You'll Be Reassured To Learn That The White House Is Not Facing Any Scandals:  According to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, anyway.

Now, isn't that reassuring?

President Obama Evades A Question About When the White House knew about the IRS abuses.

In a potentially ominous development, President Obama carefully avoided saying Thursday whether he knew about the IRS targeting of conservative groups before the White House counsel was supposedly informed last month, raising new questions about when Obama and his advisers became aware of the targeting and whether they had anything to do with it.

Obama's lawyerly answer — which is worth reading — was, undoubtedly, prepared in advance.  He came into that brief press conference expecting that question and planning to evade it.

Which should make any sensible person even more suspicious.

Today's Michael Ramirez cartoon is brilliant.

(Check out Obama's recent Ohio State speech, if you are wondering where Ramirez got the idea for this cartoon.)

Are You Wondering Why The Obama Administration Decided To Investigate The Associated Press?  This post probably describes what motivated that investigation.

(In my opinion, it is likely that the AP got its information from someone very high up in the Obama administration, who was boasting about their success in this case — and I do think the administration is right to investigate the leak; in fact, I would go even further and say that they are obligated to investigate the leak.  But I doubt that this fishing expedition is the right way to go about the investigation, if only because I assume most high-level leakers would not leave an obvious trail in the form of a phone record, or an email.)

Some Of Obama's Poke-In-The-Eye Nominations have been ruled unconstitutional, again.

A second appeals court has joined the D.C. Circuit in ruling that President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, concluding that some board actions taken in the wake of those appointments were also invalid.

The issue has far-reaching implications for both the NLRB and other boards, including Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been a frequent target of conservatives and whose director was a recess appointment.

They were ruled unconstitutional because the Senate wasn't actually in recess.

If President Obama were trying to avoid gridlock, he would show more respect for the Senate (and the House, for that matter).

(You can find some background on the case here.  Please note:  the Senate was holding pro forma sessions when Obama made some of these appointments.  And, if I recall correctly, in some of these supposedly pro forma sessions, the Senate did take some actions.)

Some Tourists have odd interests.

Massachusetts State Police and the FBI are investigating a late-night trespassing incident at the Quabbin Reservoir that has triggered increased patrols at water supply facilities around the state.
. . .
Seven people who claimed to be recently graduated chemical engineering students — five men and two women — will be summoned to Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown for trespassing at the reservoir at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.  Police declined to release the names of those involved in advance of a court date, but said they reside in Northampton, Sunderland, Amherst, Cambridge and New York City.

They also said a preliminary investigation by authorities suggests the individuals originally are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

You wouldn't think they would have a very good view of the reservoir at 12:30 in the morning.

For Chris Matthews, The Thrill is gone.

President Obama "obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch," Chris Matthews said tonight.

Yes, you read that right:  The MSNBC host who in 2008 felt a "thrill going up my leg" after hearing Obama speak has grown disenchanted.  Tonight's episode of Hardball saw Matthews delivering a rare, unforgiving grilling of the president as severe as anything that might appear on Fox News.

(At least temporarily.)

I suppose we have to give Matthews a little credit for, finally, noticing the obvious.

Are "Mainstream" Journalists Catching On To President Obama?   Perhaps.

Republicans have waited five years for the moment to put the screws to Obama — and they have one-third of all congressional committees on the case now.  Establishment Democrats, never big fans of this president to begin with, are starting to speak out.  And reporters are tripping over themselves to condemn lies, bullying and shadiness in the Obama administration.
. . .
Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats.  And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be.

This White House’s instinctive petulance, arrogance and defensiveness have all worked to isolate Obama at a time when he most needs a support system.  “It feel like they don’t know what they’re here to do,” a former senior Obama administration official said. “When there’s no narrative, stuff like this consumes you.”

I'm partisan enough so that I can't resist stringing all those charges together:  According to some of our mainstream reporters, President Obama is a liar, a bully, shady, aloof, holier-than-thou, petulant, arrogant, and defensive.

No doubt Obama has some good points, too, but none of them are mentioned in the article.

(You would almost think that David Freddoso was right in 2008:

Obama's ethnic pedigree understandably attracts much interest and fascination.   But it is far less interesting than his unusual political pedigree.   He is the product of a marriage between two of the least attractive parts of Democratic politics—the hard-core radicalism of the 1960s era and Chicago's Machine politics. (pp. x-xi)

In 2008, I used that description of Obama to make some predictions about how his presidency would go.  Decide for yourself how accurate those predictions have been, so far.)

BC Surprises Everyone:  Last night, I decided I would watch a few minutes of the election coverage from the Canadian province to my north, enough so that I could see whether the province's National Democratic Party would win, as all the polls predicted.

(I brushed up a little bit on the issues and candidates and learned that the ruling Liberals, who, I must repeat, are not associated with the federal Liberal Party in Canada, had been tarred by scandals and had a new and untested leader, Christy Clark.  Moreover, the province's once almost-dead Conservative Party had shown signs of life, and was likely to take votes away from the Liberals.) As I watched, the CBC broadcasters went from mild surprise that the Liberals had a lead in the early returns to considerable surprise as the later results added to the Liberal lead.

How big a surprise was this for the pollsters?  About 14 points.

Mainstream pollsters also wound up with egg on their face.  Not a single one gave an inkling the NDP would squander the solid lead they enjoyed in the polls right up to voting day.

On the eve of the election, Angus Reid had the New Democrats ahead by nine percentage points.  Instead, the party finished five points behind the Liberals, an astonishing swing of 14 points.

Which is way too large to be explained by sampling error.

What happened?  There's a clue in the Wikipedia article, which I will trust for the moment.  The Liberal share of the vote did decline, by 1.42 percent to 45.82 percent, but the NDP support declined even more, by 2.66 percent to 42.15 percent.

But the polls were very close on the third and fourth parties, the Greens and the Conservatives; each received about 1 percent less than the polls predicted.

So the polls underestimated the support for the ruling Liberal Party (which by BC standards is "conservative") and overestimated the support for the socialist NDP, but got the other parties about right.

Probably, the most obvious explanation for the Liberal win is correct.  In spite of the scandals and the new leader, the voters chose not to give control of the government to the NDP, which had been disastrous when it was last in power, and didn't seem to have learned from its failures.

Why didn't the pollsters pick that up?  They don't seem to know, and neither do I.

On the whole, the Liberal win is likely to mean better relations between British Columbia and their neighbors than an NDP win would have.

(Oh, and one more mild surprise:  Christy Clark chose to run in a swing riding — and lost.  So some back bencher will have to resign so they can have a special election and put her in the Legislative Assembly.)

The Polls Closed 18 Minutes Ago In British Columbia:   Didn't know they were having an election?  Then you probably don't live in Canada, since the provincial election has drawn very little attention elsewhere.

But there are some interesting lessons in the election, especially for Americans.

The socialist New Democratic Party has been leading in all the polls, and they are expected to defeat the ruling Liberal Party.

At this point you may be wondering what happened to Canada's ruling Conservative Party.   Don't they have a chance in this election?

No.  In fact they last won a single seat in the Legislative Assembly (as they call their provincial parliament) in 1978.

But things are not as bad for conservative voters as that might suggest.  Canada's parties are far more decentralized than the parties in the United States and, although the British Columbia Liberal Party has the same name as the national party, it has been "completely independent of the federal Liberals" since 1987.

This Wikipedia article describes the party as both "conservative" and "neoliberal".  By American standards, the party would be center right.

Which for real conservatives makes it preferable to the leftist NDP.

But, if they would rather vote their heart, the Conservative Party of British Columbia has had a small revival in recent years and is offering candidates in more ridings (districts) than it has in the past.

If I were voting in this election, I might vote tactically.  If I were in a riding that was closely balanced between the Liberal and the NDP candidates, I would vote for the Liberal, as long as the candidate wasn't completely obnoxious.  In a riding where there was no doubt about who would win, I would vote for the Conservative candidate, if one was available.

(There are many other parties to choose from, though not all of them are running candidates.  The Platinum Party of Employers Who Think and Act to Increase Awareness has a great name, and some may like the Work Less Party of British Columbia for the same reason.)

Rooseveltian, Kennedyesque, Johnsonian, Nixonian, And Clintonian:  All of those are adjectives that could be used to describe a president's use of the Internal Revenue Service against political enemies.

You'll see the fourth adjective, "Nixonian", most often used that way, but there is a strong argument that Nixon deserves it the least of the five.

Let's start with an example from the first president in that little list:

Although Nixon was notorious for treating the I.R.S. as though it were his private domain, the records show that Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have set the stage for the use of the tax agency for political purposes by most subsequent Presidents.

One of the most brazen instances of a political vendetta during a Presidency was the Roosevelt Administration's attack on Andrew Mellon.  No historian has been able to determine why Mellon so enraged F.D.R., but there is speculation that the New Deal President saw the millionaire who served as Republican Treasury Secretary from 1921 to 1932 - a time of Wall Street excesses followed by the Great Depression - as the symbolic enemy.   Nor has a document emerged that directly links Roosevelt to the decision to go after Mellon.

But go after him, the Roosevelt administration did — with, we can be certain, at least the tacit approval of FDR himself.

The Roosevelt administration didn't just try to hurt its political enemies with the IRS, it also helped its friends, from time to time.

The Kennedy administration followed the Roosevelt example, and took it further, even targeting whole classes of churches.

On many occasions, the pressure to use the agency as an instrument to curb dissent came from the White House.  John F. Kennedy mobilized the I.R.S. against the right-wing, fundamentalist Christian ministers who had been so critical of his religion during his Presidential campaign and his first months in office.

(In every election during my life time, many churches have violated the law by open electioneering.  In recent elections, this has been especially common in the black churches that routinely support Democratic candidates.  As far as I know, no Republican administration has targeted these churches.)

The Kennedy administration used the IRS (and other federal agencies) against its political enemies in many ways.  If you want a fairly complete compilation of their sins, you might want to find a copy of Victor Lasky"s It Didn't Start With Watergate.

For example:

Specifically, on his return to California following his 1960 political defeat, the man who lost the presidency by a handful of votes found himself being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.  As did Robert H. Finch, one of his 1960 campaign managers.  The experience wasn't too pleasant for either Nixon or Finch, involving, as it did a time-consuming search for documents of all kinds, but in the end their tax returns were found to be in order. (p. 55)

Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, used the IRS in similar ways against his political enemies.

And Nixon?  According to Lasky, John Dean prepared a silly "enemies list" of McGovern supporters, and sent a request to the IRS to have some on it investigated.  Nixon didn't know about the list — and Nixon's Treasury Secretary, George P. Schultz, told the IRS Commissioner, Johnnie Walters, to ignore it. (pp. 332-333)

If you look carefully at the Nixon impeachment counts, you'll see that he was accused of trying to use the IRS against his political opponents, not of using the IRS against his political opponents.

As Mickey Kaus reminds us, we can add Bill Clinton to that list of presidents who have used the IRS against their political opponents.

I always thought the number of Bill Clinton enemies audited by his Internal Revenue Service was a bit high to be coincidental.

Take a look at some of his partial lists, if you want to see why Kaus came to that conclusion.

If we were picking a president's name to turn into an adjective suggesting improper use of the IRS and other federal agencies, we would probably decide that Rooseveltian or Kennedyesque would be a better choice than Nixonian.

Finally, a brief point about the current IRS scandal:  Many officials in the IRS and the Obama administration would know about these other, non-Nixon scandals, and would know that the administrations that committed those abuses mostly got away with them.

(What about the other post-war presidents?  Did Truman, Eisenhower, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, or Bush 43 use the IRS against their political enemies?  Not that I know of, but I won't say that means it didn't happen.

Thanks to commenter "Grurray" for that link to the informative, if dated, catalog of IRS abuses.)

The Last Labour Government In Britain Decided Their Nation Needed To Be More Diverse:  And so they encouraged mass immigration.

Labour sent out ‘search parties’ for immigrants to get them to come to the UK, Lord Mandelson has admitted.

In a stunning confirmation that the Blair and Brown governments deliberately engineered mass immigration, the former Cabinet Minister and spin doctor said New Labour sought out foreign workers.

He also conceded that the influx of arrivals meant the party’s traditional supporters are now unable to find work.

According to another Labour insider, Andrew Neather, one of the purposes of the policy was to "rub the Right’s nose in diversity".

There are parallels to these Labour policies in many other countries, including the United States.

(Peter Mandelson has had, to say the least, an interesting political career.)

"Indoor Pot Production Leaves Giant Carbon Footprint"  Here's another dilemma for our Greens, most of whom favor marijuana use, strongly.

Marijuana growing is not a green industry.

Done mostly indoors in Washington, pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency.

The power-hungry crops rival data centers or server farms in intense use of electricity, according to a peer-reviewed study last year in the journal Energy Policy.  One kilo, or 2.2 pounds, of pot grown indoors, the study says, leaves a carbon footprint equivalent to driving across the country seven times.  Producing one joint is equivalent to leaving a light bulb on for 25 hours.

(I'm particularly charmed by their use of "carbon dioxide generators".)

Why not grow it outside?  The security problems are worse when it isn't grown in a closed building, as the article explains.  And it is easier to grow more potent marijuana indoors.

(Oddly, the article doesn't mention the little problem of federal laws, except for this promise from Governor Jay Inslee:

Inslee did address the subject on a radio show earlier this year.  He said he assured U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that Washington will keep its weed from leaking into other states, and there may be security reasons for keeping pot production under lights, behind locked warehouse doors.

If there is a practical way Governor Inslee can keep our marijuana from "leaking into other states", he hasn't shared it with us.)

Poke-In-The-Eye Nominations And Gridlock:  In this thoughtful post, Jazz Shaw argues that President Obama mostly deserves to have his nominations confirmed.

But with all that said, confirmations are something that have to happen in every administration.  I’ve certainly been criticized here for saying it before, but Obama did win the election, and he’s only going to nominate people who reflect his views.  If we want better nominees who agree with us, we need to do a better job of winning presidential elections.

I won't quarrel with Shaw's general principle, nor will I quarrel with his observation that both parties have politicized these confirmation fights in recent years.  (In my opinion, the worst part of this politicization is the delays, where a party attempts to win on a nomination by wearing the other side out, rather than with a direct vote.)

That said, a president can deliberately provoke a confirmation fight — and many presidents have done just that.  To provoke a confirmation fight, a president will nominate a poke-in-the-eye candidate, a man or woman who is not just disagreeable to the other party, but painful to them.

To see how this works, consider an opposite example, Robert Gates.  After the Republicans lost the 2006 election, George W. Bush could have chosen a new Secretary of Defense who annoyed Democrats, or worse.  Instead, he brought in an experienced, respected, and, above all, bland man, Robert Gates.

Bush showed that he was not trying to provoke a nomination fight with the Democrats.  And Barack Obama showed that he was not trying to provoke a nomination fight with the Republicans when he asked Gates to stay on, and then followed him with Leon Panetta.

(Panetta was not the worst choice, but Obama should not have accepted his condition, that he be able to spend his weekends in California.)

But then, having lost the House in 2010 and 2012, Obama decided to go for a poke-in-the-eye nomination, Chuck Hagel, for Secretary of Defense.  Obama picked a man that he should have known was unacceptable to many Republicans.

(It is possible that Obama did not know that when he made the nomination, but Republicans made it clear immediately afterward that Hagel was not their favorite for the position.   When that happened, Obama could have withdrawn the nomination.)

And Obama made similar poke-in-the-eye choices when he nominated Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary, and Gina McCarthy to head the scandal-plagued EPA.

So, yes, Republicans should delay fewer nominations — and Obama should not go out of his way to provoke Republicans, as he has been doing in his second term.

(I borrowed the "poke-in-the-eye" phrase from this Glenn Thrush article.)

Australia's Capital, Canberra, Is Celebrating Its 100th Birthday with a "skywhale" balloon that has to be seen to be believed.

This spectacular monster was actually created to celebrate the capital’s centenary, although some failed to detect the link between 100 years of Canberra and a hot air balloon that looks like something Benny Hill might have hallucinated if he’d been an opium-addicted marine biologist.

In fact, even after you have seen it there, you might have trouble believing it, so here's some coverage from the Australia Broadcasting Corporation, with video, and more pictures.

(As a science fiction fan, I kind of like the balloon, although I have been unable, so far, to think of any connection between the beast and Canberra's centenary.

But I do think it might inspire a science fiction writer.  I'd suggest explaining it with genetic engineering, since it doesn't look at all natural.)

More White House/News Media Family Connections:  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ben Rhodes, the White House speechwriter and foreign policy advisor, has a brother in an influential position — president of CBS News.

There are more family connections, as we learn from an interview on Fox News.

RICHARD GRENELL: I think the media's becoming the story, let's face it.  CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. Let's call a spade a spade.

Let's also show you why CNN did not go very far in covering these hearings because the CNN deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Tom Nides.  It is time for the media to start asking questions why are they not covering this.  It's a family matter for some of them.

As you almost certainly know, ABC's George Stephanopoulos got his start as a Clinton aide.

And there are more such connections, which don't seem to embarrass these news organizations, at all.

Rhodes describes himself as foreign policy realist.  Whether the advice he gives to President Obama is realistic or not is a matter for another post — but he does seem to have used his connections realistically.

(Ben Rhodes has another useful connection; his wife, Ann Marie Norris, is a "Senior Foreign Policy and Defense Adviser" to Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California).

There's a small story from the Clinton years that shows how these connections can turn into jobs.  When the Monica Lewinsky scandal was about to break, President Clinton suggested of one of his aides that they send her to CNN to get her out of the way.  He seemed certain, in the report that I saw, that he could get her a job there, with just a phone call to the president of CNN, in spite of the fact that Lewinsky had no obvious qualifications for a job at the news organization.)

Global Warming in Minnesota.

(As usual, here's my disclaimer, with my usual apology for not having updated it.)