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Obama Nominates Benghazi Scapegoat for Promotion

Kevin Drum — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:58:05 +0000

The State Department spokeswoman who earlier this month found herself in the middle of the controversy surrounding key revisions to the Benghazi talking points appears to be in line for a promotion. The White House announced Thursday that President Barack Obama intends to nominate Victoria Nuland as assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, a position that requires Senate confirmation.

On a substantive basis, I know nothing about Nuland and have no opinion about whether she's well qualified for this position. On a political basis, hoo boy. Obama is waving a red cape in front of a bull here. The only question is, on a scale of 1 to 10, just how loathsome and shameless can the attacks from the Fox News set get over this? I'm going to predict it'll be about an 8. Give Ted Cruz a few minutes to warm up and he'll be claiming that Nuland's suggested changes to the Benghazi talking points should be prosecuted as a war crime.

What's more, this comes on the heels of rumors that Obama plans to appoint Susan Rice as his National Security Advisor. Rice, of course, has already been attacked by Republicans about as viciously and shamelessly as any State Department lieutenant in recent memory. But it's worth keeping in mind that there is a difference between the two women. In the Benghazi affair, Rice did nothing wrong, but she also did nothing especially noteworthy. Nuland, as near as I can tell, actually did yeoman work. The first draft of the CIA talking points was sloppily drafted and full of information that needed to be kept classified. Nuland firmly pushed back on this stuff, and eventually got it removed—which is exactly what she should have done. No good deed goes unpunished, of course, as I think we're all about to find out.

On a gossipy note, this sure seems to suggest that Obama is tired of kowtowing to the know nothings in the GOP. And good for him. This is obviously a political risk, but apparently he doesn't care anymore. He thinks Nuland is the best person for the job, so he's nominating her. If the whackjobs start frothing at the mouth over it, let 'em froth.

Corn on MSNBC: Obama Speech Grapples with Security and Civil Liberties Issues

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:22:02 +0000

Wednesday, US attorney general Eric Holder acknowledged that four Americans have been killed in drone strikes, though only one was targeted. Today, the president spoke on the future of counterterrorism in the US. DC bureau chief David Corn discusses the speech with John Podesta, president of Center for American Progress, and host Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball:

Corn also analyzed the speech with The Grio's Joy Reid on MSNBC's Martin Bashir:

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.

Boy Scouts: You Can Be Gay Until You Turn 18

Dana Liebelson — Thu, 23 May 2013 22:49:10 +0000

Boy Scouts and their families deliver signatures protesting the ban. GLAAD

Today, on a muggy afternoon in Grapevine, Texas, members of the Boy Scouts of America's National Council voted 61-38 percent to stop discriminating against kids in the program on the basis of sexual orientation, overturning a national ban on gay Scouts that the organization has enforced for decades. The BSA will continue barring gay adults from serving as scoutmasters and volunteers, meaning that teenagers who come out during their time with the program could be booted after they turn 18. The decision is seen as a compromise between church groups that partner with the Scouts and those eager to see the program fully end its discrimination against gays.

"No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," states the new resolution, acknowledging that "[y]outh are still developing, learning about themselves and who they are, developing their sense of right and wrong, and understanding their duty to God to live a moral life."

"It's an incomplete step, but still a step in the right direction," Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout raised by two lesbian mothers, and founder of Scouts for Equality, tells Mother Jones. His organization, along with Scouts, parents, and volunteers who support overturning the ban, have been rallying in Texas for days, across from the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, where more than 1,400 BSA voting members from across the United States cast their votes this afternoon. Scouts in uniform faced off against about two dozen protesters supporting than ban—and "a couple local guys driving by in trucks, saying anti-gay stuff," Wahls says.

Controversy over the ban picked up last fall, when major backers like the Intel Foundation and UPS stopped funding the program because of its discriminatory policy. In January, the BSA said it would vote on the issue. The following month, President Obama said he supported overturning the ban, and celebrities like Carly Rae Jespen and Dr. Phil followed suit. There have been over 1.8 million signatures submitted in favor of overturning the ban, according to Rich Ferraro, vice president of communications at GLAAD, a gay right group, in contrast to 19,000 signatures in favor of it, delivered by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian organization.

The Boy Scouts, which was founded in 1910 with an oath promising that Scouts would be "morally straight," have a long history of discriminating against gay members. In 1980, an Eagle Scout and aspiring Scout leader was kicked out for attending his prom with a male date. In June 2000, the US Supreme Court affirmed in a 5-4 decision that the Boy Scouts could continue barring gay Scout leaders. And as recently as April, 2012, an Ohio mom and den leader named Jennifer Tyrrell was forced out of the organization for being gay.

The new policy, which kicks in January 1, makes it so that member troops can no longer discriminate against gay youth. But anyone who is gay and over 18 years old still won't be allowed to be a Scout leader or volunteer. (The Boy Scouts' coed Venturing program, aimed at young adults, will allow gay members until they are 21.) This means that gay Scouts like 16-year-old Pascal Tessier can continue to participate in the program without fear of being kicked out, and will have the opportunity to earn the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout like his older brother has. But under the new policy, he would still be banned from the program when he turns 18.

When Mother Jones asked BSA whether or not it would eventually consider voting on the ban on gay adult members, a spokesperson said: "This is not about a step or progression…It is the option that did not, in some way, prevent kids who sincerely want to be a part of Scouting from experiencing this life-changing program and to remain true to the long-standing virtues of Scouting."

Tyrrell, the mom ousted for being gay and still unwelcome under the new policy, said in a press release, "I'm so proud of how far we've come, but until there's a place for everyone in Scouting, my work will continue."

Obama Kinda Sorta Narrows the Scope of the War on Terror

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:22:38 +0000

A couple of hours ago I had a choice to make: spend the next hour writing a reaction to President Obama's big national security speech, or go to lunch. I went to lunch.

That was all for the best, since I had mixed reactions to the speech and wasn't quite sure what to say about it. It was long and thoughtful, and in a lot of places its tone was welcome: Al-Qaeda is on the run, Obama said, and the danger we now face is of a much smaller scale than it was 12 years ago. So it's time to rethink just how we want to prosecute our eternal war against terrorists:

America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do — what we must do — is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. To define that strategy, we must make decisions based not on fear, but hard-earned wisdom. And that begins with understanding the threat we face.

Afterward, administration officials told reporters that Obama had announced a new drone policy in his speech, though you could be excused for missing it: in the future, "strikes will be authorized only against militants who pose 'a continuing, imminent threat,' aides said, instead of 'a significant threat,' which had been the previous standard." That's a mighty thin difference, especially with no external oversight to ensure that it's followed. And aside from that there were damn few specifics. Generally speaking, Obama defended drone attacks, defended the targeting of U.S. citizens abroad, and defended his aggressive prosecution of leakers. And while he suggested he was open to both more executive oversight and to a change in tactics, I think Dave Weigel was shrewd to highlight Obama's insistence that he couldn't do this on his own. Ed Kilgore summarizes:

Obama four times shifted responsibility for current dilemmas at least partially to Congress: on drones (where he insisted the appropriate congressional committees have known about every single strike); on embassy security; on the 9/11-era legal regime that still governs anti-terrorist efforts; and on Gitmo (where Republicans have repeatedly thwarted effort to transfer detainees to U.S. prisons). [And a fifth: a media shield law to protect journalists who report classified information. –ed.]

Is this a reflection of reality or an example of buck passing? I'm not sure we know yet. As someone who has consistently highlighted the power of Congress over policy—even foreign policy—I'm inclined to say the former. But it all depends on exactly what Obama does going forward. If Congress takes him up on his offer to rein in executive power and provide more oversight, will he cooperate or fight? He didn't say enough today to make that clear. He just said he was ready for a conversation.

So let's have it. As Heather Hurlburt points out, Obama's speech was a beginning, not an end. David Corn has more here.

Conspiracy Theory Watch: Hillary Sold Stingers to Al Qaeda!

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:32:50 +0000

Seriously. This is the latest fever dream from the right. They believe that the reason Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Benghazi on September 11 was to negotiate the return of Stinger missiles that Hillary Clinton had sold to Al Qaeda groups over the objections of the CIA.

I am not making this up.

Why couldn't the wingers be happy with their old complaint: that Obama had done too little after the Libya war to secure Muammar Qadafi's arsenal of shoulder-mounted antiaircraft missiles,¹ thus allowing them to fall into the hands of assorted bad guys in the Middle East? That's at least based on a kernel of truth. Beats me. Because it didn't involve Hillary Clinton, I guess, and therefore wasn't a perfect conspiracy theory.

¹For the record, old Russian SA-7s, not Stingers. More here.

A Brief Primer on Where the Whole "YouTube Video Thing" Came From

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:23:25 +0000

Bob Somerby catches Greta Van Susteren asking House Speaker John Boehner about Benghazi last night:

VAN SUSTEREN: Have you determined why the whole YouTube video thing was brought up in Benghazi in the first place, whose idea it was, and why they seized upon it and held onto it for so long?

BOEHNER: Don't know yet, but we're going to find out.

VAN SUSTEREN: You have no sort of conceivable theory about, like, you know—

After more than eight months of investigation, neither Van Sustern nor Boehner has even a clue about where the "YouTube video thing" came from! So let's make this as easy as possible for them. Here's what the CIA talking points said in the very first draft. This is before anyone else had seen them, commented on them, or asked for changes to be made:

We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.

This is also what the final draft of the talking points said. And here is Susan Rice on Meet the Press a few days after the attacks:

Putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.

Rice said basically the same thing on the other Sunday shows too. And here is David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times reporting directly from the scene a month after the attacks:

To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred: a well-known group of local Islamist militants struck the United States Mission without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video....The fighters said at the time that they were moved to act because of the video, which had first gained attention across the region after a protest in Egypt that day.

Bottom line: The CIA said Benghazi was inspired by the Cairo protests. That's precisely what Rice said on the Sunday shows, noting correctly that the Cairo protests were prompted by the video. What's more, the Benghazi fighters themselves claimed that they were motivated by anger over the video. That's where the "YouTube video thing" came from. There's no mystery here.

Now, was the CIA correct? Were those on-the-ground reports correct? To this day, we don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter. At the time, that was the intelligence community's best assessment. And that's why Susan Rice said what she said. So once and for all, can we please stop pretending we have no idea where she came up with this stuff?

Virginia Lt. Gov. Candidate E.W. Jackson: Gays Are "Ikky"

Tim Murphy — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:18:54 +0000

That's an actual tweet from the Rev. E.W. Jackson, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia.

Jackson, a social-conservative activist with no record of electoral success, was nominated on the first ballot at the state GOP's convention on Saturday and almost immediately triggered an acute case of heartburn among the party's establishment due to his far-right views on gay rights and abortion. (Among other things, he favors the reinstatement of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and said the Democratic party's platform was in line with the Antichrist.) Jackson is, as Daily Kos Elections' David Nir puts it, "an oppo researcher's mescaline-fueled fantasy bender riding on pegasus-back."

And we're only starting to scratch the surface. A quick survey of Jackson's now dormant Twitter feed, @ewjsr (he now tweets at @Jackson4VA) shows that he is been remarkably consistent in his attacks on the gays, Muslims, and communists he believes are destroying the country from within.

"The 'homosexual religion' is the most virulent anti-Christian bigotry & hatred I've ever seen," he tweeted in October of 2009. "They have threatened me, but not vice versa."

That was around the same time he concluded that "[t]he homosexual movement is a cancer attacking vital organs of faith, family & military - repositories of traditional values." After President Obama addressed the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights group, Jackson groveled that the organization wanted to "homosexualize the country." After Family Research Council president Tony Perkins was disinvited from an event at Andrews Air Force Base, Jackson called the Obama administration "the Gestapo." When Rush Limbaugh invited Elton John to perform at his wedding, Jackson called it "utterly disappointing." He referred to Democrats as "Demoncrats."

Elsewhere, Jackson describes President Obama as the "first homosexual President," and endorses an argument by Frank Gaffney that Obama is also the "First Muslim President."

Jackson, a Harvard Law School graduate and former student at Harvard Divinity School, recognized the contradiction in these statements, and openly struggled with it: "It will be interesting to see how Obama reconciles Islamicizing America with homosexualizing America," he tweeted. "Babylon v Sodom & Gomorrah." (The Baylonians weren't Muslim, but that's hardly the point.) Jackson considered it "tragic" that American foreign policy was, in his view, now "pro-Islam."

He was also bothered by the presence of practicing Muslims in the administration:

Jackson's fear of Muslims was such that after an Air France flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and a gunman opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, in 2009, he immediately alleged—citing absolutely nothing—that both events had been acts of Islamic terrorism. (The Holocaust Museum gunman was a white supremacist, and the Air France crash was ruled an accident). Responding to a report that Obama was hoping to use his space agency as a way of reaching out to to the Muslim world, he was indignant: "Obama's new mission for Nasa, not to explore space, but expand Islam! Huh?"

Given the last few days, this last tweet seems somewhat fitting. It's from 2010, and it's a stirring defense of another conservative activist whose unlikely nomination cost Republicans a once winnable race:

Who Will Stick Up For the IRS?

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:08:11 +0000

Perhaps this is just because I read David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel The Pale King recently, but I actually feel kind of sorry for the IRS. Frankly, their job seems almost impossible. Think about it: they have to process over a hundred million claims a year, several million of which are highly complex. That means they need a huge number of people. And these people need to be fairly smart, because this isn't simple work. But it is boring work. In other words, the IRS needs tens of thousands of people who are (a) smart, (b) willing to do really tedious work, (c) for moderate wages, (d) while working for a soul-crushing bureaucracy, and (e) being loathed by all right-thinking people.

Does this sound to you like a recipe for disaster? Me too. Frankly, the biggest surprise about the tea party targeting scandal isn't that it happened, but that there haven't been a lot more like it. After all, it wouldn't take much. Nobody ever lost an election by demagoguing the IRS, which means they're always under a high-powered microscope from ambitious politicians. Or in some cases, under something more like a proctoscope, as in the case of the infamous 1998 Roth hearings, described here by yours truly a while back:

One of the great scams of the 90s was the Roth Hearings, a brilliant piece of performance art staged by Senator William Roth as an attack on the Internal Revenue Service. The hearings were deliberately dramatic: Roth held them in a committee room designed to block electronic eavesdropping and had guards search everyone before they entered the chamber. IRS employees called as witnesses were blocked by black curtains and had their voices electronically altered, like mobsters afraid of being murdered in their sleep.

The testimony was equally dramatic: IRS agents, they said, routinely made false accusations against people, busted into people's homes and waved guns in their faces, and once even forced a girl caught in a raid to change her clothes while agents watched.

As it happens, virtually none of this was true, but that didn't matter. Republicans lined up to denounce the IRS as "Gestapo-like" and a law was quickly passed that handcuffed agents and slashed the budget for audits and enforcement, especially against high-income taxpayers. It was a boon for the rich in the same way that it would be a boon for drug dealers and street criminals if Congress slashed the budgets of local police departments.

Generally speaking, the end result of all this was a reduced auditing budget, which made life much easier for America's millionaires and billionaires, and a reined-in operating budget, which made the IRS less able to do its job efficiently and more likely to screw up in some kind of spectacular way. Mission accomplished! Noam Scheiber reviews the recent cuts in the IRS budget since Republicans took over the House in 2010 and concludes that they had pretty much the same effect:

The just and logical result of this chain of events would be to discredit the people intent on starving government. Instead, the [tea party targeting] scandal has become a convenient talking point for opponents of government itself. The IRS uproar “probably represents the last shovelful of dirt on the central mission of Barack Obama’s presidency: rehabilitating Big Government’s reputation as a necessary first step toward a new Progressive Era,” wrote the economics commentator James Pethokoukis in National Review. More alarmingly, mainstream pundits are echoing this conclusion. “The IRS flap eats away at the underpinnings of what President Barack Obama promised when he first ran in 2008,” wrote the centrist columnist Jerry Seib the following week. “A revival of confidence that government is capable of solving problems in a smart and nonideological manner.”

I’m afraid Seib is right. As it’s currently playing out, the scandal probably is sapping confidence in government. But how we got to this point is no accident. It was the plan all along.

I'm happy to have the tea party targeting scandal thoroughly investigated. It looks to me mostly like a failure of management and overworked staffers, not a partisan hit job, but hey—you never know until you investigate. So investigate away. But I sure hope this doesn't turn into a rerun of the Roth hearings. Those were not just a travesty, but a travesty that's all too likely to repeat itself since no one, Democrat or Republican alike, ever wants to stick their necks out for the universally reviled IRS. Because of that, this could turn into a Roth-esque feeding frenzy just through sheer unchecked momentum. Hopefully, there's someone in Congress with the guts to keep this investigation on track, even if it does mean running the risk of being branded pro-IRS.

Obama's Counterterrorism Speech: A Pivot Point on Drones and More?

David Corn — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:03:13 +0000

In recent years, conservative and liberal reaction to President Barack Obama's national security policies has often converged. Conservatives note that Obama has continued (or expanded) many of the Bush-Cheney policies and methods—drones, indefinite detention, military commissions, use of the state secrets privilege—and this, they proclaim, proves that the Bush-Cheney regime was not excessive or unlawful. Liberals, pointing to Obama's decisions in these areas, complain that the fellow who once campaigned against the excesses of the Bush-Cheney years has gone over to the dark side. A Justice Department white paper leaked in February explaining the administration's justification for targeted killing abroad of US citizens suspected of terrorism embodied the sort of executive power overreach associated with Obama's predecessor. And the Obama administration's fierce pursuit of national security leaks—which led the Justice Department to collect secretly information on the communications of the Associated Press and James Rosen of Fox News—reinforces the view that Obama has taken a step or two toward an imperial presidency.

White House aides rankle at any comparison to Bush and Cheney. They dutifully note that in his first days in office, Obama ended the use of torture (a.k.a. enhanced interrogation techniques) and declared his intention to shut down Guantanamo. (Gitmo remains open, but that's mainly because congressional Republicans and Democrats thwarted the White House effort to develop a high-security facility in the United States to house the detainees.) And the Obama-ites contend they have reformed some of the Bush-Cheney policies, such as the use of military commissions, to justify maintaining these practices. Also, they are not reluctant to add that Obama did end the war in Iraq and is downsizing the war in Afghanistan (at a faster pace than then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA chief David Petraeus urged in 2011). But much of this defense has tended to get lost as the administration has fired off drone strikes without acknowledging the individual attacks and has, following in the path of previous administrations, resisted certain congressional oversight efforts.

Continue Reading »

Sadly, 20-Second Cell Phone Charging Probably Still Just a Dream

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:26:13 +0000

Last night, I wrote about Ionut Budisteanu, a Romanian teenager who won an Intel science award by inventing some cool technology that could make driverless cars cheaper. Today, Matt Yglesias picks up on this story, but also tells us about another award winner:

Eesha Khare, an 18 year-old from California, also did something with some major potential commercial applications and "developed a tiny device that fits inside cell phone batteries, allowing them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds." We're told that "Eesha’s invention also has potential applications for car batteries."

I hadn't noticed that, but a bit of googling produced several dozen breathless media reports about a new invention that will charge your cell phone in 20 seconds. I was a little skeptical: this didn't sound like merely an Intel award winner, it sounded like a patentable invention that would turn Eesha Khare into an instant billionaire. So I checked into it a bit.

Long story short, it turns out that Khare did some interesting work in supercapacitors. This is obviously impressive for a teenager, but no, it's not a fabulous new invention. Lots of companies have been working on supercapacitors for a long time, and lots of companies have investigated the specific chemistry that Khare used. The account here is perhaps a bit more dyspeptic than it should be, but I suspect the wrap-up is about right: "Add it all up and the central conclusion we can draw from all of this is that the mainstream media is stupid."

Which is too bad. It would be nice to charge my cell phone in 20 seconds and my tablet in two minutes. Oh well.

Mitch McConnell's Friends Are Being Oppressed By Liberal Thugs

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:37:44 +0000

Ed Kilgore is impressed with the flexibility of Mitch McConnell's mind:

You have to hand it to Mitch McConnell. While other scandal-mad Republicans are off on a wild goose chase that could well end in 1998, McConnell's focused on exploiting scandals to promote his very favorite cause, and his special gift to the corruption of American politics: hiding the identity of big campaign donors. His op-ed in today's Washington Post aims at convincing us that conservative donors obviously need anonymity because they will otherwise be persecuted by Obama-inspired bureaucrats and union thugs.

In fairness, this has actually been the conservative party line ever since they did an abrupt U-turn after Citizens United and decided that disclosure of donors' identities wasn't something they approved of after all. From the very beginning, their claim has been that America's right-wing millionaires need to keep their political affiliations private because otherwise liberals will hound them into....something. Even now, McConnell can't really provide any specifics of just what would happen if donors had to make their donations public, and is instead reduced to muttering vaguely about Chicago thuggery, a "culture of intimidation," and favoritism in awarding government contracts:

These tactics are straight out of the left-wing playbook: Expose your opponents to public view, release the liberal thugs and hope the public pressure or unwanted attention scares them from supporting causes you oppose. This is what the administration has done through federal agencies such as the FCC and the FEC, and it’s what proponents of the Disclose Act plan to do with donor and member lists.

I'll give him this much: supporting political causes does indeed expose you to pressure from people who don't like your causes. This goes both ways, of course, and conservatives are just as fond of boycotts and picketing and demagoguery as lefties are. The question is why McConnell thinks not just that speech should be free of government interference, but should also be free of any consequences whatsoever. The marketplace of ideas is weak tea indeed when no one has any idea of just who's saying what.

GOP Food Stamps Proposal Would Discriminate Against African-Americans

Erika Eichelberger — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:15:44 +0000

On Wednesday the Senate agriculture committee approved a GOP proposal that would amend the farm bill the Senate is considering to ban "convicted murderers, rapists, and pedophiles" from getting food stamps. On its surface, the idea sounds unobjectionable, but the measure would have "strongly racially discriminatory effects," according to the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

The amendment, introduced by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), and agreed to by unanimous consent in the committee, would bar anyone who has ever been convicted of certain violent crimes—even if they committed the crimes in their youth and have served their sentence—from ever getting food stamps (called SNAP benefits) ever again. CBPP president Robert Greenstein slammed the amendment in a statement Tuesday, calling it "stunning." Because African Americans are incarcerated at a higher rate than other races, he says, "the amendment would have a skewed racial impact. Poor elderly African Americans convicted of a single crime decades ago by segregated Southern juries would be among those hit." Under current law, there is only a lifetime ban on food stamps for convicted drug felons, and many states have opted out of that ban.

The measure wouldn't just hurt ex-cons. Greenstein points out that "the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members."

Plus the amendment could cause higher rates of recidivism. "Ex-offenders often have difficulty finding jobs that pay decent wages," Greenstein says. "The amendment could pose dilemmas for ex-offenders who are trying to go straight but can neither find jobs nor, as a result of the amendment, obtain enough food to feed their children and families."

The House of Representatives has also voted to cut food stamp funding from the farm bill; their plan would throw some 2 million people off the program.

There's still time to rethink the senators' ill-conceived plan, though, Greenstein says. "The farm bill is still on the floor, and the amendment can still be modified," he says. "Senators should gather the courage to step up to the plate and address this matter."

High School Student Slashes Cost of Driverless Cars

Kevin Drum — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:19:41 +0000

Ionut Budisteanu, a high-school student from Romania, has invented a system that slashes the price tag of driverless cars:

"The most expensive thing from the Google self-driving car is the high resolution 3-D radar, so I was thinking how I could remove it," he told NBC News. His solution relies on processing webcam imagery with artificial intelligence technology to pick out the curbs, lane markers, and even soccer balls that roll onto the road. This is coupled with data from a low-resolution 3-D radar that recognizes "big" objects such as other cars, houses, and trees.

All of this information is collected and processed real time by a suite of computers that, in turn, feed into a "supervisor" computer program that calculates the car's path and drives it down the road....The high-resolution 3-D radar used by Google, he noted, costs about $75,000. His whole system should work for no more $4,000.

Actually, it's not the cost savings that are interesting here. Google's engineers are undoubtedly well aware of cheaper alternatives to their high-res radar, but have stuck with their current system because it provides better feedback and price is no object when you're still in the prototype stage. What's interesting is the fact that Budisteanu's system essentially replaces Google's expensive hardware with cheap processing power. This is one of the keys to the future of artificial intelligence. As recently as a few years ago, Budisteanu couldn't have done what he did because the processors then available wouldn't have been powerful enough. Today they are, which means that brute force plus some software can do the same thing as Google's sophisticated radar.

Brute force isn't the answer to all AI problems, but lots of processing power is a minimum necessary component. Without it, you simply have no chance of coming close: a hamster-sized brain can't solve differential equations no matter what you feed it. But once you get a bigger, faster brain, possibilities start to open up that seemed impossible only a short time before. Budisteanu's invention is a pretty good example of this.

Immigration Bill Heads to the Full Senate, 200 Amendments Later

Gavin Aronsen — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:39:52 +0000

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a sweeping immigration reform bill on Tuesday, but only after sifting through more than 200 amendments. The bill would give the nation's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants a 13-year pathway to citizenship, which would be the biggest change to the immigration system in years.

So, is it the same compromise that its authors, the so-called "Gang of Eight," originally hammered out? The committee made a total of 141 revisions to the bill; here's a quick look at a few of the most notable:

No protections for same-sex couples: Democrats reluctantly let this widely discussed measure die in order to keep Republicans on board. It would have allowed a foreign-born member of a same-sex couple petition for legal residency, just as straight couples may do. Because it was withdrawn by its sponsor, committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), it's not technically a revision. "With a heavy heart, and as a result of my conclusion that Republicans will kill this vital legislation if this anti-discrimination amendment is added, I will withhold calling for a vote on it," Leahy said. "But I will continue to fight for equality."
Protections to keep families together: An amendment introduced by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) would require officials to ask immigrants in detention centers whether they are the parents or guardians of children so that the impact of their potential deportation on their families can be assessed.
Additional benefits for DREAMers: An amendment introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) would allow immigrants who arrived before the age of 16 to join the military and subsequently apply for citizenship as an alternative to deportation. Another amendment, introduced by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), would give high school grads access to financial aid (with the exception of Pell Grants).
Limiting the use of solitary confinement: Currently, immigrants being processed through detention facilities are sometimes held in solitary confinement for weeks on end: The New York Times recently reported 35 cases of immigrants held there for more than 10 weeks. Another Blumenthal amendment would largely prohibit involuntary confinement exceeding 15 days.
Visa allowances: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) won approval for an amendment backed by the tech industry that would allow companies to hire foreign workers with H-1B visas before first offering the jobs to qualified citizens, as it is now required, unless more than 15 percent of the current employees in a specific field within that company are already on H-1B visas.
Safer deportations: Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) authored an amendment to cut down on risky deportations. Mexican immigrants might still be dropped off in a border towns rife with kidnappings and gang violence, but Coons' revision to the immigration bill would stop the practice of nighttime deportations.
Airport tracking system: Another amendment introduced by Hatch would set up fingerprint tracking systems in 10 major airports. Officials currently keep tabs on immigrants flying into the United States; this amendment would require immigrants to be fingerprinted upon both departure to a foreign country and arrival back in the US.

Overall, the immigration reform bill cleared the Judiciary Committee without any fundamental changes. But, in order to not upend the precarious bipartisan balance struck by the Gang of Eight, the committee rejected some more partisan amendments such as the LGBT protection measure and a border security measure from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Now it's off to the full Senate, where senators will have the chance to offer even more amendments on the floor in June before voting on the final bill.

The Obama Administration Finally Admits Killing 4 Americans

Asawin Suebsaeng — Wed, 22 May 2013 23:00:31 +0000

After nearly two years of (officially) keeping quiet about what the whole world already knew, the Obama administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States government had indeed killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. This had been fairly common knowledge ever since the strikes occurred in 2011, but the White House, CIA, and other involved parties have maintained (but not really) an official policy of not acknowledging that a targeted killing program exists.

Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that the administration had signed off on a drone strike that killed, without due process, the Al Qaeda-linked cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in September 2011 in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Wednesday, which was obtained by New York Times reporter Charlie Savage. The letter also acknowledged the killing of Samir Khan (killed in the same drone operation), Awlaki's teenage son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (killed in Yemen later that month), and Jude Mohammed (killed in Pakistan in November 2011). However, all except Anwar al-Awlaki were "not specifically targeted by the United States," according to Holder's letter.

"Today's disclosure builds on the administration's effort to pursue greater transparency around our counter-terrorism operations," an anonymous White House official told Fox News correspondent Ed Henry.

Here is Holder's letter:

The letter was released the day before President Obama is scheduled to deliver a big speech on national security at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is expected to touch on his administration's controversial ramped-up use of drone warfare and the status of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The last time Obama publicly discussed US drone strikes and his administration's targeted killing program was in a Google+ "Fireside Hangout" on February 14:

First of all, I think, there's never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil. And, you know, we respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counter-terrorism operations outside the United States. The rules outside the United States are going to be different then the rules inside the United States. In part because our capacity to, for example, to capture a terrorist inside the United States are very different then in the foothills or mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But what I think is absolutely true is that it is not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we are doing the right thing. I am the head of the executive branch. And what we've done so far is to try to work with Congress on oversight issues. But part of what I am going to have to work with Congress on is to make sure that whatever it is we're providing Congress, that we have mechanisms to also make sure that the public understands what's going on, what the constraints are, what the legal parameters are. And that is something that I take very seriously. I am not someone who believes that the president has the authority to do whatever he wants, or whatever she wants, whenever they want, just under the guise of counter-terrorism. There have to be legal checks and balances on it.

Boy Scouts: Gays Okay. Treehuggers Not So Much.

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:56:20 +0000

The board that governs the Boy Scouts of America plans to vote on Thursday on a proposal to lift the ban on gay members.

But while the organization may soon welcome gay scouts, they are apparently not so welcoming of treehuggers. The Center for Investigative Reporting posted a story this week on the Scouts booting out Kim Kuska, a naturalist and former biology teacher who been affiliated with the Scouts for 50 years, over his "obsession" with protecting the rare Dudley's lousewort:

Since the 1970s, the Eagle Scout and adult Scout leader-turned-whistle-blower has worked to protect the plant from extinction at Camp Pico Blanco, a Boy Scout camp nestled in the mountains along the Little Sur River south of Monterey, Calif. The camp is home to nearly 50 percent of all known specimens of Dudley’s lousewort, a flowering fern-like plant found in only three places in the world.

But over the past four decades, Scout officials and camp staff have threatened its existence repeatedly by harvesting old-growth trees it needs to survive, crushing some of the few remaining plants and introducing potentially competitive species. Under state law, it is illegal to harm a plant that is classified as rare.

The camp also cut down several trees in the old-growth forest in 2011 without a permit, a Scout official acknowledged.

Kuska's whistleblowing reportedly got him drummed out of the Scouts earlier this month. Read the whole story here.

Grassroots Greens Challenge Environmental Defense Fund on Fracking

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:49:22 +0000

A coalition of grassroots environmental groups—plus a few professors and celebrities—issued a public message to the Environmental Defense Fund on Wednesday: You don't speak for us on fracking.

The coalition of 67 groups released an open letter to EDF President Fred Krupp criticizing his organization for signing on as a "strategic partner" in the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that bills itself as an "unprecedented, collaborative effort of environmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, energy companies and other stakeholders committed to safe, environmentally responsible shale resource development." CSSD's partners include Chevron, CONSOL Energy, and Shell. The partners have been working together on voluntary industry standards for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from shale rock.

The groups that signed the letter included national organizations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, as well as regional environmental outfits such as the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Catskills Citizens for Clean Energy. Actors Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger also signed the document. They wrote:

The very use of the word sustainable in the name is misleading, because there is nothing sustainable about shale oil or shale gas. These are fossil fuels, and their extraction and consumption will inevitably degrade our environment and contribute to climate change. Hydraulic fracturing, the method used to extract them, will permanently remove huge quantities of water from the hydrological cycle, pollute the air, contaminate drinking water, and release high levels of methane into the atmosphere. It should be eminently clear to everyone that an economy based on fossil fuels is unsustainable.

Gail Pressberg, a senior program director with the Civil Society Institute, criticized EDF for a "willingness to be coopted" by industry in a call with reporters about the letter. "For too long, nationally-oriented groups have tried to call the shots on fracking," she said. "These local people can and should be allowed to speak for themselves."

EDF's Krupp responded with his own letter on Wednesday, defending the group's participation in CSSD and its record of "fighting for tough regulations and strong enforcement" on natural gas extraction:

Let’s be clear about where EDF stands. It’s not our job to support fracking or to be boosters for industry. That is not what we do. In fact, we regularly clash with industry lobbyists who seek to gut legislation protecting the public, and we have intervened in court on behalf of local communities and their right to exercise traditional zoning powers. We have made it clear that there are places where fracking should never be permitted. But if fracking is going to take place anywhere in the U.S.—and clearly it is—then we need to do everything in our power to protect the people living nearby. That includes improving industry performance in every way possible. In our view, CSSD, a coalition that includes environmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, energy companies and other stakeholders, is one way to do that.

Make no mistake: CSSD is not and never will be a substitute for effective regulation. Stronger state and federal rules, along with strong enforcement, are absolutely necessary. However, voluntary efforts can build momentum toward regulatory frameworks.

I've covered the sparring between EDF and grassroots groups over gas before. At the heart of it is that many of the grassroots groups want there to be no fracking, period. EDF's position is that fracking is "never going to be without impact, never going to be risk free," as EDF Vice President Eric Pooley described it to me, "but we're also mindful that it's happening all over the country." Voluntary standards, Pooley said, are not the ultimate goal—but they can help reduce impacts in communities that already have drilling, and lay the groundwork for actual regulations. "How could we not, in good consciousness, want to engage if we see an opportunity to reduce impacts in communities?" he said.

For what it's worth, both enviros and industry folks have berated CSSD for being too accommodating of the other side.

Exciting New Book From Paul Ryan Will Be Like Every Other Right-Wing Book of the Past Decade

Kevin Drum — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:42:51 +0000

Paul Ryan is writing a book!

So far, Ryan has been doing the writing by himself. The early theme of the draft is a broad discussion of American renewal, with an emphasis on the Republican future and the party’s need to articulate what he calls the “American idea.”

So....it's going to be like every other book ever written by a conservative in the past decade. I can hardly wait.

The NRA's List of "Coolest Gun Movies" Is Astoundingly Dumb

Asawin Suebsaeng — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:51:54 +0000

When conservatives try to list their favorite pop-culture items to make a political point, the results are often baffling. In 2005, Human Events released the list of "Most Harmful Books" written in the 19th and 20th centuries (Charles Darwin and John Stuart Mill are put in the same league as Hitler and Mao). The following year, National Review compiled a much-discussed "50 greatest conservative rock songs," which for whatever bizarre reason included Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun." In 2012, the Telegraph declared their brazenly idiotic "top 10 conservative movies of the modern era." And just over a week ago, the American Enterprise Institute posted the "21 greatest conservative rap songs of all time," which prominently features Justin Bieber.

And now American Rifleman, the National Rifle Association's shooting and firearms consumer magazine, has published its official list of the 10 "Coolest Gun Movies." Writes American Rifleman blogger Paul Rackley, "Many of these movies also take us back to simpler times, when dreaming of saving the day got us through that oh-so boring class." Here's his list:

Red Dawn (1984)

The Terminator (1984)

The Alamo (1960)

Die Hard (1988)

The Godfather (1972)

Zombieland (2009)

The Matrix (1999)

The Delta Force (1986)

The Road Warrior (1981)

Tremors (1990)

Continue Reading »

Quote of the Day: The Pervasiveness of Bad Ideas

Kevin Drum — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:51:48 +0000

From Mark Thoma, commenting on Paul Krugman's evisceration of sloppy and ill-informed counterintuitiveness:

The degree to which bad/false ideas can be used to support political goals is still pretty frustrating.

I don't think I really have anything to add to that. I don't expect it to change anytime soon, though.

Making Deposits in the Sleep Bank

Kevin Drum — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:36:43 +0000

Today, the Wall Street Journal tells us that, within limits, extra sleep can make up for missed sleep. Plus this:

Recent data suggests that banking sleep in advance of a long night can actually offset upcoming sleep deprivation. "If you knew you were going to give birth on a particular day, for example, you could sleep for 10 hours a day for multiple days before the event, and be fine," he says. Just plan ahead.

Just plan ahead! Who are these people, anyway? Can most of us really just choose to sleep ten hours for a few days in a row even if we don't really need it? Hell, I can't do it even when I do need it. Which has been for approximately the past 20 years.

On the other hand, I'm also pretty unlikely to be giving birth anytime soon, so I guess it all evens out.

Here's How to Fool People Into Thinking They Know More Than They Do

Kevin Drum — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:20:13 +0000

Which do you learn more from? A presenter with good speaking skills and professional visual aids, or someone reading badly from prepared notes? Oddly enough, a team of psychologists actually decided to test this. Their test subjects, as usual, were university students:

Afterwards the students answered questions about how much they felt they had learned. As expected, students who had watched the lecturer with better presentation skills expected to remember more of the material, believed that they understood the material better, and rated their interest and motivation more highly than the students who watched the dud instructor.

The twist came when the students took a test that investigated their memory and understanding of the Calico cats concept. The students who watched the skillful (or “fluent”) lecturer barely outperformed the students who watched the “disfluent speaker.” But they did much poorer than they expected to do, whereas the other group did about as well as they expected.

If these results hold up, it means that flashy, TED-style lectures don't actually impart any more knowledge than boring old-school lectures. But they do make you more confident that you learned something. Is that worthwhile all by itself? Or is it better to have a proper grasp of just how much you really know? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

POSTSCRIPT: And what's this business about calico cats? Well, that was the subject of the test lecture. Roughly speaking, cats are white by default, and their two sex chromosomes each add a color to their coat. Color is carried on the X chromosome, so female (XX) cats can potentially be tricolored (orange, black, and white). Male (XY) cats max out at two colors (white plus one other). So with rare exceptions, only female cats can be calicos.

POSTSCRIPT 2: Are you thirsting for a political angle to this? Well, Fox News is pretty well known for pioneering a much flashier, more visual approach to the news. Does this turn Fox watchers into tedious blowhards who think they know more than anyone else even though they don't? I report, you decide.

WATCH: What Does 400 ppm Mean? Talking with Climate Scientist Michael Mann

Chris Mooney — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:00:13 +0000

Last week in Washington, DC, leading climate scientist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania sat down with Climate Desk Live to talk about the significance of an planetary milestone—we've reached 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As Mann explained, humans are altering the content of the atmosphere at an alarming rate—one perhaps never seen before in the history of Earth itself.

Looking For a Benghazi Talking Points Villain? It Was David Petraeus, Not Barack Obama

Kevin Drum — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:31:48 +0000

After reading through the Benghazi "talking points" emails and doing some additional reporting, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung confirm what's been pretty obvious for a while now. The House committee that originally asked for the talking points wanted only some basic facts so that no one would mistakenly disclose classified information to the press, but CIA Director David Petraeus—"a master of the craft of media cultivation"—understood the reputational stakes immediately and acted accordingly:

A close reading of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies, reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee’s request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency.

The information Petraeus ordered up when he returned to his Langley office that morning included far more than the minimalist version that Ruppersberger had requested. It included early classified intelligence assessments of who might be responsible for the attack and an account of prior CIA warnings — information that put Petraeus at odds with the State Department, the FBI and senior officials within his own agency.

This was especially galling to the other participants in the review process because (a) the Benghazi annex was a CIA installation and CIA was responsible for its security, (b) the talking points were supposed to be limited to what we knew about the attack, and (c) the whole point of producing the talking points was to avoid endangering the investigation by revealing classified information about suspects and methods.

In the end, as Wilson and Young point out, "The only government entity that did not object to the detailed talking points produced with Petraeus’s input was the White House, which played the role of mediator in the bureaucratic fight that at various points included the CIA’s top lawyer and the agency’s deputy director expressing opposition to what the director wanted." This entire controversy has been much ado about nothing from the beginning, but if you absolutely insist on singling out a villain, the choice is now pretty obvious. David Petraeus was the Machiavellian manipulator of the narrative here, not Barack Obama.

VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Grills Treasury Secretary on Too Big to Fail

Erika Eichelberger — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:03:11 +0000

At a Senate banking committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on too-big-to-fail banks—financial institutions that are so large that their failure would endanger the entire financial system.

"How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up?” she asked.

Too big to fail is far from over. The largest financial institutions are still ballooning in size. In the past few years, banks have been beset by one scandal after another—from money laundering, to rate-fixing, to foreclosure fraud, and have mostly received wrist-slaps as punishment—probably because, as Attorney General Eric Holder recently warned, prosecuting too-big-to-fail banks for bad behavior might spook the entire financial system.

Too big to fail almost died three years ago. Warren noted that as the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law was being crafted, an amendment was proposed that would have broken up the banks, but it didn't pass—in large part, she reminded Lew, because the Treasury Department (then under Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) was against it.

"Have you changed your position," Warren demanded, referring to the Treasury department. "Or are you still opposed to capping the size of banks?"

Lew responded that "ending too big to fail is our policy and we're aiming to do it." But Warren wouldn't let him weasel out of the question with generalities. "I want to focus you in here," she pushed. "My question is about capping the size of largest financial institutions."

Lew refused to commit. "Our job right now is to implement…Dodd-Frank," he said. "I think this is not the time to be enacting big changes."

"Let me try the question a different way," Warren persisted. "How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up?" she asked, adding that the largest American banks are 30 percent larger than they were five years ago. "Do they have to double in size? Triple in size? Quadruple in size? Before we talk about breaking up the biggest financial institutions?"

Lew said that too big to fail "is an unacceptable policy", but urged Warren to have some patience.

She'd have none of Lew's excuses: "What we've seen…is one scandal after another in these largest financial institutions," she said. "It's clear they have not changed their risk bearing practices nor have they decided that they're suddenly going to start following the law."