NY Times:
But amid all the “I Am Charlie” marches and declarations on social media, some in the cartooning world are also debating a delicate question: Were the victims free-speech martyrs, full stop, or provocateurs whose aggressive mockery of Islam sometimes amounted to xenophobia and racism?
Such debates unfold differently in different countries. But the conversation could be especially acute in the United States, where sensitivities to racially tinged caricatures may run higher than in places like France, where historically tighter restrictions on speech have given rise to a strong desire to flout the rules.
Ron Fournier:
With no small amount of regret for offending many good people, I tweeted and retweeted the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. While I am no longer in a decision-making role for a newsroom, I can join the tens of millions of social media users—think of us as self-publishers—and distribute the offending images far and wide.
For me, there never was anything funny about the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. They're repugnant, vile, and irresponsible. But they're also news—and they cannot be suppressed at the point of a gun. Click.
AP:
Did AP run the Charlie Hebdo cartoons mocking Islam?
AP tries hard not to be a conveyor belt for images and actions aimed at mocking or provoking people on the basis of religion, race or sexual orientation. We did not run the “Danish cartoons” mocking Muhammad in 2005, or the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the same type. While we run many photos that are politically or socially provocative, there are areas verging on hate speech and actions where we feel it is right to be cautious.
This policy is consistent with our approach to sound bites and text reporting, where we avoid racist, religious and sexual slurs.
In a letter, my dad floyd abrams criticizes @nytimes for not showing any of the "offensive" cartoons
http://t.co/...
— @danabrams
More politics and policy below the hold.
It looks like we'll still have Mitt Romney to kick around some more. MT @maggiepolitico Romney said today that he is weighing a 2016 run
— @DKElections
Romney digital team being run by five brothers Tagg, Hashh, Subb, Tweett, and Buckett
— @Atrios
Romney insiders tell me Mitt isn't sure Jeb will survive a GOP primary—and that rest of the field can't take Hillary
http://t.co/...
— @mckaycoppins
Paul Waldman:
But does saying "Je suis Charlie" necessarily mean that you celebrate the work they did before this week? I don't think it does in the minds of many who are saying it, nor should it. The people holding up those signs are announcing their commitment to an ideal of free speech that has nothing to do with that speech's content. The horror of the murders comes from the fact that the victims were killed because they drew or published cartoons (in addition to those who just happened to get in the killers' way); it would be no more horrible if the cartoons were funnier or more insightful.
The Guardian:
Some, though, are looking for other shows of support. In social media, the call has been loud – and aimed at several British newspapers, including this one – to take a stand by publishing the very images that made Charlie Hebdo a target. For the most vociferous, republishing a sample of the magazine’s usual fare, which the Guardian has already done, is not enough: they insist that true defenders of free speech would reprint Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of the prophet Muhammad, especially the crudest, most scatological examples.
That case is straightforward. Since these are the images the gunmen wanted to stop, the surviving free press is obliged to deny the killers that victory. No other gesture can show that we refuse to be cowed by their crime. By repeating Charlie Hebdo’s action, we would demonstrate our resistance to the edict the terrorists sought to enforce on pain of death. We show that Charlie Hebdo was not alone.
There is an appealing simplicity to that stance, but it rests on faulty logic. The key point is this: support for a magazine’s inalienable right to make its own editorial judgments does not commit you to echo or amplify those judgments. Put another way, defending the right of someone to say whatever they like does not oblige you to repeat their words.
Juan Cole:
The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.
The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. French Muslims may be the most secular Muslim-heritage population in the world (ex-Soviet ethnic Muslims often also have low rates of belief and observance). Many Muslim immigrants in the post-war period to France came as laborers and were not literate people, and their grandchildren are rather distant from Middle Eastern fundamentalism, pursuing urban cosmopolitan culture such as rap and rai. In Paris, where Muslims tend to be better educated and more religious, the vast majority reject violence and say they are loyal to France.
Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.
In other news:
Fmr @MittRomney NH camp mgr @JimMerrillNH says phone ringing off hook, NH Romney backers asking: "Is this for real?" #fitn #nhpolitics
— @jdistaso
NO PATH to 60 in Senate for House DHS/#immigration plan. Manchin, Heitkamp, King, Tester against. Kirk, Heller wary
http://t.co/...
— @seungminkim
Dara Lind:
Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they're ready to take on Barack Obama on immigration.
They're seething about what they see as repeated executive overreach by the president in the final months of last year, especially when it came to his actions to protect millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation.
Republicans are planning to start early next week, with a bill that would temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security — on the condition that Obama's executive actions be stopped.
Here's how they want to stop Obama — and how they're trying to get the bill through.
Emily Atkin:
A series of 77 earthquakes in Ohio — including one strong enough to be felt by humans — was caused by the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, scientists claimed in research published Tuesday in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).
Small earthquakes have been attributed to fracking in Ohio before. But those earthquakes were all too small to be felt. Tuesday’s study is the first time scientists have attributed a larger earthquake to fracking, the process of injecting high-pressure water, sand and chemicals underground to crack shale rock and let gas flow out more easily.
The scientists, from the University of Miami, identified 77 earthquakes of varying size in the Poland Township of Ohio, all occurring between March 4 and March 12 and all located near a group of oil and gas wells. The quakes ranged between magnitudes of 1.0 and 3.0, but the local community reportedly only felt one, a magnitude 3.0 on March 10.
According to study co-author Robert Skoumal, that magnitude 3.0 quake was “one the largest earthquakes ever induced by hydraulic fracturing in the United States.”
Justin Wolfers:
Commentary on this month’s employment report has focused on what’s happening to wage growth. Throughout the recovery, wage growth has been disappointing, barely keeping pace with inflation.
Last month, several commentators (not me!) thought that we might have seen a turning point, as wages were reported to have grown by 0.4 percent in November. Friday morning’s report revised that number down to a more moderate 0.2 percent, and added the news that wages actually fell by 0.2 percent in December.
That is, wage growth remains muted after all.
My colleague Neil Irwin wrote about this slow wage growth as if it were bad news. I feel much more optimistic. Let me explain how we can read the same numbers differently, and why this is important in the debate about Fed policy and getting more people working.
WaPo:
There is little empathy at the top.
Most of America's richest think poor people have it easy in this country, according to a new report released by the Pew Research Center. The center surveyed a nationally representative group of people this past fall, and found that the majority of the country's most financially secure citizens (54 percent at the very top, and 57 percent just below) believe the "poor have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return." America's least financially secure, meanwhile, vehemently disagree — nearly 70 percent say the poor have hard lives because the benefits "don't go far enough." Nationally, the population is almost evenly split.