WASHINGTON — When the State Department fields the first of 350 additional Marine security guards at high-risk embassies and consulates around the world later this year, the price tag will be steep: about $1.6 million per Marine.

Why so much?

It turns out that about $525 million of the $553 million that Congress approved this year to deploy more Marine guards — fulfilling a recommendation of the independent review panel that investigated the attacks last year on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya — is going toward building new command-and-control hubs in the posts and living quarters for the Marines.

The department plans to send 35 new Marine detachments, with about 10 Marines each, to diplomatic posts over the next few years. The first 90 are expected to arrive by the end of the year, officials said.

At each of the 35 missions receiving Marine guards, the department plans to spend about $15 million to build a command-and-control center, called a Post One, equipped with security cameras and communications equipment, from which guards serving around the clock can control access in and out of the embassy buildings.

The 1,200 Marine security guards now stationed in more than 130 countries live in a variety of locations depending on the embassy’s design and space. Some live on the diplomatic compound; others do not.

The financing for the new facilities also covers living quarters, which would include bedrooms and common areas, as well as small gyms and cafeterias. The department prefers that the Marines live on the compound when possible, officials said.

“They’re trying to make these living arrangements as comfortable as possible,” said one government official who has been briefed on the construction plans.

State Department officials are reluctant to provide details on the building arrangements, for security reasons.

But they said each of the new command centers and additional housing would be custom-designed, either as part of brand-new embassies or leased housing. The department is in the process of developing specific project plans for each of the new Marine detachments, with the first new facilities to be included in embassies under construction in Laos and the West African country of Benin.

No doubt, additional security is necessary in many of these cases. However, one has to wonder if we’re not going to end up going over the top here, especially if it means spending money in parts of the world where we don’t really need to.

This post is the second in a series that explores aspects of the unfolding IRS Scandal, and, in particular, the TIGTA Audit. The first post from this series, looking at the different Non-Profit designations involved—can be found here. Note, all references to the audit contain two page numbers. The first corresponds to the page number that appears on the page of the document. The second refers to the page within the PDF.  

A week ago, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) released the findings of an investigation into the IRS’s Exempt Organization Division (EO). The EO oversees organizational requests for tax exempt status — in particular 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 status. One of the primary goals of the investigation was to determine whether or not the Determination’s Unit, based in Cincinnati Ohio, improperly targeted applications submitted by conservative groups. The release of the audit generated lots of news and commentary, the vast majority of which was focused on the first of three major findings in the report—namely that the Determination’s Unit used “inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for review for indications of significant political campaign intervention.” (Highlights/PDF page 2)

While the audit may seem old news, it remains the largest publicly released collection of verified facts about the IRS scandal. As such, it is impossible to have a grounded discussion of the scandal without understanding the contents of the report. Further given recent developments, like the decision of EO Director Lois Lerner to invoke the 5th Amendment in her recent appearance before Congress, it may very well be all of the major information we have for the foreseeable future.

The focus on the first finding—the use of inappropriate selection methods—has led many to miss a number of the report’s other important findings. Rather than falling back on pure partisanship and sensationalism as an explanation for this happening—though both have surely contributed—I’d like to suggest three reasons the reporting of the audit’s content have missed some of these points.

#1. The report’s non-linear structure

The body of the audit is arranged around TIGTA’s three main findings:

• Section 1: “The Determinations Unit Used Inappropriate Criteria to Identify Potential Political Cases”
• Section 2: “Potential Political Cases Experienced Significant Processing Delays”
• Section 3: “The Determinations Unit Requested Unnecessary Information for Many Potential Political Cases”

Many media summaries of the audit appear to be built upon a mistaken belief that the three sections build on one another—i.e. need to be read in a linear fashion. That is simply not the case. While some of the information overlaps across the sections, each finding needs to be read as separate from the other two.

Unfortunately, the construction of the report, contributes to this confusion. Perhaps the most egregious example occurs in the highlights/summary section:

WHY TIGTA DID THE AUDIT
[...] The overall objective of this audit was to determine whether allegations were founded that the IRS: 1) targeted specific groups applying for tax-exempt status, 2) delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications, and 3) requested unnecessary information from targeted groups.
(Highlights/PDF p2)

It’s understandable why anyone reading this passage would see the three findings as building upon each other. However, the findings tell a different story.

Again, the first finding was that the Determination’s Office used inappropriate criteria to target certain conservative groups. More specifically TIGTA ruled that reviewers’ decision to flag applications based on the applying organization’s name and/or its policy statements—rather than their specified activities—was inappropriate because it gave the appearance of bias. Simply put, Tea Party and other conservative groups were “targeted,” in so much as their names, possibly among others, appeared on a BOLO, or “Be On the Look Out [for]” list created by and circulated within the Determinations department.

So, without a doubt, in the first section, the phrase “targeted” group refers specific conservative groups. However, in the second and third sections of the report, the phrase “targeted group” refers to all groups whose applications were put into the specialist review cue due to concerns over potential political involvement.

This gets to what I consider to be one of the most under-reported aspects of this story: while it’s true that conservatives have a lot to be pissed about, the fact is that, once a file was flagged for specialist review, all groups, regardless of political persuasion or ideology, received the exact same, unconscionably shitty treatment. All flagged applications experienced the same extreme delays in the processing of their documents. And likewise, many of these groups received the same, often intrusive requested for clarification.

#2. Gaps in information

Anyone who has done a close read of the audit will realize that it contains a number of information gaps. For example, a close read suggests that there were more terms on the BOLO list than discussed in the audit (see 6-7, PDF p12-3 — footnote 16 in particular). Because the section of the audit involving the BOLO list was restricted to the treatment of Conservative groups, the audit doesn’t provide additional information about whether or not this is the case. So we are left not knowing (a) how often BOLO lists were used in general, and (b) if other groups were being identified by their names as well. (As a side note: the Audit doesn’t ever find fault with using BOLO lists in general, simply the choice to using an organization’s name as a trigger for review).

Likewise, TIGTA make it clear that they were focused on investigating charges of inappropriate flagging of certain applications based on the BOLO list. The audit only discusses applications in terms of the sections of the BOLO list the Inspector General was investigating. No attempt was made to actually categorize the applications based on ideological or political alignment (see 8, PDF p14 — footnote 8 in particular). That means, for example, while we know that 1/3 of the applications flagged as “Potentially Political” contained terms from the BOLO list—and are therefore assumed to be from Conservative groups—we have no idea about the contents or political alignment of the remaining 2/3rds of the flagged applications.

#3. Reporting cycles

Sadly, the final reason that some of these points have been missed has to do with the nature of reporting cycles. As a reporter said to me once “the only way to get a story in on time, when it will have the most impact, is to get it wrong.” The more confusing the document, the greater the chance that things get missed on the first few passes.

Likewise, for as much work as I’ve put into this article, I’m sure that I’m going to miss a lot. Thankfully we have comments to serve as a catch all.

These three factors—not to mention the sensationalizing—have led to reporters, in my opinion, overemphasizing the conservative/Tea Party aspect of this scandal, and missing-or at the very least, underreporting—other, equally important parts.

So what have reports missed, or underr-eported?

Again, there are some big points that I think have been lost in much of the reporting. One, as stated above, is how badly all “flagged applications” were treated. Once you were in the specialist cue, politics didn’t matter. Chances are you were going to be waiting and asked some very prying questions.

Of equal importance is that the Audit makes it abundantly clear that few people within in the IRS understand, let alone can articulate, what constitutes Significant Political Campaign Intervention in regards to 501(c)4′s. The report contains numerous references to this issue. Also, the auditors repeatedly recommend that the EO draft and publish clear and easily articulable guidelines on this topic. It’s telling that these are the only two recommendations that the IRS pushes back on (Recommendation 2—11/PDF p17—and Recommendation 5— 16/PDF p22). In both cases, TIGTA’s responses to the EO’s response convey a strong sense of exasperation at the EO’s continued denial of the scope of the problem.

On the topic of management, another thing that has been under-reported is—believe it or not—the total breakdown of management within the EO. I realize this seems like something that actually has been covered. But, so far, the only thing that’s been discussed is the finding of “insufficient managerial oversight” regarding how managers in Washington were seemingly unaware that Determinations Unit specialists were inventing their own criteria for reviewing cases (and later overturning management’s decisions without letting anyone know).

What most reports have missed is that the EO’s problems go far beyond the Determinations Unit. For example, the Technical Unit—a separate division from the Determinations Unit—took more than 20 months to draw up draft procedures for the processing the 501(c)4 reviews (12, PDF p18). The net result of the delay was that Specialists simply stopped processing applications that had been forwarded to them for additional review for 13 months until they had a process to work with.

As many commentors have pointed out here, and in other places, these managerial problems alone serve as justification for the recent decision to suspend, and most likely fire, Lois Lerner.

On Specialists and the Review Statistics

Turning to the specialists, the audit indicates that initial reviewers actually did a pretty good job of identifying signs of potential political intervention. Auditors found that only 2% of initially approved applications—an estimated 44 out of over 2000—should have been sent to specialists for further review. Of course, one can argue that this success rate was accomplished by flagging far too many applications for specialist review.

However, the facts don’t necessarily bear that out.

There were two reasons why an application was flagged: (1) Potential Political Campaign Intervention and (2) an incomplete applications. On the second one, the Auditors never give any indication that applications were incorrectly flagged as incomplete or needing additional information. As to the more contentious issue, after reviewing almost all of the 298 flagged applications, 69% of them—205—contained signs of “significant political campaign intervention.” (10/ PDF p16) Again, those 298 applications were the ones that all were significantly delayed and asked some unnecessary questions.

Let me note that even though a group that was “correctly” flagged for review, there’s no reason that it should not still end up with 501(c)4 status. For example, the phrasing of the application could make the group appear more directly political than it actually is. However, its important to note that success rate significantly drops when one looks at the applications flagged using “names” as the key BOLO criteria. Among the targeted conservative groups with BOLO list names, auditors found only 18% —17 of 91— of the applications proved to be correctly flagged. (ibid, see footnote 28)

We cannot say for certain whether the use of names as a BOLO flag was intentionally, politically motivated. However, it’s abundantly clear that it was an ineffective method of identifying problem applications. Unfortunately, TIGTA only evaluated the effectiveness of the use of names. We have no data on whether-or-not flagging policy statements was any more, or less, effective.

Likewise, the specialists didn’t do so well when it came to requesting follow-up information—though its not as abysmally as some reports would lead you to believe. The audit found that 58% of information requests were found to have sought data that was later deemed to be unnecessary. However, contra some analysis, the report clearly did not say that those 58%—98 organizations in all—should not have received any follow-up questioning. After an internal review of information requests, the EO sent revised information requests to a number of those groups. (20, PDF p26) One has to wonder how many of those unnecessary questions were asked because the specialist was confused about the 501(c)4 criteria.

Some final thoughts (for now)

This article only scratches the surface of the content of the audit. And I suspect much more is going to come out in the comments thread. There is one other revelation that I—as someone who studies journalism—found particularly interesting. I was struck by the role that the media (news and, by association, conservative media) played in helping initiate actions that helped both end and begin this scandal.

As mentioned about, it was a combination of media reports and congressional requests that sparked the audit in the first place. We also learn from the time-line and Section 1, that media reporting in 2010 is what helped initiate the current situation. Reading around redactions, we discover that stories about the potential abuse of the 501(c)4 structure by political groups caused mangers within the EO to call for more thorough reviews of 501(c)4 applications (11/ PDF p5).

We also learn that news reports in February of 2012 (19/ PDF p13) about processing delays and requests for intrusive questions led to an executive order stopping new requests for information and to providing unlimited extensions to those who had already received requests. Perhaps this is the most damning thing that can be said about EO management problems–and again why Lerner had to go– we learn that administrators apparently learned about what their divisions were doing from media, rather than internal, reports.

Photo by JASON REED/REUTERS

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: Steven L. Taylor – “Hmm. Cloudy with a chance of a ridiculous shitstorm.”

Second: Stormy Dragon – And with the Obama family happily reunited, it was time for Marine Poppins to leave, for there were other politician families who still needed his help.

Third: markm – Obama: “…rain?!?!?… I just learned about the forecast…at the same time you guys did”

HONORABLE MENTION

Patrick McCain – “… and another one for my teleprompter, Corporal.”

jd – “A little more to the right.” ( And all the GOP said, “Amen” – rodney dill)

Michael Hamm – Where is the Blue Angels flyover? Oops – I sequestered them.

Donald Sensing – “Hey! What happened to my sidearm?”

OzarkHillbilly – “I told you pigeons are all Republicans.”

anjin-san – Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
But that doesn’t mean Issa’s done witch hunting yet
Nothing seems to stick…
Those raindrops are fallin’ on my head, they keep fallin’
( …but I’m worry free, schedule a tee time for me. – rodney dill)

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Clifford the Big Red Dog visits the White House.

“Hey! It’s letting up… Do you caddy too?”

“Hmmmm… Nothing like a little bad weather to take peoples minds off political scandals.”

Obama (to press): “Hey, I know Susan Rice told you there would be no rain today… but you know how she lies.”

Obama: “Where could you have been better placed to protect the Presidency?”
Marine: “Benghazi, Mr. President.”

Obama: “What’s the weather report for today?”
Marine: “Chance of Scandals early, with scattered political attacks toward evening.”

Obama: “Is is raining?”
Marine: “Yes, Mr. President.”
Obama: “Let met check… Hey! Why’d you let me get wet?”

The Thursday Contest already has the Metrosexual App.

For decades, Mexicans have been about 30 percent of all legal immigrants to the United States, while only a smidgen more than 1 percent come from Great Britain. Is that fair? Granted, their food is better, but why is it the norm is to have nearly 30 times as many Mexican as British immigrants?

We have been taking in more immigrants from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, individually, than from England, our mother country. There are nearly twice as many immigrants from El Salvador as from Canada, and 10 times as many as from Australia.

I am guessing, and call me crazy, that there are at least two excellent reasons why immigration from Mexico (and other Latin American countries) substantially tops that from the UK.  First, and this is a shocker, the US has a massive land border with Mexico, while an ocean separates the US and the UK.  Second, the level of economic and political development in the UK is more comparable to that of the US than is Mexico’s to the US and that would dampen the interest in substantial migration from there to here.  Previous waves of European immigration (especially at the early part of the 20th Century) were driven by development disparities or exigent circumstances, like the aftermath of world wars.  There is no particular reason, in 2013, to expect similar levels of immigration from developed states as from less developed ones.

Part of the disparities in the numbers is also influenced by things like relative population size (Mexico’s population is roughly twice that of the UK’s, for example).  Although, granted, it is not the main variable.  The main variable is relative level of development.  After all, why might it be the case that there would be more Salvadorans coming to the US than Canadians?  It is a true mystery!

If only there was some metric we could use to shed light on this subject.

Let’s see, the per capita GDP of the US is $49,800, one of the highest in the world.  How does that compare to the countries in question?

Australia:  $42,400

Canada:  $41,500

UK: $36,700

Mexico:  $15,300

Colombia:  $10,700

El Salvador:  $7,700

So, it ends up that El Salvador in one of the poorer countries in the world, and certainly one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, and Canada is one of the richest.  Odd how such factors might influence one’s decision to migrate.  My vast social science knowledge also leads me to point out that being poor in a really poor country truly bites in comparison to being poor in a rich country.  Poor folks from really poor countries have been known to risk their lives for the chance to work as a janitor in a fast food restaurant.  Poor people in rich countries, not so much.

Of course, as per the aforementioned Buchanan, Coulter is asserting that being “American” fundamentally means “white Anglo” (and hence the concerns about immigrants from the UK, Canada, and Australia).    Being of a more swarthy complexion clearly means “not America” to Coulter and her ilk.

Why do we have to become a different country? Was there a vote when the country decided to turn itself into Mexico? No other country has ever just decided to turn itself into another country like this.

Also:  this assertion is ironic (not to mention ahistorical), given that much of the USA used to be part of Mexico and it didn’t become part of the US via a vote.  While I am not suggesting retrocession, it does require a substantial amount of myopia to ignore the historical ties between a huge chunk of the United States and Mexico (and a lot of people who are quite American, despite their hue or their last names).

The notion that American is about kin groups, and not about broader ideals, is a fundamentally flawed and racist position.

(For those who do not get the Buchanan reference, please see:  Buchanan and “White America”).

OAKLAND PARK (CBSMiami) - A man, before fatally shooting another man on I-95, accidentally called 911 which recorded his plan for murder.

Scott Simon was arrested Tuesday night for the murder of 33-year-old Nicholas Walker, who was shot while driving his car onto I-95.

It was a butt-dialing blunder that led police to the man they say orchestrated the fatal shooting. Now they’re looking for his co-conspirators.

In the accidental phone call to 911, Simon is recorded telling someone else that he’s going to follow the victim home and kill him.

Simon has been charged with first-degree murder for his involvement in the killing of Walker on May 5^th, although Broward Sheriff’s Office homicide detectives don’t believe he was the one who fired the gun.

Next time, make sure the cell phone is off when announcing your murder plans.

BEIJING — The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, bluntly told a North Korean envoy Friday that his country should return to diplomatic talks designed to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons, according to a state-run Chinese news agency.

“The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and lasting peace on the peninsula is what the people want and also the trend of the times,” Mr. Xi said in a meeting at the Great Hall of the People with Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, a personal envoy of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, the China News Service reported.

Vice Marshal Choe, who has been in Beijing for three days on a mission to repair the prickly relationship between North Korea and China, handed Mr. Xi a letter from Mr. Kim. The contents were not disclosed.

In telling the North it should return to the negotiating table, Mr. Xi appeared to strike a stern tone, saying, “The Chinese position is very clear: no matter how the situation changes, relevant parties should all adhere to the goal of denuclearization of the peninsula, persist in safeguarding its peace and stability, and stick to solving problems through dialogue and consultation.”

The Chinese leader called for resuming the so-called six-party talks, the diplomatic effort among six countries including China and the United States that collapsed in 2008 when North Korea walked out.

American experts on North Korea say it is unlikely that North Korea would agree to the talks, largely because the United States and South Korea would insist on preconditions like a pledge from North Korea that it would abandon its nuclear program.

The warning Friday from Mr. Xi follows a clear message the Chinese president delivered at a conference in April at Boao in southern China, when he said that “no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain.”

As the vice marshal proceeded through the standard meetings in Beijing with two senior Communist Party leaders, the usual conduit for relations between the two countries, and then a meeting with a senior Chinese military commander Friday, it remained unclear whether he would be accorded an audience with the Chinese president. The meeting with Mr. Xi at the Great Hall of the People was announced after it occurred.

The erratic behavior of Mr. Kim and his approval of a third nuclear test in February has annoyed China, the biggest economic benefactor of North Korea.

The assessment that the North Koreans won’t comply with the Chinese pressure is likely correct, but it strikes me that it’s only so long that can continue. After all, it’s eminently clear that Pyongyang’s effort to ratchet up tensions as a method of getting concessions from the U.S. and South Korea isn’t likely to work anymore. It failed spectacularly when they tried it in March and April. If the North Koreans to continue to go rogue as they have in the past several months, one can expect additional pressure from Beijing designed to get North Korea back to the bargaining table.

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 58 percent of all Americans support a so-called path to citizenship that would offer those currently living in the United States illegally a way to achieve legal status if they paid a fine and met other requirements. The Senate bill under consideration includes a 13-year pathway to citizenship after payment of a fine and any back taxes owed.

The overall support for the bill’s most controversial provision, however, masks partisan divisions that have colored the congressional debate. Majorities of Democrats and independents favor the path-to-citizenship proposal, but 52 percent of Republicans say they oppose it. Among Republicans who dislike the idea, most — 67 percent — say they could not support a congressional candidate who backs a citizenship path.

(…)

[I]t’s immigration reform that presents GOP lawmakers with a potentially difficult choice. Some prominent Republicans have said the party should get behind comprehensive reform of the nation’s immigration laws to help overcome opposition to GOP candidates among Hispanic voters.

In last year’s presidential election, just 27 percent of Hispanic voters supported Republican Mitt Romney. Unless the party’s next nominees can significantly improve their support among Hispanics, winning back the White House will be difficult.

But with a narrow majority of the Republican rank-and-file opposed to a path to citizenship, Republican lawmakers know that a vote in favor of immigration reform might carry electoral consequences. That reality was reflected in Tuesday’s vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel approved the immigration bill, 13 to 5. But only three of eight Republicans on the committee joined the 10 Democrats to support it.

The bill will need 60 votes to clear the Senate. Supporters are hoping for a much bigger majority to give the legislation momentum as it heads to the House, where Republican opposition is expected to be even stronger.

A vote against a path to legal status carries less obvious risk for Republican lawmakers than a vote for it. In the poll, most Republicans who favor such a provision, 62 percent, say they could support a candidate who opposes it.

Will Republican Party internal politics end up killing the immigration bill? The possibility certainly seems likely. If that happens, though, one thinks that the GOP will come to regret it when 2014 and 2016 roll around.

British media quickly made the rounds of British mosques to secure denunciations of the horrific acts, a practice condemned by The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins on the grounds that doing so validated the political message of the attackers.

More than a thousand miles away, for the last five nights Husby, a district of Stockholm, Sweden, has erupted in violence marked by clashes with police and widespread arson. The spark that touched off the violence is said to have been that Stockholm police shot a 69 year old man who was wielding a knife, a resident of the area, dead. The population of Husby has been characterized as 80% immigrants, mostly Turks, people from the Middle East, and Somalians. They are overwhelmingly Muslims.

Denying that Islam has anything to do with the violence is fatuous but it would be equally facile to say that Islam is causing the violence. The commonality is that over the years both Britain and Sweden have brought in large numbers of immigrants who are dramatically different from the previous native populations in ethnicity, religion, and culture. That may have been done for political, economic, humanitarian, some other reasons, or some combination of all of the above. These immigrant and descended-from-immigrant populations have not been assimilated into the society at large, whether due to the society, the immigrants, or both.

At Foreign Policy Elias Groll has a very interesting post on the violence in Sweden, in which he makes a pertinent observation:

What’s happening in Husby is clearly a symptom of Sweden’s failed effort to integrate its massive immigrant population. Housing segregation is rampant in the country, and Husby is a case study in how immigrant populations have come to dominate Stockholm’s outer suburbs.

He produces a graph which clearly illustrates that immigrants have largely replaced ethnic Swedes in Husby over the period of the last thirty years. Over approximately the same period Sweden has slowly rolled back its cradle-to-grave welfare state, that trend accelerating in recent years. I don’t know what the relationship between the growing immigrant population and the changes in the welfare system might be. They might be unrelated; it might be that one caused the other; it might be that the same economic factors lie behind both.

Whatever the cause of or cure for the violence, it certainly will do little to discourage the growth of nativist, nationalist, or anti-immigrant political parties. In Britain the British National Party has grown from just a handful of voters 30 years ago to about 2% of the vote today. By comparison Labour polls less than 30% of the vote while the Tories polled about 36% in the last elections. In Sweden the Sweden Democrat Party has grown from nothing thirty years ago to almost 6% of the vote today. The Social Democratic Party got about 25% of the vote while the Moderate Party received about 30% of the vote. 2% and 6% don’t sound like much but can be pretty influential in a parliamentary system.

An Interstate 5 bridge over a river north of Seattle collapsed Thursday evening, dumping several vehicles into the water as authorities investigated the cause of the collapse that cut off the state’s main north-south thruway and sent three people to the hospital.

[...]

The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being "functionally obsolete" — a category meaning that their design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders are low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.

The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.

According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department, 42 of the county’s 108 bridges that are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.

Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state’s bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington’s 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient of functionally obsolete.

Thankfully, no one was killed.  The culprit for causing the collapse may have been an oversized load.

However, this is just another reminder about problems in our infrastructure.  Major bridges and such are supposed to collapse in poor, underdeveloped countries, not in an economic superpower.  On the one hand, accidents happen and perfection is an impossibility.  On the other, as noted above, we know that thousands of bridges across the country are potentially problematic, not to mention it stands to reason that a bridge build in 1955 might not be up to the traffic levels of 2013 (or in the NAFTA era in general).

That we did not direct substantial stimulus spending in this direction remains, to my mind, a key failure of the last half decade or so.

Capping off several months of controversy and debate, the Boy Scouts of America’s governing body has voted to open membership to those who are openly gay:

GRAPEVINE, Tex. — The Boy Scouts of America on Thursday ended its longstanding policy of forbidding openly gay youths to participate in its activities, a step its chief executive called “compassionate, caring and kind.”

The decision, which followed years of resistance and wrenching internal debate, was widely seen as a milestone for the Boy Scouts, a symbol of traditional America. More than 1,400 volunteer leaders from across the country voted, with more than 60 percent approving a measure that said no youth may be denied membership “on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

The top national leaders of the Boy Scouts had urged the change in the face of vehement opposition from conservative parents and volunteers, some of whom said they would quit the organization. But the decision also put the scouts more in tune with the swift rise in public acceptance of homosexuality, especially among younger parents who are essential to the future of an institution that has been losing members for decades.

The decision is unlikely to bring peace to the Boy Scouts as they struggle to keep a foothold in a swirling cultural landscape, ensuring continued lobbying and debate in the months and year to come. The group put off the even more divisive question of whether to allow openly gay adults and leaders, and those on both sides of the debate predicted that, with the resolution’s passage, the Boy Scouts would soon be forced to start allowing gay adults, whether by lawsuits or embarrassment at the twisted logic of forcing an Eagle Scout who turns 18 to quit.

Gay rights advocates called the decision a breakthrough but vowed to continue pressing the scouts to allow gay members of all ages. Some conservative churches and parents said the scouts were violating their oath to be “morally straight” and said they would drop out.

Still, for gay men who were forced out of scouting and their allies, thousands of whom joined the push for change, the opening of membership was more than welcome.

“I’ve waited 13 years for this,” said Matt Comer, now 27, who was forced out of his scout troop at age 14 after he started a Gay-Straight Alliance at his school. Since the fourth grade, he said Thursday, he had dreamed of becoming an Eagle Scout and was crushed when he was denied the chance.

“Today we finally have some justice for me and others,” he said. “But gay youths will still be told they are no longer welcome when they turn 18.”

Leaders of the conservative faction predicted that the Boy Scouts will soon be forced by lawsuits to allow openly gay leaders and accused the top leaders of ignoring the beliefs of their members.

“The fallout from this is going to be tremendous,” predicted Robert Schwarzwalder, a senior vice president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, and a father of two scouts in Northern Virginia. “I think there will be a loss of hundreds of thousands of boys and parents.”

“This great institution is going to be vitiated by the intrusion of a political agenda,” he said.

Glaad, a gay rights group that has campaigned for change over the last year, said it would keep up pressure on the Boy Scouts over the leadership issue. “We’ll continue urging corporate donors and public officials to withhold their support,” said Richard Ferraro, the group’s vice president for communications.

The UPS Foundation, Merck, the Intel Foundation, and many local United Ways and city agencies have already ended financing for the scouts because its policies violated their own nondiscrimination guidelines.

For the last year, the organization whose motto is “God and Country” has been engulfed by the culture war.

In a closed meeting of the assembled delegates here Wednesday night, the top three leaders of the Boy Scouts — Wayne Brock, the paid chief executive, Wayne Perry, the volunteer president who is a corporate leader from Washington state, and Tico Perez, the volunteer commissioner and a consultant in Florida — made a strong plea to allow gay youths, saying the goal of scouting was to reach as many boys as possible, according to people who attended.

“This is not about what’s legal but what’s compassionate, caring and kind,” Mr. Brock reportedly said. No similar proposal to allow gay adults was on the agenda and the executives have said little about how they made the distinction. But in surveys this spring, many parents and volunteers around the country said they were against the idea of openly gay scout leaders.

The vote was a bittersweet one for David Knopp, 86, who spent much of his life in scouting as a boy, as a professional staff member and later as a volunteer with a council in Connecticut. He had tried to keep his sexual orientation a secret but one day, he said, two scout officials said, “We found out you are a homosexual” and forced him out.

“I see this as a good step but with a lot of misgivings,” he said of the limited opening to gays.

This is, I’m sure, not the end of the issue. For one thing, I am sure that the conservative blowback on this issue will be harsh and severe. We may even see efforts by some to create breakaway organizations that refuse to comply with the new rules, although they would likely be forbidden by applicable copyright and other applicable laws from even indirectly associating themselves with the Boy Scouts of America. Additionally, as the excerpted piece notes, this still leaves in place a ban on openly gay Scout leaders. However, it’s going to be hard for the BSA to credibly make the argument that a ban on gay Scout leaders should remain in place while they are openly admitting openly gay members, especially since it isn’t uncommon for former Boy Scouts to themselves become Scout Leaders when they enter adulthood.

In the end, this is a good step forward for the Boy Scouts. As a former Scout myself, although I will admit I pretty much dropped out of the program before I hit the teenage years, I’m glad to see this happen. There will undoubtedly be much vile coming from the Christian right over this decision, but honestly that’s just because they are recognizing that this is just another sign that they are losing the culture war over the issue of the cultural acceptability of homosexuality. Which, I would submit, is a good thing.

Lois Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt organizations division of the IRS, has been placed on administrative leave, an administration official has confirmed to CBS News.

Lerner has come under fire for failing to alert Congress of the undue scrutiny that some IRS officials in her division had placed on conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Thursday afternoon, Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz., the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Government Affairs investigations subcommittee, called on Daniel Werfel, the new acting IRS commissioner, “to suspend immediately Lois Lerner from her office as Director of the Office of Exempt Organizations.”

In a letter to Werfel, Levin and McCain accused Lerner of not being forthcoming about the targeting scandal during an hours-long interview by the subcommittee, writing that she “failed to disclose the internal controversy over the search terms used by the Cincinnati office to identify 501(c)(4) groups for further review, the actions taken by that office in reviewing the identified groups, the investigation and imminent findings by the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA); and TIGTA’s conclusion that the IRS had used inappropriate criteria to target Tea Party and other conservative groups. Ms. Lerner also failed to disclose that she was fully aware of these issues as early as June 2011, and, according to TIGTA, had been personally involved in reviewing questionable actions taken by the Cincinnati office.”

“Given the serious failure by Ms. Lerner to disclose to this Subcommittee key information on topics that the Subcommittee was investigating, we have lost confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties,” they continued.

Under applicable civil service rules, Lerner will continue to get paid while on leave, but it’s likely that this could just be the beginning of a process that will result in her termination if it turns out she engaged in wrongdoing.  For the time being, then, the suspension strikes me as appropriate, especially given the fact that Wurfel was brought on board with the explicit task of reviving the reputation of an embattled agency that nobody really likes anyway.

Just a day after opening his seemingly quixotic campaign for Mayor of New York City, former Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted that there are likely other women out there with compromising photos and emails that he sent:

Former congressman and newly announced New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner (D) said in an interview Thursday morning with WNYC-FM that there could be women coming forward with more e-mails or photos from the inappropriate digital conversations that led to his resignation in 2011.

“It is what it is,” Weiner said. “People may decide they want to come forward and say, here’s another email that I got or another photo. I’m certainly not going to do that. So people may hear things that are true, they may hear things that are not true, but I’m going to try to keep being focused on issues that are important to New York City.

Weiner acknowledged that his campaign will include “a lot of apologizing,” but says he hopes people will first give him a chance to make his case and then think about voting for him.

“I’m not asking people to say just forget it and pretend it never happened,” he said. “I’m maybe not asking for a second chance, giving me a vote, but for now giving me a second chance to hear what I have to say.”

Interestingly, Weiner also suggested that a New York Time Magazine interview he granted last month may not have done him any good.

This suggests to me that there indeed are other pictures out there that didn’t become public two years ago, and which may do so now that he’s back in the public eye. This comes on the same day that New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo said that if Weiner somehow manages to win the election, New Yorkers should be ashamed of themselves, a comment which suggests quite strongly that New York’s political elite are going to be united in opposition to Weiner and, most likely, behind current frontrunner Christine Quinn.

Given his history and the political odds against him, it’s hard to see how Weiner could actually pull off a win here. Some commenters have tried to compare Weiner to Mark Sanford, who recently won election to Congress notwithstanding a personal scandal that ended his marriage and, it seemed, his political career. However, as Linda Feldmann at The Christian Science Monitor notes, there are significant differences between Weiner and Sanford:

• Weiner is trying to come back much sooner than Sanford did, two years versus four years.

• Weiner is aiming for a more prestigious job – mayor of the biggest city in the United States, currently held by Michael Bloomberg. Sanford had the good fortune of seeing his old congressional seat open up, allowing him to show a little humility as he ran for a job less prestigious than the governorship.

• Sanford had less difficult competition than Weiner does – not that Sanford’s political resurrection was a sure thing. Plenty of voters in South Carolina’s First Congressional District weren’t ready to forgive and forget. He had to compete in a runoff for the Republican nomination. Then in the general, he faced a well-funded Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of satirist Stephen Colbert. Toward the end of the campaign, Sanford’s ex-wife accused him of trespassing on her property, and the National Republican Congressional Committee stopped investing in the race. But the district was heavily Republican, and Ms. Colbert Busch was a political novice. Sanford won by nine percentage points.

• Perhaps the biggest issue weighing against Weiner is the “ick” factor. The “weiner” jokes are back, as voters are treated to rehashes of Weiner’s lewd texts and tweets sent to women he had met online. Back in 2011, when confronted, Weiner lied about his actions before admitting to them.

To this, I’d add two other points. Unlike Weiner, Sanford was competing in a Special Election for a Congressional District, not a Democratic Primary in the largest city in the United States. Winning a Special Election in a district you’d represented before, as Sanford had, is far easier than winning a Democratic Primary for Mayor of New York just two years after having been forced to resign from Congress as a result of a bizarre sex scandal that occurred while your wife was pregnant with your son. Additionally, despite his personal problems it was clear from the start of his race that Sanford had retained significant goodwill in his old District, something that helped him significantly in winning both the Primary and the General Election. One gets the impression that there isn’t the same reservoir of goodwill for Weiner, especially among Democratic activists. It’s hard to see how he overcomes all of that, especially given that all of the big money is going to be behind Christine Quinn.

Update: Weiner’s day gets worse. It turns out the background graphic on his campaign website is of the City of Pittsburgh, not New York.

There have been new developments regarding the testimony of IRS employee Lois Lerner, who asserted the protections of the Fifth Amendment when she was called to testify before the House Government Oversight Committee yesterday. Today, Chairman Darrell Issa said that he intends to recall her to testify before the committee despite the fact that she has invoked her right not to testify pursuant to the Fifth Amendment:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Representative Darrell Issasaid on Thursday he will call Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner back to testify before his committee on the IRS-Tea Partyscandal after she asserted her constitutional right not to answer questions.

“We are obligated to bring Lerner back because she did not properly take the Fifth (Amendment),” Issa said.

“She clearly chose to make her statements and then not open herself up to even any questioning as to the statement she made,” said Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I addressed the issue of whether Lerner had waived her testimony yesterday, and while there has been some legal commentary since then from others arguing that her opening statement may indeed have constituted at least a partial waiver of her rights,  it strikes me unlikely that this is going to go anywhere. For one thing, if Lerner is indeed brought back before the committee without a grant of immunity, and indeed all of this could just be public posturing as the parties negotiate an immunity agreement behind the scenes, then she is obviously going to continue to assert her Fifth Amendment rights regardless of whatever position Issa or any of the other members of the committee have to say about it. This means that the committee will have two choices, either they let it slide or they vote to hold her in contempt. If they go that route, then the House as a whole will also have to hold her in contempt, at which point the matter would be referred to the Justice Department. Even assuming that the Justice department agrees to prosecute, they’re going to have to convince a Federal Judge that Lerner has in fact waived her rights. I would submit that’s going to be difficult.

Orin Kerr examined the issue in a post at The Volokh Conspiracy last night:

The tricky part is how to characterize Lerner’s testimony before she invoked the Fifth Amendment. On one hand, if you say that Lerner merely expressed her view that she is innocent but did not actually testify as to any facts, then you could say she did not waive her rights with her statement. Questioning would not be about the details of facts she already testified to, but rather would require her testimony on a subject she declined to testify about. On the other hand, if you say that Lerner’s reciting the allegations and then denying them effectively testified about the allegations, then you could say that she did testify and did waive her rights. From that perspective, she already testified about “the subject” by saying that she did not violate any IRS rules or submit false testimony, and further questioning would be about the details of why she thinks that.

I’m not enough of a Fifth Amendment nerd to have strong views on which side is right. So I posed the question earlier today (based on press reports of what Lerner said, not the full transcript) to a listserv of criminal procedure professors that includes some serious Fifth Amendment experts. Opinions were somewhat mixed, but I think it’s fair to say that the bulk of responders thought that Lerner had not actually testified because she gave no statements about the facts of what happened. If that view is right, Lerner successfully invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and cannot be called again. But this was not a unanimous view, it was not based on the full transcript, and there are no cases that seem to be directly on point. So it’s at least a somewhat open question.

Given that it’s an open question, it seems highly unlikely to me that a Federal Judge is going to rule that Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights in any respect by making a brief, entirely generalized, statement to a Congressional Committee at a hearing to which she was subpoenaed before formally invoking her Fifth Amendment rights. Admittedly, it would have been preferable for her to remain silent altogether, but it doesn’t seem to me that what she did comes even close to being sufficient to constitute a waiver.

One possible clue to where the courts might be on this issue can be found in a short unanimous opinion from the Supreme Court in a case called Ohio v. Reiner 532 U.S. 71 (2001). In that case, Reiner was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of his infant son from what the prosecution contended was “shaken baby syndrome.” At trial, Susan Batt, the child’s babysitter refused to testify relying on her rights under the Fifth Amendment and was granted immunity under applicable Ohio law. Batt then went on to testify that she had only asserted the privilege on advice of counsel and went on to maintain her innocence. The Supreme Court of Ohio reversed Reiner’s conviction on the ground that Batt had no valid Fifth Amendment right because her testimony could not have incriminated her. The Supreme Court of the United States reversed that decision, and in the process made a point about the Fifth Amendment privilege that strikes me as being especially applicable to the situation we’re presented with here:

We have held that the privilege’s protection extends only to witnesses who have “reasonable cause to apprehend danger from a direct answer.” Id., at 486. That inquiry is for the court; the witness’ assertion does not by itself establish the risk of incrimination. Ibid. A danger of “imaginary and unsubstantial character” will not suffice. Mason v. United States,244 U.S. 362, 366 (1917). But we have never held, as the Supreme Court of Ohio did, that the privilege is unavailable to those who claim innocence. To the contrary, we have emphasized that one of the Fifth Amendment’s “basic functions … is to protect innocent men … ‘who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’ ” Grunewald v. United States, 353 U.S. 391, 421 (1957) (quoting Slochower v. Board of Higher Ed. of New York City, 350 U.S. 551, 557—558 (1956)) (emphasis in original). In Grunewald, we recognized that truthful responses of an innocent witness, as well as those of a wrongdoer, may provide the government with incriminating evidence from the speaker’s own mouth. 353 U.S., at 421—422.

The Supreme Court of Ohio’s determination that Batt did not have a valid Fifth Amendment privilege because she denied any involvement in the abuse of the children clearly conflicts with Hoffman and Grunewald. Batt had “reasonable cause” to apprehend danger from her answers if questioned at respondent’s trial. Hoffman, supra, at 486. Batt spent extended periods of time alone with Alex and his brother in the weeks immediately preceding discovery of their injuries. She was with Alex within the potential time frame of the fatal trauma. The defense’s theory of the case was that Batt, not respondent, was responsible for Alex’s death and his brother’s uncharged injuries. In this setting, it was reasonable for Batt to fear that answers to possible questions might tend to incriminate her. Batt therefore had a valid Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

In the case before us, all we have from Lerner is, as I said, a generic opening statement in which said the following:

While the Reiner case is admittedly not fully on point, and it doesn’t entirely address some of the arguments that those arguing in favor of waiver have made, however, it does raise an important point that may end up being relevant here. In the end, all that Lerner’s statement constitutes is a declaration of her own innocence. Given that, the Reiner Court’s holding that the Fifth Amendment privilege still applies to people who claim to be innocent strongly suggests that she did not waive her rights merely be making a statement in which she states that she is innocent.. Indeed, to the extent there is any doubt on this issue I would expect that a judge is going to err on the side of protecting her rights at this stage, especially given the fact that this is a Congressional hearing and not a Grand Jury proceeding or criminal trial and the fact that there is an ongoing FBI investigation of this matter of which Lerner is likely to be, at the very least, a person of interest. A finding that Lerner waived her rights in this Committee hearing would, potentially, prejudice her ability to assert those rights in a law enforcement interrogation.

There will be more to come on this I am sure, but I submit that the default rule of erring on the side of liberty is one that people examining the issue would do well to apply.

So far, public interest in a trio of controversies connected to the Obama administration has been limited. Roughly a quarter (26%) of Americans say they are very closely following reports that the IRS targeted conservative groups. About the same number (25%) are tracking the Benghazi investigation very closely, and even fewer (16%) are very closely following news about the Justice Department subpoenaing phone records of AP journalist.

The new survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted May 16-19 among 1,002 adults, finds that 37% of Republicans are paying very close attention to the IRS story, compared with 21% of Democrats and 25% of independents. And the Benghazi investigation continues to draw much greater interest from Republicans (34% very closely) than Democrats (18%).

A historical review of previous controversies involving White House or cabinet officials finds that these levels of public interest – and the partisan divide in attentiveness – are not necessarily new. Previous scandals – such as the Lewis “Scooter” Libby case during George W. Bush’s administration or the “Pardon-gate” scandal at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term – received similar levels of public attention, and were generally more interesting to those in the opposition party.

Bad news for Republicans, obviously, because as long as most of the public isn’t paying attention to this story it’s unlikely that they’re going to score many political points off of this, and that is the ultimate end of all of this obviously. In the end, all this is likely to do is stir up the GOP base, although, as these numbers indicate, even most Republican’s don’t seem to be closely following the latest scandals:

As we head into the summer, I doubt we’re going to see public interest increase unless there is some major blockbuster revelation that directly links the White House to what happened at the IRS, or something serious in the Benghazi matter. Given the direction the evidence is going at the moment, this seems unlikely.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is taking some heat for comments he made last week about his lack of Latino staffers.

Corbett, asked at a Philadelphia forum hosted by the Spanish-language newspaper ALDIA News Media if he had any Latinos serving in his administration, responded that he did not.

“No, we do not have any staff members in there,” he said. “If you can find us one, please let us know.”

When the moderator responded saying she was “sure” there were Latinos in the administration or who would want to work there, Corbett replied, “Do any of you you want to come to Harrisburg? See?”

Corbett is already in serious re-election trouble. This is unlikely to help.