On This Week, Much Pearl Clutching Over Secret
Service Men Behaving Badly

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My goodness, the pearl clutching that's going on over (gasp) the Secret Service patronizing hookers! Someone I know who used to work in military intelligence had this to say:

Granted, asking for the two-for-one special is pretty lame, but this whole Colombia thing is too funny. When Reagan visited Guam in 1985 at least 15-20 members of his SS detail hit up Club Yobo strip club. Are they really gonna have an investigation because SS and TDY [temporary duty] military patronize strip clubs and hookers?

Why, yes, they are. And on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Carolyn Maloney get to shake their heads and look Very, Very Serious while talking about this today:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning. The headlines out of Washington this week swirled around a single theme: federal workers behaving badly. At the GSA, the depth of wasteful spending became clear when new photos showed official Jeffrey Neely living the high life at a Las Vegas hotel at taxpayer expense.

And the scandal involving the president's security detail in Colombia continues to spread, with six Secret Service agents now forced out, six others still under investigation, and 11 members of the military also under scrutiny.

The White House says security was not compromised and is standing by Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, who personally briefed the president Friday. But Congress is stepping up its investigations, and our headliners are at the center of that work, Maine Senator Susan Collins, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, and New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from the House Oversight Committee.

Welcome to you both. I think it's appropriate that we have female legislators here today, because we just learned this morning that the agent who swept in and cleaned this all up, female agent Paula Reid, head of the service detail down in Latin America, and she seemed to get to the bottom of this quickly.

COLLINS: She did. She acted decisively, appropriately, and I can't help but wonder if there'd been more women as part of that detail if this ever would have happened.

That, alone, might be the stupidest damn thing I ever heard. Yes, because admitting women into the military academies has completely changed the culture of sex and violence, right?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, what's the latest, though, on the investigation?

MALONEY: I would like to say I talked to Director Sullivan last night, and he was commending her leadership, too. She really went in there and cleaned up the mess. And one thing I asked him is, how many women are on the force? It's only 11 percent of the agents are women.

And if -- we agree on this. If there were more agents on the ground, maybe we would not have had this.

Arghh. Women are not some magic ingredient that you add and testosterone just... disappears! Military culture (and paramilitary culture, like the Secret Service) is, ultimately, based on force. How far back do you suppose the term "rape and pillage has" goes?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Only 11 percent?

MALONEY: And I can't help but keep asking this question, where are the women? We probably need to diversify the Secret Service and have more minorities and more women.

Yes, we do need to do that, but not as some incredible overnight remedy. After all, has adding women and minorities to urban police forces stopped brutality? Of course not. The dominant culture still rules.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is an excellent point. Let me -- let's get to this investigation right now. We learned, Senator, from McClatchy news this morning that Colombian police are now investigating whether any of the women involved in this scandal were underage. And we know that at least six agents have been forced to leave their jobs. Do we have any evidence that underage women were involved? And do you expect more agents to go?

COLLINS: That's an issue that I raised with the director, and he told me that at this point there is no evidence of underage women. But, frankly, in some ways, although that would make the matters worse...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Illegal.

COLLINS: ... it would make it illegal, so that obviously makes it worse. It is beside the point as far as the broader issue. Most Secret Service agents do an extraordinary job, and they're very disciplined and professional. But what are Secret Service personnel doing bringing unknown foreign nationals to their rooms, regardless of their age?

When it happened under Reagan, it was the era of, you know, actual communists. No one seemed to care then.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Again, that is an excellent point. And the chairman of your committee has sent a letter to Director Sullivan suggesting that those four nationals may have come in contact with sensitive security information. Do you have any evidence of that?

MALONEY: Well, I -- I spoke to Director Sullivan last night. And he is doing a thorough investigation. He does not believe that security was compromised in any way for the president or any national leader.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you pretty confident of that at this point?

MALONEY: Well, the investigation is going forward. We don't have all of the facts yet. We need to wait until the end. I know that he found -- another person was implicated. He announced that immediately. I'm pleased that the whole process is very transparent. And we'll see at the end. And the Oversight Committee will be holding hearings when the information comes out, and we are going to get to the bottom of this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But, Senator, you said you find this hard to believe that this is a one-time incident.

COLLINS: I do. Now, I recognize that the vast majority of Secret Service personnel are professional, disciplined, dedicated, courageous. But to me it defies belief that this is just an aberration. There were too many people involved. If it had been one or two, then I would say it was an aberration. But it included two supervisors. That is particularly shocking and appalling.

No, it isn't. It's just a political problem. It makes the administration look bad, because as many Americans still look at online porn and sneak off to strip clubs, we like to pretend that we're above that sort of thing. The fact is, military and paramilitary culture supports this very thing. It's even seen as a bonding experience. It may not be pretty, but it's reality.

The thing that concerns me is, I don't see how you get rid of a bunch of experienced people without leaving the president's security in jeopardy. This seems like an incredibly bad idea.

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http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/week-much-pearl-clutching-over-secret

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FDL Book Salon Welcomes Martin Cohen and Andrew
McKillop, The Doomsday Machine: The High Price of Nuclear Energy, the Worlds Most Dangerous Fuel

Little more than 13 months after the world's third major civilian nuclear accident in three decades, it might be surprising to find that one of the words commonly used in context with nuclear power these days is "renaissance." Though more the product of[...]

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Thumbs on the Scale: How the Conservative Media
Helps Romney

Isn't it interesting how the US establishment media, even as it went out of its way to push the Republicans' distorted talking points on Hilary Rosen's comments concerning Ann Romney, simultaneously ignored things that might not reflect well on Mrs.[...]

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Dems on Hill have "buyer's remorse" about health
care reform

Not anything close to the buyer's remorse a lot of us have about them. First this excerpt from The Hill:

?I think we would all have been better off ? President Obama politically, Democrats in Congress politically, and the nation would have been better off ? if we had dealt first with the financial system and the other related economic issues and then come back to healthcare,? said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who is retiring at the end of this Congress.

Well, we did deal with the economic crisis first. That's what the stimulus was about. And had the administration sold the stimulus harder, and more wisely, to the public, both before and after it was passed, people would, in retrospective, have perceived the stimulus as worthy and effective, and thus would have perceived that the Congress DID in fact deal with economic issues first.

The second problem was the way they handled health care reform. The administration did a lousy job selling the legislation to the public, and an equally lousy job demonizing Republicans and insurance companies (and Big Pharma et. al.), both during and after the legislative battle. So we ended up with legislation that no one understands, that the administration has, at times, seemed almost embarrassed of mentioning, and that the Republicans have outright lied about, continually, and about which the public now believes many of the lies.

The fault, dear congressman, is not in our legislation, but in ourselves.

A lot of us predicted exactly how the health care reform battle, and every other battle, was going to go down if the Democrats continued to refuse to fight.  Yet refuse a lot of them did, especially the administration (and then when the administration backed away, Dems on the Hill were left hanging out to dry, making them less willing and able to fight).

Then there's Barney. Always ripe for an annoyingly certain opinion:

The most recent wave of misgivings from Democrats began with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who told New York magazine that Democrats ?paid a terrible price for healthcare.?

Frank said Obama had erred in pushing the legislation after GOP Sen. Scott Brown?s January 2010 victory in Massachusetts, which took away the Senate Democrats? 60th vote.

Yes, how crazy of President Obama to actually push for something after one guy won an election against a really bad Democratic candidate, and a race in which the White House refused to help until the last week or two, when all was already lost.

Again, post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning has its flaws. Maybe we didn't lose because we attempted to pass a particular piece of legislation. May we lost because we did it poorly.

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s-remorse-about.html

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Mitch Daniels: Romney Doesn't Need Strategy for
Women, Latinos

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Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is dismissing the idea that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney needs a specific plan to win over women and Latino voters.

During a Sunday interview, Fox News host Chris Wallace noted that President Barack Obama had a significant lead among women, Hispanics and low-income workers.

"During the campaign, Romney said he opposes the DREAM Act, he supports the Arizona crackdown on illegals, he said illegals should self deport," Wallace pointed out. "A lot of Hispanics express concern about those positions. He can't just say, 'I didn't mean it.'"

"I don't think he has to at all," Daniels replied. "He gives away nothing here with regards to the president who has been, I believe, very duplicitous sometimes on this very same subject, but I think he's got to speak the language honestly, not narrow broadcasting -- narrow-casting, let's say -- to individual groups, as much as the language of unity that talks about the issues the unite us all, the threats that menace us all."

Daniels added that Romney's economic policies were good enough that he didn't need to cater directly to groups like women and Hispanics.

"Gov. Romney is already getting good marks for his superior point of view on the thing that bothers Americans most. It bothers everyone, all those groups you just mentioned as much as anyone. So, he's got a great opening, and I think he'll seize it."

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/david/mitch-daniels-romney-doesnt-need-strategy-wo

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Steve Doocy_Asshat Of The Week

by @TomBales1  There are a whole gaggle of asshats to pick from this week, but we're gonna start with Steve Douchy Doocy for claiming that President Obama openly and directly mocked Mitt Romney by saying, "Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.".   In all honesty, the statement qualifies Doocy for my little list not so much because of the innacuracy of its content but because of the blatant hypocrisy and dishonesty of the person making it, which we'll get to in a moment.

As for Mr. Obama's statement itself, OK, this might... by a fairly simple exercise of imagination... be construed as some kind of a direct personal attack on Mittens.  I myself actually believe that Mr. Obama had Mr. Romney in mind when he said it.  I know damned well that's what I thought (and I applaud Mr. Obama for daring to say what most of us are thinking) when I heard it and would have been thinking had I been the one saying it.  But even so it's a very mild one in addition to being the absolute truth and even if it is a direct slap, so what?  It's true.  Mitt Romney was born rich, Mr. Obama wasn't.  It's as simple as that and right wingers need to get over it.

Mitt Romney WAS born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has had his way paid and the skids greased for him in everything he's ever done. He dodged the draft (even while openly denouncing draft protestors) and even when it came to his missionary service for his church, he managed to do the whole thing ensconced in a luxurious mansion in France. He's never had to lift a finger to do a day's work in his life and his sole accomplishment in that life has been to make even more money by devastating the quality of life for millions of other Americans. It's just what people born with silver spoons do and why we have a one percent slapping the rest of us around.

The REAL problem with Mr. Doocy's "reporting" though is not the pearl clutching and histrionics he wraps around the notion that POTUS would dare to call Mr. Romney out on the disconnect that might be the most glaring defect in his qualifications to lead ALL of the people, but the fact that the president didn't exactly say what Mr. Doocy claims he said.  

If Mr. Doocy considers himself a journalist and if he's had any kind of training as a journalist, he knows damned well that when you offer a direct quote from someone you DON'T add your own self serving words to theirs.  By attributing words to the president that the president didn't actually say, Steve Doocy flat assed lied. (Not to be unexpected from an employee of a "news" organization that has a SCOTUS issued LICENSE to lie,)

Mr. Doocy inserted the first three words of the statement he attributes to POTUS into that statement himself before using it to demonize the President.  Mr. Doocy didn't think that the presidents actual words were a strong enough indicator of Mr. Obama's "disdain for Americans" so he inserted a few of this own to make it more personal.

Mr. Obama never said "Unlike some people...", he simply said "I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.".  It's an old saying... I've been hearing it (and using it on occasion) all my life and it WAS an old saying even before I was born having actually appeared as early as 1719 which... believe it or not... predates me by a few years.   According to Wiki:

   The English language expression silver spoon is synonymous with wealth, especially inherited wealth; someone born into a wealthy family is said to have "been born with a silver spoon in his mouth". As an adjective, "silver-spoon" describes someone who has a prosperous background or is of a well-to-do family environment.

I'm sorry Republican friends, but if that description doesn't fit Mitt Romney, you're going to have to clue me in on how he managed his rise from an obscure peasant, born to poor working class parents like mine, to a position of prominence in the one percent and a net worth of a quarter billion dollars through hard work and the sweat of his brow because from everything I've been able to find out about the man he's never been anything but a corporate hatchet man, a tax dodger and and a professional candidate for president.

As for the Fox news hack... Mr. Doocy is just doing what right wing screechers do best.  Talking someone's words and either redacting or embellishing them, creating a false narrative which is then hammered on by every other talking head in the organization and, in this case , picked up and hammered on further by people who ought to know better.  (Looking at you, Washington Post)  Such is the sorry state of "journalism in America today.

Steve Doocy, we salute you. Grandpa's Asshat of the Week.  


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-doocyasshat-of-the-week

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Trying to score birth control in 2012

?The personal is political.? My mother would remind me of that, growing up in the 80?s and 90?s. She would remind me of what was fought for, and what was sacrificed, so that I could go into the world with certain rights and privileges.

I took it for granted.

I am sorry. It won?t happen again.

I am a 37-year-old woman, and I have no problem saying that I have been sexually active for over 22 years. More than half my life. I have been blessed that my sexual history is healthy and that my experiences have been positive. The majority of my partners have been the products of long term relationships. I was married in my mid-20s and it ended in my early-30s. All that said, if you want to call me a slut, that?s cool. I really don?t care. Because it doesn?t really matter. In the 22 years that I have been sexually active, I have been militant about birth control. Seriously, moment-ruining, militant. That ?caught up in the moment" thing? Yeah, I don?t do that. Ever.

Since I don?t do that, my health insurance has never paid for pre-natal care, delivery, a cesarian-section, or pediatric care. I have been a cost-effective consumer in the realm of reproductive services. Additionally, I have not found myself in the position of making the choice between keeping a pregnancy to term or having an abortion. In return for this responsible behavior, all that I ask is that I have access to birth control.  Seems this is becoming the request of an "uppity woman" and not a woman simply making the decisions that are the best for her life, her body, and her partner.

For 20 of the 22 years that I have been sexually active I have been on the pill. Growing up in the late 80?s and early 90?s I was always careful to use condoms to prevent the transmission of STDs. I am screened yearly for all STDs and have blood taken to screen for HIV and Herpes. I have had negative results on my STD screenings and blood work.

The past two years I have not been on the pill. For personal reasons, I didn?t have to be on it anymore. I found that my energy improved; my PMS induced mood swings diminished; I lost weight; and overall I felt better. I would defend any woman?s right to birth control pills, but for me, it was no longer the best solution.

Cut to the present. I went in today for my pelvic exam, pap smear, and birth control prescription. I am in a serious relationship where I would feel better having an alternative birth control method to condoms. After doing my own research, talking to other women, and my doctor, I decided that I wanted to be fitted for a diaphragm. My doctor walked me through the process, told me about how to use the device, how to care for it, and common mistakes that lead to a decrease in effectiveness.  Then she said, ?But I?m not sure how to get you one.?

It seems that there is a shortage of birth control at my university affiliated health clinic. There is an 8-week backorder on many popular birth control pills and diaphragms are not carried at all.  I asked her why this was happening.

She told me that in all the years she had been practicing medicine, she had never seen anything like it, and that she was deeply concerned.

I was referred to Planned Parenthood to see if they could fill my prescription for birth control. I drove to Planned Parenthood, but they couldn?t give me a diaphragm unless I consented to another pelvic exam. Two exams in one day. I declined. I asked if they knew of any way I could get a diaphragm. All three women (one doctor, and two support staff) shook their heads and agreed it was almost impossible to find diaphragms.

Let?s stop right here for a moment. Almost impossible to find diaphragms. A safe, effective, barrier method, inserted up to two hours before intercourse and effective for 6 hours, is almost impossible to find. A device controlled by the woman is almost impossible to find. It's 2012. How in Margaret Sanger?s good name did we get here?

Finally, one of the women at Planned Parenthood gave me the name of a specific pharmacist at a grocery chain who would help me. ?He will order it for you next day.? She said this as if this was some sort of back-door, black-market deal being made for me.

I drove obediently to the location, amazed at what has happened to my reproductive rights. When I was 15, I went to the doctor, got on the pill and that was that. Over the years I?ve paid out-of-pocket and at various levels of co-pay, but I always had my pills on time (no 8-week back order), and delivered without question. Suddenly, I found myself on a 20-mile journey, taking over four hours out of my day, to try to score a diaphragm. It was laughable.

The pharmacist nodded when I gave him my referral from Planned Parenthood and he told me I would have it by 3 p.m. the next day. My insurance couldn?t tell me exactly what my co-pay would be, because after 20 minutes of trying to explain to my prescription benefits representative that diaphragms don?t come in ?one-month or three-month supplies? as per their co-pay system, I got frustrated and hung up.

I called some other pharmacies and many told me that getting a diaphragm could take several days to a week. Wal-Mart told me it was ?against their policy? to fill a prescription for a diaphragm.

Overall, I?m stunned. I still don?t have a final total on what this little adventure is going to cost. I had a $30 co-pay on the exam, and my diaphragm sounds like it will be somewhere between $30-$75, and I guess I should be thankful that insurance will cover part of it. What I can?t believe is that it took me four hours to go on a wild goose chase for a device that should be available to any woman who wants it. I am lucky, I have a car, financial resources, and an open schedule. I could afford in time, transportation, and money the opportunity (privilege?) to seek out and purchase my birth control.

I shouldn?t have to rely on a nurse?s friend who works in a pharmacy and is ?sympathetic? to the plight of fornicating women. I suppose I?m lucky. I will have a prescribed medical device in less than 24 hours. If I had wanted to be put back on the pill, I would be waiting until mid-May for birth control. Meanwhile, my partner has OTC access to an effective barrier method without question or waiting. Of course, this method is not as effective as the options I?ve described, and does not take into consideration the women (and men) who are allergic to latex.  For them, access to prescription birth control is even more vital. Condoms are also a method which, as a woman, I have limited jurisdiction. While I am fortunate to be in a relationship of trust and respect, there are other women who are not so lucky. To expect a man to take responsibility for my reproductive rights in the moments prior to sexual activity reduces my role in the agency of my own body. It compromises my ability to have control over what happens to me.

The personal got political and the political got personal today. There?s a calculated war on women, and it?s not just women seeking abortions, or cheaper birth control, it?s any woman who wants control over her reproductive organs. It's any woman who wants access to birth control. I experienced it on a very personal, visceral, and infuriating scale. I told my mother about my experience today. Her response was a mixture of rage and sadness. ?I fought hard for the right to get birth control,? she said, ?I went through humiliation 45 years ago so you wouldn?t have to go through that today.? 

I had no idea what to say.

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-Control-in-2012

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Will Chamber of Commerce Call for Walmart
Corrupters to Be Purged

After reading the New York Time's excellent reporting on Walmart's pervasive bribery of foreign officials (Mexico in this case, but it's hardly isolated to them), I remembered reading stories last year, including this excellent piece by Dan Froomkin, [...]

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Bill Maher Goes After the Media for Hyping a
Potential Race War in the Wake of the Trayvon Martin Shooting

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On this Friday's Real Time, Bill Maher highlighted another segment with his "Real Time reporter" Alexandra Pelosi, this time focusing on the media and their hyping of a potential race war in Sanford, Florida, because all of about the three members or so of the New Black Panther Party and a handful or so of Neo-Nazis decided to show up in town.

It was nice to see someone point out just how overblown the coverage on either has been, but it's too bad Maher did not also point out the fact that Fox has been flogging the New Black Panthers as though they're a group to take seriously and fearmongering over them for a lot longer than just this story. They've been hyping this tiny group for a lot longer than just their coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting. I would hope he continues to go after them for their overblown coverage of that small fringe group and points that out in the future to his audience as well.

I'll settle for the him pointing out how horrid it is that the media looked like they were praying for a race war when it's fairly obvious there was not going to be one, so they'd have some ambulances to chase for now since sadly, he's one of the few I've seen doing it since this case finally got some national media attention.

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http://crooksandliars.com/heather/bill-maher-goes-after-media-hyping-potenti

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Midday open thread

• Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground:
  

  Penn State climate scientist Dr. Richard Alley hosts parts II and III of Earth: the Operator's Manual on PBS beginning at 7pm Sunday, April 22--Earth Day. Part I of this excellent series aired in April 2011. The series gives an overview of climate change, but primarily focuses on what we can do to help slow down climate change though smart energy choices. Dr. Alley, a registered Republican, geologist, and former oil company employee, is the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University, and one of the most respected and widely published world experts on climate change. Dr. Alley has testified before Congress on climate change issues, served as lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is author of more than 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles on Earth's climate. He is also the author of a book I highly recommend--The Two Mile Time Machine, a superb account of Earth's climate history as deduced from the 2-mile long Greenland ice cores.  Dr. Alley is an excellent and engaging speaker, and I highly recommend listening to his 45-minute keynote speech, "The Biggest Control Knob: CO2 in Earth's Climate History" given at the 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting, via this very watchable recording showing his slides as he speaks in one corner of the video. If you want to understand why scientists are so certain of the link between CO2 and Earth's climate, this is a must-see lecture.

• Rock 'N' Roll this past week lost Dick Clark, Men At Work's flautist and sax player Greg Ham, and Bert Weedon, whose books on guitar helped teach the young Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Brian May. Amp creator Jim Marshall died earlier this month, and here's a little industry secret: those legendary Marshall stacks usually consisted of mostly empty cases, as that many Marshalls in one place at one time not only would have blown out ears, they would have knocked down walls.

  And Joel Selvin on Levon Helm:
  

  No singing drummer was ever better.

  Given the commercial success of Don Henley with The Eagles and Phil Collins with post-Gabriel Genesis, that's quite a statement. And it's true.
• If Mitt Romney is trying to prove he's tolerant by hiring a gay national security and foreign policy spokesman, it's not working:
  

  In fact, Grenell?s homosexuality does not mean he?s pro-equality (self-loathing professional and personal behavior is sadly, part of GOP gay history as well). Mike Rogers, who did groundbreaking work exposing the double lives of politicos ? gay hating homosexuals in positions of power who professionally worked to restrict or prevent expansion of LGBT rights ? profiled Grenell on BlogActive (Rogers and his work were also the subject of the documentary Outrage). Mike bestowed one of his Roy Cohn Awards on Grenell for homophobic professional behavior while in the Bush admin back in 2006, asking readers to ?Let him what you think of a gay man representing a homophobic administration. Let him know what you think of his defending the US vote with Iran and Sudan on gay rights?

  And it gets better:
  

  This is blogACTIVE?s first internationally connected Roy Cohn Award. blogACTIVE has learned that John Bolton?s spokesman at the United Nation?s, Richard Grenell, is gay.

  If anything says foreign policy expert, it's a resume that includes having been John Bolton's U.N. spokesman:
  

  The Senate refused to confirm the pugnacious Fox New contributor as U.N. envoy in 2006, forcing a recess appointment. Known for extremely hawkish positions and undiplomatic conduct, Bolton has maintained close ties to the Islamophobic right ? but sometimes only when the money was good enough.

• This should make for some fun backroom conversations:
  

  Cantor Suggests Anti-Semitism Is A Problem Within The House GOP Caucus

• And a headline question that answers itself:
  

  Is Nikki Haley?s book full of lies?

  Supposed Romney running mate front-runner under fire for memoir distortions

• California once set an example with the best public education system in the world. This is the example California is setting now:
  

  The CSU system has already weathered a 33 percent cut in its overall state funding ? $1 billion ? over the last four years, and faces another $200 million cut if Gov. Jerry Brown fails to convince voters to pass a state initiative authorizing a tax hike this November.

  The UC system is in similar straits. Once upon a time, California gave every student who qualified for the UC system a completely free ride. Now the state pays only 11 percent of UC tuition costs. As a result, for in-state students, tuition has tripled over the last 20 years, to $13,200. But out-of-state students pay three times as much as that, a fact that has made them more and more attractive to admissions departments.

  This is why:
  

  California?s troubles paying for higher education can be traced all the way back to the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which made it extraordinarily difficult for the state to raise taxes. But California?s s woes are by no means unique. In 2011, state funding for higher education dropped by $6 billion, or 8 percent nationwide. And with the federal government caught in the same vice grip ? an intransigent refusal to raise taxes for any purpose whatsoever ? there?s little help that can be expected from Washington. In fact, the same graduate students who are getting their unpleasant mail from CSU this week are due for another unhappy surprise on July 1, when interest rates on their federal student loans bump up, a result of one of the cost-cutting deals that was part of the debt ceiling agreement one year ago.

  All these numbers add up to another simple, straightforward truth: Quality higher education is increasingly available only to those who can afford it.

• In devastating news, legendary Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt announced her retirement due to the early onset Alzheimer's with which she was diagnosed a year ago. She is 59 years old.
  

  Summitt?s announcement on Wednesday that she was stepping aside, taking on the title of head coach emeritus while her longtime assistant Holly Warlick became head coach, was as soft a landing as she could muster, her former assistant Mickie DeMoss described it. Summitt found a way to do it with dignity and class, David Climer writes in The Tennessean, as she always has. John Adams writes in The Knoxville News-Sentinel that Summitt always made the right choices to stick by her program, so this made total sense. She will turn her star power now on the fight against Alzheimer?s, writes Dan Wetzel on Yahoo.com and if Summitt showed anything in her farewell season, it?s that she can teach people how to fight, Ann Killion writes on SI.com.        </  The task quickly becomes how to quantify Summitt?s legend, which isn?t as easy as counting victories (1,098) or national championships (eight), writes Gene Wojciechowski on ESPN.com. She changed the sport so profoundly and became such an icon that reaction to her stepping down drew reactions from people ranging from Peyton Manning to LeBron James. She was as much a force of nature as anything, an example of all the right ways to handle success and failure and everything in between, writes Gary Parrish on CBSSports.com.

  Summitt won more games than any coach in any college sport ever, and she did it with class. But she was so much more than a coach, and she will continue to be a teacher, leader, mentor, friend, and mom. And the embodiment of a life well lived.
• Tory Lords are whining about the possibility of democracy infiltrating their hallowed House.
• The Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year went to nobody.
• ARTNews has a fine tribute to the late Antoni Tàpies. End of an era.
• In case you were wondering if Newsweek still exists, it does.
• David Dayen:
  

  George Zornick carries a rebuttal from Eric Schneiderman?s team on yesterday?s damaging expose of the securitization fraud working group.  Here?s what it has to say:

  • There are 50 staffers ?across the country? working on the RMBS working group (the official title).
  • DoJ has asked for $55 million for additional staffing.
  • The five co-chairs of the working group meet formally weekly, and talk daily.
  • There are no headquarters for the working group, but that?s because it?s spread across the country.
  • There is no executive director.
  • Activists still think the staffing level is too low.

  If any of this looks familiar, it?s because it?s EXACTLY what Reuters and I reported a week ago.  In other words, it was unnecessary.  And it doesn?t contradict what the New York Daily News op-ed said yesterday, either.  Like that op-ed, this confirms that there is no executive director and no headquarters for the working group, which sounds more like a central processing space for investigations that could have happened independently, at least at this point.

• Revealing:
  

  On Spain, Lagarde says the Madrid authorities are taking the situation extremely seriously. She then argues that Europe's bailout fund should be allowed to bail out Spanish banks directly, rather than having to work through its sovereign government (a view not shared by some EU states, including Germany).

  Given the continuing failure that is the cruel stupidity of austerity, why bother even pretending it's about anything other than bailing out the banks?
• You won't see me write this very often, but Hamid Karzai is right.
• Donald Boesch was one of two scientists to serve on the president's commission on the Deepwater Horizon disaster:
  

  Unfortunately, the US Congress ? caught up in partisan rancour, including debates about expanding offshore oil drilling ? has failed to adopt legislation to address the lessons learned and the recommendations of the oil-spill commission and others. Such legislation should codify the executive reforms mentioned earlier into law, increase liability limits, and dedicate sustained funding for oil-spill research and environmental assessment and monitoring.

  Even in the current constrained fiscal circumstances, improved oversight and essential R&D could be supported by industry fees amounting to pennies per barrel, imperceptible within the daily fluctuations in price on the world market or at the pump.

  New laws were passed within a year of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. If important lessons are not to be lost as the events of 2010 fade from memory, there is a pressing need tochange the law to make such accidents less likely, and our response more effective.

• It's not happening. Really. It's not.
  

  Like snow sliding off a roof on a sunny day, the Greenland Ice Sheet may be sliding faster into the ocean due to massive releases of meltwater from surface lakes, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

  Such lake drainages may affect sea-level rise, with implications for coastal communities, according to the researchers. "This is the first evidence that Greenland's 'supraglacial' lakes have responded to recent increases in surface meltwater production by draining more frequently, as opposed to growing in size," says CIRES research associate William Colgan, who co-led the new study with CU-Boulder computer science doctoral student Yu-Li Liang.

• Step right up and nominate a fellow blogger, or apply for yourself, to get a Netroots Nation Scholarship:
  

  Democracy for America and America's Voice Education Fund have teamed up to provide financial assistance to fifty outstanding bloggers and activists so they can attend this year's Netroots Nation conference.

  We want to see you in Providence, so sign up today!

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