The Commentariat -- Feb. 28, 2016

Afternoon Update:

There Will Be Chaos. Peter Holley of the Washington Post: "Former CIA director Michael Hayden believes there is a legitimate possibility that the U.S. military would refuse to follow orders given by Donald Trump if the Republican front-runner becomes president and decides to make good on certain campaign pledges. Hayden, who also headed the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005, made the provocative statement on Friday during an appearance on HBO's 'Real Time with Bill Maher.' Trump, fresh off a string of primary victories, has yet to secure his party's nomination, but Hayden said the candidate's rhetoric already raises troubling questions.... During his appearance on 'Real Time,' Hayden cited Trump's pledge to kill family members as being among his most troubling campaign statements."

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: The Army still is not allowing members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots to be buried in Arlington Cemetery, reasoning that they were not technically part of the armed services. "... the WASPs wore uniforms, carried weapons, had access to classified information and saluted their superiors. Along with training men to fly bombers, the WASPs flew fighter planes from military bases to ports, where they were shipped to battle overseas. At least three dozen of them died or were killed while serving." Rep. Martha McSally (R-Az.), a fighter pilot herself, has introduced legislation to change that. The bill has more than 100 co-sponsors. "On Thursday, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs sent the bill to the House floor."

Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump repeatedly tells Jake Tapper of CNN that he "knows nothing" about David Duke & white supremacist groups who have endorsed or supported his candidacy. "Possibly Trump is making a clever historical reference that he will later explain when he reveals that his entire political profile from 2011 through 2016 was a form of guerrilla theater designed to smoke out the widespread appeal of Republican racism. Or else, more likely, he is even stupider than anybody previously believed." Thanks to MAG for the link.

Linda Greenhouse (pub. 2/27) on "abortion exceptionalism" & the Texas case to be argued this Wednesday in the Supreme Court. A 4-4 tie would leave Texas's restrictive law in place. Greenhouse urges the justices to consider the facts. CW: At least four of them likely will. That ain't enough.

*****

Presidential Race

Amy Chozick & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "Drawing overwhelming support from the African-American voters who deserted her here eight years ago, Hillary Clinton won her first resounding victory of the 2016 campaign in South Carolina on Saturday, delivering a blow to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont as their fight turns to the 11 states where Democrats vote on Tuesday." ...

... Abby Phillip, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Hillary Clinton is projected to win the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina, according to exit polls and early returns -- a victory that showcased Clinton's durable support among black Democrats, and raised questions about Sen. Bernie Sanders's ability to compete with her in the South." ...

... Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "The result positions Mrs. Clinton for a sweep of the South in a few days on Super Tuesday and puts the burden on Mr. Sanders to post decisive victories elsewhere. If he does not -- and the polls, at least so far, are not encouraging -- Mrs. Clinton seems likely to amass a significant and possibly irreversible lead." ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic: "The networks called the election as the polls closed at 7 p.m., and Clinton was set to win by a huge margin -- more than 47 percent, with almost all the votes counted. The victory all but clears the way for Clinton to coast to the Democratic nomination.... In her remarks in Columbia, Clinton seemed to declare the primary battle over, and she began looking ahead to the general-election battle.... 'Despite what you hear, we don't need to make America great again. America never stopped being great,' Clinton said. 'But, we do need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers'": ...

... Jim Newell of Slate: "South Carolina -- not Iowa -- was where Sen. Barack Obama began the run of wins that built up his insurmountable delegate lead over Clinton in 2008. It appears as if it will serve the same purpose this time around in Clinton's favor." ...

... ** Ari Berman of the Nation tells the horrifying story of South Carolina's voter-ID law. It makes you want to cry. And if you think Gov. Nikki Haley maybe isn't so bad because she supported removing the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds, you'll think again. ...

... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "As voters made their way to the polls Saturday in South Carolina -- where Bernie Sanders was expected to get trounced in the Democratic presidential primary -- the candidate was 1,000 miles away [in Austin, Texas], in what seemed an alternate universe. More than 10,000 adoring supporters showed up and cheered the Vermont senator's every sentence at an outdoor rally on a gorgeous day here. Sanders boasted about how he was going to beat Donald Trump 'soundly' in the general election. And before leaving stage, he was beaming as he sang 'This Land is Your Land' with the daughter of Willie Nelson and granddaughter of Woody Guthrie":

... Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post: "Bernie Sanders is right: Bill Clinton's welfare law doubled extreme poverty.... Hundreds of thousands of Southern families are living on less than $2 in cash a day as a result of legislation President Bill Clinton signed in 1996, according to new research by Johns Hopkins University's Kathryn Edin and University of Michigan's Luke Shaefer.... The profound and enduring consequences of that law, and of the rest of Clinton's policies on poverty, are only just becoming clear.... Sanders said that the number of people living in extreme poverty has doubled under President Clinton's reforms. If anything, that was an understatement.... While the poorest of the poor have suffered, other low-income Americans have benefited. Many experts think Clinton's policies reduced poverty overall." Sanders voted against the law, a law which Hillary Clinton actively supported.

Madame NeoCon. Jo Becker & Scott Shane of the New York Times have a long, two-parter on Hillary Clinton's pivotal role in the Libyan crisis. "This is the story of how a woman whose Senate vote for the Iraq war may have doomed her first presidential campaign nonetheless doubled down and pushed for military action in another Middle Eastern country. As she once again seeks the White House, campaigning in part on her experience as the nation's chief diplomat, an examination of the intervention she championed shows ... her expansive approach to the signal foreign-policy conundrum of today: whether, when and how the United States should wield its military power in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East." Part 2 is here. CW: This report is a vivid reminder, too, that Hillary is not just Bernie Lite. She is someone who has been twice persuaded that Middle Eastern revolutionary "leaders"/elites can & will put together a democratically-governed state. ...

Leslie Picker of the New York Times: "Warren E. Buffett took aim on Saturday at the 'negative drumbeat' of this year's presidential campaign, saying that the view that children today would not live as well as their parents was 'dead wrong.' In his annual letter to shareholders, the billionaire investor -- who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president -- wrote that 'the babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.'"

** Alexander Burns, et al., of the New York Times: "In dozens of interviews, elected [Republican] officials, political strategists and donors described a frantic, last-ditch campaign to block Mr. Trump -- and the agonizing reasons that many of them have become convinced it will fail. Behind the scenes, a desperate mission to save the party sputtered and stalled at every turn." ...

     ... CW: This bit from the report is especially hilarious: "At a meeting of Republican governors [February 20], Paul R. LePage of Maine called for action. Seated at a long boardroom table at the Willard Hotel, he erupted in frustration over the state of the 2016 race, saying Mr. Trump's nomination would deeply wound the Republican Party. Mr. LePage urged the governors to draft an open letter 'to the people,' disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics." On Friday "LePage endorsed Trump, saying he could be "one of the greatest presidents' and "I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular. So I think I should support him because we're one of the same cloth." Yeah, Monsieur LePew, you've "deeply wounded the Republican party," too, so that's one of the ways you're Donald Trump. ...

     ... Dara Lind of Vox writes that the LePage lipflop shows why the GOP can't stop Trump: "... the most damning thing about the New York Times' LePage anecdote: he suggested that governors get together and write an open letter, but the other governors apparently weren't willing to go that far. If the person who is willing to stick his neck out to stop Trump defects to the pro-Trump side, who, exactly, do Republicans expect is going to stop him?" ...

... Daniel Drezner of the Washington Post: "Trump is winning because no significant Republican coalition seriously tried to oppose him when there was still time for it to work. And the reason no powerful Republican coalition emerged to stop him is that the GOP believed all the analysts who said Trump had no chance.... While the field of candidates was crowded, Trump posed what economists call a collective action problem. It was in everyone's general interest for someone to attack Trump -- but it wasn't in anyone's specific interest to do it or to draw Trump's fury in response (ask Bush, whom Trump mocked mercilessly until he finally quit)." ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "The problem is Republican voters. Look at the polls and you see that in virtually every state in the country between 30% and 50% of GOP voters currently back Trump. And only unicorn thinking supports the idea that the 70% to 50% who do not constitute some sort 'anti-Trump' faction. That's the problem, not Trump himself.... Republican elected officials have increasingly coddled, exploited and in some cases - yes - spurred their voters penchant for resentment, perceived persecution, apocalyptic thinking and generic nonsense.... Trump is very little different from the average candidate Republicans elected in 2010 and 2014, in terms of radical views and extreme rhetoric." ...

... Kristen East of Politico: "Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Saturday endorsed Donald Trump for president. Trump has made immigration a central issue in his campaign for president, vowing to build a wall along the southern border of the United States and promising to have Mexico pay for it. 'For years I pleaded with the federal government to do their job and secure our border. Today, we can elect a President who will do just that -- Donald J. Trump,' Brewer said in a statement released by Trump's campaign." ...

     ... CW: Brewer is perhaps best known for wagging her finger at President Obama, then calling him "thin-skinned." So hardly a surprise that she would support a racist for president. ...

... CW: AND I thought maybe MAG was kidding about this when she mentioned it in yesterday's Comments. But no, it's true. Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed: "Jean-Marie Le Pen, the larger-than-life founder of France's far-right Front National party, endorsed Donald Trump on his Twitter feed on Saturday. If I was American I would vote for Donald Trump,' Le Pen tweeted. 'May God protect him!'... Le Pen has faced legal sanctions more than once for Holocaust denial and for other controversial statements. Over the decades, he has repeatedly made disparaging remarks about minorities.... A Trump spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment." ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "For more than eight months, amazingly enough, few of Trump's rivals in the G.O.P. race, or the news organizations that were covering his campaign, bothered to seek answers to ... questions [about Trump's business record], which, in fact, cover only a subset of the pertinent issues raised by Trump's long career. Apart from a few jibes in the early debates about some of his casinos seeking bankruptcy protection, the Republican front-runner had been getting off pretty much scot-free." ...

... Stephanie Saul of the New York Times has a short piece on Donald Trump's now-defunct bait-&-switch scheme previously known as "Trump University." Marco was right when he said in Thursday's debate, "There are people that borrowed $36,000 to go to Trump University..., and you know what they got? They got to take a picture with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump." ...

... Kevin Sullivan & Mary Jordan of the Washington Post: "In the sharpest official Mexican government comments to date on Republican front-runner Donald Trump..., Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu, Mexico's top diplomat..., called Trump's policies and comments 'ignorant and racist' and his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border 'absurd.'... As for Mexico paying for Trump’s proposed wall, she said: 'It is not a proposition we would even consider. It is an impossible proposition.'"

Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas -- released summary pages of their tax returns from the last several years Saturday evening, an effort to raise pressure on billionaire Donald Trump to do the same just days before Super Tuesday in the Republican presidential nominating battle. Rubio and his wife, Jeanette, made $2.29 million from 2010 to 2014 and paid $526,092 in taxes.... Cruz's campaign reported several hours later that the senator from Texas and his wife, Heidi, earned $5.05 million over the last four years and paid $1.45 million in taxes. Both candidates released only the first two pages of returns for the years 2010 to 2014, which provide summary information but drew criticism immediately from Democratic partisans who cited the decision of Hillary Clinton and other presidential candidates to release multiple years of full tax returns. Without the full returns, key details about Cruz's and Rubio's family financial dealings -- such as precise sources of income, deductions and amounts donated to charity -- were not revealed." ...

... CW: I'm waiting for Trump to turn over a fake "summary" of his tax returns by his fake accountant, just as he did with his LOL fake doctor's report.

... Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: Marco continues his anti-Trump schtick. "As in Dallas, where his extended riff on Trump's spelling, wealth, age and bladder control turned viral, Rubio used the Oklahoma City speech to humiliate the front-runner.... In his current messaging, which is being fine-tuned from stop to stop Rubio casts Trump as not only an imbecile but a rip-off artist and a wimp.... While Rubio attacked Trump, national cable networks played his speech live -- a favor granted constantly to Trump, rarely to anyone else. When Rubio switched tacks to deliver his positive stump speech, the networks cut away." ...

... Elliot Smilowitz of the Hill: "Rubio on Saturday continued his mockery of rival Donald Trump, going after the businessman's spelling errors and 'spray tan' at a campaign event in Kennesaw, Ga. 'You guys wanna have a little fun today?' Rubio mischievously asked the crowd, holding up his cell phone. 'Last night he was actually pretty calm after I punched him around a little bit,' he said of Trump. 'He's learning how to spell, I guess. But he's flying around on Hair Force One and tweeting.'" With video.

Other News & Opinion

Eli Rosenberg of the New York Times: "Health officials in the United States have advised pregnant women who are scheduled to attend the Olympic Games in razil to reconsider their plans because of the Zika virus epidemic. In a travel advisory released on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said women who are pregnant in any trimester should “consider not going to the Olympics."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "MSNBC intends to part ways with host Melissa Harris-Perry after she complained about preemptions of her weekend program and implied that there was a racial aspect to the cable-news network's treatment, insiders at MSNBC said. Harris-Perry refused to appear on her program Saturday morning, telling her co-workers in an email that she felt 'worthless' to the NBC-owned network. 'I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,' wrote Harris-Perry, who is African American. 'I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [NBC executives] or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.'"

Beyond the Beltway

Lenny Bernstein & Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: Despite two outbreaks of Legionnaire's disease in & around Flint, Michigan, "no government agency has tested the water supply for the legionella bacteria that cause the infection, which flourished as the beleaguered city's tap water was being poisoned by lead.... Corrosion encouraged the growth of legionella bacteria, which flourish in warm water that contains flakes of iron -- a nutrient for the bacteria -- from aging pipes."

James Queally of the Los Angeles Times: "Three people were stabbed, including one who was critically wounded, and 13 were arrested when a Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim erupted in violence Saturday, police said.... Six Klansmen and seven protesters were arrested following the fracas, Wyatt said.... Brian Levin, director of CSU San Bernardino's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said he was standing next to the man in the Grand Dragon shirt when a crowd of protesters carrying weapons swarmed the Klansmen. A brawl broke out and one of the Klansmen was knocked to the ground and kicked. Levin said he later saw the man's arm bleeding. Levin said he pushed the Klan leader away as the violence continued and a protester was stabbed. Levin said he asked the man, 'How do you feel that a Jewish guy just saved your life?' 'Thank you,' the man replied, according to Levin.... The Klan has a long and troubling history with the city. Klansmen were once the dominant political force in Anaheim, holding four of five City Council seats before a recall effort led to their ouster in 1924."

Way Beyond

Liz Sly & Zakaria Zakaria of the Washington Post: "The unthinkable happened in Syria on Saturday as an internationally mandated truce unexpectedly took hold across much of the country, raising hopes that the beginning of an end to the five-year-old crisis may be in sight. There were scattered skirmishes and bursts of artillery fire across some of the front lines, a car bomb killed two people in the province of Hama, and Syrian government warplanes dropped barrel bombs on a village in Idlib province, without causing casualties. But for the first time in as long as anyone can remember, the guns were almost completely silent, offering Syrians a welcome respite from the relentless bloodshed that has killed in excess of a quarter of a million people."

News Lede

New York Times: "Wesley A. Clark, a physicist who designed the first modern personal computer, died on Monday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 88.... Mr. Clark's computer designs built a bridge from the era of mainframe systems, which were inaccessible to the general public and were programmed with stacks of punch cards, to personal computers that respond interactively to a user. He achieved his breakthroughs working with a small group of scientists and engineers at the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1950s and early '60s."

The Commentariat -- Feb. 27, 2016

Presidential Race

** Michael Barbaro, et al., of the New York Times: "In a rollicking day of spectacle, spite and scorn, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey declared his allegiance to Donald J. Trump and war on Marco Rubio, describing the senator on Friday as desperate and unfit for the presidency. The endorsement interrupted a 48-hour assault from an emboldened Mr. Rubio, who is adopting many of the real estate mogul's crude tactics and colorful insults as he urgently tries to arrest Mr. Trump's march to the Republican nomination.... Aghast party elders expressed dismay over the alliance, calling it a political marriage of expedience. 'Good Lord almighty,' said Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, who is backing Gov. John Kasich. Now it's the walls and bridges team.'..." ...

... Sean Sullivan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Marco Rubio and Donald Trump emerged Friday as the principal antagonists in an all-out brawl for the future of the Republican Party, as establishment opposition to the front-runner's candidacy started to crumble with a high-profile endorsement by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie." ...

... Claude Brodesser-Akner of the New Jersey Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie is endorsing Donald Trump for president. Appearing next to Trump in Fort Worth, Texas, Christie said Trump would 'do what needs to be done to protect the American people. The one person Bill and Hillary Clinton do not want to see on that stage is Donald Trump,' said Christie." Thanks to MAG for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... He Said He Was a Whiney-Baby Before He Said He Was a "Strong Leader." Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Here are eight of Christie's biggest knocks, slams and putdowns" of Donald Trump." ...

... Jonathan Chait weighs in on the alliance between a deal-maker & an old-fashioned machine pol: "Trump and Christie are both figures whose self-interest aligned, and whose most important worldviews aligned as well. The deal-makers made a deal." ...

... Nate Silver: "It probably also won't be the last major endorsement for Trump. Even if most 'party elites' continue to resist Trump, a lot of Republican elected officials will be looking after their own best interests instead of the collective good of the party. Some will back Trump because he's popular in their states. Some will be looking for opportunities within a Trump administration. Some will agree with Trump's views on immigration or his critique of the political establishment. So there will be more of these endorsements, probably. But it isn't surprising that Christie is one of the first." ...

... Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg: "As a twice-elected governor of a blue state and former chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Christie could also serve as Trump's ambassador to establishment donors, lawmakers and behind-the-scenes operators across the nation.... Meanwhile, senior Republican operatives reacted with a mix of surprise and horror. 'Unforgivable,' said one. 'I'm just in shock,' said another. 'What a nightmare,' said a third." ...

... Nolan McCaskill: "Maine's Gov. Paul LePage "became the second governor to endorse Donald Trump on Friday.... 'I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular. So I think I should support him because we're one of the same cloth,' the governor said...." CW: High praise indeed. ...

... Lauren Fox of TPM: "Donald Trump has an inkling Mitt Romney will endorse his competitor Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination, but Trump says he does not want Romney's endorsement anyway. 'Number one, when you walk into a state you cannot walk like a penguin. He walked like a penguin. I said this is a problem,' Trump said. 'Somebody tell him take some steps. Romney turned out to be a disaster.'"

For those of us who judged the GOP Official Debate & Food Fight Night to be "Animal House"-worthy, if among slightly less mature participants, we were ever so wrong. These guys are class acts. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Marco Rubio relentlessly mocked Donald Trump on Friday, escalating the attacks he unleashed during Thursday night's debate and even suggesting the Republican frontrunner may have wet his pants on the stage." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mighty presidential. ...

...Scott Lemieux: "Let us dispel with the idea that the Rubibot cannot be programmed to imitate the frontrunner.' ...

... Steve Benen: "Had [Marco Rubio] actually won those primaries [in New Hampshire & South Carolina], the media's adulation might have been easier to understand, but ... Rubio made 10 appearances over two Sundays [on the morning talk shows] after embarrassing defeats. The reason for this special treatment is one of those things the political world tends not to talk about, though Slate's Jamelle Bouie recently acknowledged what usually goes unsaid: '[T]he media has a huge crush' on Marco Rubio. With this in mind, it came as something of a surprise to see Rubio on CBS this morning, complaining about an elaborate media conspiracy -- to help Donald Trump.... From Rubio's perspective, the same news organizations that have shown him levels of affection that border on creepy are actually conspiring in secret against him.... Such paranoia says something unsettling about the presidential hopeful's perspective." ...

     ... CW: What it probably really says is that Marco is strategically distancing himself from media adulation. GOP voters have learned to hate the "lamestream media, (TM Sarah Palin) for occasionally slipping unflattering facts into their coverage of the candidates. The guys pulling Marcobot's strings know enough to tell him to pretend the mainstream media is out to get him. ...

... ** Gail Collins: "This is perhaps the first instance of a presidential campaign running on dialogue more normally overheard in a junior high bathroom when the mean girls are doing their hair. The debate itself more closely resembled a Quentin Tarantino movie, in which a group of men are stuck together for what seems like eternity, and try to break the monotony by yelling a lot."

Brian Beutler: "To absolutely no effect, the Republican Party and its conservative movement allies have spent months and months -- and a fair amount of advertising money -- spreading the message that Trump is actually a liberal.... What Rubio and Cruz demonstrated [Thursday] night (and what Rubio continued demonstrating, somewhat haltingly, [Friday]) is that the secret to getting under Trump's skin isn't to call him a liberal but to mock him, or call him a crook, and to not stop (as Jeb Bush did so frequently) after a single pop to the nose. The downside of this revelation, though, is that it leaves open the question of how a crooked, risible demagogue managed to commandeer the Republican Party, almost without trying." ...

Ken Vogel of Politico: "A handful of Republican big-money groups on Friday launched hard-hitting ad campaigns targeting Donald Trump that echoed Marco Rubio's Thursday night debate smack-down of the GOP presidential front-runner. The group behind what's expected to be the most expensive and sustained assault ― a super PAC dedicated to Rubio called Conservative Solutions PAC ― has raised about $20 million in the past week alone, sources tell Politico. They say the cash will power a full-frontal assault on Trump in the delegate-rich states that vote in March, starting with Tuesday's 14 Super Tuesday contests."

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) in the Huffington Post: "If you watched the Republican debate on Thursday, you probably noticed the candidates agreeing that insurance companies should be allowed to sell policies across state lines.... This is often presented as the Republicans' Big Idea on health care -- in fact, as with Trump, it's often the only idea they can come up with. But ... it's absolute nonsense. For starters..., nothing in federal law prohibits states from allowing out-of-state insurance companies to sell policies to their citizens. In fact, six states have already tried it. And guess what? It doesn't work.... Eighteen [states] looked into allowing out-of-state insurance sales before Obamacare became law, and 13 have considered it since. But very few have actually decided to do so. And the ones that have report unanimously that it has accomplished nothing.... Smaller insurance companies based in a single state have found again and again that ... it simply isn't worth the hassle." Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the link. ...

... CW BTW: Hey, single-payer insurance would eliminate of this problem, wouldn't it?

Amendment I, U.S. Constitution. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances....

... Hadas Gold of Politico: "Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an easier time suing news organizations. 'One of the things I'm going to do if I win..., I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected,' Trump said." ...

... Naomi Jagoda of the Hill: Donald Trump "said during Thursday's debate that he can't release his tax returns because he is the subject of an audit. At a press conference on Friday, he reiterated that he would not make his returns publicly available until the audit is complete.... Trump is not prohibited from releasing his tax returns because he is being audited, according to the Internal Revenue Service. 'Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information,' the IRS said in a statement." ...

... Alexander Burns & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "With his enormous online platform, Mr. Trump has badgered and humiliated those who have dared to cross him during the presidential race. He has latched onto their vulnerabilities, mocking their physical characteristics, personality quirks and, sometimes, their professional setbacks. He has made statements ... that have later been exposed as false or deceptive -- only after they have ricocheted across the Internet. Many recipients of Mr. Trump's hectoring are fellow politicians, with paid staff members to help them defend themselves. But for others, the experience of being targeted by Mr. Trump is nightmarish and a form of public degradation that they believe is intended to scare off adversaries by making an example of them.... Others say Mr. Trump's actions go beyond the outlandish and cross into more sinister territory. Parry Aftab, a lawyer who leads the Internet safety group WiredSafety, said Mr. Trump's behavior was a textbook example of cyberbullying." ...

... Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "A pair of homophobic Trump supporters gave CNN's Carol Costello more than she bargained for when they cited bizarre online rumors to suggest Marco Rubio had engaged in gay sex. Lynette 'Diamond' Hardaway and Rochelle 'Silk' Richardson -- known as the 'Stump for Trump Girls' -- have gained fame for their series of online videos supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump...." ...

... "Il Trumpo." Annalisa Merelli, an Italian, in Quartz, compares Donald Trump to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, & compares the media coverage of the two. "There's nothing funny about it." CW: I've thought the same thing for some time, but Merelli takes a deep dive into how Berlusconi succeeded in, well, trumping the Italian media, & how Trump is doing the same thing here. Via Paul Waldman.

Scott Bland of Politico: "Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination."

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post: "If Donald Trump speaks for disenfranchised whites, Hillary Clinton speaks mostly to blacks who feel the same.... Leading up to the South Carolina primary, Clinton kept a breathlessly demanding schedule in the state, shuttling between cocktail parties and black churches, but spending most of her time trying to remind African Americans that she's always been there for them. (Unspoken: Even though they ditched her for Barack Obama.)... Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, the least empathic human to gaze across the Rio Grande, Donald Trump, continued preaching his own liturgy, lately distilled to a few repeat-after-me slogans.... Those who play to [our] divisions while knowing better -- mining anger and resentment instead of appealing to our better angels -- have made a Faustian bargain for which there should be no forgiveness. Nor, needless to say, votes."

Anne Gearan & John Wagner of the Washington Post: "The Democratic presidential contest moves to South Carolina on Saturday, a primary that serves as two starkly different milestones for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Clinton is looking to her expected victory here to prove her strong support among African American voters -- and to cement her status as the presumptive front-runner heading toward Super Tuesday three days later, when six of 11 Democratic contests will take place in Southern states with large populations of black voters. Sanders spent much of the past week campaigning in other states -- and attacking Clinton on an array of issues with new gusto. He is looking to contests that come after Tuesday, where he has more chance of winning -- and a chance, he says, to hang onto the momentum and enthusiasm that his strong liberal message has generated in this unusual election year."

Steven Myers of the New York Times: "Even admirers of Mrs. Clinton's record as secretary of state acknowledge that the use of the [private e-mail] server had consequences for her select circle of confidants.... The emails -- as well as Mrs. Clinton's initial decision to set up the server -- are now the focus of investigations by the F.B.I., the inspector generals of the State Department and the intelligence agencies and by the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.... The question facing investigators ... is whether enough evidence exists to warrant criminal charges for improperly handling or in any way exposing highly classified secrets to potential disclosure."

... German Lopez of Vox has a helpful post on how Sanders & Clinton have differed on "tough-on-crime" legislation. Sanders has voted for a few "tough-on-crime" bills because they contained other provisions he liked, & he has voted against other "tough-on-crime" legislation. "Historically, Clinton has been much tougher and more punitive on crime."

Robert Reich: "I endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. He's leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization -- a 'political revolution,' as he puts it -- is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy." ...

     ... CW: Reich was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor & very briefly dated Hillary Rodham when they were undergrads. ...

... Charles Pierce: "I went over to City Hall and voted for Bernie Sanders Friday morning.... I believe that the movement exemplified by the Sanders campaign ... is an important one, not least because it is a hedge against forgetting what happened to the country in 2008 -- and, more important, what might have happened in 2008 and 2009 had the country not had the good sense to elect this president.... I think [Clinton] is going to be the nominee -- and the more states Sanders wins, and the more votes he piles up, and the more delegates come to Philadelphia pledged to support him, then the more tightly she can be fastened to the positions she adopted to beat him." ...

... CW: I too will be voting for Bernie for the reasons Pierce cites & for another one that one is apt to hear from Republican voters: "he represents my values."

Other News & Commentary

Karen DeYoung & Hugh Naylor of the Washington Post: "Guns fell silent for the first time in years in parts of civil-war-racked Syria early Saturday morning, as a cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia went into effect at midnight, Damascus time." ...

... Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: "Against the backdrop of relentless airstrikes on rebel-held positions inside Syria, the United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously endorsed a deal negotiated between the United States and Russia for a 'cessation of hostilities.'"

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Joshua Partlow & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "In recent years, a tide of used batteries has swept into northern Mexico as metal recyclers seek to profit from the country's relatively lax controls on lead exposure in the workplace and the environment.... While U.S. politicians express outrage over elevated lead levels in drinking water in Flint, Mich., they have done little to stem the flow of car batteries -- each containing about 20 pounds of lead -- south of the border. Officials estimate that the number of old batteries shipped to Mexico has grown by more than 400 percent in the past decade, spurred in part by tougher U.S. laws.... As many as one in five lead-acid batteries from American vehicles -- from suburban minivans to fleet buses and trucks operated by government agencies -- end up nowadays in Mexican recycling plants, to be broken down by workers under conditions that range from adequate to abysmal...."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. John Koblin of the New York Times: "In an unusually public flare-up, [Melissa Harris-Perry,] one of MSNBC's television personalities clashed with the network on Friday in a dispute about airtime and editorial freedom and said she was refusing to host the show that bears her name this weekend."

Beyond the Beltway

Officially Favorite Killing Machines. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "The Barrett .50 caliber rifle is a powerful gun. Widely used in the military, its rounds can 'penetrate light armor, down helicopters, destroy commercial aircraft, and blast through rail cars,' according to a report from the Violence Policy Center, a gun safety group. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence describes .50 caliber rifles like the Barrett as 'among the most destructive weapons legally available to civilians in the United States.' And as of Wednesday, the Barrett .50 caliber is now the official state rifle of Tennessee.... Tennessee is the seventh state to declare an official state firearm of some sort.... There weren't any state firearms until 2011...."

The Commentariat -- Feb. 26, 2016

Afternoon Update:

For those of us who judged last night's food fight to be, well, an "Animal House"-worthy food fight, if among slightly less mature participants, we were ever so wrong. These guys are class acts. Eliza Collins of Politico: "Marco Rubio relentlessly mocked Donald Trump on Friday, escalating the attacks he unleashed during Thursday night's debate and even suggesting the Republican frontrunner may have wet his pants on the stage." ...

<'>... Mighty presidential. P.S. If, BTW, you forgot how a real president speaks, check out the video below, where President Obama addresses the Syrian civil war, ISIS & international implications.

Claude Brodesser-Akner of the New Jersey Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie is endorsing Donald Trump for president. Appearing next to Trump in Fort Worth, Texas, Christie said Trump would 'do what needs to be done to protect the American people. The one person Bill and Hillary Clinton do not want to see on that stage is Donald Trump,' said Christie." Thanks to MAG for the lead. CW: I have two comments: (1) The main reason Christie endorsed Trump was for the principled reason that he (a) got a out of New Jersey on (b) Donald's goldplated private jet; (2) what MAG said.

*****

John Parkinson of ABC News: "President Obama ordered his national security team to 'continue accelerating' the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State 'on all fronts.'Obama convened a meeting with his National Security team today at the State Department as diplomats grapple over the details of a cessation of hostilities in Syria":

Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Obama will convene a long-anticipated meeting at the White House next Tuesday with top Republican senators to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) will both attend, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday. The spokesman said the meeting was arranged 'after a number of conversations, some more awkward than others.'" ...

... Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) announced Thursday he was withdrawing his name from consideration as a possible Supreme Court nominee, just one day after it became public the White House was weighing whether to select him." ...

... Eric Levitz & Claire Landsbaum of New York: "... appointing Sandoval might have been a cynical maneuver aimed at clarifying just how extreme the Republican Party's intransigence truly is. But it's unclear if Senate Democrats would have been willing to hold their tongues long enough for Obama to carry out his troll. On several upcoming Supreme Court cases, a Sandoval nomination would actually have been worse for progressive priorities than if Scalia's seat simply remained vacant."

Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Among the court's members, [Justice Scalia] was the most frequent traveler, to spots around the globe, on trips paid for by private sponsors. When Justice Scalia died two weeks ago, he was staying, again for free, at a West Texas hunting lodge owned by a businessman whose company had recently had a matter before the Supreme Court.... Many of the justices are frequent expenses-paid travelers, a practice that some court scholars say ... could potentially create the appearance of a conflict of interest, particularly when the organizations are known for their conservative or liberal views.... Legislation is pending in the House and the Senate that would require the Supreme Court to create a formal ethics system, beyond the Ethics in Government Act, similar to the one that governs actions of all other federal judges. That system is known as the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Chief Justice Roberts has argued that the Supreme Court, even though it generally abides by this judicial ethics code, is not obligated to do so." ...

... Paul Krugman blogpost title: "Antonin Scalia really was a character out of a Dan Brown novel." ...

... Charles Pierce: Scalia "passed away before the House of Representatives could get busy making it easy for him and the rest of these be-robed predators to honor God and his creatures by tying them to the hood of the family Olds. The House is getting ready to pass a truly noxious bit of legislation that seems to be aimed at destroying the Endangered Species Act by killing off anything that act might protect namely, the Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2015.... This law is a bulging hope chest for the sadistic followers of St. Hubert...." ...

... Humane Society: "There's not one regular deer or duck hunter who gets anything out of this bill. Any lawmaker who claims he's for sportsmen by supporting this bill is guilty of grandstanding.... This is the most destructive anti-wildlife proposal ever to come to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.... If Congress exhibits the worst of judgment and caves in to the trophy-hunting lobby by passing this scam of a bill, we'll call upon President Obama to give it a clean kill shot."

Katie Benner & Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "Apple on Thursday filed its formal opposition to the federal court order requiring it to help law enforcement officials break into an iPhone, setting the stage for more legal wrangling in a case that has pitted the world's most valuable company against the United States government." ...

... Danny Yadron, et al., of the Guardian: "Apple's lawyers believe forcing America's largest company to help the government crack open one of its iPhones would violate the US constitution and be a misinterpretation of a 227-year-old law." ...

... Spencer Ackerman & Sam Thielman of the Guardian: "The director of the FBI has conceded that future judges will look to his battle with Apple as a precedent for law enforcement access to locked or encrypted mobile devices, the first time the government has conceded that the implications of the case stretch beyond an investigation into the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The ultimate outcome of the Apple-FBI showdown is likely to 'guide how other courts handle similar requests',James Comey told a congressional intelligence panel on Thursday, a softening of his flat insistence on Sunday that the FBI was not attempting to 'set a precedent'."

Presidential Race

This Week's JournoMeme: "Is it too late for Marco to save the Republican party?"

It's the Media's Fault. Donald Trump has portrayed himself now consistently as fighting for the working people. And he has a record of sticking it to working people for 35 years. If any other candidate in this race had his record, there would be nonstop reporting on it. Unfortunately he's being pumped up because many in the media with a bias know that he'll be easy to beat in a general election. So we're gonna put a stop to it now. There's no way we're going to allow a con artist to take over the conservative movement. -- Marco Rubio, this morning

... if anything, Rubio and Cruz themselves bear a fair amount of blame for the failure to stop Trump. As has been widely documented, both refrained from seriously going after Trump for months, apparently calculating either that engaging Trump was too risky or that it would compromise any efforts to scoop up Trump's supporters after he faded. -- Greg Sargent

Michael Barbaro & Matt Flegenheimer of the New York Times on last night's GOP "debate": "In a series of acid exchanges, a newly pugnacious Mr. Rubio, long mocked for a robotic and restrained style, interrupted Mr. Trump, quizzed him, impersonated him, shouted over him and left him looking unsettled. It was an unfamiliar reversal of roles for the front-runner, who found himself so frequently the target of assaults from Mr. Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz that he complained they must have been a ploy for better television ratings.... The two-hour rumpus frequently devolved into unmediated bouts of shouting, name-calling and pleas to the moderators for chances to respond to the latest insult." ...

... Karen Tumulty & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Sparring between the two [-- Rubio & Trump --] dominated the debate, turning the other three candidates on the stage into bystanders for much of the evening." ...

... Ben Jacobs & Tom Dart of the Guardian: "It was the first time rival candidates have used a debate stage to go after the foundation of Trump's campaign -- his experience as a businessman, his assertion that he is the only candidate who can be relied upon to be a stalwart opponent of illegal immigration, and his fundamental belief in 'winning'.... The concerted attacks and Trump's counterpunching left John Kasich and Ben Carson as relative bystanders. At one point, Carson pleaded: 'Can somebody attack me?'"

... Driftglass's liveblog/Tweetathon covers the details, enhanced by poetic license. "Rubio: 'Why won't you hire my mommy, Donald?'" CW: As usual, the calibre of the debaters makes it hard to tell where they leave off & satire begins. ...

... Here's the Washington Post's "annotated transcript." ...

... Will Rahn & Olivia Nuzzi of the Daily Beast: Rubio "delivered what was easily his best debate performance yet Thursday night, hammering frontrunner Donald Trump repeatedly on his character, his business record, and his claims to being a conservative. It was the performance he needed. The question now is whether it will matter at all." ...

... Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "... now that Rubio has gone on the attack, the question is whether he can survive the inevitable counterattack. Trump has hitherto largely ignored Rubio, but if the past is any guide, Rubio will now be in Trump's crosshairs. If Rubio does turn the odds around and win, Thursday night will be seen as the turning point. The problem is that Trump could continue to steamroll through the primaries, which will prove only that Rubio waited too long to go after him." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz followed nearly identical plans in Thursday night's Republican presidential debate. They cast themselves as the true conservatives in the debate and attacked Donald Trump as an ideological heretic. They almost completely abstained on attacks against each other, recognizing that Trump is on the verge of breaking away from the pack." ...

... Jamelle Bouie: Rubio, & especially Cruz, don't understand the basis for Trump's appeal. If Rubio has any chance of taking Trump down, it's to keep up the attack on Trump's exploitation, via "Trump University," of the ordinary Americans he claims he'll protect. ...

... Jessica Roy of New York: "Unlike most of his fellow Republicans, Donald Trump isn't afraid to acknowledge that Planned Parenthood provides important health services for millions of women across America. But exactly like his fellow Republicans, he'd also defund it." ...

... The Art of the Israel-Palestine Deal. Michelle Goldberg of Slate explains to Marco Rubio that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a real estate deal, somthing Donald Trump seems to intuitively get. ...

... The Guardian's liveblog of the GOP presidential debate is here. The New York Times is liveblogging here. ...

... CW: I can't stand to watch those blowhards, but I'm enjoying the liveblogs. The reporters make the "debate" sound like a schoolyard fight: "Am not." "Are, too." Maggie Haberman of the Times: "... while both Cruz and Rubio are shaving some points off Trump, we're at a point in the campaign where those two are basically saying to him, 'How dare you say you wouldn't let people die in the streets?'"

Today's must-read is Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone essay on "how America made Donald Trump unstoppable.... Trump's basic argument is the same one every successful authoritarian movement in recent Western history has made: that the regular guy has been screwed by a conspiracy of incestuous elites. The Bushes are half that conspiratorial picture, fronts for a Republican Party establishment and whose sum total of accomplishments, dating back nearly 30 years, are two failed presidencies, the sweeping loss of manufacturing jobs, and a pair of pitiable Middle Eastern military adventures -- the second one achieving nothing but dead American kids and Junior's re-election." CW: Please take the time to appreciate the prose as well as the point. ...

... Paul Krugman writes everything you need to know about the delusions & practices of the GOP establishment. ...

... CW: What Krugman doesn't cover is racism, etc., in the Democratic party leadership. Before you get all smug about how Democratic leaders would never say & do the kinds of things Nixon, Reagan & Trump did, let me remind you that, yes, they do. Bill Clinton became president because he embraces racist tropes. Then he acted on them. When his wife said at a campaign rally in 1996 that it was necessary to "bring to heel ... superpredators," she was pulling a Nixon/Reagan. Mind you, her remarks, & Bill's remarks & actions re: "criminal justice reform" & "welfare reform," are exactly the same as Trump's. The Clintons are progressives of convenience -- they need the black/female/gay vote to win the White House. This is fundamentally how they differ from Bernie Sanders, who was willing to be arrested -- and was -- in support of racial equality. Young Bernie was not thinking in terms of tactical self-interest when he marched against Jim Crow; everything the Clintons do & say in public is self-interested. This is what the kids mean by "authenticity"; they may not be able to adequately articulate it, but in their hearts they get it. As for Trump, he would be a Democratic demagogue if Republicans had not been more successful than Democrats in exploiting the dark urges of the white mob. When I vote for Hillary Clinton in November, I know I'll be voting for a racist homophobe, just as I knew it when I voted twice for Bill Clinton on those November days long past. In hopes for a better tomorrow, I vote for the lesser of two evils today. ...

... On Hillary Clinton's 1996 remarks, Robert Mackey & Zaid Jilani, writing in the Intercept, provide helpful context. Now, as Hillary said this week when confronted about her past remarks on black youths, let's get "back to the [real] issues." ...

... Tim Egan chalks up Trump's impulsive, erratic behavior to chronic sleep deprivation. Sounds silly, but he might be right. ...

... While his former opponents were debating each other, once-presidential candidate Lindsey Graham was speaking at the Washington Press Club:

Culture Wars, Ctd. digby: No, those Republican "populists" who like the "anti-PC" Donald Trump are not going to be voting Democratic when somebody tells them Democratic economic policies are much better for them than are Republican policies. "... what the Trump phenomenon represents [is] a primal scream of loss. Yes, it's economic. The whole middle class in America feels the squeeze and the poor are as screwed as they ever were. But for these people, the Trump people, it's cultural more than anything else. They feel they have lost their social status And even if they become more economically secure, the way think they were back in the 1950s, they will never get that back. On some level they know this. And that's what they're angry about." ...

... ** Oh yeah? Here's one Republican -- neocon Robert Kagan -- who is ready to switch sides, as he says in this WashPo op-ed: "A plague has descended on the [Republican] party in the form of the most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of U.S. politics.... He is ... the party's creation, its Frankenstein monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker.... Then there was the Obama hatred, a racially tinged derangement syndrome that made any charge plausible and any opposition justified.... For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." CW: A mostly fun read. ...

     ... Jonathan Chait comments on Kagan's op-ed: "The neoconservatives were originally moderate liberal critics of the Democratic Party, who objected to its leftward turn in the 1960s and 1970s and began their exodus from the broader Democratic Party around the McGovern campaign. Most of them are deeply enmeshed in the conservative movement now and have views about the role of government indistinguishable from those of other conservatives. But, eventually, some faction will break loose from the GOP and form the basis for a sane party that is capable of governing. Who knows? Maybe that faction will be the one that moved into the party a half-century ago." ...

... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: "If Trump succeeds in capturing the Republican nomination, the debate that is now playing out on the margins of the right will be front and center for every elected Republican. They may soon have to choose: Would they rather have as President an enemy they can oppose[, i.e., Clinton], or one for whom they are -- in more ways than one -- responsible?" ...

... Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "David Duke, a white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, is urging the listeners of his radio program to volunteer and vote for Donald Trump. 'Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage,' Duke said on the David Duke Radio Program Wednesday, referring to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio." CW: It would appear from that remark that Duke is such an ignorant asshole he doesn't realize Cruz & Rubio are as white as he is. Maybe whiter. I don't know anything about Duke's family heritage, but if he comes from a long line of Southerners, there's a high probability that Duke isn't as white as the driven snow. ...

... "Don't Vote for a Cuban." Martin Longman, in the Washington Monthly, on "the ugliest campaign ever." But don't worry; Reince Preibus is in control. ...

... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "While the Mexican government has said little about Mr. Trump's plan to beef up border security, two of the country's former presidents have a message for Mr. Trump: Mexico won't pay. 'I'm not going to pay,' Vicente Fox said, using a profanity to comment about the wall Thursday in an interview with Fusion.... Mr. Fox's successor, Felipe Calderón, expressed similar concerns about the wall this month. 'Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall!' Mr. Calderón told CNBC." ...

     ... CW: What Fox actually said was "I am not going to pay for this fucking wall." (He gave the interview in Spanish, but switched to English for that remark, which comes at the end of the linked clip.) ...

... Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Multiple Republican campaign sources and operatives have confided that none of the remaining candidates for president have completed a major anti-Trump opposition research effort. For those hoping to blunt Trump's momentum, the late start on opposition research is no small problem.... The most common [explanation] is that few campaigns actually thought Trump would last long, making the need to dig into his past rather moot.... It is treated as a truism among Republicans that a vast reservoir of damaging opposition research remains untouched." Thanks to MAG for the link. ...

... Kevin Drum: "With all the money sloshing around the primary, nobody could manage to find a few million bucks to put together a professional ratfucking operation? Republicans really are losing their mojo." ...

... Here's some dirt, which the Guardian may have initially obtained from some political oppo research team:

>... Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "... Donald Trump is being confronted with resurfaced allegations that he sexually assaulted and tried to rape a woman in the early 1990s. The woman alleged in a federal lawsuit in 1997 that Trump violated her 'physical and mental integrity' when he touched her intimately without consent after her boyfriend went into business with him.... The woman ... dropped the $125m lawsuit in Manhattan the following month. It coincided with a separate legal dispute between Trump and the woman's then-boyfriend over an alleged breach of contract relating to their beauty pageant business venture. Trump claimed at the time that the lawsuit alleging assault was aimed at pressuring him to settle the other dispute, which reportedly he did for a six-figure sum later that year.... Yet when asked by the Guardian whether she stood by the allegations detailed in the lawsuit, the woman said in a text message: 'Yes.'... Potentially confusing matters further, the woman appears to now be a supporter of Trump's campaign for the White House." ...

... Janell Ross of the Washington Post: "Melania Trump ... told MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' that she has no problem whatsoever with her husband's public comments about Mexican and Muslim immigrants.... Her reason: She followed the [immigration] law and thinks others should have to do the same.... But what Melania Trump didn't say ... is this: Models like her don't exactly wait in the same much-talked-about immigration line as the average Mexican immigrant -- or, for that matter, immigrant workers who would like to come to the United States from anywhere in the world.... The U.S. government officially considers them workers with special skills for whom a certain number of visas ... are set aside each year."

Philip Bump of the Washington Post: A new Quinnipiac University poll of Florida Republicans, conducted after Jeb! dropped out of the race, shows Trump getting 44% of the vote & Rubio 28%. "If you are Rubio, there is no way of looking at this besides that it is an unmitigated disaster Trump leads easily with almost every demographic in the poll." ...

... Lee Drutman of Vox: "Rubio's chances were always poor. Ranked choice voting could have told us this sooner.... If we are really down to just Rubio and Cruz as the only viable alternatives against Trump, it looks like Rubio dropping out would help Cruz far more than Cruz dropping out would help Rubio.... Rubio's support is narrower than most thought, Cruz's support is wider.... The so-called 'establishment wing' of the Republican Party may be in even weaker shape and far fuzzier than most pundits tend to think."

Less-Great Expectations. Tal Kopan of CNN: "A super PAC supporting Ben Carson on Thursday sent out a fundraising email to supporters saying the candidate needs to be on the Republican ticket -- even as the vice presidential nominee -- in order to capture the minority vote. The email, signed by 2016 Committee National Chairman John Philip Sousa IV, said that the race is still 'in flux' but if Carson isn't on the ticket, 'The Democrats will win the White House and the America we love will disappear.... The demographics of America have changed dramatically, and that is why Ben Carson must stay in this race. He may not win the GOP nomination, but he still holds the winning hand in this political poker game. If Ben Carson is on the ticket, either as president or as vice president, we can win the White House by winning upwards of 25% of the black vote and 35% of the Hispanic vote.'" ...

     ... CW: See digby above for what "the America we love" looks like. According to Sousa IV, Carson's best-selling quality is his race. What is a black man to do when even his own backers are racists? Maybe a Sousa I march will cheer him up. He can parade around his rec room passing by all those awards he got before he went wingnutty:

CW: What I said. Nick Gass of Politico: "Rick Perry did not exactly close the door on the possibility of another go at the presidency in 2016 during a contested convention in an interview with CNN." My thought was that Perry could just right back into the fray, but Gov. Oops! is looking for an opening in a brokered convention.

Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are preparing to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in an effort to help her campaign secure critical Hispanic votes in next week's Super Tuesday primaries." ...

... New York Times Editors: "'Everybody does it,' is an excuse expected from a mischievous child, not a presidential candidate. But that is Hillary Clinton's latest defense for making closed-door, richly paid speeches to big banks, which many middle-class Americans still blame for their economic pain, and then refusing to release the transcripts.... Mrs. Clinton further complained, 'Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?' The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries. Voters have every right to know what Mrs. Clinton told these groups.... By stonewalling on these transcripts Mrs. Clinton plays into the hands of those who say she's not trustworthy and makes her own rules."

... Eugene Scott of CNN: "A pair of Black Lives Matter activists interrupted Hillary Clinton Wednesday night at a private fundraiser, confronting the Democratic presidential candidate with past statements she made about youth in gangs. 'We want you to apologize for mass incarceration,' Ashley Williams said at the Charleston, South Carolina, event. 'I'm not a "super predator," Hillary Clinton.' Williams was referring to statements Clinton made in New Hampshire during her husband's 1996 presidential re-election campaign, defending then-President Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill. The bill advocated for tougher policing of gang members." ...

... Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "'Looking back, I shouldn't have used those words, and I wouldn't use them today,' Hillary Clinton told me in a statement when I asked her what she would have said to Ashley Williams, the activist who interrupted Clinton at a Charleston, S.C., fundraiser Wednesday night."

Beyond the Beltway

Chad Livengood of the Detroit News: "Two top advisers to Gov. Rick Snyder urged switching Flint back to Detroit's water system in October 2014 after General Motors Co. said the city's heavily chlorinated river water was rusting engine parts, according to governor's office emails examined by The Detroit News. Valerie Brader, then Snyder's environmental policy adviser, requested that the governor's office ask Flint's emergency manager to return to Detroit's system on Oct. 14, 2014, three weeks before Snyder's re-election. Mike Gadola, then the governor's chief legal counsel, agreed Flint should be switched back to Detroit water nearly a year before state officials relented to public pressure and independent research showing elevated levels of lead in the water and bloodstreams of Flint residents.... His message that was received by Snyder's Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore, Deputy Chief of Staff Beth Clement and then-Communications Director Jarrod Agen and Brader." Gadola grew up in Flint & his mother lives there. ...

... CW: Is it possible that Muchmore, Clement & Agen, all of whom had frequent, direct access to the governor, never mentioned the Flint water crisis to Snyder? Were they trying to ensure that the governor retained "plausible deniability"? Or implausible? If Snyder really surrounded himself with aides who kept him in the dark on critical issues, then I'm not so sure he's such a savvy businessman, much less a competent politician. I think it much more likely that they -- and others -- told Snyder about the contaminated water & he waved it off because switching Flint back to Detroit water would have undermined his bean-counting program. ...

... BTW, it wasn't as if Gov. Snyder couldn't have read about the many contaminants in Flint's water, say, back in September 2014, even without input from his staff.

"You Mean Veterans Can't Vote?" Charles Pierce: "A 90-Year-Old Iwo Jima Veteran Couldn't Vote in Scott Walker's Wisconsin.... Veterans. Grandparents. Honor students. Cops. Nurses.... These examples could provide an endless stream of campaign commercials that would have the advantage of actually being true. However, this would require competent, forward-thinking leadership at the Democratic National Committee which is, at the moment, being run by someone whose primary concentration apparently is ensuring herself good seats at the 2017 inauguration."

Sarah Kaplan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Three people were killed and another 14 injured after a gunman opened fire in [Hesston,] a small city in Kansas, indiscriminately shooting people along a highway and at his workplace, a lawn mower factory, before he was fatally shot by authorities, police said."

Susan Svrluga of the Washington Post: "Melissa Click, a professor who gained national notoriety during the protests at the University of Missouri, has been fired."

Way Beyond

Somini Sengupta of the New York Times: "The United States and China have agreed to stiffen international financial sanctions against North Korea in a major shift for Beijing, which has long been unwilling to further isolate its intransigent ally. Whether the development, confirmed Thursday by diplomats at the United Nations Security Council, means that China will take steps to prevent North Korean ships from bringing coal and iron ore to Chinese ports remains unclear. The United States had pushed for a partial ban on permitting North Korean ships to enter ports around the world."

Anne Barnard of the New York Times: "... many Syrian medical workers in insurgent-held areas and human rights groups believe medical facilities are not just being hit by stray bombs or indiscriminate attacks, but have long been deliberately targeted by the Syrian government and its Russian allies. It is a measure of the deep mistrust that gravely challenges prospects for a truce set to begin Saturday.