In case you thought that the “Journolist” controversy over a now defunct, left leaning e-mail list created by Ezra Klein when he was 22 and working for The American Prospect, which was the source of the leaked e-mails by Washington Post right wing blogger, David Weigel that got him fired, well, it still rages among journalists from the left and the right. As Joe Conason points out it isn’t the left that has the problem it is the right wing journalists who have their knickers in a knot.

Joe Conason: On the team: The stunning hypocrisy of Journolist’s critics

They speak at GOP banquets. They meet to plot in Grover Norquist’s office. Yet the wingers find a listserv shocking

Nothing much can be learned from the manufactured media uproar over Journolist, except as a case study of how the right-wing propaganda machine still dominates America’s daily narrative — and how conservative journalists remain astonishingly exempt from the standards they are pretending to uphold.

Look no further than the outrage feigned by two of the nation’s most prominent right-wing journalists, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard (and Fox News) and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, both of whom could barely contain their indignation over the revelation that a few hundred progressive writers and academics engaged in political discussion via e-mail. Having read a single Journolist e-mail that suggested tarring him as a “racist,” Barnes suddenly detects a departure from “traditional standards” :

  When I’m talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.

   My response has usually been to say, yes, there’s liberal bias in the media, but there’s no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal … Now, after learning I’d been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I’m inclined to amend my response. Not to say there’s a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.

   My guess is that this and other revelations about JournoList will deepen the distrust of the national press.

More:

Perhaps it is appropriate to give the last word to the American Spectator’s John Tabin, who has written a striking dissent from the right-wing hysterics over Journolist:

Everyone who has been shown to have their work influenced by conversations on Journolist is, likewise, a commentator. That Chris Hayes tries to get perspective from other liberals before he goes on TV to opine on a topic, or that Joe Klein incorporates ideas from off-the-record exchanges into his blog posts, is not exactly earthshaking news. Commentators on the right do exactly the same thing — it’s just our emails don’t get leaked because we’re smart enough not to conduct these exchanges on listservs where we let the audience expand to include 400 people. This practice is a double-edged sword — you get the benefit of idea-sharing, but you have to be careful not to get sucked into groupthink. Liberals seem more prone to the latter failing, but that’s more a problem for them than for anyone else, and it’s not much of a scandal …

This brings us to the conduct of the Daily Caller itself … [Editor Tucker] Carlson is being flat-out disingenuous when he puts the burden on Journolist members to release the context of the threads that Jonathan Strong has reported on with a gloss that the people quoted all say is misleading. Everyone on Journolist was party to an off-the-record agreement. As explained above, having people trust you to keep conversations off the record is an important part of practicing journalism. (It shouldn’t be a surprise that my source, who was willing to break the agreement to the extent that he treated an off-the-record discussion as an on-background discussion, is an academic, not a journalist.) The Caller is in possession of the complete threads (I gave them too much credit when I assumed they must not be), and was not party to that agreement. If the Caller is witholding information from readers to sensationalize the narrative, as the people they’re quoting all claim that they are, they are practicing tabloid journalism …

If Tucker Carlson wants to run his website like a tabloid, he’s welcome to do so — but he shouldn’t be lecturing anyone about journalistic scruples.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post’s Line points out that the Journolist flap shows conservative media conspiracy, not liberal one

That’s the real story behind the Journolist flap, no matter what you’ve read to the contrary on news sites, reputable or otherwise.

Consider today’s lead story on the Daily Caller, the conservative site that’s led the charge on the J-list “scandal.” The story “exposes” a J-List thread in which the topic of some kind of journalistic coordination came up. It has this huge headline:

   

Journolist debates making its coordination with Obama explicit

But way down in the 13th paragaraph, the story quotes a post from the very same thread in which J-List founder and Post blogger Ezra Klein excplicitly rules out any such coordination:    

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, the founder of Journolist, quickly jumped in: “Nope, no message coordination. I’m not even sure that would be legal. This is a discussion list, though, and I want it to retain that character,” he wrote.

Again, Sargent reiterates that the problem is the right wing media and quotes Mark Halpern of Time

As I’ve been arguing here regularly, the moral of the Shirley Sherrod affair is that not all partisan media are created equal. Though this is overwhelmingly obvious, few media figures have been willing to state clearly that the problem isn’t “partisan” media in general, but the conservative media in particular.

Now Mark Halperin, to his credit, goes there:

 

The Sherrod story is a reminder — much like the 2004 assault on John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — that the old media are often swayed by controversies pushed by the conservative new media. In many quarters of the old media, there is concern about not appearing liberally biased, so stories emanating from the right are given more weight and less scrutiny.

   Additionally, the conservative new media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by old-media decisionmakers is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative new media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the old media find it irresistible.

   …all of us who are involved in politics and media should take a moment to recognize that we have hit a low point. And let all of us resolve that, having hit bottom, it is time to start climbing out of the pit.

As Steve Benen notes, Halperin is widely respected by the Beltway media elite, so here’s hoping they listen to him.

In other words, Tucker Carlson whose byline is the Daily Caller, Fred Barnes and John Fund are making a mountain out of a mole hill to shut down the left leaning journalists and  they lack the very journalists scruples that they are whining that the left lacks.  

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Is this what the American people really voted for? More war?

Robert Scheer at Truthdig

Thank God for the Whistle-Blowers

What WikiLeaks did was brilliant journalism, and the bleating critics from the president on down are revealing just how low a regard they have for the truth. As with Richard Nixon’s rage against the publication of the Pentagon Papers, our leaders are troubled not by the prospect of these revelations endangering troops but rather endangering their own political careers. It is our president who unnecessarily sacrifices the lives of our soldiers and not those in the press who let the public in on the folly of the mission itself.

What the documents exposed is the depth of chicanery that surrounds the Afghanistan occupation at every turn because we have stumbled into a regional quagmire of such dark and immense proportions that any attempt to connect this failed misadventure with a recognizable U.S. national security interest is doomed. What is revealed on page after page is that none of the local actors, be they labeled friend or foe, give a whit about our president’s agenda. They are focused on prizes, passions and causes that are obsessively homegrown.

Gaius Publius at AMERICAblog

Ellsberg: Obama ‘has indicted more people for leaks than all previous presidents together’

Daniel Ellsberg is asked to comment on a clip of press secretary Robert Gibbs complaining about the leaks:

   

KING: Daniel, do you understand why Mr. Gibbs, representing the president, is so upset?

   ELLSBERG: Well, he’s very upset in part because he’s working for a president who has indicted more people now for leaks than all previous presidents put together. And two of those people — Thomas Drake and Shamai Leibowitz — have been indicted for acts that were undertaken under Bush, which [the] George W. Bush administration chose not to indict.

   So this is an administration that’s more concerned about preventing transparency, I would say, than its predecessor which I’m very sorry to hear. As somebody who voted for Obama and expect to vote for him again, despite all this.

Yikes. That’s all – yikes. (Video of the Ellsberg intervew is available here.)

Don’t worry, Mr. Dionne, the Democrats will not fail to cave to Republican demands.

E. J. Dionne Jr.: The Politics of Stupidity Strike Again

Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?

Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans. David Cameron, the new Conservative prime minister in Britain, is a leading example.

He recently offered a rather brutal budget that includes severe cutbacks. I have doubts about some of them, but at least Cameron cared enough about reducing his country’s deficit that alongside the cuts, he also proposed an increase in the value-added tax from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. Imagine: a fiscal conservative who really is a fiscal conservative.

That could never happen here because the fairy tale of supply-side economics insists that taxes are always too high, especially on the rich.

This is why Democrats will be fools if they don’t try to turn the Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year into an election issue. If Democrats go into a headlong retreat on this, they will have no standing to govern.

But IOKIYO.

Nicholas D. Kristof: 1 Soldier or 20 Schools?

The war in Afghanistan will consume more money this year alone than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War – combined.

A recent report  from the Congressional Research Service finds that the war on terror, including Afghanistan and Iraq, has been, by far, the costliest war in American history aside from World War II. It adjusted costs of all previous wars for inflation.

Those historical comparisons should be a wake-up call to President Obama, underscoring how our military strategy is not only a mess – as the recent leaked documents from Afghanistan suggested – but also more broadly reflects a gross misallocation of resources. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was a distortion of American policy: By the standards of history and cost-effectiveness, we are hugely overinvested in military tools and underinvested in education and diplomacy.

It was reflexive for liberals to rail at President George W. Bush for jingoism. But it is President Obama who is now requesting 6.1 percent more in military spending than the peak of military spending under Mr. Bush. And it is Mr. Obama who has tripled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he took office. (A bill providing $37 billion to continue financing America’s two wars was approved by the House on Tuesday and is awaiting his signature.)

Wrong, Stephen, Obama sank his agenda by playing to the Republicans and corporations so he could look bipartisan. It wouldn’t have mattered if he put the climate first.

Stephen Stromberg: What sank the Senate’s climate bill

Who killed the climate bill? Democrats who supported climate legislation in the House feel betrayed, The Post reports; after they approved a controversial cap-and-trade bill, Democratic leaders failed even to hold a vote on similar legislation in the Senate, and GOP challengers are on the attack. A few environmentalists blame lawmakers who led the effort for compromising some good policy out of the legislation.

But the real answer is simpler: Too many senators have little, if any, incentives to pass climate policy that’s rational in the long term and good for the country as a whole. Also to blame is President Obama’s policy agenda, which prioritized health care.

At this point with the revelations from Wikileaks, they would have to prosecute themselves.

Roger Shuler: Is Obama DOJ Engaged in a Coverup?

Until last week, the best that could be said of the U.S. Department of Justice under Barack Obama was, well . . . nothing. That’s because the DOJ, under Attorney General Eric Holder, had pretty much done . . . nothing.

But things changed last week with reports that the DOJ had found no criminal charges were warranted against Bush administration officials for the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

The news came in the form of a letter from DOJ official Ronald Welch to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI). In those six pages, the Obama DOJ moved into dark territory. No longer was it just ignoring possible criminal acts by Bush officials; it was engaging in active deceit of the American public.

On top of that, we now know that the “investigation” was handled by a special prosecutor with ties to evidence suppression in an earlier criminal case. What, if anything, will the Obama DOJ do about this latest news, which comes courtesy of some splendid reporting by Andrew Kreig, of the Justice Integrity Project?

Scott Horton, of Harper’s, called the findings a whitewash–and he was being charitable. I would call it a coverup. Our unsolicited advice for Conyers: Don’t just quietly accept this steaming pile of horse feces.

Has anyone wondered what happened to FISA reform that President Obama promised to do after he took office? Well if this is his idea of reform, he is no better than the gang that occupied the Executive for the last 8 years.

In today’s Washington Post, the White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity by adding four little words, “electronic communication transactional records“, the government will have access to the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. The government lawyers are claiming that it would not grant access to content. If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you.

From emptywheel at FDL:

Make no mistake. This is one of the most important pieces of civil liberties news in a long time. The Obama Administration is asking Congress to sanction the collection of internet records without a warrant that has been going on-the kind of shit they used to do without a warrant, until people expressed their opposition.

But then Democrats took over and now they want legal sanction and now-Voila, a request that presumably provides cover.

As Glen Greenwald said, “One Point, contrary to blatant strawman incessantly raised by Obama loyalists that the criticisms are NOT grounded in the complaints that Obama has failed to act quickly enough to usher in progressive policies but instead are based on the horrendous policies which Obama himself has affirmatively and explicitly adopted as his own, many of which directly contradict what he vowed to do as President.”

Obama has gone further than Bush by ordering the assassination of an American citizen abroad without due process and now this. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones said it best last night

You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

On this day in 1858, the Harris Treaty was signed between the United States and Japan was signed at the Ryosen-ji in Shimoda.  Also known as the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, it opened the ports of  Edo and four other Japanese cities to American trade and granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, among other stipulations.

The treaty followed the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa, which granted coaling rights for U.S. ships and allowed for a U.S. Consul in Shimoda. Although Commodore Matthew Perry secured fuel for U.S. ships and protection, he left the important matter of trading rights to Townsend Harris, another U.S. envoy who negotiated with the Tokugawa Shogunate; the treaty is therefore often referred to as the Harris Treaty. It took two years to break down Japanese resistance, but with the threat of looming British demands for similar privileges, the Tokugawa government eventually capitulated.

Treaties of Amity and Commerce between Japan and Holland, England, France, Russia and the United States, 1858.

The most important points were:

   * exchange of diplomatic agents

   * Edo, Kobe, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Yokohama‘s opening to foreign trade as ports

   * ability of United States citizens to live and trade in those ports

   * a system of phttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality extraterritoriality] that provided for the subjugation of foreign residents to the laws of their own consular courts instead of the Japanese law system

   * fixed low import-export duties, subject to international control

The agreement served as a model for similar treaties signed by Japan with other foreign countries in the ensuing weeks. These Unequal Treaties curtailed Japanese sovereignty for the first time in its history; more importantly, it revealed Japan’s growing weakness, and was seen by the West as a pretext for possible colonisation of Japan. The recovery of national status and strength became an overarching priority for the Japanese, with the treaty’s domestic consequences being the end of Bakufu (Shogun) control and the establishment of a new imperial government.

 1014 – Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars: Battle of Kleidion: Byzantine emperor Basil II inflicts a decisive defeat on the Bulgarian army, and his subsequent treatment of 15,000 prisoners reportedly causes Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria to die of a heart attack several months later, on October 6.

1030 – Ladejarl-Fairhair succession wars: Battle of Stiklestad – King Olaf II fights and dies trying to regain his Norwegian throne from the Danes.

1565 – The widowed Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, Duke of Albany at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Scotland.

1567 – James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling.

1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – English naval forces under command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.

1693 – War of the Grand Alliance: Battle of Landen – France wins a Pyrrhic victory over Allied forces in the Netherlands.

1793 – John Graves Simcoe decides to build a fort and settlement at Toronto, having sailed into the bay there.

1830 – Abdication of Charles X of France.

1836 – Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

1847 – Cumberland School of Law is founded in Lebanon, Tennessee, United States, one of only 15 law schools to exist in the United States at the end of 1847.

1848 – Irish Potato Famine: Tipperary Revolt – in Tipperary, an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule is put down by police.

1851 – Annibale de Gasparis discovers asteroid 15 Eunomia.

1858 – United States and Japan sign the Harris Treaty.

1864 – American Civil War: Confederate spy Belle Boyd is arrested by Union troops and detained at the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C..

1899 – The First Hague Convention is signed.

1900 – In Italy, King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated by Italian-born anarchist Gaetano Bresci.

1901 – The Socialist Party of America founded.

1907 – Sir Robert Baden Powell sets up the Brownsea Island Scout camp in Poole Harbour on the south coast of England. The camp ran from August 1-9, 1907, and is regarded as the foundation of the Scouting movement.

1920 – Construction of the Link River Dam begins as part of the Klamath Reclamation Project.

1921 – Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1932 – Great Depression: in Washington, D.C., troops disperse the last of the “Bonus Army” of World War I veterans.

1945 – The BBC Light Programme radio station is launched for mainstream light entertainment and music.

1948 – Olympic Games: The Games of the XIV Olympiad – after a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin open in London.

1957 – The International Atomic Energy Agency is established.

1958 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1959 – First United States Congress elections in Hawaii as a state of the Union.

1965 – Vietnam War: the first 4,000 101st Airborne Division paratroopers arrive in Vietnam, landing at Cam Ranh Bay.

1967 – Vietnam War: off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.

1967 – During the fourth day of celebrating its 400th anniversary, the city of Caracas, Venezuela is shaken by an earthquake, leaving approximately 500 dead.

1976 – In New York City, the “Son of Sam” kills one person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of attacks.

1981 – A worldwide television audience of over 700 million people watched the Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

1987 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand sign the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel (Eurotunnel).

1988 – The film Cry Freedom is seized by South African authorities.

1987 – Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi and President of Sri Lanka J. R. Jayawardene sign the Indo-Lankan Pact on ethnic issues.

1993 – The Israeli Supreme Court acquits alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges and he is set free.

1996 – The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act is struck down by a U.S. federal court as too broad .

2005 – Astronomers announce their discovery of Eris.

No Keith, Rachel.  The Boys are back in town.

8 – 2 last night, much more entertaining than a no-hitter.  Jon, I’m going to give you some personal advice, once that beard starts itching in a week or two you won’t be able to get rid of it fast enough.

Men of Honor is good, but not so good I’d watch it twice in a row.  Charlie is the Johnny Depp version.  New Mythbusters @ 9- Bottle Bash.

• AMC– The Mummy
• ESPN– Cards @ Mets
• ABC Family– Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• FX– Men of Honor x 2
• History– American Pickers, Pawn Stars (I’m tired of hyping Chasing Mummies, it’s just not that good)
• Turner Classic– Yesterday’s Enemy, Fail Safe
• Discovery– Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs
• TLC– Toddlers & Tiaras

Later-

• AMC– Troy (Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?)
• SciFi– Haven
• Turner Classics– Network
• USA– Burn Notice (this week’s)

Dave has Michael Keaton and The Flaming Lips.  Jon has Robert L. O’Connell, Stephen Elon Musk.  Alton does Molasses.

Ice Station Impossible is the introduction of Professor (voice of Stephen Colbert) and Sally Impossible, and Pete White and Billy Quizboy.  It includes the death of Race Bannon (Yeah, they never show that part on TV.)

Does Random House have some kind of deal where it’s authors can’t be listed in Wikipedia?

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 100 days in, Gulf spill leaves ugly questions unanswered

by Andrew Gully, AFP

2 hrs 9 mins ago

2 ‘Demonised’ BP boss sparks fresh US anger on exit

by Sam Reeves, AFP

Wed Jul 28, 5:05 am ET

3 Spain’s Catalonia region bans bullfighting

by Marcelo Aparicio, AFP

36 mins ago

4 Serbian proposes new talks on outstanding issues in Kosovo

by Katarina Subasic, AFP

Wed Jul 28, 1:15 pm ET

5 US lawmakers beat back Afghan war challenge after leaks

by Olivier Knox, AFP

2 hrs 55 mins ago

6 Afghan bus hits roadside bomb, up to 25 dead

by Arif Karemi, AFP

Wed Jul 28, 8:51 am ET

7 Oil spill hits 100 days as BP aims for quick well kill

By Tom Bergin and Kristen Hays, Reuters

1 hr 56 mins ago

8 Special Report: Watching grass grow in the Gulf, and cheering!

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent, Reuters

1 hr 44 mins ago

9 Key parts of Arizona anti-immigration law blocked

By Tim Gaynor, Reuters

43 mins ago

10 U.S. keeps pressure on Iraq to form new government

By Ross Colvin, Reuters

1 hr 23 mins ago

11 Durable goods orders fall, business spending up

By Lucia Mutikani, Reuters

1 hr 50 mins ago

12 Congress gives Obama long-delayed Afghan war funds

By Matt Spetalnick and Sayed Salahuddin, Reuters

Tue Jul 27, 8:24 pm ET

13 Boeing profit beats, but shares fall on revenue

By Kyle Peterson, Reuters

Wed Jul 28, 1:36 pm ET

14 Economy erodes election hope for Democrats

By Steve Holland, Reuters

Tue Jul 27, 3:29 pm ET

15 100 days later, BP taps new CEO, seeks fresh start

By HARRY R. WEBER, AP Business Writer

Wed Jul 28, 10:42 am ET

16 BP hopes to turn page with new CEO, leaner company

By HARRY R. WEBER, AP Business Writer

Wed Jul 28, 1:36 am ET

17 Gulf flow has stopped, but where’s the oil?

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer

Tue Jul 27, 6:29 pm ET

18 Judge blocks parts of Arizona immigration law

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press Writers

10 mins ago

19 FBI director defends bureau over test cheating

By MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writers

24 mins ago

20 WikiLeaks: We don’t know source of leaked data

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer

44 mins ago

21 NYC looks to stop spreading bedbug infestations

By SARA KUGLER FRAZIER, Associated Press Writer

16 mins ago

22 Congress narrows gap in cocaine sentences

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

50 mins ago

23 Sarkozy orders illegal Roma immigrants expelled

By JENNY BARCHFIELD and CECILE ROUX, Associated Press Writers

43 mins ago

24 Rangel, ethics panel lawyers talking settlement

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jul 28, 7:26 am ET

25 Spanish region says adios to bullfighting

By JOSEPH WILSON and DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writers

Wed Jul 28, 8:40 am ET

26 Arizona helped deport thousands without new law

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jul 28, 11:23 am ET

27 Judge orders tougher look at fire retardant drops

By JEFF BARNARD, AP Environmental Writer

17 mins ago

28 Canadian woman is next top UN internal watchdog

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 2 mins ago

29 No charges for NY’s Paterson in aide violence case

By COLLEEN LONG and MICHAEL VIRTANEN, Associated Press Writers

2 hrs 49 mins ago

30 APNewsBreak: Study says Amish expanding westward

By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jul 28, 1:29 pm ET

31 BMW challenges small car stereotype

By ANN M. JOB, For The Associated Press

Wed Jul 28, 11:15 am ET

32 DC pushes female condoms to fight HIV epidemic

By JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jul 28, 5:00 am ET

33 3 NJ teens charged with videotaped immigrant death

By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jul 28, 4:15 am ET

34 Texas, feds wait turns in polygamist leader cases

By JENNIFER DOBNER, Associated Press Writer

Wed Jul 28, 3:57 am ET

35 Holy spelunker: Caves closed to fight bat fungus

By BOB MOEN, Associated Press Writer

Tue Jul 27, 8:53 pm ET

36 Feds: Fatal DC rail crash came from lax oversight

By SARAH BRUMFIELD, Associated Press Writer

Tue Jul 27, 7:50 pm ET

37 Ship lost for more than 150 years is recovered

Associated Press

23 mins ago

You know, sometimes you run across a 6 foot tall white pooka of a sentence-

You can read about his gibberish at that last Media Matters link, but here is what fascinates me strangely, precisely because of its ubiquity to the point of banality for anyone who has been paying even glancing attention at right wing thought or what passes for same as it pertains to race lately, an observatory group that includes myself, a fact that is in no small part what has kept me from posting much in recent days, because it is all so inexpressibly wearying, dreadful, insipid, hateful, and fucked up, is this especial snippet of squalor squirted by Mr. Lord, a specimen whose credentials include a gig as a former assistant political fluffer for Zombie Ronald Reagan and assorted dusty, unattractive Pennsylvanian electoral fossils, and who is currently non-gainfully employed as a right-wing-crazy welfare recipient, and whose contemporary written work reveals him as an all-around unpleasant opinion-pustule so virulent that he roundly deserves to be sent to Hell with the task of diagramming this sentence and explaining precisely why it is grammatically correct to a gang of glue-huffing eighth-grade Republican byblows whose parents never loved them and who are also stupid and ugly, or else just Tucker Carlson.

Color me impressed.

Look, to be as close to the bone as may be sliced, “conservatives” have detected in their typical brutally nonsensical thud-thud-hack-chomp-burp fashion that there is a certain power, a certain magic, a certain force to the capacity to call someone a “racist” and make it stick, and as they can dully discern that the “call you racist” Ring is a One Ring to Rule them All, rhetorically related to the “Support this Stupid War Or You Hate America Ring,” which they already collected from the slack-jowled Dwarf-Lord twerps in their fucking Halls of Stone or Connecticut, namely a beardless and quite smackable Joe Lieberman, they covets it, this racism-detecting precious, they covets it, yesss; and while nobody likes Gollum, he’s more presentable than Dan Riehl, but what’s the essential difference, I axe you?

Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years Doctor and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton has placed an injunction some of the most controversial parts of the Arizona Immigration Law stating that they are likely to be held unconstitutional. The judge has blocked sections that

– Require a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped;

– Making it a violation of Arizona law for anyone not a citizen to fail to carry documentation;

– Creating a new state crime for trying to secure work while not a legal resident;

– Allowing police to make warrantless arrests if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be removed from the United States.

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law),” Bolton ruled. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

Judge Bolton ruled only on the lawsuit brought by the Justice Department. There are seven other lawsuits.

Here is the link via Scribd to the ruling.

h/t to TPM and AMERICA blog

Up Date: Judge Bolton’s decision is based on the the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

The Supremacy Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2. This clause asserts and establishes the Constitution, the federal laws made in pursuance of the Constitution, and treaties made by the United States with foreign nations as “the Supreme Law of the Land” (using modern capitalization). The text of Article VI, Clause 2, establishes these as the highest form of law in the American legal system, both in the Federal courts  and in all of the State courts, mandating that all state judges shall uphold them, even if there are state laws or state constitutions that conflict with the powers of the Federal government. (Note that the word “shall” is used here and in the language of the law, which makes it a necessity, a compulsion.)

The text of the Supremacy Clause

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Here is Bill Egnor’s (aka Something The Dog Said), from his series at FDL: Friday Constitutional – Articles 5, 6 and 7

Article 6

Clause Two:

   

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The language of this seems a little backwards, but basically this clause is stating that the laws and treaties of the United States (what we would call Federal Law) always trumps State law. It also instructs judges that they are to follow this reasoning, with no exceptions. It is another of the ways that the Framers bound the country together. By making an overarching set of laws that must be applied everywhere, they made sure that there would be continuity between the States.

Up Date 2: This is the summary of the decision which is based on preemption of Article VI, section 2 of the US Constitution.

The summary, as written by Judge Bolton, is:

   Applying the proper legal standards based upon well-established precedent, the Court finds that the United States is likely to succeed on the merits in showing that the following Sections of S.B. 1070 are preempted by federal law:

   Portion of Section 2 of S.B. 1070 – A.R.S. § 11-1051(B): requiring that an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States, and requiring verification of the immigration status of any person arrested prior to releasing that person

   Section 3 of S.B. 1070 – A.R.S. § 13-1509: creating a crime for the failure to apply for or carry alien registration papers

   Portion of Section 5 of S.B. 1070 – A.R.S. § 13-2928(C): creating a crime for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work

   Section 6 of S.B. 1070 – A.R.S. § 13-3883(A)(5): authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense that makes the person removable from the United States

   The Court also finds that the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm if the Court does not preliminarily enjoin enforcement of these Sections of S.B. 1070 and that the balance of equities tips in the United States’ favor considering the public interest. The Court therefore issues a preliminary injunction enjoining the enforcement of the portion of Section 2 creating A.R.S. § 11-1051(B), Section 3 creating A.R.S. § 13-1509, the portion of Section 5 creating A.R.S. § 13-2928(C), and Section 6 creating A.R.S. § 13-3883(A)(5).

b/t to bmaz at FDL.

Up Date 3: BigTentDemocrat (aka Armando), at TalkLeft says that Judge Bolton erred in letting one slip and that it could cause some real “mischief”:

Section 5 of S.B. 1070 also creates A.R.S. § 13-2929, which makes it illegal for a person who is in violation of a criminal offense to: (1) transport or move or attempt to transport or move an alien in Arizona in furtherance of the alien’s unlawful presence in the United States; (2) conceal, harbor, or shield or attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield an alien from detection in Arizona; and (3) encourage or induce an alien to come to or live in Arizona. A.R.S. § 13-2929(A)(1)-(3). In order to violate A.R.S. § 13-2929(A), a person must also know or recklessly disregard the fact that the alien is unlawfully present in the United States.Id. The United States asserts that this provision is preempted as an impermissible regulation of immigration and that the provision violates the dormant Commerce Clause. (Pl.’s Mot. at 44- 46.)18

   

a. Regulation of Immigration

The “[p]ower to regulate immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power.” De Canas, 424 U.S. at 354. The regulation of immigration is “essentially a determination of who should or should not be admitted into the country, and the conditions under which a legal entrant may remain.”Id. at 355. “[T]he fact that aliens are the subject of a state statute does not render it a regulation of immigration.”Id. The United States argues that “to the extent Section 5 is not a restriction on interstate movement, it is necessarily a restriction on unlawful entry into the United States.” (Pl.’s Mot. at 45.)

A.R.S. § 13-2929 does not attempt to regulate who should or should not be admitted into the United States, and it does not regulate the conditions under which legal entrants may remain in the United States. See De Canas, 424 U.S. at 355. Therefore, the Court concludes that the United States is not likely to succeed on its claim that A.R.S. § 13-2929 is an impermissible regulation of immigration.

 

(emphasis by BTD)

“Punting the Pundits“ is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Maureen finally realizes this war is futile.

Maureen Dowd: Lost in a Maze

The waterfall of leaks on Afghanistan underlines the awful truth: We’re not in control.

Not since Theseus fought the Minotaur in his maze has a fight been so confounding.

The more we try to do for our foreign protectorates, the more angry they get about what we try to do. As Congress passed $59 billion in additional war funding Tuesday, not only are our wards not grateful; they’re disdainful.

Washington gave the Wall Street banks billions and in return, they stabbed us in the back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost wrecked our economy.

Washington gave the Pakistanis billions and in return, they stabbed us in the back, pledging to fight the militants even as they secretly help the militants.

We keep getting played by people who are playing both sides.

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During the debate over war funding on Tuesday, Representative James McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, warned that we are in a monstrous maze without the ball of string to find our way out.

“All of the puzzle has been put together and it is not a pretty picture,” he told the Times Carl Hulse. “Things are really ugly over there.”

Yes, it’s what you can’t see and they won’t talk about that will bite us for years to come.

Thomas L. Friedman: Want the Good News First?

It is pretty much a tossup for me: Who poses a greater long-term threat to America’s Gulf Coast ecosystem: the U.S. Senate or BP? Right now, from what I’ve seen flying over the Louisiana coast at the mouth of the Mississippi, my vote is the U.S. Senate. BP at least seems to have finally gotten its act together and is cleaning up the oil spill. The Senate, in failing to pass even the most modest bill to diminish our addiction to oil and begin to mitigate climate change, has not even begun to do its job.

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Here’s the good news. Thanks to: the capping of the broken oil well; the cleanup efforts so far by a flotilla of shrimp boats converted to skimmers; the currents that have blessedly taken a lot of the spill away from the shore; the weathering process that is breaking down a lot of the crude into different compounds that dissolve, evaporate or get absorbed by microbes in the ocean; and the dispersants that have broken up the biggest oil slicks, there is less and less to see here on the surface. Walking along the beach on Grand Isle, the only inhabited barrier island on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, it appears that our worst fears have not materialized – so far.

So much for the good news. The bad news is what you can’t see that is happening under the ocean’s surface and the stuff you can see – the decades of degradation along the whole Gulf Coast from decades of unfettered development – that no one is talking about.

Psst, David, the Taliban live there. They aren’t going away.

David Ignatius: Little choice but to depend on Pakistan’s help in Afghanistan

In the almost nine years the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan, any thoughtful person who follows the war has had a recurring worry: Can America rely on Pakistan? Can our allies in that turbulent country close the Taliban’s havens along the border? And, for that matter, are the Pakistanis really trying?

The massive disclosure of war-related documents this week by Wikileaks raised a number of questions, but none more important than the Pakistan conundrum. Although the Obama administration has played down the leaks in general, senior officials agree that Pakistan’s ability to close the sanctuaries is an absolutely crucial issue.

snip

It’s usually a mistake to try to “call” a faraway conflict — up or down, success or failure — on the basis of fragmentary information. But right now, any observer would say that Afghanistan is going badly, that the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy hasn’t been proved and that the American public’s patience is dwindling.

That brings us back to closing the Taliban havens in Pakistan. It’s a measure of America’s strategic difficulty that this uncertain option with a reluctant partner may now offer the best possibility for reaching the “acceptable end state.”

No unfunded job spending, damn it, but $37 billion for a futile war. Let’s just fire more teachers.

Harold Meyerson: The job machine grinds to a halt

Ain’t no hiring. And ain’t likely to be any for a good long time

The problem isn’t merely the greatest downturn since the Great Depression. It’s also that big business has found a way to make big money without restoring the jobs it cut the past two years, or increasing its investments or even its sales, at least domestically.

In the mildly halcyon days before the 2008 crash, the one economic outlier was wages. Profit, revenue and GDP all increased; only ordinary Americans’ incomes lagged behind. Today, wages are still down, employment remains low and sales revenue isn’t up much, either. But profits are the outlier. They’re positively soaring.

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Another source of jobs would be public, and public-private, investment in infrastructure. As Michael Lind and Sherle Schwenninger  of the New America Foundation have argued, building a new American infrastructure of roads, rail and broadband is not only an economic necessity but also the investment with the highest multiplier effect in creating new jobs. A U.S. infrastructure investment bank, such as that proposed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), could leverage significant private capital to begin America’s rebuilding, though the idea has encountered rough sledding in (surprise) the Senate.

What won’t work as an economic solution — indeed, it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment — is blaming the unemployed for their failure to find jobs. There are now roughly five unemployed Americans for every open job, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s most recent calculations, and that ratio isn’t likely to decline much if we leave it to the corporate sector to resume hiring. Corporations have figured out a way to make money without resuming hiring. Their model is premised on not resuming hiring. If the public sector doesn’t fill the gap, the era of American prosperity is history.

Pointing out the fiscal responsibility of keeping the Bush tax cuts..for those who can least afford a tax increase. She’s got it half right. Entitlements aren’t the problem, Ruth.

Ruth Marcus: Why Congress should let the Bush tax cuts expire

The modern Republican argument about taxes seems to boil down to two principles, both misguided: Taxes can be reduced, but they can never be allowed to go up. And whatever level taxes are at, they are too high.

Think back to the beginning of the Bush administration tax cuts. It seems almost impossible to believe, but the argument then was that the budget surplus was too large. There was, or so President George W. Bush assured us, ample cash to cut taxes for everyone and protect the Social Security surplus and set aside $1 trillion over the next decade for “additional spending needs” and pay down the national debt.

“The people of America have been overcharged, and, on their behalf, I’m here asking for a refund,” Bush told Congress in February 2001.

snip

The real disagreement is over extending the high-end tax cuts, and on this even some supposedly fiscally responsible Democrats — I’m talking to you, Kent Conrad — have gone wobbly. The no-new-taxes-now crowd cautions against raising taxes in a recession — a fair point, except that there are more efficient ways to spur the economy than giving more money to those least likely to spend it. Alternatively, they cite — and inflate — the supposed impact on small business of raising the upper-end rates.

This would be more convincing if the Republican line were something other than “no new taxes, ever.” The economic and fiscal circumstances may change, but the prescription remains the same. And the patient is too ill to tolerate another dose of this quack