The Commentariat -- March 17

** In a letter from publisher A. O. Sulzberger, the New York Times announces its new pay subscription policy for the online Times, to go into full effect March 28. CW: I'll be paying up, so any articles I link will be available to nonsubscribers even if you've used up your 20 "free" hits per month.

Martha Raddatz of ABC News: "U.S. officials are alarmed at how the Japanese are handling the escalating nuclear reactor crisis and fear that if they do not get control of the plants within the next 24 to 48 hours they could have a situation that will be 'deadly for decades.'" Here's Raddatz's video report:

... David Sanger, et al., of the New York Times: "The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities." ...

... Hiroko Tabuchi, et al., of the New York Times: "Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese press and an increasingly angry and rattled Japanese public are frustrated by [Japanese] government and power company officials’ failure to communicate clearly and promptly about the nuclear crisis. Pointing to conflicting reports, ambiguous language and a constant refusal to confirm the most basic facts, they suspect officials of withholding or fudging crucial information about the risks posed by the ravaged Daiichi plant." ...

... CW: a lot like White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at his press briefing yesterday. You can watch the stonewalling briefing here. ...

... William Broad of the New York Times: "A United Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late Friday. Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable." ...

... Andrew Higgins of the Washington Post: "Unlike victims of earthquakes in Haiti, Indonesia or China, those suffering in Japan expect their government to work and can’t understand why a country as affluent as theirs can’t keep gasoline, the lifeblood of a modern economy, flowing and why towns across the northeast have been plunged into frigid darkness for five days." ...

Secretary Clinton tells Wolf Blitzer she will "be moving on" at the end of President Obama's first term:

     ... Update. Glenn Thrush of Politico: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s revelation that she won’t be staying on if there is a second Obama term ... [came] coming at a critical moment in her fierce internal battle to push President Barack Obama to join the fight to liberate Libya from Muammar Qadhafi. Clinton’s position seemed to be vindicated on Thursday as the U.S. pushed for a U.N. no-fly-zone resolution."

Mark Landler & Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "The prospect of a deadly siege of the rebel stronghold in Benghazi, Libya, has produced a striking shift in tone from the Obama administration,which is now pushing for the United Nations to authorize aerial bombing of Libyan tanks and heavy artillery to try to halt the advance of forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi." ...

... BUT. Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "As Persian Gulf monarchs forcibly suppress street protests in the kingdom of Bahrain, the Obama administration has responded mostly with mild or muted objections — a sharp contrast from its demands for new governments in the republics of Egypt and Libya." ...

... Nicholas Kristof: "The Arab democracy spring that begun with such exhilaration in Tunisia and Egypt is now enduring a brutal winter in Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen."

Rama Lakshmi of the Washington Post: "A WikiLeaks cable suggesting Indian government payoffs to lawmakers to secure support for a controversial nuclear deal in 2008 rocked the parliament Thursday, when opposition parties demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh." ...

     ... The backstory from the India Times: "An aide of Congress leader Satish Sharma allegedly showed a US Embassy employee 'two chests containing cash' and said Rs 50-60 crore is ready for use as 'pay-offs' to win the support of some MPs ahead of crucial vote of confidence in UPA government over the Indo-US nuke deal, claimed a set of US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks." ...

... Kim Zetter of Wired: "The American Civil Liberties Union calls the treatment of WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning unconstitutional and 'gratuitously harsh.' The remarks came in a letter sent Wednesday to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates." Here's the ACLU statement & a copy of their letter to Gates. ...

San Francisco Chronicle Editors: "President Obama made things worse by insisting that Manning's treatment was 'legal.' In the past decade this country has insisted that many horrible imprisonment procedures were legal. Obama campaigned on the promise that just because some things were 'legal' didn't mean that they were right. He should heed his own words on the Manning case."

Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "Western diplomats, Taliban leaders and the Afghan government have begun to take a hard look at what it would take to start a negotiation to end the fighting.... Interest in a political track is growing as pressure mounts to find a palatable way to reduce the military commitment here and as public support for the war ebbs in the United States and Europe."

If there had been a cop on the beat with the authority to hold mortgage servicers accountable a half dozen years ago, if there had been a consumer agency in place, the problems in mortgage servicing would have been exposed early and fixed while they were still small, long before they became a national scandal. -- Elizabeth Warren, in testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee.

... Tim Noah of Slate: Republicans & Wall Street Journal editors are railing against the overreaching & politicization of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even though it "hasn't done anything yet," & can't even open for business before July 1, 2011.

Stealth Attack. Meredith Shiner of Politico: "House Republicans quietly took their first legislative step Wednesday at repealing Wall Street reform, exposing the difficulty of rolling back a major Barack Obama law that isn’t health care. Republicans clearly want to strike at the heart of banking reform with legislation attacking new regulations on derivatives, credit rating agencies and private equity firms. But their piecemeal approach suggests they are trying to do so without appearing to favor Wall Street over Main Street." ...

... The people who write loopholes for their friends know how to write loopholes for themselves, too. Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times: a ban on earnmarks "was one of the promises made by a newly elected class of conservatives in the House. But ... lawmakers still have a way to get their favorite projects funded: appealing directly to federal agencies for money that is already available. And agency officials seem to be paying attention.... In some cases, that may be the result of the clout certain lawmakers have over how much money an agency receives." ...

... Shira Toeplitz of Politico: "Twenty-two Republicans senators are threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling later this year unless the president concedes to cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the current budget negotiations." ...

... BUT. Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and liberal Democrats opposed to cutting Social Security benefits are trying to outflank President Obama and centrists who have signaled a willingness to cut a deal with Republicans. In a move intended to put lawmakers on the record regarding the “third rail” of American politics, the liberal senators introduced a measure Tuesday to require a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress in order to pass any cuts to Social Security benefits." ...

... This from the "Screw America" Party. John McKinnon of the Wall Street Journal: Dave Camp (R-Mich.), "the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wants to cut the top U.S. tax rate to 25% for individuals and corporations, and cut or eliminate many popular deductions." ...

... How to Become a Congressional "Expert" Witness: give a member of Congress a hefty campaign donation. T. W. Farnam of the Washington Post reports.

New York Times Editors: "Mr. Obama owes the country muscular White House leadership to make sure his reforms happen. A good starting point ... is a new measure sponsored in Congress by two New York Democrats, Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Carolyn McCarthy.... The National Rifle Association ... declined the administration’s invitation to talk — a sign of real disrespect for a president who has actually expanded gun rights. It also shows disdain for the well-being and safety of the public."

But one clear and terrible fact remains. A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun. He used it to murder six people and wound 13 others. And if not for the heroism of bystanders and a brilliant surgical team, it would have been far worse. -- Barack Obama, Arizona Star, March 13, 2011 ...

... Forget Due Process. President Convicts Accused. Karen Garcia wants to know if a Constitutional scholar who is now President of the United States would really write such an op-ed in the hometown newspaper of a man who has been charged with but not convicted of multiple murders? Talk about tainting the jury pool. ...

... ** E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: instead of effectively pleading with the NRA, as he did in the above-linked Arizona Daily Star op-ed, President Obama must stand up to "the bullies of the NRA." Read all of Dionne's column. By parsing Obama's the op-ed, Dionne really captures the essence of the President's capitulation to the gun lobby.

Matt Negrin of Politico wrote an acerbic post yesterday on President Obama's acceptance of a "transparency" award. In an update, Negrin writes that the scheduled presentation was postponed because of scheduling changes. Here's Negrin's lede & a few excerpts:

President Obama's only event at the White House that isn’t closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he’ll accept an award for being open to the press.... But he probably won’t mention that his administration acted on fewer requests for information last year even as it was asked for more, a tally documented by the AP. And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view. We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.

Right Wing World

CW: Here's my vote for the most hypocritical statement of the week. It comes from teabagger South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on "RomneyCare," a Massachusetts program which is a great deal like "Obamacare," the "nightmare" DeMint has loudly & repeatedly condemned, tried to undermine, has vowed (and has written a Senate bill) to repeal & rallied his base against. Ready?

One of the reasons I endorsed Romney [in 2008] is his attempts to make private health insurance available at affordable prices.
-- Jim DeMint

Andy Borowitz: "With unprecedented crises engulfing the world, millions of television viewers are finding the news too stressful to watch – and are turning to the Fox News Channel instead."

Josh Dorner of Think Progress: "Last year, former Speaker Newt Gingrich offered his vocal support for the ultimately successful campaign to oust three of the nine Iowa Supreme Court justices who had unanimously ruled in favor of marriage equality. As Gingrich courts social conservatives while exploring a possible presidential bid, new disclosures from his camp indicate that he and his associates bankrolled more than one-third of the $850,000 campaign to remove the Iowa justices." ...

... P. Z. Myers explains Newt's traditional family values: "The Republicans support a version of marriage that rests on tradition, authority, and masculine dominance.... If we strip marriage of the asymmetry of power, as we must if we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, then we also strip away the man and wife, dominant and submissive, owner and owned, master and servant relationship that characterizes the conservative view of marriage."

Local News

Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) presents his budget proposal to an audience of Ohio voters. Washington Post photo. CW: Kasich, a former Fox "News" contributor, looks suspiciously like Glenn Beck giving one of his enthusiastic blackboard-assisted lectures.Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) put on a rousing dog-&-pony show to tout his proposed "austerity" budget. "Despite his best efforts to win over his audience, however, his performance was met with only sporadic applause from the crowd of nearly 900. Kasich received tough questions from Republicans and downright skepticism from Democrats as well as teachers and other public workers who say his proposals would gut schools and government services...."

Sick-o. Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic for Kaiser Health News: Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels proposed "the Healthy Indiana Plan" as an alternative to Medicaid, & state Republican legislators are loving it. The plan covers less, has a lifetime cap, doesn't deal with chronic illness & is more expensive than Medicaid.

News Ledes

The U.N. Security Council approved a far-reaching resolution establishing a no-fly zone over Libya yesterday. Here's the vote. Raw video:

** New York Times: "The United Nations Security Council voted Thursday to authorize military action, including airstrikes against Libyan tanks and heavy artillery and a no-fly zone, a risky foreign intervention aimed at averting a bloody rout of rebels by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. After days of often acrimonious debate, played out against a desperate clock, as Colonel Qaddafi’s troops advanced to within 100 miles of the rebel capital of Benghazi, Libya, the Security Council authorized member nations to take 'all necessary measures' to protect civilians, diplomatic code words calling for military action. Diplomats said the resolution — which passed with 10 votes, including the United States, and abstentions from Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India — was written ... to allow for a wide range of actions, including strikes on air-defense systems and missile attacks from ships." ...

... Guardian: "British, French and US military aircraft are preparing to defend the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi after Washington said it was ready to support a no-fly zone and air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's forces."

Washington Post: "The Senate approved another stopgap budget bill Thursday that would keep the federal government open until April 8. The measure, which had already passed the House, is expected to be signed by President Obama on Friday. The bill would cut $6 billion in federal spending."

** President Obama spoke to the press about Japan this afternoon. USA Today item here. Update: the President said dangerous levels of radiation are not expected to reach the U.S. He did not take questions. Here's the transcript, courtesy of the White House. ...

... New York Times: "Amid widening alarm in the United States and elsewhere about Japan’s nuclear crisis, military fire trucks began spraying cooling water on spent fuel rods at the country’s stricken nuclear power station on Thursday, but later suspended the operation, the NHK broadcaster said." ...

... Bloomberg News: "The U.S. plans to airlift [U.S.] citizens from Japan along with military and diplomatic families, reflecting widening skepticism that the authorities can contain leaks from the quake-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant."

After meeting, President Obama & Irish PM Enda Kenny made statements to the press this morning. CNN Update: "Clad in a light green tie, complete with shamrocks emerging from his suit pocket, President Obama welcomed Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny to the Oval Office stressing the 'incredible bond' between the two countries.... Obama announced he will travel to Ireland in May around his state visit to the United Kingdom.... Obama said he hopes to visit ... the birthplace of his great-great-great-great-great grandfather." See the President's & PM's remarks to the press above.

Washington Post: "The Environmental Protection Agency released a plan Wednesday that would reduce emissions of mercury and other toxins from coal-burning power plants, drawing praise from health officials and condemnation from some industry representatives and lawmakers."