This and That

Photo: Pete Souza

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Six months ago today, we made history. And we’re not done yet. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 6, 2013

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Line of the day?

Charles Pierce: Just as Darrell Issa and his merry men are ready to engage in another round of Outrage Kabuki on the subject of Benghazi, BENGHAZI!, BENGHAZI!!, some of the air is going out of the balloon already, and the high-pitched whistling seems to have reached a frequency that can be heard at the dog’s breakfast known as Fox And Friends.

And when you’ve lost a human tack-hammer like Brian Kilmeade, it’s going to be tough to sell anyone smarter, which is, you know, like, everybody.

More here

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Jonathan Bernstein: If you’re not inside the conservative information feedback loop, you might not be aware that within that loop the Benghazi “scandal” is still going at 100 percent strength. Months after the actual incident, which was back in September. Even though no one has ever made clear exactly what terrible secret was the subject of the supposed cover-up; even though a succession of “revelations” have all turned out to be nonsense (here’s one from just last week). Doesn’t matter; discredited accusations are just forgotten and new ones are substituted.

More here

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New post || Open thread – competing claims in Syria | The People’s View: thepeoplesview.net/2013/05/open-t…

— Liberal Librarian (@Lib_Librarian) May 6, 2013

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Dan Rather: “All of these things we’ve said about what the president could do, should do, might have, could have, but the central  thing to keep in mind is his opponents — you talk about taking them out to dinner, making nice with them — these people, politically, want to  cut his heart out and throw his liver to the dogs.”

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Heritage vs. Heritage: Major immigration report released today directly contradicts its 2006 study thkpr.gs/107cMgE

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) May 6, 2013

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UPDATE: Author of Heritage’s 2006 study on immigration reform blasts Heritage’s 2013 study as brutally dishonest thkpr.gs/107cMgE

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) May 6, 2013

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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on The View today:

Catching Up

President Barack Obama with a three-year-old relative of Rosa Parks after unveiling a statue in her honor

Reminded me of:

Flickr

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This evening:

7:30: President Obama delivers remarks at the Business Council dinner and answer questions, Park Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC (Pooled Press for Remarks)

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TPM

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Just catching up with reaction to what Scalia said today. Absolutely stunning. More in the morning, just a few snippets:

ThinkProgress: There were audible gasps in the Supreme Court’s lawyers’ lounge, where audio of the oral argument is pumped in for members of the Supreme Court bar, when Justice Antonin Scalia offered his assessment of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. He called it a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

….It should be noted that even one of Scalia’s fellow justices felt the need to call out his remark. Justice Sotomayor asked the attorney challenging the Voting Right Act whether he thought voting rights are a racial entitlement as soon as he took the podium for rebuttal.

Full post here

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Charles Pierce: …. Sotomayor, for whom this seems very, very personal, made an argument from history that discrimination is an infinitely mutable thing and that, as soon as you find a remedy for one form of it, human ingenuity will devise three new ones…..

……it was hard not to go back to Florida, and to all the people I met who were waiting in line for six and seven hours to vote because the state had deliberately enacted policies to make it more difficult. Those policies were discriminatory. The people enacting them knew exactly what they were doing. They knew who those policies were aimed at as surely as did the county registrars administering the literacy tests did back in 1965…..

Full post here

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Greg Sargent: Judging by all the early reporting on the first round of Supreme Court arguments about a key section of the Voting Rights Act, that provision may be in real peril. Conservative justices expressed sharp skepticism of the law, with much attention being paid to Antonin Scalia’s description of it as a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

…. all may not be lost. That’s because proponents of the Voting Rights Act are focused mainly on holding on to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Full post here

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Steve Benen: I’m beginning to think an infectious disease is spreading in the nation’s capital. Symptoms include memory loss (forgetting everything Republicans have done in recent years), blurred vision (an inability to see obvious GOP ploys), and an uncontrollable urge to blame “both sides” for everything, even when it doesn’t make any sense.

The disease has already affected pundits like Bob Woodward, Ron Fournier, David Brooks, nearly everyone on the network Sunday shows, and today reaches the editorial board of the Washington Post. Indeed, the Post’s editors seem to have come down with an especially acute case today, as evidenced this bang-your-head-against-your-desk editorial on the sequester, which cavalierly ignores the paper’s own reporting, and demands that President Obama “lead” by somehow getting congressional Republicans to be more responsible.

Full post here

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President Barack Obama talks with Congressional leaders prior to the Rosa Parks statue unveiling ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Feb. 27, 2013. Pictured, from left, are: Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Assistant Democratic Leader Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.; Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.; House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio; and House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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First lady Michelle Obama at a “Let’s Move!” event in Clinton, Miss.

… with Rachael Ray

More in the morning

Eight years ago…..

January 2005, Barack Obama sworn in as US Senator

January 2009, the Inauguration ….. never saw that coming, eh Dick?

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will again administer the oath of office to President Barack Obama during his second inauguration this month, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced on Friday.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will take the oath officially on Sunday, Jan. 20 and again on Jan. 21 in a ceremonial swearing-in at the Capitol. Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be the fourth woman to administer the oath when she swears in the vice president, the committee said.

‘a remarkable diversity achievement’

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with Justice Sonia Sotomayor prior to a reception for the new Supreme Court Justice at the White House, on Aug. 12, 2009.

AP: President Barack Obama is moving at an historic pace to try to diversify the nation’s federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn’t selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships.

 More than 70 percent of Obama’s confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were “non-traditional,” or nominees who were not white males. That far exceeds the percentages in the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton (48.1 percent) and George W. Bush (32.9 percent), according to Sheldon Goldman, author of the authoritative book “Picking Federal Judges”.

 “It is an absolutely remarkable diversity achievement,” said Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst…

 …. The president won Senate confirmation of the first Latina to the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. With the confirmation of Justice Elena Kagan, he has put three women on the high court for the first time. The Obama administration also nominated and won confirmation of the first openly gay man to a federal judgeship: former Clinton administration official J. Paul Oetken, to an opening in New York City.

 … Of the 98 Obama nominees confirmed to date, the administration says 21 percent are African-American, 11 percent are Hispanic, 7 percent are Asian-American and almost half – 47 percent – are women…

 … “The more diverse the courts, the more confidence people have in our judicial system,” said Nan Aron of the liberal Alliance for Justice. “Having a diverse judiciary also enriches the decision-making process.”

Full article here

historic successes, historic delays

state of the union

Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

“Don’t cry – again.”

A seat sits empty for recovering Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

…with John, Dallas and Roxanna Green, family of the late Christina Taylor Green of Tucson

…with Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)

with Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill, right, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., center, and Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa

Read the text of the address here

President Obama’s arrival:

The official White House video:

Here’s the C-Span version:

Enhanced White House version:

ah, more change you can believe in

The Supreme Court began a new era Monday with three women serving together for the first time – Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Obama’s appointments, Sonia Sotomayor (left) and Elena Kagan (right)

three guiding lights

First Lady Michelle Obama listens as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor talk with a group of young women, during a mentoring event at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., March 17, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

accidents will, eh, happen

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has a broken ankle, uses crutches as she arrives at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on February 25, 2010

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leave the Oval Office after a meeting on June 22, 2009. Secretary Clinton broke her elbow the week before.

Sonia Sotomayor (then Supreme Court nominee) walks with crutches on her way to Capitol Hill June 8, 2009 in Washington, DC. Sotomayor fractured her ankle that morning.