;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 18, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "Congress on Friday morning overwhelmingly gave final approval to a sweeping, year-end fiscal package that includes a $1.15 trillion spending measure as well as $620 billion in tax breaks for businesses and low-income workers. The bill now goes to the White House, where President Obama has said he will sign it." ...
... Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio missed Friday's Senate vote approving a massive $1.8 trillion end-of-the-year spending bill and tax package -- a day after he suggested that he could try to slow the legislation down. The Florida Republican, who is running for president, was the only 2016 contender to miss the vote, which is the Senate's final vote of the year. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), three other presidential candidates, all voted against the legislation. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a fourth GOP presidential candidate from the Senate, backed the bill.... [Rubio] has missed more than half of the Senate's votes since October."
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "President Obama commuted the sentences of 95 drug offenders Friday, more than double the number of commutations he granted earlier this year in July, in an effort to reduce prison crowding and give relief to drug offenders who were harshly sentenced in the nation's war on drugs."
Edda Lederer & Cara Anna of the AP: "U.N. Security Council members have reached agreement on a resolution they plan to adopt on Friday endorsing the way forward on a possible end to Syria's civil war, Russia's deputy foreign minister said."
Gabriel Debenedetti of Politico: "Bernie Sanders' campaign on Friday threatened to sue the Democratic Party for suspending its access to the national voter database, saying the move threatens to undermine the Vermont senator's presidential run. Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, held a press conference on Friday in which he described how the Democratic National Committee was unfairly choking off the 'lifeblood' of the campaign." ...
... Maggie Haberman & Nick Corasantini of the New York Times: "A fight between the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party’s leadership went public on Friday, on the eve of the year's final primary debate, as the Sanders camp accused the party of actively trying to help Hillary Clinton."
... Maryalice Parks, et al., of ABC News: "Now, it has come to light that the Sanders staffer may have downloaded and exported the Clinton campaign's data, and it may have been more than one Sanders staffer that accessed the information, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said today. Sanders campaign officials defended themselves during a news conference today, saying they are running a 'clean' campaign and that they in fact 'alerted' the DNC two months ago that campaign data was available to others." ...
... Greg Sargent: "... based on what we know at this point about what happened, preventing the Sanders camp from accessing voter data for any meaningful length of time is not tenable.... One point that can be made right now is that the DNC needs to restore Sanders' access to the data as quickly as possible."
Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times' public editor: "A Times article Sunday reported that the U.S. government had missed something that was right out there in the open: the jihadist social-media posts by one of the San Bernardino killers.... It was certainly damning -- and it was wrong.... The executive editor, Dean Baquet ... said that some new procedures need to be put in place, especially for dealing with anonymous sources, and he said he would begin working on that immediately.... He said [the reporters'] sources apparently did not know the difference between public and private messages on social-media platforms.... The Times need to fix its overuse of unnamed government sources. And it needs to slow down the reporting and editing process.... If this isn't a red alert, I don't know what will be." (Emphasis added.) ...
... CW: Excellent. The Times is relying on anonymous sources so ignorant don't know the difference to a private e-mail & a public Facebook post. And nobody at the Times thought even to ask for the URLs of the alleged public postings to see for themselves that they actually existed (which they didn't). This is incredible. I've been a source for reporters at less prestigious newspapers than the Times, & the reporters always check out my tips or allegations. I would be horrified if they didn't. ...
... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "The New York Times has attached a three-paragraph editor's note to a front-page Sunday story on the abilities of the U.S. government to surveil the online communications of the San Bernardino, Calif., assailants, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik.... There's a problem here.... The New York Times is attempting to preserve the structure and feel of a story about federal government misfeasance in a world where there appears to be little or no misfeasance. Consider the new-look lede: It appears to fault immigration officials for failing to uncover Malik's online views on jihad. Well of course they failed in that pursuit: Those views were expressed in private -- and quite possibly encrypted -- communications. There should be no expectation that they would be uncovered by immigration officials.... This is an attempt to retrofit a factually poisoned article with replacement parts that don't fit."
Christian Davenport of the Washington Post tells the story of Blake Percival, the whistleblower who exposed USIS for doing background checks on only a portion of the federal government hirees the company had contracted to vet. "USIS, the government contractor that had done the background checks on Edward Snowden and Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis, filed for bankruptcy and went out of business." After four-and-a-half years, Percival just received a $6 million award for reporting USIS, which had fired him for trying to end their practice of dumping cases the company was hired to investigate. "After the attorneys' cut, Percival's share before taxes would be $3.3 million, he said."
Sarah Karlin of Politico: "Martin Shkreli, who became a lightning rod for criticism about drug price gouging, resigned as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company announced this afternoon, a day after he was charged in a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme unrelated to the company."
Here's a trailer for "The Big Short." See Krugman's column, linked below:
*****
Julie Pace of the AP: "The White House is promising President Barack Obama will deliver a 'non-traditional' State of the Union address next month, eschewing the standard litany of policy proposals for a broader discussion on the challenges facing the country." ...
... Peter Baker & Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "President Obama told a group of news columnists this week that he now realizes he was slow to respond to public fears after terrorist attacks in Paris and California, acknowledging that his low-key approach led Americans to worry that he was not doing enough to keep the country safe. But he said his refusal to send large numbers of ground forces back to the Middle East was rooted in the grim assumption that the casualties and costs would rival the worst of the Iraq war. A major recommitment of troops could result every month in the deaths of 100 Americans and $10 billion spent, the president said. Mr. Obama said that if he did send troops to Syria, as some Republicans have urged, he feared a slippery slope that would eventually require similar deployments to other terrorist strongholds like Libya and Yemen, effectively putting him in charge of governing much of the region. He told the columnists that he envisioned sending significant ground forces to the Middle East only in the case of a catastrophic terrorist attack that disrupted the normal functioning of the United States." ...
... AP: "President Barack Obama said Thursday that U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials have received no specific, credible information suggesting a potential terrorist attack against the United States. He said Americans must be vigilant this holiday season":
Richard Serrano & Richard Winton of the Los Angeles Times: "Enrique Marquez, the friend of terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, was arrested Thursday and charged with conspiring to give material support to a terrorist plot, according to federal charges that allege the two men planned to attack Riverside Community College and a busy freeway during rush hour.... The three-count criminal complaint against Marquez represents a major development in the widening investigation of the third foreign terror attack in the U.S. this year, and the deadliest since 2001." ...
... NEW. Niraj Chokshi & Jia Lynn Yang of the Washington Post: "Marquez was cooperating with law enforcement officials in their investigation, and a newly released criminal complaint appears to show that he has turned into an open book. [The article includes] some of the most surprising and interesting details from the complaint. (You can read the entire thing here.)"
In the Spirit of the Season. Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "Hate crimes against Muslim Americans and mosques across the United States have tripled in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., with dozens occurring within just a month, according to new data. The spike includes assaults on hijab-wearing students; arsons and vandalism at mosques; and shootings and death threats at Islamic-owned businesses, an analysis by a California State University research group has found." CW: Never mind all that Prince of Peace crap. Also, too, the First Amendment protects Christianists only. ...
... OR, Just Repeal the First Amendment. Alex Griswold of Mediaite: "Conservative documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz released a video in conjunction with Fox News showing Yale University students agreeing to sign a petition that would repeal the First Amendment":
Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "The House on Friday passed a year-end spending bill that would keep the government funded through September and that the Senate is expected to clear for the president's signature later in the day. There was concern until earlier this morning that there would not be enough support for the bill, but last minute lobbying efforts by leadership secured far more than the needed votes. The vote was 316 to 113, with 150 Republicans and 166 Democrats supporting the measure." ...
... Scott Wong & Mike Lillis of the Hill: "The House is poised to pass a bipartisan $1.1 trillion bill to fund the government, with GOP and Democratic whip teams going into overdrive to boost their numbers before the Friday morning vote. Democratic leaders have voiced numerous objections to the package, particularly the inclusion of an end to a ban on crude oil exports and the failure to address Puerto Rico's debt crisis. But with the White House urging support -- and dozens of conservatives expected to buck GOP leaders and vote no -- the Democrats are also scrambling to convince wary rank-and-file members that the current package is the best they can get." ...
... Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "The House on Thursday passed the tax portion of the year-end budget deal as Congress seeks to quickly wrap up its remaining business with members itching to head home for the holidays. The vote was 318 to 109.... House Republicans provided most of the needed votes, 241, to pass the tax package, which House Democratic leaders oppose because they say it is too expensive and does not do enough for low-income workers.... The House vote on the appropriations package, which will occur Friday morning, could be close. If both bills pass the House, they will be rolled into one package that the Senate is expected to clear for the president's signature as early as Friday afternoon." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... ** Devin Henry of the Hill: "In a victory for the Obama administration, the spending package released by congressional leaders on Wednesday won't block American financial contributions to an international climate fund for poorer nations. The bill, greens and Democrats say, doesn't explicitly appropriate funding for President Obama's pledged contribution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). But since the legislation doesn't formally block money for the GCF either, Obama is expected to be able to use current discretionary funding streams to send American money to it.... Democrats were able to include an amendment allowing the funding in a Senate spending bill." CW: Looks like a victory for Mother Earth. ...
... Paul Waldman: "... whether you're happy with the overall balance of line items in the [spending] bill, one thing's for sure: it will increase the deficit rather substantially.... Despite all their talk about what we're handing to the next generation and how government should balance its books just like a family does, when it comes down to actually making choices, Republicans are no more concerned about deficits than Democrats are.... All the Republicans running for president have tax plans that would send the deficit into the stratosphere.... [In contrast,] the biggest Democratic policy initiative in recent years was the Affordable Care Act, which was completely paid for through taxes and budget cuts within Medicare. The ACA not only didn't increase the deficit, it decreased it."
SOP. An Example of Why It's So Hard for Congress to Do Anything. John Bresnahan of Politico: "Sen. Richard Shelby loaded up the $1.1 trillion spending bill with pet provisions, including one measure worth hundreds of millions to a rocket manufacturer with operations in his home state.... But in an only-in-Congress twist, Shelby, a very senior member on the Appropriations Committee, still plans to vote against the sprawling omnibus package. He's citing the lack of language to restrict Syrian refugees as the reason. The move ... could make the Republican senator the unofficial chairman of the 'hope yes, vote no' caucus on Capitol Hill."
The visa scrutiny story is complicated. Ari Melber & Safia Ali of MSNBC: "Top officials at the Department of Homeland Security considered a specific policy to strengthen security screenings for foreign visa applicants' social media accounts, but the proposal was ultimately not adopted, according to an internal department memo obtained by MSNBC.... DHS officials did not dispute the internal memo [which Melber & Ali publish] when asked about it, but emphasized more recent efforts to vet social media accounts.... Current U.S. policy does not include a formula for when to vet social media. Administration officials have emphasized they are taking a 'very close look' at visa screenings. In addition, Secretary of State John Kerry recently acknowledged 'social media has placed a whole new burden and a whole new set of questions' on the process. Those concerns have continued even as FBI officials have clarified that Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino shooter, did not publicly post support for terrorism on social media, as some originally reported."
Lolita Baldor of the AP: "U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged on Thursday that he used a personal email account to conduct some government business until 'a few months ago.' 'I should have known better,' Carter told reporters traveling with him in Irbil, Iraq, the regional capital of the Kurds. "It's not like I didn't have the opportunity to understand what the right thing to do was. I didn't do the right thing.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday that his committee would conduct a review to determine whether Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter had sensitive government information on the personal email account he used to conduct a portion of his government work. 'With all the public attention surrounding the improper use of personal email by other administration officials, it is hard to believe that Secretary Carter would exercise the same error in judgment,' Mr. McCain, a Republican, said in a statement, adding that his committee had requested copies of Mr. Carter's emails to conduct the review." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... CW: Okay, Sen. McCain. That's just fine. Now where's the outrage on the Times story about the Pentagon covering up & dismissing charges that Navy SEALS abused prisoners & killed a detainee? Isn't that worse? (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times: "While fighting grinding wars of attrition in Afghanistan and Iraq, [Navy SEALS] Team 6 performed missions elsewhere that blurred the traditional lines between soldier and spy. The team's sniper unit was remade to carry out clandestine intelligence operations, and the SEALs joined Central Intelligence Agency operatives in an initiative called the Omega Program, which offered greater latitude in hunting adversaries.... Its activities have also spurred recurring concerns about excessive killing and civilian deaths.Afghan villagers and a British commander accused SEALs of indiscriminately killing men in one hamlet; in 2009, team members joined C.I.A. and Afghan paramilitary forces in a raid that left a group of youths dead and inflamed tensions between Afghan and NATO officials. Even an American hostage freed in a dramatic rescue has questioned why the SEALs killed all his captors." As an old Navy man, Sen. McCain, you might want to look into just how this team operates & if the claimed indiscriminate killings really is "keeping us safer."(Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
** Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "For the first time in more than 60 years, firearms and automobiles are killing Americans at an identical rate, according to new mortality data released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2014, the age-adjusted death rate for both firearms (including homicides, suicides and accidental deaths) and motor vehicle events (car crashes, collisions between cars and pedestrians, etc) stood at 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people. The convergence of the trend lines above is driven primarily by a sharp drop in the rate of motor vehicle fatalities since 1950.... Over the same period, gun deaths rose, but by a considerably smaller amount. Gun homicide rates have actually fallen in recent years, but those gains have been offset by rising gun suicide rates.... Innovations in gun safety are hard to come by, in large part because of Congress's longstanding ban on many types of federal gun research."
Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine, on Republican efforts to suppress the Hispanic vote in Texas & elsewhere.
Movie Review. Paul Krugman: "'The Big Short' is based on the Michael Lewis book of the same name, one of the few real best-sellers to emerge from the financial crisis. I saw an early screening, and I think it does a terrific job of making Wall Street skulduggery entertaining, of exploiting the inherent black humor of how it went down.... While the movie gets the essentials of the financial crisis right, the true story of what happened is deeply inconvenient to some very rich and powerful people. They and their intellectual hired guns have therefore spent years disseminating an alternative view that the money manager and blogger Barry Ritholtz calls the Big Lie. It's a view that places all the blame for the financial crisis on -- you guessed it -- too much government, especially government-sponsored agencies supposedly pushing too many loans on the poor.... Sure enough, 'The Big Short' has already been the subject of vitriolic attacks in Murdoch-controlled newspapers...." ...
... CW: As a refresher, you might want to read Mike Konczal's 2013 debunking of the Big Lie, which Krugman links in his column.
Several days ago, a commenter wrote that the GAO's claim that the EPA was engaging in "covert propaganda" seemed bogus. Steve Benen agrees: "... the Obama administration's EPA this week appears, at least at first blush, to have been caught up in a similar kind of controversy. The New York Times' front-page headline certainly seems dramatic: 'E.P.A. Broke Law With Social Media Push for Water Rule, Auditor Finds.'... The allegations here are pretty thin. The EPA created a social-media message, it disseminated that message, and it made no effort whatsoever to hide its authorship of the message.... Apparently, investigators at the Government Accountability Office determined that as the EPA's message worked its way around the Internet, it might not have been entirely clear that the EPA created the message. Ergo, there was a potential for 'covert propaganda.'"
Michael Crowley of Politico: "When Secretary of State John Kerry convenes Syria peace talks in New York on Friday, the fate of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will be a main topic of debate. But despite widespread agreement that Assad has committed shocking war crimes -- and a new report chronicling the atrocities -- U.S. officials say the question of bringing Assad to justice is off the table for now. Western allies have reached a similar conclusion. While hoping Assad might face a criminal trial one day, they concede that bringing Assad to justice is a lower priority than ending the carnage in Syria as soon as possible." ...
... Charles Pierce: [John Kerry] is a statesman. [Chris Christie] is really going to make Putin pay at recess. Meanwhile, John McCain ... [has] sought refuge from his confusion in the latest production of Bad Historical Analogy Theater." ...
... CW: More & more, I see politics as a battle between grown-up & adolescent minds. As you have no doubt learned from personal experience or from critiquing your own parents, the grown-ups don't always get it right, but oftentimes they do. The teens, by contrast, nearly always get it wrong.
Presidential Race
Rosalind Helderman, et al. of the Washington Post: "Officials with the Democratic National Committee have accused the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of improperly accessing confidential voter information gathered by the rival campaign of Hillary Clinton, according to several party officials. Jeff Weaver, the Vermont senator's campaign manager, acknowledged that a low-level staffer had viewed the information but blamed a software vendor hired by the DNC for a glitch that allowed access. Weaver said one Sanders staffer was fired over the incident. The discovery sparked alarm at the DNC, which promptly shut off the Sanders campaign's access to the strategically crucial list of likely Democratic voters.... Maintaining the master list is one of the prime responsibilities of the national party committee...." ...
... CW: Yeah, I'm alarmed, too. If this isn't a purposeful set-up, then the DNC used its own error to hurt the Sanders campaign. Fire Wasserman-Schultz. But make her apologize to Bernie first. ...
... Dan Merica of CNN: "The Bernie Sanders campaign staffer who was fired for accessing data unique to the Hillary Clinton campaign's vote file, told CNN on Friday that he was only trying to 'understand how badly the Sanders campaign's data was exposed' and not attempting to take data from the Clinton campaign.... He added, 'To the best of my knowledge, nobody took anything that would have given the (Sanders) campaign any benefit.'"
Alan Rappeport: "As in the previous Democratic debate, which was held at the same time as an important college football game, the candidates will clash on Saturday night with the New York Jets and the Dallas Cowboys." CW: And Christmas. Reruns of "It's a Wonderful Life" will probably get more viewers than the debate.
Jonathan Easley & Tim Devaney of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) picked up a major endorsement Thursday from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), becoming the third national union to back him." ...
... Ben Kamisar of the Hill: "The progressive group Democracy for America will endorse Bernie Sanders, the first presidential primary endorsement in the history of the group, which boasts more than 1 million members. The Vermont senator won 88 percent of the group's online vote, far beyond the two-thirds majority needed to trigger an endorsement. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton won just 10 percent of the vote, with former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley finishing with 1 percent."
David Neiwert, in a Southern Poverty Law Center report: "Four candidates participated in [a forum organized & run by anti-Muslim extremist Frank Gaffney], three of them (Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson) via videotaped messages, and one -- Rick Santorum -- in person. The procession underscored the extent to which [Gaffney's Cemter for Security Policy's] extremism has been embraced by ostensibly mainstream conservatives.... By the end of the eight-hour conference, attendees had been treated to a nonstop cavalcade of extremism and conspiracy."
E.J. Dionne: "It was billed as a foreign policy debate, but Tuesday’s encounter among Republican presidential candidates was in large part an acting competition over who could convey the impression of being the baddest, meanest foe of the terrorists -- and of Hillary Clinton and President Obama.... There was something genuinely appalling that candidates who so often claim to be devout Christians allocated the bulk of their time to warfare, to throwing people out of our country and to walling them off." ...
... Conservative Daniel Drezner of the Washington Post: "The overwhelming bulk of what the GOP candidates had to say [Tuesday] night was pure, unadulterated horses***.... What was startling about the debate was just how so many candidates could say so many wrong things about American foreign policy in two hours.... Only two candidates didn't say anything flatly wrong about foreign policy the whole night: Jeb Bush and Rubio.... Oh, and both of them were far more hawkish on the use of force in the Middle East than the other candidates, which is less than comforting.... When it comes to American foreign policy, what was said in Vegas should stay in Vegas." ...
... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "One thing was clear from this debate. None of these nine candidates had any remotely plausible ideas on how to defeat ISIS, or prevent terrorist attacks on American soil, beyond what []President Obama is already doing -- except doing it louder, or with a scarier scowl, or maybe doing more of it." Aw, c'mon Fred, carpetbombing (Cruz), putting Petraeus i& "the warrior class" in charge again (Fiorina), prosecuting ISIS (Christie) & shutting down parts of the Internets (Trump) are plausible strategies.
Tim Egan: Climate change is "a hoax, says Donald J. Trump, with all the practiced hucksterism of the swampland salesman. He may feel different when one of his resorts is below the sea. He's got Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, rooms with a view of a tomorrow that won't answer to his bluster. His colleagues in science denial, gathered at a fake palazzo in Las Vegas, with a fake canal mimicking a real city that may soon be underwater, could have benefited from a field trip to nearby Lake Mead. This is the nation's largest reservoir, allowing a city of 1.3 million to sprout in a desert that gets about four inches of rain a year. This summer, Lake Mead fell to its lowest level since it was initially filled. It has dropped nearly 150 feet in the last 14 years." ...
... Bradford Richardson of the Hill: "Donald Trump said on Thursday it was a 'great honor' to be complimented by 'highly respected' Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond,' the GOP presidential front-runner told supporters at a rally in Columbus, Ohio." CW: Very diplomatic, Donald. Too bad you weren't so diplomatic about the leader of a country that is one of our actual allies. But then Angela Merkel did beat you out for that very important title of Time's Person of the Year. So she deserves the flak. ...
... Kevin Drum: "... this 'highly respected' man is now directly threatening American military forces in a crucial area of Syria. ...
... Colin Campbell of Business Insider: "During a Friday-morning interview with Donald Trump, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was baffled by the Republican front-runner's embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.... 'Well, I mean, it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?' Scarborough asked.... 'He's running his country, and at least he's a leader,' Trump replied. 'Unlike what we have in this country.'... Several of Trump's Republican presidential rivals criticized the billionaire businessman on Thursday for saying it was a "great honor" to receive Putin's praise." CW: Hey, if you have to kill a few opponents, invade a few countries, what the hell. That's leadership:
Brian Beutler: Marco & Ted are engaged in a duel over who is meaner to undocumented immigrants. And the winner is Donald Trump.
Tim Alberta of the National Review: "James Dobson, founder of the Christian group Focus on the Family and one of the nation's most influential evangelicals, will endorse Ted Cruz for president today, according to sources briefed on the announcement." Via Paul Waldman. CW: Buh-bye, Ole Doc Ben.
Ed Kilgore of New York: Chris "Christie was a federal prosecutor in a state near New York in the months and years after 9/11. Thanks to some revisionist history, he's recasting his prosecutorial career as one long fight against terrorism.... As Olivia Nuzzi explains in a Daily Beast column, this isn't the take on his prosecutorial career that Christie himself -- or Christie watchers -- has presented in the past, most notably when he ran for governor in 2009. Until it suddenly became convenient to his presidential campaign to put a different spin on it, Christie the prosecutor was focused like a laser on fighting crime and corruption."
Jebmentum! Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "Buoyed by an aggressive performance in Tuesday's Republican debate, Jeb Bush is intensifying his strategy of attacking Donald J. Trump's fitness for the presidency, which his aides believe is setting him apart from the sprawling field just as voters begin to make up their minds in early voting states."
A Note on the Huckster. Daniel Strauss of Politico: "Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, struggling with its low standing in the polls and underwhelming fundraising, slashed the salaries of senior staffers amid the departure of its top communications aide.... Mr. Bush plans to make New Hampshire, the first primary state, his second home as the holidays approach, and to spend more than half his time there in the seven weeks before the Feb. 9 primary." ...
... Paul Waldman: "... so he should be returning soon to his other, more lucrative career of scamming old people out of their money by selling them phony Bible-based cancer cures."
In case you had any doubts, Ben Carson Is. Still. Crazy.
Beyond the Beltway
Jaime Fuller of New York: "Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceuticals CEO who raised the price of a drug that helps people with HIV or cancer from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill..., pleaded not guilty to the seven counts — which include securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud -- and was released on $5 million bond Thursday afternoon. According to CNBC, Shkreli had to give up his passport and isn't allowed to leave New York. The charges aren't related to the price-gouging at Turing Pharmaceuticals, his current company -- being the 'most hated man in America' is not necessarily illegal."
Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "A state court in Massachusetts has ruled that a Catholic preparatory school violated the state's antidiscrimination law when it rescinded a job offer to a man because he was married to another man. Matthew Barrett had accepted a job as Food Service Director at the Fontbonne Academy, a Catholic girls school. On his employment forms, he listed his husband as his emergency contact -- a move that led the school to rescind the job offer."
Yasmeen Abutaleb of Reuters: "Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who opened fire on a San Bernardino holiday party earlier this month, were buried Tuesday in a quiet, graveside funeral. Many of those who attended mosque with the couple refused to attend, two mosque members said." (Also linked yesterday.)
Fear of Calligraphy. Vernon Freeman of WTVR: "Augusta County[, Virginia,] schools and all administrative offices are closing Friday December 18, after parental objections to a controversial high school geography assignment involving Arabic.... The controversy stems from a homework assignment at Riverheads High School that some parents called Islamic indoctrination."
News Ledes
AP: "Mother Teresa, the tiny, stooped nun who cared for the poorest of the poor in the slums of India and beyond, will be declared a saint next year after Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her intercession. The Vatican on Friday set no date for the canonization, but it is widely believed that it will take place in the first week of September to coincide with the 19th anniversary of Mother Teresa's death and during Francis' Holy Year of Mercy."
Washington Post: "American-led airstrikes killed at least 180 Islamic State fighters as local Kurdish forces scrambled to repel a bold, multi-pronged assault by the militants, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. At least four coordinated attacks by more than 300 heavily armed militants kicked off the most intense fighting that northern Iraq has seen this year, illustrating the extremist group's continued potency despite a year-long air campaign by the United States and its allies."
Share Article 
