2012 or Never

Republicans are worried this election could be their last chance to stop history. This is fear talking. But not paranoia.
By Jonathan Chait
New York Magazine
Published Feb 26, 2012

Of the various expressions of right-wing hysteria that have flowered over the past three years—goldbuggery, birtherism, death panels at home and imaginary apology tours by President Obama abroad—perhaps the strain that has taken deepest root within mainstream Republican circles is the terror that the achievements of the Obama administration may be irreversible, and that the time remaining to stop permanent nightfall is dwindling away.

“America is approaching a ‘tipping point’ beyond which the Nation will be unable to change course,” announces the dark, old-timey preamble to Paul Ryan’s “The Roadmap Plan,” a statement of fiscal principles that shaped the budget outline approved last spring by 98 percent of the House Republican caucus. Rick Santorum warns his audiences, “We are reaching a tipping point, folks, when those who pay are the minority and those who receive are the majority.” Even such a sober figure as Mitt Romney regularly says things like “We are only inches away from no longer being a free economy,” and that this election “could be our last chance.”

The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis—that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care—is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.

The GOP has reason to be scared. Obama’s election was the vindication of a prediction made several years before by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Despite the fact that George W. Bush then occupied the White House, Judis and Teixeira argued that demographic and political trends were converging in such a way as to form a ­natural-majority coalition for Democrats.

(More here.)

What Ails Europe?

By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT

Lisbon

Things are terrible here, as unemployment soars past 13 percent. Things are even worse in Greece, Ireland, and arguably in Spain, and Europe as a whole appears to be sliding back into recession.

Why has Europe become the sick man of the world economy? Everyone knows the answer. Unfortunately, most of what people know isn’t true — and false stories about European woes are warping our economic discourse.

Read an opinion piece about Europe — or, all too often, a supposedly factual news report — and you’ll probably encounter one of two stories, which I think of as the Republican narrative and the German narrative. Neither story fits the facts.

The Republican story — it’s one of the central themes of Mitt Romney’s campaign — is that Europe is in trouble because it has done too much to help the poor and unlucky, that we’re watching the death throes of the welfare state. This story is, by the way, a perennial right-wing favorite: back in 1991, when Sweden was suffering from a banking crisis brought on by deregulation (sound familiar?), the Cato Institute published a triumphant report on how this proved the failure of the whole welfare state model.

(More here.)

Violence in wake of Koran incident fuels U.S. doubts about Afghan partners

By Greg Jaffe,
WashPost
Published: February 26

In the course of one week, the burning of copies of the Koran by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan has set off a deadly chain of events that has not only inflamed tensions but possibly exposed a crippling weakness in the American strategy to wind down the war.

The emerging U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is built around plans to replace large NATO combat formations with small teams of advisers who will live and work alongside their Afghan partners.

But the killing of two high-ranking NATO officers by an Afghan security official — and the subsequent decision by the top NATO commander in the country to recall his personnel from top Afghan ministries — has spurred doubts about whether Afghan security forces can be relied upon to provide for the protection of their Western partners. The consequences of that erosion of confidence, former U.S. officials and analysts say, could be devastating.

“If the trust, ability and willingness to partner falls apart, you are looking at the endgame here,” said Mark Jacobson, who served until last summer as the NATO deputy senior civilian representative in Kabul.

The killing of the U.S. officers on Saturday occurred two days after a man wearing an Afghan army uniform fatally shot two American troops in eastern Afghanistan, the latest in a string of incidents in recent months in which local security forces have turned against NATO personnel.

(More here.)

Amid a Federal Education Inquiry, an Unsettling Sight

By MICHAEL WINERIP
NYT

What was Arne Duncan doing sharing the stage with Michelle Rhee at a recent education conference?

Mr. Duncan is the education secretary.

Ms. Rhee was the chancellor of schools in Washington from 2007 to 2010.

Since last summer, the Office of the Inspector General in Mr. Duncan’s department has been investigating whether Washington school officials cheated to raise test scores during Ms. Rhee’s tenure.

You would think Mr. Duncan would want to keep Ms. Rhee at arm’s length during the investigation. And yet there they were, sitting side by side last month, two of four featured panelists at a conference in Washington about the use of education data.

(More here.)

How the GOP would expand the deficit

By Editorial Board,
WashPost
Sunday, February 26, 5:32 PM

AT A TIME of record debts and deficits, the two leading Republican presidential candidates are proposing a path on taxes and spending likely to add trillions more. That’s the sobering conclusion of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), whose board includes six Republican former lawmakers with expertise in budget issues, three Republican former heads of the Congressional Budget Office, and two former Office of Management and Budget directors under Republican presidents.

Last month, we examined former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s reckless tax plan, which, according to calculations by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, would drain another $180 billion from the treasury in 2015 alone. The CRFB estimated the 10-year cost of the original Romney tax plan at $1.3 trillion. By the end of the 10-year window, the debt would be a dangerous 86 percent of the gross domestic product.

But last week Mr. Romney upped the tax-cutting ante, promising, in addition to the previous grab bag of tax goodies, a 20 percent across-the-board cut in marginal rates and repeal of the alternative minimum tax. The Tax Policy Center estimated that the 20 percent rate cut would cost about $150 billion in 2015 alone. The Romney campaign said that the rate change wouldn’t add to the deficit because it would generate unspecified economic growth and be accompanied by spending cuts and elimination or cutbacks of deductions. Okay, which ones? On that question, the campaign was decidedly unspecific — understandably so, because its math doesn’t add up. Until he is more specific about what sacred cows he would tackle — employer-sponsored health care? — Mr. Romney’s plan cannot be taken as a fiscally responsible proposal.

Then again, he looks reasonable by comparison with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who envisions a tax cut costing an eye-popping $6 trillion over 10 years — above and beyond the $4 trillion cost of extending the George W. Bush tax cuts. Mr. Santorum would flatten the tax code, collapsing today’s six brackets into two: 10 percent and 28 percent. Those in the 10 percent bracket would pay no taxes on capital gains and dividends; those in the 28 percent bracket would pay a 12 percent rate. He would triple the exemption for dependent children and cut the corporate tax rate in half — except for manufacturers, who would pay nothing.

(More here.)

Why Doctors Die Differently

Careers in medicine have taught them the limits of treatment and the need to plan for the end

By KEN MURRAY
WSJ

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. It was diagnosed as pancreatic cancer by one of the best surgeons in the country, who had developed a procedure that could triple a patient's five-year-survival odds—from 5% to 15%—albeit with a poor quality of life.
[DOCTORS] Arthur Giron

What's unusual about doctors is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little.

Charlie, 68 years old, was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with his family. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation or surgical treatment. Medicare didn't spend much on him.

It's not something that we like to talk about, but doctors die, too. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care that they could want. But they tend to go serenely and gently.

Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).

(More here.)

Scotland moves toward vote on independence

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images - A general view of people walking along the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland. The British national government has opened formal negotiations with the Scots to set a date for an independence referendum that could tear modern Britain.

By Anthony Faiola,
WashPost
Published: February 25

EDINBURGH, Scotland — After centuries of war with England, politicians in this stately city signed away Scotland’s sovereignty in the early 1700s for the promise of riches and the glory of empire. Three hundred years later, resurgent nationalists here are plotting a new rebellion to win it back.

Appealing to the force of tartan pride, the Scottish National Party won surprise control of the regional Parliament last year, which thrust the separatist fantasy of hearing “Scots Wha Hae” on the bagpipes as the national anthem into the realm of distinct possibility. The British government, boxed into a precarious corner, has opened formal negotiations with the Scots to set a date for an independence referendum.

Scotland’s independence crusade is emerging as the greatest threat to the cohesion of the United Kingdom since Ireland achieved independence — a ­three-decade process that culminated in 1949, when Ireland left the Commonwealth.

Scotland won the right to a “devolved” Parliament in the late 1990s and has sweeping powers over, for example, its judicial system and government spending. But full independence would give the SNP the authority to fulfill a wide array of pledges, including expelling the British nuclear fleet from Scottish waters, withdrawing from NATO and unwinding Scottish regiments from Britain’s military forces overseas. It would also give politicians in Edinburgh the freedom to vote separately from — and perhaps counter to — Britain in world bodies such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.

(More here.)

The demonizing of Barack Obama

By Colbert I. King,
WashPost
Published: February 24

February is African American History Month. Yet these are days of sadness.

The brilliance of hope, so blinding a few short years ago, has dimmed. The dreams of a 21st-century America, where achievement is based on skills, determination and merit, free from an arbitrary color standard, have been replaced with injuries inflicted by present-day haters as malevolent as some of our worst enemies of the past.

Who could have imagined a U.S. publication suggesting that Israel “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place.” In case you were unsure of what you’d just read, the writer clarified, “Yes . . . order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence.”

Those words were written only a few weeks ago, in a column by the owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1925. Andrew Adler’s call for President Obama’s assassination was immediately condemned by major Jewish organizations. He apologized, resigned from his post and has reportedly put the paper up for sale.

But it can’t be unsaid. To read in a mainstream publication that Barack Obama should be killed takes the breath away.

(More here.)

Water, water everywhere? Yes, but...

10 Must-see water documentaries that provide insight into the future water crisis

by Chris Maxwell-Gaines
The Watercache Blog

Here is a list of ten must-see documentaries that help expose some of the critical issues facing water in the 21st century.

1. FLOW: For the Love Of Water

2. Tapped

3. Blue Gold – World Water Wars

4. The Colorado River: Running Near Empty

5. Thirst

6. Water on the Table

7. The Water Front 

8. Liquid Assets: The Big Business of Water

9. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water 

10. The Story of Bottled Water

(Descriptions here.)

We'd like to add "Precious Waters: Minnesota's Sulfide Mining Controversy" and "Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story" (video) from the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota.

Why Do Innocent People Confess?

By DAVID K. SHIPLER
NYT

SEVERAL months after Antonio Ramirez was shot seven times in Oakland, Calif., the police picked up a frightened 16-year-old named Felix, isolated him in an interrogation room late at night without a lawyer, rejected his pleas to see his mother, and harangued him until he began to tell them what he thought they wanted to hear.

They wanted a diagram of the crime scene, he later told his court-appointed lawyer, Richard Foxall, but whatever he drew was so inaccurate that the police never produced it. When he described escaping in one direction after the killing, they corrected him, because they knew from witnesses that the shooter had gone the opposite way. When he didn’t mention an alley nearby, they told him about it, and he incorporated it into his statement. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said one officer, as Felix recalled to his lawyer.

So, they demanded, where was the gun? Felix denied having a gun. “That’s when they really got out of control and started yelling at him,” Mr. Foxall said. “He started to feel personally threatened.” Slyly, he made up something demonstrably untrue: that he had left the gun with his grandfather. “I thought this was brilliant,” his lawyer said, because it discredited the tale. “He doesn’t have a grandfather. Both grandfathers are dead.”

Once the police had badgered a rough murder confession from Felix, they taped it. Yet the confession lacked a critical detail — one that officers neglected to feed to him. Felix learned it three days later in court when he was handed the charge sheet and saw the date of the crime. He stared at the document and realized that he had the perfect alibi: On the day that Antonio Ramirez was gunned down, Felix had been locked up in a juvenile detention facility for violating probation in a case of theft.

(More here.)

Opinion: On payroll tax cut, whole is worse than the parts

Bipartisanship doesn't serve self-interest

Article by: TIM PENNY and TOM HORNER
Minneapolis Star Tribune
February 25, 2012

Tom Horner is a public affairs consultant and was chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger, R-Minn. Tim Penny is president and CEO of the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and a former Democratic member of Congress. Both are former Independence Party candidates for Minnesota governor.

Sometimes compromise isn't all it's cracked up to be. The latest example is the agreement reached by Republicans and Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut.

As G.K. Chesterton put it more than a century ago, "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." The payroll tax cut proved Chesterton right on both counts.

Continuing to give 160 million working Americans more take-home pay through a payroll tax cut may have value as the country climbs out of the Great Recession. But in doing so, Democrats are undermining the future solvency of Social Security (a program they usually defend from any incursion), while Republicans (who of late are loudly defending tax cuts for the wealthiest) are now in no position to propose ending the payroll tax cut for working families.

For decades we have known that baby boomers would overwhelm the Social Security system. Already, the system is no longer raising enough revenue to cover annual benefits. Yet, amazingly, now is the time both parties have conspired to reduce the program's revenues. Worse, they offer no mechanism to replace the dollars lost to the payroll tax cut. Consequently, they make fixing the program's long-term shortfall more challenging and difficult. That is the kind of bipartisan behavior we do not need.

The other elements cobbled into the payroll tax bill are also dubious. Arguments can certainly be made for avoiding deep cuts in Medicare payments to doctors (dubbed the "doc fix") and for extending unemployment benefits. Unfortunately, like Social Security, what we need aren't more stop-gap solutions, but rather meaningful, long-term policy reforms.

(Continued here.)

A Good Question

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT

AN e-mail came in the other day with a subject line that I couldn’t ignore. It was from the oil economist Phil Verleger, and it read: “Should the United States join OPEC?” That I had to open.

Verleger’s basic message was that the knee-jerk debate we’re again having over who is responsible for higher oil prices fundamentally misses huge changes that have taken place in America’s energy output, making us again a major oil and gas producer — and potential exporter — with an interest in reasonably high but stable oil prices.

From one direction, he says, we’re seeing the impact of the ethanol mandate put in place by President George W. Bush, which established fixed quantities of biofuels to be used in gasoline. When this is combined with improved vehicle fuel economy — in July, the auto industry agreed to achieve fleet averages of more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025 — it will inevitably drive down demand for gasoline and create more surplus crude to export. Add to that, says Verleger, “the increase in oil production from offshore fields and unconventional sources in America,” and that exportable U.S. surplus could grow even bigger.

Then, add the recent discoveries of natural gas deposits all over America, which will allow us to substitute gas for coal at power plants and become a natural gas exporter as well. Put it all together, says Verleger, and you can see why America “will want to consider joining with other energy-exporting countries, like those in OPEC, to sustain high oil prices. Such an effort would support domestic oil and gas production and give the U.S. a real competitive advantage over countries forced to pay high prices for imported energy — nations such as China, European Union members, and Japan.”

(More here.)

Five myths about Medicare

By John Rother,
WashPost
Published: February 24

1. Medicare is inefficient and fails to control costs.

The trustees of Medicare last year projected that the program’s share of gross domestic product would increase from the current 3.7 percent to about 5 percent in 2030 and nearly 6 percent by 2050. But since Medicare’s inception in 1965, its spending growth, on a per-person basis, has stayed consistent with or lower than the increase in private health insurance premiums.

The Congressional Budget Office recently predicted that per capita Medicare spending will grow 1 percent faster than the rate of inflation over the next decade. The CBO attributes the slower projected trend in Medicare spending to the enactment of President Obama’s health-care overhaul, which reduced high payments to Medicare HMOs, and to the anticipated influx of younger, healthier baby boomers, which will lower the average cost per beneficiary. Medicare enrollment is projected to accelerate over the next 25 years, from 47.5 million today to 80 million in 2030.

The addition of baby boomers is the single largest factor in Medicare’s projected spending growth over the next few decades. In the short term, this shouldn’t be a problem, but as that vast generation ages, if systemwide health-care costs don’t come down, it will be.

(More here.)

Hugo Chavez may have aggressive tumor, cancer experts say

By Juan Forero,
WashPost
Published: February 25

BOGOTA, Colombia — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will undergo cancer surgery in Cuba for the third time in eight months as early as Monday, an indication that he may be facing an aggressive tumor that could spread throughout his body, oncologists and gastroenterologists say.

In a country where Chavez makes all major decisions and pronouncements, details about his illness remain sketchy, with only the maximum leader revealing what he sees fit to disclose. But leading doctors who treat various forms of cancer, including those in the pelvic area where Chavez has been stricken, say the recent discovery of a one-inch formation points to a new, potentially critical stage for the president.

“He is facing a delicate situation, one of great uncertainty and everything points to an aggressive tumor,” said Carlos Castro, a Colombian oncologist and scientific director of the Colombian League Against Cancer. “I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few months we hear about a small lesion elsewhere in his body, in a lung, or in the liver. That’s called metastasis.”

Like Castro, Floriano Marchetti, a University of Miami professor who treats colon and rectal cancer, does not have direct knowledge of Chavez’s health. But Marchetti, too, has followed the president’s pronouncements about his fight with cancer, including the announcement last week that Cuban doctors would operate once more to remove what could be a malignant growth.

(More here.)

Ghastly Outdated Party

By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT

WASHINGTON

IT’S finally sinking in.

Republicans are getting queasy at the gruesome sight of their party eating itself alive, savaging the brand in ways that will long resonate.

“Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.”

He said his party is “coming to grips with a weaker field than we’d all want” and going through the five stages of grief. “We’re at No. 4,” he said. (Depression.) “We’ve still got one to go.” (Acceptance.)

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates — be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes — and try to destroy them with it.

(More here.)

Web Deals Cheer Hollywood, Despite Drop in Moviegoers

By BROOKS BARNES
NYT

LOS ANGELES — Movie attendance hit a 16-year low in 2011. Star wattage continues to dim. DVD sales keep plunging. Almost none of the films being honored at Sunday’s Academy Awards have struck a mainstream nerve.

Yet Hollywood has a noticeable spring in its step. After all, it’s not the music business.

Instead of Hollywood suffering its own Napster moment — the kind of digital death trap that decimated music labels first through the illegal downloading of files and then by a migration to legal downloads almost solely through iTunes — several deals announced this month have it feeling more in control.

While studios still consider piracy a huge problem and feel stymied by Silicon Valley (and Washington politics), they nevertheless control their content. And now the Web is coming to them.

(More here.)

Moral Hazard: A Tempest-Tossed Idea

By SHAILA DEWAN
NYT

THE reports outraged America: In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, people who fled the ravaged Gulf Coast were spending disaster relief, paid for by taxpayers, on tattoos, $800 handbags and trips to topless bars.

It turned out that few, if any, Katrina evacuees actually did any such thing. A vast majority used debit cards issued by FEMA to buy necessities like food and clothing. But the damage was done: FEMA swore that it would never hand out money like that again.

Behind this brouhaha was an idea that Americans seem particularly preoccupied with. It is called “moral hazard” — an obscure insurance term that has taken on new currency in our troubled economy. We’ve heard a lot about moral hazard lately, first in connection with the bailouts for big banks, and now with efforts to help homeowners who got in over their heads.

Moral hazard sounds like the name of a video game set in a bordello, but in economic terms it refers to the undue risks that people are apt to take if they don’t have to bear the consequences. In other words, if the money is free, why not spend it on a designer purse? If you know that you’ll be bailed out, why not roll the dice on some tricky mortgage investments — or splurge on a home that you can’t really afford?

(More here.)

Perry’s Working Retirement Sheds Light on a Perk

By JAY ROOT
NYT

An obscure 1991 provision dealing with state pension benefits was only a few paragraphs long, and it escaped public notice at the time. Even the lawmakers who passed it said they did not know what the fine print accomplished until it became law.

But 20 years later, Gov. Rick Perry — and an elite group of other veteran politicians — can thank Government Code 813.503 for the lucrative pension benefits they are allowed to collect without leaving office.

Politicians’ pension records are private, so it is unknown how many are taking advantage of the provision. But any state representative, senator or nonjudicial state elected official who meets the age and service requirements is entitled to some benefit under the law, at wildly varying amounts depending on the official’s highest average state salary and individual circumstances, Employees Retirement System officials say.

Mr. Perry invoked the provision last year, disclosing in December that he had increased his take-home pay by more than $90,000 a year through his on-the-job retirement. He also makes $150,000 a year as governor.

(More here.)

Before Vote, Republicans Make Moves to the Right

By JONATHAN WEISMAN
NYT

WASHINGTON — As Senator Orrin G. Hatch looked on in May 2010, delegates to Utah’s Republican convention booted out Robert F. Bennett, his three-term Senate colleague and Republican mainstay, chanting “TARP, TARP, TARP” to make clear that Mr. Bennett was being punished for backing the Wall Street bailout that both Utah senators had supported.

Ever since, Utah’s senior senator has been working to make sure his quest for a seventh term this year does not meet the same fate. As a result, Mr. Hatch’s voting record has shifted decidedly rightward. After receiving an 88 percent rating from the Club for Growth political action committee in 2009, he jumped to 100 percent in 2010 and then 99 percent in 2011, far surpassing his lifetime score of 78 percent.

Election-year adjustments in a lawmaker’s voting pattern are common. But this election cycle is shaping up as unique. The pressure from the right flank of the Republican Party is intense, and unlike in 2010, party veterans this time around have had time to see it coming after the last primary season bumped off or nearly toppled so many of their colleagues.

Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, has never had a re-election campaign like this one and has been preparing for it for more than a year, said Andy Fisher, a senior aide who has been with him since 1983. Likewise, Mr. Hatch is exercising political muscles that have atrophied for years in one of the most overwhelmingly Republican states in the nation.

(More here.)

Loose Border of ‘Super PAC’ and Campaign

By MIKE McINTIRE and MICHAEL LUO
NYT

When Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign needs advice on direct mail strategies for reaching voters, it looks to TargetPoint Consulting. And when the independent “super PAC” supporting him needs voter research, it, too, goes to TargetPoint.

Sharing a consultant would seem to be an embodiment of coordination between a candidate and an independent group, something prohibited under federal law. But TargetPoint is just one of a handful of interconnected firms in the same office suite in Alexandria, Va., working for either the Romney campaign or the super PAC Restore Our Future.

Elsewhere in the same suite is WWP Strategies, whose co-founder is married to TargetPoint’s chief executive and works for the Romney campaign. Across the conference room is the Black Rock Group, whose co-founder — a top Romney campaign official in 2008 — now helps run both Restore Our Future and American Crossroads, another independent group that spoke up in defense of Mr. Romney’s candidacy in January. Finally, there is Crossroads Media, a media placement firm that works for American Crossroads and other Republican groups.

The overlapping roles and relationships of the consultants in Suite 555 at 66 Canal Center Plaza offer a case study in the fluidity and ineffectual enforcement of rules intended to prevent candidates from coordinating their activities with outside groups. And there has been a rising debate over the ascendancy of super PACs, which operate free of the contribution limits imposed on the candidates but are supposed to remain independent of them.

(More here.)

Could nuclear fusion — the 'holy grail' of nuclear power — be close at hand?

LIFE Fusion on Target for Ignition This Year

Posted by Ross Pomeroy at Thu, 23 Feb 2012
Newton Blog

Controlled nuclear fusion with net energy gain is on schedule to occur later this year at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California.

That was the message from NIF's director for laser fusion energy, Mike Dunne, who spoke at a Photonics West 2012 plenary talk in January. Optics.org covered the event:

"We are now in a position to say with some confidence that ignition will happen in the next 6-18 months," stated [Dunne], adding that he felt personally that the breakthrough was likely to happen in around nine months.

The vehicle of what would be a monumental step forward for energy production is called Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (with the awesome acronym "LIFE"). LIFE functions by firing a powerful laser at a small, centimeter scale chamber. The laser generates massive pressures within the chamber and creates temperatures of over 4 million degrees Celsius. Miniscule deuterium-tritium fuel pellets will be rapidly inserted into the chamber, and the aforementioned conditions will induce the deuterium and tritium to fuse together, creating helium, a free neutron, and massive amounts of energy.

(Continued here.)

An expert witness for the GOP gender gap

By Dana Milbank,
WashPost
Published: February 24

If the gender gap becomes a chasm that swallows Republicans this fall, it will be no fluke. It will, however, have something to do with Sandra Fluke.

She’s the Georgetown University law student who was blocked by chairman Darrell Issa from testifying about contraception before his House government-reform committee this month. The result was an embarrassment of a panel in which five men testified against an administration plan to expand birth control coverage.

Now Democrats are turning Fluke into a feminist martyr. On Thursday, the student was surrounded by dozens of cameras as she sat before a pseudo-committee chaired by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a rump session designed entirely to exploit the Republicans’ mistake.

“Following your rejection by the Republicans from the panel,” Pelosi declared, “we’ve heard from over 300,000 people saying we want women’s voices to be heard.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) went an order of magnitude higher. “You certainly speak for millions,” he said.

(More here.)

Republican Truth or Dare

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

I know you’re extremely excited about the latest developments in the Republican presidential primaries. As a public service, I am ready to answer all your questions.

Is it true that a giant cat in Wisconsin saved the life of its owner by giving her the Heimlich maneuver?

You see, this is the way rumors get started. I believe you are talking about Amy Jung of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., who is not a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. However, the story about Pudding, her 21-pound cat, has gone viral since it was first reported by Samantha Hernandez in The Door County Advocate.

Jung adopted Pudding from the local Humane Society. Just a few hours after the cat joined the family, his new mistress suffered a seizure while sleeping. According to Jung, Pudding sat on her chest in an attempt to wake her, hit her face with his paw, bit her nose until she was aroused and then ran to her son’s room to summon help.

Wow, where can I find a similar 21-pound cat to monitor my health in the late-night hours?

(More here.)

Focus on Social Issues Could Shape Battle for Women

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
NYT

Rick Santorum creates a stir by speaking out against prenatal testing. Virginia’s governor and legislature get caught up in an emotional debate over requiring women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound. President Obama, under pressure, recalibrates his position on health-insurance coverage of contraception for employers with religious affiliations.

Social issues are back with a vengeance, dominating the dialogue on the presidential campaign trail, in Congress and in state capitals.

In an election that until this point has been almost totally defined by the economy’s struggles, the abrupt return of the culture wars has introduced a volatile new element. There are any number of ways in which the politics might play out, but perhaps the biggest question is the degree to which the new attention on social issues might shape the battle for one of the most important electoral swing groups: moderate and independent women voters.

Even before social issues were forced front and center by the combination of Mr. Santorum’s new prominence, the recent battle over the Susan G. Komen foundation’s financing of Planned Parenthood and Mr. Obama’s decision to revise his contraception policy, both parties were tracking the sentiments of women voters closely.

(More here.)

Branding a Soldier With ‘Personality Disorder’

By JAMES DAO
NYT

Capt. Susan Carlson was not a typical recruit when she volunteered for the Army in 2006 at the age of 50. But the Army desperately needed behavioral health professionals like her, so it signed her up.

Though she was, by her own account, “not a strong soldier,” she received excellent job reviews at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where she counseled prisoners. But last year, Captain Carlson, a social worker, was deployed to Afghanistan with the Colorado National Guard and everything fell apart.

After a soldier complained that she had made sexually suggestive remarks, she was suspended from her counseling duties and sent to an Army psychiatrist for evaluation. His findings were shattering: She had, he said in a report, a personality disorder, a diagnosis that the military has used to discharge thousands of troops. She was sent home.

She disputed the diagnosis, but it was not until months later that she found what seemed powerful ammunition buried in her medical file, portions of which she provided to The New York Times. “Her command specifically asks for a diagnosis of a personality disorder,” a document signed by the psychiatrist said.

(More here.)

U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb

By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
NYT

WASHINGTON — Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.

At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran. There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances.

(More here.)

Romney’s Economic Closet

By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT

According to Michael Kinsley, a gaffe is when a politician accidently tells the truth. That’s certainly what happened to Mitt Romney on Tuesday, when in a rare moment of candor — and, in his case, such moments are really, really rare — he gave away the game.

Speaking in Michigan, Mr. Romney was asked about deficit reduction, and he absent-mindedly said something completely reasonable: “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.” A-ha. So he believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal.

The right’s ideology police were, predictably, aghast; the Club for Growth quickly denounced the statement as showing that Mr. Romney is “not a limited-government conservative.” On the contrary, insisted the club, “If we balanced the budget tomorrow on spending cuts alone, it would be fantastic for the economy.” And a Romney spokesman tried to walk back the remark, claiming, “The governor’s point was that simply slashing the budget, with no affirmative pro-growth policies, is insufficient to get the economy turned around.”

But that’s not what the candidate said, and it’s very unlikely that it’s what he meant. Almost surely, he is, in fact, a closet Keynesian.

(More here.)

G.O.P. Fund-Raiser Faces Inquiries Into His Races

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT

WASHINGTON — Last year, House Republican leaders tapped an up-and-coming Florida lawmaker, Representative Vern Buchanan, to lead the party’s fund-raising for candidates nationwide, a crucial part of their efforts to keep control of the House in November.

The drive has already paid dividends in surging donations. Now, however, Mr. Buchanan’s golden touch in raising money could prove as much a hindrance as an asset, as a thicket of questions surrounding his own Florida campaigns is threatening to distract from the Republicans’ national finance operation.

Federal inquiries surrounding Mr. Buchanan appear to be widening, as investigators examine allegations that his companies improperly reimbursed contributors to his campaigns and claimed improper tax deductions and that he failed to include all his varied financial interests in his Congressional disclosure reports.

The Federal Election Commission has already completed one investigation that produced a settlement this week with a former partner of Mr. Buchanan’s who used their car dealership to reimburse employees for contributing to the congressman’s campaigns, in violation of federal law.

(More here.)

After a Year, Deep Divisions Hobble Syria’s Opposition

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
NYT

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s downward spiral into more hellish conflict in cities like Homs has provoked a new surge of outrage around the world, with Arab and many Western countries searching for new ways to support protesters and activist groups coming under the government’s increasingly lethal assault.

But as diplomats from about 80 countries converge on Tunisia on Friday in search of a strategy to provide aid to Syria’s beleaguered citizens, they will find their efforts compromised even before they begin by the lack of a cohesive opposition leadership.

Nearly a year after the uprising began, the opposition remains a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grass-roots organizers and armed militants, all deeply divided along ideological, ethnic or sectarian lines, and too disjointed to agree on even the rudiments of a strategy to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The need to build a united opposition will be the focus of intense discussions at what has been billed as the inaugural meeting of the Friends of Syria. Fostering some semblance of a unified protest movement, possibly under the umbrella of an exile alliance called the Syrian National Council, will be a theme hovering in the background.

(More here.)

Real-world issues, fantasy-land solutions

By Fred Hiatt,
WashPost
Thursday, February 23, 11:16 AM

Run to the extreme in the primary, move to the center in the fall: That’s expected. But moving from the cartoon world the Republican presidential candidates have constructed back into three dimensions might prove more difficult.

In their debate Wednesday night, the remaining candidates seemed to be continuing their drift from reality — the reality of a center-right electorate they propose to woo and govern, and of the complexities of the problems they promise to solve.

Take immigration. Early on, Ron Paul opposed building a border fence because it might be used to keep Americans in. When it comes to drifting from reality, he was ahead of the pack. But other candidates showed glimmers of understanding that real people are affected by this issue.

Rick Perry, you might recall, wondered if it made sense to bar promising youth, brought here as infants, from a college education. Newt Gingrich said that the United States wasn’t the kind of country to uproot from their communities millions of people who had lived here peacefully and productively for many years.

(More here.)

Delusions About the Detroit Bailout

By STEVEN RATTNER
NYT

WHEN Mitt Romney takes the podium at Ford Field in Detroit today, he’s likely to include yet another sharp denunciation of the government’s rescue of General Motors and Chrysler.

That Mr. Romney would traverse Michigan trashing a program that saved tens of thousands of jobs at the Detroit-based automakers doesn’t necessarily mean he’s politically tone-deaf.

After all, an NBC/Marist poll recently found that 50 percent of Michigan Republicans who were likely to vote opposed the government’s actions (only 42 percent supported them).

Mr. Romney may have the primary politics right — though with a majority of Michigan voters supporting the rescue, he may want to pivot deftly before the general election in November. But on the substance he’s dead wrong.

As a presidential aspirant, Mr. Romney evidently hasn’t felt a need to be consistent or specific as to what should have been done to address the collapse of the auto industry starting in late 2008. But the gist is that the government should have stayed on the sidelines and allowed the companies to go through what he calls “managed bankruptcies,” financed by private capital.

(More here.)

Study Tests Claims of Republican Candidates’ Debt Plans

By JACKIE CALMES
NYT

WASHINGTON – A centrist budget-watchdog group is punching trillion-dollar holes in the claims of Republican presidential candidates that they would rein in the mounting federal debt if elected, according to an analysis to be released on Thursday.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group of former members of Congress, former administration officials, budget experts and business leaders of both parties, analyzed each candidate’s agenda under three scenarios – most optimistic, intermediate and most pessimistic, depending on the specificity of the candidates’ proposals. It found that all four men remaining in the Republican race would increase annual budget deficits beyond what is currently projected, under at least one of the scenarios studied.

Over a two-term presidency, Newt Gingrich would increase deficits beyond current projections under all three scenarios, as much as $9.7 trillion, while Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum would increase deficits under two of the three forecasts by trillions of dollars. Ron Paul, with his libertarian small-government agenda, would decrease deficits under two of three scenarios.

(More here.)

Dutch Puzzled by Santorum’s False Claim of Forced Euthanasia

By ROBERT MACKEY
NYT

The Dutch Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Wednesday on recent remarks by Rick Santorum, the Republican presidential candidate, in which he claimed, falsely, that forced euthanasia accounts for 5 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands.

An embassy spokeswoman, Carla Bundy, explained that the Dutch government preferred not to intervene in an American political campaign. But Ms. Bundy did provide The Lede with documents and official statistics showing that there are no provisions of Dutch law that permit forced euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia, which has been legal since 2002, accounted for about 2 percent of deaths in the Netherlands in 2010.

As Jonathan Turley, a legal blogger, explained on Monday, the Dutch law permitting euthanasia is unambiguous about the requirement that it be voluntary, and lawmakers mandated that each case be carefully reviewed by an expert panel.

It not only requires consent but a waiting period. If a doctor dispatches someone without their consent or satisfying the tight controls, he is charged with murder.

The doctor must document that he or she confirmed that the patient requesting euthanasia or assisted suicide is making a voluntary and informed request. The record must also show that the patient was suffering unbearably and was fully informed about the prospects. Then a second doctor must examine the patient and supply a second written opinion on the satisfaction of the criteria.

(More here.)

About Last Night

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
NYT

Right-wing politicians never miss a chance to declare their religious piety and “family values,” or to accuse those who disagrees with them of lacking both.

At last night’s debate in Arizona, the moderator, John King of CNN, read a question from CNN’s website noting that contraception had become an issue in the campaign and asking which of the candidates believe in birth control. The audience booed the question, indicating to the contenders—as if they hadn’t already realized it—that Mr. King had given them a great opportunity for grand-standing.

Mr. Gingrich, who can play the crowd like no other, went first, and didn’t even try to answer the question. In a rather amazing about-face, he accused President Obama of having “voted in favor of legalizing infanticide” and to “protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.” He also complained that the “elite media” had never raised this issue in 2008. Leaving aside the absurdity of a candidate for president calling anyone else “elite,” Mr. Gingrich was misrepresenting both Mr. Obama’s record, and the news coverage. What a shock.

In 2001, 2002 and 2003, when Mr. Obama was a state senator, pro-lifers proposed bills that would have classified a fetus that survived an abortion as a person with full legal rights. The bill would never have survived judicial scrutiny, but in any case Illinois law already required doctors to try to save viable fetuses. It had no purpose other than the declaration of “personhood,” so Mr. Obama opposed it. Far from getting a pass from the “elite media,” many outlets reported on this tempest-in-a-teacup during the 2008 campaign.

(More here.)

Euro Agonistes

Paul Krugman
NYT

Daniel Davies had a very good piece — written in the form of a role-playing adventure game — about Greece; the point was that there aren’t any good answers, certainly for the government of Greece, given the situation that the creation of the euro and the initial debt bubble within the euro area have created.

It really is an agonizing position for all the troubled peripheral economies. At root, their problems are primarily caused by balance-of-payments rather than sovereign debt issues; they had huge capital inflows between 1999 and 2007, which led to inflation, and now they need somehow to regain competitiveness. But overlaid on this is a sovereign-debt crisis, which has forced them to seek aid — and the lenders are demanding harsh austerity in return, which is further depressing economies already suffering from severe overvaluation.

It’s not too hard to see what Europe as a whole — which, in practice, means the ECB and the Germans — should be doing: less demands for austerity, much more general reflation. (The whole situation would look much better with eurozone inflation of 3 or 4 percent). And you can make the case that austerity, at least at this level of harshness, is actually counterproductive even in fiscal terms: it depresses growth, so that the debt position becomes worse even if the current budget deficit is reduced.

It’s much harder, however, to say what the leaders of such peripheral economies should do. Unilateral default won’t solve the competitiveness problem, and at least for now would actually worsen the fiscal squeeze, since they’re all still running primary deficits. (That may change in a year or so). Euro exit would allow a quick devaluation, solving the competitiveness problem — but it would be hugely disruptive and would generate vast ill-will, so it’s hard to see any government taking that step until there really are no alternatives (which may soon be true for Greece, but not the others).

(More here.)

Taking Aim at an Old Debate

Can Female Athletes Compete Against Men? In Shooting, Yes—But Not in the Olympics

By MARK YOST
WSJ

As a member of the Texas Christian University rifle team, junior Sarah Scherer competes against some of the best female—and male—shooters in the country. But when she competes in the second round of the Olympic trials at Camp Perry, Ohio, this weekend, she'll only be competing against other women.

Why is that? Is it still unfair for men and women to compete against one another—even in sports where size and strength matter little? Or is it just latent sexism?

Shooting is a sport that certainly requires more brain than brawn. Keen sight, breathing control and trigger squeeze are among the qualities that make an Olympic-caliber shooter. Yet, most shooting competitions remain segregated.

It wasn't always this way. For decades men and women regularly shot against one another in international competitions. But in 1976, American Margaret Thompson Murdock tied for the gold at the Montreal Olympics in the small-bore rifle against teammate Lanny Bassham. When the judges examined the targets more closely, Bassham was awarded the gold, but Thompson's performance was enough to put pressure on the International Olympic Committee—primarily from Eastern European teams—to segregate the sport.

(More here.)