The Commentariat -- March 25, 2014

Internal links removed.

** Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency's once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that -- if approved by Congress -- would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials. Under the proposal, they said, the N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans' calling habits. The bulk records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than they normally would. And the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order." ...

     ... CW: Why, this does sound like an election-year issue to me. By contrast, a proposed House bill would strengthen rather than weaken the NSA's data collection program: it "would have the court issue an overarching order authorizing the program, but allow the N.S.A. to issue subpoenas for specific phone records without prior judicial approval."

Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "President Obama and the leaders of the biggest Western economies agreed on Monday to exclude President Vladimir V. Putin from the Group of 8, suspending his government's 15-year participation in the diplomatic forum and further isolating his country. In a joint statement after a two-hour, closed-door meeting of the four largest economies in Europe, along with Japan and Canada, the leaders of the seven nations announced that a summit meeting planned for Sochi, Russia, in June will now be held in Brussels -- without Russia's participation." ...

... Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "A bipartisan proposal to provide more than $1 billion in aid to the new Ukrainian government survived a procedural vote in the Senate Monday evening, setting it up for final passage later this week. But the vote came after Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) suggested that Republicans may have helped Russia annex Crimea by delaying the vote." ...

... Here are the full remarks delivered yesterday by President Obama & Prime Minister Rutte of the Netherlands at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam:

Gene Robinson: "Blaming poverty on the mysterious influence of 'culture' is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to address the problem. That's the real issue with what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said about distressed inner-city communities. Critics who accuse him of racism are missing the point. What he's really guilty of is providing a reason for government to throw up its hands in mock helplessness." ...

... Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "The long-term unemployed are not lazy. Nor are they coddled, hammocked or enjoying a coordinated, taxpayer-funded vacation. They are, however, extremely unlucky -- and getting unluckier by the day."

Simon Maloy of Salon makes a point different from, but vaguely related to, one I made yesterday. Maloy sees the day coming when the Koch brothers & the GOP agendas diverge: "As extreme as they often are and as infuriatingly obstructionist as Republicans can be, they are still vulnerable to prevailing public sentiment and beholden to the realities of governing. The Kochs answer only to themselves. They act according to self-interest and the interests of their tax bracket." There are cracks emerging, at the state level, between the Koch agenda & that of local elected Republicans.

Charles Pierce: "Bravo to Stephanie Simon of Tiger Beat On The Potomac for her deep reporting on how taxpayer dollars are being used to fund the teaching of creationist nonsense in direct conflict with the Constitution, several decisions in the federal courts, over 200 years of scientific achievement, and basic common sense.... This week, the 'religious liberty' scam in the Hobby Lobby case is going before the Supreme Court. I am sure that there will be a 'religious liberty' argument made in defense of making American students dumber when they get out of school than they were when they went in. Dear Mother of Jesus, we are a heavily armed nation of fkwits." ...

... Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog has a long, informative post on the so-called "religious liberty" cases the Court will hear today. ...

     ... Update: Here's Denniston's take on this morning's oral arguments. CW: Please don't tell me the right cares about "family values" when the winger justices appear to be ready to let strangers decide what medical treatment -- and specifically treatment that determines who actually is in a family -- a woman can have. (BTW, Hobby Lobby pays its workers more than do its competitors -- well above minimum wage, even for part-timers.)

... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "There's something that makes the current Supreme Court different from some of its recent predecessors. The justices got religion." ...

     ... CW: Worth noting, as Barnes does not: this puts the Court even more out of touch with the American public, which is becoming less, not more, religious. (The liberals on the Court, as Barnes details, are not strict adherents to their faiths.) ...

... The most righteous president of my lifetime:

Not. Our. Fault. (But We'll Ruin You if You Say It Is.) Hilary Stout, et al., of the New York Times: "It was nearly five years ago that any doubts were laid to rest among engineers at General Motors about a dangerous and faulty ignition switch. At a meeting on May 15, 2009, they learned that data in the black boxes of Chevrolet Cobalts confirmed a potentially fatal defect existed in hundreds of thousands of cars. But in the months and years that followed, as a trove of internal documents and studies mounted, G.M. told the families of accident victims and other customers that it did not have enough evidence of any defect in their cars...."

Gossip Report. Fred Barbash of the Washington Post: "Reid Cherlin, a former White House press aide, has written a critical look at the first lady's office in the current issue of the New Republic. Entitled, 'The Worst Wing: How the East Wing Shrunk Michelle Obama,' the piece consists primarily of unnamed former aides complaining about her 'leadership style' and their inability to cultivate a good relationship with her.... Cherlin worked in the 2008 Obama campaign and was an assistant press secretary in the White House until March 2011." ...

... CW: Cherlin's piece, which I haven't gotten around to scanning, is here. Nice that the New Republic published it when the First Lady & her top staff are on the other side of the world.

Beware, people. Some crooks look like this.... Eric Lipton of the New York Times: " Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington, the highest-ranking woman in the House leadership and a rising star in the party, may have improperly used her House office staff and financial resources to help bolster her political career, the Office of Congressional Ethics has concluded." CW: Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the link. I'm shocked, shocked that Mrs. American Pie would cheat the taxpayers & compromise her staff in this way. Why, she seemed evah so sweet & wholesome. As Pepe suggests, the successful thief does not "disgruntle" the help. ...

... Kyung Song of the Seattle Times: " The House Ethics Committee on Monday declined to open a formal investigation into allegations that U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers misused her campaign and congressional funds -- a decision that rules out potential ethics charges or sanctions against the Spokane Republican for now. However, two lawmakers on the bipartisan panel will continue reviewing the complaints, which were filed in 2013 by Todd Winer, McMorris Rodgers' former spokesman."

The Washington Post debunks every premise of a Koch brothers anti-ObamaCare ad targeting Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado:

... And yet. And yet. The Post gives this lying piece of crap only two Pinocchios.

Beyond the Beltway

Harvey Rice, et al., of the Houston Chronicle: "The Houston Ship Channel, where up to 168,000 gallons of oil were spilled after a barge and a tanker collided last weekend, will remain closed until Tuesday, Coast Guard officials said late Monday.... Oil washed up on tourist beaches in Galveston Monday, two days after the collision, an official said. Government records show the Miss Susan has been involved in a string of 20 accidents and incidents reported to the Coast Guard in the past dozen years, including two other accidents that occurred when the boat was pushing barges containing oil or asphalt."

AP: "The lawyer hired to represent North Carolina's environmental agency during a federal investigation into its regulation of Duke Energy's coal ash dumps once represented the utility company in a different criminal probe. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources has hired Mark Calloway of Charlotte to help respond to 20 grand jury subpoenas the agency and its employees have received after the Feb. 2 spill at Duke's Eden plant, which coated 70 miles of the Dan River in toxic sludge.... A former federal prosecutor who now specializes in white-collar defense, Calloway represented Duke during a 2004 federal investigation into the company's accounting practices."

David Schwartz of Reuters: "A federal judge admonished Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and a chief deputy on Monday for critical remarks directed at a sweeping court ruling that found their deputies racially profiled Latino drivers.... 'I intend to have my order followed,' said U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, who required Arpaio and [Chief Deputy Jerry] Sheridan to attend the court hearing. Snow ordered Arpaio last year to stop using race as a factor when making law enforcement decisions...."

Michael Van Sickler of the Tampa Bay Times: "Changes adopted Wednesday to a House bill expanding the scope of Florida's controversial 'stand your ground' law would severely limit access to court records in the self-defense cases.... A 2012 Tampa Bay Times investigation reviewed 200 cases, including ones that wouldn't be available if lawmakers approve the new language, and found that the law was used inconsistently and led to disparate results.... [Rep. Matt] Gaetz,] who filed the amendment] has been a forceful advocate for the 'stand your ground' law. He famously vowed last year that he wasn't going to change 'one damn comma' in the law after hearings were announced in the wake of George Zimmerman's acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

John Reitmeyer & Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record: "A story published in The New York Times quoting the New York attorney leading the probe [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie launched in January is the first hint there is evidence to back Christie's claims that he played no role in the lane closure plot carried out by a top aide and his appointees at the Port Authority.... Critics have faulted Christie's internal review, saying it was being headed by an attorney with deep ties to the governor's mentor, Rudy Giuliani, and to the Port Authority itself. And one of the lawyers who, according to a source, is interviewing Christie's staff for this review earned a contract from Christie when he was U.S. attorney and her daughter served as an intern in the governor's office." See also yesterday's Commentariat.

Anthony York & Mark Barabak of the Los Angeles Times: "Late in life, at age 75 and apparently done seeking higher office, [California Gov. Jerry] Brown has reinvented himself again, this time as the anti-politician politician. He shuns most trappings of the office. There's no motorcade, no entourage. The governor showed up at the elections department with a lone campaign advisor and his wife, who snapped a photo using her smart phone. Brown fashions many of his own speeches, veto messages and even press releases. His staff in the governor's office is about half that of his Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who employed as many as 230."

Presidential Election 2016

Matea Gold & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife plowed more than $92 million into efforts to help mostly losing candidates in the 2012 elections, is undertaking a new strategy for 2016 -- to tap his fortune on behalf of a more mainstream Republican with a clear shot to win the White House, according to people familiar with his thinking."

News Lede

Washington Post: "Oleksandr Muzychko, an ultra-nationalist member of Ukraine's recent protests who was wanted in Russia for alleged war crimes, was shot dead late Monday in the western Ukrainian city of Rivne, according to reports by Russian news outlets, RT and Interfax. There were conflicting accounts of what happened to the man also known as Sashko Biliy."

The Commentariat -- March 24, 2014

** Paul Krugman: "The drift toward oligarchy continues," thanks in large part to Republican policies. ...

... CW: I wonder where the conservatives are who hate this. After all, those so-called intellectuals & scribes who work at think tanks & winger rags are mostly ordinary working people. Yes, they know who's buttering their bread, but at some point, aren't they too going to revolt against policies that are directly hurting them? They can't all be so stupid or so shortsighted as to think advocating for Koch-friendly policies will be to their ultimate benefit. Where is the outrage on the right?

CW: Here's what I wrote on March 19 (or maybe 18): Ben Casselman of Nate Silver's new FiveThirtyEight venture susses out whether or not more Americans are trying to sustain themselves in minimum- & low-wage jobs. If Casselman's analysis -- which makes at least one ridiculous assumption & expresses complete ignorance of factors contributing to low wages ("Economists aren't sure"), then I am singularly unimpressed with Silver's product. ...

... Here's Krugman yesterday: "Timothy Egan joins the chorus of those dismayed by Nate Silver's new FiveThirtyEight. I'm sorry, but I have to agree: so far it looks like something between a disappointment and a disaster.... Unfortunately, Silver seems to have taken the wrong lesson from his election-forecasting success. In that case, he pitted his statistical approach against campaign-narrative pundits, who turned out to know approximately nothing. What he seems to have concluded is that there are no experts anywhere, that a smart data analyst can and should ignore all that. But not all fields are like that -- in fact, even political analysis isn't like that, if you talk to political scientists instead of political reporters. So, for example, before glancing at some correlation and asserting causation, you really should talk to the researchers." ...

... CW: It seems that Silver, like that other wunderkind Ezra Klein (and perhaps Glenn Greenwald, too), has bitten off more than he can chew. However, I wouldn't worry too much if their teenaged-style rebellions against their buttinsky MSM editors are failures. These are smart guys. A big flop can be a big learning experience -- if the flopper is indeed smart enough to heed the lesson.

Walter Dellinger, in a Washington Post op-ed, argues that access to contraception is a "test of equality." He recounts some of the arguments in Griswold v. Connecticut. ...

... Brian Beutler: The Hobby Lobby "case will test what's more sacred to this court: Corporate imperatives or so-called religious liberties."

Carrie Brown & Tal Kopan of Politico: "President Barack Obama said on Monday that Europe and the U.S. are 'united' on Ukraine, kicking off a series of talks with foreign leaders this week aimed at exerting pressure on Russia. Obama spoke briefly to the press with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam after landing Monday morning. Obama later met with President Xi Jinping of China at the U.S. ambassador's residence here." ...

... Kathleen Hennessey of the Los Angeles Times: "The fight over control and influence in Ukraine should not be seen as a Cold War-era battle, President Obama said in an interview released Monday as he opened a European trip certain to be dominated by discussion of the West's response to Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula." ...

... Reuters: "Barack Obama arrives on Monday morning in the Netherlands, where he will try to gauge how far European allies are willing to go to stop Moscow from moving deeper into Ukraine after annexing Crimea. The US president is visiting Europe for talks with fellow leaders of the Group of Seven industrial democracies, when he will try to persuade them to increase pressure on Russia."

Carol Morello & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "U.S. and Ukrainian officials warned Sunday that Russia may be poised to expand its territorial conquest into eastern Ukraine and beyond, with a senior NATO official saying that Moscow might even order its troops to cross Ukraine to reach Moldova."

Stephanie Simon of Politico: "Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies. Now a major push to expand these voucher programs is under way from Alaska to New York, a development that seems certain to sharply increase the investment." ...

... Katie Halper of AlterNet, in Salon, on how school vouchers provide taxpayer-funded teaching of goofy conservative/religious ideas. One example: the Great Depression was a hoax.

Evie Salomon of CBS "News": "This past week marked the 46th anniversary of the My Lai massacre, in which 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were massacred by U.S. troops in 1968. It's one of the most shameful chapters in American military history, and now documents held at the Nixon Presidential Library paint a disturbing picture of what happened inside the Nixon administration after news of the massacre was leaked. The documents, mostly hand-written notes from Nixon's meetings with his chief of staff H.R. 'Bob' Haldeman, lead some historians to conclude that President Richard Nixon was behind the attempt to sabotage the My Lai court-martial trials and cover up what was becoming a public-relations disaster for his administration."

Senate Races

Nate Silver: "We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six [Senate] seats and capture the chamber. The Democrats' position has deteriorated somewhat since last summer, with President Obama's approval ratings down to 42 or 43 percent from an average of about 45 percent before. Furthermore, as compared with 2010 or 2012, the GOP has done a better job of recruiting credible candidates, with some exceptions." ...

... Alex Roarty of the National Journal: "In an unusual step, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Monday issued a rebuttal the famed statistician's prediction -- made a day earlier -- that Republicans were a 'slight favorite' to retake the Senate. Silver was wrong in 2012, the political committee's Guy Cecil wrote in a memo, and he'll be wrong again in 2014. 'In fact, in August of 2012 Silver forecast a 61 percent likelihood that Republicans would pick up enough seats to claim the majority,' Cecil said. "Three months later, Democrats went on to win 55 seats."

Beyond the Beltway

Christie's Lawyers Clear Christie. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "With his office suddenly engulfed in scandal over lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey two months ago summoned a pair of top defense lawyers from an elite law firm to the State House and asked them to undertake an extensive review of what had gone wrong. Now, after 70 interviews and at least $1 million in legal fees to be paid by state taxpayers, that review is set to be released, and according to people with firsthand knowledge of the inquiry, it has uncovered no evidence that the governor was involved in the plotting or directing of the lane closings." CW: See? I knew Christie was totally innocent & now that's an indisputable fact. Hope New Jersey taxpayers are satisfied. "The investigation's most significant obstacle was the lack of access to the three figures at the center of the lane closings -- [Bridget] Kelly, the author of the infamous 'time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee' email; Bill Stepien, the governor's former aide and campaign manager; and David Wildstein, a Christie ally at the Port Authority — who all declined to be interviewed." CW: Eh. Details, details.

News Ledes

Seattle Times: "Fourteen people are confirmed dead from the massive mudslide in Snohomish County, after searchers found six more bodies this afternoon."

New York Times: "A federal jury on Monday found five associates of the convicted swindler Bernard L. Madoff guilty on 31 counts of aiding one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. The case centered around whether or not the employees had committed securities fraud and other deceptive acts to knowingly mislead auditors and investors in Madoff Securities. The trial in the United States District Court in Manhattan went on for more than five months...."

Chicago Tribune: "More than 30 people were injured this morning when a CTA Blue Line train ran into a platform at O'Hare International Airport and came to rest on an escalator, an accident that could close the station for up to 24 hours...."

New York Times: "Russia and Russian state companies have increased the economic pressure on the new pro-Western government in Kiev over the past week, closing the border to most trucks, shutting a Ukrainian factory in Russia and yet again raising the price of natural gas." ...

... AP: "A Ukrainian air force commander is being held after his base in Crimea was stormed by pro-Russian forces, and the acting president called for his release Sunday."

New York Times: "Japan will announce Monday that it will turn over to Washington more than 700 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium and a large quantity of highly enriched uranium, a decades-old research stockpile that is large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons, according to American and Japanese officials."

AP: "A court in Egypt on Monday sentenced to death 529 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on charges of murdering a policeman and attacking police, convicting them after only two sessions in one of the largest mass trials in the country in decades. The verdicts are subject to appeal and would likely be overturned, rights lawyers said. But they said the swiftness and harshness of the rulings on such a large scale underlined the extent to which Egypt's courts have been politicized and due process has been ignored...." CW: Sounds like an attempt to legalize mass murder.

Washington Post: "President Obama has ordered a sharp increase in U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to Uganda and sent U.S. military aircraft there for the first time in the ongoing effort to hunt down warlord Joseph Kony across a broad swath of central Africa."

Washington Post: "Observers on a Chinese search plane on Monday spotted some 'suspicious objects' in the southern Indian Ocean -- two large floating objects and many smaller white ones -- as the search for the missing Malaysian Airline flight entered its third week." ...

     ... The Guardian has live updates. ...

     ... UPDATE. Washington Post: "Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was lost in the southern Indian Ocean, effectively removing all hope that it might have survived the still unexplained diversion from its flight path more than two weeks ago. Reading from a prepared statement, Najib said new information from satellite data showed that the plane's last location was 'in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth,' a city on Australia's west coast." ...

     ... UPDATE 2. Los Angeles Times: "The British company whose satellite data helped direct search efforts for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 toward the south Indian Ocean said about two weeks ago that it had received 'routine' and 'automated' signals from the missing Boeing 777.... While the Boeing 777's transponders and communications systems were disabled, the airplane's satellite terminal was still on, "pinging" to try to maintain a connection with a satellite."

The Commentariat -- March 23, 2014

Internal links removed.

In anticipation of President Obama's meeting with Pope Francis this Thursday, Jason Horowitz of the New York Times examines Obama's many interactions with the Roman Catholic Church.

David Sanger & Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times: "American officials have long considered Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the United States for fear that the company would create 'back doors' in its equipment that could allow the Chinese military or Beijing-backed hackers to steal corporate and government secrets. But even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents [provided by Edward Snowden] show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors -- directly into Huawei's networks."

New York Times Editors: "Hobby Lobby ... and Conestoga Wood Specialties ... are not religious organizations, nor are they affiliated with religious organizations. But the owners say they are victims of an assault on religious liberty because they personally disapprove of certain contraceptives. They are wrong, and the Supreme Court's task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees."

David Morgan of Reuters: "The Obama administration will soon issue new Obamacare guidelines allowing people to enroll in health coverage after a March 31 deadline, but only under certain circumstances, according to sources close to the administration. The sources said the new federal guidelines for consumers in the 36 states served by the federal health insurance marketplace and its website, HealthCare.gov, would allow people to enroll after March 31 if they had tried earlier and were prevented by system problems including technical glitches." ...

... Lisa Zamosky of the Los Angeles Times has tips for last-minute ObamaCare shopping. ...

... ** Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "In the poorest state in the nation, where supper is fried, bars allow smoking, chronic disease is rampant and doctors are hard to come by, Obamacare rolls into town in a lime green bus. It took some real convincing by the Obama administration and a leap of faith by one state Republican official to get one of the nation's largest insurance companies -- Humana -- to set up shop across Mississippi. Virtually no other insurer was willing to do so, discouraged by the acute health needs here and most elected officials' outright hostility to the law. Four months and more than 200 bus stops later, enrollment numbers here remain dismal. Only 9 percent of the state's Obamacare-eligible population have signed up...." ...

     ... CW: I was about to cite Haberkorn's report as evidence that Politico does have some serious reporters (and it does) when I read this disclaimer at the bottom of the report: "This story was produced with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, a program of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism's California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships." So, if you pay Politico to publish important content, they'll do so.

Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker on President Obama's Supreme Court "farm team": a group of Obama-appointed judges from which he might choose to replace a current justice.

** Gregor Schmitz of Der Spiegel interviews mega-financier George Soros on the future of Europe. The interview, which appears in the New York Review of Books, is excerpted from their upcoming book. ...

Nicole Flatow of Think Progress: "A Buddhist student and his family won a settlement last week against a Louisiana school district where the student's religion was ridiculed in class as 'stupid,' the teacher taught that evolution is 'impossible,' and that the bible is '100 percent true.' The court-approved consent decree prohibits future religious discrimination in a school district that had portraits of Jesus Christ in the halls and a 'lighted, electronic marquee' outside one school that scrolls Bible verses." Via Steve Benen. The underlying report, by Heather Weaver of the ACLU is interesting/disturbing, too.

... George Packer of the New Yorker on Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Rod Nordland of the New York Times: "... about 13 years after the Bamian Buddhas were blasted into rubble [by the Taliban], the world faces a new quandary: whether to leave the gaping gashes in the cliff where the giant statues once stood, to rebuild the Buddhas from what pieces were left, or to make copies of them.... Opinion is passionately split. The major donor countries that would have to finance any restoration say the site should be left as it is, at least for now. The Afghan government wants at least one of the statues rebuilt."

Beyond the Beltway

Paul Egan & Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press: " The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, after first signaling it would not intervene in Michigan's gay marriage case until Tuesday, posted a new order late Saturday imposing a stay in the case until Wednesday. That means U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman's Friday order declaring unconstitutional Michigan's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is temporarily stayed, and clerks will no longer be able to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples before Wednesday at the earliest."

AP: "Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox [D] is resigning from his leadership post and will not run for re-election, he said Saturday, a day after federal and state authorities raided his Statehouse office and home as part of a criminal investigation that they would not detail." ...

... Gregory Smith & Katherine Gregg have the Providence Journal story, with nothing further on the nature of the investigation. They do cite Steven O'Donnell, the superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police who said, "'Fox knows what's going on.... He's certainly aware of what happened' Friday and why it happened."

Gubernatorial Race

Maureen Dowd interviews California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times: Glenn Champ, "one of four gubernatorial candidates introduced to California Republicans recently, is a registered sex offender who spent more than a decade in state prison, convicted of crimes including voluntary manslaughter and assault with intent to commit rape.... Champ's rap sheet is lengthy. Court records show that in 1992, he pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed firearm. In 1993, he was convicted of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and as a result was placed on the state's sex-offender registry. In March 1998, he accepted a plea deal on a charge of loitering to solicit a prostitute; later that year, he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge after hitting a man with his vehicle, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to court records."

Senate Race

Daniel Strauss of TPM (March 20): "North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-NC) has listed two different colleges as his alma mater. Tillis, who's running in the GOP primary to face Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), is a graduate of the University of Maryland but he actually went to the independent online school University of Maryland University College. Tillis' LinkedIn page listed the University of Maryland at College Park as where he got a Bachelor of Science Degree in Technology Management, Technology & Project Management. Similarly on Tillis's biography page on his House Speaker website, Tillis listed the University of Maryland as his alma matter and links to College Park's website. But according to officials contacted at both the University of Maryland at College Park and the University of Maryland University College, Tillis graduated from the University of Maryland at University College."

John Frank of the Raleigh News & Observer: "A day after questions surfaced about his alma mater, U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis said where he went to college shouldn't matter and dismissed suggestions he misled voters."

CW: Yeah, and I went to Harvard. A/k/a the Harvard Online School of Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning. But I admit I flunked out.

Right Wing World

So, what, it took us what 100 years to find the Titanic? It took us 2,000 years to find Noah’s Ark. Do we ever find Flight 370? -- Fox "News" anchor Bill Hemmer, right there on the teevee during a "news" show

It's impossible to exaggerate how stupid Hemmer's remark is. Steve Benen explains. -- Constant Weader

News Ledes

Washington Post: "With a burst of automatic weapons fire and stun grenades, Russian forces in armored personnel carriers on Saturday broke through the walls of one of the last Ukrainian military outposts in Crimea, then quickly overpowered Ukrainian troops armed only with sticks. The fall of the Belbek air base, along with the loss of a second Ukrainian air base Saturday near the Crimean town of Novofedorivka, removed one of the last barriers to total Russian control of the Crimean Peninsula."

Malia, Michelle & Sasha Obama walk a section of the Great Wall of China. AP photo. CLICK ON PICTURE TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

AP: "U.S. first lady Michelle Obama told Chinese professors, students and parents on Sunday that she wouldn't have risen to where she was if her parents hadn't pushed for her to get a good education. Mrs. Obama made her comments before hosting a discussion about education on the third day of a weeklong visit to the country aimed at promoting educational exchanges between the U.S. and China. She also walked a section of the Great Wall with her two daughters."

Guardian: "Images taken by Chinese and French satellites and separate sightings of scattered debris have become the focus of the search in the Indian Ocean for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370."