Tag Archives: obama

Did the White House Create a Bunch of Fake Lois Lerner Emails?

by DesireeCheesman Posted on June 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Howard Kurtz thinks Jon Stewart is going too damn easy on our current president:

When it comes to Obama, the humor is gentle. I do recall Stewart pummeling the president over the botched ObamaCare rollout. But on the IRS scandal this week, he mocked the tax agency for almost criminal stupidity in losing all those emails—but never questioned whether the Obama administration is engaged in a coverup.

Yes, Kurtz actually wrote that. He thinks Jon Stewart should have entertained the possibility that someone in the White House invented a time machine and wrote a bunch of emails in 2011 asking the IT department at the IRS to fix Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive. Maybe it was the same time machine that inserted Obama’s birth record in the Honolulu Advertiser in 1961. Or, perhaps, Mission Impossible-like, a crack team of forgers ginned up a bunch of fake emails that just looked like they were from 2011.

Look, I’m not saying that’s what’s happened. I’m just asking the question. It’s what any responsible journalist would do.

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Did the White House Create a Bunch of Fake Lois Lerner Emails?

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President Obama Has Finally Learned the Limits of American Military Power

by AlysaKincaid Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’ve been meaning to make note of something about Iraq for a while, and a story today in the LA Times provides the perfect hook:

A group of U.S. diplomats arrived in Libya three years ago to a memorable reception: a throng of cheering men and women who pressed in on the startled group “just to touch us and thank us,” recalled Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security advisor….But in three years Libya has turned into the kind of place U.S. officials most fear: a lawless land that attracts terrorists, pumps out illegal arms and drugs and destabilizes its neighbors.

….Now, as Obama considers a limited military intervention in Iraq, the Libya experience is seen by many as a cautionary tale of the unintended damage big powers can inflict when they aim for a limited involvement in an unpredictable conflict….Though they succeeded in their military effort, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies fell short in the broader goal of putting Libya on a path toward democracy and stability. Exhausted after a decade of war and mindful of the failures in Iraq, U.S. officials didn’t want to embark on another nation-building effort in an oil-rich country that seemed to pose no threat to Western security.

But by limiting efforts to help the new Libyan government gain control over the country, critics say, the U.S. and its allies have inadvertently helped turn Libya into a higher security threat than it was before the military intervention.

The view of the critics in this piece is pretty predictable: no matter what happens in the world, their answer is “more.” And whenever military intervention fails, it’s always because we didn’t do enough.

But I don’t think Obama believes this anymore. He mounted a surge in Afghanistan, and it’s pretty plain that it’s accomplished very little in the way of prompting reconciliation with the Taliban or setting the stage for genuine peace. Even lasting stability seems unlikely at this point. That experience made him reluctant to intervene in Libya, but he eventually got talked into it and within a couple of years that turned to shit too. Next up was Syria, and this time his reluctance was much more acute. There would be some minor steps to arm the anti-Assad rebels, but that was it. There was a brief moment when he considered upping our involvement over Syria’s use of chemical weapons, but then he backed off via the expedient of asking for congressional approval. Congress, as Obama probably suspected from the start, was unwilling to do more than whine. When it came time to actually voting for the kind of action they kept demanding, they refused.

By now, I suspect that Obama’s reluctance to support military intervention overseas is bone deep. The saber rattlers and jingoists will never change, but he never really cared about them. More recently, though, I think he’s had the same epiphany that JFK had at one time: the mainstream national security establishment—in the Pentagon, in Congress, in the CIA, and in the think tanks—simply can’t be trusted. Their words are more measured, but in the end they aren’t much different from the perma-hawks. They always want more, and deep in their hearts the only thing they really respect is military force. In the end, they’ll always push for it, and they’ll always insist that this time it will work.

But I don’t think Obama believes that anymore, and I think he’s far more willing to stand up to establishment pressure these days. This is why I’m not too worried about the 300 advisors he’s sent to Iraq. A few years ago, this might very well have been the start of a Vietnam-like slippery slope into a serious recommitment of forces. Today, I doubt it. Obama will provide some limited support, but he simply won’t be badgered into doing more. Deep in his heart, he now understands that Iraq’s problem is fundamentally political. Until there’s some chance of forging a genuine political consensus, American troops just can’t accomplish much.

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President Obama Has Finally Learned the Limits of American Military Power

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Rand Paul: Republicans Are "Too Eager for War"

by CharlieGKR Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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On the Sunday morning television shows this past weekend—against the backdrop of an Iraq in flames—former Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) continued their ongoing feud and the battle for the (national security) soul of the Republican Party. In recent months, as Mother Jones has reported that Paul in 2009 accused Cheney of using 9/11 as an excuse to launch the Iraq invasion to benefit Halliburton (the corporation Cheney once led) and called on the GOP to disassociate itself with the former vice president, Cheney’s allies have slammed the senator for expressing reckless positions. During a private speech in March, without mentioning Paul by name, Cheney contended that Paul’s skepticism about US intervention abroad would endanger the United States. On ABC News’ This Week on Sunday, Cheney explicitly assailed Paul as “basically an isolationist”—a term of profound derision in the neocon wing of the GOP. Meanwhile, on Meet the Press, Paul was asked if Cheney could be considered a credible critic of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and Paul, without saying Cheney’s name, replied, “The same questions could be asked of those who supported the Iraq war. You know, were they right in their predictions? Were there weapons of mass destruction there? That’s what the war was sold on. Was democracy easily achievable?…They didn’t really, I think, understand the civil war that would break out.” This was obviously a jab at the former vice president.

But though Paul, who is mulling a 2016 presidential bid, has not hesitated to challenge the hawks of the GOP, he has softened his language. He no longer accuses Cheney of pushing the Iraq war to reap corporate profits. (He even recently claimed that was not what he had meant to say.) And in these latest rounds, Paul has not voiced his previously stated view that the GOP is the party of war-mongers at odds with true Christian beliefs.

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Rand Paul: Republicans Are "Too Eager for War"

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Read the Supreme Court’s Unanimous Decision Telling Cops They Need a Warrant to Search Your Cellphone

by Kyle3094ioyoxj Posted on June 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Read our explainer of the decision here.

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Supreme Court Cell Phone Search Decision (PDF)

Supreme Court Cell Phone Search Decision (Text)

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Read the Supreme Court’s Unanimous Decision Telling Cops They Need a Warrant to Search Your Cellphone

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America Unhappy Over Obama’s Lack of Magic Iraq Wand

by RudolfGraves Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy continues to get bad reviews:

Dissatisfaction with President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy has shot up among both Republicans and Democrats in the past month, even though a slim majority supports his recent decision to send military advisers to Iraq to confront the growing threat from militants there, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The survey suggests that most Americans back some of Mr. Obama’s approaches to the crisis in Iraq, including majority support for the possibility of drone strikes. But the poll documents an increasing lack of faith in the president and his leadership, and shows deep concern that further intervention by the United States in Iraq could lead to another long and costly involvement there.

….“I voted for him because he said, ‘Give me four more years and I will fix everything,’ but nothing is being fixed,” Michelle Roberts, 34, a Democrat from Salem, Mass., said in a follow-up interview. “I understand he wants to fight terrorism, but send in robots, drones. Don’t send in our troops. Our men and women are dying for what?”

This poll really demonstrates the schizophrenia of the American public. If you read through the individual questions, you’ll see that substantial majorities approve of nearly everything Obama has done related to Iraq. Majorities believe the US shouldn’t take the lead in world conflicts; they don’t believe we should have left troops behind in Iraq; they don’t think the US has a continuing responsibility to Iraq; they specifically don’t think the US has a responsibility to fight ISIS; they approve of sending 300 advisors; they very much disapprove of “sending ground troops” into Iraq; and overall, a plurality thinks Obama is doing the “right amount” to address the violence in Iraq.

And yet, the public disapproves of Obama’s handling of Iraq by 52-37 percent.

In other words, Iraq is like the economy: it doesn’t really matter what the president is doing. If the economy is good, the public approves of his performance. It it’s bad, they disapprove. Likewise, if the world is peaceful, they think the president is doing a great job. If it’s not, they don’t—even if he’s pretty much doing everything they think he should be doing. Basically, we all want the president to wave a magic wand and make everything better. No wand, no approval.

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America Unhappy Over Obama’s Lack of Magic Iraq Wand

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U.S. mayors call for emergency action on climate change

by KurtisPatrick Posted on June 24, 2014

The cities have spoken

U.S. mayors call for emergency action on climate change

By

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America’s mayors have sent an urgent message to federal lawmakers – and to the nation: “Emergency action” is needed on climate change.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a bipartisan group that represents the leaders of 1,400 cities, each of which is home to at least 30,000 people, has called on the Obama administration and Congress to “enact an Emergency Climate Protection law that provides a framework and funding for the implementation … of a comprehensive national plan” to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

If members of Congress understood the urgency of climate change as well as the nation’s mayors do, we might not be in as much of a screwed-up climate situation as we are in today.

The resolution, which was approved by delegates during four days of meetings in Dallas, expresses strong support for the EPA’s draft rules on power-plant pollution. It also calls on Congress to hurry up and extend renewable energy tax credits.

Another resolution approved by the group endorses the establishment of Obama’s proposed $1 billion climate-adaptation fund.

“[R]esiliency efforts, especially those regarding water and wastewater, not only save lives and taxpayer dollars but also play a key role in preparing cities for the challenges they face from these events,” the adaptation-related resolution stated. “[C]ities currently face several barriers to properly planning and implementing resiliency efforts, including funding and financing challenges, insufficient permitting and regulatory flexibility, a shortage of data and modeling information, and a lack of communication and partnership among communities.”

The message being broadcast by the nation’s mayors sounds particularly strong once you consider that more than four-fifths of Americans live in cities.

And it’s not like the mayors are looking to shirk their own responsibilities when it comes to helping protect their residents from the whims of global warming and environmental upheaval. They simply recognize the dire need for federal leadership and assistance.

Another resolution approved on Monday “encourages” the group’s members to “prioritize natural infrastructure,” such as parks, marshes, and estuaries, to help protect freshwater supplies, defend the nation’s coastlines, and protect air quality amid worsening floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires.

Laura Tam, the sustainable development policy director at San Francisco-based urban affairs think tank SPUR, described that resolution as a “statement that de-polarizes climate adaptation.” After all, Tam told Grist, “Who can argue with the premise of encouraging cities to protect waters, coasts, plant trees and improve air quality?”

Well, we can think of some members of Congress who might try to argue with it — as if their campaign donations depended on it.


Source
Full list of resolutions approved during four-day meeting in Dallas, U.S. Conference of Mayors

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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U.S. mayors call for emergency action on climate change

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Awlaki Assassination Memo Finally Released

by AnnabelCorrigan Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

A federal court has finally released the Obama administration’s memo justifying the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen living in Yemen who was apparently a top Al Qaeda operative. I think we mostly knew this already, but the memo confirms that the decision to kill Awlaki was based primarily on the Authorization to Use Military Force passed a few weeks after 9/11:

“We believe that the AUMF’s authority to use lethal force abroad also may apply in appropriate circumstances to a United States citizen who is part of the forces of an enemy authorization within the scope of the force authorization,” reads the Justice Department memorandum, written for attorney general Eric Holder on 16 July 2010 and ostensibly intended strictly for Awlaki’s case.

Among those circumstances: “Where high-level government officials have determined that a capture operation is infeasible and that the targeted person is part of a dangerous enemy force and is engaged in activities that pose a continued and imminent threat to US persons or interests.”

I’ve never taken a firm stand on the decision to kill Awlaki. Everything I’ve read persuades me that he was, indeed, a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative, and a dangerous one. If we were engaged in a normal war, there would be no question about our right to treat him like any other enemy combatant.

But we aren’t engaged in a normal war, are we? There’s no specific enemy, no specific battlefield, and no way of knowing if and when the war is over. The AUMF is open-ended, both in time and geography, and is famously vague about just who it authorizes the president to make war against. It specifies “those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” and that takes in a helluva lot of ground.

Thus, the problem I’ve always had isn’t specifically with the targeting of Awlaki, but with the fact that the targeting was based on such a flimsy legal pretext. However, despite the fact that I’m disappointed in Obama’s decision to interpret the AUMF widely, most of the blame on that score should be directed not at Obama, but at Congress. The AUMF is now more than a dozen years old, and it’s long past time for Congress to emerge from its fetal crouch and write a new law specifically designed for our present circumstances. Among other things, it should address the president’s ability to target American citizens for killing. If Congress wants to give the president that power, it should debate and pass a law and the courts should rule on its constitutionality. That’s the rule of law. And regardless of whether I liked the law, I’d accept it if Congress passed it, the president signed it, and the Supreme Court declared it constitutional.

Instead, as usual, Congress prefers to do nothing. This leaves them free to kibitz if they don’t like what the president is doing, or to simply avoid having to take a stand at all. It’s shameful.

Read the full Justice Department memo here.

Source:

Awlaki Assassination Memo Finally Released

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Supreme Court Strikes Down EPA Interpretation of Clean Air Act

by JackieMesserly Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

A few years ago, the EPA added carbon dioxide to an established program that limits emissions of harmful pollutants. But there was a problem: the Clean Air Act says that permits are required by any source that emits more than 250 tons of a covered pollutant. Because CO2 is such a common gas, this would have forced tens of thousands of small sources to go through an expensive and pointless permitting process, something EPA wanted to avoid. So, for CO2 only, they unilaterally changed the threshold to 100,000 tons per year. This exempted most large businesses, but it also gave critics an opening to challenge the law. Today they won:

The Supreme Court, in a split ruling, has blocked the Obama administration from requiring special permits for some new power plants, but upheld them for others. In a dense 5-4 decision Monday, the justices said the Environmental Protection Agency had wrongly stretched an anti-pollution provision of the Clean Air Act to cover carbon emissions in new or modified plants.

But the ruling was confined to only one regulatory provision, and it is not likely to directly affect the broader climate-change policy that the administration announced earlier this month. That policy relies on a different part of the law that says states must take steps to reduce harmful air pollutants, which include greenhouse gases.

This doesn’t affect the EPA’s recent proposal that would limit CO2 emissions from power plants, since that relies on a different provision of the Clean Air Act that’s already been blessed by the Supreme Court. However, today’s ruling is a demonstration of something I’ve mentioned before: When an executive agency modifies the way it interprets a law, it’s a fairly routine affair. Interpretations of federal statutes, especially complex regulatory constructions, are notoriously difficult, and agencies do it all the time. There’s no presidential “lawlessness” or “tyranny” involved, and disputes over these interpretations are routinely resolved by courts. In this case, it was obviously a close call, since the decision was 5-4 and the opinion was long and dense.

This is what’s likely to happen in other cases where the Obama administration has interpreted a law in ways that his critics don’t like. If the critics are serious, they’ll go to court, and in some cases they’ll win. In others, they’ll lose. Welcome to the 21st century.

UPDATE: I wrote this hastily because—and I know you’re going to love this excuse—a temporary crown fell out and I had to pop out to my dentist to get it re-cemented. But now that I’m back, it’s worth pointing out that today’s Supreme Court decision actually upheld most of the EPA’s new limitations on CO2 emissions. The main reason I highlighted the one piece they struck down was because I wanted to make a point about presidential “lawlessness” that’s become such a talking point on the right these days. In the case of the 250-ton rule, the EPA tried to reinterpret the law and the court ruled against them. Other interpretations were upheld. That’s the way this stuff goes.

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Supreme Court Strikes Down EPA Interpretation of Clean Air Act

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Tell the EPA what you think of its climate rules

by BrittnyMacaluso Posted on June 19, 2014

Tell the EPA what you think of its climate rules | Grist
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« Federal bill would wash away plastic microbead problem

19 Jun 2014 7:21 PM

Tell the EPA what you think of its climate rulesBy Shutterstock

You know those proposed EPA power-plant rules that we’ve been going on and on and on about? Now you can go on and on and on about them yourself.

The Obama administration has opened up the official 120-day public comment period, after the proposal was published in the Federal Register. The EPA will accept feedback through Oct. 16, so now’s the time to speak your mind.

Here’s how to comment.

The big enviro groups are going to be pushing to make the rules stronger, while industry and Republicans are trying to undermine them.

The EPA will consider all the feedback and finalize the rules by June 2015 — but the fighting and litigation will continue indefinitely.


Source
EPA Starts Taking Comments on Clean Power Plan, Climate Central
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Turns out there are a few Republicans who want to do something about climate change

by MaeGlydewweqqeq Posted on June 19, 2014

Turns out there are a few Republicans who want to do something about climate change

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Here’s a helpful reminder that not all Republicans oppose climate action. Former EPA administrators who served under Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush I and II spoke out on Wednesday in support of federal efforts to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants. They appeared at a Senate hearing organized by Democrats to discuss EPA’s recently proposed power-plant rules. From USA Today:

“We have a scientific consensus around this issue. We also need a political consensus,” said Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey Governor and first EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, who resigned her post after disagreeing with the White House’s direction on pollution rules.

Whitman was joined by William Ruckelshaus, the nation’s first EPA administrator under President Richard Nixon, William Reilly, who led the EPA under President George H.W. Bush, and Lee Thomas, who was administrator under Reagan. …

[T]he four EPA administrators … said the Obama administration had worked hard to make the proposal flexible and workable, using authority provided by Congress.

More from McClatchy:

Whitman … said she was frustrated by the debate over whether the EPA had the authority to take the action it did on carbon pollution.

“The issue has been settled,” she said in her prepared testimony. “EPA does have the authority. The law says so and the Supreme Court has said so twice. The matter should be put to rest.”

While she questioned whether the EPA may be “stretching its legal authority a bit too far in some parts of the proposed rule,” she said those concerns can and should be worked out in the rule-making process. The focus should be on those details, not on whether the EPA has the authority to act, she said.

Senate Republicans responded with non-scientific gibberish, of course.

“I wasn’t surprised by their positions,” Reilly told The Huffington Post after the hearing. “I am surprised at the continued refusal to believe that the science is as it is claimed to be by 11 national academies of science. If you don’t like the IPCC, there are many other choices for authoritative science. … When I was in office I made it a rule to follow the science. Well, the science is pretty clear.”

This isn’t the first time the four ex-EPA chiefs have teamed up to push a climate message. Last summer, Reilly, Whitman, Ruckelshaus, and Thomas cowrote an op-ed in The New York Times supporting Obama’s climate plan and arguing that “the United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change.”

Most rank-and-file Republicans agree. A recent poll found that 63 percent of Republican voters believe the federal government should limit the release of greenhouse gases from existing power plants.

So, to repeat: Not all Republicans oppose efforts to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Just all of those in Congress.


Source
Republican EPA chiefs to Congress: Act on climate, USA Today
Republican ex-EPA chiefs say it’s time to act on climate change, McClatchy
Republican Former EPA Chiefs Try To Convince Senate GOP That Climate Change Is Real, The Huffington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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