THERE'S A HOLE IN MY HEART ALL THE WAY TO CHINA

So after gathering the materials he was about to leak, the NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, went to Hong Kong -- which means I wasn't completely off base on Friday when I speculated about a China connection to the leak. Of the two reasons Snowden gives for choosing Hong Kong, the first strains credulity:

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

In a NPR interview Glenn Greenwald doubles down on this "spirited commitment" nonsense.

He chose it [Hong Kong], I think, for a couple of reasons. One is that he said that there was a history of very vibrant commitment to free speech and free association. There are political protests all of the time in Hong Kong that are very free. People think that because it's technically in China that it's oppressive, but Hong Kong is under its own rule and has a lot of civil liberties.

Charles Johnson cites Wikipedia on the subject of press freedom in Hong Kong:

That year [2011], Hong Kong's ranking on the Press Freedom Index published annually by Reporters Without Borders dropped twenty places to 54th place. In a report published alongside the index, it was noted that "arrests, assaults and harassment worsened working conditions for journalists [in Hong Kong] to an extent not seen previously, a sign of a worrying change in government policy."

In the 2013 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index, Hong Kong has slipped even further, to 58th place.

Josh Marshall ponders the choice of Hong Kong:

[Snowden] says in the article that his highest hope is get asylum in Iceland. I can pretty much guarantee you that that's not going to happen. A small country that wants to be close friends of the United States is not going to do that. I could see arguments for Russia or Venezuela or perhaps Iran. But of all the places where you might have a shot at not getting extradited, China's not a bad choice. Hong Kong might even give you the best of both worlds, hosted by repressive government which is a US rival and yet living in a city with Western standards of openness, wealth, etc.

... Call me naive but I think this is going to come down to how Beijing wants to play this. If they don't want a fight over this, Snowden's toast. If they like the optics of it, I don't think it matters what that extradition treaty says. China's a big enough player and the US has enough other fish to fry with the Chinese, that the US is not going to put the bilateral relationship on the line over this guy. And the Chinese might relish granting asylum to an American running from the claws of US 'state repression'.

I actually think the U.S. will be very, very insistent on getting this guy, at whatever risk to the bilateral relationship. And I don't think China is quite ready to be defiant in a Francis Gary Powers-style standoff over him -- but I think China will name a high price, which the U.S. will quite willingly pay.

But I'm still wondering whether there's more to this. I'm still thinking about one the tweets I reproduced on Friday:

Fascinating that these leaks abt our surveillance practices come in the 2 days before a tough mtg w/the Chinese about theirs.

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) June 6, 2013

Is there any possibility that China assisted Snowden before the fact?

And should I read anything into the fact that NBC anchor Lester Holt began a report on Snowden by referring to him as the "apparent" leaker?

The apparent source who exposed the government's top-secret collection of phone records has revealed himself -- so says the publication that broke the story last week.... Tonight the self-identified source of that story has stepped forward....

I'm not trying to be Alex Jones here. I'm just wondering if NBC is implying a suspicion that the leak could involve more than just this one guy.

RASMUSSEN POLLS NSA SPYING, THEN AND NOW

... and, you will be astonished to learn, gets very different results.

Rasmussen, December 28, 2005:

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 23% disagree.

Rasmussen today:

Just 26% of Likely U.S. Voters favor the government's secret collecting of these phone records for national security purposes regardless of whether there is any suspicion of wrongdoing. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 59% are opposed to the practice. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

You may have already detected the reason for the very different results. The question that led to today's result makes what the NSA is doing sound as sinister as possible:

The federal government has been secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans for national security purposes regardless of whether there is any suspicion of wrongdoing. Do you favor or oppose the government's secret collecting of these phone records?

The question back in 2005 (for a somewhat different NSA program) made what was being done sound rather different:

Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?

But given how much better Republicans are at framing than Democrats, I fear that public opinion actually is going to be very different, as measured by other pollsters. The publi believed Bush was running a TERRORIST SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM because 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! THEY HATE US FROM OUR FREEDOMS! SMOKING GUN/MUSHROOM CLOUD! Whereas I fear the public will think Obama is doing it because BENGHAZI! IRS! AP! JAMES ROSEN! CHICAGO WAY! I guess we'll find out when polling outfits without partisan agendas start doing surveys.

I DON'T THINK IT WAS FEAR

Maureen Dowd begins a column about Obama-era surveillance excesses by looking back to 9/11 and the Bushies:

THE acid that corroded George W. Bush's presidency was fear -- spreading it and succumbing to it.

You could see the fear in his eyes, the fear that froze him in place, after Andy Card whispered to W. in that Florida classroom that a second plane had crashed into the twin towers.

The blood-dimmed tragedy of 9/11 was chilling. But instead of rising above the fear, W. let it overwhelm his better instincts. He and Dick Cheney crumpled the Constitution, manipulated intelligence to go to war against a country that hadn't attacked us, and implemented warrantless eavesdropping -- all in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists....

I say this all the time, but I don't think the Bush administration was motivated by fear. What I see when I watch the Booker Elementary School clip is a guy who simultaneously wants to be an easygoing goof-off with a soft life and a man of great consequence. He's president of the United States, which seems like a tough job, but, hell, he was governor of the second-largest state in the Union and that wasn't so hard, was it? He'd had seven and a half not-so-taxing months, and he'd probably struck, by his lights, an ideal balance between consequence high, but not much chance of Rushmore) and leisure (life was pretty good). And now he knew he suddenly had to Get Serious. This wasn't just helping to enable tax breaks for his beloved corporate class. This was life or death. Oh crap -- not only did he have the role of Big Man on America's Campus, he actually had to do stuff. Important stuff. He didn't seem afraid of terrorism, he seemed afraid of a lifestyle change.

As for Cheney: I think he's paranoid, but I don't think he's fearful. What I mean is that he gets off on the notion that America is in extreme peril and he's the guy tasked with saving it -- and that because he shoulders this awesome burden, he's the special target of the targeters. That's his ego trip.

(I see the same thing, by the way, in the personality of Roger Ailes. I don't know whether Ailes really does sit in his office awaiting a violent attack by Muslim terrorists or gay people with guns, but I'm sure some stories of his obsession ith his own security are true, and I think he's obsessed because he simply loves to think of himself as someone worthy of assassination plots. Cf. Dick Cheney and the man-sized safe.)

Bush, I think, came to savor the sense of danger, because it made him utterly consequential. Cheney had savored it all along.

They spread fear, in a calculated way, but I don't think they were frightened.

NEW GOP HIRE CALLED BELIEVERS IN CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION "HITLERIAN"

CNN reports:

The Republican National Committee has brought on a director of evangelical outreach to massage the party's complicated relationship with religious conservatives, GOP sources told CNN on Saturday.

The party organization has hired Chad Connelly, a consultant and motivational speaker who, until this weekend, was the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party.

... Connelly, a Baptist, has told multiple South Carolina Republicans that he will be steering the national party's outreach to faith-based groups....

Back in 2002, Connelly wrote a book in which he explained what he thinks of church-state separation:

About halfway into his 80-page tome, Freedom Tide, Connelly argues — as he frequently does — that the Founding Fathers Christians intended the United States to be a Christian nation....

But over the years, the anti-Founding Fathers forces have gotten their way, fooling the American public into believing untruths. Connelly writes:

The debate about our founders' intentions and where we stand today makes us question: what changed and when? William James, the father of modern psychology, said, "There is nothing so absurd, but if you repeat it enough, people will believe it." Adolf Hitler, like James, recognized the power of repetition in getting people to believe lies. "The ultimate Hitlerian propaganda technique is the principle of the big lie. Hitler declared '...that the very greatness of the lie is a factor in getting it believed ... a great lie is more effective than a small one...' In brief, the bigger the lie, the more likely it will be believed by the masses."

So, yeah -- if you oppose the establishment of religion you're using Nazi techniques, according to the nest Republican Party hire. How's that party rebranding working out for ya, GOP?

Connelly is also a former Amway representative. Perfect.

ARE WE GOING AFTER THE POLICY, OR ARE WE GOING AFTER THE PRESIDENT?

The security state needs to be curtailed. I just wonder which narrative is going to prevail: one that focuses on surveillance excesses that need to be corrected -- or one that focuses on the president.

If it's the latter -- and I think it's going to be -- I worry that Republicans will make real political hay out of what's going on, but the surveillance policies themselves will never be in serious danger. I think the right-wing noise machine, with the help of the mainstream press, is quite capable of sustaining public anger about Obama administration surveillance programs while national-security-oriented Republicans in Congress work hand in hand with like-minded Democrats to make sure those policies aren't actually changed.

Result: Obama's approval ratings go down; Democrats (and only Democrats) are associated in the public mind with highly intrusive "big government"; Republicans make significant gains in the 2014 midterms; this scandal and others hurt the Democrats' 2016 presidential candidate the way Monicagate hurt Al Gore in 2000 ... and yet the surveillance state remains in place, and is possibly even expanded in secret by President Christie or Rubio or Jeb (all of whom would be likely to stock their administrations with veterans of the Bush White House).

The right is working hard to make us forget that these policies were the work of two presidents from two different parties, endorsed in a bipartisan way in Congresses that have had several shifts in party control, and mostly OK'd by the courts. For the right, the real and faux scandals of the past few months are table-setters for this week's revelations. Here's Rush Limbaugh:

There was a time when the United States government earned the trust of its people. There was a time when most people believed that the United States government was protecting them. There was a time when most people believed that the United States government was spying on the bad guys, that the United States government was in fact earning the trust of the people. But this current data collection, scanning, whatever you want to call it, unfortunately has to be judged in context: the IRS leaks, the now unquestionable, undeniable, admitted-to-it IRS tactic of suppressing the vote of Tea Party conservatives, denying them their First Amendment rights.

The regime and its tricks with the Associated Press and Fox reporter James Rosen, the Benghazi cover-ups, the Fast and Furious operation, suing the state of Arizona for simply endorsing essentially federal immigration law. You can't just try to be the smartest guy in the room and say, "Well, we must be levelheaded about this and understand that this is just metadata." We cannot take the motives and intelligence guided by experience watching this administration over the last four-and-a-half, five years, and what their express purpose is.

So (says Limbaugh) it's a uniquely Obamaesque way of operating. It has nothing to do with the way the country was governed from 9/11 until Obama's inauguration. Pre-Obama, we were just "spying on the bad guys."

Oh, but surely the "liberal media" doesn't agree with that narrative -- right? Well, here's Gail Collins in The New York Times today:

Yeah, what about Congress? The president keeps saying that "Congress is continually briefed" about security issues. In reality, the briefing is pretty much confined to the members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, who are sworn to secrecy. Many of them also have a longstanding record of being in the pocket of the intelligence community. A few of the others had been desperately trying to warn their colleagues about the telephone-call program without breaking their vow of silence. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon did everything but tap dance the information in Morse code....

I wouldn't rely on Congress to keep things under control. It's really up to the president.

But as Adam Serwer says:

Wyden, Udall and Merkley publicly criticized admin over what NSA was doing for years. If their colleagues didn't know they didn't want to.

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) June 8, 2013

When the three of then proposed amendments to make public what NSA was doing, some if the people now saying "I didn't know" voted them down.

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) June 8, 2013

Last year we watched a majority of Senators publicly vote not to know what the NSA was doing. m.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/s…

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) June 8, 2013

I'd love to think that liberals, moderates, Obama-haters, and libertarians are going to join together on this as an issue. I'd love to think that it's going to be like gay marriage or the Iraq War -- we're going to look up and notice that the public has changed its thinking, and politicians start to realize not only that it's politically safe to join the emerging majority, but it's politically risky not to.

But I don't think that's what will happen. I think the center is going to echo the right in making this a story about Obama. I think the goal will be to get and keep Obama under 40% in the polls. I think that's the right's only goal in all this. We can't let that be the only result.

STILL HERE

No, I'm not living until tinfoil after my last post -- I got busy with real-life things (work, etc.) and the day got away from me. I'll be back soon, but for now I'll share this about Surveillancegate, from Aimai in comments:

But I will say that clearly right wing fears that Obama will use this information (such as it is) for nefarious purposes are clearly overblown. If he had his hands on the dirt on the Republican congress he could have passed all his legislation in a single session.

Indeed. And if he were really the modern-day Nixon and had access to massive amounts of secret data, he would have driven the one semi-electable GOP candidate out of the race in 2012 instead of allowing him to win the nomination -- in fact, I think he would arranged to win a 49-state landslide against surprise nominee Herman Cain. Don't you think?

CUI BONO?

So now we know that story is worse: in addition to phone data mining, the government has spying on your Internet use via an ongoing program started late in the Bush era called PRISM, as well as working with credit card companies on surveillance.

Where are all these leaks coming from? Who's informing us of this?

We saw an elaborate PowerPoint presentation of the PRISM program in The Washington Post and The Guardian. Which led to this exchange on Twitter between Marcy Wheeler and Marc Ambinder:

@marcambinder Maybe China. They have access to our internet anyway, right?

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 6, 2013

Is Marcy serious about this? I'm not sure, but she did retweet this:

Fascinating that these leaks abt our surveillance practices come in the 2 days before a tough mtg w/the Chinese about theirs.

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) June 6, 2013

And tweet this:

In fact, if I were a SciFi writer, I'd have China--which has access to this anyway--getting and leaking these documents to fuck w/O/Xi mtg.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 6, 2013

And now ... where is Glenn Greenwald? He lives in Brazil, right?

Well, yes. But he's not in Brazil right now:

Greenwald, an American, is at this moment in Hong Kong, out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction.

And I just heard an NPR interview with Greenwald in Hong Kong.

Coincidence?

NOT ABOUT SURVEILLANCE

This is weird:

Weld County commissioners today announced that they want to join other northeastern Colorado counties in forming a new state -- North Colorado.

Commissioners said a "collective mass" of issues have cumulated over the past several years that isolate rural Colorado from the rest of the state and put those counties at a disadvantage....

Commissioners said Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties all expressed interest in the idea.

More:

"The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be," said U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Yuma. "The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life, and I don't blame these people one bit for feeling attacked and unrepresented by the leaders of our state."...

So what's upsetting them?

The "straws that broke the camel's back" included the signing of SB 252 on Wednesday, which increases renewable energy standards in rural areas in a way that rural energy companies say is too costly.

Commissioner Sean Conway told the Tribune oil and gas and agriculture in particular are being targeted....

Gov. John Hickenlooper's spokesman Eric Brown said "background checks on gun sales, increasing renewable energy and supporting responsible development of oil and gas are popular with rural and urban voters. Not everyone agrees, of course, but we keep trying."

Ahhh -- renewable energy, higher environmental standards for conventional energy developers, and new gun laws. On these subjects, Democrats have succeeded in passing laws Republicans don't like. That's not allowed to happen!

Secession is the only possible remedy!

This could be on the ballot by August 1 -- seriously. (Although the rest of Colorado would apparently have to approve.)

If, as we keep hearing, there's a demographic wave that's going to make a lot of red states less and less red in the coming years, is this going to happen again and again? If Texas goes purple in a decade or two, is it going to split into Blue(-ish) Texas and Jesus-and-Guns Texas? And will secessionists start threatening to shut down state governments if they don't get to secede, the way Republicans have effectively shut down the federal government?

In other words, can we look forward to the biggest, whiniest tantrum in the recent history of self-governance?

We'll see.

EVEN THOUGH POINTING OUT RIGHT-WING HYPOCRISY ON THE NSA IS LIKE SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL...

Story from May 12, 2006:

Fox News Host On NSA Story: Wall Street Won't Let A 'Puny Little Traitor...Take Down Our Market'

The Dow was down 120 points today, prompting Fox News' David Ruder to suggest it was because USA Today made "the country less safe" by running its story on NSA's data mining.

But Fox News host Brenda Butler disagreed, saying that Wall Street would "not going to let some puny, little traitor, some leaker who went ahead and compromised our national security, take down this, take down our market, take down our country." ...

BUTLER: Let me tell you something. Wall Street knows, we are winning this war on terror. They are not afraid that we will win it. They are so secure in President Bush's winning it, they are not going to let some puny, little traitor, some leaker who went ahead and compromised our national security, take down this, take down our market, take down our country, there is no way....

Video clip here. The USA Today story was "NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls." It describes the very program that's in the news today.

So how does Fox feel about that same program now? Is the publicizing of the program a threat to our markets and our country? Is the leaker of the story a traitor?

Er, not exactly:





Gosh, what's changed since 2006?

YOU'RE SOAKING IN IT

At this point we've got multiple lawmakers openly saying "Oh yes, this has been a regular occurrence since 2006."

— Zandar (@ZandarVTS) June 6, 2013

Yup:

UPDATE During a press conference, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the order the Guardian obtained is "the exact three-month renewal" of program underway for the past seven years.

And:

Chambliss: "This is nothing new. This has been going on for 7 years...every member of the U.S. Senate has been advised of this." #NSA

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) June 6, 2013

Also, via David Corn, here's USA Today reporting on this, um, seven years ago:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews....

I'm not saying this should make us feel better. It says we're being surveilled now just the way we've been continuously since 2006. How free did we feel across those years? Yeah, I thought we were a tad freer as of 1/20/09 than we actually were. But I still don't know what abuses this has led to.

And, well, tracking cookies don't make me feel free, especially when I get two days of sidebar ads based on a couple of recent health-related searches (for a condition I don't actually have). And my bank wants to know where I go on vacation -- y'know, just for my sake, to prevent someone is some far-flung place from using my credit and ATM cards -- and thus requests that I inform it of my travel plans.

Up to a point, modern life requires some intrusiveness. Except for a few off-the-gridders, we generally shrug off the notion that government knows where we live, knows when we move, knows about our cars, licenses us to drive, etc., etc. But, um...

Once again the 2nd is caught sleeping as the other Amendments get the dogshit beat out of them. Thanks a lot, you broken down piece of crap

— norbizness (@norbizness) June 6, 2013

Yeah -- God forbid the gummint should know anything about our guns (even though that restraint doesn't protect us from, say, mass surveillance. Presumably because the gunners are mostly right-wingers who saw mass surveillance in the previous administration and said, "Hell yeah! Git 'er done!")

Republicans will demagogue this now, but President Rubio or President Christie or President Cruz will surveill without hesitation. We think President Rand Paul wouldn't, but then we also thought President Obama wouldn't.

I GIVE UP

No, I'm not really giving up. I've been blogging for eleven years to defend progressive ideas in general, but also to defend Democrats against Republicans and the right. It's quite possible that I've done more of the latter than the former. And, yes, when I see a Democratic president doing a Bush-like data sweep of phone metadata, I ask myself what the point is.

But I support Democrats primarily because of the difference between the two parties' approaches to the treatment of ordinary schmucks in this country. I don't love the financial deregulation and welfare cutbacks of Clinton or the corporation-coddling of Obama, but the Clinton tax increase was the right thing to do and the highly inadequate recovery policies of Obama nevertheless did more to put a floor under the Great Recession than austerity did in Europe. And what's most important is that the GOP wish list for the economy amounts to a massive increase in economic inequality -- go look at graphs of wealth transfers under the Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney budget. Then recall that the GOP's 2016 nominee might be Rand Paul, whose own budget is even worse.

So, yes, I'll defend a maddening level of pro-plutocrat corporatism against a wholesale abandonment of the notion that the preservation of a middle class and the amelioration of poverty are worthwhile goals. Add that to Democratic versus Republican attitudes on women's rights, gay rights, the rights of non-whites, the role of immigrants, the limitation of creeping Christian theocracy, guns, voting rights, etc., etc., and yes, I am still going to defend Democrats -- even after this surveillance story, and even after all the civilian drone casualties and so on and so on.

But no, I'm not a happy Democrat today.

Now go read the sixty million identically self-righteous blog posts about all this. Yes, all those people have a point. But I'm not going to write that post. I'll be here waiting for the moment when we're ready to talk about something else.

****

ALSO, TOO: Read Joshua Foust.

RACIST FEDERAL JUDGE COULD HAVE BEEN ON THE SUPREME COURT

Talking Points Memo directs our attention to this:

A coalition of civil rights organizations has filed a judicial misconduct complaint against a staunchly conservative federal judge for allegedly prejudice comments she is accused of making during a recent speech.

Judge Edith Jones of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals addressed the University of Pennsylvania law school on Feb. 20.

Her comments were not recorded. But five students and one attorney who attended signed affidavits stating Jones said certain "racial groups like African Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime."

She also allegedly said they are prone to commit acts of violence.

More, from The Austin Chronicle:

... according to the complaint, Jones asserted as fact the proposition that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to commit violent crimes. When asked to explain her comments, "she stated that there was 'no arguing' that 'Blacks and Hispanics' outnumber 'Anglos' on death row and 'sadly' it was a 'statistical fact' that people 'from these racial groups get involved in more violent crime,'" reads the complaint. As an example, she noted that it is a "fact" that "'a lot of Hispanic people [are] involved in drug trafficking' which itself 'involved a lot of violent crime.'"

She also was reported to have commented on pending cases, some of which she may have to rule on, which is a violation of judicial ethics. Oh, and she seems to have spoken out in favor of the death penalty because it's good for killers' souls:

... according to the complaint, Jones referred to her personal religious views as justification for the death penalty. A killer is "only likely to make peace with God and the victim's family in that moment when the killer faces imminent execution," she said -- a proposition that she said she found evidence for in an article she and her husband found online called "Hanging Concentrates the Mind." (Apparently by Rev. George W. Rutler, in the Catholic magazine Crisis, Feb. 8, 2013.)

Ronald Reagan appointed Jones to the Fifth Circuit in 1985. In 1987, when Lewis Powell retired from the Supreme Court, Orrin Hatch, asked about Powell's replacement, said, "I'd like Edith Jones." Jones was on George H.W. Bush's short list in 1990 when William Brennan retired (Poppy picked David Souter), and he was on George W. Bush's short list in 2005 when William Rehnquist died (Shrub picked John Roberts for the chief justice slot rather than elevating one of the sitting justices).

One reason Jones is a right-wing hero is opinion in a 2004 case filed by Norma McCorvey, the formerly pseudonymous Roe of Roe v. Wade and subsequently an abortion opponent, who sought to have Roe overturned. Jones concurred in the court's decision not to overturn Roe, but only on procedural grounds. She made clear what she thinks of the decision:

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Norma McCorvey's attempt Tuesday to reopen the 1973 Roe v. Wade case legalizing abortion.

But one judge on the three-judge panel, Houston's Edith H. Jones, saw fit to use the ruling to blast the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark abortion ruling....

She ... authored a strongly worded four-page concurring opinion that called the Roe decision an "exercise of raw judicial power." McCorvey, she wrote, "presented evidence that goes to the heart of the balance Roe struck between the choice of a mother and the life of her unborn child."

Jones, appearing to agree with all of McCorvey's evidence, stated, "If courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with present-day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe Court knew."

She continued: "The perverse result of the Court's having determined through constitutional adjudication of this fundamental social policy, which affects over a million women and unborn babies each year, is that the facts no longer matter."

And (via Steve Benen) there's this:

She also wrote a 1997 opinion throwing out a federal ban on the possession of machine guns and has been an advocate for toughening bankruptcy laws.

No wonder the wingers love her. And now we know what she thinks of people who aren't white.

****

More at Memeorandum.

CAN SAMANTHA POWER'S APPOINTMENT SURVIVE A RIDE ON THE RIGHT-WING CRAZY TRAIN?

I see that national security adviser Tom Donilon is stepping down. President Obama plans to replace Donilon with UN ambassador Susan Rice, whose appointment as NSA doesn't require Senate approval, but the appointment of her replacement at the UN does -- and her replacement is said to be Samantha Power.

So what will the reaction be among the crazies who set the agenda for Republican officeholders?

It could be rather shrill. Here are some excerpts from an October blog post by Diane West, a right-wing syndicated columnist with some mainstream cred and the author of a new book called American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character:

At her indispensable blog Refugee Resettlement Watch, Ann Corcoran wonders: "Are they keeping Samantha Power under wraps now so she won't be tainted by the Libya scandal washing over Washington? And, why would they do that?"

Power, with Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton, form the troika of "humanitarian vulcans" that helped drive Obama's Libya intervention, sending Uncle Sam to join the jihad. Rice and Clinton have been thoroughly "Benghazi'ed" since the consulate attack, with more of the same likely in store. Power, however, has not been part of the conversation.... Ann thinks the silence on Power is calculated to save her from Benghazi-gate....

West goes on to quote Corcoran's blog post:

First, who is Samantha Power?

* Power was born in Ireland and is a protege of George Soros. Update: Here is a better link connecting Soros and Power....

* She is married to Cass Sunstein, former "regulatory czar" in the Obama White House and author of a book Glenn Beck highlighted at length entitled "Nudge" and I think its self-evident where he wants to nudge us to!

(Sunstein is a wingnut Antichrist, as I explain below. --S.M.)

* Power called Hillary Clinton a "monster" during the 2008 Presidential campaign....

* In Edward Klein's book, "The Amateur", she was quoted as saying she was sick of doing "rinkey-dink do-gooder stuff" like refugee issues. Here is the quote as reported by Klein:

Among Obama's foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, the far-out leftist firebrand, complained that the administration's cautious, first-dono-harm, approach to the Arab Spring had effectively sidelined her in White House Councils. She said she'd been relegated to "doing rinky-dink do-gooder stuff," such as advocating on behalf of beleaguered Christians in Iraq, and no longer had as much access to the President. She was itching to get back in the fray, and she saw an opportunity in Libya.

* So, she got herself in the catbird seat on Libya and became the architect for our involvement in Libya! (and what do you know—they produced more refugees!)

(Overheated emphasis as in West's post.)

And here's Amateur author Edward Klein in a June 2012 Accuracy in Media interview talking about Power:

KLEIN: Samantha Powers is a former Harvard professor who believes, and has written, that the United States is responsible for a lot of bad things in the world, and that we should go and apologize to the rest of the world. She has said so. She thinks that Willy Brandt getting down on his knees in front of the Holocaust Museum, or whatever, in Germany was the way the President should behave -- and we've seen the President doing just that. She is in the National Security Council; she is one of his chief political advisors -- very, very far left, and very anti-Israeli. Until his Israel policy blew up in his face, and he had to back off, Obama was following in Samantha Powers' footsteps.

So to sum up: linked to Soros, enabled Obama's "apology tour," enabled the evildoers in Libya, up to her eyeballs in Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! but sneaky enough to avoid consequences, and hates Israel. Oh, and one of her principal haters is self-promoting blowhard and Murdoch media mainstay Edward Klein, who was all over Fox just a couple of days ago on unrelated matters, and will certainly turn up there once or twice or fifty times in the coming days.

I think I hear Ted Cruz already doing vocal exercises, in preparation for the talking filibuster.

And I haven't even gotten to Power's husband, Cass Sunstein, who has been denounced by both Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Beck for suggesting in a 2008 academic paper (and I'll have to admit I'm not exactly on board with this myself) that governments might combat conspiracy theories by sending people to online or real-world forums where such theories are discussed so that those people might refute the arguments. He did not suggest banning conspiracy theories, though, in the manner of an academic, he did list banning as a response a government could theoretically take. For this sort of thing, Beck calls him "the most dangerous man in America," suggesting that he might be responsible -- this was in April 2010 -- for the fact that people were being photographed at tea party rallies with racist signs. Sunsteinian infitration!

There's much, much more -- see this compilation by Oliver Willis. (Sunstein wants to ban hunting! Sunstein is more powerful than the Federal Reserve!) And it's not just Beck:

Fox's Sean Hannity claimed that Sunstein wanted to "force sterilizations," which was untrue.

Rush Limbaugh said Sunstein "want[s] to control the Internet," but omitted Sunstein's description of that policy as a "bad idea." ...

Appearing on Beck's show, Fox's Andrew Napolitano said that Sunstein's "potential damage is limitless."

Fox Business host David Asman accused Sunstein of advocating for the "creation of a Ministry of Truth" and said his ideas "add up to fascism."

Clear Channel radio host Jim Quinn described Sunstein as a "Nazi."

So, yeah, I think we're all going for a ride on the crazy train.

CHRISTIE: NOT JUST AFRAID, BUT AFRAID OF NOTHING

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what a boneheaded decision Chris Christie made with regard to the upcoming special election to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Facing a reelection campaign in a blue state, Christie didn't want to anger Democrats by appointing a placeholder Republican and postponing the election until 2014; on the other hand, he wasn't going to alienate Republicans whose votes he wants in a 2016 presidential campaign by appointing a Democrat. And yet he didn't want the popular Democrat Cory Booker on the ballot this November as he's running for reelection. So he scheduled a special election a few weeks before the election he's running in -- and that's a big waste of money, which makes a mockery of his fiscal conservative image, particularly among his fellow Republicans. ("I think this ends his 2016 chances. It's year after year with this guy," says a Republican official quoted by National Journal.)

But what the hell is Christie afraid of?

Is he afraid he might lose in November? Check the polls. Before Hurricane Sandy and the Obama bro moment, Christie led Democrat Barbara Buono by 16 points in Quinnipiac poll. After Sandy? Christie has led Buono by anywhere from 30 to 43 points in thirteen consecutive polls. So if Booker on the ballot brings out a few voters who don't like Christie and who otherwise might not have shown up at the polls, what the hell difference does it make? Maybe Christie wins by 15 rather than 30. So what?

I know, I know: He wants a huge victory. A huge victory will show that he has the juice to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2016.

You know who went into the 2012 GOP presidential campaign coming off a huge victory? Jon freaking Huntsman. He was reelected as governor of Utah in 2008 with 77.7% of the vote. Fat lot of good it did him.

By contrast, do you remember who was the last guy standing against Mitt Romney in the 2012 primaries? Rick Santorum -- a guy who'd lost his last race by 18 points.

The idea thAT you need a huge victory to set the table for a presidential run is something only political pros and mavens think about -- the public doesn't care. And in fact, if you're running in a Republican primary, it probably helps not to run up a big victory. Win too many independent and Democratic votes and the GOP base will really think you're a filthy RINO. (Which, of course, already Christie's problem.)

And how much of a threat would Booker's presence on the ballot be to Christie anyway? National Journal says:

With Booker as the favored Democratic Senate nominee, less-reliable Democratic voters, particularly African-Americans, would be more likely to show up at the polls.

Here's an interesting thing I found in a February Quinnipiac poll: Booker's favorability rating among African-Americans in New Jersey is not much higher (67%) than his favorability among whites (58%). He's not Barack Obama -- at least not yet. He's more like Barack Obama before the 2008 primaries. (Remember when it seemed as if he might have to battle Hillary Clinton for the African-American vote?)

So Christie didn't have the guts to be on the ballot with Booker. And now he looks gutless.

JUST A REMINDER THAT PHIL BRYANT DOESN'T THINK ALL MOTHERS SHOULD STAY OUT OF THE WORKFORCE

It appears that Phil Bryant, Mississippi's Republican governor, has (in the words of Ed Kilgore) "crossed the Todd Akin Line":

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said Tuesday that America's educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers.

Bryant was participating in a Washington Post Live event focused on the importance of ensuring that children read well by the end of third grade. In response to a question about how America became "so mediocre" in regard to educational outcomes, he said:

I think both parents started working. The mom got in the work place.

Yeah, those dames -- they started to work outside the home and the whole country went to hell in a handbasket. Won't somebody think of the children?

Well, not all the children, of course. As it turns out, Governor Bryant thinks it's appalling that some mothers don't work outside the home.

You know -- those mothers.

You'll recall that last year the Romney campaign tried to make a big issue out of the notion that the Obama administration had "gutted" the welfare-to-work requirements of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF) -- a line of attack based on a greatly distorted reading of what the administration was trying to do. Now, keep in mind that the vast majority of TANF adult recipients are female (only 14.8% are male).

Well, Governor Bryant's contribution to that discussion was an open letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (PDF; also here) in which he expressed horror at the thought that fewer of the (mostly female) TANF recipients might work outside the home, and boasted about how many recipients were working in his state:

... By eliminating the work requirements, you are creating a dangerous policy precedent and deterring Americans from becoming more self-sufficient. The existing work requirement should remain intact and any reauthorization proposal of TANF should incentivize personal accountability to move from welfare to work.

... Mississippi has been recognized as having the highest TANF Work Program Participation Rate in the nation. In 2011, our state's TANF Work Program Participation Rate was 70.06%....

In this case, women in the workforce are good!

And there isn't a word in the entire letter about the risk to education, curiously enough.

WHILE YOU'RE WATCHING THE NICE LADY FROM THE TEA PARTY COMPLAIN ABOUT PERSECUTION....

Today's news:

Six groups have been scheduled to give first-person accounts of the IRS's targeting of conservative organizations on Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee announced Monday....

Four ... groups that have representatives scheduled to testify -- the Laurens County Tea Party, the Wetumpka Tea Party, the San Fernando Valley Patriots and the Linchpins of Liberty -- are all among the roughly 25 groups taking part in a lawsuit against the IRS filed by the American Center for Law and Justice....

I see that Diane Belsom of the Laurens County Tea Party in South Carolina is ready to testify (or may already have begun to testify). I hope the conversation isn't limited to how mean the IRS was to her and how much she loves freedom and the Constitution and our American way of life. I hope she gets around to talking about the speech her fourteen-year-old daughter, Desiree, delivered to a tea party rally last year, in which she compared modern-day America to the dystopia of The Hunger Games:

...The most popular movie right now of my generation is titled: “The Hunger Games.” It’s set 75 years from now, in a society completely ruled by the government. The general population lives in sheer poverty, while a few select elites profit from the system of total government control. The most frightening thing about the movie is that America is fast becoming the totalitarian world of the Hunger Games....

By getting involved in your local Tea Party- you can make a difference. You can stop America from becoming the totalitarian world of the Hunger Games. You can stop the national debt from increasing even more. You can stop Obama from being re-elected. You can ensure a better future for yourself, your children, and your grandchildren. And even though you're just one person, and I’m just one person, if we all work together, we can change the world. There is strength in numbers- will you join me?

And I hope Desiree's mom gets to chat about the Laurens County Tea Party's deep concerns about the threats of Agenda 21 and sharia law in America:





I think it would be enlightening if she were allowed to show the committee members portions of the linked videos:

Y'know, just so America can grasp the true nature of these persecuted patriots.

BOB WOODWARD: BUT AREN'T ALL PRESIDENTS NIXONS?

The Obama administration says that the White House wasn't involved in any IRS irregularities, but Bob Woodward says that's nonsense because, well, it just is:

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward says the Obama administration has explaining to do on the IRS scandal and needs to answer questions about who knew what, when.

"This fiction that somehow [The IRS is] totally an independent agency is absurd," the legendary journalist said Monday on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News, saying that in the Nixon era, the Treasury secretary refused to audit Democratic groups when the IRS commissioner was asked to do so by the White House.

"Clearly in the pipeline, lots of people knew some of this or should know it...."

Here's what Woodward said to O'Reilly (video at Fox News Insider):

It's part of the government. This fiction that somehow it's totally an independent agency is absurd. When George Shultz was the treasury secretary for Nixon, and the IRS commissioner at the time, Johnny Walters, came to see Shultz and said, "The White House wants me to audit this list of Democrats," you know what George Shultz did? He said, "If they want me to do that, they can get a new treasury secretary." He refused to do it. Clearly, in the pipeline, lots of people knew some of this, or should know it.

Wait -- that's your argument, Bob? The IRS must have been politicized by someone high up in the White House, because it was politicized that way under Nixon, the most criminal-minded president of our lifetime? Isn't that like looking at Rob Ford and Marion Barry and concluding that when any big-city mayor does something ill-advised, it must be because the mayor was smoking crack, because that's what mayors do?

I understand the suspicion, but "Nixon did it, so they all do it" hardly constitutes proof.

SITE MANAGEMENT, AGAIN

The switchover to Disqus comments seems to have been a big flop, so I'm in the process -- I hope -- of restoring the old system. Hoping it works....

(For now I seem to have no comment program operating, but I hope that will resolve itself soon.)

UPDATE: It's back to normal now. And the old Blogger comments are back.

OH, PLEASE: STOCKHOLM DEMOCRATS WILL STILL HAVE A CHRISTIE CRUSH IF HE APPOINTS A REPUBLICAN

Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey died today at age 89. After pausing briefly to express condolences, the political world turned to speculation about Lautenberg's replacement -- Governor Chris Christie gets to pick a temporary replacement until voters elect a new senator in November 2013 or November 2014 (it's still not clear when the election will take place).

In reaction to this, The Atlantic's usually astute Elspeth Reeve sees a dilemma for Christie where there really isn't one:

... it's yet another moment when what's good for Christie in 2013 might not be good for him in 2016. Christie, after all, is a Republican running a state that voted for President Obama by almost 18 points. "Replacing a Democrat with a Democrat and then saying the voters should decide what happens next in November would no doubt be very well-received by Democrats and moderates," The Washington Post's Sean Sullivan writes. But that would mean Republicans who are already annoyed with Christie and his Obama-hugging antics would disown him.

To understand the difficult position Christie's in, look at this two tweets: "What lucky Democrat will Democrat Chris Christie appoint to Sen. Frank Lautenberg's seat?" noted conservative thriller author Brad Thor asks. Salon's Joan Walsh adds: "Hey Dem donors giving to Chris Christie: will you rethink if he picks a Republican to replace Lautenberg?"

... "Rumors have abounded for months that Christie was considering appointing Cory Booker," Politico's Maggie Habermann and Ginger Gibson write. "However, sources close to both men have insisted this scenario makes no sense for either of them."

... if Christie appoints a right-winger, he angers the Democrats he needs to be reelected....

Everyone, please take a deep breath. Christie is not going to appoint Cory Booker. Christie is not going to appoint any Democrat. And Democrats will still vote for him in November when he runs for reelection.

Before Hurricane Sandy hit, Chris Christie had spent most of his term as governor bashing Democrats, liberals, and especially labor, in as boorish a fashion as possible. Here's what he said about President Obama about a week before the hurricane reached the Jersey Shore:

Speaking before supporters at Ball Office Products in Richmond Friday, Christie ripped into President Barack Obama.

"You've been living inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for the last four years," Christie said. "If you don't think you can change Washington from inside the White House let's give you the plane ticket back to Chicago you've earned."

Christie riled up the Richmond crowd saying that Obama is arrogant for believing he can't change Washington politics.

"If he believes that, then what the hell is he doing asking for another four years?" Christie said. "We're happy to give you a bus ticket to the outside, Mr. President."

Christie added that Obama is "blindly walking around the White House looking for a clue."

"He's like a man wandering around a dark room, hands up against the wall, clutching for the light switch of leadership and he just can't find it."

That was October 19, 2012. Twelve days later, Christie and Obama got together to assess storm damage -- and Democrats swooned, forgetting that speech and nearly three years of Democrat-, liberal-, and labor-bashing. To me, watching it was like watching a battered spouse take back an abuser after seeing one bouquet of flowers in the abuser's hand.

But that's Dems for ya. By January, Christie was polling better among Democrats than among Republicans nationwide.

Just meeting with Obama every so often -- there they were again last week -- has Christie ready to blow away an actual Democrat in his reelection bid. He doesn't have to change his policies. He doesn't have to change his rhetoric. All he has to do is throw a few bro-hugs at the president and Dems' hearts skip a beat. So why should we expect Dems to care if Christie names a Republican to fill the rest of Lautenberg's term, as long as the Republican is at least a few inches to the left of Ted Cruz (as nearly all New Jersey Republicans are)? BooMan's right -- he could easily pick Christie Whitman or Tom Kean, both of whom are seen as "nice" Republicans by many Democrats.

Christie's could have a harder time winning back Republicans for 2016 -- but maybe he's not planning to run, or maybe he figures he'll start tacking right again ten minutes after the polls close in November. The GOP's last two presidential nominees had to overcome RINO reputations, so why not Christie? He knows he's good at bamboozling an entire party's voters.

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE ADVOCATED BLISTER PACKS FOR PAINKILLERS...

Dr Ezekiel Emanuel notes that suicides, including suicides by poisoning, have been on the rise in recent years, and in response he makes a perfectly rational proposal:

We need to make it harder to buy pills in bottles of 50 or 100 that can be easily dumped out and swallowed. We should not be selling big bottles of Tylenol and other drugs that are typically implicated in overdoses, like prescription painkillers and Valium-type drugs, called benzodiazepines. Pills should be packaged in blister packs of 16 or 25. Anyone who wanted 50 would have to buy numerous blister packages and sit down and push out the pills one by one. Turns out you really, really have to want to commit suicide to push out 50 pills. And most people are not that committed.

How do we know this would work? Because it already has:

In September 1998, Britain changed the packaging for paracetamol, the active ingredient in Tylenol, to require blister packs for packages of 16 pills when sold over the counter in places like convenience stores, and for packages of 32 pills in pharmacies. The result: a study by Oxford University researchers showed that over the subsequent 11 or so years, suicide deaths from Tylenol overdoses declined by 43 percent, and a similar decline was found in accidental deaths from medication poisonings. In addition, there was a 61 percent reduction in liver transplants attributed to Tylenol toxicities.

Of course, this idea horrifies right-wingers. Ann Althouse sneers:

But if we could save one life... the life of the insufficiently committed... suicidal but too lazy to poke enough pills out of the blister packs...

You know the type. For them, life is not worth the trouble. And then suddenly killing yourself is also a lot of trouble. What's more trouble? Living or these damned blister packs?

Conventional wisdom says that the suicidal will always find a way to kill themselves. It turns out that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Go read this New York Times Magazine story on suicide. The British switched from carbon-monoxide-producing coal gas to natural gas in the 1960s and 1970 and absolute suicide numbers declined by a third; a suicide barrier was erected on the Ellington Bridge in Washington, D.C., and suicides there declined, without any increase on the nearby Taft Bridge. And UC-Berkeley professor Richard Seiden learned that merely preventing a suicide once can be sufficient:

In the late 1970s, Seiden set out to test the notion of inevitability in jumping suicides. Obtaining a Police Department list of all would-be jumpers who were thwarted from leaping off the Golden Gate between 1937 and 1971 -- an astonishing 515 individuals in all -- he painstakingly culled death-certificate records to see how many had subsequently "completed." His report, "Where Are They Now?" remains a landmark in the study of suicide, for what he found was that just 6 percent of those pulled off the bridge went on to kill themselves. Even allowing for suicides that might have been mislabeled as accidents only raised the total to 10 percent.

"That's still a lot higher than the general population, of course," Seiden, 75, explained to me over lunch in a busy restaurant in downtown San Franciso. "But to me, the more significant fact is that 90 percent of them got past it. They were having an acute temporary crisis, they passed through it and, coming out the other side, they got on with their lives."

Wesley J. Smith of National Review is a appalled in a more traditionally right-wing way:

I believe in reasonable regulations to protect public safety, for example, requiring that an odor be put into natural gas and the wearing of seatbelts in cars....

Like I said, reasonable regulation is legitimate. But at what point does too much become too much?

Show of hands: Who believes that Wesley J. Smith -- or any National Review writer -- would be in favor of requiring seatbelt use in cars, or putting an odor in natural gas, if we weren't doing these things already! (The cost! The nanny-statism! Our precious freedom!)

Ezekiel Emanuel has worked in the Obama White House. His brother used to be Obama's chief of staff and is now the mayor of Chicago. His other brother is a big kahuna in evil liberal Hollyweird. We're never going to do anything like this precisely because a guy like Ezekiel Emanuel thinks it's a good idea.

If we want this to happen, liberals have to oppose it. We have to persuade the right that we think big bottles of Tylenol have to stay on the market because taking them off the market would discriminate against transsexuals of color with multiple disabilities. Also, that George Soros makes billions of dollars off Tylenol suicide.

Get them to believe that, and then we'll switch to blister packs.

****

UPDATE: Good point here.

@nomoremister Tell the GOP that blister-packs require lots of useless, environmentally-unfriendly plastic and the GOP will love them.

— Elizabeth Eastwood (@BethEastwood) June 3, 2013

Indeed.

ACCORDING TO MARCO RUBIO, CONGRESS IS NOT PART OF THE GOVERNMENT

Politico describes the latest stumbling block Republicans (led by Marco Rubio) want to place in the way of immigration reform:

The Gang of Eight's hopes for a Senate supermajority is running into the GOP's push for a dramatic crackdown on border security....

[Senator Marco] Rubio, a key member of the Gang of Eight, is shopping around a proposal to have Congress -- not the Department of Homeland Security -- write the border control strategy that would be a prerequisite for most of the other elements of reform. Rubio hasn't yet landed on specific parameters, but, arguing that Americans don't trust their government to get it right, Rubio wants lawmakers to craft the plan at the outset, rather than leave the details up to the Obama administration.

Yup -- Congress should do this because "Americans don't trust their government to get it right." Congress, apparently, is not part of the government, according to Rubio.

I thought that might just be an inaccurate paraphrase of what Rubio is saying, but apparently not:

[Rubio's] invoking the IRS scandal to sell his proposal.

"The lack of trust in the federal government -- by the way, not made any better by the events of the last few days, things we've learned the federal government has done in other realms, whether it's the IRS or other things," Rubio said. "The lack of trust in the federal government, and in particular, in this administration, makes it even harder to convince people that coming up with a plan like this on its own is good enough. So maybe the solution is to have Congress actually write that plan for them."

Senator? You're in the upper house of Congress. You're part of "the federal government." (And, of course, you're part of the branch of the federal government with a 15% approval rating; the president's is more than three times as high.)

But Rubio is just tapping into a popular right-wing meme: the notion that only the parts of the government controlled by Republicans are legitimate. Recall that when Newt Gingrich's hordes took over Congress after the 1994 midterms, he tried to turn himself into the pseudo-president of the United States, while Bill Clinton had to insist that, yes, the actual presidency was still relevant. By contrast, when Democrats regained control of Congress after the 2006 midterms, the notion that they might try to act in ways that displeased the Republican president of the United States was deemed utterly outrageous by the right and center alike.

Rubio's desire to put this aspect of immigration policy under congressional control suggests that he and his fellow Republicans are pretty confident that their party will control Congress forever. Of course, given the way House districts lead to GOP majorities even when a majority of the total House vote goes to Democrats, and given the fact that all Republicans ever need to control the Senate is a 41-vote superminority, that may be a safe assumption.

SITE MANAGEMENT

I've switched to Disqus for comments. The Blogger comments have disappeared for now, but allegedly they've been imported and will reappear in a day or so. (UPDATE: They seem to be there now.) I'm hoping this will be painless for everyone; apologies for any inconvenience.

IS MITT ROMNEY RUNNING FOR SOMETHING?

I'm a bit puzzled by the release -- read it at Time's Swampland blog! buy it at Amazon! -- of the transition plans for the Romney presidency:

In the months before the 2012 election, a group of high-powered consultants and political operatives prepared a secret report for candidate Mitt Romney, explaining how he should take over and restructure the federal government should he win the presidency.

...On May 29, the Romney Readiness Project, the Republican candidate's transition organization known as R2P, published a 138-page report detailing how it prepared for a potential Romney victory. It is the product of a team of nearly 500, who labored in Washington and around the country to be ready to help Romney assume the reins of power on January 20th, 2013....

The report is already being justifiably mocked for how blatantly it flies the (gray) flannel:

"The White House staff is similar to a holding company" read one PowerPoint slide, which would have been presented to President-elect Romney as part of an expansive briefing on the morning after Election Day....

Among the recommendations for the Romney administration:

* Corporate-style training seminars were planned for appointees and nominees before the inauguration to teach management skills.
* A plan to restructure White House operations to suit Romney's corporate management style, with clear deliverables....

But I think it's meant to impress us, not make us laugh (even though we already knew about the alleged brilliance this project after word of it was spoon-fed to the press shortly after the election).

The fact that the report emerges the same week as an Ann Romney interview on CBS makes me wonder if Mitt is trying to get back in the game. I he hoping to run for senator or governor somewhere? And if so, where? Massachusetts? New Hampshire? Michigan? Utah? California? So many potential home states to choose from.

But I think I speak for much of America when I say: Mitt, just stay away.

*****

UPDATE: Headline typo fixed.

I SMELL LINKBAIT

Sorry, Charlie Cook, I don't buy this:

... The Cook [Political Report] announced Thursday that it was shifting its prediction for the [Massachusetts Senate] race from "leaning Democrat" to "toss up," although the group acknowledged it still had its "thumb on the scale" for Democrat Edward Markey, an 18-term congressman who has consistently polled ahead of his Republican rival, businessman Gabriel Gomez.

"In truth, we have had a difficult time accepting the idea that this race might get close," wrote Cook's Jennifer Duffy. "At the same time, Democrats nominated a long-serving member of Congress at a time when Congress is an almost universally unpopular institution...."

OK, stop right there. This is America. What do we think of Congress? We hate it. What do we do when members of Congress are up for reelection? We return well over 90% of them to office. Our hatred of Congress doesn't extend to our members of Congress. And while I know that Markey isn't literally running for reelection, he is a familiar figure who's won a lot of races.

And let's look at the numbers, as compiled by Real Clear Politics. Quiz question: How would you characterize the following numbers -- "toss-up" or "leans Democratic"?





Here's how this category change gets rationalized:

... more than half of Massachusetts voters are registered as independents, and Gomez will need to get as many of them as possible to the polls June 25.

Recent history suggests that's possible. In 2010, Republican Scott Brown won a similar special election on the strength of his support from independents, who voted for him 2 to 1 over Democratic Martha Coakley, according to a postelection poll by The Washington Post.

Martha Coakley ran an awful race, in the first flush of the teabag moment. This is a very different contest.

In a Public Policy Polling survey released in mid-May, Gomez had 56 percent of the independent vote -- up from 47 percent at the beginning of the month.

Yes, but that PPP survey (PDF) showed Markey gaining and Gomez's favorability numbers declining:

Public Policy Polling's newest survey of the US Senate election in Massachusetts finds Ed Markey's lead over Gabriel Gomez growing to 7 points at 48/41, up from a 4 point margin right after the primary election 2 weeks ago....

Markey's consolidating his party base, going from a 68/21 lead with Democratic voters two weeks ago to a 77/12 one now. That suggests that voters who supported Stephen Lynch in the primary election are starting to unify more around Markey now....

Gomez's net favorability has declined by 6 points in the last two weeks from +14 at 41/27 previously to now +8 at 42/34. Most notably he's gone from 33/32 with Democrats right after the primary to now 20/52, suggesting that the more Democrats learn about him the less crossover appeal he has.

Which is similar to what we learn from the latest survey of the race, from Emerson College Polling Society, a poll that has Markey leading by 12, up from a 6-point lead three weeks ago (PDF):

Felix Chen, President of ECPS, said "the data suggests that Markey's domination of the air waves with television ads are having the intended effect of allowing him to define his opponent, which has lowered the favorable opinion of Gomez, while increasing his own support from undecided voters".

The survey shows that more Independent voters moving toward Markey. In the May 1 poll, Gomez led this group by 21 points (46% to 25%) but now Gomez holds only an 11 point lead (43% to 32%) among Independents....

According to Juliet Albin, an ECPS analyst, "Gomez's overall favorability has dropped 4 points (from 45% to 41%) while his unfavorable opinion has increased by 10 points (25% to 35%)". Moreover, Markey has slightly increased his favorable opinion up to the 50% threshold, which according to Albin is a standard indicator of electoral success.

*****

Why is Cook reclassifying this race? Maybe it's out of a sincere belief that it could just as easily go Republican as Democratic. But we know from 2012 that Republicans, including Republican political pros, would rather hear happy news about their electoral prospects than the truth.

Maybe Cook is just trying to give them what they want. Maybe Cook assumes that the "create our on reality" party will perk up in response to an inspiring delusion.

WHAT NON-SCANDAL ARE THE RIGHT-WINGERS FREAKING OUT ABOUT NOW?

The usual right-wing shriekers are making noise about this Daily Caller story:

Former IRS commissioner Shulman's wife works for liberal group fighting open campaign spending

Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman ... is married to the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an "organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics."

... Shulman's wife Susan L. Anderson is the senior program advisor for the Washington-based nonprofit organization Public Campaign, which claims that it "is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system."

How horrible! These people want to oppress poor, suffering billionaires and large corporations!

...Public Campaign receives "major funding" from the pro-Obamacare alliance Health Care for America NOW!, which is comprised of the labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the progressive activist organization Move On, among others....

Know who else provides major funding for Public Campaign? Extreme, America-hating radical-left organizations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York -- yup, the lunatic fringe. Also the Committee for Economic Development, whose CEO is a big commie named Steve Odland:

Mr. Odland brings to CED an extensive business background, serving as Chairman & CEO of Office Depot, Inc. from 2005-2010; Chairman, President & CEO of AutoZone, Inc. from 2001 until 2005; and President & CEO of Tops Markets, Inc. from 1998 to 2000....

Mr. Odland also possesses a strong policy background. From 2004 to 2006, he was Chairman of the Business Roundtable's Corporate Governance Task Force. Previously, Odland was a U.S. Presidential appointee as a Commissioner on the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission; a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation; a U.S. Presidential Appointee on the Council on Service and Civic Participation; and a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Corporate Ethics....

One member of Public Campaign's board of directors is an evil lefty named Whitney North Seymour, Jr.:

He was the Republican nominee for Congress in New York's 17th District in 1968, but was defeated by Democrat Ed Koch.... Seymour was also an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1982....

During his term as United States Attorney, Seymour represented the United States Government in seeking to stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

Oh, but:

Seymour was independent counsel or special prosecutor in the case of Michael Deaver, a senior aide to President Ronald Reagan, who was convicted of perjury in 1987.

So, yeah, I guess he was the kind of Republican who may as well have been a card-carrying communist. Whoops! Never mind!

MORE FROM CATHIE ADAMS: THE SECRET INTERNATIONALIST CAPITALIZATION AGENDA!

You may have seen this story:

A speaker at a tea party event in Texas recently suggested that that anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist was a secret Muslim because "he has a beard."

In a video posted by the Far North Dallas Tea Party on Thursday, Texas Eagle Forum President and former Chairman of the Texas Republican Party Cathie Adams presented evidence that Norquist was part of a "stealth jihad" in the United States....

"As you see, he has a beard," she pointed out. “He's married a Muslim woman. But he denies that he has converted himself. He denies that."

... Adams went on to suggest that CIA Director John Brennan could also be a secret Muslim....

Late last year, Adams also said that "Barack Hussein Obama has got to have a teleprompter because he fried his brain on drugs" (in the midst of a rant in which she argued that the "green agenda" is a smokescreen for Marxism). But my favorite Cathie Adams rant involved the Great Capitalization Conspiracy:

Adams said that environmentalists are blasphemers because "these people worship the creation instead of the Creator" and that is why "our children are being taught now in public schools to capitalize the "E" of "Earth"; it is an object of worship."

This gets truly bizarre. She gets to capitalization via Mikhail Gorbachev and an aspirational document called the Earth Charter, which inspired an artwork called the Ark of Hope, which eventually gets to Agenda 21 via Poppy Bush ... um, well, I'll let her explain (with some call-and-response from a fine, upstanding citizen in the audience):

ADAMS: The entire green issue is green on the outside and Marxist red on the inside. It's like a watermelon. But we also know from Mikhail Gorbachev that he is an unabashed atheist. And the green agenda is written into a document called the Earth Charter. And it's very short. You can find it online. But when one woman, an artist, read it, she said, "This is such a holy document that I'm going to construct this ark." And so that part was presented in 2002 at Johannesburg, South Africa, to encase the Earth Charter.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Blasphemy.

ADAMS: Yes, it is blasphemy. But these people worship the creation, not the Creator. That is the green agenda. They also will inject, at times, Gaia worship, or earth worship. That's why our children are being taught now in public schools to capitalize the "E" of "Earth." It is an object of worship, rather than worshipping the Creator.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: New Age.

ADAMS: Yeah, it is New Age. [Break in video]

ADAMS: The second treaty is called the climate change treaty. This is why George H.W. Bush went to Rio de Janeiro. He went to sign two documents: one was climate change, and two was Agenda 21. So if anyone tells you that "Oh, well, Agenda 21 is just a soft-law document, it's not even a treaty, it came out of UN, why do I care?," well, why did George H.W. Bush, president of the United States, go to Rio de Janeiro to sign the document?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: A traitor.

ADAMS: Well, let me also ask you: did he not also call for something like a "new world order" in a State of the Union address?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Amen. Sure did.

ADAMS: I tell you, folks, that this climate change treaty is exactly the new world order.

Yes, this woman was once the chair of the Republican Party of Texas. I weep for my country.

****

By the way, Merriam-Webster's says that "earth" is "often capitalized" when used as the name of one of the planets in our solar system, but not in other contexts.

FOX PLAYS IDEOLOGICAL TELEPHONE AGAIN

Headline at Fox Nation:




What the linked story (from CNN) actually says:

IRS collects docs from 88 employees in investigation

The Internal Revenue Service has told House GOP investigators they have identified 88 IRS employees who may have documents relevant to the congressional investigation into targeting of conservative groups, according to a congressional source familiar with the investigation....

Republicans are privately preparing to seize on the fact that if nearly 90 IRS employees may have been somehow involved in this targeting, it is evidence that the controversy extends well beyond the mistakes by a few low level employees.

However, with no documents in hand, there is no way to know how many of the employees being asked to preserve documents were truly involved in the activity in question....

Oh.

So instead of nearly 90 IRS employees definitely being involved, we have a maximum of 88 employees who may have relevant documents. Um, that's rather different.

The folks at Fox Nation know that, of course. The inaccurate paraphrase is no accident. That's a standard Fox propaganda technique: getting the facts wrong in a way that seems inadvertent but that nudges a story much further into the right-wing outrage zone (and gullible-centrist outrage zone).