"Right Away" She Felt A Tingling All Over

Actress Eva Longoria is no ignoramus, dolt, imbecile or knucklehead.  She couldn't be, given that she was selected as a co-chairperson for President Obama's campaign and thus must have more going for her than talent and physical beauty.

But she does play one on TV.  The Daily Beast reports (video, below)

On Friday morning, former Desperate Housewives star and Barack Obama campaign co-chair Eva Longoria announced that there’s only one presidential candidate for whom she’d be willing to volunteer in 2016: Hillary Clinton.

“I was so exhausted after 2012,” Longoria said during the Latina Power panel at Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s 2013 Women in the World Summit, shortly after Clinton herself left the stage. “I was thinking I would never volunteer for another campaign, and then someone said, ‘How about Hillary?’ And right away I was like, ‘Unless Hillary runs.’”..

Longoria’s admission came near the end of a conversation about the power and potential of America’s fast-growing Latino community—a population that’s set to double by 2050. 

Admission, as Daily Beast reporter Andrew Romano termed it, is the right word.  Presumably, Longoria likes Mrs. Clinton because the latter supports comprehensive immigration reform, a cause dear to the actress' heart.  Presumably but not necessarily, because

A ninth-generation Texan, Longoria didn’t realize that she was “the Mexican” until leaving her home district in Corpus Christi to attend a gifted-and-talented school as a child. “I got on the bus and I had a tortilla, and everyone else had Pop Tarts,” she said. “I was like, ‘What is that?’ and they were like, ‘What is that?’ I kind of live on the hyphen between Mexican and American.”

But Longoria added that with legislation pending in Washington, “the tide is changing.”

“And I think it’s in the hands of women,” she said. “The messaging is in the hands of women, because we’re just better at it.”

And on second thought, Clinton's stance on immigration reform does not separate herself from other likely Democratic contenders, nor even from (arguably) any national Democrats, for whom support for illegal immigrants undocumented workers is a must.

Other than that issue, and the claim that women are better at "messaging," there is little known of Ms. Longoria's views on issues.   Perhaps that doesn't matter, because Clinton's stance- as compared to that of Joe Biden,  Martin O'Malley, Brian Schweitzer, Andrew Cuomo (gasp) or any other Democrat tangentially interested in the presidency- appears of little interest to her.

We've been here before, when some activists preferred a particular candidate because of demographic factors.  In this case, it's gender, as it was race previously.  There are a hundred reasons that was a bad idea, one of which is reflected in a story from the Boston Globe which begins

US Drug Enforcement Administration investigators have visited the homes and offices of Massachusetts physicians involved with medical marijuana dispensaries and delivered an ultimatum: sever all ties to marijuana companies, or relinquish federal licenses to prescribe certain medications, according to several physicians and their attorneys.  

The stark choice is necessary, the doctors said they were told, because of friction between federal law, which bans any use of marijuana, and state law, which voters changed in 2012 to allow medical use of the drug.

The DEA’s action has left some doctors, whose livelihoods depend on being able to offer patients pain medications and other drugs, with little option but to resign from the marijuana companies,where some held prominent positions.

The Globe this week identified at least three doctors contacted by DEA investigators, although there may be more.

“Here are your options,” Dr. Samuel Mazza said he was told by Gregory Kelly, a DEA investigator from the agency’s New England Division office. “You either give up your [DEA] license or give up your position on the board . . . or you challenge it in court.”

Mazza, chief executive of Debilitating Medical Conditions Treatment Centers, which won preliminary state approval to open a dispensary in Holyoke, said the DEA investigator’s visit came shortly after state regulators announced the first 20 applicants approved for provisional licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries.

Labeling the DEA's action "just stupid," Charles Peters asks

Would it be that hard for Eric Holder to whistle up the DEA and say, look, dudes, how about not doing this part of your jobs for a while. (It's exactly what he did as regards marriage equality and the Defense Of Marriage Act. When the states started acting on their own, he declined to use DOMA to interfere.) These doctors are being asked to choose between their ability to prescribe drugs that help with the symptoms of, say MS, and their ability to prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes. This is not a choice any physician should have to make -- and certainly not under the force of federal law -- and the DEA's meddling in medical practice is way outside its brief, and it is both clumsy and utterly inappropriate...

The president should pull them back from this. He knows better.

We have a  president who as a candidate supported labeling of genetically modified food ingredients and of a food's country of origin "because Americans should know where their food comes from" who now has a Food and Drug Administrator who

reportedly likened the problem of overuse of antibiotics in livestock—which can lead to drug-resistant bacteria in animals as well as in humans—to having your “hair on fire”; but late last year, when the FDA finally took steps to address the problem, its program was voluntary. The FDA has also failed to deliver on Obama’s 2008 campaign pledge to label genetically modified food.

And it's not just a matter of unfulfilled promises. On some food policy issues, the Obama administration has actually managed to lose ground. In 2012, the USDA began the regulatory process of allowing poultry lines to increase their speed from a maximum of 140 birds per minute to 175. At the same time, the program decreases the number of required federal food-safety inspectors, who are responsible for spotting unsanitary or diseased birds, on each line from four to one.

“What is the Obama administration’s food policy?” asks Dave Murphy, head of the group Food Democracy Now and a prominent Obama supporter during the 2008 campaign. “The answer, I’m afraid, is that it’s status quo and industrial agribusiness as usual.”

So unlike on same-sex marriage, Barack Obama appears to have devolved, rather than evolved, on drug and agricultural policy.  He has done so without fear of political retribution from Democrats who have loyally backed him partly because, as one GOP Senator once admitted, "If he was for it, we had to be against it."

With nearly unwavering devotion from his left flank, President Obama has been concerned primarily with his right flank.  And now, even before she is nominated- much less elected- Hillary Clinton has the luxury of hearing from breathless admirers like Eva Longoria.

Activists from Hollywood usually have little worthwhile to add to the political debate, though there are some notable exceptions.  Celebrity admirers like Longoria who support Clinton because- oh, maybe just "because"- would encourage a President Clinton to avoid progressive policy. We've only recently been down this road- and it's a dead end.








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That's One Clever Dog Whistle

Politico reports that at an appearance in Roanoke in southwestern Virginia

Rep. Paul Ryan pledged Friday night that House Republicans will investigate President Barack Obama’s deal to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

At an after-dinner speech on the eve of Virginia’s GOP state convention, the former vice presidential nominee urged activists to unite behind Senate candidate Ed Gillespie as their best hope for advancing a conservative agenda.

For now, he said, the Senate is a “graveyard of good ideas” and Republicans must focus on aggressive oversight as their best bet to hold Obama accountable.

“I’m part of the IRS investigation,” Ryan told about 600 people in a ballroom at the Hotel Roanoke. “We’ve got the Benghazi investigation, the Veterans Affairs investigation, and we’re going to do an investigation about this troop transfer with the Taliban. So we’ve got a lot on our plate.”

The Wisconsin congressman said the country would start to turn the corner if Sen. Harry Reid became minority leader, stressing that Republican unity is key to make that happen.

“We agree on the same principles. We actually all agree on the same policies … Every now and again we disagree on tactics,” he said. “So it’s very important that as a party we put those differences aside, we put them in perspective, and like Mel Gibson said in that great movie ‘Braveheart,’ ‘we need to unite the clans!’”

According to Politico reporter James Hohmann, the former Repub vice-presidential nominee was referring to clans.  But he could as easily have been referring to Klans.

Gibson has engaged in a few tirades exposing his religious bigotry, misogyny, or profound passion for profanity. Nonetheless, probably his most famous outburst occurred when, in 2006

he was stopped on Pacific Coast Highway and told he was to be detained for drunk driving Friday morning in Malibu. The actor began swearing uncontrollably. Gibson repeatedly said, "My life is f****d." Law enforcement sources say the deputy, worried that Gibson might become violent, told the actor that he was supposed to cuff him but would not, as long as Gibson cooperated. As the two stood next to the hood of the patrol car, the deputy asked Gibson to get inside. Deputy Mee then walked over to the passenger door and opened it. The report says Gibson then said, "I'm not going to get in your car," and bolted to his car. The deputy quickly subdued Gibson, cuffed him and put him inside the patrol car.

TMZ has learned that Deputy Mee audiotaped the entire exchange between himself and Gibson, from the time of the traffic stop to the time Gibson was put in the patrol car, and that the tape fully corroborates the written report.

Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."

The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"

The deputy became alarmed as Gibson's tirade escalated, and called ahead for a sergeant to meet them when they arrived at the station. When they arrived, a sergeant began videotaping Gibson, who noticed the camera and then said, "What the f*** do you think you're doing?"

A law enforcement source says Gibson then noticed another female sergeant and yelled, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"

We're told Gibson took two blood alcohol tests, which were videotaped, and continued saying how "f****d" he was and how he was going to "f***" Deputy Mee.

This does not appear to have been an isolated incident.  In April, 2012 the website thewrap.com published a nine-page letter written to the actor/screenwriter/producer/director by screenwriter Joe Ezterhas who had written for Gibson a screenplay about Judah Maccabee. At the time, CNN's Josh Levs found

"I've come to the conclusion that the reason you won't make 'The Maccabees' is the ugliest possible one. You hate Jews." He recounts Gibson repeatedly using derogatory epithets for Jewish people.

Allegations of anti-Semitism are nothing new for Gibson. Concerns that arose among some Jewish groups over his handling of the story of Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ" in 2004 were replaced by widespread condemnations two years later when Gibson was arrested on a drunk driving charge. According to a police report, he asked the arresting officer if he was Jewish and said, "F***ing Jews. The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

Gibson later apologized without acknowledging specific remarks.

Eszterhas is a veteran of the industry, having penned such titles as "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls."

In his letter, he writes that he hoped Gibson viewed the Maccabees project "as a kind of penance/apologia" -- a claim Gibson denies in his response.

Eszterhas says that soon after he began working with Gibson on it, he became "increasingly worried that I'd made a grave mistake by hooking up with you."

It was not immediately clear how thewrap.com obtained Eszterhas' letter.

In discussing Jewish people, Gibson regularly used the terms "Hebes," "oven-dodgers," and "Jew-boys," Eszterhas alleges. "You said most 'gatekeepers' of American companies were 'Hebes' who 'controlled their bosses.'"

"You said the Holocaust was 'mostly a lot of horsesh*t,'" the letter says, adding that Gibson made various false accusations, including that the Torah refers to sacrificing Christian babies.

The most intriguing, though completely overlooked, portion of Gibson's alleged remarks involved the then-head of the Roman Catholic Church.  Representative Ryan is a disciple of Ayn Rand, a proud libertarian and atheist. He also always has portrayed himself- as has a largely friendly mainstream media- as a devout and devoted Roman Catholic and Christian After singing during a Baptist service, he reportedly told a  minister “I’m Catholic, but I’m cool with that. I’m so goofy with that stuff. It’s just not my thing. I’m Catholic!”

But according to Levs, Ezterhas maintained that Gibson  "called Pope John Paul II 'the anti-Christ' and 'the devil.'"

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine," Rick says to Sam in Casablanca (video, below).  Of all the actors in all the movies in American cinema, Mel Gibson is quoted by Paul Ryan.

The Wisconsin congressman, who enjoys posing as a friend of the poor while advocating policies to wipe them out, may not have an authentic bone in his body. But Mel Gibson, partly on the strength of "The Passion of the Christ," an anti-Semitic movie its fans erroneously believe faithful to the biblical account, is a favorite with much of the GOP base. And when Paul Ryan- reportedly contemplating a run for the 2016 presidential nomination- speaks to a conservative Republican audience, he certainly knows how to blow that dog whistle.

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A Very Tactical Critique

Is his recent op-ed in USA Today criticizing the release of Sgt. Bowe Berghdahl, Florida Senator Marco Rubio argues

The prisoner swap is part and parcel of a broader problem with the president's approach to the war on terror.

Put simply, he doesn't seem to understand that we are still at war. 

That's inaccurate on two counts, the first that the President does not "understand" that we are still at war. The Daily Beast's Josh Rogin writes

Following President Obama’s Rose Garden ceremony Saturday with Bergdahl’s parents, senior administration officials have repeatedly praised Bergdahl as a hero and applauded his conduct, pushing back against reports he intentionally deserted his post in Afghanistan. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday that Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.” Rice and other top officials also began calling Bergdahl a “prisoner of war.”

“Sergeant Bergdahl wasn’t simply a hostage, he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield,” Rice said.

“Sgt. Bergdahl is a sergeant in the United States Army. He was a prisoner of war,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday. “This was an exchange of prisoners…Again, I remind you this was a prisoner of war exchange.”

But there is a hitch: both the Obama Administration and Senator Rubio are wrong.  Rogin continues

During the five years of Bergdahl’s imprisonment, despite discussing his case in several public briefings, State Department and Defense Department officials made sure not to refer to Bergdahl as a “prisoner of war.” The reason, according to a senior administration official at the time, was that U.S. policy dictated that the rules of treatment for “prisoners of war” under the Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban. There was concern that if the U.S. called Bergdahl a “prisoner of war,” the Taliban would say its soldiers in U.S. custody were “prisoners of war,” as well, and would demand Geneva protections.

Some experts said the Obama administration’s sudden use of the term “prisoner of war” for Bergdahl has greater implications for U.S. policy on the treatment of detainees, especially the Taliban.

“It rips open an issue that we’ve put aside for 10 years, which is that some of the people we have imprisoned could be entitled to some Geneva protections,” said Eugene Fidell, a professor of military law at Yale University. “The Obama campaign was critical of the Bush administration going in, but the actual changes in how the Obama treated these guys as opposed to the Bush administration are few.”

Ironically, the Administration of Bush 43, which Rubio supported, appeared not to "understand" the conflict with Al Qaeda as a war.  Rogin continues

The Bush administration decided in 2001 to classify militants captured on the battlefield as “enemy combatants” who were not entitled to protections and privileges afforded to “prisoners of war” under the Geneva Conventions, which the U.S. has signed but the Taliban has not. That allowed the Bush administration to create the prison at Guantanamo Bay and various other prisons around the world, and keep the prisoners out of the eye of international observers.

"One of the interesting issues of Article 4 of the Geneva Convention deals with if you were to deem somebody as a prisoner of war, the United States government would be obligated to pay them a monthly stipend,” said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in February 2002. “The United States government would be obligated to give the al Qaeda or the Taliban detainees, the al Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo musical instruments. Those would be obligations imposed upon a government under the prisoner of war aspect of Article 4 of the Geneva Convention.”

This runs contrary to the "W is stupid" meme which was popular in some quarters during his presidency.  GW Bush is a bad painter, but was smart enough to understand that the USA's ongoing clash with Al Qaeda is not "war."

Invariably, it is clear who is winning a war, and Rubio's words reflect the national uncertainty over the status of the struggle.  The Senator notes "al-Qaeda is not defeated. Under President Obama's watch, it has instead morphed into affiliates operating in as many as a dozen countries" and claims "the threat from these disparate groups is not subsiding." Clearly, it is unclear who is winning (clearly and unclear; yes, I noticed) and "victory" in the traditional sense, as it is known in war (e.g., the Allies in World War II under Democratic leadership and the North Vietnamese Communists in the Vietnam War under Repub leadership), will be nearly impossible to attain and unrecognizable if it is.  (The world has changed, Senator.)

It is remarkable, further, that a United States Senator who claims concern about the United States Constitution would fail to recognize that the Constitution requires Congress to declare war.  Consequently, he charges with a straight face "The American people deserve better than a president who refuses to speak honestly about the threats we face."  The "war" we're involved in is not ( practically or legally) a war, but would more accurately be labeled a jihad, which translates as "struggle."

Rubio, like Bush 43, is brighter than he appears. Nowhere in his op-ed does he criticize the President for violating the National Defense Authorization Act which, as Joan Walsh implies, is the GOP's most "legitimate complaint" about the swap.  Apparent (notwithstanding Obama's signing statement) violation of the NDAA however, is insufficiently incendiary for most Republicans- and as someone who hopes to be President in three years, Rubio is reluctant to suggest any President has exceeded his authority (photo below of the Senator with the guy who stands between him and a run at the office, from south Florida's Sun-Sentinel).

It is probably unfair to say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel;  more likely is a signing statement. Not surprisingly, therefore, it's the one thing about the deal that doesn't seem to bother Senator Rubio.

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If A Stopped Clock Is Right Twice A Day, Laura Ingraham Can Be Right Once A Month

During the roundtable (actually, rectangular table) of Fox News Sunday on (when else?) Sunday with host Chris Wallace, this relatively insignificant faceoff (video, below) transpired:

WALLACE: Let's turn to the president's foreign policy and his speech this week at West Point. Mr. Obama set new limits on the use of U.S. force in the world. This in the same week that he announced that he's going to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016 when he will have left office. Here is the president of West Point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: U.S. military action cannot be the only or even primary component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Laura, is there something there that you can glean from the speech that is -- that you can call the Obama doctrine?

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I've been searching. I think the response from the cadets, the graduating class of West Point is very telling. I did listen to the entire speech. And there is little in the way of response. And it's very uncomfortable. And look, I think he is reflecting to this extent the viewpoint of many in the American public who are weary of all these military engagements. And I think more resisting to military engagements six years in, seeing the world as chaotic as it is now, Africa, Middle East and beyond. So it's true. I don't think that we are clambering (ph) to go to war. However, the idea that the president goes to West Point and says, look, we've never been stronger relative to the rest of the world, I'm sorry. That doesn't even pass the straight face test. Just on an economic front. Forget on our declining influence around the globe. So, I thought it was a very odd speech. And it was not well received. And that didn't surprise me at all given the tenor and the tone.

WALLACE: Bob, what did you think of the speech? And when you look at our intervention in Syria, our lack of intervention and role, or rather our intervention in Libya, a lack of intervention in Syria and how we play in Ukraine, is there a coherent, a cogent Obama foreign policy?

BOB WOODWARD, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, there is so much talk. And I don't think talk solves lots of these problems. In foreign policy, you're trying to do two things, comfort your friends and scare the hell out of your enemies or your potential enemies. A speech like this does not have that effect. Because he said we're in effect lowering the threshold to use the military. Sometimes it is best to just be quiet and not try to theorize and not try to explain here. And I think this is the explaining is just not working. At the same time, there are two jobs the president has. And that is to protect the country and avoid unnecessary wars. And if you look at the record, you have to give Obama some credit. He's protected the country and we have not had another war or unnecessary war.

INGRAHAM: To be protective -- Benghazi diplomatic mission on 9- 11-12, I mean we kind of failed on that regard, don't you think, Bob?

WOODWARD: Well, you're underscoring my point that this will never go away, at least with you.

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: I actually don't think - I don't think it's funny when an ambassador is murdered.

WALLACE: On that somewhat cheap shot, we're going to have to leave. Thank you, panel. See you next week. Up next, our "Power Player of the Week," Fox's Bret Baier on his son's special heart and his family's inspiring journey.

Salon's Elias Isquith was not in a fair and balanced mood as he commented

Laura Ingraham’s obsession with the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi has become so comically extreme that even the Washington Post’s usually mild-mannered Bob Woodward is winning laughs by mocking her — and on a Fox News panel, no less.

It's not completely clear from the transcript, but a viewing of the video makes evident that Wallace, who began to respond during the laughter and before Ingraham's final statement, was referring to Woodward's remark as the "somewhat cheap shot."

Can we be honest?  Wallace (far more so, Isquith) was being overly generous to Bob Woodward.  The GOP has found little that would call into serious question the performance of the Administration on that day, and much of the caterwauling clearly is political posturing. But Ingraham, on this occasion, didn't sink to that level, merely arguing "we kind of failed in that regard."

That is not an offensive or even bold statement (nor piercing commentary) but an observation, and an obvious one stated in respectful, almost passive, fashion.  If Woodward could not resist responding, he might have simply reiterated that the nation has been kept safe and avoided unnecessary wars under this President. Perhaps he might have slipped in a cliche, as in  "it wasn't the high water mark for this Administration." Better yet, he could have taken his own advice of a moment earlier when he observed "Sometimes it is best just to be quiet and not try to theorize and not try to explain here."

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Race-Conscious, Class-Blind

I don't know what Robert Reich thinks of reparations, though perhaps he realizes including it in its national platform would render the Democratic Party obsolete.  Nor does it matter what he thinks of the idea.  For if Robert Reich is right- and he is- Ta-Nehisi Coates is very, very wrong.

Coates argues "something more than moral pressure calls America to reparations. We cannot escape our history. All of our solutions to the great problems of health care, education, housing, and economic inequality are troubled by what must go unspoken."  He supports HR 40, sponsored by senior Michigan Democrat John Conyers (on the ballot for re-election because a Judge says so) because

Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.

There may be ten reasons HR 40, also known as the "Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act," is a bad idea.  The first is that it sets up a commission; the second it that it would be virtually unworkable.  Reasons 3-10 are better answered by the working class family down the block, one in which both parents are working outside the home so their children. with their own meager wages, earn enough that they can afford a community college education and a shot (however meager) at the American Dream.

Or maybe we can ask the husband and wife.which wants to take in an elderly, ailing parent but is unable because their apartment is too small.  Or the divorced woman who is working two minimum-wage jobs and still cannot afford health care- or food- for her children.   They probably would have a good explanation of why giving out money on the basis of inherited characteristics such as race is a terrible idea.

Robert Reich- though he may not realize it- also knows why reparations would miss the point of what's going on in the USA these days, as it has been the past few decades.  He notes

America’s largest employer, with 1.4 million workers, refuses to provide most of them with an income they can live on. The vast majority earns under $25,000 a year, with an average hourly wage of about $8.80.

You and I and other taxpayers shell out for these workers’ Medicaid and food stamps because they and their families can’t stay afloat on what Walmart pays. (I’ve often thought Walmart and other big employers should have to pay a tax equal to the public assistance their workers receive because the companies don’t pay them enough to stay out of poverty.)

Walmart won’t even allow workers to organize for better jobs and wages. In January, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint accusing it of unlawfully threatening or retaliating against workers who have taken part in strikes and protests.

The firm says it can’t afford to give its workers a raise or better hours and working conditions. Baloney. Walmart is America’s biggest retailer. Its policies are pulling every other major retailer into the same race to the bottom. If Walmart halted the race, the race would stop.

Don’t worry about its investors. Its largest is the Walton family, whose combined wealth is greater than the combined wealth of the bottom 42 percent of the entire American population.

Exploitation of workers for the privileged few isn't limited to Wal-Mart, though it is a particularly flagrant sinner and because of its vast workforce enjoys the greatest opportunity to do right by the American people. Reich continues

Walmart isn’t the only place where low-wage workers are on the move. Two weeks ago, 2,000 protesters gathered at McDonald’s corporate headquarters in suburban Chicago to demand a hike in the minimum wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. More than 100 were arrested.

Giant fast-food companies have the largest gap between the pay of CEOs and workers of any industry, with a CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of more than 1,000-to-one.

Meanwhile, across America, low-wage workers are demanding – and in many cases getting – increases in the minimum wage. Despite Washington’s gridlock, seven states have raised their own minimums so far this year. A number of cities have also voted in minimum-wage increases.

The movement of low-wage workers for decent pay and working conditions is partly a reflection of America’s emerging low-wage economy. While low-wage industries such as retail and restaurant accounted for 22 percent of the jobs lost in the Great Recession, they’ve generated 44 percent of the jobs added since then, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project.

But the movement is also a moral struggle for decency and respect, and full participation in our economy and society. In these ways, it’s the civil rights struggle of our time.

Coates presents an informative lesson on American history. Perhaps, though, he could see the forest for the trees if he glanced upon these illustrations, from Curry County (OR.) Democrats:

While productivity and corporate profits soar, the average employee in a company takes in .380% as much as does the CEO.  And some of those workers are black. Or white. Or hispanic, Asian, or members of indigenous tribes.    At last glance, no one was suggesting reparations for those workers.









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The Right To Arm Bears Shall Not Be Infringed

The National Rifle Association is right.  It is right not in what adorns a wall on the inside of its headquarters, nor in what it claims, but in what it knows the Second Amendment means, and says.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," it reads. Or rather, it reads ".... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  Clearly, the organization knows the Second Amendment says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  The Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms as much as it does an individual's right to arm bears (images below from davidstang.com, bobralph.com, and the xenohistorian weblog, respectively).

That inconveniently-placed "well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state," has unnecessarily confused many legal scholars. But it needn't do so.  James Madison proposed a raft of amendments to the Constitution on June 8, 1789 and one of them became the Second Amendment which, in 1989 even Robert Bork believed "guarantee(s) the right of states to form militias not for individuals to be armed." As Michael Waldman writes in Politico magazine

There is not a single word about an individual’s right to a gun for self-defense or recreation in Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention. Nor was it mentioned, with a few scattered exceptions, in the records of the ratification debates in the states. Nor did the U.S. House of Representatives discuss the topic as it marked up the Bill of Rights. In fact, the original version passed by the House included a conscientious objector provision. “A well regulated militia,” it explained, “composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Waldman argues "We don’t really know what he meant by" a "well regulated militia" or "the right to keep and bear arms," but in good liberal tradition, he is being overly kind to ideological foes bereft of evidence.  If the guy wanted to ensure "no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in prison," he was not thinking of any individual right to bear arms, but rather a commitment to military service.

Waldman does explain

The amendment grew out of the political tumult surrounding the drafting of the Constitution, which was done in secret by a group of mostly young men, many of whom had served together in the Continental Army. Having seen the chaos and mob violence that followed the Revolution, these “Federalists” feared the consequences of a weak central authority. They produced a charter that shifted power—at the time in the hands of the states—to a new national government.

“Anti-Federalists” opposed this new Constitution. The foes worried, among other things, that the new government would establish a “standing army” of professional soldiers and would disarm the 13 state militias, made up of part-time citizen-soldiers and revered as bulwarks against tyranny. These militias were the product of a world of civic duty and governmental compulsion utterly alien to us today. Every white man age 16 to 60 was enrolled. He was actually required to own—and bring—a musket or other military weapon.

Former Justice John Paul Stevens agrees, noting the Second Amendment "was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated."   Thus, he proposes amending the Amendment  to read "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed."  

That would reflect the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution, who were intensely interested in maintaining a strong militia to protect against tyranny of the federal government.  It should reassure the right, much of which has convinced itself that a the states are in ever-present danger of being overrun by the federal government and has not noticed there is no state militia in effect today.  The Second Amendment was enacted, as Chief Justice Burger put it in a speech in 1992, "to ensure that the 'state armies'- 'the militia'- would be maintained for the defense of the state."

The National Rifle Association  finds it useful to introduce the text of the Amendment with three dots (...). It understands, as former Justice Burger the previous year had commented, that the Second Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud- I repeat the word 'fraud'- on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

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Can't Help But Question Republican Motivation

The Obama Administration has secured the release from captivity of an American serviceman, and Republicans are not amused- or pleased.  The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty reports

Amid jubilation Saturday over the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from captivity by the Taliban, senior Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were troubled by the means by which it was accomplished, which was a deal to release five Afghan detainees from the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Top Republicans on the Senate and House armed services committees went so far as to accuse President Obama of having broken the law, which requires the administration to notify Congress before any transfers from Guantanamo are carried out.

The GOP is not late to the game.  Twenty-four months ago, the late Michael Hastings found

"The Hill is giving State and the White House shit," says one senior administration source. "The political consequences­ are being used as leverage in the policy debate." According to White House sources, Marc Grossman, who replaced Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was given a direct warning by the president's opponents in Congress about trading Bowe for five Taliban prisoners during an election year. "They keep telling me it's going to be Obama's Willie Horton moment," Grossman warned the White House. The threat was as ugly as it was clear: The president's political enemies were prepared to use the release of violent prisoners to paint Obama as a Dukakis-­like appeaser, just as Republicans did to the former Massachusetts governor during the 1988 campaign.

Two months later, Tom Hayden explained

Republican opposition to diplomatic compromise with the Taliban is blocking the release of a captured U.S soldier held since 2009 and broader negotiations aimed at a resolution of the decade-long war.

A recent German interview with a leading Afghan diplomatic mediator, Naquibullah Shorish, describes the stalled scenario for peace in some detail. The process, launched with Obama administration support in Qatar in 2010 under German mediation, was to begin with a prisoner exchange as a trial test for further talks. The American soldier, Sgt. Bowe Bigdahl, who was captured on June 30, 2009, was to be released in a swap for five Taliban detainees held in Guantanamo. The Taliban believed the exchange had US approval. But US Republican opposition made Congressional approval impossible, and the talks have floundered ever since.

In short, the US troop withdrawal clock is ticking towards its 2014 deadline while the hands of the diplomatic clock have stopped. Mitt Romney, goaded by his top foreign policy adviser John Bolton, has steadfastly opposed talks with the Taliban while remaining vague about his support for the 2014 drawdown.

Voter suppression is not the only tried-and-true trick up the GOP sleeve.  Whatever the stated rationale of Republicans for questioning the deal that led to the Sgt. Bergdahl's release (image below from New York Daily News), Republicans in the past have interfered, for partisan political advantage, with release of Americans held hostage. Wikipedia reminds us

In late 1979 a number of US hostages were captured in Iran during the Iranian Revolution. The Iran hostage crisis continued into 1980, and as the November 1980 presidential election approached, there were concerns in the Republican Party camp that a resolution of the crisis could constitute an "October surprise" which might give incumbent Jimmy Carter enough of an electoral boost to be re-elected.[3] Carter's rescue attempt was first written about in a Jack Anderson article in theWashington Post in the fall of 1980.[4] After the release of the hostages on January 20, 1981, mere minutes after Republican challenger Ronald Reagan's inauguration, some charged that the Reagan campaign had made a secret deal with the Iranian government whereby the Iranians would hold the hostages until after Reagan was elected and inaugurated.[5]

The issue of an "October Surprise" was brought up during an investigation by a House of Representatives Subcommittee into how the 1980 Reagan Campaign obtained debate briefing materials of then-President Carter. During the investigation (a.k.a. Debategate), the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee obtained access to Reagan Campaign documents and discovered numerous instances of documents and memorandum referencing a monitoring effort for any such October Surprise. The Subcommittee, chaired by former U.S. Rep. Donald Albosta (D–MI) issued a comprehensive report on May 17, 1984, describing each type of information that was detected and its possible source. There is a section in the report dedicated to the October Surprise issue.[6]

The allegations that the Reagan team subverted the US government's attempt to resolve the hostage crisis were generally regarded as an unsupported conspiracy theory until the Iran-Contra affair was exposed in 1986, which showed that the US government had made a secret deal with the Iranian government in 1985 to covertly supply Iran with arms, with the funds being used to support the Nicaraguan Contras. Investigations of the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Central Intelligence Agency played a central role, made the 1980 October Surprise allegations, in which Iran and the CIA also figured, seem less implausible, leading to more serious investigation of the claims...

Former C.I.A. director and Repub vice-presidential nominee George Herbert Walker Bush was at the center of the (unproven) allegations:

During investigations in the early 1990s Bush provided several alibis that fell apart, before maintaining that he was visiting a private residence in Washington. Bush refused to disclose the person visited, except to members of the House October Surprise Task Force on condition that they did not disclose the name or interview the person. This person ultimately proved to be Richard Anthony Moore(Ambassador to Ireland 1989-1992), but he had died by the time this was disclosed.[24] John Norman Maclean, who worked at the Chicago Tribune for 30 years, told a State Department official, on a date the official recalled as 18 October 1980, that Bush was flying to Paris for hostage negotiations. Maclean had been given the information by a source he described as "in a secondary position in Republican circles ... where he would have access to information of this kind", but never published the claim due to Republican denials.

If the value of property is determined by three things- location, location, and location- there are three goals of a political party- victory, victory, and victory.   If the result is subversion of American foreign policy, that's only collateral damage.

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