The Commentariat -- June 7, 2015

Nedra Pickler & Julie Pace of the AP: President "Obama kicked off an overnight visit for the Group of Seven summit of world leaders by focusing on mending relations with host Germany, with a visit to this picturesque Alpine village [Kruen. Germany] with Chancellor Angela Merkel." ...

... Julie Davis: "One year after President Obama rallied core allies to join the United States in punishing Russia for its bellicose ways, he will use a gathering on Sunday of the world's largest industrialized democracies to urge them to stand strong, and together, in isolating the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. But this time, Mr. Obama faces an additional challenge: It is not entirely clear that their efforts are working. The tough economic sanctions that have been the linchpin of American and European efforts to confront Moscow over its annexation of Crimea last year and its continuing aggression in Ukraine have, along with the lower price of oil, exacted a toll on Russia. They may even have helped deter Mr. Putin from escalating his intervention."

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who began his life on the national stage more than four decades ago under the dark cloud of a family tragedy, laid his elder son, Beau, to rest on Saturday, marking yet another moment of grief in a long political career shaped by it. At a funeral Mass that drew about 1,000 mourners, including President Obama and members of the cabinet, former President Bill Clinton, a four-star general and members of Congress, Mr. Biden and his family remembered Joseph Robinette Biden III, who died of brain cancer on May 30 at the age of 46":

... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: "This morning as I watched President Obama give an incredibly moving eulogy for Beau Biden, I couldn't help but think of another political family that has also had to shoulder more than their fair share of grief. That's because today [Saturday] is the 47th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.... It is hard not to wonder how this one man's death changed the trajectory of our country." LeTourneau cites a portion of Kennedy's speech following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. ...

... NPR: "Here's an astonishing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who in 2010 became the second African-American appointed as federal judge in Mississippi. He read it to three young white men before sentencing them for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling 'white power' as they drove off."

New York Times Editors (June 5): CIA torture of prisoners was much worse than the U.S. government admits. "If the fully unredacted story of that treatment ever has a hope of coming out, it won't be through the American government, which continues to hide key details of torture and abuse from the public."

Amanda Terkel & Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "During the 2004 elections, George W. Bush's campaign, managed by a closeted gay man, pushed a series of anti-gay ballot initiatives across the country. The House of Representatives, led by a male speaker who allegedly sexually assaulted a male minor, moved a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage after beating back attempts to strengthen hate crimes legislation. And the White House, led in part by a vice president with a lesbian daughter, eagerly encouraged a conservative evangelical base hostile to gay rights.... [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert wasn't a strident culture warrior during his time in Congress. But he was a vital cog in the anti-gay political machinery that the GOP deployed for political benefit.... During his tenure, he was a clear foe of the LGBT community." ...

... Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "After a relatively slow start to his career as a consultant and lobbyist, J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, became very busy in 2010.... He also made an unusual request to one of his business associates: to find a financial adviser who could come up with a plan for an annuity that would generate a substantial cash payout each year. According to the associate, J. David John, the former speaker also asked that the adviser not be told of Mr. Hastert's involvement. The request came just a few weeks before Mr. Hastert, according to charges in a federal indictment, made his first payment to a man known as 'Individual A' in what was to be a total of $3.5 million." John & Hastert later had a falling-out, & John has sued Hastert.

Your Forever Stamps Are a Bad Investment. Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Postal Service will have to roll back a portion of its largest rate increase in 11 years after a federal court ruled that the higher postage prices in place since January 2014 can't be permanent. Postal regulators had agreed to a 3-cent emergency postage hike for first-class letters, to 49 cents from 46 cents, after the Postal Service said it needed to recoup billions of dollars it lost during the recession.... But regulators set a cap on the amount of revenue USPS could recoup with the higher prices. The cap will be reached this summer.... The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the emergency rates should not become permanent.... As of Friday, it was unclear when the rates will be rolled back and by how much."

Kellie Woodhouse of Inside Higher Education: "It didn't take long for the criticisms to begin rolling in after Harvard University announced a $400 million donation to its engineering college."

Marie's Sports Report

Melissa Hoppert of the New York Times: "American Pharoah, the flashy colt with the smooth stride, won the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, becoming the first Triple Crown winner in a generation and etching himself in the history books":

     ... And now you'll never remember how to spell "pharaoh."

Presidential Race

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship in Salon: "Far from being an outsider, [Bernie] Sanders is paddling his way along the mainstream of American public opinion."

In the New York Review of Books, Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast has a long, ostensible review of Peter Schweizer's Clinton Cash. CW: I haven't the time to read it, so any reviews of the review would be welcome.

Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times: "As Republican presidential hopefuls negotiated a motorcycle ride and pig roast Saturday in Iowa farm country, the race was on for who had more swagger -- the bikers who could become the party's nominee, or the woman senator leading the trip.... 'Joni's 1st annual Roast and Ride' was part fundraiser, part campaign stop on the road to Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucus next year, drawing not only [Scott] Walker and [Rick] Perry, but Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Carly Fiorina. Rubio, who didn't ride but was planning to join the roast, provided much of the buzz as Iowans begin to take a closer look at the candidate who they ranked second, after Walker, in the crowded GOP field, according to a recent Bloomberg Politics-Des Moines Register poll." ...

... MEANWHILE, Jebbie was in Kennebunkport celebrating his mother's 90th birthday & no doubt looking over the new "cottage" Barbara Bush is having built for him there. ...

... AND Who Knows Where This Guy Was? Tyler Bridges of the Washington Post: "Just weeks before he is expected to announce his presidential campaign, Bobby Jindal is at the nadir of his political career. The Republican governor is at open war with many of his erstwhile allies in the business community and the legislature. He spent weeks pushing a 'religious freedom' bill that failed to pass, while having little contact with legislators trying to solve Louisiana's worst budget crisis in 25 years."

Steve Benen on "an alarming concern raised separately by several Republican presidential candidates: the imaginary prospect of Christianity being 'criminalized' in the United States."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Turkish voters delivered a rebuke on Sunday to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his party lost its majority in Parliament in a historic election that dealt a blow to his ambition to rewrite Turkey's Constitution and increase his power."

New York Times: "The State Police and other law enforcement agencies were continuing on Sunday to hunt for two fugitive murderers in the wilderness and rural communities of northern New York, a day after the two men escaped from the maximum-security state prison here. In a news conference on Sunday afternoon, officials said investigators were sifting through more than 150 leads. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the state was offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the inmates, or $50,000 for tips leading to each one."

New York Times: "Ronnie Gilbert, whose crystalline, bold contralto provided distaff ballast for the Weavers, the seminal quartet that helped propel folk music to wide popularity and establish its power as an agent of social change, died on Saturday in Mill Valley, Calif. She was 88."

The Commentariat -- June 6, 2015

Internal links removed.

Nicole Perlroth, et al., of the New York Times: "The same Chinese hackers who breached the records of at least four million government workers through the Office of Personnel Management appear to have been responsible for similar thefts of personal data at two major health care firms, Anthem and Premera, according to cybersecurity experts. The multiple attacks, which began last year and were all discovered this spring, appear to mark a new era in cyberespionage with the theft of huge quantities of data and no clear motive for the hackers.... the attackers seem to be amassing huge databases of personal information about Americans. Some have high-level security clearances, which the Office of Personnel Management handles, but millions of others do not, and the reasons for their records being taken have puzzled investigators." ...

... Brian Bennett & Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times: "The investigation into the cyberattack on computers at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is proceeding on the theory that the hack was directed by the Chinese government and aimed at uncovering sensitive, personal information that could have been used to blackmail or bribe government employees to obtain secrets, officials said Friday. Social Security numbers, email addresses, job performance reviews and other personal information of about four million government workers were siphoned out of the computer servers, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity...."

Jacob Weisberg of Slate: "Rather than leaving [Edward] Snowden's status as a problem for his successor, [President] Obama should make resolving his case part of his presidential legacy as well. His Justice Department could offer Snowden a plea bargain, under which he would not serve prison time in exchange for his cooperation. Or the government could charge Snowden under the standard laws covering disclosures of classified information by government officials.... Snowden clearly broke the law in revealing government secrets. But he did so for valid reasons and with an outcome that now has the endorsement of both the legislative and executive branches. That is reason enough for Obama to show him mercy."

Ashley Halsey of the Washington Post: "In a scathing self-examination, federal regulators acknowledged Friday that for years they failed to adequately address a 57-cent defect in an ignition switch that killed 109 people and injured more than 200 others. The ignition-switch problem, which could prevent air bags from deploying, endured for a dozen years before General Motors recalled 2.6 million cars last year."

Your Tax Dollars at Work. Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "A senior National Weather Service official helped write the job description and set the salary for his own post-retirement consulting post -- then came back to the office doing the same job with a $43,200 raise, the agency's watchdog found. The deputy chief financial officer also demanded that he be paid a $50,000 housing allowance ... in violation of government rules for contractors, one of numerous improprieties in a revolving-door deal sealed with full knowledge of senior agency leaders, according to an investigation by the Commerce Department Inspector General's office.... His procurement of his own post-retirement job appears to be commonplace throughout the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the Weather Service's parent agency."

White House: "In this week's address, the President recognized Immigrant Heritage Month, an occasion that allows us to celebrate our origins as a nation of immigrants":

Gilad Edelman of the New Yorker: "... a legal system formally blind to race is just as often blind to racism." Or How to Get an All-White Jury while Pretending Not to be Racist. Turns out that is pretty easy.

Mark Stern of Slate on how a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit came to strike down some of the worst provisions of Idaho's anti-abortion laws. And, yes, there's an heroic woman at the center of the story: Jennie Linn McCormick, a poor, single mother who terminated her own pregnancy because there were no abortion clinics in her vicinity. And then kept fighting for the rights of other women.

Joel Gehrke of the winger National Review is worried about all the ways a win for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell could backfire on Republicans & make them "complicit" in extending ObamaCare. Via Paul Waldman. ...

... Paige Cunningham of the wingnut Washington Examiner: "Millions of Americans could lose Obamacare subsidies under a Supreme Court ruling this month, but many in the GOP don't need their votes anyway. That's a major political calculus for Tea Party Republicans, who are likely to resist any efforts to extend the subsidies, even temporarily. They're much more worried about angering their base by appearing to concede to Obamacare than whether a handful of constituents lose their subsidies." CW: Yeah, so who cares?

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "A Democratic legal fight against restrictive voting laws enacted in recent years by Republican-controlled state governments is being largely paid for by a single liberal benefactor: the billionaire philanthropist George Soros." CW: This is an excellent example of how not to write a declarative sentence.

Presidential Election

... Clinton begins speaking about 18 min. in. ...

New York Times Editors give Hillary Clinton two thumbs up for her push for expanding voting rights: "it is very encouraging to see Mrs. Clinton championing this central democratic principle so early in the campaign. President Obama said very little on voting rights until deep into his second term.... Making voting easier for all eligible voters should be the epitome of a nonpartisan issue. Unfortunately, stopping people from voting has become a key part of the modern Republican playbook." ...

... Charles Pierce: "The speech that Hillary Rodham Clinton gave at Texas Southern University on Thursday regarding the right to vote even was better than I expected it to be.

And in Florida, when Jeb Bush was governor, state officials conducted a deeply flawed purge of voters before the presidential election of 2000."

     Yeah, she went there. That purge -- which is estimated to have eliminated over 12,000 eligible voters from the rolls in a primary that Bush's dim brother won by a margin of 537 -- was central to the Republican effort to keep the election in Florida within the margin of shenanigans, thereby enabling the Supreme Court to hand the White House to C-Plus Augustus and thereby inaugurate eight full years of utter calamity. That HRC tracks the campaign of voter-suppression back to that ur-event is not merely faithful to history, but also a remarkably shrewd maneuver." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Clinton's embrace of voting rights ... serves to demonstrate to the party's core constituents something elemental, and true: At the current moment, there is only one party that respects their rights as citizens." Chait runs through the GOP's objections to expanding voting opportunities, & they are transparently bogus. ...

... Brian Beutler of the New Republic: Clinton's "strategy involves staking out a variety of progressive issue positions that enjoy broad support, but it's not as straightforward as simply identifying the public sentiment and riding it to victory. The key is to embrace these objectives in ways that makes standard Republican counterspin completely unresponsive, and thus airs out the substantive core of their ideas: Rather than vie for conservative support by inching rightward, Clinton is instead reorienting liberal ideas in ways that make the Republican policy agenda come into greater focus." ...

... Chris Christie bites, making a case that only Fox "News" viewers would buy. Salvadore Rizzo of the Bergen Record: New Jersey "Governor Christie lashed out at Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail Friday, saying her new push to expand voter rolls across the country was a ploy designed 'to commit greater acts of voter fraud.'" ...

... Paul Waldman: "Looks like it's time for some traffic problems at the polling place." ...

... AND Rick Perry Is Still Stupid. Caitlin MacNeil of TPM: "On 'Fox and Friends' Friday morning, Perry ... brought up the requirement to present a photo ID in order to fly on commercial airplanes numerous times while defending his voter ID law. 'When I got on the airline to come up here yesterday, I had to show my photo I.D. Now, Hillary Clinton may not to have had to show an ID to get on a airplane in a long time...' he said. 'She's on a private jet,' Brian Kilmeade, one of the 'Fox and Friends' co-hosts, jumped in to say." CW: It seems Perry is arguing that the reason Clinton doesn't see the need for photo IDs is that she doesn't have to show her ID when she flies on noncommercial planes. Congratulations, Rick. This is even dumber than the fake voter-fraud "rationale." ...

... Steve M.: "... Perry apparently thinks only people who do fly, or can afford to fly, should be able to vote. In 2003, a Department of Transportation survey noted that 'About one out of five adult US residents (18 percent) reported that they had never flown on a commercial airline. Compared to flyers, non-flyers were much more likely to.'"

Robert Costa & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "The presidential candidacy of Ben Carson, a tea party star who has catapulted into the top tier of Republican contenders, has been rocked by turmoil with the departures of four senior campaign officials and widespread disarray among his allied super PACs.... Carson's associates ... [said] the retired neurosurgeon's campaign chairman, national finance chairman, deputy campaign manager and general counsel have resigned since Carson formally launched his bid last month in Detroit. They have not been replaced, campaign aides said.... [Carson's] his campaign has been marked by signs of dysfunction and amateurism.... Two independent super PACs designed to help Carson are instead competing directly with Carson's campaign for donations and volunteers, while campaign chairman Terry Giles resigned last month with the intention of forming a third super PAC." ...

... Neil Irwin of the New York Times explains how a successful campaign is organized. However, when you're a know-it-all like Ben Carson, running under God's direction, you really don't have to bother with all that. It looks as if God is pushing for a return Fox "News" gig for Dr. Ben. Or God is a bad CEO.

Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: Former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on the GOP presidential candidates: "says that Rand Paul scares him to death, Ted Cruz and Scott Walker are not ready for primetime, Rick Perry is not capable enough, and America will not elect another Bush to be president. Of all the candidates, he said Marco Rubio is his favorite." Quite an entertaining read. ...

      ... CW: Coburn really doesn't like Ben Carson. He said in the Sirius XM radio interview which Kaczunski cited that he had 'a personal bone to pick with him on integrity that I witnessed.' The former senator said Carson was asked not to attack President Obama in his National Prayer Breakfast speech but said 'his speech was nothing but an attack on the president.'" In December 2014, Coburn said, "I wouldn't vote for Ben Carson."

To put herself to sleep, Gail Collins repeats factoids about the 2016 presidential candidates.

Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post: "John Edwards will never be president, but everyone running for the job today is cribbing from his campaign." CW: Tankesley covered Edwards in the 2008 campaign, & it sounds as if he still has a man-crush on Edwards. Edwards' campaign policy package was just a repackaging of standard Democratic ideals designed to appeal to a wide populace, so it's hardly a surprise that today's Democratic candidates are repackaging these ideals once again.

Beyond the Beltway

Jean Hopfensperger of the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The Ramsey County Attorney's office filed criminal charges Friday against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for 'failing to protect children' from an abusive priest. The charges stem from the archdiocese's oversight of former priest Curtis Wehmeyer, who is now serving a prison term for abusing two boys while he was pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

On D-Day, our crew took off at 2 a.m. in a formation of 36 B-24s. The pilot was a man named Beckham. We thought we were following the lead element. But when the sun came up, we didn't see anybody; we couldn't find our group. We had been following a light, but the light was some other group. It's a wonder a whole mess of people didn't run into each other that night. We unloaded our bombs after daylight close behind the lines. -- Co-pilot Frank Waterhouse, who was 19 years old on D-Day, from an oral history

News Ledes

New York Times: "Two convicted murderers serving life sentences in adjoining cells staged an elaborate escape from New York's largest state-run prison overnight, fooling guards with makeshift dummies made out of sweatshirts and using power tools to drill a tunnel through the prison's 30-foot-tall walls, officials said. The men remained on the loose late Saturday as a broad swath of law enforcement authorities conducted an extensive manhunt...."

Washington Post: "More than 400 people came midday Saturday to the National World War II Memorial [in Washington, D.C.] for the 71st anniversary of D-Day, the massive landing and battle on the coast of France."

AP: "Jurors on Friday convicted a female Los Angeles police officer of felony assault for repeatedly kicking a handcuffed woman who later died. The jury of 11 women and one man reached its verdict after about two days of deliberations in the trial of Officer Mary O'Callaghan, 50. She pleaded not guilty to assaulting a civilian in the 2012 arrest of Alesia Thomas, 35.

The Commentariat -- June 5, 2015

All internal links removed.

Afternoon Update:

Jean Hopfensperger of the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The Ramsey County Attorney's office filed criminal charges Friday against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for 'failing to protect children' from an abusive priest. The charges stem from the archdiocese's oversight of former priest Curtis Wehmeyer, who is now serving a prison term for abusing two boys while he was pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul."

*****

David Sanger & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Thursday announced what appeared to be one of the largest breaches of federal employees' data, involving at least four million current and former government workers in an intrusion that officials said apparently originated in China.... The target appeared to be Social Security numbers and other 'personal identifying information,' but it was unclear whether the attack was related to commercial gain or espionage." CW: The announcement was almost certainly the administration's "response" to the NSA hacking piece the Times published online yesterday, linked below. ...

... The Washington Post story, by Ellen Nakashima, is here. ...

... They're Just Gonna Do It Anyway. Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of Americans' international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad -- including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show. The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and 'cybersignatures' -- patterns associated with computer intrusions -- that it could tie to foreign governments." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Eric Tucker of the AP: "The growing use of encrypted communications and private messaging by supporters of the Islamic State group is complicating efforts to monitor terror suspects and extremists, U.S. law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Appearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, the officials said that even as thousands of Islamic State group followers around the world share public communications on Twitter, some are exploiting social media platforms that allow them to shield their messages from law enforcement." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ed Snowden in a New York Times op-ed: "Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy -- the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights -- remains under threat.... As you read this online, the United States government makes a note.... As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects."

Tim Devaney of the Hill: "Legislation to fund the Justice Department is chock full of GOP-backed language designed to keep the Obama administration from moving ahead with gun control regulations. The Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, which cruised through the House this week, contains several provisions directed squarely at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) rule-making authority. Under the measure, the ATF would be prohibited from banning certain forms of armor-piercing ammunition or blocking the importation of military-style shotguns. Another provision would block federal agents from creating what critics say is a gun registry." ...

... CW: Here they use the same trick to prevent the President's immigration reform orders (now on hold, BTW). Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A little more than a week after denying President Barack Obama's effort to move forward with controversial executive actions on immigration, a federal appeals court has ordered both sides in the case to file new legal briefs.... The House voted Wednesday in support of an amendment that would bar funding for the Justice Department's defense of the pending appeal as well as the underlying lawsuit."

Mark Hensch of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday he does not expect his chamber will appoint new circuit or Supreme Court justices for President Obama.

Paul Krugman: "... conservatives have long held Texas up as a supposed demonstration that low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor are the keys to prosperity. So it's interesting to note that Texas is looking a lot less miraculous lately than it used to.... the spectacle of the Texas economy coming back to earth, and Kansas sliding over the edge should at the very least make right-wing bombast ring hollow, in the general election if not in the primary. And someday, maybe, even conservatives will once again become willing to look at the facts." CW: Nah.

How to Become a Very Successful Politician. Noah Bierman & Evan Halper of the Los Angeles Times: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) "may lack some of the qualities of previous top party leaders in the House - the grand political vision of Newt Gingrich, the deal-making savvy of Tip O'Neill, the strong arm of Tom DeLay. But McCarthy excels at something else that has become key to leadership in Congress: recruiting candidates and raising money for them.... That spending and fundraising have fueled one of the fastest rises to power in congressional history." CW: Yeah, McCarthy's predecessor Eric Cantor was really good at that stuff, too.

Charles Blow: "How you view 'broken windows' policing completely depends on your vantage point, which is heavily influenced by racial realities and socio-economics. For poor black people, it means that they have to be afraid of the cops as well as the criminals."

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A landmark Environmental Protection Agency report on the impact of hydraulic fracturing has found no evidence that the contentious technique of oil and gas extraction has had a widespread effect on the nation's water supply, the agency said Thursday. Nevertheless, the long-awaited draft report found that the techniques used in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, do have the potential to contaminate drinking water. It notes several specific instances in which the chemicals used in fracking led to contamination of water, including drinking water wells, but it emphasized that the number of cases was small compared with the number of fracked wells." ...

... Natash Geiling of Think Progress: "Industry groups were quick to tout the report as proof of fracking's safety, while environmental groups claimed that the report was hampered by a lack of available information and watered-down by oil and gas interests. The study wasn't a comprehensive survey of all wells, and relied heavily on data already collected by state and federal agencies or willingly submitted by gas and oil companies."

Karl Mathiesen of the Guardian: "Global warming has not undergone a 'pause' or 'hiatus', according to US government research that undermines one of the key arguments used by sceptics to question climate science. The new study reassessed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (Noaa) temperature record to account for changing methods of measuring the global surface temperature over the past century. The adjustments to the data were slight, but removed a flattening of the graph this century that has led climate sceptics to claim the rise in global temperatures had stopped." ...

... CW: Wait, wait! This just prove that Jeb Bush was right: that climate science is "convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you." So, you know, it's silly to trust climate scientists. They're always disagreeing, so fageddaboudit till the science stops advancing & everybody gets on the same page. Bring on the Dark Ages. ...

... Ah, yes, Michael Bastasch, the energy & climate science editor at the right-wing Daily Caller, has NOAA's number: "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year 'pause' in global warming: They 'adjusted' the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record. New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years." Bastasch calls this "fiddling" or "tampering" with the data.

Brian Ross, et al., of ABC News: "In Steve Reinboldt's 1970 high school yearbook, wrestling coach Dennis Hastert wrote that Steve was his 'great, right hand man' as the student equipment manager of the Yorkville, Illinois wrestling team. But Steve was also a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Hastert, Steve's sister [Jolene] said today in an interview with ABC News. It is the first time an alleged Hastert victim has been identified by name since his indictment for lying to the FBI and violating federal banking laws to cover-up past misconduct. Hastert, due in court next week, has not responded to the allegations.... Jolene said that Steve told her the abuse lasted throughout Steve&'s four years of high school.... Her brother also spent time with Hastert as a member of an Explorers troop, which Hastert ran.... Reinboldt died of AIDS in 1995." ...

... CW: So obviously Steve Reinboldt was not "Individual A" in the Hastert indictment. Assuming the allegations have merit, Hastert has been a serial abuser.

Dan Williams of Reuters: "The Israeli military sees potential security benefits in an expected international deal curbing Iran's nuclear program, a senior officer was quoted as saying on Thursday in an unexpected analysis of the issue. Prime Minister Netanyahu has presented the planned deal as a threat to Israel. But in a closed-door briefing to Israeli reporters published in part by local media, the officer said the deal - if agreed by its June 30 deadline - could provide clarity on whether Iran is on course to a bomb." Via Paul Waldman.

Margaret Talbot on Abercrombie's foolish exclusivist policies & how they led not just to the company's defeat in the Supreme Court but also to its slumping sales.

Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "Jack Warner, the former FIFA vice president who was among 14 people indicted by a United States grand jury as part of an inquiry into corruption in world soccer, says he knows why the organization's president, Sepp Blatter, announced plans to step down from soccer's governing body.... Mr. Warner, who said he feared for his own life, also said he had evidence linking FIFA to his country's 2010 election.... Mr. Warner's sons, Daryan and Daryll, are also cooperating with the authorities, having secretly pleaded guilty in 2013 after they tried to deposit more than $600,000 in nearly two dozen United States bank accounts in an attempt to avoid detection. During a rambling and sometimes incoherent seven-minute television address..., [which was] a paid political advertisement, he said he had reams of documents, including copies of checks, linking Mr. Blatter and other senior FIFA officials to an effort to manipulate a 2010 election in Trinidad and Tobago." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... AP: "Military intelligence officers have raided the headquarters of the Venezuelan Football Federation amid the spiraling FIFA scandal. Venezuela's public prosecutor's office said agents raided the Venezuelan organization's offices Wednesday to gather evidence for a criminal investigation. The organization's former head, Rafael Esquivel, was detained in Switzerland last week along with six other FIFA officials accused of taking bribes." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Presidential Race

Peggy Fikac of the Houston Chronicle: "Former Gov. Rick Perry announced for president Thursday with a promise to 'restore hope' to Americans left behind by the economy at home and unsettled by chaos abroad. 'We have the power to make things new again, to project America's strength again, and to get our economy going again,' he said at a small airport hangar in the Dallas area, backed by veterans against a backdrop formed by a C-130 plane of the type he flew while in the Air Force. 'And that is exactly why today I am running for the presidency of the United States of America.'" CW: Bigger news: got through speech without once saying "oops." I still think his chances would be better running for president of the Republic of Texas. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... CW: However, I have to admit Perry is better-prepared this time around. Why, he even has his own rap-country theme song. If you can't quite figure out what a rap-country song is, Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed explains. ...

    ... HOWEVER, as Steve M. documents, it would appear that the country Perry loves ever so much is the one that flies this flag.

... Washington Post Editors: "Voters should evaluate [Rick Perry] on the terms he suggests -- on real measures of his judgment.... Mr. Perry's 'simple formula' [of low taxes & light regulation] ... included fighting several counterproductive ideological wars that have hurt Texans. His battles against Environmental Protection Agency clean-air rules were as extreme as they were unsuccessful. Even though Texas had the nation's highest uninsured rate at the outset of health-care reform, he rejected federal funds to expand its Medicaid program, irrationally leaving a pile of money on the table and low-income residents with few or no real coverage options. Mr. Perry's deployment of the Texas National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border was simple grandstanding on immigration."

Hunter Walker of Business Insider: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) offered a somewhat confusing explanation of his Iraq policy in an appearance on Fox News' 'Outnumbered' on Thursday. Rubio seemed to express support for US troops being present in Iraq, but he maintained this did not represent the controversial 'nation-building' philosophy that led to a protracted American military presence in that country following the US invasion in 2003.... 'It's not nation-building. We are assisting them in building their nation,' Rubio said...." (Emphasis added.) CW: As I have noted in the past Marco is a master at meaningless double-speak. This is a classic example. ...

... NONETHELESS, Brent Budowsky, a Democrat, writes in the Hill: "Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) is the most interesting GOP presidential candidate in the 2016 field, a field that is becoming a party embarrassment.... It includes candidates who are egotistical vanity players, unelectable rightist ideologues, talk show wannabes and book sale promoters, and it features only one woman, whose only qualification is a failed tenure as a CEO and whose only purpose in the campaign would be to act as the female Republican stalking the female Democrat who could be America's first female president."

Catherine Thompson of TPM: "Endorsements from Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, of TLC's '19 Kids and Counting,' have disappeared from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's (R) presidential campaign website. The Duggar endorsements enjoyed top billing on the campaign site's 'I Like Mike' sidebar on May 22, the day Huckabee issued a full-throated defense of the family following the publication of a 2006 police report that showed the Duggar's eldest son, Josh, was investigated for molesting five underage girls when he was a teenager. Parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said that four of the victims were Josh's sisters, while the fifth was a babysitter, during an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly that aired Wednesday night.... Archived versions of the campaign site show that the endorsements were removed sometime Monday night.... When a reporter on Tuesday asked Huckabee whether the Duggars would be joining him on the campaign trail, the former governor responded "I don't know, it'll be up to them...," according to video captured by BuzzFeed." CW: So Mikey is ambivalent about child molestation & incest. That's an improvement.

Ron Fornier of the National Journal: "... Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and other GOP presidential candidates critical of Obama's formulation [of American exceptionalism] are making a mistake with their retro pitch to a populace that has always looked to the future.... The term 'American exceptionalism,' first used with respect to the United States by Alexis de Tocqueville, refers to the notion that this country differs qualitatively from other developed nations because of its national credo, ethnic diversity, and revolution-sprung history. It is often expressed as superiority.... Obama's concept of American exceptionalism is not, as critics say, something smaller. It's Reagan-plus: a striving city under constant construction." CW: Yes, Ron Fournier. Because a thousand monkeys typing → Shakespeare sonnet.

Paul Waldman on "why many of the GOP presidential candidates are repeating a narrative of victimhood and oppression that has become common on the religious right:... Call it empathizing or pandering, but the candidates know it isn't enough to say 'I agree with you on the issues' -- you have to demonstrate that you feel what they feel and look at the world the same way they do. That's true to a degree of any constituency group, but it may be particularly important with voters who feel as besieged as social conservatives do today." ...

... Robert Costa & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "... among the social conservatives who are a powerful force within the Republican Party..., the widespread acceptance of [Bruce] Jenner's evolution from an Olympic gold medalist whose masculinity was enshrined on a Wheaties box to a shapely woman [Caitlyn] posing suggestively on the cover of Vanity Fair was a reminder that they are losing the culture wars. Across social media, blogs and talk radio this week, conservatives painted an apocalyptic view of America.... The GOP's struggle with the issue was evident by the fact that -- although President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats uniformly praised Jenner's bravery -- no top-tier Republican candidate had anything to say about her this week."

Amy Chozick of the New York Times: "Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday accused Republicans including her potential rivals Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Perry of 'deliberately trying to stop' young people and minorities -- both vital Democratic constituencies -- from exercising their right to vote, as she presented an ambitious agenda to make it easier for those groups and other Americans to participate in elections. Speaking at Texas Southern University [in Houston] in front of her largest crowd yet as a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton accused Republicans generally of enacting state voting laws based on what she called 'a phantom epidemic of election fraud' because they are 'scared of letting citizens have their say.'" ...

     ... CW: Chozick might have taken the trouble to note, somewhere in her report, that Clinton's "allegations" are well-supported by the facts. Instead, she followed the she said/he said playbook, citing an RNC spokesman's rebuttal. ...

     ... Ferinstance. Ari Berman of the Nation: "From 2011 to 2015, 395 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and 21 states have adopted new laws making it harder to vote, 14 of which will be in effect for the first presidential cycle in 2016.... [Clinton's] policy proposals would make it easier for millions of Americans to cast a ballot and participate in the political process. Clinton's speech signaled that voting rights will be a major issue in the 2016 [presidential] race." ...

... Adrian Carrasquillo of BuzzFeed: "Hillary Clinton called for universal, automatic voter registration for every citizen when they turn 18, at a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston, one of the largest historically black colleges in the nation." ...

... Dana Milbank: "There doesn't have to be smoke to give the appearance of fire at the Clinton Foundation. The sprawling charity has sucked in so much cash from so many sources that, with some creativity, it can be tied to virtually any skullduggery.... [Hillary] Clinton and her husband have only themselves to blame for making themselves vulnerable to guilt-by-association attacks.... At a time of rising populist backlash against Wall Street, inequality and wealth-purchased privilege, there is no Democrat more closely tied to the rich and the powerful than Clinton. At a time when Democrats need to draw contrasts with Republicans by sticking up for the little guy, Clinton's solicitation of -- and favors for -- the powerful make her an inauthentic messenger." ...

... CW: Just as inauthentic as Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt. Noblesse oblige, vous savez. Maybe voters should choose Ted Cruz instead, because he authentically grew up poor.

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post on why formerly solid Republicans Lincoln Chafee & Jim Webb are now Democrats (Hillary Clinton, too, was once a Republican, though she changed her party affiliation early in life): "Polarization in the House and Senate is now at the highest level since the end of Reconstruction, according to at least one measure. And it's true that both parties have moved outward. But the polarization has been asymmetric, with Republicans having moved much further right than Democrats have moved left.... If there isn't room for Nixon and Reagan in today's shrunken GOP tent, there definitely isn't space for centrists such as Chafee and Webb."

Beyond the Beltway

AP: "Guam has become the first U.S. territory to recognize gay marriage after a federal judge struck down the prohibition."

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck and the Police Department's independent watchdog have determined that two officers were justified in fatally shooting Ezell Ford, a mentally ill black man whose killing last year sparked protests and debate over the use of deadly force by police, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. Department investigators found evidence indicating that Ford had fought for control of one officer's gun, bolstering claims the officers made after the shooting, said two sources...."

Politico: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden greeted thousands of mourners in the sanctuary of St. Anthony of Padua's church on Friday afternoon as they paid their respects at a wake for his beloved eldest son."

Washington Post: "Tariq Aziz, a top minister for Saddam Hussein who served as Iraq's international spokesman for more than 20 years and was perhaps the government's most recognizable figure after the longtime dictator, died June 5 at a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. He was believed to be 79."

Bloomberg News: "Payrolls climbed in May by the most in five months and worker pay accelerated, showing companies were upbeat about the U.S. economy's prospects after an early-year slump. The 280,000 advance in payrolls exceeded the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey and followed a revised 221,000 April increase, figures from the Labor Department showed Friday in Washington."

Guardian: "Twenty million Yemenis, nearly 80% of the population, are in urgent need of food, water and medical aid, in a humanitarian disaster that aid agencies say has been dramatically worsened by a naval blockade imposed by an Arab coalition with US and British backing. Washington and London have quietly tried to persuade the Saudis, who are leading the coalition, to moderate its tactics, and in particular to ease the naval embargo, but to little effect."