President Obama Commutes the Sentences of Another 61 Individuals

From the White House:

Today, the President announced 61 new grants of commutation to individuals serving years in prison under outdated and unduly harsh sentencing laws. More than one-third of them were serving life sentences. To date, the President has now commuted the sentences of 248 individuals - more than the previous six Presidents combined. And, in total, he has commuted 92 life sentences.

This is the result of the President's Clemency Initiative that has focused on commuting the sentences of individuals who meet the following criteria:

* They are currently serving a federal sentence in prison and, by operation of law, likely would have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of the same offense(s) today;

* They are non-violent, low-level offenders without significant ties to large scale criminal organizations, gangs or cartels;

* They have served at least 10 years of their prison sentence;

* They do not have a significant criminal history;

* They have demonstrated good conduct in prison; and

* They have no history of violence prior to or during their current term of imprisonment.

Presidents have the power to either pardon or commute the sentences of individuals convicted of federal crimes.

In modern times, presidential clemency usually takes one of two forms: pardons, which constitute a full forgiveness for a crime and restore civil rights like voting and gun ownership, and commutations, which shorten prison sentences and usually have conditions attached.

Some have critiqued President Obama for not issuing more pardons. Although he has granted a total of 70 so far, that is far fewer than most modern presidents. In that sense, this President has flipped the precedent set by previous administrations on these two powers. I would suggest that there are two reasons for that.

First of all, Obama was not impressed with the traditional use of presidential pardons.

The president complained that the pardon attorney's office favored petitions from wealthy and connected people, who had good lawyers and knew how to game the system. The typical felon recommended for clemency by the pardon attorney was a hunter who wanted a pardon so that he could apply for a hunting license.

Secondly, as Neil Eggleston wrote in the White House article cited above, President Obama initiated this Clemency Initiative as a way to push for more permanent criminal justice reforms.

Despite the progress we have made, it is important to remember that clemency is nearly always a tool of last resort that can help specific individuals, but does nothing to make our criminal justice system on the whole more fair and just. Clemency of individual cases alone cannot fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies. So while we continue to work to resolve as many clemency applications as possible - and make no mistake, we are working hard at this - only broader criminal justice reform can truly bring justice to the many thousands of people behind bars serving unduly harsh and outdated sentences.

To date, this administration has used both commutations and the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act to address specific injustices that exist in the criminal justice system. In order to take the next step, Congress needs to act.

Media Should Learn to Avoid Republican Leaks About the Clinton Email Story

You might remember that last summer, the New York Times had to retract major parts of a story about the so-called "Clinton email scandal" because leaks that were provided to them (most likely from Republican lawmakers) turned out to be completely false.

I guess the Washington Post didn't get the memo on how to be careful about what you print from unreliable sources. That's because on Sunday they published a lengthy piece by Robert O'Harrow on the roots of this "scandal." By all accounts, it didn't cover much new ground. But there was one line that became the focus of a lot of headlines.

One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey.

To get a sense of how big that part of the story became, google "Clinton email 147 FBI agents" and you'll find the myriad of stories it produced.

And yet, much like the NYT learned, it turns out that the leaker was not reliable and the Washington Post had to print this correction.

An earlier version of this article reported that 147 FBI agents had been detailed to the investigation, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey. Two U.S. law enforcement officials have since told The Washington Post that figure is too high. The FBI will not provide an exact figure, but the officials say the number of FBI personnel involved is fewer than 50.

In case you are tempted to assume that "fewer than 50" means 49, a source told Ari Melber that "there are currently about 12 FBI agents working full-time on the case."

I don't think that a tin-foil hat is required in order to figure out what's going on here. Republicans are leaking lies to the press about this story - knowing full well that the old adage is sure to hold: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

One has to wonder how long it will take for the media to figure out they're getting played.

The Backlash of Entitlement Sustained by Dominance

Men are entitled to control women's sexuality.

White people are entitled to their supremacy.

Owners are entitled to the profits produced by their laborers.

The United States is entitled to its exceptionalism.

The other day I made a rather bold statement about this election. I suggested that we view all of the issues that are on the table through the lens of whether or not they contribute to dealing another blow to the embrace of dominance as the source of white male power, or give it new life. The statements above capture exactly what I was talking about.

Think about that in light of what Derrick Jensen wrote about entitlement.

I have spent the past several hours now thinking about the notion that masters "shall be entitled to their labor," and at the risk of overstating, it seems to me that entitlement is key to nearly all atrocities, and that any threat to perceived entitlement will provoke hatred...

From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with—and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with—the perceived entitlement. ...

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

We are living in a moment when all of those entitlements are being challenged. Whether we are talking about women, people of color, workers or global citizens - we are all in the process of developing the power and wherewithal to not go along with the perceived entitlement. That has created a backlash of hatred (in the form of fear and anger), which is exploding and fueling the candidacy of Donald Trump (and Ted Cruz). The promise to "make America great again" is all about reinstating that entitlement via dominance.

It is interesting to note that Josh Marshall is describing Trump's candidacy the same way.

In my series of impromptu essays about Trump and Trumpism I've repeatedly returned to the topic of 'dominance politics' and the way it informs virtually everything about Trump's campaign. So far I've discussed it mainly in the context of domestic, electoral politics. That's the framework in which I usually think about it. But since Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee and thus possibly become President, it's important to think through the implications abroad as well...

As I've written before, Trump's brand of dominance politics is built on "a series of symbols and actions that mark the dominating from the dominated." His attitude toward other countries seems quite similar. In the Trump foreign policy worldview, we, the United States, are the unmanned losers that guys like Trump stomp and humiliate. We've become a nation of Jebs in need of a Trump to lead us. We need a Trump-type president to move back to dominating rather than being dominated.

It is important that we begin to see current events in this light. That is because it gives us the ability to see what is fueling the backlash...progress. That knowledge can steel us for the struggle, but it is also empowering. The threat to entitlement is so strong that it is resulting in a lashing out from the dying beast in its death throes. Or, as Rebecca Traister put it:

This is our country in an excruciating period of change. This is the story of the slow expansion of possibility for figures who have long existed on the margins, and it is also the story of the dangerous rage those figures provoke.

Finally, knowing all this reminds us to keep our eyes on the prize.

A Feminist Democratic Agenda

Years ago I jokingly referred to the Gloria Steinem quote in that image at a family gathering. My mother responded with a rage that was not typical for her. I realized quickly that I had struck a nerve about how she had crafted her own identity and the things she valued. I was joking about the bargain with life that she had made back in the early 1950's.

Years later, that bargain is undergoing radical change. Rebecca Traister has written a book titled: All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation. In an article adapted from the book, Traister begins by giving us the data related to the change:

In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent. In other words, for the first time in American history, single women (including those who were never married, widowed, divorced, or separated) outnumbered married women. Perhaps even more strikingly, the number of adults younger than 34 who had never married was up to 46 percent, rising 12 percentage points in less than a decade. For women under 30, the likelihood of being married has become astonishingly small: Today, only around 20 percent of Americans ages 18-29 are wed, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960.

Traister then outlines the impact of that change.

It is a radical upheaval, a national reckoning with massive social and political implications. Across classes, and races, we are seeing a wholesale revision of what female life might entail. We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.

This reorganization of our citizenry, unlike the social movements that preceded it and made it possible — from abolition and suffrage and labor fights of the 19th and early-20th centuries to the civil-rights, women’s, and gay-rights movements of the mid-20th century — is not a self-consciously politicized event. Today’s women are, for the most part, not abstaining from or delaying marriage to prove a point about equality. They are doing it because they have internalized assumptions that just a half-century ago would have seemed radical: that it’s okay for them not to be married; that they are whole people able to live full professional, economic, social, sexual, and parental lives on their own if they don’t happen to meet a person to whom they want to legally bind themselves.

Even though this is not a politicized movement, it has had profound effects on our politics.

While they are not often credited for it, single women’s changed circumstances are what’s driving a political agenda that seems to become more progressive every day. The practicalities of female life independent of marriage give rise to demands for pay equity, paid family leave, a higher minimum wage, universal pre-K, lowered college costs, more affordable health care, and broadly accessible reproductive rights; many of these are issues that have, for years, been considered too risky to be central to mainstream Democratic conversation, yet they are policies today supported by both Democratic candidates for president.

Prior to reading this article, it had actually never occurred to me that much of the agenda of the Democratic Party today is so profoundly feminist. That is a remarkable change that has gone largely unnoticed. It is also important to note that this agenda was not put on the table by our current presidential candidates. It was there for them to embrace long before they announced their intentions to enter this race.

As Stan Greenberg documented in his book, America Ascendant, this agenda is supported by the majority of Americans - regardless of their party affiliation. That is how it came to be embraced by Democrats prior to this presidential election and is likely to drive much of the debate going forward.

Of course there is a segment of the population that finds this agenda deeply threatening - exactly because it represents the kind of change to the social order of a bygone era. And so, much like the backlash we're seeing to the changing racial demographics, this one is facing a significant reaction from many conservatives. That is why I recently suggested that almost every issue in this election cycle can be seen through the lens of an old social order clamoring for a return to dominance as the organizing principle.

But as Traister suggests, our economic and social systems will have to adapt.

None of this is easy, or likely to happen quickly, especially not with a Republican-led Congress. But it is the beginning of a new kind of relationship between American women and their government. Single women are taking up space in a world that was not designed for them. They make up a new republic, a new category of citizen. If the country is to flourish, we must make room for free women, and let go of the economic and social systems built around the presumption that no woman really counts unless she is married.

Rogue State and Misogyny: Trump's Foreign Policy

Since I did my due diligence and slogged through Donald Trump's interview with the Washington Post, I have no desire whatsoever to try and get through the one he did with the New York Times. But Max Fisher did the work for me and tried his best to understand Trump's foreign policy. Here's the part of that analysis that stood out to me:

Trump's favorite word in his New York Times interview is "unpredictable."

"We need unpredictability," he says. "Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer. Because I don’t want to say I won’t or I will."

Unpredictability is central to the Trump foreign policy doctrine. So is an emphasis on zero-sum relations with all nations, a disdain for allies, a status quo position of belligerence and uncooperativeness, a strategy of using leverage and bullying to extract concessions from other countries, and an innate suspicion of the international order.

What Trump is describing, in his vision of American foreign policy, is what we might otherwise call a rogue state.

Trump's America is, like North Korea or at times Putin's Russia, a rent seeker leeching off the international order rather than upholding it.

Frankly, I am at a loss for words beyond that. It is incomprehensible to me that rational people would seriously consider voting for a man like that to be Commander-in-Chief. The anger/fear that drives those folks must be some powerful elixir.

Kevin Drum also waded through the interview - which was conducted with David Sanger and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times and noticed something extremely telling.

Trump spent the entire interview practically slobbering over Sanger. Haberman might as well have been nonexistent for all the attention she got and the number of times Trump interrupted her to turn his attention back to Sanger. You may draw your own conclusions.

Here's my conclusion: Franklin Foer is right when he says, "But there’s one ideology that he [Trump] does hold with sincerity and practices with unwavering fervor: misogyny." Nuff said.

Cuba and Electoral Politics in the U.S.

Much of the discussion about President Obama's opening of our relations with Cuba and his recent visit there have focused on the impact they will have on Cuba itself as well as other Latin American countries. But let's be honest, most Democrats have known for a long time that - as Obama has said repeatedly - the embargo wasn't working. The reason things didn't change is because of the role Cuban Americans played in electoral politics - particularly in the huge swing state of Florida.

Traditionally Cuban Americans (who have been fiercely anti-communist) have parted ways with other Latinos and voted Republican. But just as generational demographics are affecting the overall electorate, they are having an impact in the Cuban American community as well. Achy Obejas documents that change.

Where once Cuban Americans seemed almost universally opposed to any efforts to better relations with the island (and held American foreign policy hostage because of their outsized influence in Electoral College-rich Florida), the majority now support it...

Why the big change? Part of it is generational. The older, more entrenched Cuban-American community has been slowly, and literally, dying off. That’s the generation that was blowing each other up in Miami in the 1970s over who was more anti-Castro, and which loudly supported the U.S.’s economic embargo on Cuba...

In the United States, younger Cuban Americans, beneficiaries of American education and civil society, and less personally invested in the pros and cons of the Cuban Revolution, are also slowly taking control. Children of the first generation of exiles make up an ever-growing share of the Cuban-American vote. And that vote—supplemented by newer arrivals from Cuba who tend to have a less politicized attitude—has been increasingly more open to dialogue and reform in U.S. policy toward Cuba...

Practically speaking, this has meant a move away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrats. It’s been gradual: from 25 percent of the Cuban-American vote in 2000, to 29 percent in 2004, to 35 percent in 2008, to 48 percent in 2012. And it’s precisely this trend that has permitted an American president to reconsider the United States’ historic—and hostile—ties to Cuba.

In that sense, President Obama didn't really create an opening, he simply took advantage of one that was already underway. To the extent that Cuban Americans will have an impact on how Florida "swings" electorally in the future, this will pose an almost insurmountable hurdle for Republicans in presidential contests. If they lose Florida, it is hard to find a way that they can reach 270 electoral votes.

As Obejas also notes, the dissidents in Cuba have typically aligned themselves with the anti-communist Cuban American Republicans. That is changing too. And so it is powerful to note the reaction of that community to President Obama's visit and speech.

Leading Cuban dissidents who met with Mr. Obama at the American Embassy after the speech described his visit as a transformational moment.

“It was the speech we and millions of Cubans yearned to hear,” Jose Daniel Ferrer, the leader of Cuba’s largest dissident group, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, said in an email. “It was a light in the dark.”

To the extent that this opening frees up electoral politics in Florida from being held hostage to the anti-communist frame of the Cold War, that light might not only shine in Cuba, but in U.S. electoral politics as well.

To Continue Momentum, Sanders Will Have to Win Votes From Democrats

Bernie Sanders had a great weekend with big wins in the Alaska, Hawaii and Washington caucuses on Saturday. Since it is delegate math that matters, he reduced Clinton's lead by 35 to 268 delegates won so far.

We've now completed caucuses/primaries in well over half the states and patterns have started to emerge. Much has been made of the fact that Sanders does well with young and white voters while Clinton has won the support of Black and Hispanic voters. After these weekend wins for Sanders, Harry Enten wrote that he outperforms expectations in states that hold caucuses instead of primaries. What is interesting to note about that is that the only two caucuses Clinton has won have been Iowa and Nevada - where she was able to take the time to build the kind of organization that is required.

But in looking at the results so far, there is another difference between the two campaigns that doesn't get mentioned very often. In the states where CNN has done exit polling, Sanders won Independents in all but two states (Georgia and Mississippi), while Clinton won Democrats in all but two (Vermont and New Hampshire).

Given that more people in this country now identify as Independents, that is hardly surprising. But it could be a factor in upcoming contests. As you may know, the Democratic Party in each state sets rules about who can/can't participate in caucuses/primaries. Of the states Sanders has won so far, all but 4 either held "open" primaries/caucuses where anyone could vote - or were open to Democrats only, but allowed voters to change their affiliation on the day of the vote. Many of the young people and Independents who support Sanders have been able to simply show up and vote.

What is interesting to note is that Sanders has won 3 primaries: Michigan and Vermont - both of which were open for anyone to vote, and New Hampshire - which allows voters to change their party on primary day. Meanwhile, Clinton has won the three closed primaries in Florida, Louisiana and Arizona. Given other areas of strengths/weaknesses for the candidates, the comparison of Michigan (open - big win for Sanders) and Florida (closed - big win for Clinton) is instructive along these lines.

If this pattern holds, Sanders should outperform the polls in Wisconsin, which holds an open primary. But by mid/late April he'll run into a brick wall of closed primaries in New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania - with almost 500 delegates up for grabs. If Sanders stays in the race through to the California primary, with its 400 delegates, he will face a "semi-closed" primary there, which requires voters to be registered as either Democrats or "no party preference" (similar to New Hampshire but without the neighbor state advantage and a mostly white electorate).

Just as Democrats are currently discussing caucuses vs primaries and the role of superdelegates, this presidential primary could spur a conversation about open vs closed primaries. That would be a worthwhile discussion. But it would affect future elections. For Sanders to hang onto his claim of momentum in this race, he'll need to find a way to win with registered Democrats.