"Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House"

If you haven't already, go right now and read The New York Times article on who is funding the 2016 presidential race. Here's a tease:

 The Chicago hedge fund billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, for example, earns about $68.5 million a month after taxes, according to court filings made by his wife in their divorce. He has given a total of $300,000 to groups backing Republican presidential candidates. That is a huge sum on its face, yet is the equivalent of only $21.17 for a typical American household, according to Congressional Budget Office data on after-tax income.

I missed it the first time. That's "$68.5 million a month after taxes." So, yeah, for him, $300,000 is pretty much chump change and will always trump your $10 to Bernie Sanders.

Thanks again, Supremes! 

The New York Times Gets It On Torture - Mostly

From an editorial two days ago:

Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an official government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

And they describe a larger conspiracy to commit the war crimes:

As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted at the time that what they intended to do was illegal.

In July 2002, C.I.A. lawyers told the Justice Department that the agency needed to use “more aggressive methods” of interrogation that would “otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute.” They asked the department to promise not to prosecute those who used these methods. When the department refused, they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They got it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods. Government officials now rely on the memos as proof that they sought and received legal clearance for their actions. But the report changes the game: We now know that this reliance was not made in good faith.

The Times gets most of it right.  Here's where they fail:

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are to give Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. a letter Monday calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate what appears increasingly to be “a vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious crimes.”

The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be held accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a former president.

See that? Everyone gets probed except the one guy in charge - George W. Bush.

And here's the reason why the torture needs to be investigated and prosecuted:  To hold accountable those who committed the crimes and to stop them from happening again.  I know President Obama stopped the practice for now, during his administration, but what's to stop some future President from simply following Dick Cheney's lead?

While a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the interrogation program shocked many with its vivid descriptions of one unresponsive prisoner frothing at the mouth after waterboarding and others shackled from bars in stress positions for prolonged periods, Cheney was unrepentant.

He repeatedly dismissed the Senate inquiry as “partisan” but seemed entirely comfortable with a public discussion of the once-secret techniques. Indeed, Cheney seemed proud of his role in creating the interrogation program.

“I’d do it again in a minute,” he declared.

That's why the torture needs to be investigated and prosecuted.  Because it might happen again.

Prosecute The Torture.

Scaife's Brain Trust Must Think Its Readers Are Idiots

They really do.

How else can you explain how they easily publish such easily debunked drivel - if only by expecting, I guess, their readers not to check their sources.

Case in point today:

What "conflict"?: So, let's get this straight: The New York Times insinuates that Ginni Thomas somehow has a conflict because, as wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, she advocates for such things as freedom, liberty and stopping government tyranny. Egads, if that's a "conflict," there's little hope for America.

Now if you actually go to the Times article (and see that? I linked to it so you can check my work), you'd see that whatever conflict is "insinuated", it's because of money and who her husband is - not, as Scaife's braintrust insinuates, because she advocates for freedom.

Take a look:

But to some people who study judicial ethics, Mrs. Thomas’s activism is raising knotty questions, in particular about her acceptance of large, unidentified contributions for Liberty Central. She began the group in late 2009 with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000, and because it is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group, named for the applicable section of the federal tax code, she does not have to publicly disclose any contributors.

The Times points out that she gets paid from Liberty Central and that a spokesperson for the group said there are internal checks to make sure there are no conflicts of interest. No details, you'll just have to trust them on this. Of course we will.

More from the Times:

A federal law requires justices to recuse themselves in a number of circumstances where real or perceived conflicts of interest could arise, including in cases where their spouses could have a financial interest. But the decision to step aside is up to each justice; there is no appeal from the nation’s highest court.

“It’s shocking that you would have a Supreme Court justice sitting on a case that might implicate in a very fundamental way the interests of someone who might have contributed to his wife’s organization,” said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor and director of the Stanford University Center on the Legal Profession.

“The fact that we can’t find that out is the first problem,” she said, adding, “And how can the public form a judgment about propriety if it doesn’t have the basic underlying facts?”

And then:

Steven Lubet, who teaches legal ethics at Northwestern Law School, said Mrs. Thomas’s solicitation of big contributions raised potential recusal issues for her husband. But he added, “There’s no reason to think that Justice Thomas would be anything other than extremely careful about it.”

“I think this is the world we live in, where two-career families are the norm and there are no constraints on the political activities of judicial spouses,” Mr. Lubet said.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said: “There’s nothing to stop Ginni Thomas from being politically active. She’s a private citizen and she has all of her constitutional rights.”

But as for the big donors, Mr. Gillers, citing a 1988 Supreme Court decision, said, “She has to tell him because the public is going to assume he knows,” and, Mr. Gillers said, fair-minded citizens could question Justice Thomas’s objectivity as a result.

Whether those issues are solid is a separate question. But look back at what Scaife's braintrust was insinuating - that the Times said that Mrs Thomas had a conflict of interest because she was advocating for freedom.

Turns out that it's the flow of money that may constitute the conflict of interest for her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Do they think their readers won't check up on them? I guess so. They must be counting on it.

More On Bush's Crimes Via The NY Times Editorial Board

Last Saturday I wrote about this report from 5 Inspectors General regarding Bush era secret surveillance activities.

Today, with an editorial titled, "Illegal, and Pointless," the New York Times Editorial Board chimes in:

We’ve known for years that the Bush administration ignored and broke the law repeatedly in the name of national security. It is now clear that many of those programs could have been conducted just as easily within the law — perhaps more effectively and certainly with far less damage to the justice system and to Americans’ faith in their government.

And...it just gets worse for Dubya and Cheney from there. A few paragraphs later:

Once the Bush team got into the habit of breaking the law, it became their operating procedure that any means are justified: ordering the nation’s intelligence agents to torture prisoners; sending innocents to be tortured in foreign countries; creating secret prisons where detainees were held illegally without charge.

And finally a call out to the Obama administration:

President Obama has refused to open a full investigation of the many laws that were evaded, twisted or broken — pointlessly and destructively — under Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama should change his mind. A full accounting is the only way to ensure these abuses never happen again.

Bush and Cheney and their administration broke the law. Repeatedly. For the sake of the integrity of the system, their illegalities must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law they so flagrantly violated.

Your "Liberal" New York Times At Work

From Mediamatters:

A June 17 New York Times article headlined "Poll Finds Unease With Obama on Key Issues" reported that according to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted June 12-16, "A majority of people said his [President Obama's] policies have had either no effect yet on improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than concrete results." However, the Times article did not report that according to the poll, a majority of respondents -- 57 percent -- approved of the way Obama is handling the economy. Nor did the Times article report that when respondents were asked if they thought "Obama's policies have made the economy better, made the economy worse or haven't ... had any effect on the economy yet," only 15 percent said that Obama's policies have made the economy worse. According to the poll, 32 percent thought his policies have made the economy better, 15 percent thought his policies have made the economy worse, and 48 percent thought his policies have not yet had any effect on the economy.

Here's the article and the paragraph cited:

A distinct gulf exists between Mr. Obama’s overall standing and how some of his key initiatives are viewed, with fewer than half of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler. A majority of people said his policies have had either no effect yet on improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than concrete results.

But here is the text of the question they're using as a foundation for that second sentence:

So far, do you think Barack Obama's policies have made the economy better, made the economy worse or haven't his policies had any effect on the economy yet?

• Better 32%
• Worse 15%
• No effect yet 48%
• DK/NA 4%

Which is somewhat different in tone from how the Times ever so subtly mis-characterizes it. Note that the question offers three distinct options; better, worse, no effect. The "no effect" part did not ask whether his policies had any effect at improving the economy, just whether they'd had any effect yet at all. The numbers also reflect a feeling that they've also had no effect yet on worsening the economy. The Times could just as easily have written that a "majority of people said his policies have not yet had an effect on the economy nor have they made it worse." Which would have been just as true. And just as misleading.

Needless to say, the Times ignores its own poll data on whether Americans think the country is moving in the right direction or the wrong direction (51/39 percent) or how well Obama is handling the economy (55/24 percent).

Fun with numbers.

Nice

Yesterday's travel section of the New York Times has a nice piece on the Burgh here.

You can view their slideshow here.

So how many of the places mentioned have you visited?

I can check off Brillobox, the Warhol, Matress Factory, Dee's and Zenith, and oh yeah, I have to blog on shit like this because if I have to listen to Obama "clarify" his position on another issue I care about, I'll lose it and have to stop blogging all together.

The Trib's Odd Little Editorial

This morning, The Clinton-loving Editorail Board at DickieCougarMellonScaife's Tribune-Review took on the the editorial board of the New York Times.

The result was an odd editorial that left out more than it included. The issue at hand is the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Indiana's Voter ID law. Here's The Trib:

Leave it to liberals to declare that protecting the integrity of the franchise somehow is a threat to our democratic republic.

Yet that's exactly how The New York Times characterized the U.S. Supreme Court's commonsense ruling upholding the constitutionality of requiring voters to prove they are who they say they are at the polls.

"Democracy was the big loser" in Monday's 6-3 decision upholding an Indiana law, The Times opines. Fraud prevention, these whacked-out liberals contend, is an "interference." The ruling "solves a nearly nonexistent problem," it notes.

Which is true, by the way. According to this study, voter fraud is nearly non-existent. Take a look:

At the national level, a major new project at the U.S. Department of Justice, the Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative (BAVII) has resulted in only a handful of convictions. according to the Attorney General, since the inception of the program in 2002, "we’ve made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority." The result? Government records show that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year. This includes 19 people who were ineligible to vote, five because they were still under state supervision for felony convictions, and 14 who were not u.s. citizens; and five people who voted twice in the same election, once in kansas and again in Missouri.

In addition, the BAVII uncovered several vote buying schemes that have resulted in the convictions or guilty pleas of about 30 people, though most of those convicted were party and election officials, candidates for public office and elected officials, and in one case, the commander of a local VfW post. The vote buying cases involved a handful of elections in the appalachia regions of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, East St. Louis, Illinois and Caldwell County, North Carolina.

So between 2002 and 2005 there were a few dozen of convictions during which time millions upon millions of people voted. Yet the Trib board counters that with a stunningly placed non sequitur:

Like the atrocious, political-speech restricting campaign finance laws that those of The Times' ilk support?

I don't know if I need to remind anyone, but the trendy thing for conservatives to oppose in campaign finance laws is "McCain-Feingold" also known as "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002." It too passed Supreme Court muster. In 2003.

If an OK by the Supreme Court is enough to placate the Trib's editorial board, then how do they explain their reaction to the "atrocious, political-speech restricting" laws that the Supremes have already OKed?

I wonder.

Anyway, the Trib ends things this way:

The coup de grace of the high court's voter-identification ruling is that the lead opinion was written by dedicated liberal John Paul Stevens. Which makes the liberals' protestations all the more laughable and all the more suspect.

Democrat-sponsored voter fraud certainly must be pervasive.

Again, no it isn't. But it's certainly interesting to point out what the Trib doesn't complain about in the Times editorial. The Times goes through a discussion of the issue:

In 2005, Indiana passed one of the nation’s toughest voter ID laws. It requires voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls. Private college IDs, employee ID cards and utility bills are unacceptable. For people without a driver’s license — who are disproportionately poor and minority — the burden is considerable. To get acceptable ID, many people would be forced to pay fees for underlying documents, such as birth certificates.

This should not have been a hard case. The court has long recognized that the right to vote is so fundamental that a state cannot restrict it unless it can show that the harm it is seeking to prevent outweighs the harm it imposes on voters.

The Indiana law does not meet this test. The harm it imposes on voters, some of whom will no doubt be discouraged from casting ballots, is considerable. The state’s interest in the law, on the other hand, is minimal. It was supposedly passed to prevent people from impersonating others at the polls, but there is no evidence that this has ever happened in Indiana. It seems far more likely that the goal of the law’s Republican sponsors was to disenfranchise groups that lean Democratic.

Here's the curious part. At the tail end of the editorial we find:

Hovering over Monday’s decision was a case that was not mentioned: Bush v. Gore. In 2000, the Supreme Court took seriously the claims of one individual — George W. Bush — that his equal protection rights were being denied by a state election system, and the court had no hestitation about telling the state what to do.

On “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Justice Scalia yet again told the public to “get over” that ruling. There are many good reasons to remember Bush v. Gore, and Monday’s ruling was a reminder of one of them. Seven years after it invoked the Constitution to vindicate what it saw as Mr. Bush’s right to fair election procedures, we are still waiting for the court to extend this guarantee with equal vigilance to every American.

The Trib pounces on the first paragraph of the Times editorial but leaves this unmentioned?? What, didn't they bother to read the whole thing?