Friday Reads

Good Morning!

Controversial portions of the Patriot Act were set to expire yesterday unless renewed by congress.  The renewed law was sent to the President in Europe to be signed into law via electronic signature using  an autopen.  The tornado coverage pretty much moved any discussion of the pros and cons of this move out of the public eye.  Here’s some information from Senator Ron Wyden explaining that the government just keeps increasing its ability to spy on its citizens. We never seem to get honest discussions about these topics.

  Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.

“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” Wyden says. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”

So, the interesting thing is that Senator Rand Paul held the act up in the Senate with a procedural move.  This turned out to be mostly symbolic as the Patriot Act was eventually renewed.

Freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a Patriot Act opponent who had used procedural tactics to delay a final vote on the bill for much of the week, eventually worked out a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to get votes on two of his amendments – but not before Reid accused the libertarian, tea-party darling of “political grandstanding” and trying to protect terrorists.

While Paul’s amendments ultimately failed by wide margins, Republican leaders blocked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) from even getting a vote on his bipartisan amendment that would have required greater congressional oversight of the anti-terrorism tools in the law.

Leahy briefly threatened to delay the final vote himself – a rare move for the chairman tasked with shepherding the bill through the Senate. But he later backed off, vowing to introduce his amendment as a stand-alone bill.

“I do feel this really ruins the chances to make the Patriot Act one that could have had far, far greater bipartisan support, and we have lost a wonderful chance,” Leahy said on the Senate floor, “but I understand that we have to do what the Republicans want on this bill.”

The longtime liberal from Vermont voted no and rejected assertions by Republicans that his objections would have been to blame for the Patriot Act provisions expiring, something top Obama administration officials warned could threaten national security during a time of heightened alert.

“There is no conceivable way this thing can get passed and signed by the president anyway [before the provisions expire],” Leahy told two reporters before the vote, unaware that the White House intended to attach the president’s signature via autopen. “So that was the most bogus, damn argument that’s been made in this place today.”

When asked if Reid, his party’s leader, had poorly managed the amendment process, Leahy replied: “I can’t even answer that with a straight face.”

Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate are trying to stop the current Senate session from going into recess to block any appointment by President Obama of Elizabeth Warren to the CFPB.  There are other recession appointments that could be made by the President but this particular one was being pushed by some liberal senators including Minnesota’s Al Franken.

Some Republicans feared that Obama would use the recess to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will have broad powers over Wall Street.

A coalition of liberal groups has launched a petition pushing for a recess appointment of Warren.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, also threatened to block the Senate’s complete adjournment in order to protest Democrats’ decision not to mark-up a budget blueprint in the panel or bring a Democratic plan to the floor.

To avoid the cumbersome process of holding a vote on the adjournment resolution, Reid opted for the compromise of holding pro-forma meetings next week, GOP sources say.

Additionally, forty-six Republican senators set a letter to  Reid via Sessions asking the majority leader to not adjourn the Senate without the Budget Committee marking up a spending plan.  This was generally seen as a political move to block the appointments instead of being an honest request for budget discussions.

The Supreme Court upheld law aimed at punishing businesses that hire undocumented workers. This was a law that was challenged by the US Chamber of Commerce.  It was called the business death penalty.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave Arizona and other states more authority to take action against illegal immigrants and the companies that hire them, ruling that employers who knowingly hire illegal workers can lose their license to do business.

The 5-3 decision upholds the Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007 and its so-called business death penalty for employers who are caught repeatedly hiring illegal immigrants. The state law also requires employers to check the federal E-Verify system before hiring new workers, a provision that was also upheld Thursday.

The court’s decision did not deal with the more controversial Arizona law passed last year that gave police more authority to stop and question those who are suspected of being in the state illegally. But the ruling is likely to encourage the state and its supporters because the court majority said states remained free to take action involving immigrants.

Thursday’s decision is a defeat for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, several civil-rights groups and the Obama administration, all of whom opposed the Arizona law and its sanctions on employers. They argued that federal law said states may not impose “civil or criminal sanctions” on employers.

Another important judicial decision was made in Wisconsin yesterday when a judge struck down the Wisconsin law that aimed at weakening union membership.  The bill was rushed through to avoid dealing with Democratic Senators who had fled the state to deny a quorum.  The judge ruled the bill’s passage did no meet Wisconsin law for properly passing laws.

In a 33-page decision, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi overturned the legislation and ruled that GOP lawmakers broke the state’s open meetings law in passing it March 9 amid raucous protests by union supporters. The legislation would limit collective bargaining to wages for all public employees in Wisconsin, except for police and firefighters, and impose cuts in their health and pension benefits to help balance a massive state budget shortfall.

On March 18, Sumi had placed a temporary hold on the law, but Thursday’s ruling voided it – at least until the Supreme Court decides whether to act in the case.

“It’s what we were looking for,” said Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, a Democrat, even as he acknowledged the higher court could have the final say.

The ruling – the latest kicker in a tumultuous three and a half months – could push GOP lawmakers to pass the collective bargaining measure again. It also highlights the importance of Supreme Court Justice David Prosser’s election to the sharply divided court following a statewide recount – one that Prosser opponent JoAnne Kloppenburg is still considering whether to challenge. And in a sign of the financial stakes, a legislative panel Thursday voted to drop $30 million in savings from employee benefits that the legislation would have delivered by June 30.

A priest in an Italian archdiocese who is  top adviser to Pope Benedict XVI was arrested May 13 on pedophilia and drug charges in a drug and sex ring investigation.  The priest is also HIV positive.  A retired priest told reporters that he had complained about the offending priest back in 1994.  My guess is that this priest didn’t attend Woodstock.

Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. “I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues,” he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse.

Reports from Libya indicate the use of systematic rape by Ghaddafi forces.  Hundreds of  women in Misratah may have been systematically raped.  Members of the Libyan rebels have offered to marry young girls that have been subjected to these rapes.  Doctors are performing abortions and treating STDs as required.  Counselors who helped during the Bosnia conflict have been sent to the area.

THE young Libyan soldier showed almost no emotion as he described how his unit had raped four sisters, the youngest about 16, after breaking into a home in the besieged port of Misratah.

“My officer sent three of us up to the roof to guard the house while they tied up the father and mother and took the girls to two rooms, two each to a room,” said Walid Abu Bakr, 17.

“My two officers and the others raped the girls first,” he recalled in a monotone, still dressed in the camouflage uniform he was wearing when he surrendered 12 days ago. They were playing music. They called me down and ordered me to rape one of the girls.”

Abu Bakr, from Traghen, a poor southern town, claimed he had been given hashish and was not responsible.

So, last on my reading list is another item from Time Magazine entitled ‘Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly?’  My answers will sound vaguely familiar.  It’s because they can get away with it.

By now social commentators have the explanations on auto-save: We know that powerful men can be powerfully reckless, particularly when, like DSK, they stand at the brink of their grandest achievement. They tend to be risk takers or at least assess risk differently — as do narcissists who come to believe that ordinary rules don’t apply. They are often surrounded by enablers with a personal or political interest in protecting them to the point of covering up their follies, indiscretions and crimes. A study set to be published in Psychological Sciencefound that the higher men — or women — rose in a business hierarchy, the more likely they were to consider or commit adultery. With power comes both opportunity and confidence, the authors argue, and with confidence comes a sense of sexual entitlement. If fame and power make sex more constantly available, the evolutionary biologists explain, it may weaken the mechanisms of self-restraint and erode the layers of socialization that we impose on teenage boys and hope they eventually internalize.

“When men have more opportunity, they tend to act on that opportunity,” says psychologist Mark Held, a private practitioner in the Denver area who specializes in male sexuality and the problems of overachievers. “The challenge becomes developing ways to control the impulses so you don’t get yourself into self-defeating situations.”

I’ll leave further explanations up to BostonBoomer.  So, that’s my offering for this morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?