PMC Commentary

DOMA DEAD

... no thanks to the usual suspects, who are still grappling with that deepest of all brain teasers--does "equal" really mean, oh, I don't know, equal?

And Pete Williams reports that some of the language in the DOMA decision suggests a lack-of-standing decision in the Prop 8 case. So at least for a while, equal will mean equal in California, too.  

It's a good day.

Standing pat, and going down?

Already the what and the why are settled historical questions. Only the when remains in this, the decaying pre-obit stage of the Grand Old Party.

What killed national Republicanism weren't really its internal divisions so much in the news, but its solidarity. Regional differences--North and South, on slavery--suffocated the Whigs, but today's GOP is little more than a regional, Southern party alone. And it's all hands on deck to protect its current congressional majority in the House, against a lot of better judgment elsewhere. Which is the why of suicidal Republican intransigence.

This age of massive demographic shifts portend equally massive electoral alignments, and yet the GOP pretends the political clock will miraculously stop in 2014.

Down goes the Voting Rights Act, and both congressional Republican leaders are mum: "I haven't read [the Court's decision] yet," said the Senate's McConnell, and Speaker Boehner referred questions to committee chairs--all in the service of the midterms.

Same with immigration reform. Some might see the Senate's bill as a rare expression of bipartisanship, but one House Republican leader (Tom Cole) has a twist: It's not a bipartisan thing, it's just "a minority of the minority in the Senate voting for this bill." So screw it. And Paul Ryan, always thinking, promised "a more methodical, patient way of doing" immigration reform--meaning its slow, systematic death. (We must forgive Paul, for he's preoccupied at the moment with ending poverty in America ... by exacerbating it.)

One needn't be Jeb Bush to see where all this is going, electorally speaking. The when, however, is hazy. At present the midterms look like a lock for House Republicans, and the Democratic Senate will soon be under siege. GOP success either way would nullify the remainder of Obama's second term. So it sure seems like now is the time to aggressively launch the unprecedented: the longest midterm campaign in American political history.  

They're sure to screw it up

If Republicans were really smart, they'd rush both floors of the U.S. Congress and demand that the Voting Rights Act be reconstituted in any constitutionally acceptable way. They would be heroes, visionaries, defenders of the oppressed--they would hustle goodwill among minority communities and mend much of the electoral damage they have done to themselves in those communities.

In sum, they would take the splendid opportunity the Supreme Court just handed them to begin that long slog back to human decency.

But, because congressional Republicans are absurdly stupid, they won't do any of these things. No, they'll be smug instead; they'll plot with their state legislatures to dig themselves deeper, they'll invent new ways to create more minority resentment and backlash, they'll inspire virtually everyone 'cepting the equally stupid to detest the Republican Party even more.

For some, it's lonely out there

A rather heartwarming coda from The New Yorker's John Cassidy:

I’m with Snowden--not only for the reasons that [whistle-blower Tom] Drake enumerated but also because of an old-fashioned and maybe naïve inkling that journalists are meant to stick up for the underdog and irritate the powerful. On its side, the Obama Administration has the courts, the intelligence services, Congress, the diplomatic service, much of the media, and most of the American public. Snowden’s got Greenwald, a woman from Wikileaks, and a dodgy travel document from Ecuador. Which side are you on?

As for Snowden himself, I'm declaring neutrality, simply because I don't know the man.

As for Snowden's actions, I'll side with Snowden--or should I say President Obama, for it was he who pointedly welcomed Snowden's actions.

That's not to deny Snowden's lawbreaking--which even Glenn Greenwald hasn't done--but no president would embrace the result of a true Espionage Act violation.

That--charging Snowden with such--is overkill. And overkill irks underdog defenders, and makes the powerfully irritated look silly.

Waiting for Edward

Fascinating. This Snowden affair is going to play out like either Tom Hanks' "The Terminal" or Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

The NSA on a villain's brain

From Wonkblog's "Here’s everything we’ve learned about how the NSA’s secret programs work":

The NSA puts all this [mined phone-call] information in a vast database, but the agency claims that access to the database is strictly limited. The agency says that only 22 Obama administration officials have the authority to authorize searches of the database.

Fair enough, we've rarely had presidents as trustworthy as Barack Obama. But there's the rub.

The year is 2025, in which, after sixteen years of uninterrupted Democratic rule, voters have installed the ruthless demagogue Ted Cruz in the White House. It was "time for a change." But Ted, seeking change, is having legislative problems with the Senate's Democratic majority leader. And Ted is unhappy--ruthlessly unhappy. So into the Oval Office he calls John Ehrlichman, Jr., one of his closest aides who also happens to have very close ties to some NSA insiders.

"Say, John, don't we have records of every phone call made in this country in the last several years? Thought so, I recall reading something about that. Well, have the NSA cough up every number called by the Senate majority leader in, say, the last two years, and check 'em out."

John Jr. does as he's told, because, well, this is the Cruz administration. And Junior discovers to Ted's delight that a D.C. escort service was one of the majority leader's calls. 

The majority leader really loves his job and wants to keep it. One way or another, Ted's problem is solved.  

The Greenhouse Effect

I have saved this piece, from Yale law professor and NY Times columnist Linda Greenhouse, since March 16:

Years from now, when the Supreme Court has come to its senses, justices then sitting will look back on the spring of 2013 in bewilderment. On what basis, they will wonder, did five conservative justices, professed believers in judicial restraint, reach out to grab the authority that the framers of the post-Civil War 14th and 15th Amendments had vested in Congress nearly a century and a half earlier “to enforce, by appropriate legislation” the right to equal protection and the right to vote....

The Roberts court stands on the brink of making an error of historic proportions.

On what basis? Ideology--the unshakable conviction that because your worldview is the true and only virtuous one, pretty much everything else must be whittled away and stuffed into it.

Ideology is not to be confused with principle: conservative principles would have found "judicial restraint" an insurmountable obstacle. Ideology is, in a word, supreme; principles are cute, but they fail to address the larger urgencies.

As I understand it, Justice Ginsburg is, as I write, delivering her thoughts on irony to the Court. The reason the Voting Rights Act is less necessary than it was in 1965, as the Court's majority argues, is because the Voting Rights Act has been effective (... you ideological idiots).

Yet there may be an even greater irony afoot. The Supremes have placed the ball back in Congress' court--this, and probably the next, Congress' court. Now I ask you: How much more motivation do minorities need to help unseat the Court's congressional counterparts in 2014? 

A self-destructive quest

Every citizen should dispatch to the White House a dog-eared copy not of All the President's Men, but of Moby Dick, for the Obama administration is on a quest of near oceanic folly.

No president--to date--was maddened by leaks more than Richard Nixon (and I don't use the verb either figuratively or lightly), whose plumbing operations bespoke a wistful paranoia of a hydraheaded leviathan: facts, the public's right to know, the inevitability of the public's knowing--and, above all, the messenger. Harpoon him and you'll only make him angry.

Naturally, as a president or one of his men you can be and often will be pissed at the leviathan--and perhaps nearly as often, rightfully so. You've a job to do, and the job's a conflicted bitch: trying to hold national security together by acting the control freak you perforce must be, while also upholding your oath to the near-anarchic Bill of Rights. Good luck with that, for there's no true balance--which, despite your campaign promises, you come to understand. It's frustrating, it's annoying, it's maddening.

But for God's sake--and yours--contain your hostility. You asked for the job, and you'll only exacerbate its tribulations by hurling poison darts at the monstrously pesky Fourth Estate. It notices--as has the NY Times' David Carr, one of those inky pests you really should prefer to have on your side:  

If you add up the pulling of news organization phone records (The Associated Press), the tracking of individual reporters (Fox News), and the effort by the current administration to go after sources (seven instances and counting in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media), suggesting that there is a war on the press is less hyperbole than simple math.

Just as mathematically straightforward is that there's a lot more of them than there is of you.

Every administration learns to loathe the press, which every administration discovers is broadly inept, habitually sensationalist and frequently nitwitted. It's the nature of the beast. What some administrations forget is that it can, and will, if provoked, eat you alive.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194513/obamas-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html?wpisrc=nl_wonk_b#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194513/obamas-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html?wpisrc=nl_wonk_b#storylink=c

 

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194513/obamas-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html?wpisrc=nl_wonk_b#storylink=cpy

Now comes Donald Trump, the voice we've been waiting for

Donald Trump, offering some of his customary rational insights, this time into the Snowden affair, on the always informative "Fox & Friends":

This guy’s a bad guy and, you know, there’s still a thing called execution. You really have to take a strong … You have thousands of people with access to material like this. We’re not gong to have a country any longer.

Yep, it's all over. The United States of America, the world's oldest democracy and baddest-ass superpower ever, brought down by a skinny, four-eyed kid with a flash drive.

In other words, Donald, all that hypersecurity was always pointless, right?

I'll second that

Andrew Sullivan:

There has been an understandable collective wince at David Gregory’s asking a fellow-journalist whether he should go to jail (I speak of Glenn Greenwald) for helping a whistle-blower.... [But] ask yourself if David Gregory ever asked a similar question of people in government with real power, e.g. Dick Cheney et al.

That point--the vulgar hypocrisy of the elite Beltway press corps--is perhaps what infuriated more than Gregory's idiotic question. It's a cumulative thing. Week after week I watch Gregory creep up to some monumental poignancy that fucking begs to be asked, only to watch him retreat in a muddle of tangentials. One can almost hear him thinking when the big boys are present: Oh, best not go there, that would be impolitic; and besides, I may need this guy to come back someday. So I'll change the subject and let this mendacious little worm off the hook.

But the lowly Greenwald? Boom. Hey, by the way, Glenn, do you agree with some of the powers whom I regularly let off the hook that you're a criminal? In fact I'll characterize you as one--as an aider and abettor--in the question itself.

Did Gregory (or any network hosts) ever once do that with Cheney? Did any Sunday morning public affairs jockey ever ask: "To the extent that you have aided and abetted torturers, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Vice President, be charged with a crime?" 

It's a simple, direct question that any one of millions of honorable Americans were exceptionally eager to ask. But we got skunked, because the journalists doing our asking for us were part of a larger problem: the coziness of Beltway elites.

Well, it was never a Socratic dialogue anyway

Ben Smith, on what's good for philosophy classes but "terrible" for old-school journalism:

I’m not sure why reporters should care all that much about [Edward Snowden's] personal moral status, the meaning of the phrase "civil disobedience," or the fate of his eternal soul. And the public who used to be known as "readers" are going to have to get used to making that distinction.

Have to? I doubt it. Snowden was instantly deified or condemned based on instant reactions to the NSA story, even though the perpetrator's personal merits or defects had nothing to do with the story itself. His virtues and his wickedness became inverse metaphors for the NSA programs: if you liked the latter, you disliked Snowden, and if you disliked the latter, you liked Snowden--a lot, either way.  

It's just human nature, I suppose. But that cancels out the "have to."

Would you like some bourbon in that water?

Sure, this comes from Rasmussen, which tends to confirm its opinions by polling them, but ...

While the poll showed a majority of Republicans nationwide--58 percent--still view [Marco Rubio] favorably, that amounts to a 10-point dip since May and a 15-point drop since February.

It's a long way to 2015. Needless to say, he won't make it at this rate, assuming the rate reflects at least some reality. Plus, whatever damage he's done to himself in taking a reasonably sane position on immigration reform could be irreversible among the GOP's utterly insane primary voters.

OK, the rest of you guys--lesson learned. Ya'll hear, Rand?

Sunday morning's two-ring circus

I missed it, but it seems David Gregory stepped in it--again--when he asked his expatriate guest: "To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?"

WaPo's media critic, Erik Wemple, objects to the "baselessness" of Gregory's leading question: "A simple substitution exercise reveals the tautological idiocy of the query: 'To the extent that you have murdered your neighbor, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?'"

The really ghastly part of Gregory's question was his implication that mere publication of classified information can be indistinguishable from criminal co-conspiracy, which would render press freedoms under the First Amendment null and void as well as lighten the dark heart of Dick Cheney.

Government officials, who are prone to classifying their grocery lists, are free to disclose actual sensitive information when it suits their purpose--which might include, say, outing a CIA agent--and the publishing journalist is good to go; but woe to the journalist who publishes classified material unfavorable to the sitting government. Such an arrangement formalized in common law would, of course, provide government officials with veto power over journalists, thereby abrogating the press' adversarial role intended in the Bill of Rights' first entry.  

So, yeah, I'm sorry I missed journalist Gregory's send-up to professional self-nullification. On the other hand, I did catch Gen. Keith Alexander on "This Week," demonstrating the NSA's deep, mum's-the-word cleverness: 

STEPHANOPOULOS:  [S]ome government officials are asking whether WikiLeaks is a legitimate journalistic organization or an enemy of the state, where do you come down on that?

ALEXANDER:  I have no opinion on WikiLeaks. I really don't track them. I don't know--I really don't know who WikiLeaks are, other than this Assange person.

Secrecy and evasion--even when they make you look, as Erik Wemple might put it, like an idiot.

Vladimir's finger

Has Chuck Schumer forgotten?

"Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States,” says the New York senator about less than avuncular Vladimir's harboring of our extraordinary fugitive.

Oh, poor Chuck. Poor, simple Chuck. Russia is our number one geopolitical foe.

Somewhere, there's a Mormon smiling.

Me? I'm reminded of a passage from Don DeLillo's 1997 masterpiece, Underworld:

Power meant something, thirty, forty years ago. It was stable, it was focused, it was a tangible thing. It was greatness, danger, terror, all those things. And it held us together, the Soviets and us. Maybe it held the world together. You could measure things. You could measure hope and you could measure destruction. Not that I want to bring it back. It's gone, good riddance. But the fact is.

The fact is ... I think Putin wants it back.

Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement

Once again, my love of understatement goes not unrequited. Pete Williams, NBC's legal correspondent, speaking on "Meet the Press" this morning, said of Hong Kong's release of the slippery Snowden: "I think it's fair to say the U.S. is upset about this."