Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1012

The Third Coming of Louis Freeh Will Take on the BP Oil Spill Shenanigans

Former FBI director Louis Freeh has enjoyed a few months of low-key lawyering away from the spotlight, and, probably, some vacation time, after he finally concluded his investigation at Penn State. But Freeh is ready for his close-up once again. The Associated Press reports he will head the investigation into whether or not one of the lawyers working under the claims administrator in charge of the BP oil spill settlement improperly received some of the settlement money. BP called for an independent investigation over allegations a lawyer working under administrator Patrick Juneau was paid by the law firm he tipped off before joining the case. The lawyer, Lionel H. Sutton III, allegedly received a portion of the $7.8 billion settlement money from a firm to which he referred claims before joining on behalf of the families and the businesses and communities who suffered damages. Sutton resigned in the middle of June. 

So Freeh is back in the spotlight and investigating major cases that will have far-reaching and monumental implications for the first time since drawing the ire of the Paterno family. You may remember Freeh from the investigation into whether the Penn State football program, and legendary coach Joe Paterno, covered up assistant coach Jerry Sandusky's child abuse. Paterno's legacy as a school institution and hero was tarnished, perhaps beyond repair, by the findings of the investigation carried out by former FBI chief Louis Freeh. Freeh's report alleged Paterno and other school officials conspired did do just that, and led to the NCAA slamming Penn State with unprecedented sanctions that nearly killed the football program Paterno had spent his life shaping. Freeh, of course, spent much of his life running the FBI — and banking on the wrong man.

       

Two Vatican Bank Officials Resign Amid Latest Wave of Scandals

Days after the arrest of a high-ranking official at the Vatican Bank, the director of the Catholic institution, along with his deputy, resigned on Monday. It's all part of the infinite saga of corruption within the institution officially known as the Institute of Religious Works, the secretive financial wing of the Vatican that can't seem to stop getting implicated in money laundering plots. And the bank's new president, Ernst von Freyberg, is taking advantage of the leadership sweep to talk about reforming the institution. 

Von Freyberg became the IRW's president in February, as one of the last acts of the now emeritus Pope Benedict XVII before he left his post. He's a German lawyer and a member of the Knights of Malta, and Benedict tapped him for the job with the hope that he'd fix the institution's reputation. And while originally von Freyberg seemed to think that fix was mainly a PR problem, it seems that the bank's president knows that those fixes will have to at least look drastic. While the Vatican statement didn't give much information on why the pair resigned, von Freyberg offered the looking forward take: "It is clear today that we need new leadership," he said of the two resignations today. Or, at least a removal of leadership with baggage: the now former bank director Paolo Cipriani had been directly tied to the money laundering scandal that took down von Freyberg's predecessor as president, though neither were charged in the end. 

As Capital New York reported earlier this year, the bank is nearly synonymous with corruption in Italy. One Italian judicial official described it to the paper as "an offshore bank in the heart of Rome." The bank doesn't allow accounts for Vatican outsiders, and it doesn't lend money. Instead, it holds about 7 billion Euros in assets for about 19,000 accounts. 

Pope Francis, who has moved pretty quickly on bank reform issues (indicating just how tenuous the situation is with the institution after the Vatileaks scandal aired the Holy See's dirty laundry for everyone's eyes), appointed a commission last week to oversee and glean information on the workings of the bank. 

       

Senator Mark Udall's Brother is Missing

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Colorado Senator Mark Udall's younger brother James is missing in Wyoming, several days after the experienced hiker was due to return from a week-long solo excursion in the Wind River Range mountains. 

James "Randy" Udall, 61, is an experienced hiker and would have been familiar with the area, according to the Subette County Sheriff's Office. On Friday, he was reported missing. That's two days after he was scheduled to return. Crews have been searching for him since Friday afternoon. According to the Denver Post, the search effort includes ground and ariel teams, covering a nearly 225 square mile area, with assistance from the U.S. Forestry service.

Speaking to the Denver Post, Udall's office said the senator has known since last week. Here's what his office told the paper: 

"In that time, (Sen. Udall) has remained in contact with those searching for his brother and, along with his family, has waited and hoped for the best," spokesman James Owens said. "Nonetheless, he knows he still has a duty to lead — even with his brother missing — and has continued to serve while closely following the search."
 

James is also the first cousin of New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, also a Democrat. 

Photo: Handout, Subette County Sheriff's Office.

       

Citing DOMA, Judge Gives Michigan's Gay Marriage Ban a Trial

Michigan's voter-approved gay marriage ban will face a trial after a federal judge declined a motion by the state to dismiss a lawsuit that challenges the prohibition. Citing last week's Supreme Court decision that effectively gives federal marriage benefits to same-sex marriages in states where they're already legal, the judge declared that the "plaintiffs are entitled to their day in court and they shall have it.” It looks like this is one of what will likely be many court challenges to state gay marriage bans in the wake of the SCOTUS decisions. 

The lawsuit in question began as an adoption case: the two plaintiffs, Jayne Rowse and April DeBoer, both nurses, are an unmarried couple living with each other in a house they own together. Each has at least one adopted child, but they're barred by state law from adopting each other's kids (only single people or married couples may adopt in Michigan, meaning that one, but not both, members of an LGBT couple may adopt). And, similar to Supreme Court Justice Kennedy's decision on the DOMA case, the lawsuit alleges that the state law violates the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. Later, the suit was amended to include a challenge to the state's gay marriage ban, too, also citing equal protection and due process. That ban, passed by voters in 2004, amended the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages and civil unions. 

Here's more from federal Judge Bernard Friedman's decision:

"Plaintiffs’ equal protection claim has sufficient merit to proceed. The United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307 (U.S. Jun. 26, 2013), has provided the requisite precedential fodder for both parties to this litigation. plaintiffs are prepared to claim Windsor as their own...And why shouldn’t they? The Supreme Court has just invalidated a federal statute on equal protection grounds because it “place[d] same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage.” Id. slip op. at 23. Moreover, and of particular importance to this case, the justices expressed concern that the natural consequence of such discriminatory legislation would not only lead to the relegation of same-sex relationships to a form of second-tier status, but impair the rights of “tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples” as well. Id. This is exactly the type of harm plaintiffs seek to remedy in this case."

Friedman noted that the state will likely point to the parts of the majority decision that reference states' rights on the matter of same-sex marriage. He'll set a trial date at a July 10 hearing. 

While it looks like Michigan is prepared to defend their same-sex marriage ban, popular opinion on the issue has changed. When the Atlantic Wire ranked the states most likely to approve same-sex marriage, Michigan was the second after New Jersey. That ranking cites a May 2013 poll noting that 57 percent of voters in Michigan back gay marriage. For comparison, the constitutional ban on gay marriage in the state passed with 59 percent of the votes back in 2004.

Read the whole 5-page ruling here: 

Michigan Gay Marriage trial

       

Pay No Attention to the Leaker Behind the Iron Curtain

Two new statements that surfaced on Monday evening offer a tiny bit more Edward Snowden for the world to pore over. One, a translated plea to Ecuador seen by Reuters; the other, an odd message posted at WikiLeaks. They are little fragments of the most interesting news story in the world, but they only shed light on the least important, most knee-jerk part of that story. Which is a disservice.

Snowden is dramatic. That is meant in both the traditional sense of the word as well as its more modern form, a truncation of "melodramatic." That a 30-year-old is dramatic is neither a surprise, nor relevant to the documents he has turned over to the press. The documents, too, are dramatic, but in the quiet way of inanimate objects. No matter how much or what Snowden says, no matter if he spends the rest of his life in a Supermax prison or a superb Ecuadorean beach, there will always be a distinction between his personal drama and the significance of his revelations. That distinction gets lost quickly. Sometimes it is obscured intentionally.

In the letter to Ecuador — apparently seen only by Reuters and reported in dribs and drabs on Monday in the late afternoon, following a day of conflicting reports about his extradition request, Putin included — Snowden most notably writes that he "remain[s] free and able to publish information that serves the public interest." While the Guardian and the Washington Post have all of Snowden's files (as Glenn Greenwald reinforced today), Snowden could of course leak any information he wants at any time. As he has, to eager new audiences like the South China Morning Post and, over the weekend, Der Spiegel.

The more dramatic part of his statement precedes that.

While the public has cried out support of my shining a light on this secret system of injustice, the Government of the United States of America responded with an extrajudicial man-hunt costing me my family, my freedom to travel, and my right to live peacefully without fear of illegal aggression.

This is a translation, heard third-hand. But it's still over-the-top. In another section, Snowden apparently wrote that he was dedicated to the fight for justice, "no matter how many more days my life contains." This echoes his statement during the interview in which he was introduced to the world. Then, he said that the CIA "is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be." Not necessarily inaccurate, but certainly dramatic.

The WikiLeaks statement is dramatic in a different way — a way that seems somehow very WikiLeaks-y. "This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile," he writes of President Obama. "These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."

The letter continues:

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country.

It's an odd formulation, as Slate's Farhad Manjoo notes.

Did Edward Snowden really write this? No American would use plural verbs for America -- the United States "have been" http://t.co/gxEBBtBoj2

— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) July 1, 2013

Snowden was dramatic and used weird language before he got involved with WikiLeaks, of course. In his live chat with the Guardian and a large, curious audience last month, he offered the famously weird question-and-answer, "If I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now." That chat, though, didn't have odd, twitchy non-American language the way the new WikiLeaks statement does. So did he write it, or did a WikiLeaks lawyer? Or, as is certainly possible, did Julian Assange? Who typed those words?

This doesn't matter. It doesn't matter literally; the post was updated to read "the United States of America has been." It doesn't matter in a practical sense; countless CEOs put their names on documents they didn't write every day, but they represent their corporate will. More importantly, it doesn't matter in a functional sense. If Snowden wrote the WikiLeaks statement or the Ecuador one or his live chat — that doesn't change what the documents say, any more than the discovery of his teenage web presence does. The questions about Snowden are not questions about the documents that have been released, vetted by journalists, and verified by the United States government. They are distinct.

We can enjoy two dramas at once. But we have to be careful not to blend their significance. The melodrama and the drama should stay distinct.

       

What the Inside of Egypt's Biggest Protest in History Looks Like at Night

[image error]The protests against Mohammad Morsi's government in Cairo are the largest ever in the country's history — even bigger than the massive protests two years ago that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Millions of people took to the streets on Sunday, which was really something, and the protests continued on Monday. The Egyptian military gave the Morsi government 48 hours to respond to the people — but insisted its policy opposes cops. The protests are even more spectacular at night. In the GIF at right, taken from Al Jazeera's coverage of the protests, you can see how big it is. You can also see the green pen lasers, which were pointed at the windows of Muslim Brotherhood offices before they were ransacked. Protesters chanted "Leave!" Here are some photos of the enormous crowds — and from the people inside them. Remarkably, many people are smiling.

Nouraradwan says, "33 million people standing there all day all night waiting for morsi to step down ...unbelieve Guys good job god blesses you all..never saw them smiling Till now i can see the happiness in their eyes."

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Another view of the massive crowd:

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(Photo by Reuters.)

By linaezzat:

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Posted by nohamaged — note her T-shirt says "Please Be Happy":

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A protester holds up both a Christian cross and a Koran:

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(Photo by Reuters.)

Helicopters flew above with the Egyptian flag hanging underneath, by peteribrahim90:

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Another view of the helicopters:

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(Photo by the Associated Press.)

Protesters chanted outside of the presidential palace on Monday:

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And Morsi supporters rallied in Nasser City, in Cairo:

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(Photos by Associated Press.)

By roufa21:

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Some graffiti, captured by youssefnasser:

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And an anti-Morsi sign:

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As in Turkey's Taksim Square, the Anonymous mask makes an appearance:

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Snacks, posted by ahmedsalehhh:

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More snacks: From a rough Google Translate, I think this is roasted corn:

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And:

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Tahrir Square:

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(Photos by Reuters.)

A rough Google Translate of the caption written by Latifa Al-Tunisia suggests this elderly couple is important in the Egyptian art world — any help in the comments would be much appreciated.

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A USA baseball cap makes an appearance — by heyitsdinaa:

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This photo went viral on Tumblr and Instagram.

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Stills from TV coverage:

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When the Journalism Gets Real, Media Criticism Get Fake

The easiest way to respond to bad news about you is to dismiss its writer as a fraud and condemn him or her to a new category called fake journalism. To see the latest example of this defense mechanism, look no further than Bryan Goldberg, a co-founder of the Bleacher Report, who has written a screed against "'real journalism'" (the sarcastic quotation marks are Goldberg's). Inspired by Napster founder Sean Parker's 9,500 word essay, which also falls in this hating-on-journalists genre, Goldberg has chimed in not just to defend Parker, who he calls " a person who fundamentally changed the world," but to save himself.

Veiled as a heroic stand against the terrible world of blogs, Goldberg just wants to call out someone who wrote something mean about him. "A few weeks ago, a 'real journalist' named Joe Eskenazi won a presitigious award for his preposterous and poorly researched 'profile' of the company I co-founded, Bleacher Report," writes Goldberg on Pando Daily. Eskenazi, you see, falls into the category of "'real journalist'" because he hurt Goldberg's feelings with his SF Weekly feature story about his company. Goldberg claims he never reached out to him for comment, thus negating all of the reporting in which Eskenazi quotes people calling the site "crap." Ergo he is "real" (ie. fake) journalist, a reflection of the overall state of things in this biz. 

This is the trend du jour of public relations: in the face of bad press, people weigh in on the state of the media. That's what Parker did in his essay, calling out all the Internet writers who wrote up his wedding not only for committing that one sin, but for being terrible at their jobs all the time. Alec Baldwin unleashed a fusillade of homophobic tweets after the Daily Mail incorrectly reported that his wife was tweeting from James Gandolfini's funeral. But in between threats, Baldwin has decided "we live in a world where there’s no journalism anymore," he told Gothamist.

Glenn Greenwald, who does a lot of real — no quotes — journalism has taken to doing this, too calling pretty much everyone who doesn't do what he does a fake journalist. "I have seen all sorts of so-called objective journalists who have all kinds of assumptions in every sentence they write," he told the New York Times's David Carr. In response to journalists asking him about his past, he basically called the Daily News and New York Times reporters "real" journalists. "If journalists really believe that, in response to the reporting I'm doing, these distractions about my past and personal life are a productive way to spend their time, then so be it," he wrote over at he Guardian. 

The sins of one, however, do not reflect the state of the entire media, nor does an insulted public figure a media critic make. It's hard to take even the most apt criticism seriously when it comes from a place of personal offense. The state of journalism isn't in disrepair because it criticizes you or your lifestyle. 

       

'The Bible' Finally Gets a Sequel

Today in show business news: NBC is very into religion, Anna Nicole Smith is a hit again, and Helen Mirren is going to be in your mom's favorite movie.

Seeing History's massive success with its ten-part miniseries The Bible, NBC's mouth watered and it whispered "Me want...." And so the network has grabbed Bible producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey to tell the second part of the story. The Bible ended with Jesus's death, so what will The Bible 2: Jerusalem Drift A.D.: Beyond the Bible be about? The beginnings of the church, mostly. Here is how Burnett describes it: "It will begin in the dark days after Jesus’ betrayal and death. A perfect storm brews in the Holy Land, fueled by social injustice, Roman military oppression and religious unrest. High priests and the Herod dynasty vie for power. Zealot revolutionaries turn to violence to regain what they believe is their promised land. And in the face of terrible odds and brutal persecution, the small band of Jesus’ disciples stand against the combined might of Rome and their own local authorities." Oy. OK. So, it's not actually based on anything else in the Bible itself, like there's no Revelations in it or whatever, it's just about what happened right after Jesus died, a period we don't know a lot about. But then I guess it'll eventually be about the actual writing of the gospels and whatnot? So it's called The Bible and it's about the Bible. Meta! Very meta. Obviously NBC has high hopes for this sequel of sorts, though I'd have to imagine that they are at least somewhat aware that all the really good stuff already happened. Poor NBC. [Entertainment Weekly]

Hopefully The Bible: When Nature Calls will at least get higher ratings than this past weekend's Lifetime: Television For The Ruined Lives Of Women original movie Anna Nicole. I mean, with 3.3 million viewers tuning in on Saturday night it did pretty well for Lifetime, coming in just under the crazily hyped Liz & Dick, but those wouldn't be good NBC numbers. So. Yeah. Really glad I took a walk around the block justifying that segue. Aren't you glad? Good. Anyway, I didn't watch the movie, so I have no idea if it was any good or not, but I am still very surprised that Mary Harron directed it. I have read that fact many times, and it is still very strange. Oh well. Glad more people made some money from Anna Nicole Smith. [Deadline]

Dame Helen Mirren has just signed on to star in a new literary adaptation. She'll be playing a chef in the film version of The Hundred Foot Journey, a "culinary competition drama about an Indian restaurant and a three-Michelin-star joint literally across the street from each other in Southern France." Lasse Hallstrom is directing. So basically your mom has plans now. She wasn't sure what she was doing on August 8 of next year, but now she has plans to go to dinner with Judy and Donna, probably at that Italian place near where she gets her hair done, and then she is going to see this Lasse Hallstrom movie about Helen Mirren being a chef. So that's nice. Your father can heat up some leftovers, and it's August so there will probably be a ball game on or something. What are YOU doing on August 8 of next year? You don't have any plans, do you. And you thought your old ma was so uncool. [Deadline]

Here's a teaser trailer for Ride Along, a comedy starring Kevin Hart and Ice Cube that is basically Training Day — they say the phrase "training day" in the trailer — except it's a comedy about a guy who needs a mean man's permission before he can propose to the mean man's sister. She evidently has no say in the matter. Great. Seems fun.

       

Alison Grimes Is Ready for Whac-a-Mole with Mitch McConnell in 2014 (and Now)

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is clearly not leaving his reelection to luck. While he's had some good fortune so far, he's mostly surviving on a lot of preemptive attacks and a surprising dose of incompetence from his opponents. With today's announcement that Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes will run against him, the most unexpectedly engrossing Senate race in the country will only get more interesting. And then McConnell will probably win.

We've discussed Grimes before. She's been rumored as a possibility for months, and, following Ashley Judd's probably-wise decision not to run in the race, Grimes emerged as perhaps the most likely candidate. Clearly, McConnell and Kentucky Republicans have had their eye on her for a while. She's been featured / disparaged in at least three ads over the past few months. This was during what McConnell famously called the Whac-A-Mole phase of the campaign. Any time a potential opponent to his candidacy peeked his or her head up — bam, nail them with an ad in opposition.

In February.

 

 

In May.

 

 

In June.

 

Grimes has so far not retreated back into the cabinet (or whatever the proper Whac-A-Mole analogy is). Instead, she insists that she spent the time since Judd dropped out preparing for the fight. "Make no mistake, members of the media, this due diligence was not reluctance, it was not hesitancy, but rather a deliberate gathering of all the necessary facts to make a decision that’s not to be taken lightly," Politico reports Grimes as saying during her announcement today.

It's natural that Republicans would be a bit intimidated by Grimes' candidacy. In 2011, she won election to her current position by a large margin — even topping the big spread posted by the state's incumbent governor — though her opponent was far weaker. As news reports on Grimes' announcement are quick to point out, she also comes from lesser Kentucky Democratic royalty. Her father, Jerry Lundergan, served two stints as state party chairman.

Which brings us to Jerry Lundergan. Lundergan's first stint as party chairman ended somewhat ignominiously, after admitting to ethics violations related to a no-bid contract with which his catering company was awarded. This was 1988, and "the sins of the father, etc.," but the grainy photo/incriminating headline in news coverage about it will almost certainly be hard for McConnell to resist.

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Of course, Lundergan redeemed himself, enough for that second stint. Unlike the first time, it lasted longer than three months.

Wasting no time after Grimes' announcement, the polling experts at The New York Times' 538 blog have weighed in with an assessment. McConnell is likely to win — but it is not a sure thing.

In many ways, Ms. Grimes faces a challenge similar to that faced earlier this year by Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the Democrat who challenged Representative Mark Sanford in a special election in South Carolina’s First Congressional District: to defeat a flawed Republican opponent on solidly Republican terrain.

McConnell's flaws, as we pointed out in May center on the fact that the senator is very unpopular. His job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 2008 race. But, in another way, that plays to his advantage. A lot more people are familiar with the work and history of Mitch McConnell than are familiar with Grimes. That's the other reason he was playing Whac-A-Mole: to tell voters negative things about every head that popped up.

And, as 538 notes, if Grimes' playbook is Colbert Busch — that's not exactly a recipe for success. Ask Rep. Mark Sanford.

       

Move Over, Brody? Ray Donovan Is the Record-Setting New Prince of Showtime

Ray Donovan might just be everyone's favorite new solemn anti-hero, if Showtime's ratings have anything to say about it. Indeed, Ray Donovan's series premiere last night had the biggest debut of any original series for the network ever, drawing 1.35 million viewers. That bests Homeland—"the best drama premiere the cable network had over the previous eight years," according to Deadline's Dominic Patten—which had 1.08 million viewers when it premiered in October 2011. (In case you were wondering, Dead Like Me topped Homeland with 1.11 million viewers in 2003.)

Of course, Ray Donovan had some help. It was buoyed by the 2.5 million people who watched the premiere of Dexter's eighth and final season as a lead-in. Ray Donovan also, you know, arrives at a very dull time for television, and especially for Sunday nights. With Mad Men gone a week earlier, Donovan was really the only appointment-television, prestige drama in its time slot, so people are probably hankering for another moody man with dark secrets and few words. We'd be interested to see how it might stack up against a more meaty non-summer lineup, but this is probably enough to hook viewers for a while, and maybe even a season-two pickup.

Showtime is also touting that 816,000 people watched the show on their On Demand and Showtime Anytime platforms, as Variety's Rick Kissell points out, plus another 870,000 who watched the encore show. 

Donovan has gotten generally favorable reviews—though not for the Boston accents—with our Richard Lawson explaining that it "represents another leap forward for the adolescent network." And now the network has a new crown prince—and he's a grumpy Bostonian mired in LA.