The Commentariat -- March 29, 2012

Adrienne Rich asks "What Kind of Times Are These?" Rich died Tuesday.

** I've added quite a few NEW links to yesterday's post on the Supremes' hearing of oral arguments on the challenges to the Affordable Care Act.

Edwidge Danticat in a New York Times op-ed: "... With draconian immigration laws spreading across the country, immigration detention is one of the fastest-growing forms of incarceration in the United States. There are more than 30,000 men, women and children in immigration custody...." Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee] & members of a subcommittee he chairs is holding a hearing which it titled, for fun, "Holiday on ICE," "seem to think the United States is too nice to the immigrants it detains. We are being too generous in deciding to give them safe water, an hour a day of recreation, and off-site medical care if they are in danger of dying.... The flippant title of the hearing shows a blatant disregard for the more than 110 people who have died in immigration custody since 2003. One of them was my uncle Joseph, an 81-year-old throat cancer survivor...."

Gail Collins: "You would think that this would be a great time to address the question of handgun proliferation, but it has hardly come up in Washington at all. This is because most politicians are terrified of the National Rifle Association." ...

... Now I've Seen Everything. Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress: "Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) donned a hoodie and took to the House floor this morning to speak out against the murder of Travyon Martin, but was shouted down and removed from the floor by the Republican speaker pro tem for violating House rules prohibiting the wearing of hats."

... Here's a bit more on Rush -- "the one politician to ever have beaten Barack Obama in an election" -- from Nicholas McCarvel of the Daily Beast. ...

... ANd from Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor, who discusses the House rules. ...

... Channing Joseph of the New York Times: "A police surveillance video obtained by ABC News shows George Zimmerman ... as he arrived at the Sanford, Fla., police station on the night of the shooting. Mr. Zimmerman, 28, said he shot the 17-year-old high school student, Trayvon Martin, in self-defense after a violent altercation in which Trayvon punched him in the nose, knocked him over and slammed his head into the sidewalk. Mr. Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged. His lawyer, Craig Sonner, has said Mr. Zimmerman’s nose was broken in the altercation. In the video, which shows Mr. Zimmerman in police custody shortly after Trayvon was shot, Mr. Zimmerman’s face and head show no obvious signs of injuries or blood."

Right Wing World

Michael Hirsh of the National Journal: the Obama campaign might be well-advised "to cast [Mitt] Romney as Barry 'Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice' Goldwater, whose trouncing by LBJ in 1964 had a lot to do with public fears that he was a warmonger.... Previously [Romney] has virtually threatened war with Iran and the perpetuation of war in Afghanistan. But Romney's remarks to CNN about Russia, calling Moscow 'without question our number one geopolitical foe' and saying that the Russians 'fight every cause for the world's worst actors,' seemed to mark a new level of indiscretion for the hyperventilating former Massachusetts governor."

Mitt Romney tells Wisconsin voters what he calls "a humorous story" about his father's closing a Michigan auto plant & moving operations to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Only Romney -- who "likes to be able to fire people" -- would see the "humor" in putting people out of work:

The only things more out-of-touch than Mitt Romney's 'joke' about his dad closing a factory are his policies that would give massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and allow insurance companies to discriminate against individuals with pre-existing conditions. He continues to be callous about the struggles that ordinary Americas face and his policies would make it harder-not easier-for anyone but the very wealthy to succeed. -- Lis Smith of the Obama campaign

... The Detroit News reports some background on the hilarious plant closing. ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times, in a post titled "The Lighter Side of Destroying Jobs," has more background on the Michigan plant closing. He adds, "Another candidate might have stayed away from a joke about closing auto plants. Considering that Mitt Romney’s private equity company forced thousands of layoffs at companies it purchased, and that he opposed a bailout of the auto industry that saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, it’s a subject he would be well-advised to avoid. But Mr. Romney doesn’t seem to have the internal warning signal granted to most politicians."

News Ledes

Yahoo! News: "The White House on Thursday accused Republicans criticizing President Barack Obama over his candid but caught-on-tape comments to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev — like presidential front-runner Mitt Romney and House Speaker John Boehner — of having an outdated 'Cold War' mindset and said Obama would happily fight for his policy through the election."

Washington Post: "Angry Senators on Thursday bowed to the will of the House with a 90-day extension of transportation funding two days before a deadline that could have shutdown highway and transit projects across the nation."

ABC News: "A 29-year-old-man was taken into police custody this morning at the Philadelphia airport after attempting to board a flight to San Francisco while carrying items that could have been assembled into an explosive device -- a vial with a fuse, a plastic bottle filled with explosive powder and three M-80 type fireworks."

AP: "President Barack Obama is renewing his call for Congress to end tax breaks to oil companies. In a Rose Garden speech Thursday, Obama will urge Congress to vote to end what the White House calls 'the billions in taxpayer dollars handed out to oil companies every year.'" ...

     ... Politico Update: "President Barack Obama repeated his plea Thursday for lawmakers to repeal billions in annual incentives for big oil companies ahead of a doomed Senate vote on the matter":

     ... Washington Post Update: "Senate Democrats followed by forcing a vote to end tax cuts for the five largest oil companies, which Republicans resoundingly defeated."

New York Times: "Top MF Global executives and their lawyers have been meeting with federal authorities investigating the collapse of MF Global and the firm’s misuse of customer money, according to testimony before a Congressional panel on Wednesday.... An important MF Global employee [Edith O'Brien] had declined to cooperate without first receiving a deal excusing her from criminal prosecution."

AP: "The annual Arab summit meeting opened in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Thursday with only 10 of the leaders of the 22-member Arab League in attendance and amid a growing rift between Arab countries over how far they should go to end the one-year conflict in Syria. As the summit opened, two explosions were heard in central Baghdad."

Here's the New York Times' obituary of musician Earl Scruggs.

Wall Street Journal: "The House overwhelmingly voted down a bipartisan budget proposal [which was based on the Simpson-Bowles Commission outline] Wednesday that would have directed lawmakers to reduce the federal deficit by more than $4 trillion over 10 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases." ...

... The Hill: "The House on Wednesday night unanimously rejected an alternative budget proposal [supposedly] based on President Obama's 2013 budget plan, dispatching it in a 0-414 rout. The vote came just hours after the White House cast the pending vote as a political 'gimmick,' an apparent attempt to downplay what many expected to be an ugly-looking vote for the White House." ...

The Hill: "The House on Thursday is poised to approve Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget measure, which would give Republicans a much-needed lift after months of intra-party squabbling." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "The House of Representatives on Thursday approved a $3.5 trillion budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on a 228 to 191 vote, largely along party lines."

New York Times: "Following a string of critical reports about its contracting practices in China, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, visited Foxconn Technology’s manufacturing plant for the iPhone earlier this week, media reports said on Thursday." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "The Fair Labor Association said Thursday that more than half of the workers in Apple’s assembly plants exceed the company’s limit of 60 hours of work a week and that many face hazardous working conditions." ...

     ... Reuters Update: "In a landmark development for the way Western companies do business in China, Apple Inc said on Thursday it had agreed to work with partner Foxconn to tackle wage and working condition violations at the factories that produce its popular products."

Washington Post: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) endorsed Mitt Romney for president on Wednesday, becoming the latest big-name Republican to throw his support behind the likely Republican nominee."

Reuters: "Pope Benedict and Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, both octogenarians, joked about their age in a brief meeting on Wednesday and then Castro popped the question: so what do you do? The two world figures chatted for about 30 minutes at the Vatican embassy in Havana near the end of the pope's three-day visit to Cuba, where he called for greater freedom and a bigger role for the Catholic Church in the communist-led nation."

Reuters: "An angry Rupert Murdoch on Thursday declared war against 'enemies' who have accused his pay-TV operation of sabotaging its rivals, denouncing them as 'toffs and right wingers' stuck in the last century." In tweets!

The Commentariat -- March 28, 2012 Supreme Court Edition

NEW. Part 1 of my analysis, in the New York Times eXaminer, of the New York Times' coverage of the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is here. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. ...

... NEW. Also, be sure to read Dean Baker's takedown of the New York Times report on RomneyCare: "The NYT puts an anti-Obamacare piece in the news section."

The court commands no armies, it has no money; it depends for its power on its credibility. The only reason people obey it is because it has that credibility. And the court risks grave damage if it strikes down a statute of this magnitude and importance, and stretches so dramatically and drastically to do it. – Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., former Connecticut Attorney General

In a very fundamental way, this Medicaid expansion, as well as the provisions we discussed yesterday, secure of the blessings of liberty.... The Congress struggled with the issue of how to deal with this profound problem of 40 million people without health care for many years, and it made a judgment, and its judgment is one that is, I think, in conformity with lots of experts thought, was the best complex of options to handle this problem. Maybe they were right; maybe they weren't. But this is something about which the people of the United States can deliberate and they can vote, and if they think it needs to be changed, they can change it. And I would suggest to the Court, with profound respect for the Court's obligation to ensure that the Federal Government remains a government of enumerated powers, that this is not a case in any of its aspects that calls that into question. That this was a judgment of policy, that democratically accountable branches of this government made by their best lights. And I would urge this Court to respect that judgment and ask that the Affordable Care Act, in its entirety, be upheld. Thank you. -- Donald Verrilli, Solicitor General (Read Verrilli's entire final remark, beginning on page 79 @ line 14)

Links to audio & transcripts of today's sessions in today's Ledes.

** Also, do read Ken Winkes' essay in this page's Comments.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "On the third day and final of Supreme Court arguments over the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care overhaul law, the justices on Wednesday shifted their attention to a question with enormous practical implications: If they strike down a key provision of the sprawling law, what other provisions would have to fall along with it?"

N. C. Aizenman & Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court began the final day of its review of President Obama’s health-care law Wednesday, considering whether all of the law must fall if part of it is found unconstitutional, and whether its proposed Medicaid expansion violates the federal-state partnership."

New York Times Editors: "By the time the proceedings were over, much of what the conservative justices said in court seemed like part of a politically driven exercise — especially because the issues addressed on Wednesday were not largely constitutional in nature. In fact, they were the kinds of policy questions that are properly left to Congress and state governments to answer, not the Supreme Court."

Jeffrey Doom-and-Gloom Toobin:

Au contraire, writes Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that. A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress.... The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself." ...

... BUT here's Denniston's analysis of the afternoon session: "Unless a closing oration by a top government lawyer stirs some real sympathy for the poor, the new health care law’s broad expansion of the Medicaid program that serves the needy may be sacrificed to a historic expression of judicial sympathy for states’ rights. It probably would require the Court to be really bold, to strike down a program passed by Congress under its spending power, and to do so for the first time in 76 years, but the temptation was very much in evidence in the final round of the Court’s hearings this week on the Affordable Care Act. It probably would be done by a 5-4 vote." Post has been updated.

Dahlia Lithwick describes the justices' behavior in the afternoon session: "... the discussion has disintegrated again into a Morning Joe-style roundtable about states’ rights, the states’ dangerous addiction to New Deal federal programs, and the possibility of sending the states back to rehab to work out their co-dependency issues."

** Andrew Koppelman of Salon: "The judges are being asked to take away health insurance from millions of people. And judging from what they said, they just might do it. Constitutional arguments that were clear howlers a few days ago now have a chance at becoming the law of the land." Koppelman does an excellent job of explaining the anti-Medicaid argument, how ridiculous it is, and how scary it is that the conservative justices, unlike any of the lower courts -- which all threw it out -- took the argument seriously.

NEW. Greg Sargent interviews Charles Fried, the former Solicitor General to Ronald Reagan. "lThere is a limiting principle,' Fried said. 'Congress can’t regulate something that isn’t interstate commerce.' At [Tuesday]’s hearing, [Justice] Kennedy suggested that it is beyond Congress’s authority to force people to purchase something they do not want. 'Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?' Kennedy asked. Fried ... said that under the mandate, Congress isn’t 'creating commerce,' it's merely regulating how inevitable commerce will be paid for. 'You’re not compelling commerce here,' Fried said. 'That assumes the commerce is the insurance. But the commerce is the health care. You’re regulating how it’s paid for. They’re not creating commerce; they’re creating the way you pay for it.'" ...

... NEW. Greg Sargent: "... in his interview with me about the limiting principle, former Reagan Solicitor General Charles Fried was scaldingly critical of the willingness of the conservative bloc of Supreme Court justices to traffic in some of the most well-worn Tea Party tropes about Obamacare. 'I was appalled to see that at least a couple of them were repeating the most tendentious of the Tea Party type arguments,' Fried said. 'I even heard about broccoli. The whole broccoli argument is beneath contempt. To hear it come from the bench was depressing.'"

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "The early outlines of the [Obama campaign's plan to deal with the healthcare issue] came into view on Wednesday as the administration aggressively promoted the more popular provisions of the health care law. That offered a glimpse of the next three months, as the court wrestles with its ruling on the most sweeping piece of domestic legislation since Medicare was created in 1965.... If the administration loses its argument, one early strategy is to run squarely against the Supreme Court." ...

... NEW. Amy Gardner of the Washington Post on the same subject.

NEW. Charles Pierce: "It's been clear for some time now that [Justice Antonin Scalia] is short-timing his job on the Supreme Court. The job bores him.... He's really just a heckler at this point."

NEW. E. J. Dionne: "It fell to the court’s liberals — the so-called 'judicial activists,' remember? — to remind their conservative brethren that legislative power is supposed to rest in our government’s elected branches.... If they strike down or cripple the health-care law..., a court that gave us Bush v. Gore and Citizens United will prove conclusively that it sees no limits on its power, no need to defer to those elected to make our laws."

MYOB. Andrew Koppelman of Salon has precisely the right answer to Alito's question yesterday about the limits of the Commerce Clause: "What Solicitor General Donald Verrilli evidently could not bring himself to say – and this may be why his answers to No Limits were so tangled and hard to follow — is that there is no such safe harbor. Government already forces you to buy insurance you may not want, and thereby to subsidize others, via Social Security and Medicare. The check on the abuse of this power is a familiar one: the ballot box." See also the New York Times Editors' take linked in yesterday's Supremes Edition. It's a different way of saying the same thing to the Court: MYOB. ...

     ... Update: In Verrilli's final plea to the Court, cited at the top of this post, he at last tells them to MYOB.

... CW: I am in complete agreement with something else Koppelman writes in the post above: "Perhaps [Justice Scalia] was just being a devil’s advocate, but let’s be clear: That’s who he was advocating for.... Here the purported champion of judicial restraint proposes reading brutal, unregulated capitalism into the Constitution. Fundamental rights are violated if government acts to keep sick people alive? The other objections to the law are merely confused. This one is evil." As I listened to the audio yesterday, that was exactly my reaction to Scalia's questions; that and the fact that Scalia so clearly takes pleasure in doing evil to the weak and needy.

David Frum, Confused Conservative, writing in the Daily Beast, is not convinced the Republican-appointed Supremes will save the Republican Members of Congress from their dereliction of duty. An interesting take, for what it's worth, which might not be much.

This country is in the grip of some people who have been so brainwashed that they have lost their relationship to reality itself. Even nations run by right wing dictators aren't this self-destructive. We are the most powerful nation on earth --- and we're basically at the mercy of a group of primitive paranoids. -- Digby

Jay Leno quizzes Willard Romney on health care (because Romney won't talk to real reporters):

The Commentariat -- March 28, 2012

CW: Matt Bai of the New York Times writes a long article for the Times Magazine on President Obama and Speaker Boehner's failed 2011 deficit-reduction negotiations. Much of this has been reported before, but Bai adds some reporting & puts it all together in a readable history. If you followed the negotiations last year, Bai's report won't make you appreciate Obama any more; for instance, the agreement he made to raise the Medicare eligibility age would cost lives AND more money.

Shaila Dewan & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times detail a number of ways in which the deal the state attorneys general negotiated with banks helps the banks but does not help distressed homeowners.

"When in Doubt, Smear the Dead Kid." Dave Weigel on the right's "new cottage industry of 'truth about Trayvon' content, calibrated to convince people that they really shouldn't worry about the implications of this killing."

This Is Journalism. Stephen Colbert exposes Barack Obama's gun control conspiracy:

Right Wing World

Michael Shear & Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Newt Gingrich is acknowledging that it is impossible for him to win the Republican presidential nomination outright and is cutting back on his staff and campaign schedule to focus on emerging victorious at the party’s convention this summer." ...

... CW: As one who does not follow the passions of Newt Gingrich except for laughs or while on hypocrisy watch, I was surprised to learn that the Newt always wanted to be a zoo director, a job which you might argue he held while Speaker. Now that even he has acknowledged his campaign is kaput & his only hope of becoming president is via a coup, perhaps he should think of switching careers. I hope some actual zoo director will give Newt a chance -- how about a job cleaning out the elephant exhibit, a shovel-ready job for which Newt is already well-qualified.

International Incident. Arnie Parnes of The Hill: "Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took aim at Mitt Romney on Tuesday, telling the GOP frontrunner to 'look at his watch,' and dismissing his comments that Russia was an enemy of the United States. 'We are in 2012 and not the mid-1970s," Medvedev said Tuesday, on the last day of a nuclear security summit in Asia. His comment came a day after Romney called Russia the United States’ 'No. 1 geopolitical foe.'" ...

... Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "On Tuesday morning when he was asked to respond to a comment Mitt Romney made that Russia is the United States’ number one geopolitical foe, [Speaker John] Boehner [said] ..., 'While the president is overseas..., I think it’s appropriate that we not be critical of him or of our country.' The comment could be interpreted as a subtle swipe at Romney...." CW: I do enjoy it when the son of a barkeep has to teach a rich son of a bitch a thing or two about decorum. ...

... Update. Andy Rosenthal of the New York Times: "If you’re a Republican candidate for the presidency, and you’re trying to figure out if you’ve reached the limits of acceptability in attacking Barack Obama, here’s an easy marker: Even House Speaker John Boehner thinks you’re tactless." ...

... Update 2. Cold War 2.0. Romney Keeps Shoveling. Eschewing Speaker Boehner's advice, Romney pens an op-ed for Foreign Policy criticizing President Obama for "bowing to the Kremlin."

Joe Romm of Think Progress: "Conservatives, led by Fox News, have been pushing a variety of lies about the Chevy Volt. They’ve falsely asserted that it is unsafe and a creation of the Obama administration, using absurd terms to discourage sales like, 'exploding Obamamobiles.' This relentless partisan campaign against American products and American jobs has been so successful that GM CEO Dan Akerson suggested it contributed to lower than expected demand.... [Monday], in an astonishing burst of candor, Fox & Friends has set the record straight with its story, 'Can the Chevy Volt help win the War on Terror?' Their conservative guest, Lee Spieckerman, CEO of Spieckerman Media, a self-described 'drill, baby, drill guy,' debunks every single right-wing myth about the Volt." Here's the video, thanks to reader Bill M. Steve Doucy's lead-in -- "It's all Obama's fault" -- is hilarious, & Spieckerman pretty much debunks it in the first seconds:

Local News

Voter Suppression Florida-Style. Michael Cooper & Jo McGinty of the New York Times: "Florida, which is expected to be a vital swing state once again in this year’s presidential election, is enrolling fewer new voters than it did four years ago as prominent civic organizations have suspended registration drives because of what they describe as onerous restrictions imposed last year by Republican state officials."

News Ledes

Reuters: "Banjo innovator and bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, died on Wednesday at a Nashville hospital at age 88."

New York Times: "Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century, died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was 82."

Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will complete its review of President Obama’s health care law Wednesday by considering whether all of the law must fall if part of it is found unconstitutional, and whether the law’s proposed Medicaid expansion violates the federal-state partnership. New York Times story here. ...

... The New York Times The Lede blog is liveblogging the oral arguments; one begins @ 10 am ET; the second, & final, session begins at 1 pm ET. ...

     ... Update. The audio for today's morning session is here. The transcript is here (pdf). ...

     ... Update 2: The audio for this afternoon's session is here. The transcript is here (pdf).

ABC News: "The lead homicide investigator in the shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin recommended that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman be charged with manslaughter the night of the shooting, multiple sources told ABC News. But Sanford, Fla., Investigator Chris Serino was instructed to not press charges against Zimmerman because the state attorney's office headed by Norman Wolfinger determined there wasn't enough evidence to lead to a conviction...."

Orlando Sentinel: "With the parents of Trayvon Martin looking on, congressional Democrats met Tuesday on Capitol Hill to explore ways they could use federal law to prevent a repeat of the Feb. 26 shooting in Sanford that claimed the life of the Miami Gardens teenager."

ABC News reports on the JetBlue pilot's meltdown:

Guardian: "The captain of a JetBlue plane screamed 'They're going to take us down!' and rambled about al-Qaida as passengers pinned him to the floor while another pilot took charge to make an emergency landing. An off-duty airline captain who was a passenger on the flight entered the cockpit, locked the door and landed in Amarillo, Texas, the airline said in a statement." This ABC News story adds some details. ...

     ... CNN Update: "A JetBlue pilot has been charged with interfering with a flight crew after his midair behavioral meltdown led to an emergency landing." You can read the criminal complaint here, (pdf) which is fairly scary.

Los Angeles Times: "A group led by Lakers legend Magic Johnson emerged Tuesday night as the new owners of the Dodgers, ending months of uncertainty for the storied but troubled baseball franchise."