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The Mysterious Case of the Missing Emails (Non-IRS Version)

Mother Jones

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In the famous case of Lois Lerner’s missing IRS emails, it really does appear that the whole affair was the result of nothing more than a genuine hard drive crash combined with outdated IT procedures for saving backup tapes. Needless to say, this hasn’t stopped Republicans from yelling endlessly about conspiracy theories and the deliberate erasure of damning messages.

So let’s see. How do you think they’ll react to a case in which it appears that emails really were deliberately erased and hard drives really were destroyed? Before you take a guess, it’s only fair to let you know that this case involves a pair of Republicans: New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, who was the DA of New Mexico’s Third Judicial district before her election, and Amy Orlando, a close friend of Martinez’s who was her chief deputy DA and then briefly succeeded her as DA. Andy Kroll tells the rest of the story:

On Tuesday, Mark D’Antonio, the current DA in New Mexico’s Third Judicial district, released the findings of an internal investigation that concluded that large amounts of emails—potentially including those sought by the Democrats—had been “deleted and/or removed” during the period when the office was briefly run by Orlando, Martinez’s onetime deputy. Two of the four hard drives used by Orlando’s administration—hard drives that might have contained the requested emails—were missing. And investigators noted that all emails in the DA’s office were supposed to be backed up by a “special tape drive” in the office, but the back-up tapes were “blank and appear to have been erased.”

The report also noted that, under Orlando, the DA’s office misled a reporter who’d made his own request for similar records. The DA’s office told the reporter that the records he wanted didn’t exist because the office’s server “is routinely cleaned.” But after interviewing IT staffers, investigators concluded this statement “was inaccurate because IT personnel stated that servers were not routinely ‘cleaned’ and that the data should exist on a server.”

You may now submit your guesses about how conservatives will respond to all this. I’m predicting crickets at best, a smear campaign against D’Antonio at worst.

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The Mysterious Case of the Missing Emails (Non-IRS Version)

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Does Congress Ever Turn Down a Request for War?

Mother Jones

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Plenty of people think Congress should be called back into session to conduct a vote on the bombing campaign in Syria. John Boehner disagrees:

Boehner’s office deferred to the White House when asked about the issue.

“As the Speaker has said, he thinks it would be good for the country to have a new authorization for the use of military force covering our actions against ISIL, but traditionally such an authorization is requested and written by the commander-in-chief — and President Obama has not done that,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said via email.

One of these days Boehner is going to have to make up his mind whether President Obama does too much or too little. It’s getting a little hard to keep up with him.

But this raises a question. Has Congress ever turned down a president who asked for authorization to use military force? Sure, there was Ford’s last-ditch aid request for Vietnam in 1975, but that was for the end of a war, not the start of one. Anything else? Do the fights over funding for the contras count? I feel like I’m going to be embarrassed when someone points out some famous congressional refusal that I’ve forgotten about, but I sure can’t dredge anything up.

Obviously Obama has philosophical reasons for insisting that he can go to war on his own, and he also has political reasons for not forcing fellow Democrats to take a tough vote. But does he have even the slightest chance of Congress actually turning him down?

UPDATE: OK, I’m already embarrassed. I guess you could count the non-vote on Syria last year, couldn’t you? After all, Obama did ask for permission to bomb Syria, and Congress did let it die without any real debate. On the other hand, I’d say that Obama mostly asked for authorization in the hopes of being turned down. He didn’t exactly put on a full-court press, did he?

Any other examples?

UPDATE 2: There have been a few other suggestions. (1) Congressional hindrance of FDR before Pearl Harbor. That was a mixed bag, and anyway, I guess I was thinking of more recent (postwar) history. (2) Kosovo and Libya. Interesting cases, but more of a muddle than an outright loss for the president. Congress approved some funding bills and denied others.

Still, there’s enough here to suggest that presidents often have to fight with Congress over military action. Especially Democratic presidents.

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Does Congress Ever Turn Down a Request for War?

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GOP Candidate: Mitt Romney’s "47 Percent" Remarks Are Even More True Today

Mother Jones

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A GOP House candidate in Nevada has been caught on tape telling a crowd at a fundraiser that Mitt Romney was right to say that 47 percent of the country mooch off the government. Cresent Hardy, the Republican candidate for Nevada’s 4th district, added that since 2012, when Romney made his remarks, the “47 percent” has only grown.

“Can I say that without getting in trouble, like Governor Romney?” Hardy said, at a fundraiser held last Thursday at the Falcon Ridge Golf Club. “The 47 percent is true. It’s bigger now.”

Hardy’s remarks refer to the leaked video of Mitt Romney telling donors, behind closed doors, that 47 percent of the country are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” The video was released by Mother Jones.

At last week’s fundraiser, Hardy reportedly blamed the country’s troubles on women, minorities, and young voters, since those groups voted for the president in large numbers. Jon Ralston, a top Nevada political commentator, reported Hardy’s comments on his show last night.

This is not the first time Hardy has disparaged voters on the campaign trail. A video posted by the Nevada Democratic Party in February shows Hardy claiming that people in “welfare districts” drive Escalades—a callback to the “welfare queens” trope of the 1980s.

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GOP Candidate: Mitt Romney’s "47 Percent" Remarks Are Even More True Today

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The Heartwarming Story of Arab Support for Our Bombing Campaign

Mother Jones

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Speaking of things to remain skeptical of, the very top of the list certainly has to include the news that our staunch allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan participated in yesterday’s airstrikes in Syria:

A U.S. official said that all five Arab countries were believed to have joined U.S. warplanes, although it is still unclear how many countries dropped bombs during the operation. The official asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive operational details.

Dempsey said that the first Arab government told U.S. officials that it would participate in attacks on Syria “within the last 72 hours” and that once that occurred, the other four soon promised to participate. He would not identify which country was the first to back the U.S. airstrikes.

….There are still major questions about how committed governments in the region are to helping the U.S. and Iraq, whose government is dominated by Shia Arabs, against the well-armed militants, who have claimed large areas of eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq over the last year.

Here’s the nickel version: After months of bellyaching about America’s commitment to fighting ISIS, one single Arab country finally agreed to help out. Only then did anyone else also agree to pitch in. But the extent of their involvement can’t be revealed because it’s a “sensitive operational detail.”

Can you guess just how extensive that involvement is? Or do you need a hint?

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The Heartwarming Story of Arab Support for Our Bombing Campaign

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GOP Candidate’s Twitter Feed Calls Neo-Confederate Website an "Interesting Read"

Mother Jones

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In a race that could decide which party controls the Colorado state senate, Republican state senate candidate Don Suppes is fending off accusations that his campaign tweeted out a link to a neo-Confederate website that denigrates gay people, women, and African-Americans, and complains that white people can’t use the N-word.

Colorado Democrats are circulating this screenshot of the tweet, dated May 26, in which the Suppes campaign shares a link to the website SuthenBoy.com, with the words, “Interesting read…”

Suppes, through a campaign spokesman, claims the Twitter account was hacked. Both his official campaign account and what appears to be his personal Twitter account have been deactivated.

SuthenBoy.com’s author goes by the name Gen. Robert E. Lee. A Confederate flag adorns the top of the site, and the site’s tagline is, “The Old South’s Gonna Rise Again.” On the day the Suppes campaign’s Twitter account posted the link, the blog entry displayed on the website’s home page was titled “Islam’s Threat To America: An Unintended Consequence Of Cultural Marxism.” In the post, Gen. Lee calls Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton “vermin.” “Muslims are demanding and receiving far more special treatment than other minorities,” he adds. “Broadly speaking there is very little difference between the ultimate goal of Cultural Marxism and Islam.”

The author derides multiculturalism and progressivism as “euphemisms for Marxism” and defines political correctness as “an anti-Western hate filled ideology designed to divide and conquer by using man’s natural divisions, e.g., color, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation to foment, nurture and magnify strife between the groups. Their grain of commonality is disdain for the White male who is considered to epitomize evil.”

Tirades about political correctness are typical on SuthenBoy.com. In a February 25 post, Gen. Lee complained about his inability to use certain words: “Homosexuals are now gay or folks with an alternative life style. Using the ‘N’ word uttered by a White is a societal taboo. Thug is considered offensive to blacks, regardless of how appropriate.”

“Critical Theory ‘studies’ are the breeding ground of Political Correctness,” the author writes in an earlier post. “Included therein are: black studies; feminist studies; Muslim studies; gay studies; lesbian studies; transgender studies; Indian studies; and every other marginal group that claims to be oppressed or the subject of discrimination.”

Suppes is the two-term mayor of the 3,100-person town of Orchard City and runs a heating and cooling business. Democrats are also circulating a video of Suppes claiming that members of the US Senate were supporting UN plans to control parts of the United States. Suppes goes on to describe a plaque he saw on his vacation to Mexico bearing the number 21—the plaque is proof, he implies, that the UN has used “Agenda 21,” a non-binding resolution that encourages sustainable growth, to encroach on sovereign nations; conservatives often describe Agenda 21 as a plan to evict US residents from rural communities and turn that land back into wilderness. “I do my homework,” says Suppes. “If that makes me a conspiracy theorist, I’m sorry.”

Suppes is facing Democrat Kerry Donovan in the race for central Colorado’s sprawling fifth Senate district. They are vying to replace a term-limited Democrat, and the outcome of the race may decide which party has a majority in the chamber. Colorado’s state senate is now split along party lines 18-17, with Democrats controlling the majority. Democrats currently hold the state House by a comfortable margin, and the incumbent Democratic governor is locked in a tight reelection battle. Suppes enjoys strong support from the state’s Republican leaders, including the backing of political action committee that expects to spend $3 to $5 million on a handful of competitive state Senate races.

Suppes’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Update Sept. 23, 2014 at 3:30 pm: In an email to Mother Jones, Suppes confirms that his campaign reported unauthorized activity on the @DonSuppes2014 Twitter account. Suppes adds that he has taken steps recommended for victims of identity theft.

At the same time, Suppes notes that he did not manage his campaign’s Twitter account. “The campaign Twitter account had been managed by a staffer who has since been terminated,” Suppes writes. “No authorization was ever granted to comment on articles. I had never heard of Southernboy and only recently investigated the bizarre postings which were of great concern to me.”

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GOP Candidate’s Twitter Feed Calls Neo-Confederate Website an "Interesting Read"

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We’re Bombing Syria, Just Like Obama Said He Would

Mother Jones

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The front page is dominated almost entirely this morning by the news that we’re bombing ISIS militants in Syria. I confess that this doesn’t strike me as worthy of quite such breathless coverage. Two weeks ago President Obama said he was going to bomb Syria, and now he’s doing it. Did anyone expect him not to follow through on this?

But of course I get it. Bombs are headline generators whether they’re expected or not. After reading all the reports, though, Dan Drezner is pessimistic:

I said last week that I’d start making point predictions here. So, here goes: I’m 70 percent certain that there will be no fundamental change in the Islamic State’s hold on territory in Syria and Iraq for the rest of this calendar year.

That’s probably a good bet. This isn’t because aerial campaigns have no value. Of course they do. It’s because in most cases they have limited value unless they’re used in support of ground troops with a well-defined mission. And so far, there’s no well-defined mission and no one is committing ground troops to the fight. Presumably the new Iraqi government will send in troops eventually, and then we’ll see whether our commitment of air resources was worthwhile. Until then we just won’t know.

As an aside, for the next few months I’d treat virtually every announcement from either ISIS or the Pentagon with extreme skepticism. Some of what they say may be true and some may not, but there’s really no way to know which is which. We can parse all this stuff til the cows come home, but that won’t change our fundamental ignorance. Don’t take anything at face value no matter where it comes from.

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We’re Bombing Syria, Just Like Obama Said He Would

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Who’s Going to Pay For the Latest Iraq War?

Mother Jones

Andrew Sullivan wonders why fiscal conservatives aren’t asking some searching questions about the cost of the ISIS campaign:

The ISIS campaign is utterly amorphous and open-ended at this point — exactly the kind of potentially crippling government program Republicans usually want to slash. It could last more than three years (and that’s what they’re saying at the outset); the cost is estimated by some to be around $15 billion a year, but no one really knows. The last phase of the same war cost, when all was said and done, something close to $1.5 trillion – and our current travails prove that this was one government program that clearly failed to achieve its core original objectives, and vastly exceeded its original projected costs.

If this were a massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure project for the homeland, we’d be having hearing after hearing on how ineffective and crony-ridden it is; there would be government reports on its cost-benefit balance; there would be calls to end it tout court. But a massive government program that can be seen as a form of welfare dependency for the actual countries — Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Kurdistan — facing the crisis gets almost no scrutiny at all.

Yep. The only problem with Sullivan’s post is the headline: “Does The GOP Really Give A Shit About The Debt?” Surely that’s not a serious question? Of course they don’t. They care about cutting taxes on the rich and cutting spending on the poor. The deficit is a convenient cudgel for advancing that agenda, but as Sullivan says, “it is hard to resist the conclusion, after the last few weeks, that it’s all a self-serving charade.”

Indeed it is. And not just after the last few weeks. After all, if they did care, they’d be demanding that we raise taxes to fund the cost of our latest military adventure. Right?

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Who’s Going to Pay For the Latest Iraq War?

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It’s Time For Kansas to Rejoin the Real World

Mother Jones

The Republican governor of Kansas has pauperized his state in order to fund tax cuts for the rich, while the Republican Secretary of State is busily trying to game the midterm ballot to ensure the reelection of the current Republican senior senator. I’d think this was a parody from the Onion if I didn’t know it was for real. I sure hope the good folks of Kansas finally manage to come to their senses this November.

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It’s Time For Kansas to Rejoin the Real World

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Congress Just Delayed New Funding to Help Rape Victims

Mother Jones

Last week, Congress once again delayed federal funding to help catch rapists.

Here’s the backstory. In March, President Barack Obama asked Congress to fund a new Justice Department program designed to help states and localities test backlogs of rape kits, which include DNA evidence taken after a sexual assault and are used to identify attackers. The funding would likely also go toward investigating and prosecuting rape cases.

There are over 100,000 untested kits sitting on shelves at police storage facilities around the country—some held for decades—partly because state and local governments lack the money to process them.

In May, the Republican-controlled House passed a massive spending bill for 2015 that included $41 million for the rape kit program, and a key committee in the Democratic-run Senate approved the same spending in June. But after a spat on the Senate floor over unrelated amendments Republicans wanted added to the bill, Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yanked the legislation. Consequently, Congress had to resort to a short-term spending bill to keep the government operating until mid-December. The House and Senate approved it last week, and Obama signed it Friday. Because it’s a stop-gap spending bill, the legislation continues government spending at current levels, leaving out most new funding—including the money for the rape kit processing program.

More partisan bickering this winter could cause lawmakers to fail to pass a full appropriations bill until February or March, according to experts on congressional procedure, forcing rape victims to wait another six months or so to see the program enacted. That is, if this spending bill does include the rape kit money. (Last Thursday, the Senate approved a separate House-passed bill reauthorizing an existing program designed to process backlogged DNA evidence from all sorts of crimes, including rape kits. But the existing funding, which was first authorized in 2004, has not been sufficient to clear the backlog—which is why advocates were pushing for the new money.)

“The slowdown in appropriating funds for the rape kit program is a classic example of how Congress’ legislative dysfunction blocks even the smallest of bipartisan initiatives,” says Sarah Binder, an expert on legislative politics at the Brookings Institution.

Spokesmen for both the House and Senate appropriations committees say they are confident that local jurisdictions won’t have to wait until next spring to get the federal money they need to process rape kits. They note the consensus on Capitol Hill is that Congress will pass an appropriations bill with the rape kit funding in mid-December. But Binder is less optimistic. If Republicans win the Senate in the midterm elections, she says, GOPers might block passage of a spending bill until they assume control of the Senate in January. At that point, Binder explains, Republicans may be tempted to “use those spending bills as leverage” to force Dems to accept Republican priorities. That could bring things to a halt in Congress and localities may have to wait longer until money is allocated for the rape kit program.

Meanwhile, local prosecutors are struggling to wade through their backlogs. Cuyahoga County, Ohio, has a backlog of 1,650 rape cases requiring investigation and the county won’t complete the probes until 2019, according to local county officials. “Our great hope from the federal money is that it would help counties like us…hire more investigators and advocates so we can speed that time line,” says Joe Frolick, the spokesman for Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty.

Kym Worthy, the county prosecutor in Wayne County, Michigan, plans to apply for a portion of the $41 million grant as soon as Congress approves the funding. “I’d like it to happen tomorrow,” she told Mother Jones in August. “Every day that goes by is another day that the victims have to wait for justice. This is the first grant of its kind where they really got what it takes.”

“So many of us—mayors, police chiefs, district attorneys, victim advocates, state legislators, and governors—are doing all we can to end the backlog,” Sarah Tofte, a prominent victim advocate, says. “Isn’t it time that Congress did?”

The Senate appropriations bill with the $41 million in new rape kit processing money died this summer partly because Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), wanted Democrats to allow them to add several unrelated amendments to the huge bill. One of those amendments, sponsored by McConnell, would have made it more difficult for the EPA to impose new rules on coal-fired power plants.

The federal government does not track the number of untested rape kits. That work has been left largely to advocates and journalists. The states with the largest known backlogs are Texas and Tennessee, which each have about 20,000 unprocessed kits in storage. Detroit has more than 11,000 unprocessed kits, and Memphis has over 12,000. Detroit recently tested 1,600 of its backlogged kits, helping the city identify 87 suspected serial rapists and leading to at least 14 convictions.

Here’s a look at the rape kit backlog around the country, via End the Backlog:

Map by AJ Vicens

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Congress Just Delayed New Funding to Help Rape Victims

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The Great “Out-0f-Network” Scam Is Eating Patients Alive. And It’s Supposed To.

Mother Jones

Over the weekend, Elizabeth Rosenthal gave us the latest installment in her series of rage-inducing stories about the American health care system. Like all the others in the series, it was all but ignored by the rest of the world. I guess everyone was too busy panicking over the White House fence jumper or figuring out ways to one-up each other in their withering scorn for Roger Goodell.

Or, like me, they’ve just given up even hoping that anyone will ever do anything about it. Saturday’s installment was about a medical practice that infuriates me more than almost any other: the routine practice of creating artificial and insanely high “list prices” for procedures that bear no relation to reality and exist for only one reason: to occasionally take advantage of the people who are most vulnerable to abusive pricing. That includes the uninsured, who can least afford it, and those who are already on the gurney going into surgery, who are barely in any condition to fight back.

Rosenthal’s latest piece is about the increasingly common practice of calling in “assistants” during surgical procedures who aren’t covered by the patient’s insurance and are therefore not subject to rates negotiated with the insurance company. This allows them to charge as much as they feel like, and then to harass patients with bill collectors forever unless they pay up. Here’s a graphic that accompanied the article:

The stomach-turning part of this is that it’s so obvious what’s going on. Clearly, the muscle and skin graft in the first example can be done for about $2,000, which produces a decent income for the doctor. So what’s the reason for list price topping $150,000? There isn’t one. It’s solely so doctors can scam the occasional patient and make a fast buck. As long as it’s not a Medicare or Medicaid procedure, and it’s out-of-network, there are no rules. So why not?

Are these assistants pals of the primary surgeon who get called in occasionally as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge buck-raking favor for a friend? Does it happen more randomly than that? Who knows. But there’s a limit to what patients can do. They’re in prep for surgery, there are tubes in their arms, and they get handed a bunch of papers to sign. Who knows what they say? Are they going to check? Are they going to read all the fine print? No and no, even if they’re aware that this kind of stuff can happen. Which most patients aren’t. A few weeks later they get the bill and their jaw drops to the floor. It’s the same thing that happens to uninsured patients who don’t have the benefit of insurer-negotiated rates when they land in the ER.

And there’s virtually no way to negotiate anyway. Have you ever tried to mark up a consent form? Have you ever tried to get a hospital to agree to an out-of-pocket max before an operation? Are you laughing hard enough yet? Insurance companies can do this, but ordinary schlubs like you and me can’t.

This is a scam, plain and simple. So why does it continue? Let’s allow James J. Donelon, the Republican insurance commissioner of Louisiana, to explain:

This has gotten really bad, and it’s wrong. But when you try to address it as a policy maker, you run into a hornet’s nest of financial interests.

And there you have it. It’s a great racket that allows doctors to extort loads of money from those in the most pain and with the least ability to fight back. None of them want the gravy train to end, and that’s your “financial interests” right there. It’s shameless and venal and there’s no excuse for it. And that’s America’s health care system.

In good conscience, I’m not even sure I can recommend that you read the whole piece. It will probably send your blood pressure skyrocketing and possibly send you to the ER, where you’ll be pauperized by the very practice the article is about. You have been warned.

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The Great “Out-0f-Network” Scam Is Eating Patients Alive. And It’s Supposed To.

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