If one lives in an oppressive system, like Iran or North Korea, then, yes, one can quite easily make the claim that government can be evil.
Modern history is littered with examples of evil governments, from Stalin’s USSR to Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
But what all these governments have in common is a lack of agency among its subjects. The people who lived and continue to live under those regimes have no political control over their lives. Decisions are mandated from some remote source, and all opposition is quashed. With my cantankerous nature, I certainly wouldn’t want to live in the Iran of Ahmedinajad, or the Belarus of Lukashenko.
This is not the case in the United States of America.
1:05: Tours Ellicott Dredges (which manufactures innovative dredges and dredge equipment being sold for infrastructure projects across the country and around the world)
1:20: Delivers remarks
2:15: Visits a community center
3:0: Departs Baltimore
3:25: Arrives the White House
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Kevin Drum (Mother Jones): It’s Official: Those Bogus Email Leaks Came From Republicans
It’s not as if we didn’t know this already, but Major Garrett made it official: last week’s leaks that misquoted the Benghazi emails came directly from Republicans….
So here’s what happened. Republicans in Congress saw copies of these emails two months ago and did nothing with them. It was obvious that they showed little more than routine interagency haggling. Then someone got the bright idea of leaking two isolated tidbits and mischaracterizing them in an effort to make the State Department look bad…..
But it was typical GOP overreach. To their surprise, the White House took Republicans up on their demand to make the entire email chain public, thus making it clear to the press that they had been burned. And now reporters are letting us all know who was behind it.
More here
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Steve Benen: Whether or not an issue is a “scandal” tends to be a subjective question — one voter’s world-changing controversy may be another voter’s meaningless distraction. Indeed, the Beltway has spent a week telling the nation that the White House is engulfed in three ongoing scandals, though many of us suspect this analysis is deeply flawed.
But if we’re going to talk about real political scandals, can we at least have a conversation about Republicans lying to reporters about Benghazi?
More here
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Jeffrey Goldberg (Bloomberg): So it turns out that Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and, before a group of leading Senate Republicans decided that she was evil incarnate, a top contender to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, had nothing to do with formulating the White House’s response to the fatal attacks last year at the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
…. Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, among others, argued for weeks that Rice was a crucial cog in a huge conspiracy to hide the facts of Benghazi from the American people….
…. I don’t expect that Graham will apologize to Rice for accusing her of engaging in an enormous conspiracy, when all she seems to have done is take the consensus of several government agencies and present it publicly. But you would hope Graham would think twice before threatening again to stop her advancement in government.
President Obama and Attorney General Holder attend the 32nd annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service at the West Front Lawn at the U.S. Capitol, May 15
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Two Bush-appointees, the IRS commissioner and deputy commissioner, are gone. Next, Lois Lerner, the Bush-appt’d head of 501c4 division.
— roadkillrefugee (@rkref) May 15, 2025
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@anamariecox No one at the IRS would have done anything wrong if Obama had just taken the House leadership to Camp David for a drink. Duh.
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) May 15, 2025
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You gotta love the media: In the 18th paragraph……
Steve Benen: USA Today had an item today on the IRS controversy, which seemed to reinforce much of what we already know: conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status faced unfair and unreasonable scrutiny. But deep in the article, in the 18th paragraph, USA Today added seven unexpected words: “Some liberal groups did get additional scrutiny.”
More here
Mind you, plenty of places didn’t mention this at all today
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Can’t stand Wiegel, but liked this….
“Obama needs to fire somebody.” “Okay, I fired somebody.” “Obama needs to stop looking for scapegoats.”
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 15, 2025
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NPR: The Justice Department’s subpoena of Associated Press phone records as part of an investigation into what Attorney General Eric Holder has called “a very grave leak” to the news agency has set off a political firestorm on Capitol Hill, but there’s a lot to the AP story published a year ago that started it all.
….. as NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reports, there’s much more to the story:
“As we understood it then and still understand it, that suicide bomber that AP refers to in its story was actually a double agent working with western intelligence agencies,” Dina says.
Although the double-agent did hand the new underwear bomb technology to U.S. officials, “they had hoped the agent could do more [and] … one consequence of the story is that this agent’s identity was blown,” she says.
More here
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So, when can we see the WH emails regarding Iraq WMD?
President Obama hosts a summit meeting with European Union leaders, Nov. 28, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House
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Ah, you gotta love AP. They have an article posted today by Lolita Baldor about National Guard and Reserve troops facing unemployment now that the Iraq war is over and troops are gradually being withdrawn from Afghanistan.
Needless to say, it’s desperately sad that these men and women are facing unemployment, an issue the President has repeatedly addressed over the past three years and has introduced legislation and various measures to try and boost their chances of finding work.
See how Baldor frames it, though, when talking about one such member of the National Guard, Demetries Luckett:
“… just a month after he arrived for training, the Army decided Uncle Sam didn’t need him after all. Now Luckett’s unemployed and back home in Harper Woods, Mich. - avictimof the Obama administration‘s ongoing effort to pull at least 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by next fall.”
A victim? Jeez, like not sending soldiers in to harm’s way and ending wars is a bad thing? :roll:
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President Obama signs the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 at the U.S. Department of Interior, Dec. 22
MSNBC: Since the lifting two months ago of a longstanding U.S. ban on gays serving openly in the military, U.S. Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime.
“I’m very pleased with how it has gone,” Amos said during a week-long trip that included four days in Afghanistan, where he held more than a dozen town hall-style meetings with Marines of virtually every rank. He was asked about a wide range of issues …. Not once was he asked in Afghanistan about the repeal of the gay ban.
…. The apparent absence of angst about gays serving openly in the Marines seemed to confirm Amos’ view that the change has been taken in stride, without hurting the war effort.
….. A Defense Department spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, said implementation of the repeal of the gay ban is proceeding smoothly across the military. “We attribute this success to our comprehensive pre-repeal training program, combined with the continued close monitoring and enforcement of standards by our military leaders at all levels,” Smith said.
More here
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The White House has released this statement on Barney Frank’s retirement from President Obama:
“This country has never had a Congressman like Barney Frank, and the House of Representatives will not be the same without him. For over 30 years, Barney has been a fierce advocate for the people of Massachusetts and Americans everywhere who needed a voice. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of families and businesses and helped make housing more affordable. He has stood up for the rights of LGBT Americans and fought to end discrimination against them. And it is only thanks to his leadership that we were able to pass the most sweeping financial reform in history designed to protect consumers and prevent the kind of excessive risk-taking that led to the financial crisis from ever happening again. Barney’s passion and his quick wit will be missed in the halls of Congress, and Michelle and I join the people of the Bay State in thanking him for his years of service.”
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The guy in the yellow shirt? Em, nice name!
Gabon’s striker Christ Obama vies with China’s Lui Binbin during a friendly football match between Gabon and the Chinese Junior team during the inauguration of the Sino-Gabonese friendship stadium in Libreville on November 27
White House.gov