Friday Reads

Good Morning!!

The debt ceiling debacle continues to be the top story. Politico has some interesting takes on some a$$ chewing that both Republicans and Democrats got late yesterday.  Economists from Standard & Poors told GOP pols there would be a ‘death spiral’ if they didn’t up the debt ceiling.

House Republicans were cautioned Thursday in a closed door meeting with credit rating agency officials that a “death spiral” in the bond market was one of the possible outcomes in the event of default.

One official warned of a worst-case scenario in which a default on the nation’s credit could result in a rapid drop in bond values, sparking chaos in the markets — a dramatic warning as Washington worked on a possible deal on deficit reduction and an increase in the debt limit.

Many of the right wing republican pols didn’t appear to get it.  Read some of the take away sound bits at the link and try not to bang your head on your desk too hard.  Meanwhile, Democratic Senators told Obama’s budget director they were tired of being left out of the loop. 

The White House faced a near rebellion from senators who were blindsided by word of a possible deal between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, with Democrats worried the president would cave on taxes while Republicans complained about being left in the dark on a potentially historic deficit plan.

Furious Democrats directed their ire squarely at Obama’s budget director, Jack Lew, at a closed-door lunch meeting, while Republicans peppered their leaders with questions about the possibility of being jammed into a multitrillion-dollar bill with virtually no time for review.

The frustration was evident in virtually all corners of the Senate on Thursday as it became increasingly possible that the body where landmark deals are usually made could effectively be left out of this one.

It seems that the sticking point is still that Republicans–mostly Teabots–refuse to consider any revenue enhancing measures. Obama is still asking for revenue increases while proposing about $3 trillion in cuts.

Efforts to craft a broad $3 trillion deficit-reduction deal gained traction on Thursday as the White House and top lawmakers scrambled to sort through competing options and stave off a devastating U.S. default.

With the clock ticking toward an August 2 deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, President Barack Obama and the senior Republican in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, worked toward a budget plan that would include deep spending cuts but might leave tax reform for later, congressional aides said.

The main obstacle remained the issue of tax increases that Obama’s Democrats want and Republicans vehemently oppose. There were conflicting accounts of how and when higher revenue might kick in, and the White House vowed there would be no deal without this.

The main focus was on prospects for what congressional sources said was shaping up as $3 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years, a figure that many in Washington hope would help salvage America’s triple-A credit rating. Rating agencies have called for a comprehensive deficit-cutting deal.

Negotiators have struggled to break their impasse and winnow options for raising the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Failure to reach a deal to increase U.S. borrowing authority would render the world’s biggest economy unable to pay all of its bills.

But confusion has grown amid a patchwork of proposals aimed at finding what a senior Democratic aide called the “magic formula” for resolving the crisis, which has dominated Washington’s agenda for weeks.

“Frankly, we’ve looked at a half a dozen fallback plans, none of which are all that appetizing,” Boehner — struggling with Tea Party lawmakers largely opposed to any compromise with Obama — told conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

Emptywheel is now a stand alone blog and still has some of the best information around.  I recommend you read:Obama DOJ Doubles Down on President’s Ability to Detain US Citizens with No Charges.

Back in February, Obama’s DOJ stopped defending Donald Rumsfeld and others in Jose Padilla’s Bivens suit against them (though we’re still footing the bill for their pricey lawyers). At the time, it seemed DOJ might have concerns about the claims Rummy’s crew wanted to make about the torture Padilla was suing for.

But DOJ just filed an amicus brief in Padilla’s appeal. In it, they basically double down on the claim the President can deprive a citizen already detained in the US of all due process simply by engaging in some specious word games (in this case, by unilaterally labeling someone an enemy combatant).

Critically, the government is dodging the question of what happens in detention; as I’ll show below, rather than addressing that torture, they simply engage in circular logic.

Remember why Padilla is suing: he’s arguing that Rummy’s crowd violated his constitutional rights by seizing him from a civilian jail, designating him an enemy combatant, using that designation to deprive him of due process, and while he was detained on those terms, torturing him. He’s arguing the government violated his constitutional rights both by depriving him of due process and then torturing him. Illegal detention to enable illegal torture. The government wants to pretend they can separate those issues and argue just the basis for detention.

Think Progress has a great bit of information up on how one of Rep. Darrell Issa’s top staffers is a lobbyist for the financial industry with continued close contacts and associations.  There’s your congressional ethics for you!

When he became chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) hired a large new staff to assist him with investigations. As reporters from the Watchdog Institute noted, many of Issa’s recruits came from industry or with lobbying backgrounds. However, a ThinkProgress investigation has found that at least one of Issa’s hires still maintains a financial relationship with the lobbying group he left to become a federal employee under Issa.

Last year, as Issa began recruiting for his committee, he selected Peter Warren, a lobbyist for the student loan industry. Warren had been president and executive vice president of government affairs of the Education Finance Council (EFC), a trade association for student loan companies and nonprofits, since 2004. He left EFC for the Karl Rove front group American Action Forum for a brief stint in 2010 before joining Issa as the policy director of the House Oversight Committee.

Many lobbyists burrow into government to write laws or regulations, then leave to take even higher paid positions back in the private sector. This phenomenon — the so-called “revolving door,” or reverse revolving door in this case — has plagued government for years. While examples of such corruption are boundless on both sides of the aisle, Warren is particularly interesting given his continued relationship with his lobbying group.

Go check out the evidence.  Issa has to be one of the most corrupt politicians in the country.

Okay, so now some fun stuff. Anthropologists believe that one of our human ancestors had human feet more than 3 million years ago.

Nearly four million years ago, our human relatives were very different from modern man. Australopithecus afarensis had a longer torso, a smaller brain and significantly stubbier legs – but we did have one thing in common: our feet.

After examining the ancient species’ footprints using a new type of analysis, a team of British scientists concluded that the “human” gait emerged 3.7 million years ago. The study challenges previous research, which suggests that human-like walking did not develop in homonin species until nearly 2 million years later.

In the report, which was published online Wednesday by the Royal Society Journal Interface, scientists said the species presumed responsible for those tracks had feet that were strikingly similar to those of modern humans, and less like those belonging to chimpanzees or gorillas.

Since the footprints were found in Laetoli, Tanzania more than three decades ago, they have polarized the scientific community – pitting researchers who describe the footprints as more “ape-like” against those who see in them the origins of modern bipedal motion.

It appears that there were a lot of Viking women in those Viking invasions way back when.

So much for Hagar the Horrible, with his stay-at-home wife, Helga. Viking women may have equaled men moving to England in medieval invasions, suggests a look at ancient burials.

Vikings famously invaded Eastern England around 900 A.D., notes Shane McLeod of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia in the Early Medieval Europe journal, starting with two army invasions in the 800’s, recounted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Viking invaders founded their own medieval kingdom, ‘the Danelaw‘, in Eastern England.

“There is some archaeological evidence for early Norse female settlement, most obviously oval brooches, but this evidence is minimal. The more difficult to date evidence of place names, personal names, and DNA samples derived from the modern population suggests that Norse women did migrate to England at some stage, but probably in far fewer numbers than Norse men,” begins the study.

However, McLeod notes that recently, burials of female Norse immigrants have started to turn up in Eastern England. “An increase in the number of finds of Norse-style jewellery in the last two decades has led some scholars to suggest a larger number of female settlers. Indeed, it has been noted that there are more Norse female dress items than those worn by men,” says the study.

The Pentagon is set to announce that the DADT repeal is ready.

The Pentagon will announce tomorrow that the Secretary of Defense and the heads of each military branch have certified that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the military’s controversial policy barring openly gay men and women from serving in the armed forces, is ready to be repealed.

The leaders of each service branch have determined that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly will not harm military readiness. The move paves the way for the policy to be overturned in 60 days.

The announcement will take place in an event at the Pentagon tomorrow afternoon, just shortly after new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is formally sworn in.

This is one of the final steps in overturning the longstanding policy whereby service members are not allowed to admit they are gay and the military is allowed to ask if they are. President Obama pledged to reverse the policy, but only if military leaders agreed it is the right thing to do.

Congress repealed the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law last December, but the Pentagon still had to complete the certification.

As part of an effort to reassure the military leadership, individual service members, and concerned members of Congress, last year the Pentagon circulated confidential surveys to members of the military and their families asking their views on gays serving openly and what effect they believed it would have on their ability to perform their duties in battle and at home.

So, what’s your on your reading and blogging list today?