Climate Sunday: 97 Percent of Climate Scientists Can't Be Wrong

(Via Mother Jones)

Long story short: That's a hell of a lot of people to be a "hoax", amirite? That's because it isn't.

Drunk on Scandals to Help Them Forget

You know, you won't hear this from the "lamestream media", but in a week with a handful of interesting political stories, one of the most important basically got swallowed in the news cycle. Of course, I'm talking about one of the most momentous House votes of our time--the 37th vote to repeal Obamacare.  This vote is one of the most important meaningless votes that ever got voted on, because for a lot of freshman GOP congressfolks, it was the very first time they got to vote against Obamacare, and they will remember it for a long time because you never forget the first time you voted against Obamacare, even if you spend a career trying to repeat the experience. Which it looks like some of our current congressfolk sincerely mean to do. And the 37th time will be the most momentous vote of our time until the 38th time. And so on.

Undoing Obama has been a force that has lent meaning to the Republican party. The ACA is only a symbol of what Obama means to them--a big-government program for a Big-Government style Democrat. Although the Tea Party seemed to rise up as a reaction against the bank bailout and the "porkulus", opposition to the health care reform plan became a huge focus of the movement, which was credited with the massive Republican gains in the 2010 elections. Perhaps the IRS could be a little forgiven for supposing, then, that Tea Party orgs were political?

Well, maybe not if House Republicans have their way (with the narrative, like they often do). But it does seem like there may be details that suggest there was nothing retaliatory or sinister in the closer inspection that such groups received--

They Don't Make'em Like They Used To

I dunno. I sat back yesterday following links from Twitter, and then did the same thing this evening. It seems to me that the problem with following three "scandals" at once is that, when they all start to kind of unravel a little (can I still complain that the "oppression" of the Tea Party groups was being harassed with...paperwork? And that they were by no means alone in being looked into?) I just can't keep up. It seems to me that the story that has the biggest hole blown in it is the Benghazi talking points issue. And I'm not even all that sure that the GOP is that interested in pursuing the AP phone records story, especially since they were the ones who were demanding that the administration do something about the leaks, and I'm not entirely sure at the end of the day that this First Amendment issue is such a great deal for them if it means they have to make an argument against doing something in the name of national security. I guess the IRS story will have staying power because the IRS is a perennial bad guy and the Tea Party types get to play martyr (because they had to do...paperwork).  But it's a little dry, isn't it? And it really looks more like a bureaucratic cock-up than an abuse of power, at this point, anyway.

And yet I don't anticipate that it's all going to wind down so that we can go back to talking about the sequester and debt ceilings and stuff like that. I'm just wondering how the GOP is going to keep the plates spinning even while they break.

Let Me Get this Straight--

There seems to have been some misconceptions here, so I hope I have understood this story properly. Although I'm not technically a journalist even though I play one on my blog, it seems to me that what has happened here goes a little like this--

Some AP reporters got information regarding the thing we don't call the War on Terror anymore, in which a terrorist plot was foiled because the US still does fight the terrorism. The government tries to classify info about the particulars because they'd greatly prefer their methods not be revealed to the bad guys. They got this leaked information from some official in the US government, because duh, who else would know, amirite?  So in order to stop this kind of drip, drip, drip of classified info, DOJ tried to find out who was doing it, and got a subpoena and obtained phone records.

With me so far? Good. Now, the info that was leaked by a government official fell into the laps of reporters who were doing their jobs--reporting! You can argue that maybe reporters should consider the source or make prudent judgements about what stories you run with and which you don't, but if a government official drops a goodie in your lap, why wouldn't you throw up your hands and cry "Just like Woodward and Bernstein!"

It doesn't look to me like DOJ was trying to chill the journalists doing their thing, though--and here's where the language I keep reading gets me: they obtained phone records through a subpoena. That isn't the same thing as a wiretap, is it? Here's what they got:

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

You know what I don't see there? That they got what they would have been looking for--who those reporters were talking to. And it makes more sense that's what they were after. You know, to plug the leaks.

Just to Give the IRS/Tea Party Story a Once-Over

I'll admit, there's probably some reason for concern among conservatives over the story that the IRS investigated a number of new Tea Party organizations applying for tax-exempt status, but I do want to point out that there are some strict laws regarding politicking and tax exempt status, and it's not unreasonable to point out that investigating that sort of thing is a part of what the IRS does. Also, tying the hands of the IRS with respect to looking into situations where groups may be violating tax law isn't fair to the taxpayers, and may cast a pall on other, necessary investigations.

This actually isn't the first noteworthy time that the IRS has investigated non-profits over the potential for abuse. There have been  long-standing issues regarding the clarity with which federal tax laws regarding exempt status and political activity are understood, and this more usually makes the news in relation to church/state issues. For example, All Saints Episcopal Church was investigated regarding a 2004 sermon that may have criticized President Bush too particularly, and The United Church of Christ was investigated for its apparent support of 2008 Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. But other non-profit groups have also faced tight scrutiny, such as the NAACP, which was also investigated in 2004 aparently for criticism of President Bush. One could argue that the investigation smacks of having a partisan bias, but then again, the problem with separating raising political awareness, championing certain causes, and voter education with outright politicking is just that--an issue of partisanship.

Also, in the period just after President Obama took office, it should be pointed out that there was a swelling trend of new Tea Party and Patriot-named organizations being created. So I don't find it out of the realm of possibility that the agency was, in part, responding to a changing pattern in tax-exempt registration that bore looking into, without any particular direction to do so from above.

But that's just my quick take.

Climate Sunday: The Evidence for Climate Change Without Using Computer Models or the IPCC

(h/t Little Green Footballs.)

This is a pretty excellent explainer of how CO2 does cause a warmer atmosphere and basically what we mean by "greenhouse effect"--it nicely debunks the most common denialist complaint. Basically, there is no better excuse for denialism than not knowing what one is talking about.

And here's a nice follow-up via Think Progress: 99 One-Liners Rebutting Denier Talking Points. And there are links to all the science. So, uh. Yeah. Lots of science, there.

It's not that I don't care, but I just haven't blogged about Benghazi

Sure, it might be one of those things where the Republicans are essentially pointing fingers at the Obama Administration as if it was a case of Worst. President. Ever.* even though, as the above graphic and this post by Bob Cesca  remind us, there certainly had been terrorist attacks on US citizens abroad under the previous administration without this level of concern--and all in order to...fund-raise? Or take shots at the reputation of the biggest perceived 2016 presidential threat the Dems have?

Well, that sure is what it looks like to me on both counts, but my outrage-o-meter over that sort of shenanigans was pretty well played-out during the Clinton Administration.  Surely they can aim lower than that. And I don't doubt they will.**

* With respects to anyone having the title of W.P.E., though, the more I think it over, the more the Reagan Administration strikes me as truly corrupt, in ways that I was too young to totally comprehend back when it was "current events" and which only comes into focus after time has elapsed. They sold weapons to Iran to fund an illegal war.  And Oliver North works for Fox News. And somehow, Fox News with a straight face would allege terrorists killing four people in Libya is a bigger scandal than Watergate.

I could take wingnut lessons, but I don't think I will ever gain fluency.

** Although on this matter, I think Sen. Inhofe sets the bar for tone:

“I think that she has gotten by with that type of a forceful attitude, something that’s not normally accustomed — that you don’t hear from women as much as you do men. And she came out so forcefully, and you could tell that it was orchestrated at the time that she said it,” Inhofe said in an interview Thursday on “The Rusty Humphries Show.”

A low tone, right? Asso profundo, I believe.