Atrios writes:

David Ignatius:["]The best sign that the economic engine is really repaired would be a joint plan by the White House and congressional Republicans to trim the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. [. . .]["]

Leaving aside the merits of such things, how the hell would some random policy decisions be a "sign that the economic engine is really repaired." [. . .I]n what possible sense would Congress doing some stuff prove that the economy is all better?

Of course Atrios is right, but you know who else plays the "a productive Congress means things are better" game? The Beltway Dem pundits and bloggers, led by Ezra Klein. How is their nonsense any less stupid than Ignatius'?

Speaking for me only

Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday convened the inaugural meeting of the Cabinet-level "Reentry Council." Established with grant money from the Second Chance Act, the council will focus on:

• making communities safer by reducing recidivism and victimization;
• assisting those returning from prison and jail in becoming productive, tax paying citizens; and
• saving taxpayer dollars by lowering the direct and collateral costs of incarceration.

The goals:

The Reentry Council will meet semi-annually to leverage resources across agencies to reduce recidivism and victimization; identify evidence-based practices that advance the council’s mission; promote changes to federal statutes, policies and practices that focus on reducing crime; and identify federal policy opportunities and barriers to improve outcomes for the reentry community.

According to Attorney General Holder: [More...]

The grand jury investigation into John Edwards continues. Today, the grand jury heard from Lisa Blue Baron, the widow of Edwards' campaign finance chair Fred Baron. Blue was accompanied by her Washington attorney, Abbe Lowell. Where does Ms. Blue fit in the picture?

Reportedly, the grand jury is investigating whether Edwards' campaign funds were improperly diverted to Rielle Hunter. Fred Baron said the money he gave Hunter was personal money, not campaign related, and that Edwards didn't know about it at the time. According to Andrew Young (whose credibility is zero in my book) Lisa Blue was assigned the task of comforting Hunter on the phone during the time period he was tasked with babysitting her and pretending to be the baby's father.

Rielle Hunter, in her GQ interviewed said:[More...]

Filibuster reform is all the rage in the progressive blogs these days. I am not a fan of filibuster reform at this time for results oriented reasons. Now is not the time to make the passage of legislation easier, given the extreme GOP controlled House and a supine Dem President.

But I also have an objection on the philosophical merits to filibuster reform regarding judicial nominations. My old law professor Bruce Ackerman revisits this issue and turns back to an article he wrote in 2005, when opposing filibuster reform was all the rage in the progressive blogs.

My objections are, and were in 2005, as a matter of substance, to elimination of the filibuster to lifetime appointments to the Third Branch of our government, the Supreme Court. As Professor Ackerman says, "[m]y bottom line: the separation of powers should become a fundamental part of serious talk about the filibuster."

Speaking for me only

Via dkos diarist bobswern, the banks' personal Santa Claus Tim Geithner is giving out more gifts:

Financial stocks just caught fire. Someone must be getting bailed out, right? Why yes, say critics of the giant banks. They charge that Monday's rally-stoking mortgage-putback deal between Bank of America (BAC) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is nothing more than a backdoor bailout of the nation's largest lender. It comes courtesy, they say, of an administration struggling to find a fix for the housing market while quaking at the prospect of another housing-fueled banking meltdown.

"This looks to me like a gift from Tim Geithner," said Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. "There's politics all over this."

From the corrupt incompetent Tim Geithner? Say it ain't so. God bless all the banks! What a disgrace.

Speaking for me only

Digby:

On Hardball this afternoon Matthews was talking about "cut-go" with Todd Harris and Steve McMahon, the Tweedledum and Tweedledummer of the Village and he ranted and raved about how both parties promise spending cuts to bring down the deficit but refuse to give any big specific items that would really make a difference. [. . .] After Harris babbled for a while about "entitlements" destroying the country, Matthews again said how frustrated he was that Republicans always refuse to say what they will cut [. . .] McMahon piped up at that and said:

Bryan Cranston, the Emmy Award winning lead on AMC's "Breaking Bad" (where he plays a high school chemistry teacher who runs a meth lab while in remission from cancer) has a new series, available only on the web, called "The Handlers."

He plays a well-meaning politician running for state senate, who gets some really wacky advice from his incompetent handlers. The segments are only 3 minutes, and they are really funny. There will be 8 episodes in all, available on Atom TV. Here are the first two:

[More...]

In the college bowl games, I won with Stanford last night and hope to win with Arkansas (+4) (4 units) over Ohio State tonight.

Open Thread.

I meant to write about this end of year markedly ridiculous Obama Administration puff piece by Ezra Kiein before, but work and college football got in the way. I just will point to one part to give you the flavor of the nonsense:

In housing [. . .r]ather than fundamentally reform the market, the administration and Federal Reserve focused on backstopping it. Buying a house in 2009 and 2010 was little different from 2004 and 2005. What had changed was the Fed using every tool in its toolkit -- and a few that people didn't even know were in there -- to keep interest rates low, the federal government handing first-time home buyers $8,000 to get into the market, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying virtually every mortgage that was issued.

(Emphasis supplied.) What absurd claptrap. The Obama Administration did virtually nothing to effectively address the homeowner crisis in the country and indeed, the results demonstrated that. The key failure was, of course, HAMP. What the Obama Administration did regarding the homeowner crisis was protect lenders, not homeowners. The policy was unmitigated disaster.

But in Ezra Klein's world, this was using "every tool in its tool kit." Just ridiculous.

Speaking for me only

American journalists, unlike many of their foreign counterparts, have a strong commitment to objectivity and nonpartisanship. - Newsweek

Glenn Greenwald discusses Peter Maas' New Yorker piece on "Armed Forces Media" (the Establishment Media) and how the Media is subservient to the interests of the American government. Glenn's piece is good and in a postscript, he pointed to the Newsweek article I quote at the top of this post. A laughable statement of course, but more than that, what's missing is even a feigned commitment to reporting the truth. The fact is the Wikileaks situation has been an exposing moment for "journamalism." I'll explain why I think so on the flip.

That Justice Antonin Scalia does not believe that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender should not come as a surprise to anyone. Via Huffington Post, in an interview with California Lawyer magazine, Justice Scalia confirms what most of us who thought about the question, already knew:

[Q:]In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

[SCALIA:] Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.

This has been a central point to the discussion of originalism, original understanding and original purpose constitutional interpretation which I have written about a lot here. But this specific question on gender discrimination and Scalia's view was the subject of a Daily Kos post I wrote in 2006:

Stanley Fish writes about the latest bout of handwringing from the usual suspects about the "anonymous" Internet. The centerpiece of his discussion is a new collection of essays edited by University of Chicago law professor Martha Nussbaum titled The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy and Reputation.

According to Fish (I have not and will not buy the book at $23), Nussbaum asks "“what can be done about irresponsible information” spread by the Internet, a medium that allows slander to “be done with a few keystrokes, with complete anonymity, and . . . with no fear that the Internet provider on whose website the slur is found will somehow be held responsible for incorrect . . . or defamatory statements”? " Before Nussbaum and her cohorts answer that question, perhaps they can deal with the problem of irresponsible information spread through respectable outlets by named persons that recklessly lead us to wars, irresponsible tax policy and nonsensical public discourse, like this volume and Fish's column. More . . .