JustOneMinute

Health Care Mandate Upheld

The Sixth Circuit upheld the individual mandate:

But the majority agreed with Neal K. Katyal, the acting United States solicitor general, who argued that individual choices to not purchase insurance, when taken in aggregate, have clear commercial effects because they shift the cost of caring for the uninsured to other payers.

The judges adopted Mr. Katyal’s argument that because the need for health care is unpredictable, it is impossible for individuals to opt out of the market. And they agreed that cost-shifting was inevitable so long as the federal government required hospitals to treat those who show up with life-threatening conditions.

An earnest libertarian would question the "must-treat" mandate, which started us on this slippery slope.  IIRC, I did question it somewhere, but Google fails me.

Bachmann Bashing Overdrive

Places, everyone!  The media wants to tell a story of another kooky right-winger; the right-winger in question won't mind being viewed as a victim of liberal media bias.  Everyone knows their roles, so let's commence bashing or defending Michele Bachmann.

Politico deserves an Onion for this headline:

Michele Bachmann’s thin legislative résumé

I searched in vain for a similar headline from 2007 or 2008 regarding The One; however, the current story does contain this:

Of course, having a thin legislative résumé isn’t a dead end for a presidential run — Obama started running for president just two years into his Senate term and didn’t have a substantive list of congressional accomplishments.

No kidding. 

Meanwhile, the John Wayne debacle continues.  Let's feel the love from the NY Times:

She spoke adoringly of her town, recalling the Dairy Queen, her house on East Ninth Street and the Wonder Bread Factory, where her mother picked up ingredients for her favorite mayonnaise and lettuce sandwiches. But as she stood in her old neighborhood, she misstated a piece of Iowa lore as she explained the important role that Waterloo had in shaping her character.

“John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa,” Mrs. Bachmann told Carl Cameron of Fox News in an interview. “That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.”

The actor was actually born in Winterset, Iowa, which is about 150 miles southwest of Waterloo. It was John Wayne Gacy, known as the killer clown who raped and murdered 33 teenage boys in the 1970s, who lived in Waterloo.

Uh huh. And John Wayne's parents met in Waterloo, which gives them a piece of the Duke.

So, place your bets - which will the Times cover first, the John Wayne's parents angle, or Obama's resurrection of posthumous Medal of Honor winner Jared Monti?

My money is on "Neither of the above".

Meanwhile, Back In Yemen

As Obama roots out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan they take hold in Yemen.  The good (or anyway, less bad) news is that Yemen is on the coast and within reach of the US Navy; when Obama is ready for War IV, the logistics won't be as absurd as in Afghanistan. Instead, an effort in Yemen should look like Libya, which is on the shore of a NATO lake and we can see how well that is working.

Nobody Likes An 'I Told You So...'

They told Glenn that if he voted for McCain we would have a maroon of a Vice President leading the Administration... and they were right!

Obama’s Growing Trust in Biden Is Reflected in His Call on Troops

and

Cantor Quits Biden’s Debt Ceiling Talks

 

Having Buried The War Powers Resolution...

With the War Powers Resolution laid to rest, Matthew Zeitlin of TNR explains how Obama can ignore the debt ceiling.  Bush and Cheney never thought of these arguments, but Bush and Cheney weren't laboring in pursuit of noble liberal goals, either.  

I sort of hope Obama does crash through the debt ceiling, just so we can read the Times editorial endorsing his new concept of the rule of law.

Saturday Morning

Away we go.

One More For The Memory Hole

Via Glenn, we learn that Obama can't remember which Medal of Honor winners are still alive and which are dead:

The President addressing the 10th Mountain Division today at Fort Drum:

"First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously."

As we all know, SSG Sal Giunta, of the 173rd Airborne, was the first living recipient (2011) of the MOH who fought in Iraq/Afganistan. SFC Jared Monti, 10th Mountain Division, was KIA in Afghanistan in 2006. He was posthumously awarded the MOH by Obama in 2009.

Obama spoke at length about Jared Monti at a White House awards ceremony, but obviously that was a long time ago.  In his remarks in September 2009, Obama asked a rhetorical question he seems now to have answered, at least with respect to himself:

Duty. Honor. Country. Service. Sacrifice. Heroism. These are words of weight. But as people -- as a people and as a culture, we often invoke them lightly. We toss them around freely. But do we really grasp the meaning of these values? Do we truly understand the nature of these virtues?

On a lighter note, this isn't the first time Obama has seen dead people.

MORE:  From a Military Times update we learn that the TOTUS would not have made this mistake:

The Christian Broadcasting Network contacted the White House to see what happened and was told the President didn’t have prepared remarks. They quoted White House Press Secretary Jay Carney as saying, ”At Fort Drum, the President misspoke when discussing the first Medal of Honor he presented posthumously to Jared Monti, who was a member of the 10th Mountain Division.  The President paid tribute to Monti in his remarks to troops in Afghanistan in March 2010.  Last year, the President presented the Medal of Honor to Salvatore Giunta, who was the first living recipient of the Medal who served in Afghanistan.”

Missing is the word "sorry".

 

A Tough Day For Whitey

 

Notorious Gangster Whitey Bulger Arrested After 16 Years On The Lam

and

Census shows whites lose US majority among babies

 

Obama Gets The Headline He Needs (And So Does Petraeus)

The NY Times tells us about Obama's Afghan plan:

Obama Will Speed Pullout From War in Afghanistan

He's speeding it!  Whatever you thought he would do, he's doing it faster!  Uhh, whatev.

The key tidbit is this:

The troop reductions, which were decided after a short but fierce internal debate, will be both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders...

Team Obama very much wants that news out there, in order to highlight that Obama is a tough, independent minded Commander-in-Chief who can stand up to his generals.  (Someone please call Obama "Kennedyesque" and make their day.)

However, as Marc Ambinder at the National Journal notes, General Petraeus knew which way the wind was blowing, and knew that any reductions he proposed would be accelerated:

It is clear, because his people are saying it privately today, that Gen. David Petraeus would have preferred a slower drawdown. As he prepares for his confirmation hearing to become the next CIA director, however, it is not at all clear how reluctant his endorsement of the president’s withdrawal plan actually is. Petraeus is keenly aware of two political currents. One: In keeping with American public opinion and their view that Afghanistan had become a “wrong” war, virtually all of Obama’s closest advisers wanted a rapid withdrawal.

Two: Having been the victim of a campaign by some in the Pentagon (both military and civilian officials) to constrain his freedom to choose where to go in Afghanistan the second time he reviewed the policy (there was a very early, cursory administration review that led to the appointment of Gen. Stanley McChrsytal as commander of U.S. forces there), Obama and the National Security Council would be much wiser about the process this time, understanding now that the process drove the decision as much as the input did.

I am sure that Gen. Petraeus is concerned about the outcome and not the allocation of credit or blame.  However, Obama has positioned himself to take credit for winding down the war in time for the 2012 election; if it goes sour, he will blame Bush later.  Petraeus has positioned himself to be the hero if things work out, and the victim of Obama's political needs if it doesn't.

As to the strategy, Mr. Ambinder recaps the arguments made by Joe Biden in 2009 that carried the day now:

In 2009, to convince the American people that the war in Afghanistan needed more troops, Obama could not tell the whole truth, the full truth, and nothing but: Pakistan, not Afghanistan, was the root of all the troubles; the generator of new momentum for al-Qaida, a safe haven for al-Qaida, and, indeed, the main battlefront. Afghanistan was not Obama’s “right war.” It was one he inherited; one where not only was there no hope of a Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan but one that was actively destabilizing its neighboring country, a country with whom NATO is fighting a covert war under the guise of uneasy cooperation.

There simply was not a transnational threat coming out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan have a future that’s interrelated, and Pakistan needed assurance that the government in Kabul could stand on its own two feet, one that would not rely on, say, India as a crutch.

Today, Obama needed to justify withdrawing troops so he can tell more of the truth: indeed, a senior administration official, in a conference call today, said this: “The al-Qaida threat does come from Pakistan. That is where they were hunkered down.” And: “There is no transnational threat—no terrorist threat—from Afghanistan.”

The official even acknowledged what heretofore had been unmentionable: that the United States was prosecuting an aggressive campaign inside Pakistan, sometimes without their knowledge, using assets both “human and technical,” a reference to the CIA’s successful drone attacks and to U.S. special forces raids along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

If, in a few years, we are operating covertly inside big chunks of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan just as we are in Pakistan, well, so be it.  As long as Al Qaeda feels safer on the Pakistan side of the border Afghanistan won't be the central battlefield.

 

Gonna Walk

Obama sounds forth the trumpet that will ever blow retreat:

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to announce Wednesday evening that he will order the withdrawal of 10,000 American troops from Afghanistan this year, and another 20,000 troops, the remainder of the 2009 “surge,” by the end of next summer, according to administration officials and diplomats briefed on the decision. These troop reductions are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama’s military commanders, and they reflect mounting political and economic pressures at home, as the president faces relentless budget pressures and an increasingly restive Congress and American public.

He will address the nation at 8 PM Eastern time.  The suspense mounts as we wonder - will he declare that he is withdrawing troops faster than recommended by the Pentagon because conditions in Afghanistan have improved so dramatically?  And will he manage a straight face if he says that?  (I envision more laughter/applause confusion.)

The Times suggests that Joe Biden, who never supported the Afghanistan surge, is finally carrying the day:

In announcing the withdrawals, which represent about 30 percent of current American troop strength in the country, Mr. Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in December 2009. At that time, he coupled the deployment of 30,000 additional troops with a promise to begin winding down America’s engagement by the middle of this year. Still, the speed and scope of this plan is striking.

It amounts to a broad rethinking of the military’s troop-intensive counterinsurgency strategy that Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago after a painstaking review. Officials have indicated that the administration now plans to place more emphasis on focused counterterrorism operations of the kind that killed Osama bin Laden — which the president is expected to cite as Exhibit A for a substantial American drawdown.

Biden's notion, described in detail in Woodward's "Obama's Wars", is that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were allies of convenience rather than ideological partners back in the 90's.  Unlike Al Qaeda, the Taliban has no global aspirations or inclination to inflict terror on the US.  Back in 2001 they offered safe haven to Al Qaeda, so we overthrew their government, and here we are.  But Al Qaeda is now operaing out of the tribal areas of Pakistan on the Afghanborder, not to mention Yemen and Somalia.  So, Biden argued, rather than trying to turn Afghanistan into Luxembourg, we should focus on deterring Al Qaeda from migrating back into Afghanistan.

The Times reviews Obama's Afghanistan strategy here.

Where's Sarah?

RCP tells us that Sarah Palin is off the bus and back in Alaska:

Less than a month after she appeared poised to shake up the Republican presidential campaign, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has once again receded from the 2012 limelight.

...

Though Palin and her staff never announced a timeline for the remaining legs of her trip, aides had drafted preliminary itineraries that would have taken her through the Midwest and Southeast at some point this month. But those travel blueprints are now in limbo, RCP has learned, as Palin and her family have reverted to the friendly confines of summertime Alaska, where the skies are currently alight for over 19 hours a day and the Bristol Bay salmon fishing season is nearing its peak.

As Palin enjoys her sojourn to the 49th state, she has not reconnected with key early-state figures like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and she may have jeopardized whatever political momentum she gained from her recent reemergence in the 2012 discussion. Her political action committee's website still greets visitors with a stale banner, announcing the nationwide bus tour beginning "[t]his Sunday, May 29th."

I have no idea what it means, but its great that our national media have managed to soldier on in her absence.

Marshalling Our Resources In Afghanistan

David Brooks describes the apparent futility of our vast aid effort to Afghanistan but misses a blindingly obvious point:

Do Marshall Plans work? If this country really did galvanize its best minds and billions of dollars to alleviate poverty somewhere or to solve some complicated problem, could we actually do it?

Well, the U.S. has been engaged in a new Marshall Plan for most of the past decade. Between 2002 and 2010, the U.S. spent roughly $19 billion to promote development in Afghanistan. Many other nations have also sent thousands of aid workers and billions of dollars.

In some spheres the results have been impressive. Nearly two-thirds of Afghans now have access to basic health services, up from 9 percent a decade ago. Under the Taliban, 900,000 boys and no girls attended schools. Now more than seven million Afghans attend school, and 35 percent of them are girls, according to the United States Agency for International Development.

But when it comes to laying the foundation for economic growth and stability, the results have been discouraging.

Ah, well - with the original Marshall Plan we were re-building Europe, not building it.  The underlying culture of a modern economy was already in place.

They'd Rather Fight Than Switch

The Times tells us that few Taliban are interested in taking some American cash to switch sides.  Possible explanations:

(a) As residents of a land-locked country, these Taliban are unfamiliar with the notion that rats desert a sinking ship; or

(b) they have no belief that the ship is sinking.

I lean towards (b).  Why would someone who has stuck with the Taliban this long switch sides now, when Obama is going to declare victory and anounce major US troop withdrawals next month?

Evolution As A Matter Of (Political) Survival

The White House press office reports that Obama's views on gay marriage are "evolving".  The great suspense is whether his pollsters will tell Obama that it is safe to publicly support gay marriage prior to the 2012 election.  I especaly like this Darwinian evolution towards a safer position in 2004:

In 1996, as a candidate for the State Senate in Illinois, Mr. Obama responded to a questionnaire from a gay newspaper. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,” Mr. Obama wrote, “and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

White House officials have said Mr. Obama was really referring to civil unions, which he does support. (On Friday, Mr. Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfieffer, caused a brief kerfuffle by telling a conference of bloggers that Mr. Obama had not filled out the forms himself; the White House later said he was mistaken.)

By the time Mr. Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004, his position had become more nuanced.

Isn't it Wouldn't it be great having a President who leads from conviction rather than cynically manipulating an issue for political benefit?

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day, all.  

I don't follow golf closely, but it doesn't look as if Tiger will be winning the US Open today. That frees up the afternoon.

Obama Goes Shopping For Legal Advice

The NY Times reports that on the question of Libya and the War Powers Act Obama threw the normal process for gathering legal advice overboard and went shopping for opinions that met his requirements:

2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

...

The administration followed an unusual process in developing its position. Traditionally, the Office of Legal Counsel solicits views from different agencies and then decides what the best interpretation of the law is. The attorney general or the president can overrule its views, but rarely do.

In this case, however, Ms. Krass was asked to submit the Office of Legal Counsel’s thoughts in a less formal way to the White House, along with the views of lawyers at other agencies. After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about the internal deliberations, said the process was “legitimate” because “everyone knew at the end of the day this was a decision the president had to make” and the competing views were given a full airing before Mr. Obama.

So the OLC and the Pentagon came up with the wrong answer, but Hillary delivered at State, so it was all good for Barack.

Jack Goldsmith, who headed the OLC under Bush, has more thoughts on the surprise from State at his blog:

It is interesting and unusual enough that President Obama, of all people, would take an aggressive view of his war authorities and interpret the WPR very narrowly.  But the lawyers he relied on to reach this conclusion make the situation even more interesting and unusual.  I discount the legal input of the White House Counsel; Bob Bauer is a smart man but neither he nor his office is expert in war powers or situated to offer thorough legal advice on the issue.  Legal Advisor Harold Koh, by contrast, spent his entire academic career studying andwriting about presidential war powers, including the WPR.  Based on this academic record, one would not have expected Koh to push an unusually narrow interpretation of the WPR.  Nor would one have expected him to have supported the original constitutional justification for unilateral presidential intervention in Libya.  To get a flavor of what one might have expected, consider what Koh’s former colleague Bruce Ackerman said in support of his nomination to lead State-L:

This is the real importance of the Koh nomination.  President Obama has selected one of the few lawyers who probed deeply into the constitutional implications of presidential unilateralism and how it might be controlled.  Koh would be taking his position as legal adviser at one of the rare moments when it might be politically possible to consider a National Security Charter that aims to restore an effective system of checks and balances.

This is not how things have worked out.  One wonders why.  One possibility is that Koh has a client, the Secretary of State, who is committed to the Libya intervention, and he is serving his client faithfully.  Another possibility is that Koh’s commitments to humanitarian intervention and the “responsibility to protect” outweigh his commitment to his academic vision of presidential war powers.  I certainly do not believe that Koh’s academic views should control his advice and judgment during his government service.  Nor do I think that his academic writings addressed the precise issue under the WPR that he is now advocating in the government.  But for a quarter century before heading up State-L, Koh was the leading and most vocal academic critic of presidential unilateralism in war, and a tireless advocate for institutional cooperation between the political branches in war decisions.  I am thus genuinely surprised, as many people are, by his current stance.

Well, a lot of positions advocated during the reign of BushCo have unexpectedly been put aside now that a Democrat is in the Whte House.

 

 

Hope And Change Does Not Come To Al Qaeda

Here's one for the "go figure" files - a terrorist mastermind (and the new leader of Al Qaeda) has a bad personality:

WASHINGTON — American counterterrorism officials all but welcomed the announcement on Thursday that Ayman al-Zawahriwould succeed Osama bin Laden as leader of Al Qaeda, arguing that his deep flaws are likely to weaken the core of the terrorist network.

...

Independent specialists largely agree that Mr. Zawahri is not an inspiring model for young militants, noting his lack of combat experience, his long history of ideological squabbles and his abrasive manner and pedantic speeches — including a recent six-part series of audio messages about Egypt that trailed well behind the events there.

“He’s always been a divisive figure, going back to his years in Egypt,” said Brian Fishman, an expert on Al Qaeda at the New America Foundation in Washington. “He’s just personally disliked by many in Al Qaeda. His personality always gets in the way.”

Pedantic speeches, eh?  He'll drone on until its drones-off.

Nixon Goes To Ohio

Writing in the NY Times, the world's most famous peanut farmer calls for an end to the global war on drugs.  I concur.  Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter provides roughly zero political cover for Democrats (such as Obama) who need to play tough guy on the War on Drugs for the same reasons they play tough guy on the War on Terror.  By way of example, Rudy Giuliani has a background that would allow him to move the needle on the drug war, if ever he would switch sides.

And since this is Jimmy Carter, I don't trust a word he is saying.  This passage reeks of phony statistics:

And the single greatest cause of prison population growth (in the US) has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Since earlier Jimmy told us that in the 70's non-violent offenders were treated leniently, his starting baseline of 1980 must be very low.  Seeing the actual numbers of incarcerated non-violent offenders, rather than being told of a twelve-fold increase from a low baseline, would be more convincing.  That said, I am sure he is thematically correct.

Maybe They Should Sue John Boehner, Too

Ten lonely House members take to the courts to enforce a legal interpretation that a House majority could enforce almost effortlessly:

A bipartisan group of House members announced on Wednesday that it is filing a lawsuit charging that President Obama made an illegal end-run around Congress when he approved U.S military action against Libya.

“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated. We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies,” said Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who led the 10-member anti-war coalition with Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.).

I assume the judge's first question will be, "Why doesn't the House bar funding for the war effort?".

Home From The Hill

The NY Times notes that the Republican Party is drifting away from reflexive hawkishness:

Candidates Show G.O.P. Less United on Goals of War
By JEFF ZELENY

DERRY, N.H. — The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya.

The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.

This creates an interesting dynamic as The Man Who Got Osama prepares his summer-time seance on Afghanistan.  On the one hand, Obama risks being outflanked on the left by an anti-war Republican.  On the other hand, The Man Who Got Osama might believe that he has acquired enough national security cred that he can safely unleash his inner George McGovern.

 

The Republican Debate

I have just switched on the Republican debate, hosted by CNN.  A naif would say the staging is terrible - the candidates can't seem to find the camera bringing them to the home audience, so they are addressing their answers to the questoners and loking very shifty to those of us at home.  Naturally, this is a considered a coup at CNN.

Bracing For The Dumpster Dives

They told Glenn that if he voted for McCain we'd have the FBI sifting through our data bases and our trash - and they were right!

F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

The last lib would have leapt from a ledge if this were happening under Evil BushCo.

A bit of detail:

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

Mr. German said the change would make it harder to detect and deter inappropriate use of databases for personal purposes. But Ms. Caproni said it was too cumbersome to require agents to open formal inquiries before running quick checks. She also said agents could not put information uncovered from such searches into F.B.I. files unless they later opened an assessment.

 

Set A Thief...

Frank J on how not to appear crazy.

Pawlenty's Tax Plan

On Tuesday Tim Pawlenty gave a big speech on re-booting the economy.  He talked up tax reform, but was hazy on details.

On the corporate side, he favors both rate reductions and base broadening by the elimination of "special interest handouts — carve-outs — subsidies — and loopholes".

But on the personal (and small business) side, he only talked about his plan for two rates (three, if you cout the zero bracket):

On the individual rates we need a simpler — fairer — and flatter tax system overall. I propose just two rates — 10% — and 25%.

Under my plan — those who currently pay no income tax would stay at a zero rate.        After that — the first fifty-thousand dollars of income or one-hundred thousand for married couples — would be taxed at 10%.

Everything above that would be taxed at 25%.    That’s it.

A one-third cut in the bottom rate.To allow younger — middle — and lower-income families to save and build wealth.  And a  28% cut in the top rate — to spur investment and job creation.

OK, he did say "simpler" as well as flatter.  Normlly that would imply the elimination of some deductions to broaden the tax base.  But Bloomberg has this:

Pawlenty wouldn’t target any of the popular personal tax breaks, such as mortgage interest deductions.

“In the individual tax code, we’re not proposing to change the tax deductions, exemptions or credits,” he told reporters after the speech.

So, a simpler tax that does not include simplification (other than fewer brackets).  Baffling. And annoying - my Official Editorial Opinion is that tax simplification (a worthy goal!) can only be achieved in conjunction with tax cuts, so that people are fighting over how much they win, not whether they win or lose.  Bush lost an opportunity in 2001; I have a hard time believing we can "afford" tax cuts just now, but if we are going to cut them and keep our complicated tax code, well, that will be another wasted opportunity.

A Little Hint For Newt

Everybody jumps ships:

WASHINGTON – The entire top echelon of New Gingrich's presidential campaign resigned on Thursday, a stunning mass exodus that left his bid for the Republican nomination in tatters.

Rick Tyler, the former U.S. House speaker's spokesman, said that he, campaign manager Rob Johnson and senior strategists had all quit, along with aides in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

...

Scott Rials, a longtime aide who joined the departure, said he doubted Gingrich's ability to win the nomination.

"I think the world of him. But at the end of the day we just could not see a clear path to win, and there was a question of commitment," Rials told The Associated Press.

 

 

Pay Your Bills (Or Something)

Memeorandum has lit up over a Department of Education SWAT raid, reportedly to collect a student loan.  From Reason:

No Really: SWAT Team Raids House at 6 AM and Handcuffs Father of Three Young Kids to Execute a Dept. of Education Search Warrant for Estranged Wife's Defaulted Student Loans

From Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin's site:

Dept. of Education Has SWAT Team Raid Home Over Student Loan Default

And the British Daily Mail:

A little over the top?: SWAT team launch dawn raid on family home to collect unpaid student loans

Links to the original report are no longer working.  However, a subsequent report includes a tiny bit of clarification from the DOE (my emphasis):

A U.S. government official confirmed for News10 Wednesday morning federal agents with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), not local S.W.A.T., served the search warrant. The official would not say specifically why the raid took place.   He did say the search was not related to student loans in default. 

He went on to say OIG is a semi-independent branch of the U.S. Department of Education that executes warrants for criminal offenses such as student aid fraud and embezzlement of federal aid. 

OK, I smell screw-up and cover-up.  However, the current story on offer is that they were after something more serious than a student loan default.  

As to why they came with fifteen officers, well, it would be helpful to know something about the wife's history; at this point I haven't even seen her name.

The local media seems to be pursuing this and maybe, maybe maybe we will learn that this was not as dumb a raid as it appears.

UPDATE:  Matt Welch of Hit&Run runs the DOE 'clarification', but he is also stumped as to what might justify a SWAT team.

FOR THE LEGAL EAGLES:  This memo discusses the legal authority under which the Inspector Generals can exercise police powers.  This background is interesting (naturaly, there is a war on terror conection):

However,  prior  to  enactment  of  section  812 of the Homeland  Security  Act  of 2002  (Pub. L. No.107-296),  the  Inspector General Act did not provide firearms,  arrest, or search warrant authorities for investigators of those offices.

Bowing Out Gracefully

Henry Kissinger, who knows a bit about bailing out of unpopular wars, writes about how the US can get out of Afghanistan.

The American role in Afghanistan is drawing to a close in a manner paralleling the pattern of three other inconclusive wars since the Allied victory in World War II: a wide consensus in entering them, and growing disillusionment as the war drags on, shading into an intense national search for an exit strategy with the emphasis on exit rather than strategy.

We entered Afghanistan to punish the Taliban for harboring al-Qaeda, which, under Osama bin Laden’s leadership, had carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. After a rapid victory, U.S. forces remained to assist the construction of a post-Taliban state. But nation-building ran up against the irony that the Afghan nation comes into being primarily in opposition to occupying forces. When foreign forces are withdrawn, Afghan politics revert to a contest over territory and population by various essentially tribal groups.

In our national debate, the inconclusive effort was blamed on the diversion of resources to Iraq rather than on its inherent implausibility. The new Obama administration coupled withdrawal from Iraq with a surge of troops and material in Afghanistan — an effort I supported in substance if not in every detail. We have now reached its limit.

Eventually we will have to negotiate with the Taliban.  However, since we are leaving and they are staying, there is a bit of an asymmetry:

For negotiation to turn into a viable exit strategy, four conditions must be met: a cease-fire; withdrawal of all or most American and allied forces; the creation of a coalition government or division of territories among the contending parties (or both); and an enforcement mechanism.

Enforcement is the most crucial element and the most difficult to sustain. After decades of civil war, the parties are unlikely to feel bound by provisions of any agreement. The Taliban especially will try to take over the coalition government or breach the cease-fire. In the absence of a plausible enforcement mechanism, a negotiation with the Taliban, whose forces remain while ours leave, will turn into a mechanism for collapse.

This is particularly the case if negotiations are accompanied by withdrawals amid a public debate over accelerating the process. The more rapid and substantial the immediate withdrawal, the more difficult the negotiating process will be. We must choose our priorities.

I don't think our political process will be oriented towards a continuing demonstration of American resolve.  However, as with North Korea, this is a neighborhood problem, not just a US problem:

Although the predominant role of the United States sometimes obscures it, the outcome in Afghanistan is, in essence, an international political problem. The perception that the strongest global power has been defeated would give an impetus to global and regional jihadism. Militant Islam would be encouraged to magnify similar tactics in Kashmir or in India proper, such as the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. The end of such a process is likely to be a proxy war along ethnic fault lines in Afghanistan and elsewhere, especially between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s other neighbors would be at comparable risk if a Taliban-dominated government or region reverted to the Taliban’s original practices. Every neighbor would be threatened: Russia in its partly Muslim south, China in Xinjiang, Shiite Iran by fundamentalist Sunni trends. In turn, Iran would be tempted by the vacuum to arm sectarian militias, a strategy it has honed in Lebanon and Iraq.

And since it is partly their problem, they ought to be part of the solution:

...A partly regional, partly global diplomatic effort is needed to accompany direct negotiation with the Taliban. So long as America bears the primary burden, Afghanistan’s neighbors avoid difficult decisions. To the extent that U.S. postwar withdrawal is made explicit and inexorable, they will be obliged to take another look. The formal deadline established by NATO, the implicit Obama administration deadline and the public mood make it impossible to persist in an open-ended civil war. An immediate withdrawal largely for symbolic reasons would risk falling between all shoals. A multilateral diplomacy that defines a common international security interest proscribing terrorist training centers and terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan should be undertaken urgently. To encourage this process, a deadline should be established for reaching a residual force — say, in 18 months to two years, with the major reductions coming at the end of the process. Should a reliable international enforcement mechanism emerge, the U.S. residual force can be merged into it. A regional conference is the only way a bilateral negotiation with the Taliban can be enforced. If the process proves in­trac­table, Afghanistan’s neighbors will eventually have to face the consequences of their abdication alone.

Yes, but - once the US announces a firm deadline the Taliban can simply wait us out and run out the clock by playing its neighbors against each other.  As Tom Friedman says in another context, the locals need to want peace more than we do, and right now they don't.

Meanwhile, back in the Senate the John Kerry Dems on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee puzzle over how you can ask a man to write the last nation-building check for a mistake.

The US Compared To Germany

David Leonhardt has an interesting column comparing the performance of the US and German economies.

Germany has been a frequent cudgel in recent fights over the American economy. When Germany has grown faster than the United States, stimulus skeptics like to point across the Atlantic Ocean and say that austerity works. When it has grown more slowly, people who think the American stimulus made a big difference — including me — return the favor.

But the full story is more interesting than any caricature. In the last decade, Germany has succeeded in some important ways that the United States has not. The lessons aren’t simply liberal or conservative. They are both.

And yet aother lesson is that statistics must be viewed with caution.  For example:

The results are intriguing. After performing worse than the American economy for years, the German economy has grown faster since the middle of last decade. (It did better than our economy before the crisis and has endured the crisis about equally.) Just as important, most Germans have fared much better than most Americans, because the bounty of their growth has not been concentrated among a small slice of the affluent.

Inflation-adjusted average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent since 1985 in Germany, the kind of gains American workers have not enjoyed since the ’50s and ’60s. In this country, hourly pay has risen a scant 6 percent since 1985.

Interesting, but!  Mr. Leonhardt is kind enough to link to the relevant graph at his blog.  A quick glance indicates that 1985 is an odd starting point: the US was just a few years from the stock market crash and the S&L debacle, while Germany was about to reunify.

My eyeballometric estimate is that if he had chosen 1996 as the starting point (fifteen years ago, so we get a bit of the Clinton boom but also the Bush Dark Ages), he would have determined that US average hourly pay had risen by 10% (from an indexed level of 95 to 105), while it had risen by only 7% in Germany (122 to 130 on his index).  Put another way, most of the German wage surge was from 1985 to 1995, so any lessons about income inequality ought to be drawn from that period.

I should note that I have no idea whether these indices reflect take home pay or total compenation, including health care.  And Mr. Leonhardt's entire discussion of immigration policy in the two countries is this:

I’m not saying that the United States should want to become Germany. Americans remain considerably richer. We have the innovative companies — Wal-Mart, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter — that make other countries swoon. We remain the world’s immigration Mecca.

Economists have estimated that if the US was a bit less of a Mecca, especially for unskilled workers, then hourly earnings would be higher.  Even Paul Krugman has stared at that implication of the liberal embrace of open borders for the poor.

Great Moments In "Do As I Say"

The Times follows the woes of poor Anthony Weiner, including this laugher:

One of Mr. Weiner’s most emotional apologies was delivered to former President Bill Clinton, who officiated at his wedding in July and is extremely close with the congressman’s wife, Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Clintons are deeply unhappy about the situation and with Mr. Weiner, people who had been told of their thinking said. Mr. Clinton declined to comment.

I can only imagine Wild Bill's disappointment.  He probably had the same reaction I have when watching the NBA - if you are going to be called for a foul anyway, make sure there is some hard contact.

Well - I assume Bill officiated at the wedding because he was a great "get", not because he is any symbol of marital commitment.  Maybe Charlie Sheen can someday host a Weiner Bar Mitzvah.

Bold Predictions From Christina Romer

Paul Krugman flags a recent talk by former White House economic advisor Christina Romer and grimly notes that it was not just heartless, evil Republicans who were more worried about deficits than unemployment.

However, in reading through her speech I am struck by her caution and diminished expectations for Obama:

I was thrilled that the President finally spoke about the long-run deficit and presented a comprehensive plan for dealing with it. I was listening to the speech in the car and found myself clapping when I should have been driving. It comes after both the report of the bipartisan commission and the proposal of the House Budget Committee, chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan. Reaching an agreement will obviously be incredibly difficult. The President’s leadership is likely to be essential.

His leadership is "likely" to be essential?  I would not have imagined a deal could come together without him.  Prior to 2013, natch.

FWIW, she lauds the results of Obama's deficit reduction commission, although Obama walked away from it.

Planners Versus Markets

David Brooks summarizes the Medicare reform debate as a clash of faith-based visions:

Democrats tend to be skeptical that dispersed consumers can get enough information to make smart decisions. Health care is phenomenally complicated. Providers have much more information than consumers. Insurance companies are rapacious and are not in the business of optimizing care.

Given these limitations, Democrats generally seek to concentrate decision-making and cost-control power in the hands of centralized experts. Under the Obama health care law, a team of 15 officials will be created to discover best practices and come up with cost-cutting measures. There will also be a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in Washington to organize medical innovation. Centralized officials will decide how to set national reimbursement rates.

Well, since roughly 20% of adults still smoke, one third of adults are overweight, and another third are obese, I would say there is superficial evidence that people do not choose wisely on matters of personal health.  On to the right:

Republicans at their best are skeptical about top-down decision-making. They are skeptical that centralized experts can accurately predict costs. In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee projected that Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. It actually cost $110 billion. They are skeptical that centralized experts can predict human behavior accurately enough to socially engineer new programs. Medicare’s chief actuary predicted that 400,000 people would sign up for the new health care law’s high-risk pools. In fact, only 18,000 have.

They are skeptical that political authorities can, in the long run, resist pressure to hand out free goodies. They are also skeptical that planners can control the unintended effects of their decisions.

Republicans point out that Medicare has tried to control costs centrally for decades with terrible results. They argue that a decentralized process of trial and error will work better, as long as the underlying incentives are right. They suggest replacing the fee-for-service with a premium support system. Seniors would select from a menu of insurance plans. Their consumer choices would drive a continual, bottom-up process of innovation. Providers could use local knowledge to meet specific circumstances.

 

 

Mr. Electable

In the latest ABC News/WaPo poll, Mitt Romney leads Braack Obama among registered voters by 49 to 46 percent.

Hitch On Weiner

Christopher Hitchens on Weiner and Edwards - you'll know the takeaway line when you see it.

Weiner - I Lied

Anthony Weiner is having a press conference at which he admits he lied and sent the lewd pic to the college coed.  He will not resign, but manfully accepts the consequences as long as there aren't any.

Mr. Weiner did not specificaly refer people to this post by the Ace in explaining his conduct but he outlined precisely the same scenario of the inadvertent public message followed by panic and a hastily marshalled cover-up.

ANY MINUTE NOW:  Weiner's handlers need to end this;the longer he stays up there taking questions the greater the odds that he will switch to combative, defensive rationalizations.

Back In Afghanistan

The man who killed bin Laden needs to decide how quickly to pull the plug on Afghanistan:

Steeper Pullout Is Raised as Option for Afghanistan
By DAVID E. SANGER, ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s national security team is contemplating troop reductions in Afghanistan that would be steeper than those discussed even a few weeks ago, with some officials arguing that such a change is justified by the rising cost of the war and the death of Osama bin Laden, which they called new “strategic considerations.”

These new considerations, along with a desire to find new ways to press the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to get more of his forces to take the lead, are combining to create a counterweight to an approach favored by the departing secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, and top military commanders in the field. They want gradual cuts that would keep American forces at a much higher combat strength well into next year, senior administration officials said.

The cost of the war and Mr. Karzai’s uneven progress in getting his forces prepared have been latent issues since Mr. Obama took office. But in recent weeks they have gained greater political potency as Mr. Obama’s newly refashioned national security team takes up the crucial decision of the size and the pace of American troop cuts, administration and military officials said. Mr. Obama is expected to address these decisions in a speech to the nation this month, they said.

I favor the classic "Declare victory and go home" approach.  One hopes that having killed bin Laden, Obama feels he has sufficient cred on national security to stop posturing as a tough guy on Afghanistan.

WeinerGate, Week Two

Patterico makes the case that two high school girls that helped instigate Weinergate and now say they were lying at the time are in fact lying now to protect Weiner; further, Weiner may have made a habit of flirting online with young ladies.

Andrew Breitbart says aniother woman has come forward with a treasure trove of Weiner pics, although we presume Weiner won't be able to conclusively identify or disavow them.

And who is the woman?  Maybe it's porn star Ginger Lee, or maybe not.

Meanwhile, Weiner continues to lay low - he skipped an event in Wisconsin and, more ominously, an Israel Day parade in New York City:

With the scandal still swirling and questions unanswered over a lewd photograph of an underwear-clad man sent via his Twitter account, Weiner canceled all his planned public appearances over the weekend, including walking in Sunday’s Celebrate Israel Parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a show of solidarity with the Jewish state that he has attended in past years.

UPDATE:  Breitbart is apparently going to trickle this out during the day - here is an innocuous photo of a smiling Anthony Weiner identifying himself to the as-yet-unidentified online woman.

So why the trickle-out approach?  Well, Breitbart is a master of media manipulation so this is presumaby intended to attract attention.  That said, if Breitbart had salacious photos sent by Weiner, well, any fool could get attention with that.  Which kinda sorta suggests that there won't be a smoking gun (OK, or Weiner) released today.  But fingers crossed!

I Like Where Their Heads Are

On the e-coli outbreak in Germany - let's see, a seemingly novel and deadly of a widely studied, widely available bacteria appears in Germany, with no identifiable source.  If I were paid to worry abut bio-terror, I would be freaking out.

Now, when I think of terror and Germany I think of al Qaeda and the 9/11 plotters, but I suppose I could think of Libya (and the Berlin disco bombing) or even the homegrown Baader-Meinhoff group.  I emphatically do not think of Israel, but (after providing some helpful background) these nut-jobs do.

I've Heard It Both Ways

Listen my children and I'll be tellin'

Of the mid-day tour by Sarah Palin

On the third day of June in Twenty-Eleven

Libs thought they'd died and gone to heaven

 As she remembered that famous day and year.

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed."

I didn't know that.

HMM:  Another tough day for Palin's critics, including yours truly - Paul Revere did in fact warn the Brits, after being subjected to enhanced interrogation (under which, as Cheney's detractors insist, people will say anything except the truth. People other than Paul Revere, I guess.)  However, one might note that Mr. Revere did not set off with the intention of warning the British, and I question whether Ms. Palin projected a Presidential level of confidence and authority as she brought these facts forward.  I'll hide behind Patterico on this one.

Obama And Unemployment

Nate Silver crunches the numbers inspired by yesterday's Times article and concludes (quite sensibly) that they are inconclusive.

Sully Gets Schooled

Anyone who thought (or hoped) that Andrew Sullivan had hit rock-bottom with his Palin-bashing will enjoy today's new low.

Keeping It Simple

Mickey Kaus kicks around some of the potential plot twists on WeinerGate.  The Ace of Savants favors keeping it simple:

Did any of Weiner's passionate defenders ever stop to just ask if Weiner was acting like any of the various human beings they have known, or perhaps had at least heard stories about?

Here's a little experiment if you don't believe me, or are unfamiliar with the emotion of justifiable rage. Go tell a friend that some teenagers just keyed the words "SAD LOSER" into his car.

You know what his reaction will not be?

"#Keyed! It happens!"

Yes, that will not be his reaction. But if you're unconvinced, try it.

Oh, and also be prepared for your friend to be extremely angry at you just for throwing that heart attack at him.

The Ace mentions the story of Hayley Williams, a young lady who went with the "#Hacked" excuse as a matter of convenience, until that unraveled.

To which I wil add: Brett Favre, Super Bowl champion and Hall of Fame lock probably has even more man-cards than Anthony Weiner (arguably!). Yet a guy who could walk into any bar in Manhattan and walk out with an aspiring model got taken down for sexting a, well, aspiring model.  No, I can't figure it either, but there is some very old guidance about which of the human organs are better at thinking, planning and evaluating consequences.

GREAT MOMENT IN SEXUAL EQUALITY:  The hands-down funniest take on WeinerGate yet:

Media Behaving Inexcusably on Weiner Twitter Photo

By Susan Milligan

Imagine this scenario: A youngish, recently married, female member of Congress learns that someone has sent a tweet to a fraternity house-follower of someone alleged to be her, allegedly from her own Twitter account. Her face is not in the grainy photo, but her breasts are, covered up by a lacy bra. It’s a provocative photo, one that is embarrassing to the congresswoman. She has no idea who would have done such a thing or why.

She gets the photo deleted, but when she comes back to work, she is surrounded by hounding reporters. Did she send the photo? Are those her breasts? If she really didn’t really send a sexy picture of herself to some college guys, why doesn’t she demand a police investigation? Is that reticence not proof of some guilt on her part?

There you go - if we don't think a forty-something woman would email suggestive photos to a college guy, we shoudln't think a forty-ish guy would email suggestive photos to a college girl.  What kind of a deplorable sexist society do we live in, anyway?

Ms. Milligan provides further illustration of her unfamiliarity with the glorious scope ofr human history:

...it’s doubtful someone as savvy as Weiner would do something so supremely stupid, anyway.

Wait'll she hears about Spitzer, Schwarzenenegger, Edwards, or Clinton.   Hmm - in keeping with the spirit of her column I will append some examples of famous, powerful women who humliated themselves with their unbridled lust for younger men as soon as I think of any.

Bracing For The Big Lift

The NY Times front-pages the difficulty facing their Presidential candidate in 2012:

Employment Data May Be the Key to the President’s Job
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

WASHINGTON — No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.

Seventeen months before the next election, it is increasingly clear that President Obama must defy that trend to keep his job.

Roughly 9 percent of Americans who want to go to work cannot find an employer. Companies are firing fewer people, but hiring remains anemic. And the vast majority of economic forecasters, including the president’s own advisers, predict only modest progress by November 2012.

In addition to Roosevelt they go on to mention He Who Must Not Be Named:

Ten presidents have stood for re-election since Mr. Roosevelt. In four instances the unemployment rate [link] stood above 6 percent on Election Day. Three presidents lost: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. But Ronald Reagan won, despite 7.2 percent unemployment in November 1984, because the rate was falling and voters decided he was fixing the problem.

The Obama administration hopes to tell a similar story.

The idea that Obama is The Man With A Plan will be a tough sell, since he has focused on everything but jobs, jobs, jobs (now its immigration?!?) ever since he flipped the keys to Nancy and Harry and put them in charge of the stimulus.

But the Times will do what they must.

Revenge Of The Social Networks

Still on WeinerGate, with a twist - this not-too-techie post explains how Person A can drop a picture into Person B's Yfrog account simply by knowing their Yfrog address (no password required!  But try getting that Yfrog address...).  As a bonus feature, Yfrog (a public picture sharing service) can be set to automatically generate a Tweet when a picture is added, from any source.

The post author, Joseph Cannon, having done the cool research, then jumps overboard and assumes that only a political enemy of Weiner could have sent the infamous dic-pic to the Yfrog account, and from there to Twitter and the young coed.  Nothing I read rules out the possibility that an impetuous staffer, a tasteless drinking buddy of Weiner's, or Weiner himself from an unlinked phone sent the pic.  And since Weiner is lawyering up and doing everything to discourage an investigation while Dan Wolfe is calling for the cops to check him out, I am not so sure that Weiner is as pure as the driven snow here.

Well.  I have no doubt that this quasi-hacking technique will be tested and verified promptly.  I will volunteer my own Yfrog account as soon as I have one. [KEY UPDATE - I am not able to verify a critical bit of 'evidence' about a missing URL that was highlighted by J Cannon - see below.]

HERE WE GO:  My Yfrog address is:  Tom_Maguire.zyxor@yfrog.com

Let's see if anyone can plant some tasteful photos there and generate some tweets.

THAT WAS EASY (I THINK): OK, I have emailed myself a photo from an unlinked (and unliked) Gmail account.  It has shown up nicely in Yfrog and seems to have generated a Tweet.  I suppose if I had any followers at all I could see if the Tweet was actually broadcast... 

If someone could check Tom_Maguire on Twitter that would be great, Or I may figure this out soon enough.  [Here is the live Twitter stream from my account, nicely showing the planted pics.  Very cool.

STILL POKING:  OK, I sent a directed Tweet (via Yfrog, using the unlinked email account) to the one and only Mickey Kaus, and he received it.

I would feel even better if a Loyal Reader here tried the same trick, since there is the possibility that Yfrog is verifying the email account by way of a common IP address or something (Evil spirts?).  But I think we have a real mini-breakthrough here.

HEADSCRATCHING:  How might one get someone's Yfrog address?  That may be the weak link in the theory that this was a malicious attack.

LET'S GET READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL:  OK, someone placed a cool John Madden photo on my Yfrog account.  It showed up in my Twitter feed, but was it broadcast?  I don't know, yet.  I now see a "Go, Bruins" Tweet as well.  But the toaster is still loyal.

KEY UPDATE: J Cannon claims that pictures he uploads are displayed with a Yfrog URL, but outsider uploads lack the URL.  The missing URL on the dic-pic "proves" it was uploaded by an outsider.

To which I say, hmm - every picture appearing in my account has a visible URL, even though they should all be outsider uploads.  Maybe the Cannon result came from the interplay of different platforms and browsers.  Well, "maybe" a lot of things - I am not the techie to explain this.  But until we know exactly why the URL might or might not appear or disappear, that Cannon result does not look like "proof" of much.

Here is a screenshot with the non-missing URLs:

From Cannon:

The only way to create a URL-free header is to have someone else send a pic to one's Yfrog address. Milowent did just that. You can see the result: The header now has a blank space beneath Dowson's name.

Why does Yfrog work that way? I don't know. Ask their programmers.

The important point is this: The anomaly in the header indicates that the image was not sent by Weiner. It had to have been sent by someone else.

We agree on "I don't know". Maybe Weiner using an unlinked phone would generate no URL; maybe different browsers get glitchy with the URL. 

AND LOOKING AROUND... Caleb Howe at RedState has been on this like a cheap suit, and highlights the problems with the URL and with getting that Yfrog address.  Jim Hoft crushes the whole theory.

What The Heck Is That Big Ole Thing Down There?

Anthony Weiner can't figure out whether the infamous dic-pic is of his equipment or not.  Not even the NY Times commenters are buying this level of ignorance.

Mr. Weiner was making the media rounds today, trying to get on top of this story.  Let's apply the BaffleGab Translator is interview with Luke Russert.

What he said:

RUSSERT: That’s not a picture of you?

REP. WEINER: You know, I can’t say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted. One of the reasons that I’ve asked a firm that includes an internet security arm is to take a look into what the heck happened here to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

What he meant: I've hired an internet security firm to help me stitch together a plausible cover-up.

Weiner reprised some basic non-denial denials:

Asked if he had had private, email or Twitter conversations with the college student to whom the picture was sent, he said, "I don't know this woman, this woman doesn't know me." He said he hasn't spoken to her since the incident occurred, adding, "I'm a victim, but she certainly is."

Weiner insisted he did not send the photo and that this was a hack, or a prank.  That prompted another evasion:

Weiner did not directly respond to a question about whether he knows who is responsible for the incident.

By all reports neither law enforcement nor Twitter have been asked for assistance in cracking this case. My earlier Bold Prediction that Team Weiner was looking for a fall guy among his friends, family and staff continues to look good.  Presumably the legal counsel and the internet security firm are on board to make sure the cover story is air-tight.  It is perfectly clear that what Weiner does not want is as real investigation.

It's also interesting watching the media rebellion.  The NY Times is still mostly functioning as an adjunct press office for Weiner, but otherwise Weiner has done such a poor job of giving his media allies any ammunition at all that he is looking a bit abandoned out there.  Possible theory - maybe there are libs who think their "women's lib" rhetoric should be taken seriously rather than merely used as a convenient club against right-wing targets.  Maybe.