Anthony Weiner’s communications director has apologized after Talking Points Memo published her profanity-filled excoriation of a former Weiner-campaign intern, Olivia Nuzzi.

On Tuesday the New York Daily News ran an op-ed by Nuzzi about her experience on the campaign, in which she claimed that Weiner was unable to hire top talent and had to resort to placing relative unknowns in senior positions — including his communications director, Barbara Morgan, who, Nuzzi dismissively noted, “last worked as the press secretary for the New Jersey state education commissioner.” Nuzzi also said that many of her fellow interns joined in hopes of connecting with ”Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, [in order to] forge a potential connection to . . . Hillary Clinton, to get an inside track for a campaign position if she ran for president in 2016.”

Morgan struck back during a telephone interview with TPM; among other choice words, the communications director complained that “I’m dealing with, like, stupid f***ing interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed [non-disclosure agreements] and/or they proceeded to trash me.” She also vowed to sue Nuzzi and swore, ”F***ing s***bag. Nice f***ing glamour shot on the cover . . . Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again.”

When Business Insider asked Morgan if she had intended for her comments to go public, she responded, “NO NO NO NO NO.” Morgan apologized publicly: “In a moment of frustration, I used inappropriate language in what I thought was an off the record conversation. It was wrong and I am very sorry, which is what I said tonight when I called and emailed Olivia to apologize.”

From my most recent NRO article, on the need for the West to acknowledge its religious roots: “Our governments, with few exceptions, are so infested — stuffed, in fact — with agnostics that they are complicit in the Islamic campaign to represent the West as a completely corrupted materialist society with no connection to or belief in any spiritual concepts or any moral imperatives.”

Whether you agree or disagree, your comments are, as always, most welcome.
 

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

The key to understanding the Left is knowing that they inhabit a Manichean fantasy world in which history is controlled by roiling, magical forces, in which signs, symbols, and portents are more important than empirical reality and in which their opponents are not just wrong but evil. They see life as a zero-sum game of winners and losers, with themselves cast as the heroes of their own overarching ur-Narrative, from which all other their other dialectic narratives (rich vs. poor, black vs. white, “privileged” vs. the undeserving poor, the “war on women,” etc.) flow. 

Now along comes former Obama wunderkind speechwriter and Hillary Clinton fan Jon Favreau in the Daily Beast, indulging in a particularly revealing flight of “progressive” fantasy. In this latest installment, the not-entirely-irredeemable “moderate Republicans” have been routed by the orcs and uruk-hai of the far Right, who have finally “purified” the Republican party of its humanitarian streak and can now proceed with their villainous campaign to cast the rest of the world into benighted, perpetual darkness. After hailing a predictable list of “good” Republicans — new pin-up boy Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and, yes, John McCain and Lindsey Graham — for their enlightened responses to such things as federal aid for Hurricane Sandy victims and the recent capitulation on the filibuster, Favreau proceeds to whale the tar out of his revanchist and irredentist straw men:

None of these actions have endeared the small-government conservatives to their rivals for power, the no-government conservatives. No-government conservatives take their inspiration from Grover Norquist’s famous quote that government should be shrunk to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub. These Republicans, who make up most of the House and a healthy portion of the Senate, are on an uncompromising mission to abolish most government services, benefits, regulations, and taxes.

The goals of no-government conservatives are not primarily economic. They will propose more tax cuts in times of surplus and times of deficit. They care little when the nonpartisan experts and economists at the Congressional Budget Office say sequestration will cost up to 1.6 million jobs next year, or that immigration reform will boost our GDP, or that Obamacare will reduce the debt over time. No-government conservatives are not compelled by the evidence that temporary benefits such as food stamps and unemployment insurance put money in the pockets of those most likely to spend it at local businesses that will grow and create jobs as a result. Their only jobs agenda, their only growth agenda, their only deficit agenda is eliminating government, no matter how many people it helps or how big a boost it provides the economy.

Nor are the goals of no-government conservatives primarily political. They have advisers, they can read polls, and most of them probably know that shutting down the government or forcing a default would be, among other catastrophes, highly unpopular. They realize that rampant hostage-taking and filibuster-abuse are the chief contributors to the obstruction and gridlock that Americans of both parties hate.

They just don’t care. Jonathan Chait has written about the recent embrace of “procedural extremism” among many congressional Republicans, who have “evolved from being politically shrewd proponents of radical policy changes to a gang of saboteurs who would rather stop government from functioning at all.”

But for no-government conservatives, this has been their primary policy goal all along.Their fundamental philosophy is purely ideological—the idea that since government can’t do everything, it should do nothing. So as long as the public continues to see Washington as a dysfunctional circus of petty children, the conservative philosophy of government is vindicated. That is also precisely why no-government conservatives view the successful implementation of Obamacare as an existential threat—because it would prove that limited government intervention in the market can still be an effective force for good. It is why some Republicans are threatening a shutdown unless Obama agrees to defund the Affordable Care Act—a step they know can’t even be achieved through the annual budget process.

As if. In politics, the opposite of something is not necessarily nothing, as Favreau would have it — it’s a different something: in this case, responsive, responsible and limited government. 

Citing fellow lefty Jonathan Chait in an argument from authority and offering Grover Norquist as the poster boy for movement conservatives are just two of Favreau’s many fallacies. You can read a brief fisking of his pipe dream here, and of course you’re free to write your own, to which I would just add that I don’t think even Favreau believes what he’s written — not rationally, anyway. Rather, he’s articulating the Meta-Narrative, the fairy tale that regressive Neanderthals tell each other in order to try and make sense of a world that fundamentally frightens them. It’s the only way they can deal with such an inimical universe, one whose laws of gravity, physics, and economics constantly contradict their tribal beliefs and in which their beautiful theories are subject to relentless muggings by a gang of brutal facts from the Cro-Magnons on the other side of the river. 

Since July 3, General Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi has made it clear who runs Egypt: He does. He faces two great challenges. One is the Islamist element, spoiling for a fight to take back the power it so recently lost. The other, my focus here, is the economy.

The country once famous as the “breadbasket of the Nile” now imports something like 70 percent of its food. To make matters worse, a depressed economy could mean that the money will just not be there – other than gifts from Saudi Arabia and other governments – to fend off starvation. Plus, the prospect looms of severe cuts in the country’s Nile water allotment. What to do?

There is only one choice if Egypt is to break the bonds of poverty: Pull the military out of the economy. As detailed by Shana Marshall and Joshua Stacher for MERIP and Nimrod Raphaeli for MEMRI, what’s sometimes known as “Military, Inc.” controls somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of the economy. Its products

range from consumer goods such as laptops, flat-screen televisions, sewing machines, refrigerators, pots and pans, plastic table covers, butane gas bottles, olive oil, and bottled water to medical equipment, tourism, real estate, and gas and energy. The military owns and operates no fewer than nine factories for macaroni.

The military has grown so large because of preferential tax treatment, subsidized labor, an extra-legal status, old-boy networks, and many other privileges. As can be imagined, its enterprises run along socialistic lines and are steeped in nepotism and baroque forms of corruption.

Egypt’s economy can only take off if Sisi has the courage to tell his colleagues that the gig is up, that the armed forces are getting out of the pasta business so that Egyptians can build a proper economy. I can’t imagine he will do this of his own accord, for officers have become accustomed to the good life, with plenty of money and an abundance of free servants.

Hammering at this message is one of the more important actions that foreign governments can take when meeting with Sisi and the military leadership. 

Silvio Berlusconi may be a rascal, but not even rascals deserve to be railroaded. As I write, we still don’t know the verdict of Italy’s Supreme Court on the charge of tax evasion leveled against him and his company Mediaset. It was expected earlier today (Tuesday) but it may be postponed. If convicted, he could be imprisoned, and he would almost certainly be barred from office for five years

What we know already, however, are some fascinating facts that are relevant to the verdict. The first is the number of charges leveled against Mr. Berlusconi by Italy’s left-wing judiciary over the years. It is, give or take the odd accusation, an impressive 480.

And that is just the beginning. We can break down that figure into quite compelling statistical comparisons. Mr. Berlusconi became Italy’s prime minister for the first of three times in 1994. In that year he defeated a left-wing alliance in which former Communists were the single largest party and which had been confident of finally getting to govern Italy only a few months before. Now, knowing that, how many times do you think that Berlusconi was required to appear in court before 1994? And how many times between 1994 and today?

Sorry, not even close. The answers are 0 and 2,800 respectively.

For 19 years Berlusconi managed to combine being prime minister (three times) and leader of the opposition with a successful career as full-time permanent defendant. Tom Wolfe never imagined a Great White Defendant of his stature. And in all those years he managed to avoid final conviction even if he sometimes lost cases in the lower courts. (Another appeal is still pending.) He refutes the iron-clad certainty of out-of-control over-zealous prosecutors that if you throw enough charges at someone, the court is bound to think they must be guilty of something.

Or does he?

Today he is waiting for the Supreme Court verdict on the accusation that his company failed to pay 7 million euros in legitimate taxes in 2002–2003. Now, consider this statistic: In that year Mediaset paid 517 million euros in taxation. Mr. Berlusconi is generally reckoned to be clever. Ditto his lawyers and accountants. Why would any of them risk jail over a measly 7 million more?

The case stinks. And if the verdict goes against Berlusconi, then the politicized Italian justice system stinks even more. It has been waging a political vendetta in legalistic drag against him for 19 years because he deprived the Communists of power for most of that period. And that’s a worst offense against justice than anything of which Berlusconi has been accused (including the alleged fling with “Ruby the Heart-Stealer.”)

Berlusconi may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard; and Italy’s principal bastards may be lawyers and judges, but they’re still bastards.

Charles Krauthammer attacked President’s Obama so-called “grand bargain” budget proposal on Fox News Tuesday evening, stating that the “ultimate irony” of his plan is that it “prevents real tax reform.”

The president said in a speech in Chattanooga, Tenn. on Tuesday that he would work with Republicans on reforming corporate tax codes as long as they were willing to “use the money from transitioning to a simpler tax system for a significant investment in creating middle-class jobs.” Republicans have attacked this proposal as an attempt to repeat of the kind of stimulus-spending that Obama pushed through in his first term.

Krauthammer implied that Obama has worn out the phrase “jump start” when talking about the economy, especially considering that his past initiatives have failed to create jobs. There is a “national consensus” on the need for tax reforms to stimulate growth, but, Krauthammer said, the president “wants to blow it up by using the revenue to spend it again on the same old stuff.”

Rand Paul delivered the latest blow in his recent tiff with possible 2016 foe Chris Christie. After Christie accused Paul’s state of Kentucky benefiting from “pork-barrel spending” more than New Jersey (since it receives more benefits from the federal government than it pays in taxes), Paul turned the tables and dubbed the governor “the king of bacon.”

On CNN this evening, Paul countered that the amount of federal funding Kentucky receives is in part due to Kentucky’s two military bases, a spending priority he assumed Christie would support. He argued that those who consider defense a top priority — as Paul said he believes it is, too — then its costs must be offset elsewhere in the federal budget, including a more “responsible” approach to Sandy relief, which Paul wanted to distribute on a year-by-year basis, offset by cuts in foreign aid. After his entree that “this is the king of bacon, talking about bacon,” Paul later resorted a number of times to his “gimme, gimme, gimme” description of Christie’s spending practices.

“For him to accuse me of pork-barrel spending, I’m probably the most fiscally conservative member of Congress,” Paul said.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the regulatory cost of complying with Medicare and its payment rate is driving doctors to steer clear of the program’s elderly patients. Here are the numbers:

CMS said 9,539 physicians who had accepted Medicare opted out of the program in 2012, up from 3,700 in 2009. That compares with 685,000 doctors who were enrolled as participating physicians in Medicare last year, according to CMS, which has never released annual opt-out figures before.

Meanwhile, the proportion of family doctors who accepted new Medicare patients last year, 81%, was down from 83% in 2010, according to a survey by the American Academy of Family Physicians of 800 members. The same study found that 4% of family physicians are now in cash-only or concierge practices, where patients pay a monthly or yearly fee for special access to doctors, up from 3% in 2010.

A study in the journal Health Affairs this month found that 33% of primary-care physicians didn’t accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.

As you can see in the following chart, the trend is clear:

The trend is being driven in part by frustration with the regulatory compliance burden and the fact that “Medicare payment rates that haven’t kept pace with inflation,” and that there is a ”threat of more cuts to come.” This could be made dramatically worse in 2014 because of an automatically scheduled cut to reimbursement rates, though this has always been avoided with legislation that puts it off. Until now, Congress has systematically postponed the cuts, though they’ve also used them as ”savings” to lower the cost of legislation, including Obamacare.

Very few people believe that these cuts will ever be implemented. Allowing these cuts in doctors’ fees to be implemented would reduce Medicare spending, but doctors will be very upset. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they don’t want to work for less money. As a result, if the cuts were implemented, and once doctors understand that their rates aren’t going back up — no matter how much they lobby and scream about the unfairness of it all —  they will likely stop serving Medicare patients or at least reduce the number of Medicare patients they see, feeding the trend described above. This is the way it works.

Seniors are already upset with the way things are going (they still have to pay a Medicare premium even if they can only find doctors to see by paying out-of-pocket) are unlikely to like the way things will continue to go if the cuts are implemented.

Meanwhile, here is what some doctors are doing in their Medicare after-life:

Doctors who don’t take Medicare say they don’t necessarily raise rates significantly. Some say not having to submit claims and file mandated reports allows them to keep their overhead low. They can also adjust their fees to fit patients’ needs.

“We give discounts to teachers and preachers, and anybody who comes in wearing spurs gets $5 off,” said Juliette Madrigal-Dersch, a pediatrician and internist in Marble Falls, Texas. She says she also treats patients who develop cancer free of charge. “I couldn’t do that if I took Medicare. It’s considered an illegal enticement.” Dr. Madrigal-Dersch is president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a conservative group that advocates private-pay medicine. “It’s gone from being a fringy, rebellious thing to a business model,” she added.

When the Mayo Clinic’s small family practice office in Glendale, Ariz., stopped taking Medicare in 2009, only about 500 of its 3,500 Medicare patients stayed on. Since then, an additional 250 elderly patients have joined the practice, paying between $200 to $575 a visit. Physicians say dropping out isn’t easy, and some medical specialties are more dependent on Medicare than others.

The whole thing is here.

Secretary of State Kerry announced today the formal revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Coinciding with Kerry’s efforts to jumpstart the negotiating process, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas laid out part of his vision for a future Palestinian state, before a group of mainly Egyptian journalists in Cairo:.“In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands,” the Palestinian leader said.

If Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Jewish state plans to evict a minority religious group from its territories, there would be no shortage of outrage from the European Union and violence would likely emerge from pro-Palestinian quarters.  

Meanwhile, Abbas gets a free pass for bigotry.  

The incorrigibly reactionary view of Abbas’s is hardly surprising. It is worth recalling the remarks of Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestinian envoy to the United States, back in 2011 in Washington. Commenting about the presence of Jews in the disputed territories, he said, “Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated . . .”

The Palestinian state envisioned by Areikat would not only expunge a Jewish presence but would also likely target gay citizens. The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack asked Areikat whether homosexuals would be accepted in a Palestinian state. “Ah, this is an issue that’s beyond my [authority].” Areikat responded.

Moreover, Abbas’s ongoing crackdown on Palestinian journalists certainly does not bode well for any newly created Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Security detained the journalist Haroun Abu Arrah in May for interrogation. Abu Arrah said “They asked me provocative and personal questions, such as whether I was having or had sexual relationships. I told the interrogator that this was none of his business.” The interrogator’s response: ”You better answer the questions.”

The persecution of Christians in the West Bank has intensified under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, too. Dexter Van Zile, an expert on Christians in the Middle East, brought the case of the Bethlehem pastor Reverend Naim Khoury and the First Baptist Church to the fore; the Palestinian government ruled that the church lacks the religious authority to operate.

In short, Israel simply does not have a meaningful negotiating partner. Palestinian society is divided between the undemocratic, scandalously corrupt Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian-backed Hamas organization in Gaza.

Even putting aside the social and political deficiencies of the Palestinian state in the disputed West Bank territories, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip remains opposed to a peace agreement with Israel. Hamas’s ideology in the Palestinian enclave in Gaza is animated by lethal anti-Semitism and violent hatred of Israel.

All of this helps to bolster the argument that Kerry should devote his considerable energy and political capital to dislodging Hamas. 

To reach a peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sine qua non of any deal would entail a unified Palestinian leadership committed to Western values and capitalism, and a Gaza Strip free from  Hamas.  It is a tall order.

— Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal.

Pennsylvania district judge William Wenner has ordered a criminal trial for a trio of ex–Penn State officials, including the president and the former athletic director, charging that they helped cover up the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal. 

Sandusky was sentenced in October 2012 to 30–60 years in prison for abusing ten boys during his tenure as defensive coordinator of Penn State’s football team. The former Penn State officials are accused of a “conspiracy of silence” for failing to report to authorities a 2001 allegation that Sandusky was caught abusing a boy in the school’s locker room. A former assistant football coach, Mike McQueary, testified that he witnessed the abuse and reported it to Curley, Schultz, and the late Joe Paterno, Penn State’s then–head coach. 

Former president Graham Spanier, former senior vice president Gary Schultz, and former athletic director Tim Curley have previously been charged in connection with the scandal. In 2011, Curley and Schultz were charged with perjury and failure to report the suspected abuse. In 2012, all three were charged by a grand jury with endangering the welfare of children, criminal conspiracy, and obstruction of justice (Spanier was also charged with perjury). 

World magazine brings some happy news today: Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler (R., Wash.) and her husband Daniel Beutler have announced the birth of their daughter. What makes this particular arrival noteworthy is that Abigail was diagnosed in utero with Potter’s Sequence, a rare condition that impairs kidney and lung formation. Doctors informed the Beutlers that their daughter would not be able to breathe and would therefore expire moments after birth; they recommended an abortion.

Instead, the couple sought out treatment and prayed for a miracle. They finally discovered an experimental procedure, involving saline injections into the uterus to assist in lung development, and physicians at Johns Hopkins who were willing to try it. On July 15, a mere 28 weeks into the pregnancy, their faith and persistence yielded the world’s first recorded survivor of Potter’s Sequence. Despite lacking functional kidneys and weighing a mere 44 ounces at birth, little Abigail is breathing independently and responding well to peritoneal dialysis.

In a statement on the congresswoman’s Facebook page, the Beutlers thank the many doctors and nurses who rendered assistance, as well as “the thousands who joined us in praying for a miracle. But most of all, we are grateful to God for answering those prayers.”

Democrats are reintroducing that hardy (but never passed) perennial, the “End Racial Profiling Act,” which purportedly aims to end racial profiling by law-enforcement officers. This time around, the sponsors are trying to tie it in with, naturally, Trayvon Martin — even though the bill has nothing to do with the George Zimmerman case, since whatever you think of George Zimmerman and whatever he did, he is not a law-enforcement officer.

In my statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, I summarized my testimony this way: “(1) care must be taken in defining the term ‘racial profiling’; (2) the amount of racial profiling that occurs is frequently exaggerated, and care must be taken in analyzing the data in this area; (3) with those caveats, racial profiling as I will define it is a bad policy and I oppose it, with (4) a possible exception in some antiterrorism contexts; but (5) there are problems with trying to legislate in this area in general, and the End Racial Profiling Act in particular is problematic.” ”Problematic” is an understatment, but among the problems with the bill are its encouragement of litigation and, in particular, its use of a “disparate impact” approach — which will actually encourage race-based decisionmaking by the police and which, even more ironically, creates equal-protection problems for the bill. 

In my oral testimony, I also noted that the reason for the racial profiling that does exist is the disproportionate amount of street crime committed by African Americans, and that this is largely a result of the 72 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate among them. Finally, I pointed out that, if the police are hamstrung, the victims will of course be law-abiding folks in high-crime areas — who are themselves disproportionately black and poor.

The San Diego City Council is suing Democratic mayor Bob Filner to recover any money spent defending him in a sexual-harassment lawsuit, the local ABC affiliate is reporting. 

Earlier today, the station reported that Filner’s attorney had requested the city’s taxpayers foot his legal fees; council president Todd Gloria said earlier he didn’t know if the city ”can justify that expense, given the personal nature of the allegations.”

Filner is accused by seven women of sexually harassing them in various ways, including attempted kisses, sexually charged remarks, and sexual advances. His former communications director, Irene McCormack Jackson, sued both Filner and the city last week. The embattled mayor has already pledged to take time off to enter therapy.

Also on the plane back from Rio, Pope Francis talked about austerity, particularly the need for it inside the Vatican, among those who work for the Church. 

It’s a challenge to all Christians, because it is Christian. Radical surrender and all … 

Similar to his comments about the case of a monsignor in the news, though, the words and witness are processed in many different ways, by many different people. Including Italian fashion designers who say they have been inspired to simplify their couture, according to the International Herald Tribune. 

If you get beyond style to substance, you see there is much continuity between Francis and Benedict. In fact, the more you read of Cardinal Bergoglio, the more you see how often he would cite Pope Benedict as cardinal, as he does as pontiff! Included in a much heralded, and beautiful Aparecida document about the state of the Church and a vision for evangelization the Latin American bishops issued in 2007 under his leadership. 

There’s also the fact that, had Pope Benedict not resigned, the world would have never met Francis. So if you like this pope, recall he’s a great gift of his predeccesor, trusting that resignation was his call.  

If you’re interested in more about the continuity, I write about it for the Knights of Columbus here. 

Apparently Obamacare and its exchanges are good enough for the American people, but not for members of Congress and their staff (though adding to irritation is the fact that congressmen and staff aren’t eligible for the premium subsidies to afford the comprehensive coverage they are used to). The New York Times has the story:

Under a wrinkle that dates back to enactment of the law, members of Congress and thousands of their aides are required to get their coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.

But the law does not provide any obvious way for the federal government to continue paying its share of the premiums for the comprehensive coverage.

If the government cannot do so, it could mean an additional expense of $5,000 a year for individuals and $11,000 for families under some of the most popular plans.

Not surprisingly, that idea is unpopular on Capitol Hill. . . .

“It’s a very serious concern,” said Representative Billy Long, a Missouri Republican who said staff members were “freaked out” at the prospect of paying the full cost of insurance out of their own pockets. . . .

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service pinpointed the problem 10 days after President Obama signed the health care law in March 2010. Since then neither Congress nor the administration has addressed it.

With the exchanges scheduled to open in just nine weeks, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with a creative interpretation of the health care law that would allow the federal government to kick in for insurance as private employers do, but so far an answer has proved elusive.

“Perhaps,” he said, “they could buy coverage on an exchange, pay for it on their own and be reimbursed later by the government. You would need a law to appropriate money for that.”

At a Congressional hearing in April, House members pressed the administration to say what would happen to their health insurance if they went into exchanges.

Last week Avik Roy reported that unions, too, are not too happy about their members’ being dumped into the exchanges. He writes:

In the private sector, many workers are concerned about losing their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage, and being dumped into Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges. Two weeks ago, representatives of three large labor unions fired off a harsh letter to Democratic leaders in Congress, complaining that Obamacare would “shatter…our hard-earned health benefits” and create “nightmare scenarios” for their members. Today, we learn that the National Treasury Employees Union—the union that includes employees of the Internal Revenue Service—is asking its members to write letters to their Congressmen, stating that they are “very concerned” about legislative efforts requiring IRS and Treasury employees to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges.

“I am a federal employee and one of your constituents,” the letter begins. “I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).”

That’s pretty telling, I think.

While I have sympathy for the staffers suddenly being faced with a large increase in health-insurance premiums (especially for low-level staffers making very little money), it’s worth remembering that many Americans will be subjected to such hikes, too, because of Obamacare. One also wonders whether this would have happened if the law hadn’t be written so quickly.

We are now nine weeks away from the official debut of the law’s exchanges, but the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has not clarified whether or not the government will be allowed to provide subsidies for congressional employees though the exchanges. Michael Cannon has the following predictions about how this whole thing may unfold:

That creates the potential for a sneaky, backdoor way that ObamaCare supporters — say, the Senate Democrats who set budgets for congressional offices — could shield their staff from ObamaCare: shift staff from personal to committee and leadership offices.

Or, the White House could just decide to make the same contribution to their Exchange coverage, statute be damned. It wouldn’t be the first time this White House tried to protect ObamaCare by spending money that Congress never authorized.

Congressional watchdogs, be on the lookout. 

As a member of our armed forces, Bradley Manning assumed a special responsibility to protect classified information, a responsibility he abdicated when he turned over a vast quantity of classified government documents to Wikileaks. His conviction on charges under the Espionage Act is yet another vindication of the rule of law in the contentious arena of national-security leaks. Earlier this year, Manning pleaded guilty to a series of lesser charges that could bring him 20 years in prison. The prosecution pressed ahead with the remaining counts, including the controversial one of “aiding the enemy” on which Manning was today acquitted.

The government’s theory on this last count, that the enemy — al-Qaeda — was aided because, like the rest of the world, it was able to read the classified documents Manning provided to Wikileaks, seemed to me be an unwise stretch of the law with a chain of undesirable implications.

For better and for worse, classified information leaks out of Washington’s national-security machinery on a daily basis. Our newspapers are full of stories based upon leaks and much of what we know about American foreign policy is the result of these leaks. While some leaks — of necessary secrets — can endanger the country, many other leaks — of unnecessary secrets, of which our government has a wealth — have few adverse consequences at all. If routine leaking is turned into a capital crime — which is the direction suggested by the aiding the enemy charge — our understanding of what our government is doing around the world would have suffered a significant blow. The judge’s decision today strikes me as an appropriate balance that, if matched by an appropriate sentence, will meet the twin demands of deterrence and justice. 

— Gabriel Schoenfeld is author of Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law.

Over at The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin is worked up today about McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case on the Supreme Court’s docket this coming term. 

Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, an individual can contribute up to $2,600 to a candidate’s campaign, but only up to a total of $48,600. This means an individual who, for example, wants to help every Republican in a competitive House race with a maximum contribution can’t do it — he’ll be able to support just 18 candidates to the legal max.

Plaintiff Shaun McCutcheon is trying to figure out why this is so. If the first 18 candidates aren’t corrupted by his contribution, what is so different about candidate No. 19? Or 20? or 100? He thinks the First Amendment ought to allow him to associate with as many candidates as he likes, and to spread his message as far as he can.

The Republican party, another plaintiff in the case, raises the same issue about party committees: The law limits an individual to contributing $32,400 to a national political party committee and $5,000 to a PAC, but also imposes an overall limit of $74,600 on all such contributions. So an individual can give the maximum legal contribution to the RNC, and to the Republican Senatorial Committee, but if he does so, he can’t give the otherwise legal maximum to the Republican Congressional Committee. I guess that’s okay if you think it’s more important that Republicans win the Senate than that they keep the House.

That part of the case dealing with limits on giving to individual candidates ought to be a slam dunk. The party issue is tougher, because the Court has, in the past, expressed concern that donors could give large, unearmarked contributions to parties that then might pass them on to candidates in accordance with the donor’s wishes, thus creating large, “corrupting” contributions to the candidate. The Court has never quite explained how the donor can assure that an unearmarked contribution is given to the candidate he wants to corrupt, but nonetheless, it has so held. 

Of course, if the members of Congress were smart (and here we mean Democrats, since Republicans would do this), they would raise the limits on giving to parties generally. If limits on giving to party committees had kept pace with inflation since they were first enacted in 1974, they’d be over $90,000 today, not $32,400. That explains in large part why super PACs, which can raise and spend without limit, are starting to take over functions once handled by the parties. Members of Congress, and the political parties with which they are affiliated, essentially labor under a self-inflicted wound.

There is an official transcript available in Italian. 

Among some of the color in the official translated excerpts in English: There had been some joking among papal-visit-to-Rio on Twitter about the secret Jesuit codes that must be contained in the first Jesuit pope’s briefcase he insisted on carrying himself. The pope revealed all on the plane ride back: “There wasn’t the key to the atomic bomb! There is a razor, a breviary, my diary, a book to read — I brought one on St. Therese of Lisieux, to whom I am devoted. . . . I always take this bag when I travel. It’s normal. We should be normal!”

And about all the security concerns, he said: “With less security, I was able to stay with the people, to embrace them, greet them, without armoured cars . . . it is the security of trusting in people . . . yes, there’s always the danger of encountering a madman, but then there is always the Lord who protects us, isn’t there? It is also madness to separate a bishop from his people, and I prefer this madness.”

And perhaps the most consequential comment he made, at a time when we drown in rhetoric about a “war on women” Catholics and others are supposedly engaged in was about women. He stated clearly that “Mary was more important than the Apostles, bishops, and so women in the Church are also more important than bishops and priests.” Again, this is not news to anyone who believes in the Incarnation and Mary of Nazareth’s world-changing “yes” to God, but it’s not quite the conventional view of what the Church believes about women. But here it is. And, again, like the comments about mercy he made, this isn’t the Gospel According to Pope Francis, made up while riding an alItalia charter, this is what the Church believes.