Daily Kos

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: NSA leaks and other arguments

rss@dailykos.com (Greg Dworkin) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:30:09 UTC

WaPo on new ABC/WaPo poll (above graphic):

Americans are divided when it comes to charging Edward Snowden with a crime for leaking portions of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of phone records and Internet activity, but they clearly want to know more, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Nearly two-thirds said they want open, public congressional hearings on the previously secret programs.

Pew:

The new national survey, conducted June 12-16 by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY among 1,512 adults, finds that 44% think that the release of classified information about the NSA program harms the public interest, while 49% say it serves the public interest.
However, 54% of the public – including identical majorities of Republicans and Democrats (59% each) – say the government should pursue a criminal case against the person responsible for leaking the classified information about the program.

Definitely some age related splitting: younger voters think it was more valuable and want less prosecution.

RIP Michael Hastings at age 33. He wrote this. And this:

On Reddit, Michael Hastings once shared some good advice for young journalists #RIP http://t.co/...
— @charliespiering

Rick Perlstein:

So far [Glenn] Greenwald has been lucky, and because he has been lucky, everyone who cares about fixing our puke-worthy system of "oversight" of the American state's out-of-control spy regime has been lucky too. Yes, clowns like Peter King and irrelevant throwbacks like Dick Cheney cry treason and call for death squads or tumbrels or whatever. But the bottom line is that for whatever reason (reasons I think will only become clear in the light of later history) the American establishment seems ready to think about this story—ready to give a hard look at what our surveillance state has become. The evidence is there in thoughtful and detailed reporting and analysis on how PRISM might actually work, for instance in this Associated Press piece (which is far more usefully critical than the typical piece on the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq's claimed weapons of mass destruction in 2003, which the American establishment was not ready to think about), and this analysis by technologist Ashkan Soltani—both of which sort through the available evidence far better than Glenn Greenwald does, but also would not exist without what Greenwald and Edward Snowden courageously did, however flawed Greenwald and Snowden might be as messengers. Life can be complicated that way.

Complicated, and nuanced. That it is. And Glenn fights with other people. So it goes. It's not about him, it's about the story, but the fights are generally about the story.

More politics and policy below the fold.

Open thread for night owls: Excerpts from the July edition of Harper's Index

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:30:10 UTC

Here are a few excerpts from the latest edition of Harper's Index:

• Number of U.S. retail jobs Doritos Locos tacos created in the past year, according to Taco Bell: 15,000

• Number of retail jobs created worldwide by Apple in that same period: 400

• Percentage of college professors teaching online courses who do not believe students should receive credit for them: 72

• Number of bills strengthening gun control that have been signed into law since the Sandy Hook shooting: 14

• Number weakening gun control: 37

• Percentage of criminal suspects asked to waive their Miranda rights and speak to police who do so: 84

• Number of early deaths in China in 2010 that have been attributed to air pollution: 1,200,000

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—The Republicans are not on your side:

The message is simple and easy, because it happens to be true. On issue after issue, the Republicans prove that they don't care about people, they only care about their corporate owners. Last week, they blocked an extension of unemployment benefits. This week, theykilled it. They also ensured a pay cut to doctors who accept Medicare patients, ensuring that fewer doctors will, and that those on Medicare will have more trouble finding medical care. But while they've been busy hurting people, they've also been busy helping corporations

With the BP oil gusher destroying the Gulf of Mexico, Republicans are having to pretend not to be defending BP. Meanwhile, they're criticizing President Obama for trying to protectpeople from BP. It's always the same. They protected the banks from financial regulation. They protected the health insurance industry from real health care reform. They killedcramdown, which would have protected homeowners from losing their homes. The list goes on and on. Issue after issue. Year after year.

When have the Republicans supported legislation that helps people at the expense of corporate special interests? When have they proposed such legislation, on their own? Don't hurt yourself trying to find examples. They're rhetorical questions.

Tweet of the Day:

NSA Chief: Contractor trainee waltzed into #NSA HQ & stole doc only 20 people on the planet supposedly had access to: http://t.co/...
— @billmon1

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, a Republican back-bencher (not a euphemism) makes headlines with an eyebrow-raising claim about how fetuses pass their time! Greg Dworkin discusses his latest for Politix, both-sides-ism, Republican rebranding, and traditional media missing the point(s). Armando called in on trust in gov't, in the context of the fading IRS story, the NSA revelations, Syria, and the polling on all three. David Weigel at Slate notes Republican tactics in conflating IRS accusations. Jindal's latest derp. David Dayen's Salon entry, "Bank of America whistle-blower's bombshell: 'We were told to lie.'" And the KS Sec. of State outraged by a protest at his home goes to 2nd Amendment rhetoric.

High Impact Posts. Top Comments. Overnight News Digest.

Economics Daily Digest: The hunt for good jobs continues

rss@dailykos.com (Roosevelt Institute) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:12:12 UTC

By Rachel Goldfarb, originally posted on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via email.

“This was really eye-opening for me”: Fed’s Raskin Shocked at Low Quality of Work at Local Job Fair (Reuters)

Pedro da Costa notes that Sarah Bloom Raskin's comments at A Bold Approach to the Jobs Emergency on June 4th were surprisingly personal. Raskin's trip to the job fair helped her to understand just how difficult things are in today's job market.

Roosevelt Take: Jeff Madrick continues the conversation started at the conference, and notes that we must keep working until everyone who wants a decent job has one.

Minimum Wage: Catching up to Productivity (Democracy)

John Schmitt suggests plans to increase the minimum wage so that low-wage workers get a piece of the pie from our massive productivity gains. Linking the minimum wage to CPI isn’t the solution, because that would just maintain the status quo.

Roosevelt Take: Watch John with Brink Lindsey, Ai-jen Poo, and Roosevelt Institute CEO and President Felicia Wong on the panel "Is Education the Answer?" at A Bold Approach to the Jobs Emergency.

Dems Rebrand Minimum Wage, Sick Leave As Women's Issues To Pressure GOP (HuffPo)

Laura Bassett and Dave Jamieson see these efforts as an intentional push against the GOP, since the Democrats have such large margins with women voters. By making economic issues into gender issues, they are already in the lead for voter approval.

Florida’s Governor Signs Business-Backed Bill Banning Paid Sick Leave (ThinkProgress)

Bryce Covert reports that Rick Scott has signed a bill that bans local governments from implementing paid sick leave legislation. Apparently Floridians are best served by bringing their infectious diseases to work.

Walmart Bill Vote Bumped to Next Week; Cue the Lobbyists (Washington City Paper)

Aaron Wiener writes on a D.C. City Council bill that would require large retailers whose workers are not unionized to pay a living wage of $12.50 per hour. Unsurprisingly, a Walmart spokesman doesn't like the exemption for organized labor.

Volunteering Lifts Job Prospects of the Jobless (WaPo)

Michael Fletcher reports on a federal study that provides data for something many have assumed: volunteering increases an unemployed person's chance of finding a job by 27%. For those without high school diplomas, who really struggle to find work, the effect is even greater.

The Current U.S. Economy: Text and Subtext (NYT)

Jared Bernstein thinks that the relatively positive IMF assessment of the U.S. economy requires annotation, which reveals the underlying struggles of the middle and lower classes and the problems with our current economic policy.

Will the Robots Steal Your Paycheck? BREAKING: They Already Have (The Atlantic)

Jordan Weissmann examines a study that shows that in countries where the cost of doing business has dropped, worker share of GDP fell as well. He argues that we need to consider how this change affects workers who are being replaced by technology.

Mad Men: The Quality of Mercy (6.12)

rss@dailykos.com (Adam B) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:57:06 UTC

Ted Chaough, on the hot seat (courtesy AMCtv)

This week's episode is mostly about the characters who know who they are, and those who aren't as self-aware.

McDonald's and 7-Eleven franchise owners push the exploitation envelope

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:58:34 UTC

Big corporations like McDonald's and 7-Eleven exert a lot of control over their franchise owners when it comes to things like branding and the products they sell. When it comes to labor standards, though, it's almost like corporate management doesn't care at all, as two recent cases remind us. Fourteen 7-Eleven stores were seized and nine franchise owners and managers were arrested and charged with conspiring to commit wire fraud, identity theft, and harboring illegal immigrants. According to U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch:

... the 7-Eleven defendants allegedly forced the immigrants to work 100 hours a week and pocketed the majority of their pay, while also forcing them to live in and pay rent in boarding houses that the defendants owned. This "plantation system" allegedly went on for more than 13 years, she said.

The workers were assigned stolen identities by the defendants, but it sure sounds like the abuses directed at these workers merit some charges—you know, theft, forced labor, that kind of stuff? These 14 stores are looking like the tip of the iceberg, with 40 more being inspected, yet apparently in 13 years, 7-Eleven corporate management didn't figure out something was wrong.

Meanwhile, Natalie Gunshannon, a former McDonald's worker in Pennsylvania, is suing because the franchise she worked for refused to pay her by check or direct deposit, as she requested and the law requires, instead paying her with a debit card loaded up with fees:

She was to be paid about $7.44 per hour—her paystub didn’t list her hourly rate. Minimum wage is $7.25.
According to the complaint filed, the JP Morgan Chase payroll card lists several fees, including a $1.50 charge for ATM withdrawals, $5 for over-the-counter cash withdrawals, $1 per balance inquiry, 75 cents per online bill payment and $15 for lost/stolen card.

If she was working 40 hours a week (unlikely) at $7.44 an hour, $7.61 in fees would bring her below minimum wage—and it's not hard to see how you rack up more than $7.61 in fees given that list. If she was working 30 hours a week, one over-the-counter cash withdrawal and an online bill payment would bring her below minimum wage.

The franchise owners are the ones who directly decide to keep immigrants as forced labor or pay in fee-laden debit cards. But 7-Eleven and McDonald's are not exactly hands off in other areas of franchise ownership—for instance, 7-Eleven franchisees are required to buy 85 percent of their products from the company's recommended vendors, and carry certain key items no matter what. Funny, isn't it, how labor standards are the big thing these low-wage corporations let slide with their franchisees?

Anyone can be a PAC. Even you, unhinged crackpot guy.

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:45:10 UTC

Sorry, bigots.

Via Right Wing Watch:

Government Is Not God PAC has issued a warning to

All right, I'm gonna stop you right there. Government Is Not God PAC is an actual thing? Oh for the love of ...

Government Is Not God PAC has issued a warning to President Obama over his ceremony marking LGBT Pride Month, warning that “his goal of normalizing homosexuality in America” will not go unpunished.

The "warning" apparently is that God will be smiting all those who let gay Americans raise children and hold government jobs without properly hating them, or something. It appears to be mostly about gay Americans raising children. From their pronouncement:

In a special video on LGBT Gay Pride Month, Obama praised “gay” leaders who had “bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice.” That’s a clever way of saying they have turned morality upside down and violated God’s moral laws in pushing for the normalization of homosexual sex acts.s
Obama, who claims to be a Christian, might want to read Romans 1:18-31.

And, he might want to read that the Lord Jesus Christ said about those who defile children: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” – Matthew 18:6.

Government Is Not God PAC consists of longtime far-right crackpot William Murray and, apparently, whatever farm animals he has around the ol' barn that day. Past pronouncements have included the claim that Obama would "force doctors to assist homosexuals in buying surrogate babies," so … yeah.

The main lesson I think we can all learn from this is that you, personally, are an idiot for not starting your own crackpot political PAC. No, really, anyone can do it. You barely even have to do anything, and so long as you drip out a teensy trickle of cash to a few crackpot candidates and maybe put up a completely unhinged newspaper advertisement it's all legal. I could start a "God Is Not Government PAC" right now, just to mess with people, and the only reason I'm not doing it is because paperwork gives me a bad rash.

Hannity's lame justification for partisan hypocrisy

rss@dailykos.com (DarkSyde) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:25 UTC

When last we heard from Sean Hannity, he was for data mining before he was against it. Having been exposed yet again as a partisan hypocrite, Hannity offers this ... defense? I guess, if Hannity whining he's completely consistent and a Republican congressman agreeing is a defense. Not that this anything new for Sean Hannity, he was also against hacking emails before he was for it.

Immigration reform cuts deficits—a lot

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:55:53 UTC

New American citizens swearing in.

Not a good day for opponents of comprehensive immigration reform, who have been arguing that legalization would explode the deficit. The reality? It's one of the best deficit-cutting measures on the table.

The immigration bill under consideration in the Senate would reduce federal deficits by nearly $200 billion over the next decade, and continue generating savings in the years beyond, even after millions of new citizens became eligible for health-care and welfare benefits, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday.

Everyone assumed immigration reform would cut the deficit over the first decade, as newly legalized workers paid more into the Treasury. But there was also an assumption that legalization would explode the deficit over the second decade as those immigrants became citizens and eligible for entitlement benefits.

Instead, the CBO projects further savings in that second decade, completely eliminating a chief talking point of the xenophobic brigade. Like chief Senate foe Jeff Sessions, who had originally demanded the second-decade scoring back in late May:

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, has urged the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to consider the costs of immigration reform beyond the next decade.
Sessions is concerned the CBO will dramatically underestimate the costs of comprehensive immigration reform by only projecting its costs over the next decade.

He argues that the biggest costs will kick in after the 10-year window typically used in CBO cost analyses.

“It is crucial that your fiscal and economic projections extend well beyond the current 10-year budget window,” Sessions wrote in a letter to CBO Director Doug Elmendorf.

Oops. Oh well. Without a budgetary argument against immigration reform, the haters will have to stick to good old-fashioned xenophobia. And they've got plenty of that to go around.

House votes for jobs for masturbating fetuses, or something

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:46:40 UTC

All up in your uterus, again.

Or maybe it wasn't jobs. No, it definitely wasn't a vote about jobs, because John Boehner's House just doesn't do that. It was yet another vote—destined to be ignored by the Senate, and with a promised presidential veto—for yet one more abortion restriction: banning the procedure after 20 weeks. It passed. 228-196.

But it's totally not about a war on women, guys. It's all about the fetuses. Because fetuses pleasure themselves and something about rape (although it took them a while to care about the rape part).

D.C. Football

rss@dailykos.com (keefknight) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:50:10 UTC

McConnell promises to end filibuster if made majority leader

rss@dailykos.com (brooklynbadboy) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:30:35 UTC

Mitch lets the cat out of the bag:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday starkly warned Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) not to eliminate the filibuster on presidential nominations, threatening to end the 60-vote threshold for everything, including bills, if he becomes the majority leader.
“There not a doubt in my mind that if the majority breaks the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate with regard to nominations, the next majority will do it for everything,” McConnell said on the floor.

Now does anyone really believe that McConnell won't do that anyway? Especially if he gets a Republican president?

Senate Democrats need to get this through their thick skulls: Republicans don't give a shit about "Senate comity." They've proven that time and time again. Nor do they give a shit about Senate traditions or the proverbial "one day it might be us" crap that Democrats box themselves in with. They will abuse the filibuster now and get rid of it completely when they get the majority. It doesn't matter at all what Democrats do. Republicans are going to be Republicans.

So let's just end this ridiculous farce now and just get rid of the whole goddamn thing and restore majority rule as the Founders wrote into the Constitution. McConnell and the GOP certainly have the guts to do it. The question is, do the Dems?

Take action: Tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to re-open filibuster reform.

Gov. Bobby Jindal explains what 'the left wants'

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:50:09 UTC

I have a serious question: Is Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal high? Because in this otherwise uninteresting op-ed bleating about how the Republican Party needs to stop introspecting so much and just start being awesome, he closes with perhaps the truest statements on what the Republican Party is about, which is fighting against an American "left" pulled entirely from his own imagination:

At some point, the American public is going to revolt against the nanny state and the leftward march of this president. I don’t know when the tipping point will come, but I believe it will come soon.
Why?

Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don’t have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don’t matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too.

Wow. Now that's impressive. I could probably write an entire book consisting of nothing but going down that list and pondering what Bobby Jindal thinks constitutes being "left": the exploding government, the flat-earth bit, the urgent leftist need for the IRS to "violate our constitutional rights" and all the rest. The flat earth one is a particular puzzle, coming from someone whose knowledge of post-industrial-age science did not include an awareness that volcanoes still exist and that scientists monitor them in an attempt to provide some warning when they're about to go Michael Bay on us all. No sir, any Republican insistence that they are the truer patrons of science, now that is an eyebrow raiser. I'm not aware of any particular evidence that the party of Jindal, Palin, Todd Akin, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Sam Brownback, James Inhofe, John Cornyn, Rick Santorum, Ken Cuccinelli, Pat Robertson, E.W. Jackson, Allen West, Rick Scott, Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann and countless state representatives howling about conspiracies as diverse as when the United Nations is coming to get us and whether or not the Treasury Department is hoarding ammunition so that good patriots can't fight back or whether the scientific community of the entire planet is on a quest to trick us all—I'm not aware of any evidence that that party is even tethered to the same reality as the rest of us, much less that they are the party of fact-having and science-promoting. That paragraph of Jindal's pretty much proves the point, does it not?

There's a theory going around that the intellectual underpinnings of conservatism have so collapsed as to render the movement nothing more than a blind reflex against "whatever liberals want," or rather whatever any non-conservative American is perceived to want, as cobbled together from a long list of conservative fears and conspiracies. From health care to deficits, there's precious few actual conservative policy stances that can survive longer than a single opportunistic moment; the only true measure of conservative policy can be found in who proposed it. Romneycare good, Obamacare bad. Deficits unimportant, until deficits will eat us all. Medicare is an evil government overreach—and we Republicans are the true protectors of it. Jindal would be a reasonable example of the theory, though far from the only one; he may not know what the GOP stands for (and has penned an entire op-ed professing no particular opinion on it, so long as Republicans "get on offense" about it) but he can rattle off all the leftist fictions it supposedly stands against in one long breath.

The new Republican plan to go after rapists ... one fetus at a time

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:46:26 UTC

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, tapped by Republican leadership to be the face of their new abortion ban legislation, comes up with a new—and completely bizarre—argument in favor of the legislation:

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): The bill has been amended. It does allow exceptions for rape and incest and the life of the mother, and that was the appropriate step to take.
CRAIG MELVIN (MSNBC ANCHOR): But the bill only allows the exception for rape when it's reported. Only allows the exception for incest when it's reported. Is that correct?

BLACKBURN: There is a reporting requirement in the text of the bill. And the hope is that that will help in getting some of these perpetrators out of the population that are committing these crimes against women and against minor females.

You know, if Republicans really wanted to crack down on the crime of rape, wouldn't it be smarter to do something crazy like ... cracking down on the crime of rape? Maybe even helping the victims of rape? Instead, they are proposing to punish rape victims.

Sure, their bill gives an exception in cases where the rape was reported, but the exception wouldn't include victims of unreported rape. That accounts for roughly half of all rapes, which means the GOP's legislation would target the other half of rape victims, denying them legal access to abortion.

That might seem heartless to you, but according to Blackburn, the real reason for the legislation is to put more rapists behind bars by giving women an incentive to report rape. Obviously, that argument is complete and total bull, but Blackburn wasn't done:

MELVIN: Congresswoman, do you know how many cases of rape and incest go unreported in this country every year?
BLACKBURN: You know, I know that any rape and any incest is a horrible and horrific crime and what we want to do, and the purpose of the legislation today, Craig, is to make certain that those who are carrying out crimes against women, and against these unborn babies, are dealt with

On the bright side, Blackburn says Republicans want to make sure that "those who are carrying out crimes against women" are dealt with, but the legislation doesn't actually do anything meaningful to crack down on perpetrators of sexual violence. But what it does do—by her own admission—is make sure that those who carry out crimes "against these unborn babies" are "dealt with." And the way it deals with that is by making criminals out of women who want to exercise their constitutional right to choose.

I guess the moral of the story is that you don't need to be a Republican man to spout nonsense about abortion—Republican women are perfectly capable of it as well. Which explains why Marsha is the new face of the Republican War on Women.

Cummings releases full transcript of IRS screening manager interview

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:31:02 UTC

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Government Oversight Committee, delivers on his promise to call committee Chairman Darrell Issa's bluff:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have just released a full transcript of testimony from a key witness in the investigation of IRS targeting of conservatives — and it appears to confirm that the initial targeting did originate with a low-level employee in the Cincinnati office.
It also shows a key witness and IRS screening manager – a self described conservative Republican — denying any communication with the White House or senior IRS officials about the targeting.

So now we know why Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa didn't want to to release the full transcripts—they show everything he's been saying is bunk. You can read the transcripts here and here.

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:01:02 UTC

Today's comic by Matt Bors is Data intrusion:

TransCanada Corp. (TRP), which says Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever built, isn’t planning to use infrared sensors or fiber-optic cables to detect spills along the system’s 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) path to Texas refineries from fields in Alberta.[...]
The [U.S. Transportation] department is studying leak detection as it considers new rules to improve safety. Equipment available to spot spills more quickly would have cut 75 percent off the estimated $1.7 billion toll in property damage caused by major incidents on oil lines from 2001 to 2011, consultants said in a December report prepared for the department.

Activists seek to reverse Arizona's ban on marriage equality:

The petition drive comes as the Supreme Court is expected to release its ruling this month on gay marriage. Many observers believe the court will rule that individual states must decide whether gay marriage should be legal, and Equal Marriage Arizona wants to position voters to change the state’s course on marriage equality.
“The attitudes of this state, of the people of this state, have changed a lot,” said Warren Meyer, a Phoenix business owner leading the initiative effort. “We believe that Arizonans are ready for equal marriage.”

FBI digging for Hoffa again:

The FBI—working on information from an aging reputed mobster—began digging in the waist-high grass of a Detroit-area field Monday in yet another search for the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, according to a law enforcement source with direct knowledge of the investigation. [...]
FBI Special Agent Bob Foley, head of the agency's Detroit office, told CNN at the scene that the information leading to the search "reached the threshold of probable cause, which was sufficient to allow us to obtain a search warrant.

"If it didn't rise to that level then, certainly, we wouldn't be out here."

Alzheimer's drug said to restore synapses:

The first experimental drug to boost brain synapses lost in Alzheimer's disease has been developed by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The drug, called NitroMemantine, combines two FDA-approved medicines to stop the destructive cascade of changes in the brain that destroys the connections between neurons, leading to memory loss and cognitive decline.
The decade-long study, led by Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., professor and director of the Del E. Webb Center for Neuroscience, Aging, and Stem Cell Research, who is also a practicing clinical neurologist, shows that NitroMemantine can restore synapses, representing the connections between nerve cells (neurons) that have been lost during the progression of Alzheimer's in the brain. The research findings are described in a paper published June 17 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

BofA crookedness confirmed by former BofA employees:

Bank of America’s mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification – but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.
“Bank of America’s practice is to string homeowners along with no apparent intention of providing the permanent loan modifications it promises,” said Erika Brown, one of the former employees. The damning evidence would spur a series of criminal investigations of BofA executives, if we still had a rule of law in this country for Wall Street banks.

Somewhere in India, the last telegram will be sent on July 14.

Biden vote could be necessary to break filibuster

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:10:27 UTC

The death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg makes the margin of error in Harry Reid's whipping for filibuster reform that much tighter, and it means that Reid might require the vote of Vice President Joe Biden to make it happen. Greg Sargent writes that the White House has assured Reid that it would support an effort to end the filibuster on executive nominations with a majority vote.

It’s simple math. Lautenberg’s passing means Dems now only have 54 votes in the Senate. (His temporary Republican replacement can’t be expected to back rules reform.) Aides who are tracking the vote count tell me that Senator Carl Levin (a leading opponent of the “nuke option” when it was ruled out at the beginning of the year, leading to the watered down bipartisan filibuster reform compromise) is all but certain to oppose any rules change by simple majority. Senators Patrick Leahy and Mark Pryor remain question marks. And Senator Jack Reed is a Maybe.
If Dems lose those four votes, that would bring them down to 50. And, aides note, that would mean Biden’s tie-breaking vote would be required to get back up to the 51 required for a simple Senate majority. That’s an awfully thin margin for error.

On the other hand, Leahy, Pryor and Reed could be persuadable, or even already persuaded and keeping mum. Just four undecideds, even with Levin's opposition, means Republicans have some serious thinking to do about how far they're going to push opposition to Obama's three executive nominations that are still pending floor action, and three judicial nominations that haven't gone to committee yet. The commitment of the White House to back Reid on rules change, which presumably includes Biden's tie-breaking vote, adds one more component to everyone's calculations—the Republicans' willingness to keep obstructing and the Democrats' desire to do something about it.

The most effective course of action for us in the next month is to keep pushing Democratic senators to just do it.

Keep the pressure on. Send an email to your Democratic senators telling them to re-open filibuster reform and make the Senate function again.

Republican rebranding fail, continued: The new nopology

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:10:41 UTC

American Taliban

Last week, Republican Rep. Trent Franks dismissed concerns about banning abortion for victims of rape and incest by saying that they really don't get pregnant all that often so it's no big deal. Republicans, eager to avoid a repeat of the Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock sagas, decided to replace him as manager of his abortion-ban bill, putting Rep. Marsha Blackburn in charge of leading debate on his proposal.

Today, asked about Franks' comments on MSNBC, Blackburn said:

Representative Franks has apologized for his comments.

Except he didn't apologize—he fundraised off of his comments. In an email to supporters, he wrote (emphasis added):

NARAL, Planned Parenthood and the taxpayer-funded abortion lobby is attacking me for one reason -- I'm 100 percent unapologetically pro-life and I won't back down. Will you contribute $25, $50, $100, or even $500 right now to help me fight back?

That's not even a nopology. That's not even simply not offering apology. That's Trent Franks aggressively raising his middle finger to everyone who was concerned by what he said. Or, as the congresswoman charged with leading the GOP's efforts to ban abortions describes it: "Representative Franks has apologized for his comments."

Think of the masturbating fetuses!

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:16:02 UTC

I hate you so much right now, crazy rightwing politician.

Texas Congressman: Masturbating Fetuses Prove Need for Abortion Ban

And thus, the latest internet meme is born. All right, let's hear from the cell-blob of questionable intelligence, by which I mean Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX):

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

They're curled up into a lump the size of an orange, those little stubby hands have to go somewhere. Also, you're wrong. No, God's little miracle is not pleasuring himself like a college sophomore in his little meat apartment. Please. Stop.

If we want to have a discussion on when a fetus has enough consciousness to feel either pleasure or pain—not merely reflex action mind you, but actual awareness—that would be a very fine discussion to have. It cannot, however, be based on an old Texas pervert thinking he saw a fetus whacking it one time with its little proto-fingers. Do better.

Also, if that fetus was really masturbating then it's going to hell anyway, so there's no problem.

House Intelligence Committee hearing shows limits of oversight

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:24:35 UTC

The public portion of Tuesday's House Intelligence Committee hearing with NSA chief Keith Alexander, along with other intelligence officials, has proven one thing: House oversight of intelligence activities is, if anything, less rigorous than the senate's.

What we've learned:

NSA chief Alexander says that the top secret surveillance programs have foiled more than 50 terrorist plots since 9/11. But we don't know yet from the first round of questioning whether any of those plots could have been foiled by legal, constitutional, regular intelligence. The officials have also not been asked about the assertion of security experts that the programs played a minor role. For example, in one of the key cases they highlight—would-be New Yorksubway bomber Najibullah Zazi in 2009—old-fashioned intelligence led to his arrest.
No one among intelligence leadership thinks that the FISA court is just a rubber stamp. The fact that the court hasn't rejected a single application, out of some 4,000, in the past two years didn't come up.
There are around 1,000 system administrators, like Edward Snowden, who have access to the same information as him. The majority of them are contractors.
Not everything discussed so far has been useless. Some of it has been downright disturbing. For example, regarding PRISM, the Internet surveillance program:
Confirmed: NSA Analyst doesn't need a separate court order to query database. Analysts can decide what is "reasonably suspicious."
— @EFFLive

That means NSA analysts get to decide and act unilaterally to extract collected information. Also, this:
Confirmed, no court review of individual queries. Rest of the checks are inside the DOJ — this is not oversight!
— @EFFLive

The FISA court that totally isn't a rubberstamp isn't even rubberstamping individual queries.
NSA chief Alexander says that he's never seen an NSA analyst who has that authority do anything wrong. He has a short memory apparently having completely forgotten the time an analyst illegally rooted around in Bill Clinton's email.

Thus far, the most significant revelation from this hearing is that we don't need to worry because there is totally oversight, from a congress that intelligence officials obviously feel no compunction about lying to and from a court that will give the NSA whatever it wants.

9:43 AM PT: Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) did follow up with a question about how critical the programs were to those 50 cases. The upshot in answer to that:

So: 7 years of collecting every American's records has "contributed" to maybe 10 investigations, no claim that contribution essential.
— @normative

Issa continues playing games with leaks of cherry-picked IRS interview excerpts

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:00:50 UTC

Despite demands from across the political spectrum to release the full transcripts of interviews conducted with IRS agents about how tea party applications for non-profit status were handled, House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is continuing to play games by releasing them in drips and drabs. As HuffPost's Sam Stein reports, Issa's goal is blatantly political: Instead of shedding light on what actually happened, Issa is trying to manage the release of information to form a narrative that the activities were politically motivated, and driven from the highest levels of the Obama administration.

In recent days, the California Republican has allowed reporters from local and national news outlets to review portions of his panel's investigative work into the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. The move looks like a rebuke to the ranking Democrat on his committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), and even some Republican lawmakers, who have publicly worried that selective leaking imperils the integrity of the investigation.
According to one journalist who attended a briefing session at Issa's committee office, the ground rules have been fairly strict: Reporters have been given access to a limited number of pages of interview transcripts from which they can take notes (no photocopies). And they have been given access to only a few interview transcripts at a single time, although Issa's staff has spoken with at least half-a-dozen IRS employees about the targeting of tea party groups.

Despite Issa's goals, not even his cherry-picked releases actually support the narrative he's trying to develop. The best he's been able to do is release transcripts that reinforce what we already knew: That IRS officials in Washington, DC were aware of some of the actions. Not only is that not surprising, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Issa hasn't put forward any evidence suggesting that White House directed any of this activity. Moreover, he's failed to surface a single shred of evidence that the motive for the targeting was political as opposed to an inappropriate effort to deal with ambiguous laws. The fact that he refuses to release all the information he has is a pretty clear indication that he's got nothing except a yearning for scandal.

Continuing to play these sorts of games is completely dishonest. But what else would you expect from Mr. Grand Theft Auto?

Boehner's job is threatened and he folds like a cheap tent

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:13:55 UTC

"It's all about me!"

This is truly pathetic: On Monday afternoon:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) says Speaker John Boehner should be ousted if he rams through an immigration bill without majority Republican support.

And first thing Tuesday morning:

Speaker John Boehner privately tried to assure conservatives in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that he wouldn’t advance an immigration bill through the House without the support of the majority of Republicans.

Because John Boehner is all about ~~the jobs~~ John Boehner.

Bottom line? It probably doesn't matter what happens with immigration reform in the Senate when the lunatics are running the asylum that is the House.

Republican rebranding fail, continued: House set to vote on abortion ban

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:31:16 UTC

The new brand is pretty much the old brand

Starting at noon today, congressional Republicans will continue their laser-like focus on ~~jobs and the economy~~ appeasing their fundamentalist base by bringing legislation to ban abortion to the floor of the U.S. House.

The bill was proposed by Rep. Trent Franks, who last week decided to reenact the Todd Akin experience by offering pearls of wisdom about rape and pregnancy. But just in case you're a Republican political consultant worried that your party is sinking deeper into the abyss, never fear—because thanks to deft political maneuvering on the part of House GOP leadership, Trent Franks is now out, and the legislation now has a new face.

Aware of the risks inherent in abortion politics, Republican leaders have moved to insulate themselves from Democrats’ criticism that they are opening a new front in the “war on women.” Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, will manage the debate on the bill when it reaches the House floor, a role that would customarily go to the sponsor, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona.

Brilliance! Because as long as the person managing the floor debate is female, American women couldn't care less about whether abortion is banned or not. So clearly, problem solved. But just to make sure they don't get in a tight spot again, Republicans made one more move:

And in a last-minute revision, House leaders slipped in a provision that would allow for a limited exception in cases of rape or incest, but only if the woman had reported the crime.

The provision requires women to go to law enforcement before having an abortion to report the rape or incest. Enforcing it would require medical care providers to verify that the rape or incest had been reported. Effectively, that means rape and incest victims would need to report the abortion to law enforcement.

So the moral of the story is that Republican rebranding comes down to this: They're still for banning abortion, but now they want a woman to be the face of their legislative efforts, and they want an "exception" for victims of rape and incest ... as long as the victim has previously reported the crime and doesn't mind having a third party notify law enforcement that she is going to have an abortion. Well, that sure is some rebranding.

Data intrusion

rss@dailykos.com (Matt Bors) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:51:02 UTC

click to datamine

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Exercise caution with optimistic generic congressional polls

rss@dailykos.com (David Nir) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:01:05 UTC

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here.

Leading Off:

• House: A big reason why I don't typically pay a lot of attention to generic congressional ballot polls this far out is because there's often a lot of inconsistency in the data. So far this year, most reputable pollsters have given Democrats a small lead, but every so often, one has shown a much bigger gap. The latest is PPP, which put Dems up 47-40 in their most recent poll. Last month, the Washington Post found Democrats in front by 8 points, and Quinnipiac also once came up with a D+8 result earlier this year.

More recently, though, Quinnipiac found the parties tied, and NBC/WSJ put Dems up just 3. It would be tempting to get excited about the polls that show Democrats way out in front, but excluding the unreliable Rasmussen, HuffPo Pollster pegs Dems to an average lead of about 4 points or so. I wouldn't want to conclude the gap is any bigger than that unless and until we see a whole bunch of polls demonstrating that, rather than just the occasional optimistic survey.

Daily Kos Radio is LIVE at 9am ET!

rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:31:03 UTC

Daily Kos Radio's Kagro in the Morning show podcasts are now available through iTunes.

We could catch up on what's happening in Congress. You wanna do that?

No?

OK, fine.

We'll try to clear out some non-NSA tabs and see if the story settles down some, to the point where we can at least agree what we are and aren't talking about. And then, in six months, we can try again!

We're LIVE at 9 a.m. ET with Kagro in the Morning, thanks to NetrootsRadio.com.

Listen LIVE here:The Daily Kos Radio Player

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Or if you prefer, why not download the Stitcher app on your favorite mobile device, and search for the Netroots Radio live stream? And hey, when you do, be sure to sign up with the promo code DAILYKOS, and earn Daily Kos Radio $1 in the Stitcher affiliate program!

Please do remember to "favorite" us while you're at Stitcher. We're bouncing up and down in the rankings these days, and the more of you who help us, the more listeners out there who'll find us on the Stitcher network.

Miss the last show? You can catch it here:

Need more info on how to listen? Find it below the fold.

Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

rss@dailykos.com (Bill in Portland Maine) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:16:49 UTC

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Time to play History: Cruel…or Kind?

Round 1

Florida Governor Rick Scott signs a bill into a law that forbids local governments in the state from requiring companies to provide paid sick time for employees.
History will be kind because businesses won't have to worry about shelling out money to employees who are probably just faking it, anyhow. After all, everyone knows no one gets sick enough to put in less than 110 percent at work---it's un-American!

History will be cruel because "AhhhhCHOO!!! 'Scuse me. So, uh, do you want fries with your influenza burger?"

Verdict: History will be CRUEL. Riding roughshod over the little guy by riding roughshod over local governments for no reason other than protecting corporate profits? Between this issue and many others (like his fetish for drug testing anybody in his state with a pulse), the 2014 anti-Scott campaign ads are practically writing themselves.

Round 2

NSA contract employee Edward Snowden spills the beans to the media about the enormity of America's Borg-like domestic surveillance apparatus.
History will be kind because Hero!

History will be cruel because Traitor!

Verdict: History will be KIND. Because when the government tells us not to worry our pretty little peasant heads about what it's doing behind our back, it's time to worry our pretty little peasant heads about what it's doing behind our back.

Round 3

Maine state Senator Ken Fredette (R) stands up on the Senate floor and cites the ancient scroll Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus to prove his point that women shouldn't have a say in whether or not to expand Medicaid in Maine as part of Obamacare because his manly brain is better at figuring this stuff out than the mushy womanly brains of his female colleagues.
History will be kind because Og! Og! Ook ook og!!!

History will be cruel because, to quote Judge Judy: "Fredette, you're a moron! There's something wrong with you! You're not normal!"

Verdict: History will be CRUEL. The only thing Ken Fredette proved last week is that his brain is from a planet with the word anus in it.

Next time: history judges the Massachusetts special election, squid pants, and what Jeb Bush thinks about WASP fertility. Meanwhile, Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Abbreviated pundit roundup: SCOTUS ruling on voting rights

rss@dailykos.com (Georgia Logothetis) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:35:02 UTC

The Arizona Republic isn't too pleased about the Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's draconian proof-of-citizenship law:

Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement was an unnecessary political gambit that suppressed the vote.
But the court did not strike down Arizona’s law. The ruling applies only to federal forms and elections. The state can continue to impose the proof-of-citizenship rule for state registrations.

What’s more, Scalia outlined how Arizona could seek federal approval to apply the proof-of-citizenship requirement to federal registration forms, as well.

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said he intends to follow Scalia’s guidelines.

Let’s be clear: The integrity of elections is of paramount importance. But there was little evidence of voter fraud before Prop. 200. It was part of a backlash against illegal immigration that tapped into raw emotion without stopping to engage analytical thought processes.

Undocumented immigrants were not hijacking elections. They were busing tables.

So, let’s be even more clear: Participation in elections is also of paramount importance, and Prop. 200 hurt that.

The Supreme Court would have done the state a favor by sweeping away the law.

More analysis from The New York Times:

The Supreme Court, in a 7-to-2 ruling on Monday, strongly affirmed the power of Congress to regulate Congressional elections. The court held that Arizona cannot impose a requirement on voters to prove their citizenship when the federal law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, does not require any such thing. [...]
While the decision was emphatic about federal authority over the manner of elections, the Scalia opinion also said that states have power to set the qualifications of voters, like residency requirements, and to enforce them. Justice Scalia wrote that Arizona could still ask the federal agency responsible for administering this federal law to permit the state to require proof of citizenship. And he said that if the agency did not grant the request, the state could ask a federal court to decide that signing the federal form is not enough to ensure that a would-be voter is actually a citizen.

In leaving open an avenue for an Arizona challenge, the court also made it clear that ensuring voting rights to every eligible American requires continued vigilance.

The Washington Post:

If Arizona doesn’t like how the feds are applying that clause, the state can take them to court. Arizona, however, has not pressed its case through the channels available to accommodate its interests in regulating voter qualifications.
And Arizona shouldn’t. The prospect of voter fraud should not be dismissed, but there is no evidence that it poses a practical problem. There is a far greater danger in limiting access to the ballot box, a sacrosanct right in America. Neither the states nor the federal government should be imposing new restrictions on the franchise. They should instead enact universal voter registration laws and other reforms to expand access to the vote.

For more on the day's top stories, head below the fold.

Open thread for night owls: 'Twas the War Before Christmas

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:30:06 UTC

Sigh.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced on Monday that she was writing a book filled with "legalese" about how to fight what some social conservatives call the "War on Christmas."
[...] "Kind of a legalese how-to push back and protect the heart of Christmas. At the same time, a very festive and happy and jolly book about tradition and recipes and fun things about Christmas."

Just ... sigh.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—Clear Evidence of War Crimes: Stern Letters to Come?:

It is impossible to escape a mixture of sadness and fury while reading the 149 horrific pages of the just-released report published by Physicians for Human Rights and called Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the US. Sadness for the victims. Fury for the fact that American citizens have paid for the ghastly criminal acts of guards and interrogators at U.S.-run prisons in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and Afghanistan. Sadness that Americans are now seen as torturers worldwide. Fury that high officials who ordered these acts are not digging holes and filling them up every day on some penal atoll.

The torture those officials authorized has been revealed over the years in bits and pieces. We’ve seen the photographs. Newspaper stories, magazine articles and a dozen books have been written. There have been previous scathing reports, including two by PHR. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have delved into the matter. There was, of course, the Army’s 2004 investigation into what happened at Abu Ghraib. And, better late than never, Senator Carl Levin began presiding Tuesday over three days of hearings on the subject, Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.

For the first time, however, Broken Laws, Broken Lives has added grim evidence gleaned from medical tests, both physical and psychological, of 11 former detainees. Unique stories, but with a theme that cannot - and must not - be ignored. The evidence was gathered and evaluated under strict internationally recognized standards and procedures for determining whether someone has been tortured or ill-treated and for documenting the consequences in a manner so that the results can be used in court. These standards are part of the Istanbul Protocol, Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted by the United Nations in 1999.

Tweet of the Day:

58% voters either "like" or "love" cats; 8% think they should all live in the woods: http://t.co/...
— @ppppolls

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, NSA remains at the top of the charts this week, with things only becoming more confused the more articles are written on the subject. A CNET story stirred the hornet's nest over the weekend, setting off parallel chain reactions of rebuttal, retraction, walk-backs, debunkings, and everything in between. Greg Dworkin rounds up still more polling on the issue, and most of the show is once again given over to scurrying down the rabbit holes. Just for a change-up, we threw in the Lower Hudson, NY area Daily Journal's follow-up on their publication of names and addresses of area pistol permit holders. Did it in fact result in criminal targeting of those gun owners?

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

Economics Daily Digest: When interns are employees too

rss@dailykos.com (Roosevelt Institute) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:20:31 UTC

By Rachel Goldfarb, originally posted on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via email.

When Unpaid Internships are Illegal (MSNBC)

On All In With Chris Hayes, Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren discussed the normalization of unpaid internships in all sectors, even government, in response to last week's ruling that Fox Searchlight violated labor laws by not paying interns.

Faces of the Minimum Wage (NYT)

Annie Lowrey profiles six minimum wage workers and their struggle to get by. It’s hard to see what could help these people more than a minimum wage increase, but Republicans in Congress have blocked that option.

Are Long-Term Unemployed Taking Refuge in Disability? (WSJ)

Ben Casselman explains new research that shows few are taking advantage of disability: the law requires that a worker be unable to perform their last profession, and the job market is tight. Going on disability instead of finding a new career isn’t ideal, but it is legal.

BofA Gave Bonuses to Foreclose on Clients, Lawsuit Claims (Bloomberg News)

Hugh Son and David McLaughlin report that former Bank of America employees will provide evidence that the bank intentionally falsified documents related to mortgage modifications and slowed down that process in order to boost their foreclosures.

Chart of the Day: America's 30-Year Project to Make the Rich Even Richer (MoJo)

Kevin Drum looks at a chart from the Economic Policy Institute and the further calculations performed by Andrew Fieldhouse, which shows that thirty years ago, tax policy began to encourage income inequality on a massive scale. Under the 1979 tax code, the gap wouldn’t have grown as fast.

Want to Stop Flu Epidemics? Give Workers Paid Sick Days (Salon)

Katie McDonough says that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have produced data to corroborate the common-sense assumption that lack of sick days contributes to the spread of infectious disease. One day off is enough to reduce flu infection transmission by 25%.

Great Gatsby Economics are no Party for the Middle Class (WaPo)

E.J. Dionne uses the music industry as an example of how the income inequality we're facing in the U.S. works, and argues that until those in the middle actually have a shot at huge success, our country will suffer..

Fight the Future (NYT)

Paul Krugman wants to stop focusing on the "long-run fiscal sustainability" of our economy, because we have no idea what the future will look like. Getting rid of sequestration and focusing on the short-term problem of mass unemployment is more important today.

Heartland Institute gets called on their shameless revisionism—by the Chinese

rss@dailykos.com (DarkSyde) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 02:30:05 UTC

The Boulder Glacier retreated 450 m (1,480 ft) from 1987 to 2003. Click for more info on receding glaciers

The Heartland Institute is a fossil-fuel front tasked with convincing as many people as possible to ignore their lying eyes. They were originally cooked up in 1984 to downplay the dangers of tobacco use. When last we heard from Heartland, they were for online theft before they were against it and comparing climate scientists to serial killers on public billboards. Recently Heartland bragged the Chinese were shying away from the idea of human-induced climate change because the science did not support it. This was so egregiously false the Chinese issued a stern correction reading in part:

The claim of the Heartland Institute about CAS’ endorsement of its report is completely false. ... The false claim by the Heartland Institute was made public without any knowledge of the translator group. ... we have requested by email to the president of the Heartland Institute that the false news on its website to be removed. ... If the Heartland Institute does not withdraw its false news or refuse to apologize, all the consequences and liabilities should be borne by the Heartland Institute.

It's not that Heartland is in the denial business, it's that they're terrible at it, creating more bad press for the issue and their sponsors than they could possibly be worth. How do these clowns continue to get funded?

IRS officials threatened with violence again

rss@dailykos.com (Jon Perr) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 18:42:34 UTC

If House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's faltering inquisition of the IRS seems familiar, it should. Back in the 1990s, Republicans demonized the agency, slashed its enforcement staff and, unsurprisingly, helped the growth of tax cheating which now costs Uncle Sam up to $500 billion in lost revenue annually. And as Reuters reported Saturday, history is repeating itself in one other disturbing respect: IRS officials are now receiving threats of violence.

Just days after Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) questioned why some IRS agents receive training in using AR-15 rifles ("Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?"), Reuters revealed threats made against current and former IRS officials at the center of the supposed targeting of conservative non-profit "social welfare" groups:

Ousted IRS acting commissioner, Steven Miller, has received such threats, according to a source familiar with his situation. The source declined to elaborate on the nature or the source of the threats.
And the head of the tax-exempt unit at the agency, Lois Lerner, who has been put on administrative leave as investigations into the controversy continue, has had telephone and email messages from unknown sources that "threaten physical violence," according to her attorney William Taylor.

Those threats have been reported to Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). And while lower level Internal Revenue staff frequently face such dangers, the top brass are another matter:

Threats are nothing new for IRS workers. In their unpopular line of work, IRS agents face hundreds of threats annually, including death threats, TIGTA data shows.
But it is unusual for senior IRS executives to get personal threats, said Steve Walsh, a former agent with TIGTA who worked on security for some former commissioners. He is now a licensed private investigator in Los Angeles.

TIGTA provided armed escorts for IRS employees on 74 occasions in fiscal 2012 ended September 30. In the six months from October 2012 through March 2013, TIGTA provided 36 armed escorts to IRS agents.

As a quick review of the past two decades shows, those armed escorts are provided with good reason. After all, Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage is hardly the first member of his party to slander the IRS as "the new Gestapo."

As David Cay Johnston explained in his 2003 classic Perfectly Legal, the GOP during the Clinton administration waged an all-out war on the IRS. Then as now, GOP spinmeister Frank Luntz framed the issue for his Republican allies, "Which would you prefer: having your wallet or purse stolen or being audited by the IRS?" As Sen. William Roth's Finance Committee held hearings in 1997 and 1998, Mississippi's Trent Lott and Alaska's Frank Murkowski decried the IRS' "Gestapo-like tactics." Murkowski went on to complain, "You don't need to send in armed personnel in flak jackets." Don Nickles of Oklahoma raged, "The IRS is out of control!" Congress went on to pass and Bill Clinton signed the IRS Reform and Restructuring Act in 1998.

Continue reading below the fold.

Taking the extreme out of extreme poverty

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:36:14 UTC

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—you know, the one where the policy debate is that the House wants to cut it by $21 billion over 10 years while the Senate "only" wants to cut it by $4 billion during that time—reduced the number of households with children living in extreme poverty by 48 percent in 2011.

Contrary to what Republicans yelling about poor people with TV sets and refrigerators would have you believe, the "extreme" in "extreme poverty" is no joke here. We're talking about households living on with less than $2 per person per day, and if you only count cash income, there were 1.6 million such households in 2011. If you include SNAP benefits, the number drops to 857,000. What's more:

SNAP also cut, by roughly half, the rise in extreme poverty among households with children between 1996 and 2011, the study found.

That rise, by the way, was driven by the grand and glorious welfare reform law of 1996. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reminds us that:

One reason SNAP is so effective in fighting extreme poverty is that it focuses its benefits on many of the poorest households. Roughly 91 percent of monthly SNAP benefits go to households below the poverty line, and 55 percent go to households below half of the poverty line (about $9,800 for a family of three). One in five SNAP households lives on cash income of less than $2 per person a day.

To put this in the context of the minimum wage, it takes about 25 hours a week at $7.25 to earn that $9,800 that represents half the poverty line for a family of three. That's obviously a different situation than $2 per person per day, but let's be clear: If Republicans want to make food stamps less necessary, rather than simply kicking people off the program to go hungry, the way to do that would be by raising the minimum wage and then passing some job creation programs so that job seekers no longer outnumber job openings by three to one. Because oddly enough, putting people to work at above poverty wages will tend to reduce the number of people forced to rely on government assistance to feed their kids. But no, the Republican solution to SNAP cutting extreme poverty by 48 percent is to make drastic cuts.

The national security state: Too big to succeed?

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:46:51 UTC

Edward Snowden's leaks, showing the massive scope of the National Security Agency's surveillance of phone and internet information, covers ground that previous whistleblowers have already trodden. What Snowden has provided is much of the documentation that proves the allegations of the whistleblowers before him. What he's also provided is refutation from intelligence officials and supporters of the program, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, that even though the system might be vacuuming up vast amounts of data, you shouldn't worry because of the built-in safeguards.

With some five million people have security clearances, and everybody from NSA contractors to Microsoft employees having access to classified information, that assertion from program supporters rings hollow.

NSA officials say that kind of information is irrelevant to the agency. It is tasked with collecting foreign intelligence and stopping terrorist plots, they say, and analysts would not be authorized to examine records on Americans unless they showed a link to a terrorism suspect or a foreign agent. All of the surveillance programs Snowden revealed, they add, were approved by Congress and are supervised by federal judges.
Critics say assurances about limits, rules and oversight would be more convincing if not for Snowden himself: He was able to remove highly classified documents from an NSA facility in Hawaii that officials say he was not authorized to access.

"Here's a low-level systems guy" who copied a top-secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and a presidential directive about cyber attacks, said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group in San Francisco. "To say that there is a rigorous technical program in place to prevent broad-based lurking around through the data—I have a hard time believing that."

It's also hard to argue, as Feinstein and others have, that Congress has real oversight when Congress is lied to, when staff isn't allowed to attend meetings and when they're told to pretend like the leaked NSA documents don't exist, and when members can't take notes and can't talk about the programs outside of classified meetings. It's also hard to argue that there's rigorous court oversight when the FISA court has denied just 10 applications, modified a few dozen, and approved more than 15,000 in the past 11 years.

We've also got some history that argues against the idea that low-level employees anywhere down the line in the system are walled off from the content of our communications. Here's a reminder from Atrios from when we learned that the NSA guys supposedly looking for that terrorist needle in the haystack were actually looking for the phone sex people in the military were having.

The system is just too big to provide the safeguards our president and national security leaders and congressional supporters like Feinstein insist are there. The fact of Edward Snowden and his access to classified information proves that. The big question going forward is whether it's also just too lucrative to be curtailed.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' may need a new nickname after two fatal blasts

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:06:42 UTC

Not that there should be tighter oversight of the Louisiana chemical industry or anything, but there were fatal blasts at two different Louisiana chemical plants last week. Thursday's explosion at the Williams Olefin plant killed two and injured more than 100, while Friday's rupture (not an explosion, executives insist) at a CF Industries plant killed one and injured eight. So, what kind of safety records did these plants have leading up to last week?

We don't actually know about the Williams Olefin plant; according to Erik Loomis:

The last time this plant received an OSHA inspection? We actually don’t know. But definitely not since 1993. And this is one of the most dangerous industries in the country. Petrochemical plants should be inspected at least a few times a year, if not weekly. Instead, not even once in 20 years.

This is a government oversight fail that should feel familiar from April's fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. As for Friday's totally-not-an-explosion-just-a-rupture,

Friday’s deadly blast wasn’t the first at the company’s Donaldsonville plant. The Associated Press reported that three workers were killed and nine injured by an explosion and fire at the facility in May 2000.
Later that year, OSHA imposed a fine of nearly $150,000 against CF Industries, AP said. OSHA cited the company for 14 alleged safety and health violations, 12 of which were described by the agency as serious. The company didn’t contest the citations and agreed to pay the penalties.

All of this is happening in a state where it would take OSHA more than 150 years to inspect every workplace once, and where the workplace fatality rate is 6.3 per 100,000 workers, compared with a national rate of 3.5 per 100,000. Oh, and also, the two plants are close by each other in an area filled with such facilities and called "Cancer Alley" or "Bhopal on the bayou," which should give you some idea of how well health and safety are being protected there.

Supremes chisel away at Miranda. Again.

rss@dailykos.com (Adam B) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:19:54 UTC

Pretty much every year, the Supreme Court finds another way to chip away at your Miranda rights. This morning, it's Texas' Genovevo Salinas who finds himself on the wrong end of the stick, as a 5-4 (or 3+2 v. 4, as you'll see) Court finds nothing wrong with a prosecutor's holding his silence against him.

Late December, 1992: double murder in a home, no witnesses. Police recover six shotgun shell casings at the scene. The investigation leads police to Salinas, who had been with the deceased at a party the night before, and who owned a car similar-ish to the one seen leaving the scene. Salinas agreed to hand over his shotgun for ballistics testing and to accompany police to the station for questioning. Heck, they told him they wanted to take some pictures of him and help clear him.

Because this was voluntary and Salinas was not in custody, he wasn't read his Miranda rights. He answered questions in the interview room voluntarily, until he was asked whether his shotgun “would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder.” According to the record, Salinas “[l]ooked down at the floor, shuffled his feet, bit his bottom lip, cl[e]nched his hands in his lap, [and] began to tighten up.” He answered a few more questions, and left.

A few days later, another witness claimed he heard Salinas confess. He was charged, but by that time had fled the scene, and was not arrested until 2007. At his trial, Salinas did not testify, and prosecutors used his reaction to the officer’s question during the 1993 interview as evidence of his guilt. At closing argument, drawing on testimony he had elicited earlier, the prosecutor pointed out to the jury that Salinas, during his earlier questioning at the police station, had remained silent when asked about the shotgun. The prosecutor told the jury, among other things, that “‘[a]n innocent person’” would have said, “‘What are you talking about? I didn’t do that. I wasn’t there.’” But Salinas, the prosecutor said, “‘didn’t respond that way.’” Rather, “‘[h]e wouldn’t answer that question.’”

It is hornbook law that when a defendant opts not to testify at his own trial or speak to police, the prosecutor can't comment on that—you can't penalize him for invoking his right against self-incrimination. According to Justices Alito, Kennedy and the chief justice, however, Salinas didn't exactly invoke his Miranda rights here.

An abortion walks into a bar and says to the bartender ...

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:22:57 UTC

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

“How do you make abortion funny?” That was a key question mulled at a major conservative gathering Friday on how to make social conservatism appealing to young people, after an election where Republicans got trounced in the battle for millennial voters (who are are moving even further and further away from the Christian-right on marriage on other issues).
Abortion has to be made funny, the thinking goes, because funny sells on social media, and that’s where one goes to court young people. “You can engage with sarcasm, it’s hard with the abortion issue, but you have to,” said Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins at a breakout panel at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington today on how to win millennial voters. “Unfortunately we have to, because this is the generation that we’ve been dealt.”

So the way to convince young Americans to join the Republican Party is to make abortion hilarious. Or at least be sarcastic about it. Your abortion-related humor will then get the young folks these days to realize that you are hip and with it and that they really want on board with that whole Gilead-patterened premise of social conservative religious rule, aka Jesus Sharia.

You know something? Screw it. You go for it, folks. I would have paid solid pay-per-view prices to see Mitt Romney standing at the Republican National Convention plastering the audience with some truly top-notch abortion jokes. How many abortions does it take to change a light bulb? A priest, a rabbi and an abortion walk into a bar, and the priest says hey pal, you're an abomination, I can't believe they let you in here. You know, humor.

The premise apparently extends to being anti-gay-marriage as well; nothing attracts the young folks like treating gay people like dirt while also making jokes about it on Twitter. Unfortunately, those "young people" are about 12 years old, so they'll have to figure out a way to keep them occupied until voting age. Maybe some fetus-related puppet shows or something.

In the meantime, I think we all need to start preparing an escape plan. The moon is far too boring, and Mars might take a long, long time to terraform, but we've got to at least start considering our options. We're nearing maximum crackpot. This thing's about to go supernova.

Open thread: The pay inequality and such as

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:00:12 UTC

Somewhere, Miss Teen South Carolina is smiling, while anyone who cares about pay inequality is gagging:

Joe Manchin to challenge NRA in ad

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:13:24 UTC

Just three years ago, Manchin was proud to have the NRA's support. Now he's going after them.

Sen. Joe Manchin isn't up for reelection until 2018, but he's not taking the National Rifle Association's decision to attack him lightly. In fact, he seems to see it as an opportunity:

Sen. Joe Manchin, co-author of a plan to expand background checks on gun sales, is launching a TV ad to defend himself from attacks by the powerful National Rifle Association. [...] The NRA is spending at least $100,000 on its ad campaign hitting Manchin, and an aide for the senator says he plans to “at least match” that buy. [...]
Manchin has been increasingly critical of top NRA officials in recent months, attempting to portray the organization’s leaders as out-of-step with its 5 million rank-and-file members.

He accused the NRA of lying about the background checks measure during the Senate debate. “They are telling members that our legislation would criminalize the private transfer of firearms by honest, law abiding citizens,” he said in April. “That is a lie, that is simply a lie and anyone that can read knows that is not factual.”

“The Washington NRA leadership is clearly out of step with the American people and law abiding gun owners, and is now attacking Senator Manchin for a position they once supported,” said Manchin aide Jonathan Kott. “The Washington NRA leadership is trying to distort Senator Manchin’s commitment to the [Second] Amendment because they know he is one of the most credible defenders of gun rights who also believes that it just makes sense to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those found severely mentally ill.”

This a perfect illustration of how the NRA has become a fringe group. Manchin is the kind of Democrat that the NRA depended on to claim its place as a political heavyweight. Sure, it leaned to the right, but there were still Democrats like Manchin who wanted to the NRA's support and were proud to receive it. But now that's changed, and it's not because Manchin has moved to the left—it's because the NRA can't accept even the most modest of gun safety measures.

On a political level, this is a battle that Manchin is going to win. And in the process, he's going to put to rest the myth that Democrats in conservative states need the NRA on their side, because in fact it's the exactly the other way around.

Senate Democrats running on, not from, Obamacare

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:50:23 UTC

President Obama's signature on the Affordable Care Act.

The handful of Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2014 in tough states have decided to embrace Obamacare, taking the opportunity of its implementation coinciding with the midterm elections to remind constituents of its benefits and to make sure they understand and can use them.

Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina will face voters in 2014 for the first time since voting for the Affordable Care Act – also known as "Obamacare" – three years ago. They aren't apologizing for their vote, and several are pursuing an aggressive strategy: Embrace the law, help voters use it and fix what doesn't work.
"I don't run from my votes," Begich told The Associated Press. "Politicians who sit around and say, `That's controversial so I better run from it,' just ask for trouble. Voters may not always agree with you, but they respect people who think about these issues and talk about them." [...]
"There's a lot of good that people will realize as this all comes online," the first-term senator said.

It's the only strategy that will work to defang the Republicans on the issue in 2014—making the law work, and making sure that Republican lies about it are exposed. To that end, Organizing for Action is unrolling a big education campaign on the airwaves. Given that consistent majorities, while not so thrilled with the law itself, are fed up with continued repeal efforts, it wouldn't hurt Democrats to hammer on that a bit, as well.

Making sure the law is implemented as smoothly as possible, though, will be key for many voters. Plenty will see nothing change at all, except the good stuff. Nothing will change for many who will remain on exactly the same plan except what they've already seen; they don't have to pay copays for preventive care, they can keep their adult children on their plans until age 26, and if their children have pre-existing conditions, they can still get coverage for them. For those who will be on the exchanges, the kinks need to be worked out early on. Here's one silver lining of so many Republican governors deciding against setting up their own state exchanges and leaving it to the federal government: less opportunity for state-level sabotage.

Bushmaster exec asks public to please stop victimizing his innocent gun

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:36:32 UTC

Bushmaster exec: Guns not relevant to gun violence

George Kollitides, CEO of the company that owns Bushmaster, the maker of the AR-15 rifle used in the Newtown massacre is sick and tired of hearing people blame his gun:

“It’s very easy to blame an inanimate object. Any kind of instrument in the wrong hands can be put to evil use. This comes down to intent — criminal behavior, accountability and responsibility,” Mr. Kollitides said in an exclusive interview last week. [...] “He killed the gun’s owner, stole her car, stole her gun and then went to a school and killed innocent kids. No background checks could have prevented that. He illegally obtained the guns,” he told me in his small New York office. “Only two things could have potentially stopped him: his mother locking up her guns and an armed guard. Even then, he could have driven his stolen car into a playground full of kids. He was intent on killing, which we know is already illegal.”

Sure, except that aside from guns like the AR-15, there basically aren't any other legally available "inanimate objects" capable of inflicting the sort of damage necessary to carry out a Newtown massacre. It's one thing to argue that guns should be legal, but don't tell me that there's no difference between a semiautomatic rifle and a stolen car. That's just ridiculous.

But even if cars were as effective as semiautomatic rifles at carrying out mass murders, so what? We do a lot more regulating of cars than we do of guns, and yet nobody feels like their freedom is seriously jeopardized. Despite the fact that you are required to register your car, that you're required to have a driver's license to operate a vehicle, and that you must carry auto insurance, I don't think a single person has ever seriously argued that their liberty has been curtailed in any meaningful way.

I really have no idea what could have been going through Kollitides's head when he made that comparison, but I am sure of one thing: If I ever see him behind the wheel of an auto, I'm going to get as far away from his as I can, as quickly as possible.

Boehner's immigration conundrum

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:29:16 UTC

Wingnut media is reporting that House Speaker John Boehner won't bring immigration reform to the floor without a majority of Republican support, the so-called Hastert rule.

House Speaker John Boehner is not going to bring a comprehensive immigration-reform plan to the floor if a majority of Republicans don't support it, sources familiar with his plans said.
"No way in hell," is how several described the chances of the speaker acting on such a proposal without a majority of his majority behind him.

The radicalized House GOP, bolstered by gerrymandered-induced safe districts, are hell-bent on killing Senate efforts to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants. On the other hand, the Republican establishment understands that their long-term prognosis is poor unless they can start eating away at Democratic base supporters in immigrant communities (Asian and Latino, mostly, but pretty much everything else as well).

Remember, of the 2.4 million new Americans in 2012, only seven percent were white, and all of those were immigrants.

It's widely assumed that immigration reform can pass the House with Democratic support and a few dozen Republican defectors, but only if Boehner ditches the Hastert Rule one more time. But after blowing off the Hastert Rule on a handful of legislative efforts, such as the fiscal cliff nonsense, his charges are restless. Few think Boehner could survive one more perceived betrayal.

So how firm is Boehner's insistance that he won't violate the Hastert Rule? We'll find out soon enough. It comes down to this formulation:

What's more important to John Boehner?

A) His speakership
B) The future of his party

If he opts for (A), he might keep control of the House for a while, but his role will be that of an endless obstructionist. And even the House won't be immune to the nation's demographic changes.

If he opts for (B), he gives his party a future fighting chance. As for him? K-Street will reward him richly. No one will weep for super-lobbyist Boehner.

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Barbara Morrill) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:00:09 UTC

Today's comic by Tom Tomorrow is Sensible thinkers:
What you missed on Sunday Kos ...
- Rand Paul's outreach coordinator declares "holy war" on us, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Bill Clinton (and Barack Obama?) demonstrates the type of thinking that led to the Iraq Debacle, by Armando
- Book discussion: Eyal Press' "Beautiful Souls" ... and whether Edward Snowden is one of them, by Susan Gardner
- What polling tells us (and what it doesn't) about public reaction to NSA revelations, by Greg Dworkin
- After Newtown: An interview with American Academy of Pediatrics president Thomas K. McInerny, MD, FAAP, by Greg Dworkin
- It's not personal, it's just business, by DarkSyde
- Extra, extra, read all about ... what's killing journalism, by Mark E Andersen
Noooooooooooooo!

All good things must come to an end, even after numerous awards and accolades, it’s time to acknowledge that I cannot continue to run on fumes alone. The Blend could continue limping along, but my health and well-being come first; over the last few years burning the candle at both ends with a full-time offline job and PHB. It has taken a severe toll — most readers have learned that I am dealing with chronic pain conditions — fibromylagia, and in the last couple of years, aggressive rheumatoid arthritis.
My decision to close the blog is just as reality-based as its content has been.
Probably one of the most bizarre "he said, he said" of all time:

Russia's president is fighting back: No, he did not steal a Super Bowl ring. And no, he's not rocking the diamond-encrusted prize on his finger, either.
President Vladimir Putin's spokesman denied that the leader kept a Super Bowl ring that New England Patriots' owner Robert Kraft wanted back.
Sweet gig if you can get it:

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) and his wife, Maureen, have used taxpayer money for a range of small personal items they should have paid for themselves under state policy, according to spending records.
The McDonnells have billed the state for body wash, sunscreen, dog vitamins and a digestive system “detox cleanse,” the records show. They also have used state employees to run personal errands for their adult children.
Offered without comment:

Thursday night at the Capitol Hill Club, Representative Ted Poe had a scary choking incident and was thankfully aided by a doctor-turned-GOP-aide, Nick Muzin, who may have saved his life.
Poe was eating dinner alone downstairs at the Club’s Grill when he began choking on a piece of popcorn.
You're going straight to hell ... now give me your money:

Danielle Powell was going through a hard time in the spring of 2011, just months away from graduating from a conservative Christian college in Nebraska. She had fallen in love with another woman, a strictly forbidden relationship at a school where even prolonged hugs were banned.
Powell said she was working at a civil rights foundation in Mississippi to finish her psychology degree when she was called back to Grace University in Omaha and confronted about the relationship. She was eventually expelled — then sent a bill for $6,000 to reimburse what the school said were federal loans and grants that needed to be repaid because she didn’t finish the semester.
Possible gravesite #8,732:

Federal investigators searching property near Detroit for Jimmy Hoffa's body - @detroitnews http://t.co/...
— @BreakingNews
On today's Kagro in the Morning show, NSA remains at the top of the charts this week, with things only becoming more confused the more articles are written on the subject. A CNET story stirred the hornet's nest over the weekend, setting off parallel chain reactions of rebuttal, retraction, walk-backs, debunkings, and everything in between. Greg Dworkin rounds up still more polling on the issue, and most of the show is once again given over to scurrying down the rabbit holes. Just for a change-up, we threw in the Lower Hudson, NY area Daily Journal's follow-up on their publication of names and addresses of area pistol permit holders. Did it in fact result in criminal targeting of those gun owners?

Senate bill prohibiting job discrimination against gays and lesbians gets 51st cosponsor

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:16:57 UTC

This is good news, at least on a symbolic level:

The senior senator from Delaware will become the 51st sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Washington Blade has learned.
In response to a Washington Blade inquiry, the office of Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) confirmed on Monday that he’ll sign on as a co-sponsor to the bill. Ian Sams, a Carper spokesperson, said Carper is “signing on as a co-sponsor of ENDA.”

“Sen. Carper believes it is important for federal law to explicitly prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation – in the same way that current law addresses race, sex or religion – in order to ensure that all Americans are protected equally under the law,” Sams added.

Having a majority of the U.S. Senate on record supporting ENDA is good, but what ultimately matters is whether it becomes law. As we all know, it takes 60 votes to get anything done in the hopelessly dysfunctional Senate—having 51 co-sponsors isn't enough, by itself, for passage. Still, it's unusual for a bill to have this many co-sponors. Of the four bills signed into law this year that originated in the Senate, only the Violence Against Women Act had more co-sponors—61.

As with most things, Congress is lagging behind the public, which strongly supports the principle of non-discrimination embodied in ENDA. Just today, Public Policy Polling released a poll showing 71 percent of North Carolinians believe that employers should not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, including 58 percent of Republicans. Now, with Majority Leader Harry Reid and a majority of senators on board, ENDA has momentum. And while it's possible that Republicans will decide to filibuster it if and when it comes up for a vote, it's becoming increasingly clear that if they do, they will pay a political price.

GunFAIL XXII

rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:23:39 UTC

Eight of the 43 guns "forgotten" by travelers and found by TSA agents at airports around the country, just this week.

A relatively quiet week in #GunFAIL, though that's probably due not to any particular slowdown in gun accidents, but rather the news "whiteout" effect that comes from media occupation with more spectacular gun events, like the Santa Monica shooting, and the Arizona case of the father shot and killed by his 4-year-old son. But we can hope, certainly.

This week's collection includes four accidents involving law enforcement officers, four concealed carry ninjas, three gun range-related accidents, and three home invasion shootings. No one I found this week has explicitly admitted having an accident while cleaning a loaded gun, so that's a milestone. Though it must be admitted that several of the listed scenarios come suspiciously close. Unfortunately, there was no rest from the mounting tally of child victims of GunFAIL. This week's group were aged 2, 4, 13, 14, 15 and 16, and we must note that police suspect both the two and four-year-olds were shot by other pre-schoolers. That trend, too, continues unabated.

Of special note this week: the Beaver Creek, Oregon, rifleman who decided he was safe in attempting to shoot squirrels in his yard with his .22, but ended up killing the neighbor's 4-year-old black Labrador retriever (who was in her own yard) instead. That counts as a home invasion shooting, in my book. But it's particularly worth noting because the odds are that this good guy with a gun would have sworn on a stack of bibles last week that he was a Responsible Gun Owner.^TM And now, suddenly, he's not. Instead, he's just a really, really sorry gun owner. Not that it's doing the neighbors or their dog much good. But for a while there, we were almost safe from the tyranny of squirrels, so it's just the price of freedom, I guess.

One bit of follow-up this week, as well. The Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney has decided not to file any charges in the late May case of the 10-year-old Crozet, Virginia, girl documented in GunFAIL XIX. The case is noteworthy because the girl was killed by her 13-year-old brother, while the five children were home alone that Tuesday morning. Seems Pastor Paul Hollifield and his wife home school their children, so it's not unusual for them to be home alone in the mornings, when they are expected to be self-starters when it comes to school work. On this particular Tuesday, however, their 13-year-old boy decided that 10AM on Tuesday would be a fine time to clean and repair the shotgun he'd been given as a gift after passing a hunter's safety course the previous year.

The gun hadn’t been working properly, and he had taken it apart, cleaned it, and put it back together the night before, leaving it in the living room with the safety engaged. He had taken two shells out, but forgot the one in the chamber, the statement said. While he was testing out his repairs in the morning with the gun raised to eye level and the safety off, he apparently accidentally pulled the trigger.
The shotgun was pointed in the direction of the living room’s loveseat and down a hallway, according to the statement. Maggie Hollifield was standing behind the loveseat, and her 9-year-old sibling was seated.

[...]

The 13-year-old “had been schooled in the responsible use and care of the firearm and had demonstrated his knowledge of and adherence to the requirements of responsible gun ownership,” she said.

And there you have it. He passed his safety course, and "had been schooled in the responsible use and care of the firearm," etc., etc., etc. And yet, he forgot a shell in the chamber of his shotgun, and evidently figured that meant that a "safe direction" for pointing it was ... the living room loveseat occupied by his 9 and 10-year-old sisters. The stack of bibles once again fails us.

Sources: Obama could release secret NSA court order

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:07:31 UTC

NPR is reporting that sources have told them that President Obama is considering declassifying the court order that gives the National Security Agency the authority to collect the phone record information of millions of American citizens.

The document, known as a "primary order," complements a shorter Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court document leaked to The Guardian newspaper earlier this month. That document revealed the U.S. government had been asking Verizon Business Network Services Inc. to turn over, on a daily basis, phone call records for its subscribers, for 90 days. [...]
The still-secret primary order provides more information about the program, spells out specific limits on government authority and includes safeguards to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens, a senior administration official said.

Release of this order would explain specific constraints on the surveillance program, as well as the safeguards in place to protect U.S. citizens' rights and privacy. This is the kind of transparency organizations like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been suing the government for, and what senators Mark Udall, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have been pushing for.

If the government has nothing to hide in terms of the lengths it goes to to protect civil liberties, then declassification of the document that spells out how it does so shouldn't be a problem. But it will certainly give us the necessary background to have the debate President Obama has said he welcomes.

Scalia, Supremes reject Arizona voter suppression attempt

rss@dailykos.com (Adam B) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:17:30 UTC

Gov. Jan Brewer has lost again.

In a 7-2 decision announced Monday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected the state of Arizona's efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to voter registration forms. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (a/k/a "The Motor Voter Law") requires States to “accept and use” a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections, and the Court now holds that states cannot graft additional requirements onto that form, which only requires that voters affirm that they are citizens.

Justice Scalia—yes, him—wrote the decision of the court, a majority consisting of everyone other than Justices Thomas and Alito. It relies on the Elections Clause of the Constitution (Art. I, §4, cl. 1), which provides that while states have preliminary control over federal elections, Congress can supersede the states' choices:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the places of chusing Senators.

And, basically, the Court holds that when the NVRA says the states must "accept and use" the federal form, it must accept and use them as sufficient to register voters:

When Congress legislates with respect to the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding congressional elections, it necessarily displaces some element of a pre-existing legal regime erected by the States. Because the power the Elections Clause confers is none other than the power to preempt, the reasonable assumption is that the statutory text accurately communicates the scope of Congress’s preemptive intent. Moreover, the federalism concerns underlying the presumption in the Supremacy Clause context are somewhat weaker here. Unlike the States’ “historic police powers,” the States’ role in regulating congressional elections—while weighty and worthy of respect—has always existed subject to the express qualification that it “terminates according to federal law.” In sum, there is no compelling reason not to read Elections Clause legislation simply to mean what it says.
We conclude that the fairest reading of the statute is that a state-imposed requirement of evidence of citizenship not required by the Federal Form is “inconsistent with” the NVRA’s mandate that States “accept and use” the Federal Form. If this reading prevails, the Elections Clause requires that Arizona’s rule give way.

The majority notes that the state may use information in its possession to refuse to register a voter, but it cannot require the voter to show her papers first. At most, Arizona can ask the federal Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) for permission to amend its form, as Louisiana did in 2012 to require applicants who lack a Louisiana driver’s license, ID card, or Social Security number to attach additional documentation (such as a utility bill) to the completed Federal Form.

Arizona loses. Voters win. What else? How about a solo Thomas dissent!

Religious right to Republican Party: Don't ever stop the War on Women

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:15:08 UTC

Last November, the Republican Party's extreme position on abortion contributed mightily to a double-digit gender gap and cost them easy victories in the Missouri and Indiana Senate elections. Nonetheless:

...social conservatives in town this weekend for the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference said the GOP would be making a grave mistake to ignore the hot-button culture-war issue. To the contrary, they believe it’s key to the party’s fortunes in the 2014 midterms and beyond.

Their reasoning?

“If they want to just run on economic issues, you’re not going to get the church people,” said Bob West of Tallahassee, Fla., wearing a yellow tie with the words “Choose Life” on it. “That’s the bottom line.” [...]
“The problem connecting with young people was not social issues,” said radio host Michael Medved. “It was economic issues.”

Professional evangelical Gary Bauer agreed that pushing a 19th century agenda is more popular than the "tax cuts for billionaires" favored by the GOP's establishment:

“They’ve got it upside down,” Bauer said. “The social issues we believe in are more popular than the Republican economic agenda.”

I guess Bauer almost has a point. It's pretty much impossible to defend the Republican economic agenda, which basically comes down to inflicting misery on as many people as possible. But it doesn't make any sense for Bauer to use that fact as exhibit number one in his argument for doubling down on the War on Women. The good news for Bauer is that he's getting his way, at least on the social policy.

Last year, there was Akin and Mourdock; this year there is Trent Franks. Last year, Republican state legislatures passed laws mandating medically unnecessary ultrasounds for women who choose abortion; this year they are doing the same (see Walker, Scott). Last year, congressional Republicans cast vote after vote aimed at banning abortion; this year, they are promising the same, including a vote on Wednesday to ban abortion after 20 weeks.

So despite the angst among Bauer and his gang, they should be celebrating. They're itching for more War on Women, and that's exactly what they are getting.

Lindsey Graham, the 'death spiral' and the Republican Party

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:17:32 UTC

Immigration reform is proving another awkward moment for Sen. Marco Rubio.

Immigration reform sure has Republicans in a bind. After all, Sen. Lindsey Graham was not wrong when he said, on Sunday's Meet the Press, that:

"... if we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016. We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community in my view is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who we run in my view."

He's sure not wrong that the GOP can't continue to be the party of white men, to hell with brown people, and succeed. So you'd think it would be an obvious choice to any Republican who could read polls and demographic data. Yet Sen. Marco Rubio demonstrates the other side of the Republican bind on immigration as he continues doing the will-he-or-won't-he dance on the immigration reform bill he helped write.

"I think 95, 96 percent of the bill is in perfect shape and ready to go. But there are elements that need to be improved," said Rubio, refusing to say if he’ll vote for the measure he helped write unless changes are made.

Who knows, maybe Rubio is holding out for the 98 percent of what he wanted that John Boehner got on the debt limit deal that created sequestration. But either way, his very public ambivalence highlights the fact that it's only going to get harder for Republicans to win elections in a lot of key swing states if they can't appeal to Latino and Asian voters—but for now, Republicans with personal, short-term ambition know that their party's primary-voting base will punish them for not scapegoating brown people enough.

And this dilemma couldn't happen to a more deserving party or set of politicians.

Sensible thinkers

rss@dailykos.com (Tom Tomorrow) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:50:08 UTC

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Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: How Art Pope killed public funding for judicial elections in NC

rss@dailykos.com (David Nir) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:00:08 UTC

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here.

Leading Off:

• North Carolina: Here's a depressing read about how wealthy conservative kingpin Art Pope, now Gov. Pat McCrory's top cabinet official, has waged a decade-plus fight against public financing for judicial elections in North Carolina—a fight he just won, with the imminent passage of a new budget that raids the campaign fund for other purposes and cuts off its sources of revenue. Republican state Rep. Jonathan Jordan had proposed an amendment that would save public financing, but Pope directly involved himself in the legislative process and brought about the final coup de grâce for the program:

Soon after Jordan's amendment was filed the next day, the multimillionaire GOP donor and budget director for Republican Gov. Pat McCrory made a rare visit to the General Assembly and took Jordan aside. When the impromptu meeting with Pope ended, Jordan made an abrupt U-turn and dropped the amendment.

Jordan, as it turns out, owed his office to Pope, who funded his first campaign in 2010 with over $100,000, so he probably should have expected to get this offer he couldn't refuse, whatever it may have been. A sad day indeed for North Carolina.