Taylor Bigler of The Daily Caller “reports” that potential Senate candidate Ashley Judd has done various nude scenes as an actress. Alyssa pounces:

Attacking Judd for her nude scenes is part and parcel of the right’s current strategy to discredit promising female advocates. Like Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke, the Caller’s attempts to impugn Judd as an exhibitionist are an attempt to make her seem less serious by impugning her sexual chastity (that this tactic remains in the playbook is a whole other world of crazy). But the evidence is even more specious and pathetic here. Fluke, who became engaged shortly after enduring nationally-broadcast attacks on her character, stumped for birth control access in the real world. Judd took her clothes off as part of fiction. The Daily Caller may not know the difference, but voters do. And Judd, who already knows a thing or two about the insanity of media scrutiny, is getting a real, and sadly valuable education in what you have to be willing to take if you want to be active in American public life as a woman.

Alex Pappas of the Caller claims that the Judd hit-piece was simply “entertainment.” Alyssa goes another round:

[T]he tittering assertion that the Caller’s stories about Judd’s entertainment career are just for Monday afternoon giggles is an idea belied by the Daily Caller’s very site structure, which is using stories about the fact that she’s done on-screen nudity and dated Michael Bolton to drive coverage to more substantive—though I hesitate to dignify it with that term—reporting about Judd’s political positioning for a potential race.

TNC reflects on his initial response to the Iraq War:

[I]f I regret anything it is my pose of powerlessness — my lack of faith in American democracy, my belief that the war didn’t deserve my hard thinking or hard acting, my cynicism. I am not a radical. But more than anything the Iraq War taught me the folly of mocking radicalism. It seemed, back then, that every “sensible” and “serious” person you knew — left or right — was for the war. And they were all wrong. Never forget that they were all wrong. And never forget that the radicals with their drum circles and their wild hair were right.

Since I’ve been airing some of my own delusions about the Iraq war ten years’ ago, it’s worth recalling that TNC was right. Perhaps one of the most critical pro-war opinion-leaders was Bill Clinton (even though he supported more time for diplomacy in the run-up to the war). In 1998, it was Clinton who made removal of Saddam official US policy. Here is Bill Clinton on the Letterman show ten years ago this month, predicting a cake-walk and assuming the presence of WMDs:

“[Saddam] is a threat. He’s a murderer and a thug. There’s no doubt we can do this. We’re stronger; he’s weaker. You’re looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I’d be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished.”

One more Clinton quote from that March:

“[I]f we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance, there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam… In the post-cold war world, America and Britain have been in tough positions before: in 1998, when others wanted to lift sanctions on Iraq and we said no; in 1999 when we went into Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing. In each case, there were voices of dissent. But the British-American partnership and the progress of the world were preserved. Now in another difficult spot, Blair will have to do what he believes to be right. I trust him to do that and hope the British people will too.”

But what would happen then? Even Clinton, who made it formal US policy to remove Saddam, hadn’t thought that much about that. Neither had I. To my eternal shame.

(Photo: US President Bill Clinton (L) is introduced by British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a ground-breaking ceremony for Springvale Educational Village in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 10, 2007. By Joyce Naltchayan/AFP/Getty.)

Not exactly a great start for Brand Jeb. Elise Foley summarizes the policy described in Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick’s forthcoming book on immigration, calling it a reversal from Bush:

Bush and Bolick write that there should be “two penalties for illegal entry: fines and/or community service and ineligibility for citizenship.” They don’t fully rule out citizenship, however, despite what that sentence implies. Although Bush and Bolick state there should be no special pathway, they say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to go through normal channels to naturalize by going to their native country to apply. That process currently requires three- or 10-year bars and no guarantee of return, making it untenable to many undocumented immigrants.

Benjy Sarlin thinks Bush may be trying to out-conservative other 2016 contenders, while Beth Reinhard notes that Team Jeb is now backtracking on the book-stance, and with a novel excuse:

When Bush and coauthor Clint Bolick were writing the book during the 2012 presidential campaign, the GOP was veering far to the right. Republican nominee Mitt Romney had staked out a hard-line position against illegal immigration, blasting his primary rivals as pro-amnesty and promoting “self-deportation” for undocumented workers. Bush sent the book to the printer before Christmas – weeks before a handful of Senate Republicans embraced a sweeping overhaul that, like the proposals backed by Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, would allow illegal immigrants to earn citizenship. In other words, Bush’s party moved a lot faster than the book-publishing world.

What doesn’t? Reinhard adds that “the bottom line is that in Bush’s zeal to kick-start an immigration reform debate in the GOP, he apparently laid the groundwork for his own flip-flop.” Weigel points out that “this argues for politicians writing e-books or pamphlets that they can update quickly, not writing hardcover tomes that will be mulched unless they become president.” Meanwhile, Reihan focuses on the policy in the book, which he thinks is fair:

This strikes me as entirely appropriate. Unauthorized immigrants who are eligible (i.e., who have resided in the U.S. for a sufficient period) can choose to accept permanent non-citizen resident status and continue to have access to the U.S. labor market or they can leave the country and go through the formal process of becoming authorized immigrants. Many will still have a leg up in the process over other potential immigrants, due to family ties in the U.S., English language proficiency or skills acquired while in the U.S., etc. Yet taking this path will entail taking a serious risk for the unauthorized immigrants who choose it — the opportunity cost of foregone U.S. wages and the very real possibility that they won’t be accepted. That seems like a fair trade.

More readers join the conversation:

I suppose I should be moved to pity by the reader whose physician husband works 55 hours a week and “cracks the six-figure mark”, but somehow the tears don’t flow. I’m a US-trained scientist, working at a leading UK university. My training wasn’t as expensive as a medical training, but it lasted longer. I feel privileged to be able to earn a good living doing the work I do, though I earn less than any physician I know. Sure, I could be earning many times my current salary on Wall Street. So what? People may choose their careers at the margins based on earnings, but it’s only one of many factors.

I’m certain that there are some brilliant potential surgeons who would rather work in a bank if we cut surgeons’ salaries, but there are surely plenty of others who now don’t go into medicine because they can’t afford the upfront costs of the education, or they are frightened of the debt burden.

That’s why the proposal to combine a cut in salaries with government subsidy of medical education is so important. (My doctoral studies, and those of a large number of scientists, were paid for by fellowships.) Another reader suggests that only stupid people would practice medicine if their salaries were moved closer to that of an average person. This is where the experience of other countries becomes relevant, though your reader chooses to ignore it, and retreat into American exceptionalism. Does he or she think that there are no jobs in IT or finance in Europe? (I’m a little mystified by this readers claim that the physicians elsewhere are earning $60k, when hardly any number on the chart – which is nearly 10 years old anyway – is that low.) The GPs I have seen in the UK have seemed every bit as intelligent and well trained as those I’ve seen in the US. And it’s much easier to get an appointment.

The real point is, no one gets paid what they “deserve”, but what those who employ them need or want to pay them for their services. So why is it that medical consumers in the US are so much worse than their counterparts in other advanced economies at negotiating a good price for competent medical service?

Another is even less sympathetic:

Your reader wrote:

I was in school (paying tuition) or in training (earning $20-$30K per year) for 12 years after college and collecting more than $150K in debt at a public medical school while others my age and background were moving up in their careers, earning increasingly higher wages (some made millions in the Internet bubble), increasing their retirement nest egg, buying houses, etc. I made my first paycheck from “overpaid” reimbursement at the ripe age of 33.

Cry me a frickin’ river. I’m a teacher. My training period (student teaching) was beyond full time hours and paid $0 a year. In fact, I had to pay tuition for the privilege of working 70 hours a week for no pay.  After completing my student teaching I found I was totally unemployable straight out of college – due to lack of experience – and had to embark on several years of substituting to burnish my resume.  Last year I was lucky to spend most of the year in long-term substituting (jobs lasting more than a month, which pays more than regular substituting).

I made $10,500 last year.  This year I am a first-year teacher with my own classroom, and I will make about $30k. If I max out my educational level, get rave performance reviews, and stay in the same school district for the next 20 years, I’ll max out at about $50k/year.  All the while I’m required to spend more money on education to keep my teaching certificate current.

My path through college was slower because I had to work while going to school. Even still I have about $80k in student loans.  I’m currently 35 and I will NEVER get the “overpaid” reimbursement paycheck this guy talks about.

I don’t particularly mind that my doctor’s overpaid, and I don’t expect sympathy for my low wages (I picked this career knowing what it entailed). But I’d rather my overpaid doctor not whine about the fact that he isn’t overpaid enough.

More perspective on the subject:

I’m a 30-year-old medical student and son of a highly-paid specialized physician. I am well aware of the opportunity costs involved in pursuing a career in medicine that your reader speaks of, and know well the debt burden faced by new physicians ($170,000 is the median indebtedness of medical school graduates). Assuming one has $25,000 in undergraduate debt (about the median), the monthly loan costs are about $2,250, or about $27,000 per year.

The median physician’s salary varies by specialty, but ranges from $350,000 (orthopedic surgery) to $150,000 (pediatrics) per year, after taxes, this is $250,000 to $115,000, respectively.  This leaves you with an after-tax, after-loan income of $223,000 to $88,000 assuming a one-income household.

I didn’t decide to enter this field to make money. It is a privilege to be studying medicine, and a privilege to be present in those intimate moments that are often the most critical moments in a human life. The fact that I can do all of this, and still be in the top 95%-75% of all disposable incomes in this country is nothing short of a blessing. Physician incomes aren’t the sole or primary cause of inflated health spending, but it certainly is part of the picture. I’m quite honestly disgusted at the self righteousness with which this particular reader writes, and hope that I never lose sight of the privilege that I have been granted.

A doctor gets the last word:

Medicine is a very rewarding career.  It pays fairly well.  For most doctors, not enough to make it into the 1%, but pretty close.  More importantly, it provides a lot of flexibility; you can get a job as a doctor nearly anywhere.  A friend of mine from residency went to work in Hawaii; how many auto plant workers can say that?  It has excellent job security.  Though I am sure there must be unemployed doctors, that number is quite small.  And it provides the opportunity to pursue a rewarding career.

On the other hand, it is a lot of work.  It is a lot of work, being paid fairly little, during a long training period.  It is a lot of nights away from family.  It is not a low stress occupation.  And although it pays comfortably, the upside financial reward is limited.  There aren’t multi-million dollar bonuses for doctors.  You aren’t going to take your company public and make a boatload from stock options.

Are doctors overpaid?  I don’t know.  I think we’re paid enough.  I didn’t go into medicine for the money, but it wasn’t a disincentive, either.  I’m happy with my choice, and I think most of your physician readers are too.  Which suggests that we aren’t underpaid.

Cohn expects it to do real harm:

[T]he sequestration cuts are likely to damage the economy even if Congress ends up repealing them outright. In fact, they are probably damaging the economy already. Furlough notices started going out to some federal workers on Friday, according to news accounts. People who get them are going to react. Some will take the threat more seriously than others, obviously, but given the uncertainty—not to mention the real possibility that some cuts stay in place—some people are likely to change their financial behavior. Maybe they’ll rethink a major purchase or delay maintenance that can wait a few more weeks. And what’s true of individuals is even truer of large organizations, including those in government and those outside.

Cassidy doesn’t foresee a deal any time soon: 

How likely do you think it is that, between now and March 31st, the Republicans will soften their stance on raising taxes by eliminating some loopholes and deductions? And if they stick to their hardline position, how likely do you think President Obama is to drop his calls for a “balanced” approach to replacing the sequester, and to agree to a package of spending cuts without any revenue increases? In my view, the only plausible answers to these questions range from “not very likely” to “not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

How Stan Collender understands the sequester fight:

It was never about cutting spending or reducing the deficit; the fight always was about keeping or winning control of the House of Representatives in the next election. It wasn’t about dueling economic philosophies and it definitely wasn’t about the deficit.

After watching Redemption, an Oscar-nominated HBO documentary on New York’s “canners,” Nicola Twilley considers state cash incentives for recycling, known as Bottle Bills:

Various studies have shown that they do increase recycling rates dramatically: the United States’ overall beverage container recycling rate is estimated at thirty-three percent, while states with container deposit laws have an average rate of seventy percent. As watching a documentary like Redemption makes clear, however, a lot of this extra recycling and sorting is not being done by the consumers of canned or bottled beverages; instead, the state has outsourced its acts of environmental virtue, at far below minimum wage ($2.50 an hour at best, by my rough calculations), to some of its most marginalised populations.

Financial incentives to recycle bottles and cans don’t always work this way: in Germany, my friends and hosts have always been religious about returning bottles to the shop to claim their “Pfand,” and I, who have never pursued a single cent of redemption value in California or New York, have happily followed their lead. Of course, in Germany, the standard deposit amount is €0.25, which is quite a bit more than a nickel.

Finn Arne Jørgensen notes how little has changed in the US:

 As early as 1953, Vermont introduced a bottle bill banning non-refillable bottles, but the law lasted only four years due to heavy lobbying from the beer industry. In 1971, Oregon implemented the first bottle bill requiring a deposit. This deposit was five cents, just like it is today. How many other prices have remained the same over 42 years? Vermont followed in 1973, and Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, and New York had followed by the early 1980s. A number of proposed bottle bills in other states had been struck down by industry opposition. The beverage industry fought the new bottle bills tooth and claw, seeing them as a “direct and politically motivated infringement on the free market and a threat to profits,” as geographer Matthew Gandy wrote in Recycling and the Politics of Urban Waste.

Co-director Jon Alpert reveals what he learned from following canners around – upending his expectations:

I think some of the stereotypes that were upturned for me, and are upturned in the film, is that I thought most people collecting bottles and cans were going to homeless, wrestling with mental illness or drug addiction, or that kind of archetype of a bum. But the truth and the reality, is that in this economy these are working New Yorkers. They’re the marginalized working poor. There’s a lot of ink being spilled and breath being spent on the middle class, in political conversations right now and in newspaper columns, but nobody is talking about the large population below the middle class. These are the people who are living on the absolute edge of society. What impressed me was that they’re not asking for a hand out and they’re not looking for anybody to give them anything. They want to work.

An Army officer writes:

Benkler’s piece about Bradley Manning is deceptive. Manning is being charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice because he is an American soldier who was entrusted with dealing with American intelligence. He’s not being punished as a whistleblower. Do we really want to empower soldiers and intelligence analysts with personal or institutional grudges (as Manning admits he had) with unleashing hordes of classified material that can damage the United States?

It should be noted that the UCMJ’s secondary purpose, in addition to providing a system of justice in the unique jurisdiction that is the military, is to uphold good order and discipline among the troops. As a commanding officer, you can’t uphold good order and discipline in a military intelligence unit, such as Manning’s, if you’re constantly on the lookout for potential ‘whistleblowers’ among your soldiers who’ve been entrusted with national or operational secrets, as Manning was. He should not be compared to a Wal Mart manager who deplores her inequitable salary and job prospects due to her gender and blows the whistle on corporate misbehavior.

I agree. Another reader goes further:

Bradley Manning is not a whistleblower.  Whistleblowers expose illegal activities that would otherwise be covered up.  Manning is a political activist who went too far.

Even taking him on his word that he reached out mainstream American media to no avail, he still had 500+ plus members of Congress from which to pick any number of whom would have jumped at the chance to properly expose some of what was leaked in order to affect policy change.  And had Manning never heard of the Justice Department?  If there was a cover-up of illegal activities, the DoJ is the proper authority to investigate and prosecute.  What Manning did instead was send bulk US secrets to an organization known for virtual hostage taking – making demands of governments in exchange for the safe keeping of such information.

No matter one’s distaste for our government’s actions in the Middle East, we still have to adhere to some basic rules.  For people like Manning and organizations like Wikileaks, there are no ground rules.  They make up the rules as they go along.  Despite all of its faults, our democracy is still intact.  Defending Manning and allowing him to get away with such reckless acts only invites more of the Wikileaks attitude of deciding that “Only we are the supreme moral arbiters and custodians of justice in the world!” Start multiplying that out, and anarchy follows shortly thereafter.

Manning is a traitor not only by rule of law, but to the very notion of democratic and representative government.  He should be convicted of these serious crimes and spend a significant amount time in prison for what he did.