Month: August 2014

The keepers of the secrets

by digby

Conor Friedersdorf speculates about the power someone like John Brennan must have over a president who has ordered killings overseas:

I am not suggesting that Brennan is blackmailing Obama, or even that he would necessarily retaliate if fired. Still, if Obama is like most people in positions of power, he fires no subordinate without first asking himself, “Could this person damage me?” If Obama is a normal person, rather than an unusually principled person, the answer factors into his decision. Look at what Brennan said in March, immediately after denying that the CIA spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee, when Andrea Mitchell asked if he’d resign his post if that turned out to be wrong:

… if I did something wrong, I will go to the president, and I will explain to him exactly what I did, and what the findings were. And he is the one who can ask me to stay or to go.

He’s a smart man.

That’s a pretty shocking little bit of speculation there. And if it weren’t for the long history of presidents kowtowing to the holders of the secrets it might be a foolish one. But the fact is that these people who operate in the dark have all kinds of information about everybody including (epecially) politicians who have power over them.

By the way, Friedersdorf doesn’t speculate that it’s something personal or private. Brennan knows where the drone bodies are buried and he speculates that an angry, fired Brennan could write a very nasty book about the president’s involvement in that practice if he chose to spin things in a certain way …

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Brownback’s toxic petri dish

by digby

I wrote a piece for Alternet last week about that loveable extremist Sam Brownback, taking a look at his history which is more interesting than you might think. For instance, did you know that his chief of staff for some years was none other than Paul Ryan? And that Ryan is credited with “mentoring” his conversion to Catholicism?

Anyway, here’s the opener:

Liberals throughout the land breathed a sigh of relief when Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas stepped down in 2008 and later decided to run for governor. Yes, the nation’s gain was a loss for the good people of Kansas, but Brownback’s special brand of right-wing fundamentalism was so extreme that many felt it was better to try to contain him in a single state rather than inflict him on the whole of the country. Judging from the four years he’s been in charge of that unfortunate state, their concerns were well-founded.

Read on — he’s every liberal’s worst nightmare in every way. And now he’s every Kansan’s worst nightmare too. In fact, his failed “experiment” in Koch induced economic governance may very well cost him re-election.

Of course, as is always true, they’ll say he was obstructed or didn’t have enough time or was squishy in some way because conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed. In this case it’s going to be a much tougher argument to make. He got everything he wanted …

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Supreme literalism

by digby

This does seem like the best evidence of the legislative intent in the Obamacare subsidy legal controversy (Halbig) now wending its way through the courts. Not that it will matter to the Roberts majority if they decide to be literalists about this and strike down the subsidies in states with the federal exchange due to a drafting error:

Not only did the legislators themselves never intend to cut out subsidies for the federal exchange, the CBO, that all-important arbiter of the law’s costs, never once factored it into its analyses.

“It definitely didn’t come up. This possibility never crossed anybody’s mind,” David Auerbach, who was a principal analyst for the CBO’s scoring of the ACA, told TPM on Thursday. “If we started to score it that way, they would have known that, and they would have said, ‘Oh, oh my gosh, no, no no,’ and they probably would have clarified the language. It just wasn’t on anybody’s radar at all.”

It’s pretty to think the conservative majority gives a damn about any of that. But it’s entirely possible that since all claims to legitimacy went out the window with Bush vs Gore anyway they just don’t give a damn anymore how ridiculous their reasoning is.  I can see them saying with a straight face that they have to strike it down but it’s no big deal because the congress — now being dragged around by the tail by Ted Cruz and Steve King — just has to make a couple of little changes if they want a different outcome.  I can see the supercilious grin on Alito’s face already …

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He called the torturers patriots…

by digby

 … and then lectured the American people that we are not to be “sanctimonious” about it because they had a tough job.

…We tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.

I understand why it happened. I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

These “folks” are big on sending messages. What “message” do you suppose that sent? When a patriot has a tough job we can’t expect him to adhere to the law? Or norms? Or even basic morality? Looks like it. Good to know.

I remember reading somewhere during the whole torture debate that the right thing to do was to keep torture officially “illegal” for deniability but do it anyway and then throw yourself on the mercy of the people afterwards telling them that it was necessary to protect them. That way you could keep up the pretense that we were a civilized nation while being allowed  to “take the gloves off.”  For our own good, mind you. Looks like that’s the new SOP.

And you want some sanctimony? I’ve got some for you right here:

[W]hen we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be — that needs to be understood and accepted. And we have to, as a country, take responsibility for that so that, hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.

sanc·ti·mo·ny [sangk-tuh-moh-nee]
noun
1.
pretended, affected, or hypocritical religious devotion, righteousness, etc.

What exactly is taking responsibility? Calling the torturers patriots and making excuses for them? It looks like that’s all we’re going to get from President Obama.

It’s bad enough that he can’t even find it in himself to use his vaunted oratorical skills to condemn this (beyond saying “we tortured some folks”.) But to call these people patriots and then scold anyone who finds this practice immoral and abhorrent, even suggesting that they’re pretending to be appalled is, for me, the low point. There is no “nuance” when it comes to torture and being lectured that we needn’t get all upset about it is truly insulting.

Here’s a question for you: is there any doubt after all this that any president, including Obama himself, will approve the use of torture if the CIA says it needs to use it in the future? Let’s say when there is “enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this” and everybody is afraid? I didn’t think so.

We have normalized torture with this tepid, half-assed, sanctimonious admission that “we tortured some folks” and that it crossed a line and all, but they did it because people were afraid.  Heckuva job.

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A “crisis” of their own making

by David Atkins

Republicans are very upset with the “imperial Presidency.” Not for reasons that many decent people are be upset with regard to various 4th Amendment issues, but because the President delayed implementation of his own law that Republicans despise and want to repeal.

Because that makes sense.

But Republicans will likely soon have an even bigger reason to want to sue and impeach the President: impending executive action on the immigration crisis. But as Greg Sargent notes, that wouldn’t be a problem if Republicans in Congress could get their act together to do something about it. As it turns out, they can’t:

So today House Republicans may take one more stab at trying to pass a bill to address the border crisis. But their bill has been jacked so far to the right that Dems won’t support it, and at any rate, last night Republicans blocked the Senate Dem border proposal. So Congress won’t address the crisis until September at the earliest.

The question now is how far this goes in clearing space for Obama to act alone on immigration — not just on the border crisis, but on easing deportations. And the president is letting Republicans know that they should be worried about this.

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And this underscores a key fact about this whole debate: It is precisely because Republicans won’t move out of their comfort zone on immigration — where the only response to the immigration crisis they can entertain is further militarizing of the border and expedited/expanded deportations — that Obama is now going to resort to more action on his own.

If Republicans had passed immigration reform that included some form of legal status for the 11 million, it would have wiped away the need for Obama’s deferred-deportation program and we wouldn’t even be talking about expanding it, meaning no need for Republicans to fear more Obummer Lawlessness. Reform would have spent more on border security and helped unclog the courts, speeding the removal of arriving migrants — which Republicans support. If it had passed — or if Republicans gave him the money he’s asked for to deal with the current crisis — we would not be talking about him acting alone to shift more resources from interior enforcement to the border, either.

No question, the politics of Obama’s coming executive action are dicey for Democrats. But Dems can bolster their position by contrasting unilateral problem solving with GOP inaction on the border — including the fact that they would not act because they want ever more deportations from the interior — and on immigration reform in general.

People expect their government to take action to resolve crises. Republicans in Congress have shown themselves incapable of even agreeing within their own caucus, much less being able to resolve problems in a bipartisan way. But they also want to sue and impeach the President if he does anything on his own.

They’re quite literally a dysfunctional political party sabotaging the proper functioning of government.

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Your moment of zen

by digby

A baby Rock Hyrax

Also too:

Happy Friday:

“Somewhere below pond scum”

by digby

Via Think Progress:

That ad is going to run in three states with Senators whose constituents are unhappy with their voting record on guns:

Arizona’s Sen. Jeff Flake (R) — once a popular senator viewed as a rising star — saw his poll numbers drop to the lowest in the country after he voted against the background checks bill that had overwhelming public support. Even Flake reflected after his drop in the polls, “Given the public’s dim view of Congress in general, that probably puts me somewhere just below pond scum.” He had earlier claimed he supported expanding background checks, saying, “While we may not agree on every solution, strengthening background checks is something we can agree on.”

Nevada’s Sen. Dean Heller (R) towed a similar line. He, too, claimed to support expanded background checks before voting against the Manchin-Toomey bill last May. And an overwhelming 86 percent of Nevadans supported the bill.

New Hampshire’s Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) was the only senator in the northeast to vote to block the background checks bill. And she, too, tried to claim support for background check expansion afterward by touting her support for a different Republican bill that included other provisions that would have given those with a history of mental illness more access to guns.

And please, I hope nobody sincerely thinks that the answer to this problem is for the woman in that ad to start blasting away with her own gun when her small child is in the room. The answer is to not have bullets flying around the room in the first place.

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“I stand with those children at the border and I stand for due process”

by digby

Sad:

“I stand with those children at the border and I stand for due process,” Rep. Al Green (D-TX) said on the House floor Friday morning, evoking the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I don’t stand for a fast track adjudication that mimics due process and makes a mockery of justice. I stand with the DREAMers. They have been given hope by our president. I will not vote for a bill that will destroy hope for those DREAMers. We must keep their hope alive.”

One by one, Green and about 29 other House Democrats took to the House floor in a show of solidarity with the migrant children affected by the legislation that they were opposing. They requested, “I ask unanimous consent to bring H.R. 15, a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill, to properly address the humanitarian crisis at the border.” Each time, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) refused to yield to the request and “reiterated that all time yielded is for the debate.”

Even more sad is the fact that only 29 Democrats took part.  Maybe if the whole caucus had one so someone would have paid attention.

When amateur kerning experts attack

by digby

This piece by James Fallows is the best explication of the definition, purpose and value of real journalism I’ve read in quite some time. He’s responding to a flap featuring David Frum accusing the New York Times of publishing doctored photos of Palestinian grief (which is wonderfully debunked by my friend Michael Shaw, here) but it’s really about why journalism should be respected.

For all their blind spots and flaws, reporters on the scene are trying to see, so they can tell, and the photographic and video reporters take greater risks than all the rest, since they must be closer to the action. For people on the other side of the world to casually assert that they’re just making things up—this could and would drive them crazy. I’m sure that fakery has occurred. But the claim that it has is as serious as they come in journalism. It goes at our ultimate source of self-respect. As when saying that a doctor is deliberately misdiagnosing patients, that a pilot is drunk in the cockpit, that a lifeguard is purposely letting people drown, you might be right, but you had better be very, very sure before making the claim.

I’ve been a harsh critic of journalists over the years, especially during the Bush era when the Judy Millers of the world were regurgitating propaganda that even a layperson could see from far away deserved more skepticism. And the world of political journalism is an animal of its own that follows a completely different set of rules. But Fallows is talking about real, honest to goodness on-the-ground information gathering, first hand, in order to bring back the facts to the public. It does deserve respect.

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Bye bye Cantor, hello Steve King



by digby

Meet the new GOP leadership team:

House Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting Friday morning with a revised plan to address the child migrant border crisis — one leaders hope to pass later today.

The latest plan will still require the House to vote on the border funding bill before being allowed to vote on language to stop the expansion of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to members exiting the conference meeting.

Both components, however, will look slightly different.

The appropriations bill, which was $659 million on Thursday night, will now include an additional $35 million to bolster National Guard resources at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The bill, which also contains numerous related policy riders, will also expand on language tweaking a 2008 trafficking law in order to expedite deportations of the migrants.

The measure originally called for treating all unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border the same in terms of whether they could volunteer for deportation back to their home countries. Now, the legislation will incorporate the stronger language of legislation recently introduced by Republican Reps. John Carter of Texas, Robert Aderholt of Alabama and Jack Kingston of Georgia.

In addition to making it easier to expedite deportations, their proposal would allow immigration enforcement officials to detain children while they wait for deportation hearings and require immigration enforcement officials to investigate people taking custody of undocumented immigrant children to determine whether they are being compensated by drug smugglers.

Regarding DACA — the 2012 executive order granting stays of deportation to young undocumented immigrants brought to the country illegally by their parents — that language would revert back to the original legislation introduced by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. GOP leaders quietly softened the language in the earlier proposal, angering conservatives.

There was at one point discussion about whether the new proposal would include language to crack down on asylum fraud and raise the threshold for making an asylum claim, but members pushing for those provisions ultimately backed down, saying that as long as the issue was addressed later in the legislative session they would not demand it be integrated into this package.

Conservative Republicans are now more positive about the package and the process by which changes were made, with some of the earlier, harshest critics, like Rep. Steve King of Iowa, now leaning toward voting “yes.”

King said he was extremely pleased with the concessions he was able to extract from leadership.

“The changes brought into this are ones I’ve developed and advocated for over the past two years,” he told CQ Roll Call. “It’s like I ordered it off the menu.”

You remember Steve King. He’s long been concerned about migrant children smuggling drugs across the border:

For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert…We have young people that are being recruited from age 11 on up to increasingly smuggle drugs into the United States.”

Now he wants to require anyone who extends a helping hand to these migrant kids at the border to be investigated as drug smugglers.

And the GOP has agreed.

Greg Sargent called this a long time ago” “On immigration, the GOP is Steve King’s party.”

Of course they are. After all a large majority of the Republican base thinks Steve King is right about those Latinos. As Laura Ingraham tells them every single day: these children are coming here to destroy our way of life.

Update: Luke Russert just declared that John Boehner has brought his far right into line.  Yeah, that’s how lil’ Luke sees this.

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