Oh, snap!
by digby
Three months after Howard Kurtz “moved on” from the Daily Beast over his inaccurate article about basketball player Jason Collins’ coming out, the now-Fox News contributor tweet-slammed his old boss Tina Brown on Twitter, and got a quick and stinging rebuttal.
Macho cops protecting the Homeland from old people baby animals
by digby
I thought killing a 95 year old man with close range bean bag shots was a perfect illustration of our over zealous police agencies, but this really takes the cake:
WISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn.
The Kenosha County animal shelter says it’s been overwhelmed following a WISN 12 News investigation into the death of a fawn at the hands of the state DNR.
“It was like a SWAT team,” shelter employee Ray Schulze said.
Two weeks ago, Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant.
“(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth,” Schulze said.
The focus of their search was a baby fawn brought there by an Illinois family worried she had been abandoned by her mother.
“When it made a little noise, it sounded like it was laughing,” Schulze said.
Schulze videotaped the fawn they named Giggles during the two weeks she was there. The Department of Natural Resources began investigating after two anonymous calls reporting a baby deer at the no-kill shelter.
The warden drafted an affidavit for the search warrant, complete with aerial photos in which he described getting himself into a position where he was able to see the fawn going in and out of the barn.
Agents told staff they came to seize the deer because Wisconsin law forbids the possession of wildlife.
The Kenosha County animal shelter says it’s been overwhelmed following a WISN 12 News investigation into the death of a fawn at the hands of the state DNR.
“I said the deer is scheduled to go to the wildlife reserve the next day,” Schulze said.
It was to go to a wildlife reserve in Illinois that allows the rehabilitation of deer. Schulze said agents corralled workers near the picnic area and then set out in search of the fawn.
Then they went into the barn and killed the deer. No lie. (They dispute this and say they actually just tranquilized the deer in the barn and then killed it off site, which is totally different.)
They explained it away by saying this was their policy. And when asked if they might have called ahead of time and gotten the full story their spokesperson replied that the DEA doesn’t call up a drug dealer to ask them to voluntarily give up their drugs before a raid. Which tells you exactly how these backwoods Robocops see themselves.
The problem here is that these police agencies obviously have way too many resources and way too much time on their hands. And what that inevitably leads to is zero common sense.
If you build it, they will use it …
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Do pro-lifers care about fetal pain once the baby is born?
by digby
The whole notion of fetal pain has become a rallying cry for the anti-abortion crowd and is being used throughout the country as a cudgel to either change the law to ban abortions or to make women feel guilty so they will not decide to end their pregnancies.
It’s an individual decision, but no more so than the one discussed in this article in today’s New York Times by a neonatologist about the incredible ethical, moral and emotional decision making that goes into saving premature babies:
Most extremely premature babies will experience at least one complication — bleeding in the brain, infections, intestinal perforation, severe lung damage — before discharge. Many will need treatment long after birth, sometimes for life, at great financial and emotional cost to them and those around them.
A few months ago I cared for just such a child. Let’s call her Miracle. She was born at 23 weeks’ gestation and weighed a little over a pound. Despite the bleak prognosis, her parents asked that we resuscitate her in the delivery room.
So we did. But over the next eight weeks, to keep her alive, we had to prick Miracle’s heel so many times she developed scarring. We suctioned her trachea hundreds of times. We put tubes through her mouth and into her stomach, we stabbed her again and again to insert IVs, and we took blood from her and then transfused blood back. We gave her antibiotics for two severe infections.
Each of these events created suffering, for Miracle and her parents. Her mother visited daily and developed an anxiety disorder. Her father came in only once a week, the pain and sadness was so great.
After eight weeks, Miracle came off the ventilator we had put her on. But three days later we had to turn it back on, and it was possible she would die or remain on the ventilator permanently if we didn’t give her steroids, which can have side effects as serious as cerebral palsy. Her mother opted for the steroids. But Miracle’s father was angry. He muttered to me: “Why do you do this? Why do you keep these babies alive?”
I’ve been thinking about that question for decades and haven’t found a simple answer. Some parents believe that withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment will prevent their infant from suffering and living a life not worth living; others consider it murder. Some families soar in caring for their disabled kids; others disintegrate.
Ultimately, parents have the right to decide, but we physicians must help them make informed decisions. I asked Miracle’s father whether anyone had talked to him about resuscitating Miracle before she was born. He vaguely remembered a conversation, but hadn’t understood what treating such a tiny premature baby meant.
For some reason, I doubt that the anti-abortion zealots are concerned about the pain that was inflicted on this tiny little baby over the course of many months. And perhaps that’s ok. After all, in the end she will live, albeit with lung disease, so all that suffering could be considered worth it.
Still, I wonder where the anti-abortion people are on this question? This neotalogist makes an argument for the medical profession to be more honest about the pain and suffering, the possible disabilities, the cost and the emotional toll of putting these premies through all this:
Ultimately, parents have the right to decide, but we physicians must help them make informed decisions. I asked Miracle’s father whether anyone had talked to him about resuscitating Miracle before she was born. He vaguely remembered a conversation, but hadn’t understood what treating such a tiny premature baby meant.
And nobody talked to him after Miracle was born about continuing life-sustaining treatment. In fact, he had gotten to her two-month birthday without realizing that her suffering might end in death. We had updated his wife, but she didn’t like to hear bad news, and didn’t tell him.
Do “pro-life” zealots agree that parents have a right to make these decisions? If so, why? And once they succeed in banning abortion can we expect anti-abortion zealots to be picketing and harassing hospitals that deliver premature infants not to allow parents to make these decision? If their morals are consistent, I can’t imagine why they aren’t doing it already.
I don’t mean to sound as if there’s anything wrong with parents opting for all life saving measures for their premature babies if they choose. Of course they should have that option. But I also agree with this doctor that a parent has a right to decide that the prolonged suffering and life-long disabilities are too much for their child and their family to endure. It’s so personal, so private so fraught with deep medical, ethical and moral complications that you just can’t make a blanket decision about it and must rely on the individuals involved to do what they think best. Just like abortion.
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The most conservative Republicans are the greatest protectors of your individual liberty
by digby
I still can’t get over the fact that this pantie-sniffing wierdo is known as “the cooch.”
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Don’t worry your pretty little heads about yet another classified top secret federal police program
by digby
Yesterday I read this piece in the NY Times about how the rest of the government has just been begging the NSA to share its information and how the upright, stalwart protectors of the constitution have adamantly refused — and I thought to myself, “yeah, right.” This piece had all the authenticity of a press release from Lanny Davis’ office:
The recent disclosures of agency activities by its former contractor Edward J. Snowden have led to widespread criticism that its surveillance operations go too far and have prompted lawmakers in Washington to talk of reining them in. But out of public view, the intelligence community has been agitated in recent years for the opposite reason: frustrated officials outside the security agency say the spy tools are not used widely enough.
“It’s a very common complaint about N.S.A.,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a former senior intelligence official at the White House and at the office of the director of national intelligence. “They collect all this information, but it’s difficult for the other agencies to get access to what they want.”
“The other agencies feel they should be bigger players,” said Mr. Edgar, who heard many of the disputes before leaving government this year to become a visiting fellow at Brown University. “They view the N.S.A. — incorrectly, I think — as this big pot of data that they could go get if they were just able to pry it out of them.”
The article did mention that there were some agencies that might have some access on a very limited basis but it was very insignificant.
Well here’s an example of one possible insignificant program:
A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”
[…]
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.Today, much of the SOD’s work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.
“Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,” a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use “normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.”
A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.
Never mind. This is obviously perfectly legal, with many checks and balances, and none of the surveillance evidence they are “recreating” could possibly come from any secret programs that might be construed as unconstitutional. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
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From the “we’re so good and they’re so evil” files
by digby
Gee, I wonder why our Attorney General has to make public assurances to the world that he will not torture or execute someone he is trying to have extradited back to the United States:
Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott is making a big push to expedite the executions of many prisoners who are currently on the state’s death row. He’s signed five death warrants this year (three within a four-week span this spring), a pace rarely seen since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. One of the condemned is John Ferguson, who’s set to be executed on Monday. Ferguson is a notorious killer who has been on death row for more than 30 years. He’s also a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks he’s the “Prince of God.”
Scott’s decision to move forward with Ferguson’s execution has spurred his lawyers, supported by the National Association for Mental Illness and the American Bar Association, to petition the US Supreme Court to intervene. Because he’s mentally ill, they argue, his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The court has until Monday to stay the execution or allow it to proceed.
Once again, FYI:
Because we’re so good and they’re so evil.
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Dear Ron Fournier: just passing laws does not make a President great. Passing good laws does.
by David Atkins
When asked why I spend so much time writing on a blog, one of my first responses is that political opinion journalism shouldn’t be left to opinion journalists, especially those closest to powerful people. The perspective of thoughtful outsiders is important to highlight simple truths that often elude the elite opinion makers who walk the halls of power.
Among the most perpetually obtuse of those powerful opinion makers is Ron Fournier, formerly of the AP’s Washington bureau and now of the National Journal. Largely in response to those like Greg Sargent, myself and many others who lay the blame for dysfunction in Washington at the hands of a radically obstructionist Republican Party, Fournier believes that the President could simply will his way into forcing legislation through, and that Presidents Clinton and Bush both forged a path crafting legislation through compromise. His response to the sensible notion that President Obama should stand his ground against further budget cuts is that it would be a failure to attempt to govern. Hence this sarcatstic tweet on Saturday.
Governing —>“@ThePlumLineGS: "We won. They're losing." A memo to Dems about the coming fights, from @DavidOAtkins: http://t.co/OVfnYzo3CG”— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) August 3, 2013
Sargent ably deconstructs the silliness of that “green lantern” argument by noting that the President has already done all that can conceivably be done. The current GOP is far more extremist and obstructionist than previous opposition parties dating all the way back to the Civil War, and the President has seriously angered the progressive base on a range of issues but still gets nothing but hostility from the GOP.
But one point that hasn’t been made often enough to the “both sides are to blame” pundits like Fournier is that simply passing legislation does not make a President great. Passing good legislation makes a President great. This is a crucial distinction that many pundits and Washington operatives fail to notice. Simply passing a budget isn’t a win. Passing a good budget is a win.
No one but history buffs care about the Presidents who forged that awful compromises in the decades preceding the Civil War. We remember and care about Lincoln. Few care about the presidents of the 1920s, and what they may or may not have done to solve the ills of the day. We do care about FDR, in large part because he refused to pass bad legislation in order to compromise with those who destroyed the economy in the lead-up to the Depression. Where FDR did compromise with his racist Dixiecrat base to water down or kill good laws, he displayed weakness, not greatness. When compromising helps pass good laws with a few bitter pills for everyone, that’s good governance. But when compromise creates bad laws, it’s terrible.
Which brings us to Ron Fournier’s example of Clintonian “leadership.” Yes, it’s true: after Republicans contemptibly derailed universal healthcare and swept to office on yet another wave of fear and resentment in 1994, Bill Clinton and corporate-friendly Democrats did compromise with Republicans on a large number of laws. Laws like NAFTA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, welfare “reform”, DOMA, and V-chips.
It would take a creature like Ron Fournier to believe that killing American manufacturing, deregulating Wall Street, enshrining discrimination by sexual orientation, permanently eliminating safety nets during an unprecedented boom, and wasting time with remote control prudery made Bill Clinton a great President. They didn’t. Far from it. If anything made Bill Clinton a great President, it was his willingness to go toe-to-toe with Newt Gingrich to initiate a government shutdown rather than pass a horrible budget. That was Bill Clinton’s shining moment in defense of America’s well-being. By contrast, most of the laws he racked up by cooperating with Republicans constituted the greatest demerits of his Presidency.
It’s important to note that while President Obama hasn’t been hard enough on Wall Street, he did oversee the passage of Dodd Frank reforms. His predecessor deregulated Wall Street. One of those acts was divisive and partisan, while the other was a bipartisan celebration of goodwill. The divisive, partisan law was a good one, while the bipartisan bonhomie delivered awful results. The same goes for instituting versus killing DOMA, creating the ACA instead of pushing welfare reform, etc.
And if the President does manage to get his desperately sought Grand Bargain by cutting Social Security, Medicare and essential services enough to get some token concessions out of Republicans, it will not be seen by historians (or the next election’s voters) as an act of courage or greatness. It will be seen as an act of weakness, corruption and betrayal.
It shouldn’t take a political outsider on a blog to see that.
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The lobbyists have mounted up
by digby
The New York Times featured a fascinating article today on the benefits of medical tourism for joint replacement surgery. It follows a man who had his hip replaced in Belgium at a fraction of the cost he would have had to pay in the US. (In this case, he would have had to pay out of pocket because his osteoarthritis was considered a pre-existing condition. Under Obamacare, his insurance would have to pay, although the inflated prices would be little different.)
It’s a very interesting piece worth reading all the way through, but I thought this really crystallized our problem — a problem which is not going to be eliminated through the implementation of Obamacare:
The pricing system in Belgium does not encourage amenities, though the country has among the lowest surgical infection rates in the world — lower than in the United States — and is known for good doctors. While most Belgian physicians and hospitals are in business for themselves, the government sets pricing and limits profits. Hospitals get a fixed daily rate and surgeons receive a fee for each surgery, which are negotiated each year between national medical groups and the state.
While doctors may charge more than the rate, few do so because most patients would refuse to pay it, said Mr. Boussauw, the hospital administrator. Doctors and hospitals must provide estimates. European orthopedists tend to make about half the income of their American counterparts, whose annual income averaged $442,450 in 2011, according to a survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that studies health policy.[This means they are forced to get by on a mere 220k a year…]
Belgium pays for health care through a mandatory national insurance plan, which requires contributions from employers and workers and pays for 80 percent of each treatment. Except for the poor, patients are generally responsible for the remaining 20 percent of charges, and many get private insurance to cover that portion.
Mr. Shopenn’s surgery, which was uneventful, took place on a Tuesday. On Friday he was transferred for a week to the hospital’s rehabilitation unit, where he was taught exercises to perform once he got home.
Twelve days after his arrival, he paid the hospital’s standard price for hip replacements for foreign patients. Six weeks later he saw an orthopedist in Seattle, where he was living at the time, to remove stitches and take a postoperative X-ray. “He said there was no need for further visits, that the hip looked great, to go out and enjoy myself,” Mr. Shopenn said.
Why is the US so expensive? Well, while many parts of the medical industry along with the government are trying to reduce costs it always seems to come down to this:
The Affordable Care Act tries to recoup some of the medical device manufacturers’ profits by imposing a 2.3 percent tax on their revenues, effective this year. But Brad Bishop, the executive director of OrthoWorx and a former Zimmer executive, said that the approach would harm an innovative American industry, and that the cost would ultimately be borne by joint replacement patients “whose average age is 67.” He argued that the best way to reduce the cost of joint replacement surgery was to rescind the tax and decrease government interference.
The medical device industry spent nearly $30 million last year on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Senate moved to repeal the tax, and the House is expected to take it up this fall. The bill’s supporters included both senators from Indiana.
Read this to see just what a boondoggle the medical device system in America really is. They have a powerful, wealthy lobby and they will not give up even one cent of their profits without a fight.
[T]he implementation period brings a dangerous asymmetry: The public quiets down, as people think action has been taken, but the lobbyists mount up. — Ezra Klein
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Time to reform the whistleblowing statutes
by digby
The Whistleblower Protection Act protects “any disclosure” that a covered employee reasonably believes evidences “any violation of any law, rule, or regulation,” or “gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, and abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.”
In the two months since Snowden’s alleged disclosures, no fewer than five lawsuits have been filed challenging the legality of the surveillance programs he exposed. The author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), called the scope of data collection revealed in one of the leaked Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders “incredibly troubling,” and “an overbroad interpretation of the Act” that “raise[s] questions about whether our constitutional rights are secure.”
It doesn’t end there. Over a dozen bills have been introduced in Congress to narrow these now public surveillance authorities and increase transparency regarding continuing programs. No one can know what was in Edward Snowden’s mind, but clearly he could have had a reasonable belief the documents he leaked to the news media revealed government illegality and abuse of authority.
[…]
Americans need and deserve truthful information about what the government is doing, particularly where the activity infringes on individual rights. As the father of the Constitution James Madison said, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both.” Denying Americans this knowledge through excessive and unnecessary secrecy, or worse, official deception, is unjustifiable and illegal. In a democracy, the law should never be secret.The countless articles on the front pages of dozens of newspapers across the country since the documents leaked reveal the public thirst for this information. It is clear that these disclosures benefited the public, by giving victims of illegal surveillance – essentially all Americans – the knowledge and opportunity to challenge these unconstitutional programs, both in the courts and through their elected representatives in Congress. Even President Obama said he “welcomed this debate” and thought it was “healthy for our democracy.” Yet a properly informed public debate on these programs would not have been possible without Snowden’s leaks.
I think this is a pretty good argument as to why Snowden should be considered a whistleblower. But there is a legal technicality that prevents him from having those protections and it’s a doozy:
But the fact that the leaks served the public interest by exposing government illegality and abuse doesn’t mean Snowden is protected by the law, because the intelligence community has always been exempted from the Whistleblower Protection Act. This fact refutes the other common misperception: that there are effective internal avenues for reporting illegal activities within the intelligence community.
Congress passed the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act in 1998, but it is no more than a trap. It establishes a procedure for internal reporting within the agencies and through the Inspector General to the congressional intelligence committees, but it provides no remedy for reprisals that occur as a result. Reporting internally through the ICWPA only identifies the whistleblowers, leaving them vulnerable to retaliation. The examples of former NSA official Thomas Drake, former House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark and former CIA officer Sabrina De Sousa show too well.
This lack of protection means that when intelligence community employees and contractors – who take an oath to defend the Constitution – see government illegality they must turn the other way, or risk their careers and possibly even their freedom. The people we trust to protect our nation from foreign enemies deserve legal protection when they blow the whistle on wrongdoing within government.
There are many reforms of the surveillance state that are necessary. Reforming the procedures for intelligence whistleblowers is one of them.
Not only that, we need serious reform of the classification system and congressional oversight. The fact that the congress has been routinely lied to and blocked from seeking information is outrageous. It is an equal branch of government. Even worse, the fact that Senators like Wyden and Udall are powerless to reveal what they know or protest secret government policy in any meaningful way is a sign that the balance of power is way off.
Yes, I know the presidency is just a ceremonial position much like Prince William’s main job of waving at adoring crowds, but the executive branch certainly acts as if it has singular power when it comes to issues of national security and foreign policy, no matter how often it fatuously proclaims that there are “checks and balances.” And that just isn’t the way the constitution is designed.
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Larry “Alfalfa” Summers
by digby
Actually, I don’t know that Summers hates women. But he sure hates regulation. Especially when it’s proposed by a woman. Here’s Mike Konczal:
People already have strong opinions about Summers’ culpability for the financial crisis as a result of his past support of deregulation. But what goes missing is the extent to which he sought to control and undermine an independent regulator given that he disagreed with them. If the next Federal Reserve chair, who will have immense power within the regulatory community, disagrees with another financial regulators during the implementation of Dodd-Frank, will he or she go after them equally as hard?
As documented in the PBS Frontline episode The Warning, as well as the Washington Post, in May 1998 Brooksley Born, then chair of the CFTC, announced she would be drafting and circulating a concept release paper investigating the new and rapidly growing market in a special kind of derivative known as a swap.
Today, people who support or oppose Born tend to exaggerate what she and the CFTC was trying to do at the time. The concept release Born put forward was basically just a set of questions, trying to figure out information about a market that regulators had virtually no information about. (That information would have come in handy in 2008.)
The CFTC clarified that they “no preconceived result in mind.” They were “open both to evidence in support of easing current restrictions and evidence indicating a need for additional safeguards.” The agency even welcomed “comment on the extent to which certain matters are being or can be adequately addressed through self-regulation” (see here for more details). The CFTC worked hard to reassure the market that it wasn’t trying to void any derivatives, noting that the release “in no way alters the current status of any instrument or transaction under the Commodity Exchange Act.”
Yet those reassurances didn’t stop the full-on assault from Alan Greenspan, then of the Federal Reserve, and Robert Rubin and Larry Summers of the Treasury Department. To say that the Treasury Department under Rubin went after Brooksley Born with everything they had would be an understatement. University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger, working at the CFTC at the time, told Frontline that Larry Summers called Born and said, ”You’re going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II.” Born’s critics demanded the concept release not be issued, putting pressure on Congress to stop her.
Their attack worked. The concept release was pulled back, Congress and the administration stopped the CFTC under Treasury’s advice, and Born resigned.
So why is this relevant? The Federal Reserve is the most important and powerful of the financial regulators, both before and after Dodd-Frank. As Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform says, “the Federal Reserve regulates all large bank holding companies at the consolidated level and all designated non-bank SIFIs at the consolidated level as well.”
That’s not all:
[T]he Federal Reserve has broad powers on requirements, examinations and enforcement, as well as the ability to grant exemptions and waivers for rule enforcement. Not only that, but the Fed is self-funded and still has enormous respect within the Washington establishment, both things which insulates it from Congressional and even judicial pressure. The Fed also carries a lot of influence on the newly created council of financial regulators, FSOC.
I guess that makes Larry Summers a perfect choice for Fed chair, eh?
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