The first question Republicans have to decide is, should the Court decide in their favor, do they need to do anything at all? The lawsuit would eliminate tax credits for residents of some 34 states, depending on what definition is used, whose health-care exchange is run by the federal government. This would, for the first time, bring Republicans face to face with the political fallout of taking away actual health care from current, rather than prospective, beneficiaries of Obamacare.

The most ideologically hard-core elements of the party have tried to make the case that Republicans should do nothing at all. One libertarian organization commissioned a poll designed to show that voters would not blame Republicans for doing nothing in the face of massive suffering. The poll has an unusually blunt method for producing this result. It asks, in the event the lawsuit is successful, whom voters would blame. The choices are: Congress, for poorly writing the law; the IRS, for giving out illegal subsidies in the first place; States, for refusing to establish Obamacare exchanges; unsure.

Notice that, even aside from the loaded terms (“poorly writing,” “illegal”), none of those choices allows voters to blame the current, Republican-run Congress for failing to fix the law. The only “Congress” voters can blame is the old Democratic one that wrote the law in 2009–10. The poll does prove that the public will not blame Republicans in Congress if it is given a fixed menu of choices, of which blaming the Republican Congress is not one.

Most actual Republicans in Congress realize, however, that this is not how political debates really work. In the real world, voters are allowed to blame you for stuff if they want to. An Associated Press poll finds that Americans by a 56–39 margin would want the tax credits to continue to be extended to all 50 states, even if the lawsuit prevails. As Republican Senator Ben Sasse warned several months ago, in a column urging his party to unite behind his plan, “Chemotherapy turned off for perhaps 12,000 people, dialysis going dark for 10,000. The horror stories will be real.” Obama would be able to urge Congress to simply fix the confusion by passing a law reaffirming that customers in federal exchanges are also eligible for tax credits.

—Jonathan Chait
The Obamacare Lawsuit Is a Government Shutdown, but for Health Care

Since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United, critics on the left, including Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have been outraged by the claim that a corporation is a person. That claim actually plays far more of a role in Justice Stevens’ dissent than it does in the ruling opinion of the majority. It’s also hardly an innovation of Citizens United; it goes back to the 19th century. By focusing so much attention on it, critics misstate the actual problem of corporate power and political influence.

The real problem is that workers are the instruments of their bosses’ will. If a corporation were just a person, it’d have only one vote. But corporations and firms have more than one vote. Those additional votes can’t be measured by the money those firms spend in a campaign, by the ads and lunches firms buy. Every CEO’s vote is augmented by the workers he controls, by the votes he can deliver like the ward bosses of old. While Citizens United made that problem worse — not because of the unlimited cash it allows into the political sphere but, as some of its earliest critics noted, because of the restrictions it removes on the power of employers to influence and mobilize their workers — it was always and already there.

When we think of corruption, we think of something getting debased, becoming impure, by the introduction of a foreign material. Money worms its way into the body politic, which rots from within. The antidote to corruption, then, is to keep unlike things apart. Take the big money out of politics or limit its role. That’s what our campaign finance reformers tell us.

But the problem isn’t corruption. It’s capitalism. Workers are dependent on employers for their well-being. That makes them vulnerable to their bosses’ demands, about a great many matters, including politics. The ballot and the buck are fused. Not because of campaign donations but because of the unequal relationship between capital and labor. Not just in the corridors of Congress but also in the halls of the workplace. Unless you confront the latter, you’ll never redress the former. Without economic democracy, there’s no political democracy.

—Corey Robin
Your Boss Wants to Control Your Vote

See Also

Political Harassment in the Workplace
More on Political Harassment

The Los Angeles Times editors began by acknowledging that Snowden, not President Obama, is “the ultimate author” of the so-called surveillance reform enacted into law. They conceded that “the American people have Snowden to thank for these reforms.”

Despite that, they are opposed to a pardon or to clemency. While generously conceding that Snowden has “a strong argument for leniency,” they nonetheless insist that “in a society of laws, someone who engages in civil disobedience in a higher cause should be prepared to accept the consequences.”

I see this argument often and it’s hard to overstate how foul it is. To begin with, if someone really believes that, they should be demanding the imprisonment of every person who ever leaks information deemed “classified,” since it’s an argument that demands the prosecution of anyone who breaks the law, or at least “consequences” for them. That would mean dragging virtually all of Washington, which leaks constantly and daily, into a criminal court — to say nothing of their other crimes such as torture. But of course such high-minded media lectures about the “rule of law” are applied only to those who are averse to Washington’s halls of power, not to those who run them.

More important, Snowden was “prepared to accept the consequences.” When he decided to blow the whistle, he knew that there was a very high risk that he’d end up in a US prison for decades — we thought that’d be the most likely outcome — and yet he did it anyway. He knowingly took that risk. And even now, he has given up his family, his home, his career, and his ability to travel freely — hardly someone free of “consequences.”

But that doesn’t mean he has to meekly crawl to American authorities with his wrists extended and politely ask to be put in a cage for 30 years, almost certainly in some inhumane level of penal oppression typically reserved for Muslims and those accused of national security crimes. The idea that anyone who breaks an unjust law has a moral obligation to submit to an unjust penal state and accept lengthy imprisonment is noxious and authoritarian.

—Glenn Greenwald
Media Lessons from Snowden Reporting

For powers long accustomed to tranquility and without experience with disaster, this is a hard lesson to come by. Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertions of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to be assuaged by limited concessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstance are considered balanced and sane, for they have all the good “reasons” on their side: the arguments accepted as valid in the existing framework. “Appeasement,” where it is not a device to gain time, is the result of an inability to come to grips with a policy of unlimited objectives.

But it is the essence of revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion. Whatever else a revolutionary power may achieve therefore, it tends to erode, if not the legitimacy of the international order, at least the restraint with which such an order operates. The characteristic of a stable order is its spontaneity; the essence of a revolutionary situation is its self-consciousness.

—Henry Kissinger
A World Restored

See also: Neville Chamberlain Was Right.

H/T: The Great Unraveling.

But no speaker did more to relegate the regular order to the sidelines than Hastert. As Tom Mann and I describe in detail in our 2006 book “The Broken Branch,” Hastert presided over one of the worst moments for a deliberative body in modern times, the nearly three-hour vote in the dead of night to pass the Medicare prescription-drug bill — a vote that under the rules was supposed to last 15 minutes. The arm-twisting on the floor turned to something close to outright extortion, resulting in yet more admonitions for Tom DeLay. Under Hastert, amendments from Democrats and Republicans alike were squelched by a strikingly pliant Rules Committee; conferences were rarely held, and if they were, it was late at night and they were closed to input from all except loyal lieutenants; and provisions were sometimes added to conference reports that had never been in either House or Senate bills without notice to other lawmakers, among other indignities. And, of course, Hastert presided over the informal “Hastert rule,” doing whatever he could to avoid input from Democrats, trying to pass bills with Republicans alone. The House is a very partisan institution, with rules structured to give even tiny majorities enormous leverage. But Hastert took those realities to a new and more tribalized, partisan plane.

—Norm Ornstein
This Isn’t Dennis Hastert’s First Scandal

In the Boston area yesterday, the FBI and Boston Police Department (BPD) shot and killed a 26-year-old black Muslim man, Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, after they stopped him at a bus stop at 7:00 am in front of a CVS drug store in order to question him…

NBC Nightly News led its broadcast with this story, and the video featuring a hysterical Lester Holt and Pete Williams has to be seen to be believed. “Good evening,” said the anchor. “We start here tonight with a deadly confrontation outside Boston between law enforcement and a man they feared might be preparing to launch an ISIS-inspired attack.” Even after killing the “terror suspect,” Holt intoned that agents are “still on the move in the Boston area, trying to piece together what he may have been involved with, and whether others might be connected to it.”

The story then narrated by Williams is told from the perspective of the FBI and the BPD. We learn that unnamed officials told NBC News they “were concerned Rahim had become radicalized by ISIS-inspired social media, and was actively considering an attack on police officers in Boston within the next few days, in a city still traumatized by the terrorist bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon.” The agents approached him “fearing he was preparing to take action soon.” Police are now investigating others Rahim was “in touch with who might also have been radicalized by ISIS-inspired propaganda.” Officials, Williams announced at the end of his report, “believe they disrupted a potential terror plot, but now they’re detaining other people for questioning… to see whether anyone else was involved in his plot, or whether attacks are planned.”

So just like that, major American media outlets converted someone about whom they knew nothing into a dangerous terrorist in the middle of executing an ISIS-related terror plot. And the heroic law enforcement officials didn’t just kill an ISIS Terrorist on the loose in America, but likely disrupted a vicious sleeper cell. All of that was achieved without a shred of evidence or investigation: just mindlessly repeating the self-justifying claims of the police agents who had just killed him.

—Glenn Greenwald
In Boston, Media Again Trash a Police Shooting Victim by Uncritically “Reporting” Police Accusations
‘

Ten minutes after introducing himself, [Clive Stafford Smith] was walking me through the corridors of Vanessa Branson’s labyrinthine palace telling me why prisons should be abolished.

“Let me ask you three questions,” he said. “And then you’ll see it my way. Question One: what’s the worst thing that you have ever done to someone? It’s okay. You don’t have to confess it out loud. Question Two: what’s the worst criminal act that has ever been committed against you? Question Three: which of the two was the most damaging for the victim?”

The worst criminal act that has ever been committed against me was burglary. How damaging was it? Hardly damaging at all. I felt theoretically violated at the idea of a stranger wandering through my house. But I got the insurance money. I was mugged one time. I was eighteen. The man who mugged me was an alcoholic. He saw me coming out of a supermarket. “Give me your alcohol,” he yelled. He punched me in the face, grabbed my groceries, and ran away. There wasn’t any alcohol in my bag. I was upset for a few weeks, but it passed.

And what was the worst thing I had ever done to someone? It was a terrible thing. It was devastating for them. It wasn’t against the law.

Clive’s point was that the criminal justice system is supposed to repair harm, but most prisoners — young, black — have been incarcerated for acts far less emotionally damaging than the injuries we noncriminals perpetrate upon one another all the time — bad husbands, bad wives, ruthless bosses, bullies, bankers.

—Jon Ronson
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed

It is impossible to know how many Americans are federal criminals. There are thousands of federal crimes and hundreds of thousands of federal regulations that can be criminally enforced. Some criminals are murderers, rapists, gangsters, and other profoundly immoral people. These fit easily into [American legal scholar Henry M] Hart’s understanding that criminals are people who have committed acts deserving of community’s serious moral condemnation and punishment. However, these antisocial individuals are a minuscule fraction of America’s criminal class. In fact, most Americans are criminals and don’t know it, or suspect they are but believe they’ll never get prosecuted.

—Alex Kozinski and Misha Tseytlin
“You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal” in In the Name of Justice

But there’s a reason the US has become a sprawling, oppressive penal state, imprisoning more of its citizens than any other nation in the world, both in raw numbers and proportionally. There are actually many reasons: the profit motive from privatized prisons, the bipartisan nature of the “tough-on-crime” agenda, the evils of the Drug War, mandatory minimum sentences, the disproportionate use of arrest, prosecution and imprisonment against minorities.

But one key factor is over-criminalization: converting relatively trivial and harmless acts into major felonies. The postal worker who just engaged in an act of nonviolent political protest — flying a gyrocopter to the US Capitol lawn to protest the corrupting role of money in US politics — faces up to nine years in prison on multiple felony charges. That is over-criminalization, as are the shamefully large number of people in prison for selling prohibited narcotics to consenting adults who wanted them, or even for just possessing them.

—Glenn Greenwald
Denny Hastert is Contemptible, But His Indictment Exemplifies America’s Over-Criminalization Pathology

Miller is not a gifted writer in the normal sense, but she does have one very obvious skill on the page: certainty. (Here it comes: Hitler, another otherwise plodding writer, had the same talent!) Miller on paper is so sure of herself that the reader may find his or her self mesmerized by the lack of qualification. This unwavering quality in her writing is very unique and helped sell a fake war to a whole country.

Years later, she is still blind to the fact that that was the flaw, the abject certainty she brought to her work. Instead of addressing that profound and no doubt deeply unsettling personal problem, she repeated the mistake, apparently spending all of these years in the wilderness coming up with a 400-page explanation for why nothing that happened was her fault. It’s amazing on the one hand, but also depressing, even for her sake.

Matt Taibbi
Judith Miller’s Comeback

Last week’s settlement between the Justice Department and five giant banks reveals the appalling weakness of modern antitrust.

The banks had engaged in the biggest price-fixing conspiracy in modern history. Their self-described “cartel” used an exclusive electronic chat room and coded language to manipulate the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency exchange market. It was a “brazen display of collusion” that went on for years, said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

But there will be no trial, no executive will go to jail, the banks can continue to gamble in the same currency markets, and the fines — although large — are a fraction of the banks’ potential gains and will be treated by the banks as costs of doing business.

America used to have antitrust laws that permanently stopped corporations from monopolizing markets, and often broke up the biggest culprits.

No longer…

—Robert Reich
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?