BRUTALITY OF SERVILITYBY MAUREEN DOWDNEW YORK TIMESThe case is supposed to be about exceeding a $2,300 individual campaign contribution limit, quaint in light of Citizens United. But it’s really a set of intersecting love stories. Andrew, a caricature of calculated servility, loved his golden boy boss — “more than he loved Cheri,” his wife, Rielle said. It’s a trial without heroes, just liars and an abhorrent trio of selfish people trying to spin the story their own way. DEFENDANT #34 HAS HER SAYBY THOMAS FRIEDMANNEW YORK TIMESAfter the American workers were released, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved $1.3 billion in military aid to the Egyptian Army in an effort to keep relations on an even keel. The Egyptian authorities responded by asking Interpol “to issue worldwide notices for the arrest of 15 nongovernmental workers — 12 of them Americans — accused of illegally operating pro-democracy programs and stirring unrest,” The National Journal reported. “When the U.S. decides to just give away the military aid to Egypt without considering the consequences on us,” Okail told me, “it sends a message that the West and the U.S. don’t care about democracy and human rights. They just care about strategic stability.”
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ARIZONA AND INTERPOSITIONEDITORIALNEW YORK TIMESThe four provisions of the statute at issue essentially turn all Hispanics, including American citizens and legal residents, into criminal suspects. They require racial profiling, and, because their purpose is “attrition through enforcement,” their goal effectively is separation by race. Just as racial equality was the law of the land during the desegregation era, it is the law of the land today. It is imperative that there be “a single, national approach” to immigration, as the government’s brief explains, and that any state law fulfills America’s hard-won commitment to racial equality. Arizona’s anti-immigrant statute emphatically does not.SHAKEY ECONOMIC PROSPECTS THREATEN BOTH PARTIESBY HAROLD MEYERSONWASHINGTON POSTAs currently constituted, the U.S. economy looks less and less capable of generating the kind of prosperity that a president, or a party, needs to ensure a long run in power. Nothing in Romney’s record suggests he would challenge these trends. … Obama acknowledges many of the factors behind the decline in Americans’ economic situations and has worked. [T]he imbalances in the U.S. economy — in part, both the cause and consequence of the growing political power of the very rich — are deeply rooted in the increasingly destructive form of capitalism in this country.WHY ROMNEY COULD BE A TRANSFORMATIONAL PRESIDENTBY EZRA KLEINWASHINGTON POSTOdds are … that if Obama wins, he will still be negotiating with Republican leaders in Congress. But the same can’t be said for Mitt Romney. If Romney wins the election, it’s almost a sure bet that Republicans win control of both the House and the Senate. And that matters. Right now, the GOP’s agenda is the Ryan budget, and that’s entirely fiscal. … All that can be passed through budget reconciliation — which is to say, all that can be made immune to the filibuster. So if Romney wins and the Republicans take control, they could accomplish quite a lot on party-line votes, even if their majorities are slim, and Democrats are opposed. Indeed, Romney could end up being a fairly transformational president for conservatives so long as he’s paired with a Republican Congress.OBAMA’S FOOLHARDY TRIP TO NORTH CAROLINABY KATHLEEN PARKERWASHINGTON POSTEither Obama’s staffers are so consumed with other matters that they failed to focus on what was happening down South. Or, they know they don’t have to worry about untoward treatment by the media. Alternatively, this avoidable risk suggests a standard of laxity in the midst of a campaign tour masquerading as a policy parade. Revealingly, the president’s target audience consists of unwitting metaphors for the state of the union — unemployed and deep in debt.EUROPE’S PHONY GROWTH DEBATEEDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNALGrowth or austerity? That’s the choice facing Europe these days—or so the Keynesian consensus keeps saying. According to this view … “growth” is mainly a function of government spending. The real debate ought to be over which policies best produce growth. … But it has to be private growth driven by reforms in taxes, labor markets, regulation, pensions and more. Europe’s voters have already swept several governments from office, and they seem ready to sweep out more. But what really needs to be swept away is the dominant and debilitating consensus that government spending can conjure prosperity.THE ARIZONA FACEOFFEDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNALOn the substance of the statute, we agree that states are wasting their scarce resources if they have cops picking up landscapers and other workers. But the racial claim has no basis. In 2005, Arizona’s then-Governor Janet Napolitano—a Democrat who now runs homeland security for Mr. Obama—declared a state of emergency as a result of illegal aliens. Is she a racist too? If the claim had merit, the Justice Department would use it, but it makes no such argument in its brief to the Court. The heart of this case is the balance of state and federal power, not immigration. The Obama Administration is the party abusing the Constitution’s architecture for purely political ends, and we assume the High Court will say so.
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