E. J. Dionne Jr. at the Washington Post says it's not over yet in The way forward on guns:
Victories often contain the seeds of future defeats. So it is — or at least should be — with the Senate’s morally reprehensible rejection of expanded background checks for gun buyers. [...]
Republicans who cultivate a reputation for reasonableness — their ranks include, among others, Sens. Johnny Isakson, Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Kelly Ayotte, Saxby Chambliss, Lisa Murkowski and Rob Portman — could not even vote for a watered-down proposal. This tells us that the GOP has become a coalition of the fearful. In a pinch, the party’s extreme lobbies rule.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times writes about
The Jobless Trap:
while debt fears were and are misguided, there’s a real danger we’ve ignored: the corrosive effect, social and economic, of persistent high unemployment. And even as the case for debt hysteria is collapsing, our worst fears about the damage from long-term unemployment are being confirmed. [...]
And let’s be clear: this is a policy decision. The main reason our economic recovery has been so weak is that, spooked by fear-mongering over debt, we’ve been doing exactly what basic macroeconomics says you shouldn’t do — cutting government spending in the face of a depressed economy.
Dave Zirin at
The Nation writes
Why We Must Protect Next Year’s Boston Marathon from Ourselves:
Safety is paramount of course but there is a difference between safety and submitting without dissent to being under a kind of martial law. I want to describe the possible dystopic scenario that next year’s marathon could bring and I’m not pulling this out of a pamphlet written by Glenn Beck. I’m speaking from the experience of having been in Vancouver right before the 2010 Winter Olympics, South Africa right before the 2010 World Cup, and London right before the 2012 Summer Olympics. In each of these cities, “security” meant raiding the homes and offices of "people of interest." It meant spying on activist groups planning legal protests. It meant a particular level of surveillance and harassment of black and brown communities, especially — but certainly not exclusively — the Arab and Muslim communities. It meant displacement of many of the homeless and those in nearby low-income housing to create a security perimeter. It meant, in the case of London, surveillance drones flying overhead. In all of these cities, there were so many video cameras that you couldn’t so much as scratch your behind without fearing that someone was making a note.
In all of these cities I felt safe, but safe in the way you feel in quiet, empty campground. It’s eerie, even if you aren’t thinking about the collateral damage needed to feel so “safe.” In all of these cities, after the games, much of this top-notch surveillance equipment becomes a “normalized” part of law enforcement. As one police chief said when I was in London, “It’s not like we can just put them back in the box.”
The New York Times Editorial Board writes in How to Handle a Terrorism Case:
Mr. Graham’s reckless statement makes a mockery of the superb civilian police work that led to the suspect’s capture, starting with a skillful analysis of video recordings of the marathon. The law enforcement system solved the case swiftly and efficiently, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police, and as shocking as the attack was, there is no reason civilian prosecutors, defense lawyers and courts cannot continue to do their work — especially since they have proved themselves far better at it than the military.
Mr. Tsarnaev is a naturalized American citizen, an inconvenient fact for the pressure-him-at-Gitmo crowd.
David Simon at
The Guardian fumes in
The blocking of gun control legislation in the Senate exposes just how deeply corrupted America's bought democracy has become:
A sane man's contempt for the United States Senate must now be certain and complete. Given the inertia on even the most modest legislative response to the mass murder of schoolchildren, those still credulous enough to believe that our governance is representative of popular will are either Barnum-sized suckers, or worse, tacit participants in tragedies soon to come. An entrenched collection of careerist incumbents, chosen and retained through their singular ability to gather cash from money troughs over six-year intervals — and the unrestrained ability of capital to keep those troughs constantly full — none of this is worthy of any intelligent citizen's respect or allegiance.
Alfred W. McCoy at
The Progressive writes
At Long Last—The Truth About U.S. Torture:
After five years of Dick Cheney’s insistence that “enhanced interrogation” saved “thousands of lives,” after a multiplex blitz by the Hollywood film Zero Dark Thirty propagating CIA claims that torture led us to Bin Laden, after strident neo-conservative rhetoric forced mainstream media to shun the “T” word, we finally have an authoritative, non-partisan investigation stating, as verifiable fact, “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”
And instead of blaming this abuse on a few bad apples at the bottom of the military’s chain of command, this report, titled Detainee Treatment, states, “The nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture.”
Rebecca Burns at
In These Times writes in
Corporations Are Not Bad People: Supreme Court:
Watchers of [the Supreme Court case Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleuma] have noted an obvious irony: The Court has bestowed corporations with all of the perks of personhood (think Citizens United), but none of the pesky responsibilities. In this case [in which the justices ruled 9-0 against plaintiffs], we're not just talking jury duty or speeding tickets—the plaintiffs allege that Shell and its subsidiaries aided and abetted torture, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial executions in pursuit of a stable oil supply.
Chemi Shalev at
Haaretz concludes that
The Boston bombers have already scored a tremendous victory for terror:
But this was not 9/11, the Bombay bombings or the Beslan slaughter of children, also carried out by Chechen terrorists. It wasn’t the Bali nightclub bombings, the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie or the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma. And it didn’t come close even to the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium carnage, the killing of students in Maalot or the murder of 39 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
Therefore, in terms of cost-benefit analysis, from the evil terrorist’s point of view, the Boylston Street bombings and their after aftermath can only be viewed as a resounding triumph. If the primary goal of terror attacks is to instill fear and intimidate people, to influence governments and to attract world attention, then the Boston bombers have probably succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Patrick Cockburn at
The Independent writes
The Boston bombs roused a monster:
It was depressing to see heavily armed Swat teams with assault rifles and body armour debouching from armoured vehicles in Boston as they used to do in Belfast. Curfews, which people in Baghdad and Fallujah have become inured to, suddenly become acceptable in Massachusetts. In contrast to Northern Ireland and Iraq, this is done to the applause of local inhabitants. The reason for Swat teams and curfews is understandable, but measures like these get people cumulatively accustomed to accepting without protest an authoritarian government.
Much of the initial impact of the Boston bombing and the pursuit of Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, will dissipate. Unfolding stories like this swiftly shift from being over-covered to under-covered. Journalists know the feeling of relief and frustration when editors back home decide that the story to which they have been giving wall-to-wall coverage, is old news.
Glenn Greenwald at
The Guardian writes
What rights should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get and why does it matter?:
So Democrats reacted with horror and outrage to Graham's suggestion that "the last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'" But that's already Obama DOJ policy, enacted with little controversy. And last night's announcement makes clear that the Obama DOJ intends, as Bazelon says, to question him about a wide range of topics far beyond matters of imminent threats to public safety without first Mirandizing him.
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board states in
A U.S. Supreme Court decision makes it difficult for some victims of abuses committed in other countries to win redress in U.S. courts.:
Human rights groups are appropriately appalled by the breadth of a U.S. Supreme Court decision this week that would make it exceedingly difficult for some victims of human rights abuses committed in other countries to win redress in U.S. courts.
Led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a self-proclaimed foe of judicial activism, the court reined in the use of a 1789 law known as the Alien Tort Statute, which gives federal courts jurisdiction over "any civil action by an alien for a tort committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Although the statute was inspired by concerns about attacks on ambassadors and piracy on the high seas in the 18th century, its expansive language has been used in recent years to justify lawsuits in U.S. courts by victims of torture abroad.
Debra Saunders at the
San Franscisco Chronicle gets all bent out of shape about environmentalists in
Stop Me Before I Buy Food:
I look around California and see serious problems -- undereducated children, one of the country's highest unemployment rates, homeless people and violent crime. In San Francisco, the sidewalks often smell, and it's not because of single-use plastic bags.
To sum up, the Padilla bill probably would reduce litter, but it could increase greenhouse gases and could make people sick. And it most definitely would inconvenience consumers.