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Today we're turning over the whole talking points section to the president, because he certainly deserves a victory lap after announcing this week that -- against all odds, and against all the slings and arrows of misfortune -- 7.1 million people signed up for health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.
Today -- the first of April -- Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has officially reabsorbed Alaska. "The Russian territory which has been mistaken referred to as 'the state of Alaska' has now been returned to its rightful and legal owner, Russia. It would be foolish for anyone to ever refer to the Russian Alyaska again as being any part of the United States."
The Media files were made public in large part due to a few journalists (and a few brave editors) at the Washington Post who received them and reported on them. Attorney General John Mitchell personally called up the editors at the Post in a last-minute attempt to quash the story multiple times the day they arrived, but in the end the decision was made to go ahead and publish. Incredibly, at this time Mitchell didn't even know what was in the burgled files, and even though it was two weeks after the burglary, he had apparently just become aware of it. The event explored new territory in both journalism and in the legal world, because it was the first time secret documents had ever been provided to news organizations after having been stolen from the government. There simply were no precedents to follow.
Forty-three years ago this month, an obscure branch office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations located in a Philadelphia suburb was burgled. All their files were stolen (being 1971, these files were all on paper) and whisked away to a secret hideout, then they were sorted and sent to the media. This criminal act set in motion the idea that our government should no longer operate in secret without any supervision. It was followed by the leak of the government's Vietnam War plans, a congressional investigation (the first ever of its kind) into the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., the resignation of a president brought about in no small part by leaks to the media, and eventually the modern-day document dumps of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. But while the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the Church Committee are at least somewhat well-known these days, few people (even few followers of politics, recent history, or the debates on the modern security state) recognize "the Media break-in" as where it all started.
At this point, you may be tempted to ask the barman for what you believe will be a well-known local drink, and you may thus make the mistake of asking for a "black and tan." The reception of what you consider a harmless drink order for a pint glass half-filled with Harp and half-filled with Guinness Stout will not, however, be a merry twinkle of approval from the barman's eye for ordering a local delicacy. Instead, you will (hopefully) be forgiven for such a gross error of etiquette, and (once they hear some more of your American accent, again, hopefully) they will instruct you in the long and grim history of the Black and Tans -- with a helpful suggestion that if you ever want the same drink again in an Irish pub, that you ask for it as a "half and half" instead.
Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Central Intelligence Agency are having an increasingly-public spat, it seems. Feinstein has now accused the C.I.A. of spying on her congressional committee (which is charged with oversight of the C.I.A.) and the C.I.A. has accused Feinstein's committee of taking documents they weren't supposed to have. They are both trying to convince Eric Holder's Justice Department that the other is at fault.
It's been a busy week in politics -- even without all the CPAC follies -- so let's get right to it.
Russia hasn't been on the minds of Americans for a while now (other than the recent Olympics, of course), which is why a whole lot of people are now shocked to discover a basic truth which was self-evident in the days of the Cold War: Russia, much like America, doesn't really have to care all that much what the rest of the world thinks about it.
John Boehner just bowed to reality for the third straight time, rather than choosing to create yet another meaningless self-imposed crisis for the American economy. There are metaphors a-plenty to describe today's events, but we're going with how one fellow Republican put it (who didn't even agree with Boehner when it came time to vote): "John Boehner was the adult in the room."
OK, as usual, I'm sitting down to write this without really dipping into the oceans of ink (and electrons) that are being spilled right now by other pundits, so that my reactions to both the "State Of The Union" speech and the Republican response are untainted by either groupthink or the herd mentality. So there's a very good chance (as always) that what I thought will be a long way away from what others think (on both sides of the aisle).