Dancing to Republicans' Tune on Security

Is it legal for a journalist to disclose classified information to the public? That's something of an open question, although legal opinion seems to lean heavily toward "no." After all, if you could prosecute reporters for detailing classified info, all the executive branch would need to do to censor any news story would be to direct the appropriate agency to smack that info with the "TOP SECRET" stamp. So the notion that journalists could be jailed for publishing leaked information is a very dangerous one and one that courts have not treated well.

From a historical standpoint,  publishing classified info as journalism is completely legal and any finding that said otherwise would upset years of legal opinion.

Which brings us to this:

The Guardian: The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

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A Vanishing Opportunity to Turn the Tables on the GOP

Politico called last week a "political gift" for Republicans. The convergence of three controversies had a fading political party drooling. Of course, Benghazi was an entirely made up conspiracy theory, the IRS story may or may not be scandalous but doesn't involve the White House, and seizing phone records from the AP is the sort of thing Republicans can actually get behind in their never-ending War on Terror.

Still, the press went a little nuts with the stories on an otherwise slow news week and Republicans began to believe the hype. Wall-to-wall coverage of these three stories merged into one rat king of story and the nation was transfixed. Completely and utterly transfixed.

Or were we?

CNN: President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

But a CNN/ORC International survey released Sunday morning also indicates that congressional Republicans are not overplaying their hand when it comes to their reaction to the three controversies that have consumed the nation's capital over the past week and a half. And the poll finds that a majority of Americans take all three issues seriously.

According to the survey, which was conducted Friday and Saturday, 53% of Americans say they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president's approval rating was at 51% in CNN's last poll, which was conducted in early April.

So Americans take these issues seriously, but not seriously enough to change their opinion of the president. "The CNN poll is in-line with Gallup, which also indicated a very slight rise in Obama's approval rating over the same time period," the report continues. "And Gallup's daily tracking poll also indicated a slight upward movement of Obama's approval rating over the past week. But as with the CNN poll, it was within that survey's sampling error."

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White House Makes Bad Call on Plan B

Imagine if flu shots at pharmacies became a political football. People should not have easy access to flu vaccinations, because that only encourages risky behavior like riding in elevators or mass transit, going to public places like shopping malls, and having unnecessary contact with children. If we didn’t allow people easy access to flu vaccines, we wouldn’t be "rewarding" people who engage in this sort of risky behavior. With a more cautious population, the spread of influenza would actually decrease and America would be a better and healthier place because of it.

Right about now, you’re thinking that’s just crazy. And you’re right. Easy access to flu vaccines doesn’t encourage behaviors that lead to getting sick. In fact, pharmacy flu shots reduce the number of hospital stays by American children and does the same for people over fifty. The flu shot at the corner pharmacy doesn’t harm society, it helps it. I don’t imagine you’re very surprised. This is all very common sense and entirely predictable. The argument that easy access to flu vaccines leads to unhealthy behavior and an increase in flu cases is absurd on it’s face.

It’s also the logic behind this:

Wonkblog, Washington Post: The Justice Department filed notice late Wednesday that it will challenge a federal court decision requiring the government to make emergency contraceptives available over the counter to women of all ages.

The move came hours after the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of emergency contraceptives to women 15 and older. Previously, Plan B was available to teenagers younger than 17 only with a prescription. Older women had to request it from a pharmacist.

The Obama administration also asked the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York to stay Judge Edward Korman’s early-April ruling, which is set to take effect Sunday.

“We are deeply disappointed that just days after President Obama proclaimed his commitment to women’s reproductive rights, his administration has decided once again to deprive women of their right to obtain emergency contraception without unjustified and burdensome restrictions,” Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup, who represents the defendants, said.

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Of Food Assistance and Rightwing Lunatics

I was going to write about the Supreme Court and "Obamacare," but I have to agree with Ezra Klein -- we don't know jack and we won't until the ruling comes down. "Wait and see" isn't a very satisfying bit of punditry, but it is responsible. So wait and see.

Instead of some crystal ball gazing, let's look at an issue that has the rightwing blogosphere up in arms; the fact that the government wants to make sure you get what you're entitled to.

CNN:

More than one in seven Americans are on food stamps, but the federal government wants even more people to sign up for the safety net program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been running radio ads for the past four months encouraging those eligible to enroll. The campaign is targeted at the elderly, working poor, the unemployed and Hispanics.

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For GOP, Blocking Buffett Rule as Easy as Taking Lunch from a Baby

A few days ago, this happened:

New York Times:

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a move to open debate on the so-called Buffett Rule, ensuring that a measure pressed for months by President Obama and Senate Democrats to ensure that the superrich pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent will not come to a decisive vote.

But the fierce debate preceding the 51-45 vote — the Democrats were nine votes short of the 60 they needed — set off a week of political wrangling over taxes that both parties insist they are already winning.

It seems the GOP believes that the Buffet Rule is a gimmick. It's would account for a fraction of the federal deficit -- so why even bother? They argue President Obama and Democrats are just engaging in more class warfare for cheap political points.

So how much would the Buffet Rule bring in? According to the Ezra Klein, "The Joint Committee on Taxation says the proposal will bring in $47 billion over 10 years. Chuck Schumer, assuming the extension of the Bush tax cuts, says it will bring in $160 billion." Call it $47 bil. to be safe. That's the conservative estimate.

"The White House’s opponents... have largely attacked the Buffett Rule for being too small," Klein says. "The Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso tweets, 'I’m sorry, but if the Buffett Rule is your solution to the deficit problem, you’re not even on the same continent as serious.' His colleague, Phil Klein, produced a chart comparing the Buffett Rule to 'Obama’s deficits': As you might expect, the Buffett Rule is considerably smaller. Tiny, even."

And now we come to all the hypocrisy and evil. When you're dealing with Republican arguments, you can always count on hypocrisy and evil.

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Romney Will Tell Whatever Lie He Thinks You Want to Hear

It's a trap they've set for themselves before. In 2009, the Obama administration released visitor logs to promote greater transparency at the White House. Predictably, the obsessive rightwing blogosphere pored over the names, looking for commies and Nazis and Black Panthers and general ne'er-do-wells. They found Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. So they took to Twitter and their blogs to announce the terrible news; Barack HUSSEIN Obama was still palling around with terrorists and preachers of the dreaded black liberation theology.

Except he wasn't. Turns out that it's a big world, the White House is a big building, and people don't have unique names. The William Ayers in the White House logs was a different guy, as was Jeremiah Wright. So lesson learned; never jump to conclusions based solely on the fact that you prefer those conclusions to the likely reality.

Or, it would be lesson learned, if the right had any interest in learning lessons. But, as the past decade has demonstrated so well, they don't. And so it is that Hilary Rosen has visited the White House 35 times -- which is absolute, lead pipe cinch proof that she's one of President Obama's top advisers and is probably the person running his reelection campaign.

That's the vibe you get from Dave Weigel's account of a press conference call with Romney surrogates.

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Paul Ryan, True-Believerism, and the Coming GOP Medicare Fiasco

It's a warning I haven't written about in a while, but beware of true believers. I used it more during the Bush administration, when the neocons were ignoring the fact that the invasion of Iraq just wasn't working. The neocons had a domino theory for Iraq; Saddam Hussein falls and -- for some unexplained reason -- the middle east stabilizes, Israel becomes everyone's buddy, and Democracy breaks out all over the place. Everything was falling down around their ears, but the line from the Cheneyite wing of the White House seemed to be "It will work! It will! The theory is so beautiful and perfect, it can't possibly be flawed."

This is why you should always beware true believers. They're the fanatics, the zealots, the guys who are absolutely certain the flawless idea can't fail. They're the ones who believe that when something's not working, you need to do more of it. And they seem to be incapable of recognizing failure. They're the doctor in the bad medical drama, pounding a patient's chest and shouting, "Damn you! Don't you die on me!" Except the true believer would keep pumping away until the body was stiff. The TV doctor listens when someone tells them it's over, the true believer thinks it's impossible for it to be over.

The neocon true-believerism was bloody and disastrous. Other kinds are simply disastrous. And, luckily, the example of true-believerism offered today only harms the true believers.

Politico:

To Democrats, the release of the House GOP budget is like Christmas in March. And they’re planning a celebration of sorts.

Democrats are organizing media blitzes, House floor speeches and town halls back home to seize on the changes to Medicare that Republicans are expected to propose Tuesday. To blunt GOP talking points that only Republicans are willing to confront the debt, Democrats intend to unveil their own budget next week calling for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich.

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GOP Incoherent on Abortion, Contraception

I'm pro-choice, without apology or qualification. If you're expecting some emotionally wrenching story about how I came to be pro-choice -- some tragedy involving a woman I cared for, maybe -- you're going to be disappointed. I don't have one. My position is based on a rational understanding of history and human nature -- when abortion isn't legal, women die. It's pretty straightforward. Laws restricting abortion risk creating public health crises. Want to end abortion? Fine with me. Figure out a way to make it unnecessary and women won't seek them. Outlawing abortion doesn't end it, it just makes it more dangerous. As long as the term "crisis pregnancy" exists, abortion will be necessary and no legislative action can possibly end it.

The most perplexing part of this whole debate is that so many of the people who oppose abortion seem to go out of their way to make it more necessary. They want to slash funding for anti-poverty programs and make it harder for people to collect unemployment benefits -- both measures that increase the demand for abortion services. But perhaps least rational of all, many oppose contraception and sex education. I'm constantly amazed at how people can house two obviously contradictory ideas in the same skull. Amazed, but a lot less than impressed.

I'm not sure what the exact opposite of reasoning is, but it's what these people do. And it's what these people are doing now.

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A Blackout is Working to Stop SOPA and PIPA

As you're probably aware, several major websites have blacked out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its senate sibling, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia is still usable, but it takes some futzing to get it to work. Otherwise, Reddit, Craigslist, Boing-Boing, Mozilla, SMBC, and other popular sites are effectively down for the day.

This has turned out to be an effective form of protest.

Politico:

An Internet blackout Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla and thousands of other sites against two anti-piracy bills in Congress has started to have its desired effect: Co-sponsors of the legislation have changed sides and other lawmakers have called for more debate before any vote.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who was a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act — became the latest lawmaker Wednesday to pull his support. In the House, Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), originally a co-sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, pulled his name from the list of sponsors on Tuesday. A spokesman for Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), meanwhile, told the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday that the congressman is also unable to support SOPA as written.

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Gaddafi's American Friends

Muammar Gaddafi is dead. While the State Department and the White House haven't confirmed as of this writing, it's almost certain. You might remember that official confirmation from the US government took a while when Bin Laden was killed, as well. 100% certainty takes some time.

While everyone is saying that the dictator's death is a positive, it pays to remember that under the Bush administration, Muammar Gaddafi was officially rehabbed, taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and generally hailed as a good guy. This despite the fact that, prior to 9/11, the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan Am airliner resulted in the largest American civilian death toll from a terrorist attack.

Bush's reasoning for putting Gaddafi back on the good guys list was his agreement to dismantle his WMD program and renounce terrorism. Of course, his WMD program turned out to be underfunded and largely notional, rendering that part of the reasoning nonsensical. And renouncing terrorism is easy. You don't even have to actually quit. Especially when the US made no effort to prove anything. Libya would turn over a few terrorists for trial and that would be that.

The real reason for normalizing relations with Gaddafi was almost cartoonishly simple and stereotypically neocon. Libya has oil.

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White House Begins to Acknowledge Reality that GOP is Sabotaging Recovery

We need to be honest with the public. This election is about them, not us. And we need to treat this election as the first step in retaking the government. We need to say to everyone on Election Day, "Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job."... The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president...Our single biggest political goal is to give our nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful.
-Republican Senate minority leader Mich McConnell, in an interview during the 2010 elections.

Mitch McConnell said that?!?... He admitted that on the record?!? That is embarrassing. Can I just say for the record -- that is pathetic."
-Former GOP congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.

It was embarrassing and pathetic. One election cycle had not yet come and gone and here was the GOP's top guy in the Senate, already working on the next. I can't think of a better example of the Republican Party's "permanent campaign" mode than McConnell's admission. It would be two years before the next election and, rather than focusing of governing, McConnell was concentrating on the 2012 presidential campaign. Want a recipe for disaster? There you go.

But of course the White House, being all post-partisan and above such trifling matters as political reality, pretty much ignored McConnell's confession. They would continue to reach across the aisle to try to work with Republicans and would continue to have their hand slapped back. Like a gambling addict plugging a slot machine, the president seemed trapped by his own losing streak and the belief that if he kept feeding the machine silver dollars, it would have to pay off eventually. Ok, so this time bipartisanship didn't work, but if he walked away, he was walking away from the one time -- perhaps the very next pull on that lever -- that it would.

Maybe it was the debt-limit fight that proved to Barack Obama that the machine he was playing was either rigged or broken. Or maybe there was some sort of Oval Office intervention. But the White House seems to have come to grips with reality; Republicans are only concerned about the elections and, since this is true, they have an actual disincentive to work with the president to solve real world problems for Americans.

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GOP Candidates to Struggling Americans: 'Let Them Eat Cake'

Hey, want to get really, really angry? Here you go:

I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these [Occupy Wall Street] demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! [...] It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.

That's GOP rising star Herman Cain, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, making what in any sane world would be a "major campaign trail gaffe." We don't live in any sane world. Forget the insane conspiracy theory of a White House "orchestrating" protests that lay a lot of blame at the White House's door. Instead, concentrate on the "let them eat cake" part that blames unemployment on the unemployed, financial problems on the struggling, and implies that anyone who isn't rich is a failure.

ThinkProgress:

...Cain’s claim about the unemployed is especially heartless and uninformed. There are simply not enough jobs to go around, with 4.32 unemployed people for every job opening in the country. So even someone looking hard for a job will have a difficult time finding one. Moreover, Cain fails to understand the astronomical income inequality in the U.S. and the negative effect it has on economic growth.

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The Obama Jobs Plan Just Another Preemptive Cave-In

In case you haven't seen it, here's President Obama's jobs speech, here's the transcript, and here's the White House's bullet-point fact sheet on the plan.



You are now up to speed.

I, for one, remain less than enthused. But I take heart in the fact that Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman is more excited about it than I am. He's not elated or even enthusiastic -- he calls it "a lot better than nothing" -- but he's apparently more impressed than I am. So I defer to the expert.

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Obama Jobs Plan Modest, Already Compromised

If early reports of President Obama's job speech are accurate and the choice for reinvigorating the economy is "go big or go home," it's looking like the President has opted to go home. As Paul Krugman pointed out a few days ago, the problem with the initial stimulus package wasn't that it was ineffective, but that it was too small to repair all of the damage caused by the Bush crash. In short, it may have saved us from a depression, but that's about all it was capable of doing.

So never let it be said that this administration is capable of ignoring past mistakes. If at first you don't succeed, try again -- fail better. When you need a hoist to lift the economy, get a stepladder and hope for the best. Still, it's not all bad.

Associated Press:

According to people familiar with the White House deliberations, two of the biggest measures in the president's proposals for 2012 are expected to be a one-year extension of a payroll tax cut for workers and an extension of expiring jobless benefits. Together those two would total about $170 billion.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan was still being finalized and some proposals could still be subject to change.

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A Washington Scheduling Conflict is Not the Most Important Story Ever

One of the things I like to do with what I think of as my "long form" posts is kill two or more birds with one stone. It's often the case that when you look closely at an issue or story of the day, it relates to other stories and other issues. So many things are interconnected and politics (as much as politicians like to pretend otherwise) is a complex and faceted thing. It's nearly always the case that you can grab a story and make it at least two stories; "Man, this is dumb -- and the media sucks!" And yes, media suckage figures into this particular post.

So let's begin with that. Yesterday, President Obama announced that he wanted to address a joint session of congress on September 7. This wasn't going to work, there was a big Republican debate that night and we can't have the president dominating that news cycle. Of course, House Speaker John Boehner didn't put his refusal that way, but no one on Earth believes there was any other reason. The President pushed his case, but later dropped it. He'd address congress on the 8th.

OK, now here's where we get to the "and the media sucks!" part; this is the big story today. A scheduling disagreement. Yes, the GOP looks petty and self-serving. "Remember, this is just about picking the date for the speech. It's like arguing about the shape of the table before sitting down for negotiations. What possible chance is there for Washington to approve meaningful economic legislation if there’s a dramatic showdown over scheduling?" writes Steve Benen. "That's a rhetorical question; the chances are zero." But the bigger story -- that President Obama is going to unveil a major jobs plan -- is lost in the coverage of this minor palace intrigue.

Worse, it turns out we have a good idea what's in the plan the President will outline and media's ignoring this knowledge.

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Note to the President: Winning Isn't Everything, It's the Only Thing

The good news is that President Obama is fixing for a fight on jobs.

Washington Post:

President Obama has decided to press Congress for a new round of stimulus spending and tax cuts as he seeks to address the great domestic policy quandary of his tenure: how to spur job growth in an age of austerity.

Obama will lay out a series of ideas in a major address right after Labor Day, when he and a largely antagonistic Congress will return from vacation, the White House said Wednesday.

The president is thinking about proposing tax cuts for companies that hire workers, new spending for roads and construction, and other measures that would target the long-term unemployed, according to administration officials and other people familiar with the matter. Some ideas, such as providing mortgage relief for struggling homeowners, could come through executive action.

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The Lousy Deal

We've got a debt deal and it's just the best thing ever! Check out how super-excited the White House is about the whole thing. If we go to the White House website, we learn that it's a "Win for the Economy and Budget Discipline," that the deal "Removes Cloud of Uncertainty," and that the whole thing's a trip through Bipartisan Happy-Land, where gumdrops grow on sugarplum trees and everything is made wonderful by the magical power of Centrism. Yay!

Of course, if we talk to Mean Old Mister Knows-What-the-Hell-He's-Talking-About, then the magic seems to evaporate.

Crooks and Liars:

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman warned Sunday that proposed spending cuts in a deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling would end up hurting the economy.

"From the perspective of a rational person, we shouldn't even be talking about spending cuts at all now," Krugman told ABC's Christiane Amanpour. "We have nine percent unemployment. These spending cuts are going to worsen unemployment... If you have a situation in which you are permanently going to raise the unemployment rate -- which is what this is going to do -- that's actually going to reduce future revenues."

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Well, At Least it's Not a Buck and a Half's Worth of Arugula!

In 2008, Barack Obama was an elitist. This was the worst thing ever. He supposedly ate in fancy restaurants and ordered unearthly foreign delights like arugula. This meant he was out of touch with the average person, unlike his opponent John McCain who -- as you might remember -- couldn't remember exactly how many houses he owned.

Human Events, 2008:

John McCain may be gaining what Obama is losing among women because of Obama's "Arugula Gap."

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Obama asked an Iowa crowd in 2007. I had to Google "arugula" to discover it's a leafy substitute for lettuce in trendy restaurant salads. Most people don't shop at Whole Foods (which specializes in "organic" foods and other environmentally-fashionable products). And most women, I suspect, aren't looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of their high school French teacher than of John F. Kennedy.

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The Worst Possible Deal?

Let's start with a look at the real world.

Reuters:

More consumers had trouble making payments on credit cards and other debts during the first three months of the year due to higher food and gas prices, an industry report said on Thursday.

The American Bankers Association said the data showed a downturn from prior quarters and described the most recent quarter as a "soft patch."

"Consumers are feeling insecure about the economy and whether their financial resources can carry them through until conditions improve," ABA chief economist James Chessen said in a statement.

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The Deficit isn't Caused by Jets Alone

I'm not sure what to think. On Monday, The Hill ran a piece reporting the White House had basically caved on the Bush tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans.

The White House, seeking an agreement to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Aug. 2, on Monday said it would not insist that any deal include an end to former President George W. Bush’s controversial tax rates on the wealthy.

President Obama's tactics are coming into focus as he huddles with congressional leaders to try and break the deadlock on increasing the debt ceiling.

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