The Commentariat -- August 20, 2015

Internal links removed.

Afternoon Update:

Bill Barrow of the AP: "As part of her promise to address rising college costs, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is calling to expand the AmeriCorps service program launched under her husband's administration. Clinton calls for spending about $20 billion over 10 years on the expansion, increasing the number of civil service volunteers from 75,000 to 250,000 and more than doubling the educational grant that enrollees can receive."

*****

Abby Phillip of the Washington Post: "Former president Jimmy Carter said that the cancer doctors discovered earlier this year has spread to his brain and that he will receive his first radiation treatment for the disease Thursday afternoon. 'I'm perfectly at ease with whatever comes,' Carter, 90, said at a news conference." The New York Times story, by Alan Blinder, is here. Here are clips from President Carter's news conference:

Matt Apuzzo of the New York Times: "In dozens of lawsuits around the country involving local disputes, the federal government has filed so-called statements of interest, throwing its weight behind private lawsuits and, in many cases, pushing the boundaries of civil rights law.... Recently ... the Justice Department has filed statements of interest in cases involving legal aid in New York, transgender students in Michigan, juvenile prisoners in solitary detention in California, and people who take videos of police officers in Baltimore."

E. J. Dionne: "You can bet that the Texas voting case or another in North Carolina, or both, will make their way to a Supreme Court that has already gutted the Voting Rights Act once in a 2013 decision written by [Chief Justice John] Roberts. Will he do it again? And will voters in 2016 realize just how important a president's power to name future Supreme Court justices is to the very right they will be exercising on Election Day?" CW: Yes & no, in that order.

Linda Greenhouse: "In the breadth of its perspective on the history and current problematic state of the death penalty, in its cleareyed dissection of the irreconcilable conflict at the heart of modern death-penalty jurisprudence, the Connecticut Supreme Court not only produced an important decision for its own jurisdiction; but it addressed the United States Supreme Court frankly and directly."

George Yancy of the New York Times interviews Cornel West. CW: In my opinion, West is a preening, narcissistic crank, but he is worth reading for the direction of his complaints, which should be considered if not necessarily shared or adopted in full.

Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "President Obama will travel to New Orleans next week for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "Congress is unlikely to override a promised veto by President Obama if both chambers reject a deal to curtail Iran's nuclear capabilities, according to a Washington Post analysis of where the votes currently stand." With charts! ...

... Oh yeah? What about this? George Jahn of the AP: "Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site it has been accused of using to develop nuclear arms, operating under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.... The White House has repeatedly denied claims of a secret side deal favorable to Tehran.... The document is labeled 'separate arrangement II,' indicating there is another confidential agreement between Iran and the IAEA.... Iran is to provide agency experts with photos and videos of locations the IAEA says are linked to the alleged weapons work, 'taking into account military concerns.' That wording suggests that -- beyond being barred from physically visiting the site -- the agency won't get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off-limits...." ...

... CW: I didn't know what to make of this story. The AP doesn't usually make up stuff. All the prominent commentary on it came from the winger fringe, so no help there. Then ....

... Juan Cole: "The accord actually provides for the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency always to be present at such inspections. The reason for the presence of Iranian experts is that there is a long history of outside nuclear teams being sent in by the Great Powers for espionage. I.e., the Iranian inspectors are there to keep an eye on the UN inspectors, not to cover up Iranian activities.... The AP should retract its inaccurate allegations."

Sean Fitz-Gerald of New York: "Regal Cinemas, the nation's largest movie-theater chain, announced it's beginning to search ticket buyers' bags before letting them in, according to multiple reports. The move comes on the heels of an uptick in movie-theater shootings as well as the release of a survey that found roughly half of moviegoers interviewed wanted more security."

Presidential Race

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times posts full video of Hillary Clinton's meeting with BlackLivesMatter activists last week. "The combination of patience and gentle scolding with which she responded seemed a distillation of Mrs. Clinton's worldview: that movement politics gets you only so far, and that activists must pave the way for those in office to act.... [The video] also showed Mrs. Clinton as even her admirers lament that she is seldom seen: spontaneous, impassioned and seemingly unconcerned about potential repercussions." ...

... CW: What you're seeing here is a candidate with a presidential advantage, which she uses to a positive end. Because Clinton has a Secret Service detail, she was able to keep these young people from disrupting her public meeting, but she had the guts & sense not to shut them out entirely & to engage them in an actual dialog -- which for all the participants is far superior to a shout-down. Allowing the dialog to be taped was pretty smart, too. ...

... Kendall Breitman of Bloomberg: "When it comes to using a private server for her e-mails when she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton 'didn't really think it through,' according to her communications director...., Jennifer Palmieri. '... Others had done it before and it was just more convenient and she kept it like that, and she didn't really -- that's the thing, she didn't really think it through.' 'She has said, had she, she would have done it differently,' Palmieri added. ...

... CW: Again, this is a problem that derives from having a staff that doesn't have the guts to tell the boss she making a mistake, even when the issue is one the boss hasn't given much thought. I see this as a serious flaw to Hillary's management style, & there's little reason to think the style wouldn't carry over to the White House.

"There Goes the Electability Argument!" Ed Kilgore: "... new CNN/ORC poll findings [Wednesday] should provide a very rude shock to those who think Republican voters will finally wake up and realize Donald Trump would be a disaster as a general election candidate and stampede instead to a 'grown-up' like Establishment fave Jeb Bush. At this particular moment, Donald Trump is running better than Jeb Bush in trial general election match-ups with Hillary Clinton." ...

     ... CW: As I've said before, this should unsettle Democrats, too. ...

... Steve M. New York Crank "... don't write off Bernie so fast. If Hillary flounders, his momentum will pick up. And given that this could be a populist vs. populist race, Bernie just might make more sense to populist voters."

Mark Murray of NBC News: "Eight GOP presidential candidates have now said they oppose "birthright citizenship" if their parents are not documented citizens; that is, they favor repealing or ignoring or reinterpreting the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that guarantees citizenship to U.S.-born babies." ...

... Trump Is Just Copying Me. -- Ted Cruz. Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg: "Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz says that he 'absolutely' supports ending birthright citizenship.... Cruz says 'virtually every element' in Trump's immigration plan 'is contained within legislation' that he has previously filed." CW: Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father & (U.S.) American mother. He had dual citizenship -- U.S. & Canada -- till he decided to run for president. In March of this year famed birther Donald Trump called Cruz's Canadian birth a "hurdle" that "somebody could look at very seriously." That's two GOP candidates now -- Cruz & Walker -- who claim authorship for Trump's extreme anti-immigration policy. BUT ...

... A Fine Bromance. Tim Mak of the Daily Beast: "It's a bromance with a payoff -- the senator [Ted Cruz] has been developing the billionaire's support and their aides are even discussing joint events, but if Trump drops out, Cruz aims to clean up." ...

... Eliza Collins of Politico: "Jeb Bush doesn't want birthright citizenship to go away, but he is calling for stronger enforcement for people who abuse it." ...

... David Leopold, past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in TPM, explains the law re: "birthright citizenship." Donald "Trump claims that birthright citizenship must end because it's the 'biggest magnet for illegal immigration' -- it attracts illegal immigrants using their 'anchor babies' to reap the benefits of U.S. citizenship."... The 'magnet' to which Trump refers is an arduous 31-year-long slog to legal status for the undocumented parent.... According to the Migration Policy Institute (pdf), repeal of birthright citizenship would lead to a dramatic increase in the number of unauthorized children living in the U.S. -- as many as 24 million by 2050.... Trump's extremist proposal to end birthright citizenship ... comes at the grave cost of abridging civil rights, even hearkening back to the days of Dred Scott...." ...

... AND, if you're into original intent, Li'l Randy is wrong here, "... I don't think the 14th Amendment was meant to apply to illegal aliens. It was meant to apply to the children of slaves." Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post: "... the framers of the 14th Amendment were thinking of immigrants' children, as they made clear in an 1866 debate on the Senate floor. Sen. Edgar Cowan (R-Pa.) was an opponent of birthright citizenship.... When he asked whether the proposed legislation would cover children of immigrants, Sen. John Conness (R-Calif.), a supporter, said it would." ...

     ... CW BTW: Terkel is reading a sanitized version of Conness's remark: "The proposition before us...relates...to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens.... I am in favor of doing so." Charles Pierce has "Chinese" as "Mongol"; Paul Finkelman has it as "Mongolian." Finkelman identifies Conness as a racist, who opposed equality for black Americans &, as a Californian, was hostile to Chinese immigrants. He seems, however, to have come around, as the concept of equality expanded. Nothing about intent is straightforward, despite what "law office historians" & Nino Scalia would assert. ...

... "Act Two of the Trump Epic." Josh Marshall of TPM: "Trump is now defining the GOP policy agenda. And that makes him far more than a top candidate or even a nominee. Ending birthright citizenship used to be an idea embraced on the far right of the House GOP caucus and bandied about by rightwing policy wonks. Trump has now not only made it a signature of his campaign. He's also pulling all the other candidates along with him.... In three years we've now gone from the need to support comprehensive immigration reform, to balking on supporting the deal, to embracing the policies that used to be held by the comical likes of Steve King...."

Eliza Collins: "In a 30-minute news conference in Derry, New Hampshire [yesterday], that was broadcast live on Fox News and CNN..., [Donald Trump] ripped into [Jeb Bush].... Bush saying the U.S. had to show they had 'skin in the game' by committing more resources to combating the Islamic State was 'one of the the dumber things I've heard, ever, in politics,' Trump said. 'Between Common Core, his 'act of love' on immigration and 'skin in the game' with Iraq ... I don't see how he's electable. And then on top of that he talks about women's health issues,' Trump said.... 'Right down the road, we have Jeb -- very small crowd,' he said[, referring to Jeb!'s simultaneous event in nearby Merrimack, New Hampshire]. 'You know what's happening to Jeb's crowd right down the street? They're sleeping now.'"

I had to do it for myself. -- Donald Trump, on why he's running

I think this is what people mean by "authencity." -- Constant Weader

... Time reporters interview Donald Trump for the magazine's cover story, & he says he's so much better than all the other bozos running for president. Et-cetera. Michael Scherer has the cover story here, with a lot of embedded videos of Trump saying he's so much better than all the other bozos running for president, etc. ...

... More of the Same. Tal Kopan of CNN: "... Donald Trump took on an array of subjects and political figures during a lengthy interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo on Wednesday.... Trump said the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton's email use is 'devastating,' and that it's not surprising that he came within 6 points of the Democrat in a head-to-head polling match-up. 'I think it's devastating for the election, but I think her bigger problem is not the election. I think her bigger problem is going to be the criminal (problem),' Trump said."

Philip Rucker & Jose Del Real of the Washington Post: In New Hampshire, Trump & Kasich are squeezing out Jeb! "Trump led the field in New Hampshire with 18 percent, followed by Bush at 13 percent and Kasich right behind at 12 percent, according to a recent Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University poll of likely GOP primary voters."

Sahil Kapur: Experts suggest the state-run high-risk insurance pools that both Scott Walker & Marco Rubio propose would be prohibitively expensive, which is kind of a moot point because Congress would never fund them anyway. ...

... The Audacity of Dopes. CW: One thing that gets me about these Walker & Rubio "plans": ObamaCare, such as it is, took tens of thousands of hours to develop into something that had a chance to get through Congress & that was also cost-effective & workable. These bozos think they can dash off some "ideas" on a napkin, most of which are already known to be unworkable, unpassable, & meaner than dirt, then foist them off as a blueprint for a real replacement for the ACA. ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones produces two charts that show how much ScottieCare "screws the poor," no matter the age of the head of household. Drum acknowledges that his post is "anticlimactic" because readers could already guess how his comparisons between ScottieCare & ObamaCare would turn out.

CW: I have been avoiding linking to any stories about Mike Huckabee, because of his remarks comparing the Iran deal to the Holocaust. But to update you a bit, Huckleberry is in Israel, demonstrating anew what an astounding, bigoted ignoramus he is. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ed Kilgore: "Huck held a fundraiser for Americans living in West Bank settlements deemed illegal under international law.... The dude seems off-balance."

Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "Finally another declared independent candidate, Deez Nuts, polls at 9% in North Carolina to go along with his 8% in Minnesota and 7% in Iowa in our recent polling." ...

... Ben Collins & Emily Shire of the Daily Beast: "Brady Olson is 15 years old. He filed to run for the President of the United States with the FEC on July 26 as Deez Nuts." ...

... Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone interviews Deez/Brady: "I really didn't want to see Clinton, Bush, or Trump in the White House, so I guess I'm just trying to put up a fight.... I'm fifteen, so I haven't been registered yet. I side more with the Libertarian Party." (CW: Like so many 15-year-old boys.)

Beyond the Beltway

Andy Grimm of the Times-Picayune: "Five New Orleans Police officers convicted in the shooting of unarmed pedestrians at the Danziger Bridge days after Hurricane Katrina are entitled to a new trial, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday (Aug. 18). The 2-1 ruling by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Englehardt's 2013 decision to throw out the convictions of the officers on charges related to shootings that left two civilians dead, and a coverup involving the lead NOPD investigator on the case. 'The reasons for granting a new trial are novel and extraordinary,' the appeals court decision said, citing the misconduct of then-federal prosecutors who posted pseudonymous comments on NOLA.com stories about the case. The ruling also said the Department of Justice 'inadequately investigated' the misconduct." ...

... CW: Englehardt & all three justices on the Appeals Court panel are GOP appointees. ...

... Charles Pierce: "There should be a special circle of derision reserved exclusively for prosecutors who botch important cases in very stupid ways."

AP: "Vast areas of California's Central Valley are sinking faster than in the past as massive amounts of groundwater are pumped during the historic drought, Nasa said in new research released on Wednesday. The research shows that in some places the ground is sinking nearly two inches each month, putting infrastructure on the surface at growing risk of damage." ...

... Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "... a new study released Thursday says human-caused global warming is worsening ... [California's drought]. The study by Columbia University's Earth Institute isn't the first to say warming has played a key role in fueling California's dry conditions, but it's the first to measure its impact, predicting that it increased the problem by as much as 25 percent."

Jaime Fuller of New York: "After NJ.com reported [Wednesday] morning that drones were available for purchase at Brookstone and Hudson News locations at Newark International Airport, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it was 'strongly opposed to the sale of drones at terminal shops' and that they should stop being sold 'immediately.' The New York Post reports that a Brookstone in Terminal 7 at JFK International Airport also sells drones.... 'This is obviously not a very well thought out retail strategy,'" an airport law enorcement official said. CW: Aw, c'mon, capitalism is awesome.

The Commentariat -- August 19, 2015

Internal links & defunct video removed.

Afternoon Update:

Gardiner Harris of the New York Times: "President Obama will travel to New Orleans next week for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina...."

CW: I have been avoiding linking to any stories about Mike Huckabee, because of his remarks comparing the Iran deal to the Holocaust. But to update you a bit, Huckleberry is in Israel, demonstrating anew what an astounding, bigoted ignoramus he is.

*****

Andrew Pollack of the New York Times: "The first prescription drug to enhance women's sexual drive won regulatory approval on Tuesday, clinching a victory for a lobbying campaign that had accused the Food and Drug Administration of gender bias for ignoring the sexual needs of women. The drug -- Addyi from Sprout Pharmaceuticals -- is actually the first drug approved to treat a flagging or absent libido for either sex." CW: Likely Rick Santorum has repaired to the nearest fainting couch.

Missed this item. Coral Davenport of the New York Times (Aug. 17): "The Obama administration on Monday issued a final permit for Shell to start drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean. The Interior Department gave conditional approval in May for the company's long-delayed application to drill in the untouched waters of the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast. In July, the administration issued a permit that would allow Shell to start drilling at the top of the seabed but would not allow the drill to penetrate into the oil reserves until Shell had quick access to a 'capping stack,' which is used to shut down wells in case of emergency spills." (See also Presidential Race.)

David Larter & Meghann Myers of the Navy Times: "The Navy is planning to open its elite SEAL teams to women who can pass the grueling training regimen, the service's top officer said Tuesday.... The move to integrate the military's most storied commando units comes the day after news broke that two women had passed the Army's arduous Ranger course. Nineteen women began the course, which has about a 45 percent passing rate."

If you think that nice winter coat you give to charity will soon be warming a needy American, think again.

Apparently all this fighting about the unpleasantness of women is causing Brother Ross to flag, too.Dana Milbank is tired of Ross Douthat, who has accused Milbank of having "bloody hands" because of Milbank's support for long-acting, reversible contraceptives: "... in 2009 launched a privately funded Family Planning Initiative that provided 30,000 IUDs and other implants at zero or little cost to low-income women at 68 family-planning clinics. The teen birth rate fell 40 percent between 2009 and 2013 -- and the teen abortion rate fell by 35 percent between 2009 and 2012 in the counties where the program was in place." But Douthat & his collaborators "tried to cast doubt" on the experiment, because they "would rather fight about abortion than reduce it."

Presidential Race

Ben Schreckinger of Politico: Bernie Sanders' "campaign is working to whip all those energized supporters into a political machine that can deliver votes and send Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire a message that, in the words of senior adviser Tad Devine, 'there's something big happening across the country and they can be a part of it.' To that end, the campaign is adding data specialists to its staff and more racially diverse faces to its speaking rosters. And it is refining methods of gathering data on attendees and converting them into volunteers." ...

... CW: Just love the way Schreckinger characterizes a Sanders supporter at the top of his story, describing him as a "Sander-ista" who is "bearded [and] ... wore a t-shirt in the style of Shepard Fairey's iconic image of Barack Obama -- emblazoned instead with Sanders' face and the message, 'Hope is nice, but I prefer no bullsh--.'" I guess the women in this photo were not available:

... If 5,000 people showed up at a Sanders rally in formal attire, Politico would find the leftist "Sander-ista" who "obviously hadn't shaved this morning," whose "suit was rumpled" & who "used a profanity to describe Republican candidate Rick Santorum."

... Greg Sargent:"... Sanders' presence may be forcing Clinton to sharpen up her own populist message." Sargent attributes this new Clinton ad to the influence of Sanders & his supporters:

... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "In a rare disagreement with President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday came out against drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean, one day after the White House granted approval for exploration off the coast of Alaska.... Mrs. Clinton continues to face pressure to take a position on the Keystone pipeline. She has said she will remain silent on the issue until Mr. Obama makes a decision." ...

... Maybe Hillary Really Doesn't Understand All This Technology Stuff. John Wagner & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "... Hillary Rodham Clinton said repeatedly Tuesday that she did not know if her e-mail server, which was turned over to the FBI last week, had been wiped clean of data. In a testy exchange with reporters following a town hall meeting in North Las Vegas, Clinton responded, 'What, like with a cloth or something?' when asked if the server had been wiped. 'I don't know how it works at all,' she added." ...

... Annie Karni of Politico: "As Hillary Clinton faces a new round of questions about her email use as secretary of state, some longtime allies are increasingly worried that she's learned little from past scandals, and is falling back on her tendency to mount a legalistic defense that only encourages perceptions that she has something to hide.... A source with inside knowledge of the Clinton campaign voiced concern that the candidate and her longtime attorney David Kendall are the only ones calling the shots -- and can have a tin ear when it comes to the politics, rather than simply the legal status, of the email saga." ...

... Jeff Toobin: "Hillary Clinton's problem: the government classifies everything.... The relevant agencies are now reviewing the documents in order to determine whether they contain classified information; if they find that to be the case (and they will), Clinton will not have the right to make those documents public; the public will never know whether she was discussing newspaper stories or the identity of covert assets. With many agencies reviewing thousands of documents, this process is guaranteed to take months rather than weeks. Thus, the process — and the attention to the issue -- will drag on."

So Much for Crazy Glue. Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "The battle line runs between the factions in the conservative movement that care about winning, and the ones that specialize in entertainment and charlatanism, with Fox News caught appropriately in the middle.... The left is engaged simultaneously in its own heated factional fight.... Wherever you fall on the question of the Black Lives Matter movement's tactics and goals, or of the way progressives have treated BLM activists, the fact that their disruptions are meant to elevate issues, and that Democrats have responded by accommodating their ideals, is undeniable.The fight among conservatives, by contrast, is marked almost entirely by nastiness and self-interest. The fact that it is over a character like Donald Trump is fitting."

The Conversation: "We'll Build a Wall." Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg: "... Marco Rubio told a conservative audience earlier this year that 'you can't even have a conversation' about legalization or citizenship until the nation's border is secure. Avoiding a real conversation on immigration is exactly what created the opening for Trump, whose new leadership role seems unlikely to go well for the party. Instead, the two sides of the Republican immigration war should confront the issue directly." Wilkinson imagines the conversation. ...

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. -- Fourteen Amendment

Donald Trump, Constitutional Expert. Nick Gass of Politico: "Donald Trump clashed with Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday night over the part of his immigration plan that would take away citizenship from the children who were born in the United States but whose parents came to the country illegally. Under the 14th Amendment, O'Reilly told Trump on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' mass deportations of so-called birthright citizens cannot happen. Trump disagreed, and said that 'many lawyers are saying that's not the way it is in terms of this.'... Trump also said that he would not pursue an amendment to the Constitution to remedy the situation." CW: It's a sad day when Bill O'Reilly is wiser than a leading presidential candidate. ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Shortly after Donald Trump released his immigration policy proposal on Monday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker assured reporters that he agreed with Trump's opposition to 'birthright citizenship.' The Huffington Post did a quick count and figured that at least five other 2016 Republican candidates did, too." To implement the GOP plan, anti-immigration advocates [CW: Trump's "many lawyers"] would have to "somehow persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the 1898 ruling, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which established how the 14th Amendment would be enforced" or amend the Constitution. "The only thing a politician could promise that would be harder would be, say, promising to build a giant, hundreds-of-miles-long wall and getting another country to pay for it." ...

... Andrew McCarthy of the winger National Review illuminates the Constitutional argument that Trump's "many lawyers" would make. ...

... Rebecca Kaplan of CBS News has more on legal interpretations of the jurisdictional phrase. ...

... "Make American Cruel Again." Jamelle Bouie of Slate: "... together with Trump as its spokesman, the [Trump anti-immigration] plan is poised to move the GOP conversation on immigration from simple restrictionism to something more punitive and cruel."

... Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "The longer he floats atop the polls, the more Trump has started to make people [in Mexico City] feel a bit queasy, forcing them to contemplate whether his candidacy is really something they need to worry about. As Trump published his immigration proposals this week, Mexicans expressed growing concern about his bid for the Republican nomination.... The Mexican government has tried mostly to stay above the fray. Over the past few months, Foreign Minister José Antonio Meade and other top officials have gone on record with their displeasure about Trump's comments. But they've also chosen not to engage Trump's near-daily anti-Mexico barrages, in part because the candidate's proposals change so often and also because officials don't expect that he’ll be president."

Jonathan Chait: "[Tuesday], Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have published plans -- really, not so much plans as skeletal descriptions of planlike concepts -- to replace Obamacare.... They will not finance real insurance for the people who have gotten it under Obamacare, nor will they face up to the actual costs they're willing to impose on people. The party is doctrinally opposed to every available method to make insurance available to people who can't afford it. They have spent six years promising to come up with an alternative plan, and they haven't done it, because they can't." CW: Thus, IMO, every "planlike concept" these scoundrels proffer constitutes a Big Fat Lie to the American people. ...

... Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times: "The Walker and Rubio proposals call for a much less regulated insurance market, where the federal government exercises little oversight over the products in the market.... Their plans are also much less concerned about ensuring health care access for the poor. In addition to rolling back Obamacare, both would also reduce future federal spending on state-administered Medicaid programs.... [Walker's plan] would give federal money to old people instead [of poor people].... any of these plans, however meritorious, can only be accomplished through enormous disruption. Millions of people who have obtained insurance through the law's expansion of the Medicaid program would lose it. Millions more would most likely lose the coverage they bought through new insurance marketplaces." CW: Fine as far as it goes. I wish the NYT had Chait's honesty & also remarked that Walker's & Rubio's "plan-like concepts" don't even pay for their crappy "replacements."

Jenna Johnson & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Scott Walker has sought to reassure jittery donors and other supporters this week that he can turn around a swift decline in the polls in Iowa and elsewhere by going on the attack and emphasizing his conservatism on key issues. In a conference call, one-on-one conversations and at a Tuesday lunch, the Wisconsin governor ... told backers that his campaign is shifting to a more aggressive posture and will seek to tap into the anti-establishment fervor fueling the rise of Donald Trump and other outsider candidates.... At the same time, Walker has veered to the right on abortion and other social issues, worrying some top backers."

The Legacy Candidate. Julie Bykowicz of the AP: "About half of the roughly $120 million raised to help [Jeb!] win the Republican presidential nomination comes from donors who previously gave to his brother or father, both former presidents, according to a new analysis of Federal Election Commission records by Crowdpac.com, a nonpartisan political research company.

Beyond the Beltway

Emma Margolin of NBC News: "After he was sued for declaring his gun shop a 'Muslim-free zone' last month, a Florida man [-- Andrew Hallinan, owner of Florida Gun Supply --] has decided to launch an online fundraiser selling artwork that features the Confederate flag to help pay for his legal fees. And the artist? George Zimmerman, the man who was acquitted two years ago in the high-profile shooting death of unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin.... Hallinan says that Zimmerman reached out to him because he knew what it felt like to be treated unfairly by the media." CW: Anyone who harbored the notion that Zimmerman was just a murdering asshole & not a racist, murdering asshole should now make a penitential contribution to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Jonathan Katz of the New York Times: "The lawyer for a white Charlotte[, N.C.,] police officer charged with voluntary manslaughter concluded his defense on Tuesday by shifting accusations onto the black former college football player who died in the 2013 shooting, portraying the unarmed victim as a would-be burglar who dared the police to kill him. The officer, Randall Kerrick, faces up to 11 years in prison if he is found guilty of using excessive force in the death of the former football player, Jonathan Ferrell, in the early hours of Sept. 14, 2013."

Russell Contreras of the AP: "A New Mexico judge ruled Tuesday that two police officers must stand trial on murder charges in the on-duty shooting of a homeless man whose killing was caught on video and sparked national outrage while fueling reforms at the Albuquerque Police Department. Pro Tem Judge Neil Candelaria said after a nearly two-week preliminary hearing that there was probable cause for the murder case against Officer Dominique Perez and former Detective Keith Sandy to go to trial."

Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Two former police officers in East Point, Ga., have been charged with felony murder in connection with the 2014 death of a man who was repeatedly shocked with Taser devices while he was handcuffed. The indictment, returned on Monday by a county grand jury here, charged former Sgt. Marcus Eberhart and former Cpl. Howard J. Weems Jr. with seven counts each, including felony murder, aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter, for their alleged roles in the death of Gregory L. Towns Jr., 24.... Mr. Towns was black, as are the former officers."

Neely Tucker of the Washington Post: In Mississippi, white folks are still loving that Confederate flag, including the one that is part of the state flag.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Louis Stokes, who as the first African-American congressman from Ohio helped focus federal attention on the nation's poor and led a special House investigation into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Tuesday at his home in a Cleveland suburb. He was 90."

New York Times: ISIS jihadists have beheaded 83-year-old Khalid al-Asaad, the retired director of antiquities for Palmyra.

AP: "Germany's Parliament has overwhelmingly approved a third bailout package for Greece despite misgivings by some conservative lawmakers of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic party. Lawmakers voted 454-113 in favor of the deal on Wednesday, with 18 abstentions."

AP: "Police in Thailand released a sketch Wednesday of the man they believe carried out this week's deadly Bangkok bombing, and offered a 1 million baht ($28,000) reward for help leading to his arrest. But apart from a rough portrait, authorities have few solid leads...."

AP: "Longtime Subway pitchman Jared Fogle is expected to plead guilty to child-pornography charges, an Indiana television station reported."

Washington Post: "Chelsea Manning was found guilty Tuesday on four disciplinary charges and given 21 days of recreational restrictions for breaking military prison rules -- keeping expired toothpaste and Vanity Fair's Caitlin Jenner cover, among other things, in her cell, her attorney said." ...

... Guardian: "A petition of more than 100,000 signatures was delivered to the US army liaison office in Congress on Tuesday asking that the charges against Manning be dropped."

The Commentariat -- August 18, 2015

Internal links removed.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In an otherwise minor decision about a municipal sign ordinance, the [Supreme C]ourt in June transformed the First Amendment. Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School and an authority on free speech, said the decision was so bold and so sweeping that the Supreme Court could not have thought through its consequences. The decision’s logic, he said, endangered all sorts of laws, including ones that regulate misleading advertising and professional malpractice. 'Effectively,' he said, 'this would roll consumer protection back to the 19^th century.'... There is little question that the decision, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, marks an important shift toward treating countless laws that regulate speech with exceptional skepticism. Though just two months old, the decision has already required lower courts to strike down laws barring panhandling, automated phone calls and 'ballot selfies.'”

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "The Internal Revenue Service said Monday that hackers had gained access to the tax returns of more than 300,000 people, a far higher number than the agency had reported previously. In the coming days, the I.R.S. will send 220,000 letters to taxpayers whose returns were probably viewed by the hackers, the agency said."

Michael Crowley of Politico: "Dozens of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation experts have signed a statement endorsing the Iran nuclear deal, the latest salvo in a lobbying campaign battle ahead of a congressional vote next month on President Barack Obama’s landmark agreement with Tehran. The Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, will release the statement Tuesday morning. It declares the deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief 'a net-plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.'” ...

... CW: But, hey, what do "experts" know? ...

... Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks up some excuses to oppose the Iran nuclear deal & writes them down, & the Washington Post prints them out.

Anna Palmer of Politico: Planned Parenthood is fighting back against Stupid Republican Tricks, partially by running ads targeting Republican Sens. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, "Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Rob Portman in Ohio.... This week’s ads follow late-July ads by Planned Parenthood in West Virginia, Indiana and Washington, D.C. targeting key senators whose support for Planned Parenthood was seen as being in jeopardy. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana broke with their Democratic colleagues and voted to defund Planned Parenthood before the August recess."

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "The Obama administration ... wrote in a letter to Sens. Joni Ernst [RTP-Iowa] and Roy Blunt [RTP-Mo.] ... [that] there are no known violations of the country’s fetal tissue laws among government researchers or the companies that supply the tissue." ...

... Peter Sullivan of the Hill: "Republican leaders on the House Judiciary Committee are asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) for information on the enforcement of fetal tissue laws, as part of its investigation into Planned Parenthood. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and subcommittee chairman Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) on Monday wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking for the history of the enforcement of two laws banning profiting from fetal tissue sales and another law banning partial birth abortions. The lawmakers are looking for past instances in which violations of those three laws were alleged." ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "There's no evidence whatsoever in these videos that Planned Parenthood violated the law ... so these guys are resorting to potential past violations. It's a fishing expedition.... They're treading a very thin line here of completely alienating not just women, but the entire population of patients and the medical community (minus Ben Carson )who are relying on fetal tissue research for critical therapies.... They're now getting into the whole arena of medical research and even of organ donation (and where were they when Dick Cheney was getting a heart?), dragging them further and further away from the political mainstream. All for the votes of religious extremists."

Capitalism Is Awesome, Ctd. Rank & Yank. Noam Scheiber of the New York Times: "... however much the most sought-after employers in the country may be changing their official policies — brutal competition remains an inescapable component of workers’ daily lives. In some ways it’s getting worse.... The basic problem is that the rewards for ascending to top jobs at companies like Netflix and Goldman Sachs are not just enormous, they are also substantially greater than at companies in the next tier down.... Grueling competition remains perhaps the defining feature of the upper echelon in today’s white-collar workplace."

Oops! J. K. Trotter of Gawker: "Earlier this year, Gawker Media sued the State Department over its response to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in 2013, in which we sought emails exchanged between reporters at 33 news outlets and Philippe Reines, the former deputy assistant secretary of state and aggressive defender of Hillary Clinton. Over two years ago, the department claimed that 'no records responsive to your request were located' — a baffling assertion, given Reines’ well-documented correspondence with journalists. Late last week, however, the State Department [said] ... it had located an estimated 17,000 emails responsive to Gawker’s request.... These newly discovered records are from Reines’ government account, and are not related to the 20 boxes of government-business emails stored on his personal account that Reines recently handed over to the government...." ...

... Alex Griswold of Mediaite: "Reines had something of a reputation of sending extremely confrontational emails to reporters telling them to “\'f*ck off,' and Gawker no doubt wanted to mine his emails for more gems. But to their surprise, the State Department responded that they couldn’t find a single email Reinnes had sent to any reporters, even though emails to those outlets were already known to exist. In response, Gawker took the State Department to court. Lo and behold, an August 13 filing by State Department lawyers announced that they had discovered '5.5 gigabytes of data containing 81,159 emails of varying length' written by Reinnes. Approximately 17,855 of those emails were considered to be responsive to the email request originally filed by Gawker." ...

... CW: Maybe Hillary used a personal server so her correspondence wouldn't get lost.

"The Center Cannot Hold." E. J. Dionne turns to Yeats to illuminate today's politics. "The center is under siege all over the democratic world.... In country after country, traditional, broadly based parties and their politicians face scorn.... The decay of middle-ground politics is a problem for both the center-left and the center-right, but it may be a bigger problem for the moderate left whose task, as the late historian Tony Judt put it, has always been to provide 'incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances.'... Political Establishments worthy of the name and middle-ground politicians who care about more than power understand the dangers of a Yeats moment — to social harmony, to tolerance and, if things go really badly, to democracy and freedom.” ...

... CW: Cheerful! We do have quite a few rough beasts slouching toward Bethlehem.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Brian Flood of TV Newser: The Huffington Post is sticking to its decision to relegate cover of Donald Trump to its entertainment pages. In response to an inquiry by Flood, the Huff Post's Danny Shea & Ryan Grim wrote, "We’re more committed to the decision than ever. Over the last month, we’ve seen our central argument proven right: that Trump is nothing more than a sideshow and not a legitimate presidential contender with serious policy ideas for moving the country forward." ...

... CW: This is just stupid. None of the GOP candidates has "serious policy ideas for moving the country forward." Is Huff Post going to move its coverage of all the GOP candidates to the entertainment page? By their own standard, they should. The problem there is that most of the candidates aren't entertaining, either. Maybe the Huff Post needs a new page titled something like, "Boring, Ignorant, Reactionary Thugs Politico Covers." BTW, as of now (12:51 am ET), the photo blazoned across the Huff Post's front page is of the big boys' debate, with Trump front & center, the the accompanying article (also linked below) -- which appears under the HuffPost Politics section -- cites, first, "business mogul Donald Trump." The front page has at least four other stories about Trump, which appear in three different sections, none of them Politics.

Presidential Race

Alan Yuhas of the Guardian: "Hillary Clinton told Black Lives Matter activists her priority was to change laws, not hearts, after two confronted her at a campaign event with accusations that she was, in part, personally responsible for the mass incarceration of black Americans, footage released on Monday reveals." MSNBC aired a portion of the tape, which you can see in the video embedded in the Guardian story (begins at the 3:15 min.-mark). ...

... CW: I like the part where Julius Jones, one of the activists, asks Clinton to explain her actual feelings, "not what you're supposed to say." Everybody gets that candidates are pre-progammed phonies. The MSNBC discussion with Melissa Harris-Perry that follows the clip is illuminating. The BlackLivesMatter reps indicate the group will be a lot tougher on Clinton than it's been on Sanders because they hold the Clinton administration responsible for implementing mass-incarceration policies that have devastated the black community. ...

... Paul Waldman: "... in a race where there’s an obvious (if not quite certain) nominee, there will always come a point at which the press will decide that that candidate is spiraling downward, the cloak of inevitability is torn and tattered, the campaign is in crisis, the whispering from party loyalists is growing louder, and the scramble is on to find an alternative before the fall occurs. This is the moment we have come to with Hillary Clinton." It's all pretty much nonsense, promoted by a press corps in search of dramatic stories. ...

... Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda All Over Again. Gene Robinson: "Any public official’s work-related e-mails are the modern equivalent of the letters, memos and diaries that fill the National Archives. They tell our nation’s history and belong to all of us. Even if your name is Clinton, you have no right to unilaterally decide what is included and what is not. So I wish Hillary Clinton would be respectful enough to say, 'I’m sorry. I was wrong.'... If Clinton now has political problems because of the e-mails — or, potentially, even legal trouble — it’s her own doing.” ...

... Mollie Reilly of the Huffington Post: "Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who famously helped break the news of the Watergate scandal, said Hillary Clinton's private email server reminds him of Richard Nixon's secretly recorded Oval Office conversations. Appearing on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' Monday, Woodward compared the controversy over the former secretary of state's emails to Nixon's cover-up of Watergate." ...

... CW: Other things that remind Woodward of Watergate: (1) the actual Watergate complex, (2) Monica Lewinsky, who lived briefly therein, (3) anything that begins with "water," like waterboarding, water crackers & water-on-the-brain, & (4) really anything that begins with the letter "W," including Dubya. Couldn't Congress just pre-impeach Hillary & save us all a lot of time?

That Was Then. I have such great admiration and empathy for Hillary Clinton.... She is obviously incredibly intelligent, focused, tough, determined, empathetic of all the tens of millions of people that she was trying to represent in her quest to become the first woman president of the United States. And as a woman, I take great pride in the fact that Hillary Clinton ran for president. And I also watched with a lot of empathy as I saw how she was scrutinized, characterized, talked about as a woman. -- Carly Fiorina, 2008 ...

... Brad DeLong: Actually, way up until last year, many of today's GOP presidential candidates had really nice things to say about Hillary.

Sam Stein & Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post: "A Good Chunk Of GOP Field Wants To Repeal The 14th Amendment..., which grants everyone born in the United States of America the right of citizenship."

This Time Trump Is Finished for Sure. Jennifer Agiesta of CNN: "Donald Trump has won his party's trust on top issues more than any other Republican presidential candidate, and now stands as the clear leader in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.... Trump is the biggest gainer in the poll, up 6 points since July according to the first nationwide CNN/ORC poll since the top candidates debated in Cleveland on Aug. 6…. Trump has also boosted his favorability numbers among Republicans, 58% have a favorable view of Trump now, that figure stood at 50% in the July survey." ...

... Citizen Trump. James McKinley & Andy Newman of the New York Times: Donald Trump spent yesterday as a prospective juror at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. "Calling jury service 'an interesting process,' he spoke as if it were less a legal requirement than a charitable act: 'People are surprised I agreed to do this,' he said. 'I’m not surprised. I think it’s the right thing to do.' He had previously failed to respond to at least five jury summonses, going back to 2006. He never received them, his lawyer said, because they went to the wrong address.... Court officers had told him, he said, that it was the biggest media scrum on the courthouse steps they had seen. 'I love records!' he said."

** The Awesome Truth. Ezra Klein: Here's "what makes a candidate like Trump potentially dangerous [to the GOP establishment]. On immigration, Trump holds a hard-line position that the Republican Party establishment has tried to mute, and so far Republican voters are loving it. On Social Security and Medicare, Trump — who opposes cuts — is closer to Republican voters than the party establishment is. On free trade deals, Trump shares a skepticism held by about half of Republican voters, but that's usually suppressed by the party's powerful business wing. Most candidates who tried to stack this many heterodoxies would be quickly squelched by the party establishment. But Trump isn't beholden to the GOP for money, staff, power, or press attention. That frees him to take positions that Republican voters like but Republican Party elites loathe." ...

This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base. -- George W. Bush, Al Smith dinner, 2000 ...

... ** Paul Krugman: "Ezra is ... a little vague about who he means by the Republican establishment; I argue that we’re really talking at this point about a small group of very wealthy donors.... As the old joke by W indicates, these donors actually constitute a sort of different base. And what we’re seeing here is a stark conflict between the two bases.... Everyone still says that DT can’t win this thing, and they may be right. But who, exactly, is supposed to come out on top and how? The money seems to have lost its knack for hoodwinking the voters." CW: Read Klein and Krugman. They're both right. And I love the part of Krugman's post about Bro! & Jeb! ...

... CW: As I wrote some while back, Trump is staking out a platform that appeals to ordinary GOP voters. The product Trump is selling is Trump. So aligning himself with voters is, obviously, good salesmanship & good politics. It is often horrible policy, of course. ... Will the day come that some of the "party establishment" decides that Trump is the one candidate who could beat Hillary? i wonder how the Grand Old Boys will deal with that. ...

... David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: Trump's deportation proposal "would require a massive extension of federal authority into maternity wards and Western Union offices, tracing the parentage of children and money to deny illegal immigrants a comfortable spot in U.S. society.... The American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, estimated that deporting all of the country’s undocumented immigrants would take 20 years and cost between $420 billion and $619 billion. It also found that the move would hurt the economy as workers vanished and would put a vast new strain on the U.S. legal system.... Other strategies laid out by Trump seek to lower legal, as well as illegal, immigration." ...

... Washington Post Editors: Donald Trump's deportation plan is a monumental loser: "What Mr. Trump proposes is nothing less than manufacturing a humanitarian upheaval on a scale rivaling the refugee crisis in Syria." ...

... Since Trump's plan is so stupid. nasty & irresponsible, Scott Walker is taking credit for it. Esther Lee of Think Progress: "... Scott Walker wants credit for fellow contender Donald Trump’s harsh immigration position, saying it’s 'very similar' to the immigration position that Walker supported as Wisconsin governor. 'It’s similar to what I brought up about four or five months ago,' Walker said Monday on Fox News’ 'Fox and Friends' when host Steve Doocy asked whether he supported Trump’s plan. 'Earlier in the year, I was on Fox News Sunday and laid out what I think we should do, which is to secure the border, build the wall, have the technology, have the personnel to make sure it’s safe and secure, enforce the law… and make sure people are here legally. I don’t believe in amnesty.'” ...

... Ed Kilgore: "It would seem that Donald Trump is no longer alone in the GOP presidential field in openly calling for the deportation of all 11 million undocumented people in this country. Scott Walker, who’s gyred and gimbaled on immigration policy for quite some time, is now echoing The Donald in saying they must all be deported before we can even think about letting some of them stay."

I was in Israel earlier this year, they built a 500-mile fence and they have it stacked and it’s lowered terrorist attacks in that region by about 90-plus percent. We need to do the same along our border, -- Scott Walker, Monday

Not too many people visit the West Bank and say, 'You know, I wish America could be more like this.' -- Paul Waldman

Charles Pierce: "... alone among the crowd of candidates, Walker most clearly is running on his record of being a complete prick to the right people – which include teachers and nurses and the people who clean up after Alzheimer's patients in group homes. Running against the right people is a staple of all campaigns, right and left, but it's rarely as clear the raison d'etre of one as it is the raison d'etre of the Walker campaign. It is a toxic combination of belligerence and aggressive victimhood." ...

That's Walker on the left (a position he rarely takes). The other guy in the photo appears to have a full head of hair; he's probably an elite snob who won't stoop to plumb.... Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: Scott Walker enjoys fattening food. Because it's manly. Also, Our Man of Science claims that "his bald spot ... is the result of having bumped his head while fixing a sink years ago and not natural aging." CW: That bump on the head may explain a lot about Scottie, but not his bald spot. ...

... Turns out this is not the first time Scottie has told this ridiculous whopper. Also, it's his wife's fault for making him try to fix the plumbing. ...

... This gives me an excuse to repost one of my favorite photos. Equality is fundamental:

Photo by Pete Souza, 2009.

Sen. Marco Rubio claims in a Politico Magazine essay, to have a swell plan to fix ObummerCare. CW: Haven't read a word of it. ...

... So Me-First Scottie today "will become the first top-tier candidate to deliver a detailed blueprint on what would come next," according to Jennifer Haberkorn & Kyle Cheney of Politico, after he voids ObamaCare on Day One or whatever. As governor of Wisconsin, "Walker used the Affordable Care Act to cut approximately 60,000 people from the state’s Medicaid plan, moving them to subsidized private plans offered through the state’s Obamacare exchange instead. He then used the state’s Medicaid savings to add more of the state’s poorest residents to the Medicaid program." CW: Huh? And you thought the ACA was convoluted. Anyhoo, Haberkorn & Cheney seem to be underwhelmed by Marco's effort, or maybe he's lost his "top-tier" status.

... Greg Sargent figures Scottie's big speech -- wherein he will blame Congress (so a few of his rivals) for failing to stand up to ObamaCare &, in general, President Obama. Walker "seems to have decided that Trump’s surge is rooted partly in those voters’ frustration with the failure of GOP leaders to stop Obama."

The War Party. Brian Beutler: Jeb "Bush has now rolled out, and adhered to, a tangle of views that could be mistaken for his brother’s — void the Iran agreement and possibly attack Iran, rescind President Barack Obama’s 2009 executive order banning torture, and possibly send thousands of U.S. troops back into Iraq—and none of them is even remotely controversial among his co-partisans.... Ripping up the global powers agreement [with Iran] is the predicate for the 'pretty good deal' Republicans have in mind. It’s the whole show."

Steve Benen: "... can we please abandon the myth that [John] Kasich is some kind of 'moderate'? Four years ago, much of the political world agreed that the Republican presidential field looked like crackpots when they said they’d ignore a 10-to-1 budget deal in their favor. Four years later, Kasich is reading from the exact same script.... He doesn’t want to deal with the climate crisis; he opposes marriage equality; he opposes the bipartisan plan on comprehensive immigration reform; and he sees even more tax breaks as the key to economic growth. As a governor, this candidate curtailed voting rights, imposed new restrictions on reproductive rights, and tried to bust labor unions." CW: And crackpot crusade for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Kitty Bennett of the New York Times: "A New York cellphone executive has emerged as a mystery megadonor behind the presidential campaign of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.... But records tie the donation to Ben Nash, the chief executive of PCS Wireless, and a spokesman acknowledged that Mr. Nash was behind the donation."

Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times is baffled as to why Carly Fiorina, who "presided over such a sharp decline in one of America’s great companies," would "promote her business experience on the trail." CW: Fiorina is counting on the ignorance of the GOP voter. Should she become a serious contender for the top job -- which isn't likely -- her opponents will have to tread lightly or be accused of leading yet another battle in the War on Women. (It's okay to attack Hillary Clinton, because she is a certified witch.) ...

... Charles Pierce: "If you don't count Ben Carson, and I don't, the two candidates who have made the greatest strides in the past two months are both people who have bragged about what titans of the American corporate universe they are, as though the American corporate universe hasn't been exposed over the past three decades as a marvelous environment for greed, solipsism, and incompetence; the land of the leveraged buyout, the Cayman bank account, and the credit default swap. When people say that government should run like a business, are they talking about Countrywide? AIG? Lehman Brothers? (Hi, John Kasich!)" ...

... CW: On that Lehman Brothers thing? Also, Hi, Jeb!

This is a little odd. How come Bobby Jindal, whose salary is $130,000/year. has "assets between $3.79 million and $11.3 million"? His wife Supriya runs a children's foundation (that for some reason keeps getting big donations from corporations who have business before the state), but it's not clear how much she contributes financially to the family coffers. (She's a chemical engineer & has worked in the chemical industry in the past. Maybe she still does.) Anyway, the Jindals' financial picture looks awfully good for a young family of five in which one of the spouses has been a career public official & the other heads a foundation which "spends almost all of the money it takes in to buy" stuff for schoolchildren.

Beyond the Beltway

Fracked Lettuce. Clint Rainey of New York: California "Assemblyman Mike Gatto has introduced a bill that would introduce the label, 'Produced using recycled or treated oil-field wastewater.' California's epic drought apparently has hard-up farmers using recycled fracking water for lack of better (i.e., pretty much any other) options...."

Justin Jouvenal & Tom Jackman of the Washington Post: "A former Fairfax County police officer was charged with second-degree murder Monday, nearly two years after he shot and killed an unarmed Springfield[, Virginia,] man as he stood with his hands raised in the doorway of his home. The charge against Adam D. Torres in the killing of 46-year-old John Geer, who had a holstered gun at his feet when he was shot, mark the first time in the 75-year history of the Fairfax County police department that an officer will face criminal prosecution in connection with an on-duty shooting."

Michael Rosenwald & John Cox of the Washington Post: "Lenny B. Robinson, a Maryland man better known as the Route 29 Batman, died Sunday night, when a passing motorist struck his "Batmobile," which had broken down near Hagerstown, Maryland. The black Lamborghini slammed into Robinson, who had exited the vehicle to check the engine. Robinson "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, his brother said, on his ’60s-style Batmobile, a costume that seemed more real than those in the movies, and the trinkets he handed out to children[, often kids in hospitals], always autographed 'Batman.'... He first started wearing the costume because one of his sons, Brandon, was obsessed with the character.... Video of his [2012] encounter in Silver Spring with police, who had stopped him because of a problem with his plates — emblazoned with the Batman symbol — made him an instant Web sensation.”