Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The president believes the White House is above the law. I don’t care what kind of intrigue or realpolitik is going on behind the scenes - this a shameful and un-American position to take. Barack Obama has an authoritarian view of executive power.

He also appears to be thin skinned and disrespectful of those who smoothed the path before him: “If the President demands that a Democrat who has served in Congress since Obama was four years old, one who paved the way on civil rights issues to make it possible to elect an African American man President, and one who played a key role in Obama winning the primary, just roll over on legislative issues, who is demeaning whom?” I hope Conyers called him “son” at least once during their conversation.

Clive Stafford Smith notes the depressing regularity with which the British justice system is being compromised by the UK’s relationship with America. Sometimes it’s tough to see the upside of being our ally.

Jeff Kaye: “Stephen Soldz has published a devastating critique of the work of the FBI and Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) on the controversial interrogation of Guantanamo prisoner 063, the supposed ‘20th hijacker,’ Mohammed al-Qahtani.” It turns out that inculcating Stockholm Syndrome is not rapport building, and psychologists who decide to take a paycheck for working with our torturers need to either be prepared to disregard their professional codes of ethics or anticipate being fired. And let’s face it, those who think otherwise are either willfully ignorant or surpassingly naive. Having to even address the issue is infuriating - everyone knows these things, and knew them all long. It’s like telling a five year old who stole a candy bar that he shouldn’t have stolen it when you both know he knew that in advance. That’s the level of our discourse.

America: No Prohibition against Monstrous Conduct

Harry Reid compared the effort to slow down on health care with previous efforts to slow down on human and civil rights, and Republicans freaked out. Steve Benen nailed the dynamic perfectly:

If we’re to believe the faux-outrage, the reference to slavery was the rhetorical element that went too far. But this, apparently, is a new concern — the right has been far more direct in making the same comparison. Harry Reid was talking about key moments in history in which the right was wrong, but Michele Bachmann recently called the Democrats’ legislative agenda “nothing more than slavery,” and no one said a word. Indeed, conservatives routinely insist that the left is trying “enslave” America, and the political mainstream just shrugs its shoulders in response.

This is not uncommon. In 2005, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) described the Bush administration’s torture policies and system of secret prisons as being reminiscent of “Soviets in their gulags.” At the time, the media and Republicans were apoplectic about Durbin’s remarks, sparking a week-long frenzy. Several conservatives called on the Senate to censure Durbin, and Karl Rove, at the time a high-ranking White House official, argued that Durbin’s quote was evidence that liberals are traitors. Durbin eventually offered a tearful apology.

But notice that just a few days ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Republican leadership, called Medicaid a “health care gulag.” Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) recently called Dems’ health care reform efforts “Soviet-style gulag health care.” Neither reporters nor other members of Congress batted an eye.

Also note, when Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said Republicans are promoting lethal health care policies, it was a huge national controversy. When Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the same thing, no one seemed to care.

Fox News: Our Viewers Are Not Intelligent Enough To Add To 100.

Justin Elliott had a really nice overview on how the government can and can’t locate you by your cell phone.

Christopher Thornberg works for a consulting firm specializing in real estate and the California economy and says Americans are giving themselves a “stealth stimulus” by defaulting on mortgages and becoming renters. I think the near-mythological status of the credit score is breaking down. It used to be considered an absolute disaster to have a bad one, an outlook various players in the credit and financial industries were I’m sure eager to promote. But now lots more people have lousy credit, credit itself is a lot harder to get, and citizens have seen the social contract of paying off your debts absolutely obliterated for the big players. Who can blame them for saying, why not for us too? Take a ding on the credit score for a few years and build it back up. Big deal.

Thinking Outside The Box, Capitol Edition: Instead of having a Goldman exec for Treasury Secretary, how about one from JP Morgan!

Financial news link dump.

• Volcker: “Wake up, gentlemen.” Nice sentiment, but we need to get past the idea that they are capable of reforming themselves. It has to be forced on them.
• Ben Bernanke is now approvingly quoting bank robbers. One of his clients needs to let him know that it won’t do to be that obvious.
• I can’t believe that at the end of 2009 anyone would actually write this, but I guess that shows just what an alternate universe the WSJ editorial page is: “Some argue that high-frequency traders, who reportedly execute 70% of the equity market trades, would pick up the lion’s share of the bill. But high-frequency traders are not villains-indeed, they play an important role in improving market efficiency.” I think we’ve had quite enough market efficiency for the moment, thanks.
• Marcy writes that Wall Street will be incredibly tough to fix, and one big reason is that they get their proxies to do their fighting for them.
• Elizabeth Warren is not impressed with the administration’s foreclosure plan.

Matt Taibbi has a great piece on Obama’s financial team. He got some blowback on it, and Felix Salmon has a nice defense: “I love it that Taibbi exists, and I’m impressed that his 6,500-word screed (into which a great deal of work clearly went) in fact has very little in the way of factual errors, let alone ‘lies’. Yes, Taibbi is polemical and one-sided, and he exaggerates his thesis, and he’s entertaining; I daresay he’s learned a lot from watching Fox News. And no, I would never want to live in a world where everybody wrote like that. But Taibbi is one of a kind, and we can enjoy him and learn from him as such.”

Taibbi can defend himself, of course, and he does so brilliantly here (via). In it he writes:

It’s almost impossible to not make mountains of money when your cost of capital is next to nothing because you’re borrowing your money from the government basically for free. Moreover we issued government guarantees for all the least responsible banks in the country - so while you and I have to keep our same old shitty credit scores, all the people who leveraged themselves to the hilt and bet the farm on subprime mortgages that we ended up bailing out now get squeaky clean, brand-new AAA credit ratings to borrow from. The cost of credit for them plummeted thanks to these guarantees, while we’re paying the same old rates to borrow our money.