacks, but it appears the effect may last only as long as a campaign does.

Congressional Race

Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: Massachusetts "Republicans and Democrats are bracing for bruising primaries over the next few weeks as five candidates begin to campaign in earnest to fill the United States Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry's departure to become secretary of state."

Marin Cogan of The New Republic on "the psycho-sexual ordeal of [women] reporting in Washington." No, female reporters usually are not anxious to "date" their sources, & when they express interest in their subjects during interviews it's because during interviews the reporters ask questions. Via Greg Sargent.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age "occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth's climate." Not meticulous enough for Jim Inhofe. They drive cars in D.C. & it still snows there.

AP: "A self-described pimp was arrested Thursday in Los Angeles, ending a manhunt that began after a vehicle-to-vehicle shooting and spectacular, fiery crash that killed three people on the Las Vegas Strip a week ago, police said. Ammar Harris, 26, surrendered to a team of police and federal agents who found him inside a North Hollywood apartment after a woman answered the door, authorities said."

Reuters: "Pope Benedict left the Vatican on Thursday and headed to the papal summer residence where he will become the first pontiff in six centuries to resign instead of ruling for life."

fell more than expected last week, suggesting some traction in the labor market recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 344,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday." ...

... BUT Reuters: "The U.S. economy barely grew in the fourth quarter although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate that showed an economic contraction. Gross domestic product expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, missing the 0.5 percent gain forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll."

AP: "The Obama administration said Thursday that it will provide the Syrian opposition with an additional $60 million in assistance and -- in a significant policy shift -- will for the first time provide nonlethal aid like food and medical supplies to aid rebels battling to oust President Bashar Assad."

Reuters: "Two major Chinese military websites, including that of the Defense Ministry, were subject to about 144,000 hacking attacks a month last year, almost two-thirds of which came from the United States, the ministry said on Thursday."

AP: "Pope Benedict XVI promised his 'unconditional reverence and obedience' to his successor in his final words to cardinals Thursday, a poignant and powerful farewell delivered hours before he becomes the first pope in 600 years to resign."

The Commentariat -- Feb. 27, 2013

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on David Brooks' latest hogwash.

Mark Murray of NBC News: "... according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll..., President Barack Obama finds himself in a much stronger position than his Republican adversaries.... Strong majorities support the broad outlines of Obama's top domestic priorities pp on immigration, gun control and raising the minimum wage.... What's more, the polls shows the Democratic Party beats the Republican Party on almost every issue...."

Donna Cassata of the AP: "Chuck Hagel takes charge at the Defense Department with deep budget cuts looming and Republican opponents still doubtful that he's up to the job. Hagel is expected to be sworn in Wednesday and is likely to address the staff in his first day as defense secretary." ...

... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Senate confirmed Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense on Tuesday after a bruising bout with Republicans, while President Obama's choice to be Treasury secretary headed to the floor with bipartisan support, suggesting that the Republican blockade against the administration's second-term nominees was beginning to ease. After escaping a filibuster by members of his own party, Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, prevailed in a 58-to-41 vote -- the narrowest margin for any defense secretary on record.... Just four Republicans voted for his confirmation: Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, [Rand] Paul [of Kentucky] and Richard Shelby of Alabama.... Hours earlier, the Senate Finance Committee approved the nomination of Jacob J. Lew as Treasury secretary on a 19-to-5 vote." ...

... Contributor James S. remarked on Paul's "yea" vote in a comment to yesterday's Commentariat: "... Aqua Buddha Man voted 'yea.' Does this mean he hasn't figured out the buttons on his chamber desk yet, or what?" May be. As Dana Milbank notes today in his column on the multiple smears Hagel endured from fellow Republican Senators, "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) gave credence to a hoax, published credulously in the conservative press, that Hagel had received funds from a fictitious group called Friends of Hamas. Asked about this by radio host Hugh Hewitt, Paul replied: 'You know, I saw that information today, also, and that is more and more concerning.'" Evidently, Paul got over his fake concerns, perhaps when somebody told him they were based on a completely phony report by what I suppose is one of Paul's favorite "news" outlets. ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate (who has described himself as a libertarian) explains it's a libertarian thing. I still can't see the logic of why -- as contributor Diane points out -- Paul voted nay on cloture hours before he voted yea on confirmation, the only Senator to do so. I think the point is that often there is little logic to Paul's "principled votes." He does what he does when he does it. If he can't find a libertarian rationale for his vote, he can find a conservative one. ...

... Funny tweet from Matt Yglesias in response to Hagel confirmation; responses to Yglesias's tweet are good, too. Via Jonathan Bernstein.

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: Today the Supreme Court "will review -- for the sixth time since passage in 1965 -- Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which mandates that federal authorities pre-approve any changes in voting laws here [in nine] states and numerous jurisdictions with a history of discrimination. It has survived each previous time." ...

... Washington Post Editors: "In reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act seven years ago, a bipartisan majority of lawmakers -- 390 to 33 in the House, 98 to 0 in the Senate -- determined that the evidence justified maintaining pre-clearance. Shelby County and its allies have not given the high court reason enough to repudiate Congress's resounding judgment." ...

... Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), in a Washington Post op-ed, on why we still need the Voting Rights Act. Lewis explains what specifically is at issue in the case before the Supremes & writes, "It is ironic and almost emblematic that the worst perpetrators are those seeking to be relieved of the responsibilities of justice. Instead of accepting the ways our society has changed and dealing with the implications of true democracy, they would rather free themselves of oversight and the obligations of equal justice." ...

... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: John Roberts has a long history of fighting the Voting Rights Act.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back a challenge to a federal law that broadened the government’s power to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails. The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote that divided along ideological lines, probably means the Supreme Court will never rule on the constitutionality of that 2008 law.... Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that the journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates who challenged the constitutionality of the law could not show they had been harmed by it and so lacked standing to sue."

Bob Woodward Extends His Anti-Obama Campaign. Kevin Robillard of Politico: "The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward attacked President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying the commander-in-chief's decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is 'a kind of madness.' ... The Pentagon announced earlier this month the U.S.S. Harry Truman, which was supposed to leave for the Persian Gulf, will remain stateside due to budget concerns. The sequester, which will cut billions in defense spending, is scheduled to hit on Friday." ...

The Virginian-Pilot: "Thousands of blue-collar jobs will be lost if federal lawmakers don't strike a deal by the end if the week to avoid sweeping budget cuts, President Barack Obama told a crowd of about 3,000 shipyard workers this afternoon. Standing in front of a massive propeller in a cavernous facility used to build submarines, Obama called on Congress to compromise or risk harming the economy in Hampton Roads," Virginia. ...

... An excellent, easy-to-understand post by Sharon Parrott of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities on the impacts of the sequester: "Taken together, the [2011 Budget Control Act] cuts and sequestration would cut discretionary spending 14 percent below the 2010 level in inflation-adjusted terms...." Apparently, Republicans cannot do this math. ...

... Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The federal government, the nation's largest consumer and investor, is cutting back at a pace exceeded in the last half-century only by the military demobilizations after the Vietnam War and the cold war."

... CW: Here's Brian Beutler's prediction on how the sequester will come down. It sounds plausible to me, though I would not be bold enough to bet a nickel on any prediction:

The most important factor in this fight is probably the reality that Obama doesn't have to face voters again and thus is willing to veto sequestration replacement bills if they're composed of spending cuts alone. Congressional Democrats are fully aware of this.... So sequestration will begin.... And then the tension sequestration was intended to create -- and in fact has created -- between defense hawks and the rest of the GOP will intensify and actually splinter the party. If that doesn't happen quickly enough, then the sequestration fight will become tangled up in the need to renew funding for the federal government at the end of March. If Republicans don't cave before then, they'll precipitate a 1995-style government shutdown, public opinion will actually begin to control the outcome, and it'll be game over. ...

... Greg Sargent adds, "Ultimately, what will be decisive is how public opinion plays out through March. The current environment suggests Republicans have a lot more work to do to shift the basic dynamic in their favor than Dems do." ...

... ** STILL, as Jonathan Chait of New York writes, "... deciphering the GOP strategy is as mysterious as gaming out the plans of a tiny band of warring clans in some mountainous region of Afghanistan.... Deepening the bafflement is that the Republicans' apparent approach bears no relation either to political reality or to the party's stated goals. President Obama is offering up something -- hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security and Medicare -- that Republicans say they want and which (because of their unpopularity) they have proven unable to obtain even when they have had full control of government. They are instead undertaking a public showdown against a figure who is vastly more popular and trusted, who possesses a better platform to communicate his message, and whose message itself ... commands overwhelmingly higher public support." Read the whole post. ...

... Sarah Binder, in the Monkey Cage: "I suspect the GOP strategy seems inscrutable because we are overestimating the degree of consensus within (and between) the House and Senate Republican conferences. In the House, for sure, I see no evidence that Speaker Boehner has the votes to re-pass the sequester replacement from last December, explaining why Boehner keeps claiming that the House has already acted even though the bill died at the close of the 112th Congress.... By carving out protection for major (Social Security and Medicare) federal benefits, narrowly tailored education benefits, and low-income support programs, Democratic priorities are partially protected.... Democratic legislators would surely prefer the sequester cuts to the alternative cuts passed in December by House Republicans, which Democrats uniformly voted against."

Kirk Semple of the New York Times: "Federal immigration officials have released hundreds of detainees from immigration detention centers around the country in a highly unusual effort that is intended to save money as automatic budget cuts loom in Washington, officials said Tuesday. The government has not dropped the deportation cases against the immigrants, however. The detainees have been freed on supervised release while their cases continue in court...."

Fiction writer Louise Erdrich, in a New York Times op-ed: "The Justice Department reports that one in three Native women is raped over her lifetime, while other sources report that many Native women are too demoralized to report rape. Perhaps this is because federal prosecutors decline to prosecute 67 percent of sexual abuse cases, according to the Government Accountability Office.... More than 80 percent of sex crimes on reservations are committed by non-Indian men, who are immune from prosecution by tribal courts." The Senate passed the reauthorization Violence Against Women Act -- again -- but the House has failed to pass it once & the version Eric Cantor has put forward would put limits on the protections the Senate bill provides to Native Americans & other groups. ...

... Update: Jake Sherman of Politico: "House Republicans seem to be resigned that their version of the Violence Against Women Act is a loser with their own members and are likely to pass the Senate bill this week without changes. The GOP leadership has set up a floor process that would allow the chamber to vote on the Senate bill if they cannot pass their own version of the domestic violence legislation.... The main lingering issues for the House's bill was how it handled violence in tribal areas. The White House on Tuesday said it 'cannot support the House substitute' to the Senate bill."

James Risen of the New York Times: "Virginia Messick is the first victim of a sexual assault scandal at Lackland Air Force Base to discuss what she has endured.... Ms. Messick, now 21, is one of 62 trainees identified as victims of assault or other improper conduct by 32 training instructors between 2009 and 2012 at Lackland, a sprawling base outside San Antonio that serves as the Air Force's basic training center for enlisted personnel. So far, seven Air Force instructors have been court-martialed, including Staff Sgt. Luis Walker, now serving a 20-year sentence for crimes involving 10 women, including Ms. Messick. Eight more court-martial cases are pending. Fifteen other instructors are under investigation, and two senior officers have been relieved of command.... The reforms undertaken by the Air Force do not alter a fundamental fact of military life: commanders have final say over whether criminal charges are brought in military courts, and victims are expected to report crimes to those who oversee their careers."

Obama 2.0. Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Lawmakers are scrutinizing Mary Jo White ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing [re: her nomination to head the S.E.C.], raising questions about the former prosecutor’s lack of regulatory experience and the challenge of policing Wall Street firms she recently defended in private practice.... Ms. White ... offered a previously undisclosed concession, vowing 'as far as can be foreseen,' never to return to Debevoise & Plimpton, where she had built a lucrative legal practice.... Ms. White had already agreed to recuse herself for one year from most matters that involve former clients.... [Some] Democrats have lingering reservations.... Her husband, John W. White, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he represents many of the companies that the S.E.C. regulates. They also question whether Ms. White's recusals, even if well-intentioned, could cripple her ability to run the agency."

Kate Zernike of the New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie, one of the most strident Republican critics of President Obama’s health care overhaul, announced on Tuesday that he would accept federal money to expand the Medicaid program in New Jersey. The expansion, which the governor described in his annual budget address to the Legislature, would provide health insurance to 104,000 of the poorest 1.3 million residents currently living without it, though some groups say the number could be higher. Mr. Christie emphasized that it was a financial decision, not a philosophical shift; if New Jersey did not take the money, he said, the federal government would give it to other states." ...

... Shushannah Walshe of ABC News: "There are almost 40 featured speakers at next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, but one of the most popular Republican governors in the country has yet to receive an invite. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is 'not being invited' to CPAC...." CW: Walshe describes Marco Rubio as "former Florida Sen[ator]." If only.

Binyamin Appelbaum: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, played down concerns about the Fed's economic stimulus campaign on Tuesday, describing it as necessary and effective and making clear it was likely to continue for some time. In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Bernanke was relatively upbeat about the broader economy, which he said was growing again after pausing in the fourth quarter. But he said unemployment remained unacceptably high." ...

... Mark Gongloff of the Huffington Post: "Newly minted Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday showed why big banks are not her biggest fans, grilling Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke about the risks and fairness of having banks that are 'too big to fail.' Warren (D-Mass.) questioned Bernanke during his latest semiannual appearance before the Senate Banking Committee...." Thanks to contributor Julie L. for the link. ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "... Ben Bernanke was up on Capitol Hill this morning giving his fellow Republicans a much-needed lesson in austerity economics. Departing from his statutory duty of reporting to the Senate Banking Committee on the Fed's monetary policy, Bernanke devoted much of his testimony to fiscal policy, warning his congressional class that letting the sequester go ahead would endanger the economic recovery and do little or nothing to reduce the country's debt burden.... He also called on European countries to ease up on their austerity policies, saying that they could adopt a 'more judicious balance' of short-term and long-term fiscal consolidation.... Today, once again, the mild-mannered professor demonstrated that he can take the heat."

Another Republican Tries to Save the Nation from Republicans. Sheila Bair, the former head of the FDIC, in a New York Times op-ed: "I am a capitalist and a lifelong Republican. I believe that, in a meritocracy, some level of income inequality is both inevitable and desirable.... But I fear that government actions, not merit, have fueled these extremes in income distribution through taxpayer bailouts, central-bank-engineered financial asset bubbles and unjustified tax breaks that favor the rich....Skewing income toward the upper, upper class hurts our economy because the rich tend to sit on their money -- unlike lower- and middle-income people, who spend a large share of their paychecks, and hence stimulate economic activity."

Maureen Dowd writes a critique of Marissa Mayer, the umpteenth CEO of Yahoo! CW: I'm in agreement with most, if not all, of what Dowd says about Mayer's actions, but I always bear in mind that Dowd is especially hard on ultra-successful women.

** CW: Sorry I forgot to link the obituary of former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Coop, who died Monday. Thanks to Kate M. for reminding us. Coop's New York Times obituary is here: "Dr. Koop issued emphatic warnings about the dangers of smoking, he almost single-handedly pushed the government into taking a more aggressive stand against AIDS, and despite his moral opposition to abortion, he refused to use his office as a pulpit from which to preach against it.... In an interview for this obituary in 1996, he said he had declined to speak out on abortion because he thought his job was to deal with factual health issues like the hazards of smoking, not to express opinions on moral issues." ...

... CW: I had no idea that the Times interviewed prominent people for their obituaries. The initial ask gives new meaning to the term "cold call."

Congressional Race

Rick Pearson & Bill Ruthhart of the Chicago Tribune: "Former state Rep. Robin Kelly easily won the special Democratic primary Tuesday night in the race to replace the disgraced Jesse Jackson Jr. in Congress, helped by millions of dollars in pro-gun control ads from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's political fund.... Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC was the largest campaign interest in the race and dominated the Chicago broadcast TV airwaves compared to a marginal buy by one minor candidate."

Right Wing World

If Ted Cruz is so smart, why can't he understand the basics of critical legal studies? Zach Beauchamp of Think Progress: "... not only did Cruz get it wrong [when he claimed that roughly a dozen professors at Harvard Law 'would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government'], but in a certain sense he got it backwards."

No-Tax Purity Test. Maggie Haberman of Politico: "The Club for Growth, the anti-tax group that has spent heavily in Republican primaries in the past few cycles, is launching a new website that names nine GOP Congress members in safe seats and urges people to help find challengers to them.... [The site] names people in districts where Mitt Romney notched more than 60 percent in the 2012 presidential race, but got a lifetime rating of below 70 percent from the Club."

Benedict Blames Dozing Jesus for Troubles. Rachel Donadio & Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "Pope Benedict XVI held his final general audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday, telling tens of thousands of believers in an unusually personal public farewell that his nearly eight years in office had known 'moments of joy and light but also moments that were not easy' when it seemed 'the Lord was sleeping.'"

Secrets of the Dead

Bork's Quest. Mark Sherman of TPM: "Robert Bork says President Richard Nixon promised him the next Supreme Court vacancy after Bork complied with Nixon's order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Bork's recollection of his role in the Saturday Night Massacre that culminated in Cox's firing is at the center of his slim memoir, 'Saving Justice,' that is being published posthumously by Encounter Books. Bork died in December at age 85." Via Charles Pierce: ... frankly, the fact that a dead crazy person is giving up a dead criminal 40 years too late, and from from the Beyond, does not impress me as an act of contrition, either."

Poor Rockefeller. Paul Glastris of the Washington Monthly: "In 1974, after Richard Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became president, Ford brought Nelson Rockerfeller into the Oval Office and offered to nominate him to be vice president. When Ford and everyone else was leaving the room, [confirmation prep expert Tom] Korologos ... invited the governor to his office to start the grueling process of going through Rockefeller's past. One of the first questions Rockefeller asked was whether his financial disclosure forms might be made public. This is Washington, Korologos told him, you can bet someone will leak them. The hearings ultimately revealed, among other things, that Rockefeller had failed to pay $1 million in taxes and financed a negative biography of a political rival. But that day, Rockefeller confessed to Korologos his biggest concern: that the disclosure would show that Rockefeller was worth 'only' $600 million, far less than everyone assumed, and he would lose stature in the eyes of his billionaire buddies."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The United States is significantly stepping up its support for the Syrian opposition, senior administration officials said on Wednesday, helping to train rebels at a base in the region and for the first time offering armed groups nonlethal assistance and equipment that could help their military campaign."

New York Times: "Van Cliburn, the American pianist whose first-place award at the 1958 Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow made him an overnight sensation and propelled him to a phenomenally successful and lucrative career, though a short-lived one, died Wednesday morning in Fort Worth. He was 78."

Reuters: "A powerful winter storm that buried the U.S. Plains moved on Tuesday into the southern Great Lakes region, where it snarled the evening commute in Chicago and Milwaukee, created near-whiteout conditions and forced hundreds of flight cancellations."

AP: "A center-left group of parties appears to have the best shot at forming a coalition government in Italy after an inconclusive national election, but the challenge is steep and comes amid public anger over austerity measures. If Italian parties fail to form a governing coalition, new elections would be required, causing more uncertainty and a leadership vacuum, and that possibility rattled financial markets across Europe on Tuesday." Guardian story here.

AP: "New U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has held his first official meeting with France's leadership amid increasing efforts by both countries to bolster Syria's opposition. Kerry met Wednesday with French President Francois Hollande in Paris, chatting in French on the front steps of the Elysee Palace." CW: I guess the headline in Right Wing World would be "Obama's Envoy and Socialist Leader Speak the Same Language -- And It's French!"

Reuters: "Iran gave an upbeat assessment of two days of nuclear talks with world powers that ended on Wednesday, but Western officials said Tehran must start taking concrete steps to ease mounting concerns about its atomic activity."

Reuters: U.S. Lieutenant-General Christopher Bogdan, "the Pentagon program chief for the F-35 warplane, slammed its commercial partners Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney on Wednesday, accusing them of trying to 'squeeze every nickel' out of the U.S. government and failing to see the long-term benefits of the project."

Guardian: "The US government is planning to call an American, possibly one of the 22 Navy Seals involved in the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden, to give evidence at the trial of Bradley Manning about how he discovered digital material later revealed to contain WikiLeaks disclosures, a military court heard on Tuesday."

AP: "Two police detectives [in Santa Cruz County, California,] were shot and killed while investigating a sexual assault complaint, and a suspect was also fatally shot after a brief chase, authorities said."

Reuters: "A 19-year-old student died following a shooting on Tuesday at a residence hall of a South Carolina university near the resort area of Myrtle Beach, and authorities were searching for a gunman, university officials said."