The Commentariat -- July 8, 2014

Internal links removed.

As fighting ramps up in the Gaza strip, President Obama writes an op-ed piece for Haaretz, saying peace as the only real security for Israel & the Palestinians.

Dan Roberts, et al., of the Guardian: "The White House was forced to defend its increasingly fraught relationship with Berlin on Monday as the Central Intelligence Agency maintained a conspicuous silence about new allegations linking it to a spying scandal involving a German intelligence official."

Erica Werner & Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP: "President Barack Obama is preparing to ask Congress for emergency spending of more than $2 billion to deal with the crisis of unaccompanied kids at the Southern border, but for now he won't seek legal changes to send the children back home more quickly. That decision comes after immigration advocates objected strongly to administration proposals to speed thousands of unaccompanied minors back home to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where many face gang violence. The White House insists the kids must be returned. Administration officials say they are still working on ways to do it faster, but say that the request for specific legislative changes will move on a separate track than the emergency spending request Obama is sending to Congress on Tuesday."

Steve Benen: "... as they once again position themselves as America's anti-immigrant, anti-contraception party, Republicans appear to have reached an important conclusion: the only changes they're comfortable making involve moving even further to the right, away from the mainstream.... There literally isn't a major issue on which the GOP has shifted towards the mainstream, despite its 2012 losses. Not one." ...

... No, Wait, Steve. There's Hope. They Go to Lunch with Intellectuals! People with Actual Policy Ideas. Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times Magazine on conservative intellectuals who have been dubbed "reformacons." CW: I didn't read it. ...

... BUT Jonathan Chait did: "Their plans are filled with unreconciled contradictions, gaping policy holes, airy generalities, and, in the few places where they are specific, they are exceedingly small-bore in their focus. Yet ... the movement's true contribution lies in its challenge to Republican apocalypticism.... And the most telling thing about the story is the near-total absence of Paul Ryan.... Ryan's absence is all the more notable since the central protagonist in Tanenhaus's account is Yuval Levin, a Republican house intellectual who gained his current prominence by advising Ryan.... Whether or not the reformicons ever compose a workable domestic agenda, they have come to recognize that they cannot run a presidential campaign promising to rescue America from fire and rubble visible only to themselves." ...

... Charles Pierce quotes extensively from a piece by Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker on the official crazy Texas Republican party platform (linked here July 4). Pierce writes,

This is the Republican Party. Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru are not. In fact, I think all those bold conservative thinkers of whom the New York Times thinks so much should bring their Big Ideas down to the next Texas state Republican convention and see how far they get. John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell, and especially obvious anagram Reince Priebus, who nominally presides over Bedlam, need to be asked every day which parts of the Texas Republican platform they support and which parts they don't. They don't get to use the crazies to get elected and then hide behind fake Washington politesse when the howls from the hinterlands get too loud. We allow ourselves only two major political parties. One of them is completely out of its fcking mind. This is a national problem.

Ed Kilgore: "Insofar as it's CW that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is suing the President of the United States to placate a furious conservative 'base' that doesn't think its heroes in Washington are sufficiently standing up to the godless Kenyan socialist, there's evidence it's not working." Kilgore cites "Erick Erickson's contemptuous reaction to the Boehner lawsuit." ...

... Brian Beutler: "John Boehner['s] ... pending lawsuit against President Obama will be the final word on whether the GOP is the party of maximum deportations, including of immigrants eligible for the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals directive.... Boehner will either include the DACA program among his list of the president's supposedly illegal executive actions, and thus cement his party's standing as one that represents the reactionary anti-immigrant minority in the country; or he'll leave DACA out, giving tacit consent to the program and infuriating the anti-immigrant faction of his own conference. And he may have just tipped his hand toward the anti-immigrant bunch."

Carol Leonnig & Manual Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post: "Sen. Robert Menendez [D-N.J.] is asking the Justice Department to pursue evidence obtained by U.S. investigators that the Cuban government concocted an elaborate plot to smear him with allegations that he cavorted with underage prostitutes, according to people familiar with the discussions.... According to a former U.S. official with firsthand knowledge of government intelligence, the CIA had obtained credible evidence, including Internet protocol addresses, linking Cuban agents to ... prostitution claims and to efforts to plant the story in U.S. and Latin American media."

Lauren French of Politico: "House lawmakers will hear testimony on Tuesday from whistleblowers who accuse the Department of Veterans Affairs of retaliating against them for exposing shoddy medical care."

Katie Zezema of the Washington Post: "White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that 'most' unaccompanied minors attempting to enter the United States on the southern border will likely not qualify for humanitarian relief and will be deported." ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate: President Obama, who will not visit the border on his fundraising trip to Texas, is inviting another "Katrina moment." Just like all the previous Katrina moments that derailed his presidency. In other words, this too shall pass.

Dana Milbank: "... the Obama presidency these days is falling a good bit short of imperial on the Alexander-the-Great scale."

Emma Roller of the National Journal punctures Ed Klein's big "scoop" (linked here yesterday) that President Obama is backing Elizabeth Warren for president. "The reports of an impending Warren-Clinton catfight are also overblown.... It's a good rule that when there is a news vacuum, pundits will happily fill the void with 'truthy' theories about 2016. But until you see photos of Warren and Clinton brawling outside a Georgetown bar, you'd do well to take these reports with a big block of Himalayan salt."

Philip Bump of the Washington Post: Not only are sales relatively slow on Hillary Clinton's book Hard Choices, the people who bought it aren't reading it, according to an analysis based on methodology devised by a mathematician.

A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Ken Vogel of Politico describes Harry Reid's concerted "War on the Kochs" in terms only a Republican could appreciate. Vogel uses terms like "the professional left" & "Koch-bashing politics" & describes the Kochs as "a couple of relatively unknown private citizens." Analysis Politico-style.

Tim Molloy of the Wrap: "Piers Morgan is gone from CNN, but new host John Walsh plans to continue his campaign for gun control. Besides hosting 'America's Most Wanted' and advocating for victims' rights, Walsh has been a longtime advocate of background checks and other safety measures. He said he would continue that fight now that he is joining CNN as the host of 'The Hunt,' a new show about catching fugitives.... He also said Vice President Joe Biden recently agreed with him that politicians are 'scared s--less' of the NRA. 'I said to Joe Biden, "90 percent of Americans are for a responsible background check for a gun, and you know what this Congress has done? Not voted on it, not brought it to the floor, not introduced a bill,'" Walsh said. 'I said, "They're all scared shitless of the NRA, aren't they?"' Walsh said the vice president replied, 'John, every one of them. Because the NRA will run a tea bagger against you.... They'll put 5 million bucks against you.'" CW: So sometimes it's "s--less" & sometimes it's "shitless."

Christopher Dickey of the Daily Beast: ISIS is destroying, or selling off, the antiquities of the ancient city of Ninevah. CW: This really is a tragedy.

Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "Teen births in Colorado have dropped by 40 percent over the past five years, thanks largely in part to a state program that provides affordable contraception to low-income women, the state's governor announced late last week. The long-lasting birth control that's being partially credited for the dramatic decline is the same contraceptive method at the center of Hobby Lobby's recent Supreme Court case." (Emphasis added.)

When Ignorance Is the Best Excuse. Richard Fausset of the New York Times on North Carolina voting rights. CW: I find it impossible to believe that Alan Langley -- the white Republican guy on the local board of elections -- is as ignorant as he claims to be. Even if he were clueless, when voters' reps came to him & said, "the changes you're making are discriminatory," he would -- if he were as wide-eyed innocent as he says he is -- revisit the decision & get input from the community (which he should have done in the first place). Fausset presents the story as two views of the same action, but I'd say one of those views is completely phony.

Jake Sherman & John Bresnahan of Politico: Eric Cantor's campaign is deep in the red, & Cantor's aides are soliciting House members for donations. CW: Cantor raised millions for them (perhaps a reason for his loss); now let's see if those selfcentered House members will reciprocate.

News Ledes

AP: "The Israeli military launched what could be a long-term offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday striking at least 50 sites in Gaza and mobilizing troops for a possible ground invasion aimed at stopping a barrage of rocket attacks against Israel."

New York Times: "Separatist rebels retreated Monday from positions in eastern Ukraine, apparently blowing up bridges, and began building barricades in the two largest cities, Donetsk and Luhansk, in anticipation of a final stand against advancing government troops. While separatist leaders have complained bitterly about being sold out by their allies in Moscow, Ukrainian officials said Monday that they had succeeded in sealing the previously porous border with Russia, stopping the influx of new weapons and fighters."

The Commentariat -- July 7, 2014

Internal links removed.

** Eli Saslow of the Washington Post on what happens to "immigration orphans": minors who are natural U.S. citizens whose parents have been deported or are in danger of deportation because they are in the country illegally. "The federal government doesn't track what happens to the children of deported parents, and no state or federal officials monitor how many children" are protected by guardians like Nora Sandigo, the (heroic) woman Saslow profiles. CW: These kids aren't "lost in the system"; there is no system.

In a CNN opinion piece, House Speaker John Boehner "explains" why he is bringing to the House floor legislation authorizing the Congress to sue President [link corrected; see comment below by Steve V.] Obama: "Constitution something something..., accountability something something..., Constitution something something." ...

... CW: As safari remarked in yesterday's Comments, "Boner, in due form, lacks any substance whatsoever besides fishing for right wing talking points about jobs, the economy and of course the Sacred Constitution." There's a lot more substance is safari's comment than in Boehner's piece. ...

... Mike Lillis of the Hill: "House Republicans plan to bring legislation to the floor authorizing a lawsuit against Obama's use of executive action, a move they believe will underline the importance to their base voters of coming to the polls in November to elect a GOP House and Senate." CW: What? What? This isn't about protecting Constitutional government? It's a political ploy? Hard to believe. ...

... ** Speaking of the Constitution. E. J. Dionne: "For too long, progressives have allowed conservatives to monopolize claims of fealty to our unifying national document. In fact, those who would battle rising economic inequalities to create a robust middle class should insist that it's they who are most loyal to the Constitution's core purpose. Broadly shared well-being is essential to the framers' promise that 'We the people' will be the stewards of our government." You can download a pdf of the article by Joseph Fishkin & William Forbath, which Dionne cites, here.

Sue John Boehner. Larry Summers, in a Washington Post op-ed, blames Congress for the U.S.'s diminished influence in the world: "A failure to engage effectively with global economic issues is a failure to mount a strong forward defense of U.S. interests. That we cannot do everything must not become a reason not to do anything. While elections may turn on domestic preoccupations, history's judgment will turn on what the United States does internationally." ...

     ... CW: Except that Larry loves him some international trade agreements, it's quite a good piece -- & unusually readable for jargon showoff Prof. Summers. BTW, it's worth contrasting Summers' ideas on how to foster international influence & Robert Kagan's ideas, referenced in the NYT piece by Josh Heilbrunn & linked below as a presidential election stories.

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The gun-control group founded by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) will begin surveying all federal candidates in the 2014 midterm elections on gun issues Monday as it tries to become a political counterweight to the National Rifle Association.... Bloomberg's group, Everytown for Gun Safety, is asking all Senate and House incumbents and candidates to complete a 10-part questionnaire stating publicly where they stand on issues such as expanding background checks for gun buyers, limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines and toughening gun-trafficking statutes."

Sam Frizell of Time: "The upstart Mayday PAC that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics has crossed its fundraising goal of $5 million, according to a Friday email from founder and academic Lawrence Lessig.... Mayday PAC, which seeks to fund politicians that will pass restrictions on campaign funding, had raised just $75,000 by the beginning of May, but has been expanding rapidly. Here's one place to contribute. CW: I suspect Mayday PAC spent its $75K wisely -- by purchasing mailing lists.

Greg Clary of CNN: "Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Sunday the Obama administration will take steps to fix the nation's broken immigration system, even without the help of Congress."

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: Harry Reid was literally sitting on a gold mine in his home in Searchlight, Nevada. But now he has sold out to "a small South Dakota company that bought an abandoned mine next door in 2010 and has high hopes for a new era of gold production. The $1.75 million deal was a handsome payout for Reid (D), who is paid a Senate salary of $193,400 per year. Nearly all of the land had been in Reid's family for decades, much of it originally deeded to his father and some bought by Reid from family members. His brother will continue to live in Searchlight, where Reid will also retain some holdings." Reid & his wife Landra will move to Las Vegas.

Paul Krugman: "Confronted with a conflict between evidence and what they want to believe for political and/or religious reasons, many people reject the evidence.... Hardly any of the people who predicted runaway inflation have acknowledged that they were wrong, and that the error suggests something amiss with their approach.... You might wonder why monetary theory gets treated like evolution or climate change.... Well, it turns out that money is indeed a kind of theological issue.... When faith -- including faith-based economics -- meets evidence, evidence doesn't stand a chance."

David Sanger & Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Sunday sought to play down new disclosures that the National Security Agency has swept up innocent and often personal emails from ordinary Internet users as it targets suspected terrorists in its global surveillance for potential threats. Administration officials said the agency routinely filters out the communications of Americans and information that is clearly of no intelligence value. The statements came in response to a report by The Washington Post [linked here yesterday], based on a large trove of conversations intercepted by the N.S.A."

Weekend Reading -- A Day Late. CW: Based on the title, I read this book review by Gene Healy in the libertarian mag Reason on our "elective monarchy" with a view toward panning it. Instead, I found the thesis of the book under review -- The Once & Future King by conservative F. H. Buckley -- pretty interesting. As always, of course, read critically. Healy points out a major flaw in Buckley's thesis. And Healy himself is not all that into accuracy. For instance, he writes that "Last September, Secretary of State John Kerry kept insisting that 'the president has the power' to wage war 'no matter what Congress does.'" There's a reason Healy left the phrase "to wage war" out of the citation: um, that's not what Kerry said. Moreover, Healy never mentions that Kerry & the administration actually went to Congress to get approval on the air strikes at issue, & that -- in large part due to Congressional misgivings, the air strikes never happened. So -- lump of salt.

Beyond the Beltway

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "North Carolina's voter identification law, which has been described as the most sweeping attack on African American electoral rights since the Jim Crow era, is being challenged in a legal hearing that opens on Monday. Civil rights lawyers and activists are gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the start of the legal challenge that is expected to last all week. They will be seeking to persuade a federal district judge to impose a preliminary injunction against key aspects of HB 589, the voting law enacted by state Republicans last August."

Mark Lifsher of the Los Angeles Times: California's "minimum wage rose one dollar Tuesday to $9 an hour.... California's new minimum wage is the fourth highest in the country, behind the District of Columbia at $9.50 an hour, Washington state at $9.32 and Oregon at $9.10."

Mollie Reilly of the Huffington Post: "An Independence Day parade in Norfolk, Nebraska included a float depicting President Obama's presidential library as an outhouse, sparking outcry from residents as well as the state's Democratic Party. The float, which did not identify its sponsor, featured an overall-clad dummy standing in front of an outhouse. Nailed to the structure were wooden signs reading 'Obama Presidential Library.... The presidential library outhouse comparison has become somewhat of a conservative meme in recent years.... Rick Konopasek, a member of the Norfolk parade committee, defended the float, comparing it to a political cartoon and noting that multiple parade judges awarded it an 'honorable mention.' 'It's obvious the majority of the community liked it,' he said. 'So should we deny the 95 percent of those that liked it their rights, just for the 5 percent of people who are upset?'" ...

     ... CW: Really, Rick? Ninety-five percent? How did you come to that calculation? And why would you boast that almost all of the people who watched your parade were no better than the contents of an outhouse?

Oh, Yippie. Cliven Bundy is back in the news, so I don't have to rely on months-old Stephen Colbert skits (see Saturday's Commentariat) to remember that old SOB. Unfortunately, the news he's in is the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which promises to sue my ass if I cite a single line of their untouchable text. (Yes, they'd lose the suit, but I'd have a heap of bills to pay to defend myself.) ...

     ... Update. Tom Boggioni of the Raw Story has the particulars: "In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said that BLM-defying rancher Cliven Bundy must be 'held accountable' for his actions. Gillespie said he had spoken with Bundy multiple times in the months before the BLM rounded up his cattle which were grazing on government land despite Bundy's refusal to pay grazing fees. Gillespie said that he he made it clear to Bundy that, if there was going to be a protest, it must be peaceful. However, the sheriff said, Bundy crossed the line when he allowed supporters, including armed militia members, onto his property to brandish weapons at police."

Presidential Election 2016

Edward Klein of the New York Post: "President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president -- a stinging rebuke to his nemesis Hillary Clinton, sources tell me.... Obama has authorized his chief political adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to conduct a full-court press to convince Warren to throw her hat into the ring. In the past several weeks, Jarrett has held a series of secret meetings with Warren. During these meetings, Jarrett has explained to Warren that Obama is worried that if Hillary succeeds him in the White House, she will undo many of his policies." CW: Do not get your hopes up, people. It's the New York Post. Also, Actual President Jarrett (according to our best winger sources) met with Rupert Murdoch a few weeks ago. It's just as likely she's urging him to run for president. Yeah, I know, Murdoch is not a natural-born citizen, so he's not eligible. But, hey, neither is Obama, & look where he's sitting now. ...

... Steve M. is also a little bit skeptical: "... the same Ed Klein told us back in 2005, when he was promoting a book called The Truth About Hillary, that Hillary is (as the book puts it) 'notoriously left-wing.' ... Is Ed Klein 2014 saying that Ed Klein 2005 was lying to us? After all, if Hillary is so secretly radical, why doesn't that radical Marxist Barack Obama consider her the one who will continue his life's work of 'transform[ing] America into a European-style democratic-socialist state'?" ...

... This New York Times piece, by Jacob Heilbrunn, is more serious: Heilbrunn posits that some prominent neocons may be aligning with Hillary Clinton. As evidence, Heilbrunn notes that "Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic administration..., called [an article by neocon Robert] Kagan [urging the U.S. to exert its power to maintain a global liberal world order] 'magisterial,' in what amounts to a public baptism into the liberal establishment." (CW: By contrast, see also Larry Summer's WashPo column linked above.) ...

... Also, this Wall Street Journal article, by Peter Nicholas, is in line with Heilbrunn's speculation (& of course with Klein's!): "Hillary Clinton has begun distancing herself from President Barack Obama, suggesting that she would do more to woo Republicans and take a more assertive stance toward global crises, while sounding more downbeat than her former boss about the U.S. economic recovery." CW: Firewalled; if the link doesn't work, copy & paste a part of the lede sentence into Google search.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Israel and the militant group Hamas seemed set on a collision course on Monday, with an escalation of cross-border clashes around the Gaza Strip, Hamas vowing to avenge the deaths of six of its fighters, and preparations underway for a possible large-scale Israeli operation in the Palestinian coastal territory. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said that the army was completing the deployment of two infantry brigades along the border with Gaza and that the government had approved the call-up of 1,500 reservists, mainly Home Front Command and aerial defense units." ...

... AP: "Three Israeli suspects in the killing of a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and burned to death last week confessed to the crime on Monday and were re-enacting the incident for authorities, an official said, as the country's leaders raced to contain a public uproar over the slaying."

New York Times: "Pope Francis on Monday held his first meeting with victims of clerical sex abuse, leading them at a private Mass at a small Vatican chapel where he asked for forgiveness and described the abuse as a 'grave sin,' even as some critics called the meeting a publicity stunt."

New York Times: "Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who as Mikhail S. Gorbachev's foreign minister helped hone the 'new thinking,' foreign and domestic, that transformed and ultimately rent the Soviet Union, then led his native Georgia through its turbulent start as an independent state, died Monday. He was 86."

The Commentariat -- July 6, 2014

Internal links, photo removed.

Barton Gellman, et al., of the Washington Post: "Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post. Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else."

New York Times Editors: "... the real [IRS] scandal is what Republicans did to cripple the agency when virtually no one was looking. Since the broad Tea Party-driven spending cuts of 2010, the agency's budget has been cut by 14 percent after inflation is considered, leading to sharply reduced staff, less enforcement of the tax laws and poor taxpayer service. As the economist Jared Bernstein noted recently in The Washington Post, a weakened I.R.S. enforcement staff will be unable to make a dent in the $385 billion annual gap between what taxpayers owe and what they pay -- an unintended tax cut, mostly for the rich, that represents 11 percent of this year's spending.... The nation's highest-income taxpayers, many of whom donate generously to Republican politicians to keep their taxes low...' are getting their money's worth from lawmakers who debilitate revenue collection while claiming to be deeply worried about the budget deficit.... The budget cutters are also trying to prevent the agency from performing its new job of collecting higher taxes on the rich to pay for health care reform, and distributing health insurance subsidies for low- and moderate-income people...."

Rick Jervis of USA Today: "Gov. Rick Perry told a U.S. House field hearing Thursday that President Obama should deploy the National Guard to secure the Texas border and should send thousands of undocumented child immigrants back to their home country. He also called on the federal government to reimburse Texas the $500 million that he said the state has spent on securing the border since 2005."

CW: There are many reasons the tuition is too damned high, but Peter Lunenfeld, writing in Salon, identifies one of them seldom mentioned: Ronald Reagan.

Dahlia Lithwick & Sonja West in Slate: "While the court has told us that we are not allowed to question the sincerity of corporations' professed religious beliefs, we remain free to question the sincerity of the court's pinky promise that the Hobby Lobby decision would have a limited scope." ...

... CW: So far the Roberts Court has rewritten the first two Amendments of the Bill of Rights. Next term: the Five Dancing Supremes will rule that the 47 percent will be required to quarter soldiers in their homes.

Steve M. responds to John Harwood of the New York Times, who wonders if Republicans will learn, as Bill Clinton did in 1992, how to take back the presidency. "Republicans have learned that the presidency is worth winning, but it's not mission-critical -- they bottled up Clinton, they bottled up Obama, they'll undoubtedly bottle up Hillary Clinton. They've lost the popular vote in five of six presidential cycles and look where we are: hedge fund managers still pay a lower tax rate than teachers, guns laws have become less stringent in much of America, the notion of human-created climate change still can't be the basis of federal legislation, our immigration policy still isn't reformed, abortion is subject to more and more restrictions in state after state.... That's just for starters. That's a pretty solid record of victory for the right." ...

Jamelle Bouie in Slate: Republicans aren't talking about the 47 percent anymore, but they're still thinking it: "... the basic idea -- that some number of Americans were lazy 'takers' addicted to welfare and entitlements -- never subsided. You can see it in the anger over Thad Cochran's win in the Mississippi Senate primary -- with opponents furious over his appeal to so-called 'moochers' -- and in the backlash to the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act; conservatives demanded women 'pay for their own birth control,' as if insurance coverage were an unearned benefit."

... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "The South is America's poverty belt, and Republicans want to make all of America more like the South." ...

     ... CW: This map kinda puts the lie to the GOP Takers Theory (see Jamelle Bouie post, linked above. While most of these impoverished states are "taker" states, many of the poor white voters in those states are Tea Party through-&-through. Rather than turning people into "Democrat" lie-abouts waiting for their gummit checks, poverty or near-poverty makes many people stingy, fearful, bigoted & superstitious. It makes them Republicans "clinging to their guns & religion," one might say.

Judd Legum of Think Progress: "... a major new study [conducted in Austrailia] finds that kids raised by same-sex couples actually do a bit better 'than the general population on measures of general health and family cohesion.' ... The lead researcher, Dr. Simon Crouch, noted that in same-sex couples parents have to 'take on roles that are suited to their skill sets rather than falling into those gender stereotypes.' According to Crouch, this leads to a 'more harmonious family unit and therefore feeding on to better health and well being.'" ...

     ... CW: Not mentioned in Legum's piece nor in the abstract of the study -- I presume that the vast majority of children reared by same-sex couples were planned. Thus, the parents are -- on average -- better prepared to accommodate their children than are many heterosexual couples who become accidental parents.

Brendan Nyhan in the New York Times: Climate change & evolution deniers aren't ignorant of the facts; they just don't believe them. "Once people's cultural and political views get tied up in their factual beliefs, it's very difficult to undo regardless of the messaging that is used."

Mark Stern of Slate: "... as more and more states find marriage equality foisted upon them by a judicial mandate, [a] discordance in rights presents something of a ticking time bomb for the LGBT movement. Currently, Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation with both gay marriage (thanks to a federal judge) and no employment protections for gay people. But ... several other states also boast same-sex marriage while lacking hospital visitation, adoption rights, or housing protections for sexual minorities.... And when the Supreme Court almost inevitably legalizes marriage equality nationwide, the chasm between gay marriage and broader LGBT equality is going to expand rapidly in dozens of red states." ...

... CW: Let's face it: living in a red state -- except maybe in a university town (think Austin, Texas) or upscale resort community (Jackson Hole, Wyoming) is always going to suck.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Israeli police have arrested a group of Israeli suspects in connection with the kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian youth from East Jerusalem who was found beaten and burned in a Jerusalem forest last week, a spokesman for the Israeli police said Sunday. After days of near silence about the case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned what he called a 'horrific crime' and pledged that the perpetrators would 'face the full weight of the law.'" ...

... The Washington Post story is here.

New York Times: "With mystery enveloping a German intelligence service employee accused of spying -- reportedly for the United States -- German officials and commentators on Sunday angrily demanded a response from Washington, warning that an already troubled relationship was at risk of deteriorating to a new low."

Reality Chex Travel Advisory. Guardian: "Passengers using airports that offer direct flights to the US may be forced to switch on their mobile phones and other electronic devices to prove to security officials that they do not contain explosives, it was announced on Sunday.... The new measure is the first to be confirmed since Jeh Johnson, the US Homeland Security secretary, warned last week that enhanced security checks would be implemented imminently at 'certain overseas airports with direct flights into the United States'." CW: So charge your cellphone before leaving for the airport.