Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1063

Durbin: You're All Scared of Hillary 2016

Sen. Dick Durbin blamed Republicans fear of Hillary Clinton dominating the 2016 Presidential election on the obsession with turning Benghazi into a major scandal. He called the whole thing part of the "political show" in the election's build up. "Unfortunately, this has been caught up in the 2016 presidential campaign, this effort to go after Hillary Clinton," the Democrat's No. 2 in the Senate said on CBS's Face the Nation. Durbin said Clinton was never interviewed for the Accountability Review Board investigation because she didn't have "direct line responsibility" for the decisions relevant in the Benghazi scandal. But Republicans want to bring her in for questioning "because they think it’s a good political show," he said. Durbin said there was no cover-up, but characterized the decision to revise the Benghazi talking points as "a squabble between two agencies, the CIA and the State Department." Durbin said there is no credibility to attacks on former Secretary of State Clinton for Benghazi despite what some right wing media and politicians would have you believe. "It is unsubstantiated, and yet the witch hunt continues," he said.

Rep-elect Mark Sanford holds no hard feelings for the Republicans who deserted after he was caught having an affair and removed from office. "I’m a Republican who has always had an independent streak that would be the best way to define it. The past is the past," the South Carolina Republican said on Fox News Sunday. "I look forward to working with the Republican team." Sanford said he learned a lot since he was busted for having an affair with an Argentinian woman while claiming he was hiking the Appalachian trail. "I learned a lot about judgment. I learned a lot about forgiveness," Sanford said. "I could go down a litany of things. I’ll boil it down this way: Our minister gave a great sermon a few months back and his point was, 'Do the events in our life refine or define your life?' In politics, people want to take an event and make it definitional to your life. I think in any of these valleys or bumps can be refining points."

Sen. John McCain wants more Benghazi investigations and more Hillary Clinton testimony. He told ABC's This Week that he wants a "select committee" to investigate what exactly happend on September 11. "I’d call [Benghazi] a cover-up in the extent that there was willful removal of information which was obvious," McCain said Sunday. "There are so many questions that are unanswered. We need a select committee," McCain added. He also had very strong words for Press Secretary Jay Carney. "For the president’s spokesman to say there were only words or technical changes made in those emails is flat out untrue. I like Mr. Carney, but that’s just unacceptable for the president’s spokesman to say that to the American people," he said. McCain also theorized that the claim Clinton didn't know anything about the Benghazi attacks doesn't make sense. "She had to have been in the loop," he claims. "Her response before the Foreign Relations Committee when she said, ‘who cares how this happened?’ in a rather emotional way. I’d say, with all due respect, the American people care."

Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein told NBC's Meet the Press that the talking points issued to Susan Rice before her infamous tour of the Sunday talk shows was wrong and that the White House should have said the September 11 attacks were carried out by terrorists much sooner. "I think the talking points were wrong," the Senate Intelligence Committee chair said. "I think the talking points should not be written by the intelligence community." There was one particular area that they could have made clearer. "Unfortunately," she said, "the word extremist was used which is not as crystal clear as terrorist." Feinstein argued the State Department and CIA deserved some criticism for their handling of the issue. But also that Republicans are driving the issue as a way to attack and discredit Hillary Clinton ahead of a potential Presidential run. "My concern is that when Hillary Clinton’s name is mentioned 32 times in a hearing that the point of the hearing is to discredit the secretary of state who has very high popularity and might well be a candidate for president," the California Democrat said. "I understand that the Republicans have a grievance because this happened a month before the election and every effort has been made to turn it into something diabolic. And I don’t see that."

       

Seth Meyers Is Officially Fallon's Successor on 'Late Night'

The New York Times' Bill Carter reports current Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers will replace Jimmy Fallon as the host of Late Night when Fallon moves to The Tonight Show. Meyers has long been rumored to be the leading candidate ever since Fallon was officially tapped to replace Leno on the big show. There were briefly rumors that NBC was prepping Howard Stern to take over as Late Night host, but those didn't make sense once you gave them any real thought.

Lorne Michaels is now the head of NBC's late night properties so it's not surprising he's posting one of his most trusted pupils into the role. Meyers has been on SNL for twelve seasons now.  "It always seemed like a logical next move," Meyers told Carter before Saturday's episode. "It was just competing with the very emotional idea of leaving a place I have been for a very long time. But if you are going to do that, it seems like you might as well just move a hallway or two." Not announcing it during the Weekend Update broadcast must have been difficult. 

The questions now turn towards who will fill Meyers' shoes in Studio 8H. He's the show's head writer and Weekend Update anchor, but there's no obvious successor in sight. Meyers has done Weekend Update solo ever since Tina Fey left the show. Jason Sudeikis was originally slated to leave in January after he was asked to stay on through the election. But Lorne Michaels indicated to the Associated Press in December that Sudeikis may be sticking around for much longer than we originally were led to believe. 

       

Things Are Getting Ugly for Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Turkish officials arrested nine Turkish nationals accused of having ties to Syrian intelligence forces for the brutal car bombings that killed 46 people in Reyhanli, a town on the border of the two countries where Syrian refugees have started living since the conflict began. 

High-ranking Turkish ministers blamed Bashar Al-Assad's government for the attacks on Sunday claiming all nine people arrested were tied to groups with connections to the Syrian regime. The two car bombings came about 15 minutes apart on Saturday and tore through a busy commercial and residential area. 

Damascus denied their involvement in the bombings. "Syria didn’t and will never undertake such acts because our values don’t allow us to do this," interior minister Omran al-Zoubi told a press conference. The attacks came less than a week after Turkey announced it would support a no-fly zone over Syria. 

 

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay and Interior Minister Muammer Guler alleged Syria's Mukhabarat cooperated with groups within Turkey to try and disrupt the unity of Syrian refugees living in harmony with the Turkish nationals in the border town. In an effort to dispel any anger towards the refugees, Turkey announced a state-wide media ban relating to the attacks. Unfortunately scenes coming out of the border city paint a nasty picture:

 

On Sunday, Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, a Syrian refugee in Reyhanli, said he and other Syrians had been sequestered in their homes since the bombings. His windows had been blown out by one of the explosions, a few blocks away. After the bombings, youths threw rocks through the open windowpanes. On Sunday, three young Turkish men smashed the hood and windows of a white van downstairs that belonged to a Syrian neighbor.

So far there's no indication Turkey will respond with military force. The government will try and quell the domestic fervor before thinking about entering any sort of spillover fight with Syria. 

 

       

Minnesota Lawyer Pimped Himself to a Client

There's one way for a lawyer to cross the line from officer of the law to officer of pleasure: when he bills a client for time they spent having sex. A Minnesota lawyer logged time he spent getting intimate with a lady he was representing in a divorce case in his billable hours.

Minnesota's The Star Tribune reports there's a sharp rise in disciplinary action against regional lawyers. Some are doing trivial things like missing court dates or filing deadlines. Trivial stuff that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. But then there are lawyers doing unfathomably stupid things like screwing a client and trying to charge her for it:

Two months before that, attorney Thomas P. Lowe of Eagan was suspended for a minimum of 15 months for having a sexual relationship with a client he was representing in a divorce case, and including the time spent during their trysts in his billable hours.

So Lowe was, in effect, his own pimp. He sold and brokered his own sexual services to a client and got a 15 month suspension for it. At least he wasn't paying hookers to lie about having sex with politicians? The bar for lawyers is so low these days. 

It turns out this story got picked up in a few different places back in January. The law blog Opposing Views has some more details. The two started their affair in August 2011 when the woman approached Lowe to represent her in her divorce. It lasted for almost a year before arguments about Lowe's marriage caused him to end the affair and their business arrangement. The woman ended up attempting suicide and confessing to everything once she was admitted to the hospital. When Lowe submitted his paperwork, prior to the suicide attempt, he described their time spent together as "drafting memos" and engaging in "meetings." 

       

Kristen Wiig's Mom Is Way Worse Than Your Mom

So less than a year since her departure, Kristen Wiig made her triumphant return to Saturday Night Live last night to retread all the characters you knew and loved. But most importantly she stayed out of the way when she needed to let the new, very strong female cast shine. 

Last night's cold open was some godawful thing where they took the week's three biggest stories: the Cleveland kidnapping, the Jodi Arias trial, and the Benghazi hearings and rolled them all into one. I admittedly showed up late, but from what I could tell it was awful. Awful, awful, awful. This is what my notes for the cold open say: "Let's just pretend that didn't happen." 

So in the interest of moving on, let's get to Wiig's monologue. They combined two of their favorite opening monologue tropes into one last night: the spontaneous breaking out into song and the backstage tour. The whole crux of the joke was that she hasn't been gone for that long (11 months and 30 days, as she points out). But she totally still remembers where everything is. (No, she doesn't.) Jason Sudeikis played a big part in the beginning of the routine, and he looked game enough despite those weird jealousy rumors that came out after last year's goodbye show. But the highlight of the whole arrangement was the verrrrrrry pregnant Maya Rudolph who made out with Jonah Hill in a closet and then busted some moves for the big finale. Seriously, you can see the baby kicking in this GIF from The New York Times' Dave Itzkoff.

The very next sketch was a pre-recorded commercial parody for Mother's Day flowers. This was probably the strongest sketch of the night. It's unfortunate that the high moment came so early. But it's also important that most people see this for what it was: a torch-passing moment from Wiig to Kate MacKinnon as the strongest female cast member on the show. It's no surprise to anyone who watches regularly that MacKinnon is taking on this role. She gets the most airtime and the strongest material, despite Nasim Pedrad and Cecily Strong biting at her heels at every moment. But MacKinnon is the clear heavyweight in the bunch. Channeling equal parts Wiig and Ana Gasteyer, MacKinnon carries the comedic weight in this sketch while Wiig takes a backseat role. All the laughs come from the current cast member in the sketch. That's not something that happend a lot in the rest of the episode so at least they did it when it counts. 

Because our next stop was a retread of The Californians. I'll confess to liking the weirdness of these sketches normally, but this one dragged on for so long. It went on forever and never stopped. Again, from my notes: "ohmythisisstillgoing." 

I guess I enjoyed "Aw, Nuts! Mom's A Ghost!" more than most. It's odd that they did a sketch partially inspired by The Grudge in 2013, as if they had the script laying around and decided to finally do it because Wiig always thought it had potential. But Cecily Strong gets to shine here, which may have been my favorite part. She nails the Disney Channel youth thing perfectly.

The next three sketches were the Kristen Wiig retread half-hour, so let's go through them like a list. First up, we have Eunice Maharelle: 

Then it was Garth and Kat on Weekend Update: 

And Target Lady got way too much booking time: 

I'll give points here because they never do big mess sketches anymore, and the acupuncture sketch may have been the biggest one I've ever seen. Aidy Bryant and Kristen Wiig are servicing Jason Sudeikis but his back keeps spurting out blood. You can see where this is going. Once the sketch reaches its logical conclusion (a geyser of blood erupting from his back) everyone is absolutely covered. Sometimes simple concepts work. It's OK to keep it simple, guys. 

And we're going to close it with this sixth graders and cougars sketch because it was the highlight of the back half of the show. Tim Robinson is the quickly becoming one of the unheralded greats on the cast. He only gets significant airtime after weekend update, it seems, but everything he does is great. This sketch was delightfully weird and I loved every minute of it. 

So that was a thing that happened. Wiig got her "hey, wasn't I great when I did all these characters regularly?" moments while sharing strong sketches with the women who are, you know, still on the show. Next week we get Ben Affleck for the season finale. Did you know he's joining the Five Timer's Club? We doubt he'll get half the fanfare Justin did earlier this season. 

       

So What Were Bloomberg Reporters Using Those Terminals for Anyway?

Investigations are being launched by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to see if their employees were spied on by Bloomberg reporters, too. But they may find Bloomberg reporters didn't always use the terminals to get scoops. They used them for fun on slow days, instead.

Yesterday, the New York Post reported a Goldman Sachs employee filed a complaint with Bloomberg LP after a reporter let something slip. He asked a Goldman source what was happening with a partner who hadn't signed on to his Bloomberg-leased terminal in a while. The Goldman source was shocked to learn the Bloomberg reporter could access that information. So the parent company promised Goldman Sachs it would curtail reporters' access to terminal information.

As The Atlantic Wire's Phillip Bump explained, the terminals Bloomberg leases to the biggest powers in finance is a multi-billion dollar business. Our sister site Quartz looked at the different things Bloomberg employees would have access to, including when someone logged onto their terminal and customer's transcripts with the help desk. Besides seeing when people were logging on, we don't know what Bloomberg reporters did with the terminals. New details have come out showing what, exactly, Bloomberg employees were doing with their access. 

"To me, the fact that Bloomberg doesn't far out-scoop everyone means: a) snooping wasn't very valuable or b) reporters weren't good at it," New York's finance reporter Kevin Roose said on Twitter Saturday. And what we know so far lends credence to the former rather than the latter. If the information was valuable, the reports about what Bloomberg reporters did with the power haven't shown it. The New York Times reports "several hundred" of Bloomberg's 2,400 worldwide journalists knew how to access the terminal information. The company is handling an internal investigation into their reporters' terminal snooping, but what they're going to find is underwhelming for the most part. 

Quartz reported several Bloomberg employees would look up transcripts of famous customers receiving technical support on slow days to help pass the time. "The transcripts were typically mundane and hardly incriminating, but who wouldn’t enjoy watching a former US Federal Reserve chairman struggle to use a computer?" they explain. And it's true! It's not uncommon for employees of technical support companies to look up the files of famous customers. This writer knows multiple people who have looked up Apple technical support records of the rich and famous while bored on slow work days. "Bloomberg staffers reading Greenspan's transcripts reminds me of when I used to work at Balthazar and look up Anna Wintour's dining history," former media critic Foster Kamer said on Twitter. 

Or there are the employees who would look up the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geinther just to impress the new guys in the newsroom, as CNBC reports: 

 

The former Bloomberg employee who worked in the editorial section recalled calling up the information on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner "just for fun" and displaying the information to new recruits "to show how powerful" the Bloomberg terminals were.

The former employee said he recalled seeing the functions used by the Fed Chairman and Treasury Secretary and the number of times those functions had been used. The person did not recall which specific functions he saw, but said it would have been at a broad level. 

There's little indication reporters could have gleaned scoops from the terminal information they could access. CNBC's Bloomberg source explained they could see when a broker accessed global equity indexes, but could not see which markets they were looking at. Knowing that a broker is looking at global indexes isn't scoop worthy information. You can assume any broker on Wall Street worth their weight would be monitoring what's happening in global financial markets. 

But what Bloomberg has to worry about are the investigations being done by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, according to the Times and CNBC, to see if Bloomberg reporters were tracking their employees. Let's hope they buy the "just for fun" to impress the new guys excuse. 

       

Why the IRS Abruptly Apologized to the Tea Party

It came as a surprise when the Internal Revenue Service apologized, seemingly out of the blue, to a number of Tea Party groups for unfairly scrutinizing their tax exempt status on Friday. Now we know why the apology came when it did. 

The Associated Press' Stephen Ohlemacher reports a federal watchdog report coming out this week will show senior IRS officials knew about the unfair scrutiny as far back as 2011. The report from the Treasury Department's inspector general shows Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, was informed that groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being targeted for extra questioning at a meeting on June 29, 2011. During Lerner's apology on Friday, he blamed the targeting on lower-level tax agents. The report seems to show Lerner was telling the truth on Friday. The report shows he told the agents to change the criteria for flagging groups "immediately."

The focus will now become whether or not IRS commissioner Doug Shulman knew about the questions when he testified that no Tea Party groups were being targeted for unfair scrutiny in front of Congress in 2012. The report doesn't shay whether or not Shulman was informed about the Tea Party questioning, but it does show the IRS's chief counsel was. It's standard procedure for the counsel and commissioner to discuss this sort of thing before a Congressional hearing. Shulman's term as head of the IRS ended at the end of last year and he was appointed by President Bush. But Obama has yet to announce a replacement. 

       

They're Going to Tear Down and Rebuild Sandy Hook Elementary

After weeks of deliberations, the task force assigned to figure out where to build the new Sandy Hook Elementary have finally concluded their search. They're going to demolish the old one and build the new school in the very same spot. 

The groups narrowed the options down to two, and then eventually to the final one, during an emotional meeting Friday night. A different site on the same road as the existing Sandy Hook building was considered the second best option, but it would have required rezoning and faced potential resistance from surrounding homeowners. There were concerns some students, parents and educators wouldn't be able to cope with returning to the site of the December 14 shooting that killed 26 people. But the group unanimously decided the best course of action was to tear down the existing elementary school building and rebuild on the same site. 

Sandy Hook students have been operating out of the former Chalk Hill Middle School in the nearby  town, Monroe. They'll spend another year there, most likely, while the new building takes an estimated 18 months to be constructed. There are two plans the city is considering that would cost around $56 million. Final budgetary plans have to be approved by the city by June. The state and federal governments are expected to help with costs, too. 

       

Astronauts at the International Space Station Successfully Fixed Its Leaky Pump

Astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn completed the most impromptu spacewalk in NASA history ahead of schedule. The two men spent roughly five hours outside of the International Space Station repairing an ammonia pump used to cool the laboratory's engine system. 

The ammonia pump was the chief suspect when little flecks were spotted leaving the ISS two days ago by commander Chris Hadfield. Cassidy and Marshburn only had two days to prepare for the spacewalk, a terrifyingly small amount of time considering they have to go out into space. But this is one of the emergency scenarios they were trained for before being posted to the ISS. 

NASA scientists on the ground walked the two men through the pain-staking process of replacing the pump Saturday morning. They stayed outside while the pump was activated to make sure no flecks were seen forming around the newly installed pump. "No evidence of any ammonia leakage whatsoever. We have an airtight system — at the moment," Mission Control reported. After about an hour of observation the two were brought back inside. It was a job well done. "No leaks! We're bringing Tom & Chris back inside," Hadfield tweeted. 

The emergency situation thankfully never put the astronauts life in danger, but it was a stressful way for Hadfield and Marshburn to spend their last few days on the ISS. The two return to earth in a Russian Soyuz spaceship on Monday. 

       

Violence Doesn't Stop Pakistan from Voting on Election Day

Update 3:33 p.m.: Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has declared victory despite not knowing the official results yet. Sharif was ahead in 115 of 272 National assembly seats at last count:

PAKISTAN’S SHARIF SAYS HIS PARTY CLEAR WINNER IN ELECTION, SAYS HOPES FOR MAJORITY TO AVOID COALITION #breaking

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 11, 2013

[image error]

Original: Despite violence from the Taliban, citizens in Pakistan turned out in huge numbers on Saturday to vote in the country's historic first ever democratic elections. Early numbers estimate a voter turnout as high as 60 percent of the over 86 million people eligible to vote. With the first results from polls starting to roll in, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and former cricket star Imran Khan appear to be in the lead. But official results won't be known until sometime on Sunday. 

The Taliban delivered on their promises to attack polling stations in an effort to keep Pakistani citizens from turning out on Saturday. The port city of Karachi saw one of the deadliest attacks after twin bombings near polling stations killed 11 people and injured 37 others. Eight people died in shootouts near polling stations in the southwest province of Baluchistan. In one Taliban stronghold, there were reports saying women were warned not to leave the house on Saturday by local mosques. A bomb injured eight women outside a polling station in Peshawar. This is all on top of the pre-election violence that injured more than 100 people. 

Things could have been much worse, though. Pakistan deployed 600,000 security officers across the country to protect voters turning out to polling stations. "For most part, the voting has been taking place according to plan," Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder told the news agency from Peshawar. 

This is the first time in Pakistan's 68 year history that a civilian government has completed a five year term and handed the government over in an election. The image of transparent democracy took a hit on Friday when the country abruptly ordered the expulsion of veteran Pakistan-based reporter and The New York Times' Islamabad bureau chief Declan Walsh for participating in "undesirable activities." The Times' Jill Abramson wrote a strongly worded letter demanding more information from the government but so far has received little response. The Times' editorial board also chastised the government in Saturday's paper. 

Hopefully things will wrap up peacefully and without major scandal souring the potentially historic election. There were some irregularities reported in Karachi, the site of the most deadly bombing, that could require a mulligan on voting in the region.  "We have been unable to carry out free and fair elections in Karachi," Pakistan's election commission said. They were forced to extend voting hours there after, among other things, a man was seen trying to stuff a ballot box before other voters screamed for him to be ejected from a polling station. But that is not expected to impede on the election results process. It appears, for now, that it's smooth sailing ahead.