This Week in America (Vol. 3, Week 25)

TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word.

This Week in South Carolina

We grieve for Charleston, SC, and especially for the congregants of the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, where on Wednesday night a 21-year-old while male sat in on a Bible study group for an hour, then opened fire on those gathered there. He killed six women and three men, one of whom, Clementa Pinckney, was not only the church's pastor but a dedicated state senator and a genuinely righteous man.

"Mother Emanuel," as the church is known locally, is a landmark of civil rights--active in the Underground Railroad and throughout the more recent civil rights era. A mass shooting is a tragedy anywhere, but a white man on a rampage in a black church, particularly one with Emanuel's history, is a different level of outrage. Our hearts are broken.

The murderer was captured the following day, and has since confessed. He has said that his goal was to start a race war. Here's the story of Debbie Dills, the florist who spotted him and stayed on his tail until the cavalry came.

Photograph from the Emanuel AME Church website

NBC News identifies the other victims as:

•Tywanza Sanders, 26, a 2014 graduate of Allen University in Columbia, which Pinckney also attended.

•Cynthia Hurd, 54, manager of St. Andrews Regional Library.

•The Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, an assistant pastor at the church and girls track coach at Goose Creek High School.

•Susie Jackson, 87, a longtime church member.

•Ethel Lance, 70, a sexton at the church.

•The Rev. Depayne Middleton, 49, a church singer and former Charleston County community development employee.

•The Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a member of the church's ministerial staff, who died in the operating room at the hospital.

•Myra Thompson, 59, wife of the vicar of Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church

Here's President Obama's statement on the tragedy.

He's right to speak about it in the context of gun violence. And he's right that gun violence happens much, much more in the US than in other developed countries. We have, collectively, far more guns than the populations of those other countries, and we have far more crime and far more gun deaths. The Washington Post has compiled the data and offers 11 essential facts on guns and mass shootings, showing just how bad the problem is. And yet, even when gun safety measures are broadly popular, Congress is too afraid of death merchants like the NRA to act.

We'll never be able to chase all the demons out of the hearts of humans. We'll never eliminate racism altogether. We'll never be able to scour mental illness from the earth. We can make progress, but that's all.

We could make it harder to get guns, though. That's the only factor here that's within our control.

But politicians are afraid of those who speak out in favor of death.

So the killings will continue.

We could change that.

But we won't.

Side Note 1: The killer is a racist who sports the Confederate flag design on his car's front license plate. Coincidentally (?), the day he was captured, the US Supreme Court announced a decision in a case in which a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans was trying to force Texas to approve license plates featuring the Confederate flag. Texas, for a change, did the right thing and refused, and the group sued. SCOTUS rejected the group's plea--Texas can't force anyone to put a Confederate flag on their car if they don't want to, so nobody can force Texas to allow a Confederate flag on their license plates if they don't want to. And they don't.

Side Note to Side Note 1: Only one of the Court's conservatives sided with the liberals to make a majority in this case. That conservative was Justice Clarence Thomas. It's almost unheard of for him to be the only one siding with the liberals. Thank you, Justice Thomas, for standing up for what's right.

Side Note 2: The killer and his victims grew up in South Carolina, where a Confederate flag still flies over the Capitol. American flags there are flying at half-mast, but the Confederate flag remains at full-mast. That flag symbolizes hatred and violence and tyranny. It defines black people as property, as less than human. It stands for armed rebellion against the United States of America. That flag inspired the murders of nine people this week. It should come down.

Side Note 3: Josh Marshall, who publishes Talking Points Memo, is a political journalist, but by training he's a historian. His piece on the history of racial violence in America--and how this week's massacre is a "lineal descendent" of past horrors--is well worth a read.

Side Note 4: Politicians and pundits tell us scare stories about Muslim extremists, but in the US, the threat from right-wing extremists is much more real and immediate. And of course, both dangers pale in comparison to the number of deaths--more than 30,000 annually, on average--from gun violence in general. Some want us to spend millions of dollars or more fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria so they won't come over here and behead us, but that ignores what's really killing Americans every day.

This note comes after the one about Josh's historical piece because--although it's not a connection he makes--the right-wing extremism we see today is also directly descended from southern racial violence, particularly the kind of organized vigilantism that sprang up after the Civil War, during Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era. You can still hear its echoes in talk about states' rights, disputing the federal government's legitimacy, even secession. Today's "Patriot" movement and the Sovereign Citizen movement discussed in the article linked above grew out of the Christian Identity movement of the early 1970s, which advocated armed resistance to the federal government and violence toward those people it considered subhuman (blacks) and the progeny of Satan (Jews). That movement spawned the Posse Comitatus, which originated the kind of "paper terrorism" (false liens and financial instruments, their own arrest warrants and driver's licenses, etc.) so common among Sovereign Citizens now. All of the militias and white supremacist groups, even the armed morons who came to deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy's defense, can ultimately be traced back to the ideas that energized post-Civil War Klansmen. And--all too tragically--that still motivate killers today.

Side Note 5: Almost no one is talking about it, but that same night, somebody shot at a black church in Memphis. Fortunately, no one was injured there.

Side Note 6: Bloomberg News has just launched a new site, The Trace, that will focus exclusively on the issue of guns. "It is our mission to expand understanding of the policy, politics, culture, and business of guns in America through daily reporting, investigations, analysis, and commentary." Currently on the front page are articles about the gun violence problem in Charleston even before the shootings at Mother Emanuel, the fact that South Carolina has some of the nation's weakest gun control laws, and a data-packed debunking of the myth--already being spread again by pro-gun death enthusiasts in the wake of Charleston--that the people in that Bible study group would have been safer if they'd been armed, and the only reason they were killed is that the church was a gun-free zone.

More gun data, this time from the Washington Post: In 2012, when these statistics were compiled, for every single incident of someone using a gun for self-defense, there were 35 gun homicides, 78 gun suicides, and 2 accidental gun deaths.

Side Note 7: Former Texas Governor and seemingly perpetual presidential candidate had a classic response to the killings, if by "classic" you mean ignorant and dishonest. He said that President Obama wants to use the event to "take the guns out of the hands of everyone in this country. This is the MO of this administration, any time there is an accident like this — the president is clear, he doesn’t like for Americans to have guns and so he uses every opportunity, this being another one, to basically go parrot that message."

Not only is that not remotely true--the president has never indicated that he wanted to take the guns away from anybody--but "accident?" A white racist goes into a black church, sits there for an hour, then pulls out a gun and kills nine people, and that's an "accident?" Perry thinks maybe the guy was just cleaning his gun while he learned about the Bible, and he dropped it and it went off, shooting some people, reloading itself, and shooting some more?

Governor Perry, mass murder is no accident. Being unable to remember the names of three federal programs you're committed to destroying? That might be an accident. Taking a gun into a church and shooting people you don't know, just because of the color of their skin? That's a deliberate act. Calling it an accident is to diminish it, and if nothing else, that's disrespectful to the victims and the survivors. I hope we'll hear you take that back, and apologize profusely. Now would be good.

Perry's statement reminded us of this, which we saw in the Weekly Sift this week:

(Special thanks to TWiA special WWW correspondent Marcy Rockwell for introducing us to the Sift.)

Below the fold: Science, torture, Kansas, clowns, dynasties, and bears.

This Week in Science

We here at TWiA World Headquarters wish someone could explain the Republican antagonism toward science. When they're asked about climate change, they respond with a line like "I'm not a scientist," but then refuse to accept what the scientists say is true. When science gets in the way of things like profits from fossil fuel extraction, they side with the extractors. The ridiculous Conservapedia says "E=mc² is liberal claptrap." Rep. Lamar Smith (R/TX)--chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, wants to cut NASA's budget by 40%. Over in the Senate, the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee is that body's most notorious climate change denier, Sen. James Inhofe (R/OK).

Now they're attacking the Endangered Species Act on every front. The ESA relies on real science to determine what species are added to the list. At that point, other factors can be considered in deciding what action should be taken. But congressional Republicans have been trying every way they can think of to put government between science and the threatened species.

CredoAction.com describes one of the worst:

"But one of those bills, crafted and sponsored by Republican presidential candidate Senator Rand Paul, would be so devastating to our ability to protect endangered wildlife that it was described by one expert as the 'Extinction Acceleration Act.'

"Paul’s bill would remove protections from 94% of currently listed species, including polar bears, wolves, grizzly bears, and sea otters. It would force the automatic removal of species from the endangered list after five years, whether or not those species had recovered and were deemed safe by scientists.

"Worst of all, it would take the entire process of species protection out of the hands of biologists and wildlife experts, where it rests right now, and require the consent of state governors and a joint resolution of Congress. And if an endangered species was found to reside entirely in the borders of a single state, that state’s governor would have the power to overrule the protection of that species."

Politicians are--as Republicans so frequently point out--not scientists. Yes, there are always multiple viewpoints to consider. Scientists are not politicians, and might not take economic factors into account when making their recommendations. But scientists should still be the ones who address the scientific questions. This country has some pretty ignorant, corrupt, and otherwise deficient governors, and we wouldn't want to see a Doug Ducey or a Bobby Jindal or a Scott Walker deciding whether some species is allowed to become extinct.

Here's an article (subscription required) describing a radical new approach to a problem that's becoming more pressing all the time. Biologists and climate scientists think we're heading toward--or are in the early phases of--a massive extinction event, as the planet warms faster than evolutionary processes that would protect plants and animals can adapt. The scientists profiled in this article think that the key is protecting the few common organisms that many species depend on--for example, cottonwood trees in the Southwest, or coral in the oceans. If those go, then hundreds or thousands of species go with them. But by understanding the genetic makeup of those common species, and if necessary adjusting them to changing temperatures, we might be able to also save those many dependent species.

Much of that research is being done in conjunction with the Southwest Experimental Garden Array (SEGA). It's fascinating and important work.

Corporate profits are a short-term interest. Protecting the globe's biodiversity is a long-term interest. Politicians who would prioritize the former ahead of the latter are doing none of us any favors, and we should remember who they are come election day.

Cottonwoods lining the banks of Southeastern Arizona's San Pedro River help make it one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the country.

Side Note 1. Pope Francis released his encyclical on climate change this week. It's not a strictly American story, of course, but climate change is already having a dramatic impact upon us, so it does relate to us. You can read it (in English) here, and this might answer some of your questions about it.

Side Note: Speaking of Rand Paul, here's an interesting take on how hard it would be to both sustain his libertarian principles and run for (or serve as) president, because in many ways, the two are mutually exclusive. The conclusion: "Other ideologies bend but rarely break. A libertarian nominated by a major party is more likely to break than bend. The good news is that if Paul were to win the Republican nomination, libertarianism’s unfitness for the modern world would be revealed for all to see. The bad news is that the poison of its extremism would enter into the body politic, perhaps never to be fully ejected."

Then again, we've already seen that for Paul, principles are easily tossed aside for political advantage, so maybe he could pull it off.

This Week in Kansas

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) is a big fan of supply-side economics, aka trickle-down economics. The theory is that if you cut taxes for the rich, they'll have more money to hire more people and the economy will grow. Around here, we call it magical thinking, because it has no basis in reality, and Brownback has proved it again. Since he initiated massive new tax cuts for the wealthy, the state's finances have suffered dramatically. Among other cuts, he state has had to slash school spending, forcing some schools to close for the summer six weeks early because they couldn't afford to keep the doors open.

Now the legislature has tried a new method, and Brownback says he'll sign the bill. Instead of rolling back those tax cuts for the richest Kansans, their new plan is to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. According to the AP, "Instead, they raised the state's sales tax to one of the highest rates in the nation and smokers will be paying 50 cents more for each pack of cigarettes. Republican legislators cobbled together a mix of tax policies to both balance the budget and attract just enough votes for passage, but it's not yet clear whether they've created long-term fiscal stability."

Most economists say it's a short-term fix, and the state will face budget issues for years to come.

Sales taxes are, of course, one of the most regressive taxes you can have. The poorer one is, the likelier to spend most of what that comes in on taxable goods (in Kansas, even groceries are subject to sales tax). The rich can, of course, buy things that come with large tax bills, but you can only own so many private planes and yachts. Day in and day out, the ones bearing the weight of a sales tax are people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

And there you have it--trickle-down economics in a nutshell. The rich get richer, schools and services suffer, and the poor and middle classes make up the difference. And yet, it remains the economic approach Republican presidential candidates promote.

Tells you what you need to know to make the right decision. Don't vote for candidates who believe in magical thinking.

Side Note 1: It's hard to be poor, but it's especially hard to be poor in Kansas. On purpose.

Side Note 2: More evidence that inequality is bad for the national economy--not just here, but in countries around the world. According to a new study by the International Monetary Fund, "We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive."

This Week in 2016

Hillary Clinton held her first big rally of the 2016 election season on Saturday. It's not her natural format--she's much more of a policy wonk than an orator who can deliver sweeping, inspirational speeches, like President Obama. (To his credit, Obama really believes in his vision--he thinks the things that bind us together as Americans should be more powerful than the forces that divide us. Recent history hasn't proven him right, but he keeps the faith.)

Clinton's approach is a bit more combative. She's a believer in some traditional Democratic values. Our representative government, she says, doesn't have to be the enemy; in fact, when it's doing its job, it protects the interest of average working Americans against those of the powerful, moneyed interests that have had free rein these last 40-some years (including during her husband's presidency). She deliberately held the rally on Roosevelt Island, because she wanted to remind the public that President Roosevelt applied those virtues to help pull America out of the Great Depression--and they made him one of the most popular presidents in history, the only one to serve four terms.

Hers was a populist message, so it's perhaps not surprising that the richest presidential candidate of modern times took offense. What's most striking about Mitt Romney's counterattack, though, is this passage: "I’m sure she’ll become more effective as time goes on. But at this stage, what does she really believe? I think people wonder can they really trust Hillary Clinton?"

That's right--the single most dishonest presidential candidate of our long lifetime, the one who rattled off outright lies so casually and so constantly that various blogs (including this one) struggled to keep up with them--is going after another presidential contender on trust issues. It would almost be funny, if it weren't so sad.

* * *

On the other side, six months after beginning his non-campaign (and stretching campaign finance rules past the breaking point--during the "exploratory period," candidates are only supposed to raise enough money for exploratory purposes; Jeb used that time to raise tens of millions of dollars for his super-PACs, with which he isn't supposed to coordinate during the actual campaign), former FL Gov. Jeb Bush has finally announced what everybody already knew--he's running. His speech is here.

He is, so far, the favorite of the Republican establishment, which in most cycles would guarantee him the nomination (see Bush, G.W.; McCain, J.; and Romney, M.). This time, there are at least eleven people running for that nomination, and a few more yet to jump in. In some ways that will clear a path for Bush, if he can run as the establishment favorite while the others split up the anti-establishment vote. He'll certainly have enough money to outlast many opponents. And unlike most in the race, he comes across as reasonably presidential on TV.

While he's good at raising money, though, he seems challenged by other areas of economics. In his announcement speech, he said, "There’s not a reason in the world we can’t grow at 4 percent a year, and that will be my goal as president." He didn't mention why, if it was so easy, his father and his brother couldn't do it--in fact, no president since Bill Clinton has hit that mark at all, and only FDR managed it year after year--while climbing out of the Great Depression. There are plenty of reasons why it's not as easy as Bush thinks it is. Of course, he didn't say how this would happen. Making wild economic promises is a good way to set yourself up for trouble down the line. One would think Bush would have learned that lesson by now.

He has another economic problem, and its name is George W. Bush. As Ezra Klein puts it, "He's gently criticized government spending under his brother's administration — 'I think he let the Republican Congress get a little out of control in terms of the spending,' he said on CBS — but that's not even a remotely plausible explanation for the economic failures of the Bush years. And more tellingly, many of Jeb Bush's economic advisers were also key voices in his brother's administration."

If Bush can't offer an economic agenda that's different from his brother's, and different from standard 21st century Republican orthodoxy, then he's promising to fail. He might not want to explicitly criticize his brother, but the fact remains that on his brother's watch, we suffered the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. For the last half-century or longer, the country has been more prosperous under Democratic Presidents than Republican ones (Jimmy Carter's term was anomalous in that regard), because Democrats prefer growing the economy from the middle out--which works--while Republicans want to do it from the top down--which doesn't. Unless the eventual Republican nominee comes up with a plan that overthrows the usual cut-taxes-and-spending-and-reduce-regulations right-wing approach, a vote for that nominee is a vote for a shrinking economy and a lower standard of living for all but the wealthiest Americans. Just ask Kansas.

Bush hasn't campaigned since 2002, and his rustiness has been apparent. So far, he hasn't really demonstrated any reason why he should have the job--why he even wants the job--except that it's kind of a family tradition at this point. He speaks in platitudes, but hasn't said much about why he's the best person to lead the country, or even what he'd do with the office. Vox.com calls him a "staunch conservative" who has learned how to "talk moderate." That doesn't necessarily mean he would campaign as a conservative in the primaries, a moderate in the general, and then govern as a conservative. But it's worth keeping an eye on.

* * *

Speaking of family traditions, here's one of the dumbest things people keep saying about this race. We wish they'd stop, because it just shows off their ignorance. "'There are two political dynasties eyeing 2016,' said Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the movement's largest organizations, and now leader of Citizens for Self-Governance. 'And before conservatives try to beat Hillary, they first need to beat Bush.'"

No. Wrong. Just quit it.

George H. W. Bush's father--Jeb's grandfather--Prescott Bush, was a wealthy US senator from CT. He married money, increasing the family fortune still more. George H. W. Bush married Barbara Pierce, a cousin of President Franklin Pierce. He served as a congressman, director of the CIA, vice president, then president. His son, Jeb's brother George W. Bush, was the governor of Texas and a two-term president. Jeb's son, George P. Bush, has been elected land commissioner of Texas. A Bush family biographer has called the family "the most successful political dynasty in American history."

Hillary Clinton's parents were a manager in a textile business and a homemaker. Her mother, Dorothy Rodham, lived with her family as boarders in a rooming house, until her parents had had enough of the kids and put Dorothy--age 8 at the time--and her little sister on a train, unsupervised, from Chicago to California, where they were raised by equally unloving grandparents. Dorothy left home at 14 and supported herself thereafter, until she was married.

Bill Clinton's father, a traveling salesman, died in a car accident three months before Bill was born. Shortly thereafter, his mother left him with her parents, who ran a small grocery store, while she went to nursing school. When she came back to Hope, AR, she married Roger Clinton, an abusive alcoholic and compulsive gambler.

One of those lineages can rightly be described as a "dynasty." The other cannot. The fact that Hillary's husband was president doesn't mean the Clintons are a dynasty. Everything they've achieved, they've done for themselves. Parental connections and inherited wealth weren't factors in their success. Maybe if Hillary wins the White House, then Chelsea does, then Chelsea's daughter enters politics, the word might fairly apply. But it doesn't now. There's only one dynasty in this race, and it's the Bush family.

* * *

The week's other new entry in the Republican race is Donald Trump. As with science denial, we'd love for somebody to explain why any Republican voters take Donald Trump seriously. Read the transcript of his announcement speech. It reads like a Saturday Night Live routine for Jon Lovitz's Liar character. On the plus side, his speech made Twitter jokesters very happy.

Trump entered (on an escalator) to the sound of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World." Young wasted no time telling the world that he doesn't support Trump (Bernie Sanders is his guy, but he's a Canadian citizen so won't be voting), and that Trump is using that music without approval. Young wants him to knock it off.

Of course, very little that Trump said was remotely true, starting with the first words out of his mouth. "Wow. Whoa. That is some group of people. Thousands. So nice, thank you very much. That's really nice. Thank you. It's great to be at Trump Tower. It's great to be in a wonderful city, New York. And it's an honor to have everybody here. This is beyond anybody's expectations. There's been no crowd like this."

Well, no, not exactly like that. A few days earlier, Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd of around 10,000 people elsewhere in New York City. Trump not only didn't have anywhere near that many, and Clinton didn't have to hire actors to pretend to be supporters (or hand out fake "homemade signs" for people to wave).

The rest of the speech was around the same level: A lot of nonsense from a guy who knows little about the world outside of his own hair, and has somehow managed to enter the Republican race.

The most cogent comment on his "candidacy" was probably the front page of New York's Daily News:

* * *

To be fair, there should also be a picture of Rand Paul in clown makeup, because he announced his big flat tax plan this week, and it's a joke. Like sales taxes, flat taxes are inherently regressive. One of Paul's "advisors" on this scheme was the Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore, who we've written about here several times. Moore is allegedly an economist but in reality he's an ideologue who's semi-skilled in using numbers to obfuscate the truth--at least, to the audience that pays attention to Heritage Foundation propaganda. Moore's numbers never add up, and they don't here, either. Paul's "plan" would balloon the deficit he sometimes pretends that he cares about, or require the federal government to shrink down to a couple of guys with calculators and legal pads sitting on a curb somewhere. Probably both.

In the op-ed announcing the plan, Paul takes his usual liberties with the truth, writing things like "We now know that the IRS, through political hacks like former IRS official Lois Lerner, routinely abused its auditing power to build an enemies list and harass anyone who might be adversarial to President Obama’s policies. A convoluted tax code enables these corrupt tactics.”

As Jonathan Chait so astutely observes, "In fact, we now know that nothing resembling Paul’s account took place, and that the IRS investigated electioneering by nonprofit organizations without regard to their support for or opposition to Obama. What’s more, even if Paul’s imagined scandal did take place, a flat tax would do nothing to prevent it, because as long as taxes exist, some law-enforcement agency will have the power to investigate people who are supposed to pay them."

Paul's plan would make the rich a lot richer. At the expense of everyone else. Maybe everybody who thinks that's a good idea should move to Kansas and live in Sam Brownback's supply-side utopia.

This Week in Torture

Some people (we're looking at you, Dick Cheney) continue to insist that certain acts perpetrated against human beings during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Global War on Terror were not torture, and that they would do them again in the same circumstances. The United States Senate begs to disagree. MSNBC explains: "By a margin of 78 to 21, the upper house passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would restrict the interrogation practices of every federal agency to those explicitly sanctioned by the Army Field Manual; a handbook that provides no entries for waterboarding, 'rectal feeding,' or any of the other innovative brutalities employed by the CIA under the previous administration."

Democratic support was unanimous; Republican support was mixed, 32-21, despite enthusiastic arm-twisting by Sen. John McCain (R/AZ), the only US senator who has in fact been tortured. Of the current presidential candidates in the Senate, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul voted with the majority, Marco Rubio skipped the vote, and Lindsey Graham voted against the amendment.

These practices, of course, were already illegal, but the Bush administration found creative ways to circumvent the law. If the defense authorization passes, the amendment will further criminalize torture. But breaking a law is easy if there are no consequences; it is to the everlasting shame of the Obama administration that even though they recognize the illegality of torture, they've refused to prosecute any of those responsible.

America is better--or was better, and should be again--than that. Americans don't torture.

* * *

It turns out, of course, that torture didn't bring us much actionable intelligence, if any. The current administration, for all its flaws, doesn't torture, and yet this week managed to kill the head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula--the group responsible for a number of serious attempted terrorist attacks against the US. A few months ago, Jeffrey Goldberg (a fairly conservative writer) wrote, "Obama has become the greatest terrorist hunter in the history of the presidency; and his successful push to disarm the Assad regime of the bulk of its chemical-weapons stockpiles has removed from the Middle East, and beyond, the possibility of an unparalleled cataclysm."

This Week in Prison

Private prisons claim to be saving the taxpayers money, vs. the costs of publicly run prisons. New research shows what many of us have said all along--that's simply not true. Private prisons try to write contracts with the states that allow them to accept only the youngest and healthiest prisoners, to avoid health care costs. They tend to have a higher rate of recidivism than public prisons, and they hand out more infractions, keeping prisoners behind bars longer (and thereby increasing their profits).

It's becoming widely accepted in this country that our incarceration rate is far too high and the justice system is in need of serious reform. One of those reforms should be to take the profit motive out of putting people in prison, by abolishing private prisons altogether. Any inmate should be in prison because he or she truly belongs there, not to pump more cash into corporate coffers.

This Week in Arizona

America's Most Corrupt Sheriff^TM suffered yet another legal setback this week, when a federal judge ordered a bench trial for a US Department of Justice lawsuit against him. According to the Phoenix New Times, the action "covers Arpaio's abuses of power, his retaliation against his critics, and ongoing discrimination against Spanish-speakers in county jails. The DOJ alleges that the MCSO has violated both the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, according to the DOJ's website, 'prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.'"

The paper adds:

"The DOJ complaint also alleges violations of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as violations of the First Amendment rights of Arpaio's critics and opponents.

"Additionally, the DOJ argues that the MCSO's misdeeds fall under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (42 U.S.C. § 14141), which states that, 'It shall be unlawful for any governmental authority, or any agent thereof, or any person acting on behalf of a governmental authority, to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers . . . that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.'"

This will, of course, cost Maricopa County taxpayers yet more in legal fees, and possibly millions more in federal funds that won't come into the county because of AMCS^TM's illegal actions. One wonders if he'll launch an investigation of federal judge Roslyn Silver, who ordered the bench trial, so he can demand her recusal somewhere down the line.

Last week, this thug with a badge became the longest-service sheriff in Maricopa County history, much to the shame of county residents. Here's a longish retrospective of the culture of corruption he's created in that once-proud office. If ever a cop belonged behind bars, it's him.

This Week in Bears

What a bear will do for some delicious grape jelly.

Because grape jelly is tastier than human ankle.