The Commentariat -- June 19

I've posted a page titled Bush Lite on Off Times Square, in which I ask readers to suggest what progressives -- or any concerned citizens -- should do about the Obama Administration's mimicry of the worst aspects of Bush/Cheney. We can't just sit here, can we?

** New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration has long been bumbling along in the footsteps of its predecessor when it comes to sacrificing Americans’ basic rights and liberties under the false flag of fighting terrorism. Now the Obama team seems ready to lurch even farther down that dismal road than George W. Bush did." Besides giving "agents significant new powers to search law enforcement and private databases, go through household trash or deploy surveillance teams..., the White House cares so little about providing meaningful oversight that Mr. Obama has yet to nominate a successor for Glenn Fine, the diligent Justice Department inspector general who left in January." CW: read the whole editorial. Charlie Savage's story, to which the editors referred, is here. ...

... Jack Balkin on "George W. Obama" -- how Obama is manipulating the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. ...

... Balkin gets Digby's seal of approval.

Peter Whoriskey of the Washington Post: "Inequality in the U.S. has has grown steadily since the 1970s, following a flat period after World War II. In 2008, the wealthiest 10 percent earned almost the same amount of income as the rest of the country combined.... A mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times on Barack Obama's "evolving" position, or whatever it is, on gay marriage. CW: Maybe you'll want to attend his $1,250-a-plate creepily-named "Gala with the Gay Community" to find out what he says he thinks about gay marriage this week, "thinking" which is, as Stolberg makes clear, a function of election metrics. ...

... Speaking of purposely garbled messages/trial balloons/politics-as-usual, Karen Garcia has an excellent post about the AARP's "position," whatever it is, on raising the Social Security age. Here's the Betty White AARP ad Garcia mentions:

Maureen Dowd does a nice job of laying out the hypocrisy of New York's Archbishop Timothy Dolan and others in the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Does hate mail sound tonier when read in a British accent?

Mike McIntire of the New York Times on the "unusual and ethically-sensitive friendship" between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas & real estate magnate Harlan Crow. "Mr. Crow’s financing of the museum, [a multimillion-dollar project in Thomas' hometown which Thomas appears to have initiated,] his largest such act of generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest questions yet — both about Justice Thomas’s extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which the justices should remain exempt from the code of conduct for federal judges.

Wary of "Wars of Choice." Thom Shanker & Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times: "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, as he prepared to depart the government for the second time, said in an interview on Friday that the human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had made him far more wary about unleashing the might of the American armed forces."

Here's Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) speaking at the Netroots Nation conference yesteday:

      ... More Networks Nation news & links to videos at their site. ...

... Bill Moyers on the Constitution:

     ... More video on the Networks Nation conference, including former Sen. Russ Feingold's remarks, & related gatherings here at The Uptake.

News Ledes

AP: "In another blow to Washington's relationship with Pakistan, U.S. officials say Pakistan failed another test to prove it could be trusted to go after American enemies on its soil by intentionally or inadvertently tipping off militants at two more bomb-building factories in its tribal areas, giving the suspected terrorists time to flee." ...

... The Hill: "House appropriators have proposed slapping new restrictions on the aid that Washington will send to Pakistan next year amid a chill in relations following the killing of Osama bin Laden."

New York Times: "Clarence Clemons, the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, whose jovial onstage manner, soul-rooted style and brotherly relationship with Mr. Springsteen made him one of rock’s most beloved sidemen, died on Saturday at a hospital in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 69." Here's a Rolling Stone obituary.

The Commentariat -- June 18

President Obama's weekly address celebrates fathers:

     ... AP story by Erica Werner here.

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. With the Anthony Weiner story behind us, here's hoping this site will no longer be a magnet for predators. I'll be on the road, so I may not be available to immediately control the comments. If a serious problem develops, I'll just have to shut down comments altogether till I get where I'm going & can more closely monitor the comments pages.

"It Isn't 'Hostilities' if the People You're Bombing Don't Shoot Back." Amy Davidson of the New Yorker joins the crowd of opinionators who can read English sentences and are appalled at the Obama Administration's twisted claims that the Libyan conflict is not subject to the War Powers Resolution. ...

... Ha! Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization.... Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to 'hostilities.' Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20. But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of 'hostilities.'”

Say What? John Aravosis of AmericaBlog: White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells Netroots Nation that a well-known 1996 questionnaire in which Barack Obama said he favored gay marriage "was actually filled out by someone else, not the President." With video of Pfeiffer making his unbelievable assertion and this reproduction of the "fake" questionnaire:

     ... CW: See Answer to Question 6. That sure does look like Obama's signature to me. ...

... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Liberal activists gave White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer a chilly reception on Friday at an online political conference as he tried to defend the Obama administration’s policies on gay marriage, Afghanistan and tax cuts. To heckling and some loud boos, Pfeiffer drove home two themes to activists attending the Netroots Nation conference: change is hard and installing a Republican in the White House would be much worse than reelecting President Obama." ...

... Here's a related report from Michael O'Brien of The Hill.

Associated Press: it's suddenly pretty difficult to tell where the AARP stands on Social Security, which comes as a shock to other advocates for the elderly.

Just Plain Mean. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: The "last extension of unemployment benefits — typically received in weeks 80 through 99 of unemployment — is paid for entirely with federal money and does not affect state budgets. But because of ideological opposition and other legislative priorities, Arizona and a handful of other states, like Wisconsin and Alaska, have not" made a minor change to their existing statutes which would "keep the program going."

David Carr & John Schwartz of the New York Times: "For the last two years, David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor who spent three decades fighting to prove the innocence of others, has been locked in a battle to do the same for himself. It hasn't gone as well." Here's an outline of the cases of those freed because of the work of Protess & his students.

CW: I have not been covering the controversy over a study, released by the ostensibly nonpartisan McKinsey and Co., mostly because the details of what's wrong with the study are (a) a deep, dark secret and (b) get pretty much into the weeds. (I did write a comment to Tom Friedman, who relied on the McKinsey report, to the effect that his commentary was intrinsically flawed, inasmuch as the study on which he based his analysis was subject to serious question. Not surprisingly, my comment was buried on a back page.) Anyway, Steve Benen demonstrates why the McKinsey controversy matters: conservatives who know the study results may be bogus are using it anyway to "prove" the Affordable Care Act is a bad deal.

News Ledes

Speaker John Boehner & President Obama on the course at Andrews AFB today. AP photo via ABC News.

President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Vice President Biden & Ohio Gov. John Kasich will play golf today. Washington Post story here. Update: here's the play-by-play from Politico.

New York Times: "President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan launched a broadside against his coalition allies on Saturday, saying the motives behind their presence were suspect and even complaining that their weaponry is polluting his country." Guardian: "The US and other foreign powers are engaged in preliminary talks with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the war in Afghanistan, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said. It is the first official confirmation of US involvement in such negotiations." Story has been updated. ...

... Guardian: "The Afghan government will struggle to pay its bills 'within a month' after the International Monetary Fund rejected proposals for resolving the Kabul Bank scandal, western officials have warned."

Reuters: "Oracle is seeking between $1.4 billion and $6.1 billion in a patent lawsuit against Google over the lucrative smartphone market, according to a court filing.Oracle sued Google last year, claiming the Web search company's Android mobile operating technology infringes upon Oracle's Java patents."

From the Heartland

Earlier today, a reader sent me the following in an e-mail. With the writer's permission, which I just obtained, I'm publishing the letter. It provides something of an antidote, I think, and an answer, to issues we've been dealing with these past few days on Off Times Square. -- Constant Weader

Yesterday was Flag Day. Several times throughout the day I thought about the times at my country school when all the classes (K - 8) would go outside first thing in the morning, raise the flag up the flag pole, and say the Pledge of Allegiance. There were two teachers and no para's with around 50 children. The older helped with the younger when that was needed. We learned to learn from our older and wiser peers, and then to help teach the younger children when we were the older and hopefully wiser ones. We valued the education we received. We learned well, played hard, and grew up in that two room school house.

At home, I learned that neighbors helped out each other for the big jobs like shelling ear corn, working the livestock, driving the cow herd to and from summer pasture, and doing an injured or sick farmers harvest in one day with 20 or more families working to get that crop in! All of this involved sharing your turn as well as those bountiful noon meals (dinner's) jointly cooked and consumed from heaping, mounded plates.

Church was a social as well as religious event. Singing was a big, big part of the process. I tolerated having to go every Sunday, but did not mind the choir practice on Wednesday nights because we had a good leader. She made us feel good about ourselves by working hard and learning how to sound decent. My Mother served countless meals in the church for all of the funerals. Each family that could, would provide the food and drink, knowing that at some point as time marched onward, the favor would be returned.

Our neighborhood garden club kept one of the historical markers along the railroad right of way (something to do with the Oregon Trail ) decent looking throughout the summer. This involved adults and children pulling weeds and watering. Sweat and toil for no pay.

There was no pay for any of this other than to know you were doing the right thing and making things better. That is what I felt when I grew up on the farm and in the small community where many of my relatives had always lived. Security. Friendship. Struggles. Caring. Learning.

None of this had to do with how much cash a person earned. Sweat. Harvest. Praying. Sharing.

That is what the Flag representing country and community meant to me then and continues to mean to me now.

I am From-the-Heartland.