Daily Kos

Update-I-5 bridge over Skagit River collapses, cars with people in water

rss@dailykos.com (Lisa Lockwood) — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:51:01 UTC

From KOMO.News in Washington-

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. -- The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapsed Thursday evening, injuring a unknown number of people.
Both the northbound and southbound portions of the bridge dropped into the river sometime before 7 p.m., according to Washington State Patrol trooper Mark Francis.

Francis said several cars were on the bridge when it collapsed, and many are now in the water.

It's unclear how many people were injured or killed in the collapse.

This is a developing story that will be updated when more information is available.

And the inevitable:

Bart Treece with the Washington State Department of Transportation was unsure when the bridge was last inspected.

"All of our bridges in the area are pretty old," he said.

Open thread for night owls: Wheeler—Closing Gitmo is not enough

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:30:09 UTC

Marcy Wheeler is the author of Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy. At Salon, she writes Obama admits "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare”—but fails to offer way out:

Four years ago, President Obama gave a seminal counterterrorism speech in front of the Constitution arguing we “uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and it keeps us safe.” Today, amid controversies over his Administration’s killing of American citizens in drone strikes, efforts to break hunger strikes by Guantanamo Bay detainees who have long been cleared for transfer, and seizures of the call records of national security journalists, Obama tried to reclaim those cherished values in his fight against terror.

Marcy Wheeler

In a speech at the National Defense University, Obama tried to redefine that fight and at least rhetorically end the war. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’”

In the speech, Obama proposed a number of policies that would return us closer to the values. He directed his aides to consider proposals—like a drone court or an additional Executive Branch review—to add oversight to targeted killing. He instructed Eric Holder to review Department of Justice guidelines “governing investigations that involve reporters” by July 12 (the only deadline in the speech). He even argued for the use of more foreign assistance rather than just military force in combating terrorism, though suggested people in both parties opposed such assistance.

Obama also promised to “engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing“ and threatened to veto any proposal that expanded this war. Obama has failed to make good on such veto threats in the past, and he made no mention of the Iraq AUMF, which remains in force two and a half years after the last troops were withdrawn from Iraq. So it remains to be seen whether his stated commitment to rework the AUMF will survive the political difficulties it has not in the past.

Obama’s most substantive proposals recommitted to closing Guantánamo Bay, a commitment that seemed to arise out of a focus on his own legacy. “[H]istory will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it,” he reflected. […]

For all the answers Obama did offer today—some convincing, others not so much—ultimately some of the big questions remain.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Torture: This shouldn't need to be said:

Let's put this straight right off the bat: favoring the use of torture is not a political position, it's a mental illness.

Any further discussion of torture should be unnecessary. However, since our our national media seems to be enthusiastically pimping depravity as a governing principle, we might as well point out that the guys that have been there, done that, seen the elephant show and lived to come home? They say it doesn't work, isn't worth it, and they want nothing to do with it.

If you need further evidence, check out Mike Ritz, a former SERE instructor who worked with our servicemen and women to prepare them for ~~harsh interrogations~~ torture, and who went on to found his own private "stress laboratory" where he could "use just about any technique" he had read about to "see what kind of results he could get." Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator who questioned prisoners in several locations, including Abu Ghraib. In other words, these are two people who have tortured other people, neither of them is shy about that fact, and they are willing to talk about that experience. Both men appeared on NPR's Tell Me More (audio link). The guys who have really done this stuff to actual human beings do not exactly back up the words of American's biggest Dick.

First off, they discussed the difference between what service people in the intelligence field had been trained to do, and what they were then asked to do by the Bush administration.

Tweet of the Day:

The fast food workers are told: "Get more education". The adjuncts are told: "What, you thought all that education would get you a job?"
— @sarahkendzior via web

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin on the lingering controversies and the variations in polling on the AP story. Also: the strange case of Josh Barro. On the IRS, Republicans now insist the President knew all about it, and if he didn't, that's evidence of a cover-up, too. Make your own untraceable AK-47 at a "build party." McCain looks to defuse a "nuclear option" showdown. Lamar! pretends not to see the difference between the ACA & Iran-Contra. A shocking chart on the shift in sources of federal revenues. "Why Private Schools Are Dying Out." When it comes to income inequality, the Medicis were pikers!

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

Economics Daily Digest: Fearing the future

rss@dailykos.com (Roosevelt Institute) — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:49:00 UTC

By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via email.

What’s in millennials’ wallets? Fewer credit cards (LA Times)

Emily Alpert talks to Pipeline Fellow Nona Willis Aronowitz about why young households are carrying less and less credit card debt. According to Aronowitz, it’s all about fear of an uncertain future.

Roosevelt Take: Aronowitz discusses why she thinks Millennials should be called the Crash Generation.

Why Suburban Poverty Is Less Visible and More Insidious (The Atlantic)

According to Emily Badger, suburban poverty is an incredibly isolating phenomenon. In areas where children play in back yards, not public playgrounds, and commuters drive instead of taking the subway, communal support for the poor all but disappears.

Elizabeth Warren Grills Treasury Secretary on Too Big to Fail (MoJo)

Erika Eichelberger characterizes Jack Lew’s response to Sen. Warren’s questioning on breaking up the biggest banks as nothing but avoidance. In the linked video, Lew sticks to name, rank, and serial number while Warren pushes for a direct answer on capping bank size.

How Budget Cuts Could Lead To Higher Costs From Tornadoes (Think Progress)

Bryce Covert reminds us that sequestration is still happening and is causing furloughs at the National Weather Service. The NWS warned residents of Moore, Oklahoma, about the tornado 16 minutes before it touched down, and we can’t afford to cut it much closer.

Fed Endorses Stimulus, but the Message Is Garbled (NYT)

Nelson D. Schwartz explains that it doesn’t look like the Fed will be cutting back its bond-buying program just yet. Bernanke’s testimony yesterday showed a sense of caution, despite the apparent signs of improvement in the job market.

Robert Kaiser on Dodd-Frank: ‘This example of Congress working also illuminated why it works so rarely.’ (WaPo)

Neil Irwin and Robert Kaiser discuss why no one would want to emulate the process required to pass Dodd-Frank, with months of negotiations for bipartisan support collapsing and the bill barely scraping by. Instead, we get no negotiation and no legislation, saving everyone time.

Why Obama’s Scandals Won’t Lead to Reform (Bloomberg View)

Ezra Klein points out the disconnect between who is upset about the policy problems raised by the IRS and AP scandals, and who wants to make a fuss about them. With those categories split, he doesn’t think we will see any changes in anonymous political spending through 501(c)(4)s or legislation to protect journalists and their sources.

U.S. Retailers See Big Risk in Safety Plan for Factories in Bangladesh (NYT)

Steven Greenhouse says major U.S. retailers are worried the accord that many European retailers have embraced will open them up to legal liability. Apparently the real risk isn’t sending workers into a death trap; it’s all the paperwork and billable hours that could result.

Fox and furious friends wanted DOJ to prosecute the New York Times

rss@dailykos.com (Jon Perr) — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:44:47 UTC

Throughout the tenure of George W. Bush, many of us to the left of center warned that unchecked presidential power was putting Americans' civil liberties in jeopardy. Now with the revelations that the Obama Justice Department seized AP phone records in one leak case and monitored a reporter's communications in another, some on the right are finally furious about infringements of our First and Fourth amendment rights. Apparently, all it took for this belated conservative change of heart was a Democrat in the White House and a Fox News reporter in the government's crosshairs. After all, when Americans learned of President Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, many of the same voices called for the prosecution of the New York Times. Then, Republican Sen. John Cornyn warned in a GOP talking point regurgitated by myriad conservative mouthpieces, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Word that the Justice Department obtained emails and phone records for James Rosen of Fox News after the publication of his June 11, 2009 story which references CIA findings from "sources inside North Korea" produced a torrent of criticism from the New York Times, the Washington Post and many other liberal voices. Over at Fox News, anchors and guests announced they were "appalled" at the "dangerous lunacy" of DOJ snooping on Rosen, calling it an unindicted co-conspirator "a huge assault on the First Amendment" (Charles Krauthammer) and "Big Brothers stuff" (Sean Hannity). Fox News executive vice president Michael Clemente issued a statement declaring:

"We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press."

Of course, when Republican George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office, the shoe was on the other foot. And Fox News and its right-wing allies wanted to kick the New York Times' ass with it.

On Dec. 16, 2005, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of the New York Times reported that President Bush had ordered the National Security Administration (NSA) to intercept Americans' overseas electronic communications without first obtaining a warrant as required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Three days later, President Bush raged about what he deemed "a shameful act" that is "helping the enemy" and added "the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with a full investigation." On Dec. 30, 2005, that investigation was announced, when White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told reporters that the Justice Department department "undertook this action on its own" and that Bush had only learned about it from senior staff earlier in the day. Then in May 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested on ABC News' This Week that the New York Times itself could face prosecution over its publication of the NSA domestic surveillance program story:

On the talk show, when asked if journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information, Gonzales responded, "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."
He was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which made it a crime for an unauthorized person to receive national defense information and transmit it to others.

The next month, Deputy U.S. Attorney Matthew W. Friedrich told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Bush DOJ thought that journalists or "anyone" could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information.

As it turned out, those words came as music to the ears of Fox News and the conservative commentariat. After all, as you'll see below, they had been cheerleading for the Bush administration to prosecute the New York Times for months.

Boy Scouts to allow gay scouts, but not gay scout leaders

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Thu, 23 May 2013 23:15:44 UTC

Zach Wahls announces the founding of
Scouts for Equality

Faced with the terrible, horrible, wrenching decision of whether to quit encouraging bigotry and allow gay scouts and scout leaders, the Boy Scouts decided to cut the baby in half and allow gay scouts, but not gay scout leaders:

“I’ve waited 13 years for this,” said Matt Comer, now 27, who was forced out of his scout troop at age 14 after he started a Gay-Straight Alliance at his school. Since the fourth grade, he said Thursday, he had dreamed of becoming an Eagle Scout and was crushed when he was denied the chance.
“Today we finally have some justice for me and others,” he said. “But gay youths will still be told they are no longer welcome when they turn 18.” [...]

The vote was a bittersweet one for David Knopp, 86, who spent much of his life in scouting as a boy, as a professional staff member and later as a volunteer with a council in Connecticut. He had tried to keep his sexual orientation a secret but one day, he said, two scout officials said, “We found out you are a homosexual” and forced him out.

“I see this as a good step but with a lot of misgivings,” he said of the limited opening to gays.

Of course, even letting in openly gay scouts only to ban them on their birthdays is a bridge too far for some:

Epitaph: On this day, the Boy Scouts of America died, sacrificing their honor and the sexual integrity of young men.
— @BryanJFischer via Twitter for iPad

Expect an outcry from people announcing that they're pulling their sons out of the Boy Scouts—a noisily self-righteous contrast to the boys and men who've been forced by bigotry to leave over the years, slipping away one by one.

In 'seismic shift,' primary care physicians creating revenue for hospitals

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:46:56 UTC

Here's another shift in health care to go along with shrinking rate of growth in health care spending over the last few years: For the first time, primary care doctors are driving more revenue on a per/physician basis for hospitals than specialists. That's the finding in a new survey of hospital financial officers by physician recruiting firm Merritt Hawkins.

For 2013, the median revenue per primary care physician ascribed by about 3,000 hospital chief financial officers is nearly $1.6 million, and it is a little more than $1.4 million for specialists. In 2010, the last time Merritt Hawkins did such a survey, primary care was at more than $1.4 million, and specialties were at nearly $1.6 million. Specialists have outpaced primary care in Merritt Hawkins' survey, which began in 2002, continued in 2004 and has been conducted every three years since. The survey includes both inpatient and outpatient revenue generated for hospitals, and it does not give an aggregate total of the revenue generated by primary care and specialty physicians. [...]
“A seismic shift is taking place in medicine, away from specialists and toward primary care physicians,” said Mark Smith, president of Merritt Hawkins, in a statement. “Primary care physicians are increasingly employed by hospitals and in new delivery models, such as accountable care organizations. They are taking a greater role in driving both the delivery of care and the flow of health care dollars.”

Note that this is among physicians who are employed by hospitals, not independent providers. Researchers attribute much of the shift to the emphasis the Affordable Care Act puts on primary care, and the increasing role of primary care physicians in health care delivery because preventive services are now provided for patients with insurance without co-pays. Demand for these services is increasing, just as demand for primary care physicians will be increasing. Medicare provider cuts are also a factor. Not mentioned in the story, but another potential factor in the decline in specialist revenue is the recession and how people have curtailed spending because of it.

Given that the Affordable Care Act is going to create demand for primary care providers that will be a challenge to meet, it's good that these doctors are also increasing revenue for hospitals—that should drive more hiring and potentially better pay for these providers. Better pay could drive more medical school students into primary care instead of specialities.

Cleared of charges after explosion, Florida teen gets full scholarship to space academy

rss@dailykos.com (Jen Hayden) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:21:45 UTC

By now you've heard about Kiera Wilmot. She's the Florida teen who was arrested for setting off a small explosion in her science class:

Kiera, 16-year-old junior, was arrested after the incident, which happened outside about 15 minutes before the school day began. No one was hurt, nor did she cause any damage.
The school's resource officer arrested her on two possible felony charges, possessing a weapon on campus and discharging a destructive device. Kiera was suspended for 10 days, sent to an alternative school, which she still attends, and told she faced expulsion.

Her headline-making nightmare hit one NASA veteran hard:

The explosion struck a chord with 18-year NASA veteran Homer Hickam, a former lead astronaut training manager for Spacelab, and later for the International Space Station.
In the late 1950s, Hickam had a brush with law enforcement for allegedly starting a forest fire. State police came to his high school and led him and his friends away in handcuffs, but his high school physics professor and school principal came to the rescue, clearing him of wrongdoing.

Hickam became determined to see Kiera Wilmot succeed:

"I couldn't let this go without doing something," Hickam said. "I'm not a lawyer, but I could give her something that would encourage her. I've worked closely with the U.S. Space Academy, and so I purchased a scholarship for her."

Great news! But it gets even better:

Learning of her twin sister, Hickam raised enough money so Kiera and Kayla could attend space camp together. Hickam runs several scholarships for kids with potential, and hopes to create an ongoing Space Academy scholarship. The twins will attend in July.

Both Wilmot sisters are headed to the Space Academy! Sometimes good things really do happen to good people. Three cheers for Homer Hickam!

Tennessee now evenly split on marriage equality; nearly 2/3 support benefits to same-sex partners

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:11:20 UTC

It's going to take a while, but the trends are clear:

A poll conducted this month for Vanderbilt University found that 49 percent of Tennesseans support gay marriage or civil unions while 46 percent are opposed to both, suggesting the state is now evenly divided on whether to extend legal recognition to same-sex couples.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of Tennesseans say health insurance and other employee benefits should be extended to the domestic partners or spouses of gays and lesbians. Thirty-one percent oppose the idea.

When the homophobes have lost even deep-red places like Tennessee, there's not much left for them. It also makes House Republican efforts to prop up the Defense of Marriage Act, which arbitrarily denies benefits to same-sex couples, look even more ridiculous.

Just when you think the GOP couldn't get any loonier, along comes E.W. Jackson

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:35:11 UTC

I love you, crazy ranting nutcase person.

Saints be praised, this guy is amazing. Aficionados of the GOP's new move towards abject batshit insanity have found a new poster boy in inexplicable Virginia lt. gov. nominee E.W. Jackson. He's Allen West, but more prone to irrational fury. He's Louie Gohmert, but more incoherent. He's Steve King and Michele Bachmann, but with the hatefulness dialed up to eleven and a half. How the hell is it that the Republican Party just discovered this loon now? I would have thought they'd have shaken every tree in the conservative nut orchard by now, but no. Here comes a new guy, and he's Akin to be worse. (Get it? Get it? Ha, it's been months since we could use that one.) No, this guy seems to have been specially cloned in a Republican Lunatic Candidate vat, and you don't want to even know what they pump into that thing.

Jackson seems to have no intention of pacing himself, either. Are we really going to have to have a Daily Jackson Roundup? Here's just the stuff brought up recently:

He says that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is just "claiming" to be Mormon. For folks like Reid, he says "they don't believe it or feel it in their hearts." Bonus points to EW for telling this to Glenn Beck, who otherwise would be reduced to interviewing soup cans in his kitchen.
He says that the federal government shouldn't be involved in disaster relief—and that he doesn't think there's "any constitutional authority to do it." Forget budget offsets, silly Sens. Inhofe and Cornyn—the new crazy Republican position is that states that face devastating natural disasters can get bent.
In 2009, he founded his own tea partyesque group called STAND. While the top issue of the hardcore social conservative group was to create a yearly American History Month, in part to help offset the "balkanizing" influence of things like Black History Month and Gay Pride Month, the second "top issue" was to call for "an end to the hyphenated American." That this made it onto the list before such social conservative mantras as the anti-abortion and anti-marriage-equality planks is odd, and the nice text at the top of his web page declaring Jackson as "Standing Up For The Judeo-Christian History And Values Which Made America Great" would be outright embarrassing, if that really were a hyphen there describing Americans. It's not, though—that's just an ant on your computer screen. That's another ant on his left-hand sidebar, which means you must have been eating at your computer again.
He's on Twitter, and it's exactly what you'd expect.
As for his history of spectacularly nasty rhetoric calling homosexuals "sick people," Democrats "slave masters" and Planned Parenthood "the Ku Klux Klan," etc., Jackson isn't backing down. "I say the things that I say because I'm a Christian," he told reporters, adding "attacking me because I hold to those principles is attacking every church-going person." Well, glad we've cleared that up. He also says, "I do not retract anything that I said."

So he's an ardent social conservative who's into rhetoric about how the other side is like the Klan, who doubts other people really are the religions they say they are, who doesn't believe the federal government should help disaster victims, who thinks gays are "sick" and "ikky" and who wants to unite some hyphens against the other hyphens in order to end hyphens, all the while saying that if you attack him for being a f--king insane hatemonger you're persecuting him and all his fellow Christians. Was I right about him being cloned in a GOP "batshit crazy" vat, or what?

Welcome, Mr. Jackson, to the Republican big leagues. Oh, you're gonna fit right in. And if the Republicans don't erect a statue to you in the next few years, I am almost positive the Democrats will do it for them.

What we need is a scandal big enough we could hang a "gate" on the end of it...

rss@dailykos.com (MattWuerker) — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:50:09 UTC

(Click for larger image)

Biggest GOP food stamp foe gets huge farm subsidies

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:45:14 UTC

Welfare recipient Stephen Fincher.

Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN) has been making a big splash with his supposedly Jesus-inspired opposition to the government helping to keep poor people alive by giving them food stamps. As could be totally expected, Fincher's Bible-quoting is highly selective and hugely misinterpreted, because that's what wingnuts quoting the Bible do.

Fincher should include in his Bible study the plethora of verses that address hypocrisy. Because, when it comes to where the funding in the Farm Bill is allocated, he's among the biggest.

Using Agriculture Department data, researchers at the Environmental Working Group found that Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican and a farmer from Frog Jump, Tenn., collected nearly $3.5 million in subsidies from 1999 to 2012. The data is part of the research group’s online farm subsidy database from which the group issues a report each year.
In 2012 alone, the data shows, Mr. Fincher received about $70,000 in direct payments, money that is given to farmers and farmland owners, even if they do not grow crops. It is unclear how much Mr. Fincher received in crop insurance subsidies because the names of people receiving the subsidies are not public. The group said most of the agriculture subsidies go to the largest, most profitable farm operations in the country. These farmers have received $265 billion in direct payments and farm insurance subsidies since 1995, federal records show.

Fincher voted for $20 billion in cuts to the supplemental nutrition program over the next 10 years. He also voted to increase the farm subsidies he's on the receiving end of. It's likely that the bulk of Rep. Fincher's income is provided entirely by taxpayers, from these farm subsidies to his congressional salary. Flincher also, of course, is an enthusiastic supporter of Paul Ryan's budget that decimates social spending, presumably because he cares so much about the deficit. As long as the deficit cutting is happening to someone else.

He's also not much a true-believer when it comes to the sacred free market.

Fincher has said his farm would have shut down without the subsidies, which he argued protect American farmers from more heavily subsidized foreign competition. "We would be all for not having government in our business," Fincher told the Washington Post in 2010, "but we need a fair system."

He needs a fair system, but everybody else is on their own. Spoken like a true Republican.

Nashville charter schools 'lose' problem students to public schools—just in time for testing

rss@dailykos.com (Laura Clawson) — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00:10 UTC

If all you care about are test scores, one of the big advantages charter schools have over traditional public schools is that they don't have to take every kid who shows up. Charters can push out the weak students, leaving them for someone else to deal with. That certainly looks like what's happening in Nashville, Tennessee, where the eight schools with the highest net loss of students are all charter schools, WSMV's Dennis Ferrier reports. The only schools losing more than 10 percent of their students are charters, which are losing up to 33 percent.

The highly regarded national KIPP chain's Nashville school lost 18 percent of its students, a situation its principal says is unacceptable. Which it might be easier to believe he really meant if it wasn't such a common occurrence and if it didn't work out so well for his school:

[Metro Nashville Public Schools[ feels it's unacceptable as well, because not only are they getting kids from charter schools, but they are also getting troubled kids and then getting them right before testing time.
"That's also a frustration for the zoned-school principals. They are getting clearly challenging kids back in their schools just prior to accountability testing," said MNPS Chief Operating Officer Fred Carr.

Nineteen of the last 20 children to leave Kipp Academy had multiple out-of-school suspensions. Eleven of the 19 are classified as special needs, and all of them took their TCAPs at Metro zoned schools, so their scores won't count against Kipp.

Then those kids' test scores—the scores the charters didn't want to have on their records—get held against public schools. And we're told charters are such an amazing answer to all the problems our school systems supposedly have. If charters are so great, they should be great for all kids, not just the ones it's convenient for them to take.

(Via Diane Ravitch)

States that rejected Medicaid also have most uninsured, poorest health

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Tue, 21 May 2013 19:30:20 UTC

Sadly, the states that have the greatest need to expand Medicaid also have the Republican leaders who are refusing to participate. That's according to an analysis from the Los Angeles Times, which states health data to determine levels of coverage and overall health status in the states.

Colon cancer deaths in states opposing Medicaid expansion, for example, are an average of 16% higher than in pro-expansion states, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of state health data.
Deaths from breast cancer are 8% higher on average in anti-expansion states. And adults under 65 are 40% more likely on average to have lost six or more teeth from decay, infection or gum disease. [...]

Yet most state leaders who are fighting the Medicaid expansion have advanced few alternative plans to tackle their states' health shortfalls. That means that, at least in the short term, America's unhealthiest states could fall even further behind as theAffordable Care Act is implemented.

"Many states may be missing a real opportunity to reduce some of the big differences we see across the country in health," said Cathy Schoen, a health economist at the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund who has studied variations between states.

The residents of many of those states, those in the Deep South, would dearly love to see Medicaid expansion, a new survey suggests. Families USA polled in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina—all states where Republicans governors and legislatures have rejected the expansion—and found that 62 percent of respondents in those states support Medicaid expansion.

In minor McConnell cave on filibuster, Srinivasan wins confirmation in Senate

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:26:58 UTC

Sri Srinivasan

The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Sri Srinivasan to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals with a 97-0 vote. The confirmation was essentially a shoo-in after he received a unanimous vote out of committee and has been more interesting because of the role it's had in the larger filibuster reform debate. And because it indicates that Mitch McConnell seems to be taking Harry Reid's reform threats seriously.

Reid and McConnell have disagreed about precisely when he should be officially confirmed. Reid wanted the vote this week. McConnell wanted to wait three business days—not a huge delay in most circumstances, but with the impending Memorial Day break it would’ve kicked the confirmation into early June.
So this week, Reid used the Senate rules to provoke a confrontation: Technically he filed cloture on Srinivasan’s nomination, guaranteeing him at least a test vote this week. More meaningfully, he forced McConnell to choose between sustaining a filibuster against Srinivasan through early June (a move that would have helped Reid build his case for changing the rules this summer) and agreeing to a confirmation vote now (effectively caving).

McConnell caved Thursday morning on the Senate floor. A small cave. But a cave nonetheless. Srinivasan will be confirmed Thursday afternoon. But the “cave” is only a small part of the story.

That part of the story is that McConnell takes Reid's threat to change the Senate rules over executive nominations seriously this time. That in turn indicates that he's concerned Reid might actually have enough Democrats on board to do it. Back in January, when a few Senate Dems were publicly undermining the ambitious reform plan from Sens. Harkin, Merkley and Udall, McConnell was largely quiet. He wasn't worried. Now he is. And he's giving Reid less ammunition to use to convince hold-out Democrats that they've got to use the nuclear option to get Obama's nominations confirmed.

But that still leaves the executive nominations of Richard Corday—which 43 Republican senators have vowed in writing to block—Elizabeth McCarthy, and Thomas Perez hanging out there, to be decided in July. With the stink Republicans have raised over these nominations, it's hard to imagine McConnell caving again.

We can't let Reid and the Democrats be complacent over this one vote. So we've got two jobs: getting Democrats on board with the nuclear option and keeping the momentum for reform going until July.

Use this link to send an email to your Democratic senators telling them to re-open filibuster reform and make the Senate function again.

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:00:14 UTC

Today's comic by Ruben Bolling is The truth about the Nixonian presidency of Obama:
DHS scabs help undermine strike:
[T]here’s a 1-day strike today of non-unionized government contract workers who make low wages and who SEIU ultimately wants to organize. In ye olden days of the Gilded Age, the government would use federal troops to bust strikes. The Department of Homeland Security’s response to the strike? Serve as a scab force.
There's a need for a global minimum wage:
In America, we accept the minimum wage as a given. It enjoys broad support. It is the realization of an ideal: that there is a point at which low pay becomes a moral outrage. (Where that point is, of course, is up for continuous debate.) Do not mistake the minimum wage for some sort of consensus of nonpartisan economists; it is a moral statement by our society. A statement of our belief that the economically powerful should not have a free hand to exploit the powerless.
Yet we are all hypocrites. We protect ourselves with a minimum wage, while at the same time enjoying the low consumer prices that come with ultra-low wages being paid to workers abroad. Our own purchasing habits reward companies for paying wages that are sure to keep their workers in poverty for life.
Bike headlight projects grid that highlights bumps and potholes:
A team from the University of Sichuan won the Red Dot Design award for a concept design called "Lumigrid"—a bike-light that projects a grid on the ground ahead of the rider, making terrain irregularities easy to spot.
Cleveland kidnap hero gets free burgers for life:
More than a dozen Cleveland-area restaurants have offered Charles Ramsey a burger anytime he wants to stop by. Ramsey will receive a "Chuck Card" to get free burgers for life when he goes to any of the participating restaurants, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reports.
"We want to honor our local hero with local food," Scott Kuhn of Driftwood Restaurant Group told the Plain Dealer. Kuhn's group operates four of the restaurants participating in the offer. "He stopped his meal midway through to help those women. We're now making sure he has other opportunities to go out and fully enjoy his burger."
Liberalism, says young radical, is "well-intentioned" but "inadequate":
Maybe I wasn’t alone in looking for alternatives. A Pew Research poll from 2011 shows that more Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have a favorable opinion of socialism than of capitalism. We don’t know exactly what they mean by “socialism,” but it certainly reflects a discontent with what’s on offer in the political mainstream.
Time magazine publishes photos from Obama's senior prom:
These previously unpublished photos, obtained exclusively by TIME from Obama’s schoolmate Kelli Allman (née McCormack), show a 17-year-old Barack Obama on the night of his senior prom. [...]
Barry spent his days at the Punahou School in Hawaii studying, shooting hoops and goofing off with his friends. Greg Orme, a fellow varsity basketball player, was Obama’s constant companion. “They were like brothers,” says Allman. On prom night, the pair double-dated. Obama and his date Megan Hughes, a student at the Hawaii School for Girls at La Pietra, joined Orme at Allman’s house, where the two couples sipped champagne before going to the dance and then an after-party. “It was a really fun, happy time. We were all cracking up, and everyone was smiling,” says Allman. “It was pretty typical from there out as far as what happens at prom: the dinner and the dancing and the photos.”
Greek yogurt success has dark side. Maybe Little Miss Muffet could help:
For every three or four ounces of milk, Chobani and other companies can produce only one ounce of creamy Greek yogurt. The rest becomes acid whey. It’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers. That could turn a waterway into what one expert calls a “dead sea,” destroying aquatic life over potentially large areas. Spills of cheese whey, a cousin of Greek yogurt whey, have killed tens of thousands of fish around the country in recent years.
A "new" Pearl Buck novel will be published:
The manuscript was stumbled upon in a storage unit in Texas and returned to the Buck family in December in exchange for a small fee, said Jane Friedman, the chief executive of Open Road Integrated Media, the publisher.
Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is believed to have completed the manuscript for the book, “The Eternal Wonder,” shortly before she died of cancer in 1973, said her son Edgar S. Walsh, who manages her literary estate.
On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin on the lingering controversies and the variations in polling on the AP story. Also: the strange case of Josh Barro. On the IRS, Republicans now insist the President knew all about it, and if he didn't, that's evidence of a cover-up, too. Make your own untraceable AK-47 at a "build party." McCain looks to defuse a "nuclear option" showdown. Lamar! pretends not to see the difference between the ACA and Iran-Contra. A shocking chart on the shift in sources of federal revenues. "Why Private Schools Are Dying Out." When it comes to income inequality, the Medicis were pikers!

Obama announces new policies on drone program in counterterrorism speech

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:55:08 UTC

One day after his administration publicly acknowledged that the U.S. drone program had killed 4 U.S. citizens, one of whom was specifically targeted, President Obama is scheduled to deliver a 2:00 PM ET speech at the National Defense University on the future of the program and U.S. counterterrorism policy more generally. According to the New York Times, which first reported the public acknowledgment, the president will announce policies that will curtail—but not discontinue—the drone program. According to the report, the president will also address efforts to close the Guantánamo prison.

You can watch the speech live in the video embedded at the top of this post. We'll post a copy of the president's speech when it becomes available.

11:03 AM PT: Here are the president's remarks, as prepared for delivery.

11:12 AM PT: Here's the administration's fact sheet accompanying the president's speech.

Nineteen House Democrats vote to take authority over Keystone XL decision away from the president

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:46:45 UTC

Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska makes a point
Wednesday about the bill he sponsored
to yank presidential authority for approving
the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

In statement after statement on the House floor Wednesday, Republicans clearly were tracking the same talking points on why representatives should vote for legislation to transfer to Congress the president's authority to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the Keystone XL pipeline. They might as well have been on the payroll of TransCanada, the pipeline's builder.

And they might as well have been playing tiddlywinks since President Obama has indicated that he will veto the bill that some have called unconstitutional if it makes it to his desk. With those 19 Democrats in tow, including eight of the 14 remaining Blue Dogs, all but one Republican voted for the bill, 241-175-1. As noted by Stephen Kretzman, executive director of Oil Change International, supporters have taken six times more campaign contributions from the oil industry than did the opponents, a total of $56 million.

The pipeline requires a presidential permit because it crosses an international boundary. The legislation would not change authority for approval of any other cross-boundary pipelines.

The Republicans at the podium Wednesday spouted permanent job numbers from the project as high as 20,000, long since debunked along with the 250,000 projected by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the million Foxaganda once claimed.

They noted that the State Department's March 1 supplemental environmental impact statement on Keystone gave a green light to the project without noting that the Environmental Protection Agency stated the SEIS had contained "insufficient information" to make a good decision.

They touted the alleged independence from OPEC oil that the United States would obtain from boosting the capacity of TransCanada to transport tar sands petroleum from the Alberta tar sands deposits to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. In a choice bit of hypocrisy, they did that even as they voted down an amendment by Democratic Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey that would have required all petroleum carried by the pipeline to be refined and sold in the United States.

They even talked ridiculously about how the pipeline would reduce the price of gasoline at the pump even though TransCanada itself said as far back as 2009 that the price of petroleum from the tar sands would rise by $3 a barrel, meaning so would the price of gasoline.

Among the several Democrats pushing back—including Holt, Henry Waxman of California, Peter DeFazio of Oregon—Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona called the bill a “reckless attempt to avoid environmental review.” Other Democrats even dared to bring up the impact the especially dirty product extracted from the tar sands has on climate change, a term which a large number of House Republicans believe or pretend to believe describes a hoax.

The outcome of the debate was preordained. The only variable from the outset was how many Democrats would vote for the legislation. Nineteen of them joined the all-but-one Republican (who voted "present") saying "aye." The legislation now moves on to the Senate. Whether it will reach there DOA or Majority Leader Harry Reid will decide to allow it to be considered is unknown so far. If it were to get a Senate vote, there is a chance it would be approved. Seventeen Senate Democrats previously have voted in support of the pipeline. But that was a symbolic vote. Fewer would no doubt vote to pull the president's authority over approval, but there might still be enough to pass the bill.

As noted, however, if it were actually to pass the Senate, there still wouldn't be enough votes to override a presidential veto. So, in reality, all the hyperventilating Wednesday represented little more than a tantrum by the congressional right wing. They had no problem offering a unique exception from long-standing rules to a foreign corporation by thumbing their noses at the processes mandated by the National Environmental Protection Agency and executive orders dating back to Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 and reiterated by George W. Bush in 2004. Not exactly a surprise, but certainly more evidence of what they really mean when they talk about patriotism.

Below the fold is the list of Democrats who voted for the legislation.

•••

_{Liberty Fraternity Equality and Trees has a good discussion on the subject going on here.}

Multiple fact-checks of Gomez agree: He lies.

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:19:45 UTC

Gabriel Gomez isn't even "truthy."

The Boston Globe, in a news story, has already called out Massachusetts Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez for his dishonest new ad. Now the actual fact-checkers are on the case, and Gomez gets panned again. In essence:

Republican Gabriel Gomez falsely claims his opponent in the Massachusetts Senate race blamed him for the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and compared him to Osama bin Laden.

But that dishonest ad isn't the only fact-checking Gomez is failing on. On Monday, when Sen. John McCain stumped for him, Gomez used a line against his opponent, Rep. Ed Markey, that he's been using for a while to paint Markey as a do-nothing lifer in Congress, implying that he's been there for 20 years but hasn't passed a single bill that became law. That's bunk, says WBUR.

It’s, at best, a shaky attack,” says Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute and one of the country’s most respected congressional observers. “I’ve watched Markey since he came to the House and I’ve written many times before that he’s one of the most effective legislators” in Congress. [...]
Markey pushed several measures over the last 20 years—designed to protect children’s privacy online, promote elder home care, and screen air and maritime cargo in the wake of 9/11—that landed in larger legislative packages signed into law.

President Obama also signed Senate legislation nearly identical to several bills Markey sponsored in the House. [...]

Markey is widely acknowledged as an architect of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which opened up competition in the industry and spurred the creation of broadband networks central to the growth of the Internet.

Bottom line: "Gomez’s claim that Markey hasn’t accomplished anything in the last 20 years doesn’t stand up to scrutiny." Gomez himself is increasingly not standing up to scrutiny. Although he is proving himself to be a typical Republican, and a good substitute for Scott Brown, who also had a rather loose relationship with facts.

Please contribute $3 to Ed Markey.

More evidence that scandalmania is taking a toll on the party of Nixon

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:30:10 UTC

If Boehner has to give that gavel back, then he'll really be crying

Yes, we know that Obama is Nixon, that the breakfast he had this morning is worse than Watergate, and that by the end of the summer he's going to be forced to resign, after which he will be forced to live in ignominy with William Jefferson Clinton, the last president to have been impeached by the Republican Party.

But in the meantime, let's enjoy the party, because as the latest ABC/Washington Post survey shows ... the GOP isn't enjoying the fruits of its scandal-exposing labors (RVs, 5/16-19, ±3.5 percent):

If the election for the U.S. House of Representatives were being held today, would you vote for (the Democratic candidate) or (the Republican candidate) in your congressional district?
Democratic candidate: 48
Republican candidate: 40

Democrats enjoy a whopping 56-33 edge among moderates, and while they get just 20 percent of the conservative vote, that's more than double the 8 percent of the liberal vote obtained by Republicans. Republicans have a miniscule 1-point edge among independents—41 to 40—but in 2010, they carried independents by a whopping 56-37 margin.

Also, as Greg Sargent notes, the poll contains more evidence that conventional wisdom about gun politics is wrong: In both red and blue states, more voters say they they would vote against a candidate who opposed expanding background checks to gun shows and the internet than say they would vote against a candidate who supported expanded checks. A total of 35 percent say they'd rule out a candidate who was against expanding checks compared with 14 percent who say they'd rule out a candidate who is for such checks. That helps explain why Republicans have been so eager to have it both ways on the issue, voting against expanded checks while simultaneously claiming that they support them.

Oklahoma tornado kicks off GOP fight over disaster relief

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:22:26 UTC

Sen. Tom Coburn's premature insistence that any disaster relief funding for his home state after this week's devastating tornadoes be offset has kicked off a big fight in the GOP.

Most other Republicans have said they don’t need offsets. A number of Republican senators, from Missouri’s Roy Blunt to Arizona’s John McCain, told reporters they won’t require offsets to vote for aid to help tornado victims in Moore.
But few of these senators were singing the same tune when New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut residents asked for financial assistance to help rebuild from the impact of superstorm Sandy. Two of the 36 votes against the major Sandy relief bill came from Oklahoma’s Senators Coburn and Inhofe. [...]

That has some prominent Northeast Republicans fired up. Congressman Peter King of New York, who fought passionately for aid for his home state after the storm, lashed out at Inhofe and Coburn, calling them hypocrites on Wednesday.

New Jersey Chris Christie, who also chastised his fellow Republicans for opposing Sandy recovery aid, supports sending aid to Oklahoma, insisting now is “not a time for political retribution” against Oklahomans. Christie urged his colleagues in Washington to provide” swift and immediate” aid to Moore on Wednesday.

The good news for Moore, and for FEMA, is that the relief fund has about $11 billion right now, plenty to cover the Oklahoma disaster. But there's still several months left in tornado season, and hurricane season hasn't even begun. That $11 billion may or may not suffice for the remainder of the year. Which means this Republican-on-Republican fight will likely be a prolonged one.

The only thing Boehner can't imagine is that Obama isn't guilty. Of something.

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:15:09 UTC

House Speaker John Boehner can't imagine President Obama didn't know about the IRS investigation until it became public:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview aired late Wednesday that it’s “inconceivable” someone didn’t inform President Obama about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups.
“It’s pretty inconceivable to me that the president wouldn’t know,” Boehner said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Greta van Susteren.

And why can't he conceive of this?

“I’m just putting myself in his shoes. I deal with my senior staff every day. And if the White House had known about this, which now it appears they’ve known about it for about a year, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t have come up in some conversation.”

Note that Boehner says the White House has known about the IRS probe for about a year, but according to the White House, they first learned about it in late April. No evidence has emerged suggesting that's untrue, which means that Boehner's explanation for why he can't imagine Obama didn't know is based on imaginary fact.

Adding to the irony, it turns out that House Republicans have known about the probe for roughly a year—the IRS Inspector General informed Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan of the inquiry last July. So, by Boehner's own logic, it's "inconceivable" that Boehner didn't know about the IRS inquiry, yet he remained silent. The logical conclusion from that flows from that "fact"—which was established by the first constructive law of inconceivability—is that House Speaker John Boehner covered up the IRS investigation.

Sure, those logical leaps are nonsense, but it's no different than what Republicans are doing here. Every day they have a new theory, but the end result of their theory is always the same: Obama is Nixon. Sure, as Steve Benen writes, when the IRS story first broke, Republicans accused President Obama of using the IRS as a political hit squad against his enemies. But that theory has been debunked, so now they are trying to accuse him of covering up knowledge of the investigation into the activities after the activities had been stopped.

Of course, this theory won't work, because even if the White House is lying (a claim for which there is no evidence), we know that Republicans were aware of the probe. Nothing was stopping them from talking about it publicly, but they didn't. But even though it's clear this latest Republican theory is going to go up in smoke, it doesn't mean they're going to stop arguing that Obama = Scandal = Nixon. It just means they've yet to imagine their next theory on why.

Initial applications for unemployment benefits improve to 340,000

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:19:15 UTC

After climbing sharply the previous week, seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending May 18 fell to 340,000, the Department of Labor reported Thursday. That was a decrease of 23,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 363,000, originally reported as 360,000. For the comparable week of 2012, initial claims were 371,000.

The four-week moving average that flattens volatility was 339,500, down 500 from the previous week's revised average of 340,000. That's in the range of five-year lows.

For all jobless benefit programs, state and federally funded, the total number of claims for the week ending May 4 fell 98,540 to 4,745,266. For the comparable week in 2012, there were 6,168,434 persons claiming benefits. The drop is the result of people finding jobs or exhausting their benefits.

As a result of the budget sequester, jobless workers eligible for federally funddd emergency unemployment compensation will collect benefit checks that are 10 percent or smaller for the rest of the fiscal year. Moreover, several states have also reduced the maximum benefit payment. Some of the same ones and others have reduced the half-century-old standard duration someone can collect benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks or less.

Although the connection is by no means linear, a downward trending claims number is historically linked to an upward trend of new jobs created, as reported each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the connection were linear, the number of new jobs reported June 7 for May would be slightly above the 165,000 announced last month. But anyone making bets on new jobs based on the benefits data could get the same outcome by flipping a coin.

While the "headline" unemployment numbers continue to improve, as they have every month for nearly three years, there are underlying problems—some of them chronic—that don't often make the news. For instance, the Economic Policy Institute reported this week:

Five years after the beginning of the Great Recession the unemployment rate for some minority workers is significantly higher than that for white workers in a number of states, including Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, Mississippi, and North Carolina.

In Michigan, Mississippi and North Carolina, the jobless rate for African Americans is more than double what it is for whites.

•••

_{h/t to another American for an important correction about whose compensation checks are being cut and for how long.}

The truth about the Nixonian presidency of Obama

rss@dailykos.com (RubenBolling) — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:50:10 UTC

Tom the Dancing Bug, by @RubenBolling.

HAVE YOU JOINED THE INNER HIVE YET??

Please click HERE for information.

White House would veto Republican-sponsored bait-and-switch student loan interest bill

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:27:09 UTC

Senior advisers to President Obama say they would recommend he veto a bill, H.R. 1911, that would tie the interest rate on student loans to the rate at which the U.S. government borrows. Unless Congress takes action, subsidized Federal Direct Stafford Loans for undergraduates will double to 6.8 percent on July 1. But this bill, dubbed Smarter Solutions for Students Act, is the wrong approach, according to a statement from the Executive Office of the President:

First, the bill would not guarantee low rates for today's students. A rate that continues to vary after the loan has already been taken out would create uncertainty and lessen transparency for students and their families who are making decisions about borrowing for college. Second, the bill's changes would impose the largest interest rate increases on low- and middle-income students and families who struggle most to afford a college education. Third, the bill does not include the President's proposal to extend repayment options to borrowers who have already left school and often face the same debt burdens as current and future students. Finally, the Administration believes that student loan interest rates should not be raised to reduce the deficit.

The Congressional Research Service says that the bill would force students and families to pay higher interest costs than is the case today. That's so even if interest rates doubled as scheduled in July.

The bill was introduced by Republican Rep. John Kline of Minnesota and has five co-sponsors. Opposition isn't confined to the White House. Kline's proposal has sparked vigorous Democratic opposition. Rep. George Miller of California has presented an analysis on H.R. 1911 that states the bill would make attending college more expensive.

"According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), increased interest rates for student loans will cost students almost $4 billion in additional loan interest charges relative to current law. [...]
[The variable interest rate is a classic bait-and-switch. [...] By the time next year’s freshmen graduate and start repaying their loans in 2017, the interest rate on that loan taken out during their freshman year is projected to more than double beyond today’s current rate for subsidized Stafford loans.

The Democratic proposal would freeze the current 3.4 percent rate on subsidized loans for two years.

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: It's going to be hard not to feature E.W. Jackson daily

rss@dailykos.com (David Nir) — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:00:09 UTC

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here.

Leading Off:

• VA-LG: E.W. Jackson isn't just an oppo researcher's dream, he's an oppo researcher's mescaline-fueled fantasy bender riding on pegasus-back. Every day there's something new and amazing about the Virginia GOP's lieutenant governor nominee; here's the latest:

In an April 28, 2011 statement while he was a Senate candidate, conservative minister and lawyer E.W. Jackson held up the three-fifths clause as an "anti-slavery" measure. The context of his statement was to attack President Obama after a pastor at a church service he attended referred to the three-fifths clause as a historical marker of racism.
"Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states," Jackson, an African-American, said in his statement.

Obviously this needs no further elaboration. Meanwhile, Jeff Shapiro of the Richmond Times Dispatch claims that Jackson "may be facing a rear-guard effort to strip him of the nomination" by Republicans terrified of his candidacy. But, he adds, "there apparently is nothing in the GOP's rules authorizing anyone or any committee to remove a duly nominated candidate for state or local office." So sorry!

Daily Kos Radio is LIVE at 9am ET!

rss@dailykos.com (David Waldman) — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:30:10 UTC

Daily Kos Radio's Kagro in the Morning show podcasts are now available through iTunes.

Is this Friday? This has got to be Friday, right?

We'll treat it that way, anyhow. Because it sure feels like it. We've got tabs to clear, stories to wade through, and a whole blog to draw them from. We don't do that often enough.

No promises that some blockhead won't commit an act of GunFAIL so atrocious that I can't help but explore it, though. And you wouldn't believe me even if I did promise, would you?

We're LIVE at 9 a.m. ET with Kagro in the Morning, thanks to NetrootsRadio.com.

Listen LIVE here:The Daily Kos Radio Player

Can't see the Flash player? Click here to download the stream directly.

Or if you prefer, why not download the Stitcher app on your favorite mobile device, and search for the Netroots Radio live stream? And hey, when you do, be sure to sign up with the promo code DAILYKOS, and earn Daily Kos Radio $1 in the Stitcher affiliate program!

Please do remember to "favorite" us while you're at Stitcher. We're bouncing up and down in the rankings these days, and the more of you who help us, the more listeners out there who'll find us on the Stitcher network.

Miss the last show? You can catch it here:

Need more info on how to listen? Find it below the fold.

Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

rss@dailykos.com (Bill in Portland Maine) — Thu, 23 May 2013 12:17:42 UTC

Click for the latest Red Cross statement on the tornado relief effort
People who wish to make a donation to support the Red Cross response can visit redcross.org, dial 1-800-REDCROSS or text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Oh! More Things I Know:

The Netroots Nation convention starts four weeks from today in San Jose.
The recent tornado outbreak reminds me once again that it's nice to be able to hear "I'm from FEMA and I'm here to help" without cringing.

The spellchecker on my new laptop didn't recognize "Stephanopoulos" and wanted to replace it with "Postmenopausal." I said sure, why not.

If I was Terry McAuliffe, I'd send Virginia Republicans a gift basket with a thank-you card for nominating that crazy guy for Lieutenant Governor.

Another thing I know: this
guy turns 72 tomorrow.

I would never join a tea party. I would, however, join a whiskey rebellion.
The Maine Department of Tourism reminds you that for the 257,000,034th day in a row, no freakishly-large man-eating Burmese pythons have been spotted on the loose in our state.

I'd like to see Obama and Biden trade places on January 20, 2014 and then switch back on January 20, 2015. Mostly because it'd be a chance to drive the right completely over the edge by a third Obama inauguration.

We are ruled by rectangular pieces of green linen-based paper with numbers and dead people's faces on them. No wonder the space people never visit.

Our 6 month-old puppy played the Rach 3 on her squeaky toy last night and then collapsed on the floor in a heap of emotional exhaustion.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Some things are happening in DC despite gridlock

rss@dailykos.com (Greg Dworkin) — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:30:10 UTC

TENNESSEE Requiring criminal background checks on all gun buyers, including gun shows, private sales: Favor 88% / Oppose 10% (Vanderbilt U.)
— @pollreport via web

NY Times on an important development:

President Obama plans to open a new phase in the nation’s long struggle with terrorism on Thursday by restricting the use of unmanned drone strikes that have been at the heart of his national security strategy and shifting control of them away from the C.I.A. to the military.

Jill Lawrence:

Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting for Public Opinion to Turn Against Obama
The president has a base of loyalists that won't quit and, at least for now, there's no evidence he was involved in any scandals.

Pew breaks down the polls in a really excellent read:

Polling when public attention is limited: Different questions, different results
When three different polling organizations conducted surveys last weekend to gauge public reaction to the news about the Department of Justice’s subpoenas of reporters’ phone records, their findings were quite different – a case study in the challenges pollsters face in a breaking news environment when public attention and information is relatively limited.

While the Pew Research Center, CNN/ORC and Washington Post/ABC News pollsters all took a similar approach in asking whether people felt the Department of Justice was right or wrong to subpoena the Associated Press reporters’ phone records, there were multiple differences in the phrasing, structure and context of the questions that help to explain the different findings.

More politics and policy below the fold.

Open thread for night owls: Summoning the godfather of investibators

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:30:10 UTC

This actually appeared as an op-ed for the New York Times. From previous Times editor Bill Keller, no less.

Republicans are howling for President Obama to name a special prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups. The president should call their bluff.
The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility. The list of candidates could start with Kenneth Starr, who chased down the scandals, real and imagined, of the Clinton presidency.

That has to be a joke, right? Sadly, it doesn't seem so, as the rest of the column is devoted to the premise that Obama can diffuse Republican notions of scandal by appointing a special counsel to do some serious work getting to the bottom of it all, and somehow the nationally famous penis-chaser "Kenneth Starr" would be a fine upstanding someone to do that job, allowing the rest of government to get back to the business of governing. (All right, now I am seriously thinking the entire column was put up as a ruse, an Onionesque parody of what the dumbest imaginable bastard in all of politics might put up as an opinion column, in which case: Well played, indeed.)

Ken Starr and the unending hunt for something, any something at all, that would require impeaching the opposition-party president was the exact moment all of American politics went to hell and stayed there. Politics was always partisan: The Starr investigation made it stupid. Politics was always stupid, at least on the outskirts: The Starr investigation turned the stupidity into a mainstream and celebrated thing. It canonized conspiracy-peddling as the defacto Republican method of governance. It gave a podium to every liar, crook, asshole, ambulance chaser, tin foil hat aficionado, and black helicopter watcher, and all the top-name Republicans in Washington came up to give them a big, sticky hug. It was one of the first things that was supposed to be worse than Watergate, and in a very real way, it was. Watergate and Iran-Contra were actual crimes conducted by sitting administrations. Whitewater was the attempt to bring down an elected president regardless, cart before horse.

It started off with obscure Arkansas land deals, wound its way through fringe theories of Hillary-as-murderer or Bill-as-drug-trafficker, and eventually settled in on a sexual favor as being the thing that was reason enough. It was the ur-outrage that plotted out how all future outrages would be plotted and peddled in Republican circles. It was retribution for Watergate and Iran-Contra, two monstrous acts by Republicans, via the industrialized construction of a new "scandal" as payback. What it was really about never mattered, and blew with the winds, and nobody blew like Ken Starr and his leak-o-matic investigation of anything and everything that crackpots brought to his ear.

It was, as I said before, the exact moment all of American politics went to hell. The press, in a constant attempt to prove their own fealty to anyone who would piss anything that the public would pay a quarter to read, slit its own wrists on a daily basis to let what was left of their integrity drain out. The GOP moved from any pretense of being policy-minded into an all-outrage, all-the-time model channeled first through Drudge and later turd-polished by Fox News into the vapid, nonsensical, eternally shouting propaganda that now defines all of conservatism. It was the very moment the sound and the fury started to signify nothing, and then less than nothing.

After the episode, though, even Republicans distanced themselves from Ken Starr. The impeachment business itself ended as a flop, a humiliation for the GOP, and was met with retribution from an angry electorate that wasn't keen on being played for the dimwits and chumps the GOP apparently thought them to be. The one group that Starr never seemed to lose favor with, though, was the pundit class. The same walking balloons of tittering media nothingness that pumped the "scandal" through all of its varied, silly iterations never did seem to internalize the lesson or feel shame over it. Even now, the old hands seem wistful. Remember back when we didn't have to do anything but wait for the phone to ring with the latest "leak?" Remember when we all got to talk about sex on the teevee and, for once, pretend we were serious? Remember that, the one time in history when our only true talent, the only thing we were ever truly good at, gossiping about pointless drivel with no pesky policy implications or choices to be made or facts to look up, was the driving force behind our very lives—no, our very professions? Remember when Bill was the root of all evil, and Hillary was the scheming mastermind behind eighty percent of everything that ever happened—back when scandals were good, and by that I mean, not so goddamn boring?

Sometimes, when the wind is still, you can still hear them wistfully sobbing for those good old days. Still, though, you almost never saw someone bring up the name Ken Starr after that with an actual, serious proposal that he be brought back to do all of that nonsense again. Even in the worst, most vapid hollows of the press, that's a new one.

To quote Peggy Noonan, who blew a gasket on the I.R.S. in the Wall Street Journal, “This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.” If that’s the case, both parties should stand aside and let a special counsel determine if what happened was criminal, or just dumb. Meanwhile, we have some governing to do.

Good God.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Karzai Shoots Back:

After being the subject of a critical story emanating from Washington regarding the drug trade in Afghanistan, Afghani President Hamid Karzai shot back:

President Hamid Karzai today demanded justice for Afghan prisoner abuse by American interrogators, and he blamed the United States and Britain, not his government, for the slow progress of anti-drug efforts in his country. He also said he would ask President Bush for greater control over Afghan affairs as part of a longer-term strategic partnership.
. . . Mr. Karzai underscored cooperation with the United States, but also insisted that Afghans' sense of independence and self-reliance was growing. "No Afghan is a puppet, you know," he said in a Fox News interview. "There is a stronger ownership of the Afghan government and the Afghan people now."

It remained unclear how much his criticisms were intended for Afghan consumption, or whether his meeting with Mr. Bush might be rendered less comfortable than past such encounters, which have generally been portrayed as relaxed and amicable.
His comments, nonetheless, came at a delicate and unexpectedly contentious moment, a day after Mr. Karzai had expressed dismay over reports of abuses of Afghan prisoners - "it has shocked me thoroughly," he said Saturday in Kabul - and as Mr. Karzai's help in eradicating opium poppies in Afghanistan was being questioned by the United States.

Tweet of the Day:

if fossil fuels didn't have near-religious significance to the GOP, Fox would be calling KeystoneXL "a bailout to a Canadian company."
— @sethdmichaels via web

On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin on why there aren't more "safe rooms" and basements in homes in "Tornado Alley." More GunFAIL & passive voice. A note from alpaca farmer on one of the key arguments once made against a Utah bill to mandate alerting parents of armed teacher in their kid's classroom. And the guy quoted in support of armed teachers, whose argument rested on the extra protection of the permitting process, once lobbied to repeal the permitting requirement entirely! Plus, he's actually been on my GunFAIL list before! Moving on, more facts about tax-exempt political groups, and discussion of a possible "nuclear option" on filibusters.

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

Economics Daily Digest: Where Have All The Good Jobs Gone?

rss@dailykos.com (Roosevelt Institute) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:49:04 UTC

By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via email.

The Case for Raising the Minimum Wage (U.S. News and World Report)

David Cooper makes the case that raising the minimum wage is not only advisable but necessary: with full-time minimum wage workers living below the poverty line, every taxpayer is subsidizing low wage employers. Not the most uplifting way to see your tax dollars at work.

Workers Strike Over Federal Contracts and Low Wage Jobs In D.C.(HuffPo)

Arthur Delaney and Dave Jamieson spoke to workers striking yesterday to protest low wages at workplaces funded by federal contracts. If taxpayers subsidize low-wage workers, this piece of the puzzle is even more frustrating, because federal contracts could set a higher wage floor.

SNAP Rolls: They’re Elevated for a Reason (On The Economy)

Jared Bernstein explains why SNAP enrollment isn’t dropping right alongside unemployment, even though that’s a pretty logical idea. Unemployment may be down, he says, but that doesn’t mean people have actually gone back to work, and in the meantime, they still need to eat.

Keynes Skeptics Find New Economic Poster Boy (NY Mag)

Jonathan Chait has discovered the new face of austerity, following the collapse of Reinhart-Rogoff: James Buchanan (the economist, not the unloved U.S. president). Buchanan argued “temporary” stimulus would create permanent long-term deficits, but Chait isn’t buying it.

Naming Names in the Dodd Frank Mess (TAP)

David Dayen wants us to stop blaming generic “Wall Street lobbyists” for gutting Dodd-Frank when they have name-brand help. Regulators like Mark Wetjen, one of the Democratic commissioners on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are also responsible for weaker rules.

The IRS controversy isn’t about taxes. It’s about disclosure. (WaPo)

Dylan Matthews thinks that the IRS controversy is really about the distinction between 501(c)(4)s and 527s: The former can keep donors a secret, but 527s must disclose. Apparently tea party organizations are worried that no one would donate to them if they had to own up to it.

Roosevelt Take: Senior Fellow Mark Schmitt takes this issue to question the difference between electioneering and political speech.

A Keynesian Victory, but Austerity Stands Firm (NYT)

Eduardo Porter examines why Keynesian economists are running victory laps around austerians, yet austerity politics are still reigning across the globe. The intellectual battle may be won, but politicians are resisting.

New on Next New Deal

Creating Good Jobs is the Defining Issue of Our Time (Next New Deal)

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Richard Kirsch knows that our biggest economic problem isn’t the deficit or national debt: It’s jobs. Good jobs, the ones that provide decent pay and benefits, are disappearing, and the economy can’t recover without them.

A note on tornado intensity ratings

rss@dailykos.com (DarkSyde) — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:30:10 UTC

Devstation in Moore, OK, courtesy of Jeff Masters at the WeatherUnderground. Click for more expert storm info & images.

There's been some confusing numbers thrown out on the rating of the tornadoes that devastated Oklahoma yesterday. Earlier Tuesday some outlets reported one was an F4, Tuesday afternoon I heard at least one news anchor call it an F5. This probably arises from two closely related but different intensity rating systems. The scale used by storm meteorlogists today is the Enhanced Fujita Scale, that's why you see the "EF" designation popping up. The older scale popularized by movies like Twister is the Fujita Scale. The original Fujita scale defines an F5 tornado as winds greater than 260 MPH, but the EF scale cuts off at 200 MPH. The change in scales has to do with a better understanding of the physics of wind energy. In laymen's terms, once wind velocity gets above ~ 200 MPH the destruction is so devastating it's difficult to distinguish finer dividing lines just beyond that without expert analysis.

It is a certainty the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma, was an EF5. When you see cars tossed like they are above, on top of a shredded steel-reinforced cinder-block storm-rated structure, that's about as bad as it gets. If surface winds in a hurricane were to get as strong as they did yesterday in Moore, we would have to extend the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale two more notches, to at least Category Seven. The National Weather Service will examine the tornado tracks and debris field to try to estimate the max winds. It remains to be seen if there's evidence for speeds above the older 261 MPH threshold. But the question is really just academic at this point.

Bernanke to Congress: Enough with the austerity, already

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:37:02 UTC

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke is over austerity and, in typical Fed speak, did his best to convince the members of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that just maybe their efforts would be better focused on creating jobs than crafting for more deficit-cutting policies.

"The loss of output and earnings associated with high unemployment ... reduces government revenues and increases spending on income-support programs, thereby leading to larger budget deficits and higher levels of public debt than would otherwise occur," Bernanke said. [...]
As he has done repeatedly in the past couple of years, Bernanke again bemoaned the government's austerity obsession on Wednesday, including this year's payroll-tax increase and the brutal budget cuts of sequestration. Bernanke suggested that the government could replace some of this foolishness with longer-term fixes to Social Security and Medicare. A "Grand Bargain" on the deficit that does away with some short-term austerity might help the economy, Bernanke added.

So we can't be giving too much credit to Bernanke, throwing in that need to impose long-term "fixes" to Social Security and Medicare, a la the Grand Bargain just as long as it saves us from short-term austerity. But the core of the problem is austerity and that there's no way the Fed's target goals of 6.5 percent unemployment (we're well above) and 2 percent inflation (we're well below) can be met any time soon unless the government starts pumping some money into the economy again.

Low-income Americans could face coverage gaps under Obamacare

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:39:55 UTC

The primary goal of the Affordable Care Act—getting the uninsured and working poor access to health insurance—is likely to be complicated by the fact that the regular complications of life (marriage, divorce, having children, job changes, layoffs) have such a significant impact on the income of people living on the edge of poverty. Those life changes could result in interruptions not just in health insurance coverage, but in health care for these people, as they ping-pong between being eligible for subsidies versus Medicaid.

As their family incomes change, so too will their eligibility for public insurance programs. And if nothing is done, policymakers warn, many low-income patients will lose access to their doctors and medications during this massive game of health coverage pingpong.
Policymakers and healthcare industry leaders across the nation are paying close attention to the issue and working to close the coverage gaps before Jan. 1, said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. [...]

Nationwide, income fluctuations are estimated to interrupt coverage for as many as 28 million people expected to bounce between Medicaid and the federally subsidized health insurance exchanges that states are working to create, according to an article in the journal Health Affairs. Among those most at risk are seasonal and hourly workers and young adults who lack coverage through their parents or jobs, experts said.

Of course, the good news with Obamacare is that this group of people will at least have access to health insurance, either on the exchange or through Medicaid (if they live in a state that's implementing the Medicaid expansion), something that wouldn't have happened for most before the law. They would just be uninsured.

It's good that this is an issue policymakers are aware of and that they're trying to figure out. But the potentially larger issue that still seems to be hanging out there with no solution is what happens to all the people falling into the gap created by states that aren't expanding Medicaid. That's a problem that so far has no solution.

GOP 'solution' to their lt. governor problem in Virginia: Zipped lips

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:12:13 UTC

The GOP's new strategy in Virginia

So you're a Republican politician in Virginia and your whack-a-doodle party has just nominated a whack-a-doodle wingnut named E.W. Jackson to be its nominee for lieutenant governor. What do you do? Apparently, you stand mute:

“I’m not going to comment on him,” said Rep. Frank Wolf of Jackson.

And:

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who also had endorsed Cuccinelli — and even appeared at an event with both men in Roanoke on Monday — did not return repeated requests for comment.
Rep. Rob Wittman speedily walked away from a reporter when asked about Jackson. Subsequent, repeated calls to his Capitol Hill office went unreturned.

That's not say Republicans are actually opposing Jackson. In fact, they're supporting him. It's just that they don't want to publicly defend him. For example, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's spokesman told BuzzFeed that Cantor would "help Republicans win" but would not defend statements made by Jackson.

And then of course there's the top whack-a-doodle of them all, GOP gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli, who is taking what might be called a "support but don't defend" position:

“I don’t need to know what the subject matter that’s going to tie up 20-20 that the LG can vote on will be. I’m confident that we’re going to get the right vote every single time out of E.W. Jackson. So I’m glad he’s on this ticket, too.”
But in a statement to the Virginia Pilot, Cuccinelli also said he would not answer questions about his new running mate’s views. “We are not defending any of our running mates’ statements now or in the future,” he noted, adding “The people of Virginia need to get comfortable with each candidate individually.”

That seems like a tough message to sell. On other hand, it can't be worse than having the guy who wants to be Governor Whack-A-Doodle defend the guy who wants to be Lieutenant Governor Whack-A-Doodle.

9-month-old Florida firm donates $140,000 to Scott and state GOP, gets $52 million state deal

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:44:41 UTC

Florida Gov. Rick Scott

If this isn't crooked, it's only because we've defined crookedness down so much that it doesn't exist anymore:

Two months after contributing $110,000 to Gov. Rick Scott's re-election campaign, an upstart property insurance company is likely to reap a $52 million windfall, paid from the coffers of Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

Here's the deal. Citizens Property Insurance Corp. is a state-run Florida insurance company. Because Florida has hit a lucky streak over the last years and not had as much hurricane damage as they had feared, they're sitting on a cash surplus of $6.4 billion dollars. But that surplus could go away if a devastating hurricane season does hit, and (shudder) there's even the possibility that a future bad hurricane could force the state to raise taxes to pay for the damage, so the governing state Republicans have a great plan to deal with that: They'll pay private companies to take profitable policies off their hands. (The premise is that this will mitigate possible losses later, presumably because if any of these smaller, privatized insurance companies were to later fail the state would tell disaster victims that were clients of those smaller firms to piss off.)

In this particular case, that has led to that not-too-unique special business flower: A new company apparently formed specifically to go after a single government contract and reap the rewards, and whose bid for the free government money consists in large part of investing in politicians:

Sitting on a record cash surplus of $6.4 billion, Citizens is hoping to sign a special deal today with Heritage Property and Casualty Insurance Co., a St. Petersburg firm that opened nine months ago and has made significant political contributions.
Heritage has donated more than $140,000 to Scott and the Republican Party of Florida in recent months, and spent tens of thousands more lobbying the Legislature.

A nine-month-old company that's donated $140,000 to Rick Scott and the Republican Party, and which is now suddenly in line for $52 million in government money? Wow. That's not at all crooked-sounding. Note, especially, that Heritage donated its first $30,000 to the Florida GOP only two months after the company was founded—and the other $110,000 to Rick Scott just two months ago, while Heritage was in the midst of lobbying Scott and state legislators for the contract.

This isn't even a one-time thing:

It's the second time this year Citizens is looking to subsidize an upstart private insurer using its massive surplus, which has been built up over seven years as the state has dodged hurricanes. In February, Citizens' board approved a deal with Weston Insurance, agreeing to pay the young company $63 million to take out 30,000 policies. Weston has spent more than $250,000 on lobbying this year, and two of Citizens' seven board members abstained from voting because of conflicts of interest.

There's even more sketchiness to all this, including an apparent government-to-private-sector revolving door racket by one of the participants. If nobody ends up in jail because of this then it's Florida's own fault. You elect crooks to write your laws, they're going to write crooked laws.

Srinivasan confirmation vote Thursday could hold key for filibuster reform in July

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:37:15 UTC

Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell had a heated exchange on the floor Wednesday over the nomination of Sri Srinivasan to the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This is a key nomination as this court, second in stature only to the Supreme Court, has four vacancies. The nomination was unanimously approved out of the Judiciary Committee, with the sideshow of Chuck Grassley proposing that instead of approving nominees, the Congress should cut the vacant seats from the court.

That Grassley proposal gave legs to a new Republican excuse for potentially blocking this confirmation, and was McConnell's primary argument on the floor Wednesday: Filling this seat is a "power grab" by Democrats and President Obama, and by trying to fill vacancies, they're really trying to pack the courts. No, seriously.

“What did our Democrat colleagues do in response? They consulted with the White House and pledged to pack the D.C. Circuit with appointees, quote, ‘one way or the other’—meaning using the nuclear option.”
McConnell said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had threatened to “break the rules to change the rules” by using the nuclear option, which allows the majority to change the rules during a congressional session. But Reid said he had no intention to do so.

“I’m not saying we have to change the rules,” Reid said in response to McConnell’s accusations. “I’m just saying we have to do better around here [and] try to work through this morass we have here.”

Presumably, Reid means that he isn't intending to change the rules for Srinivasan, and isn't taking the option off the table entirely. In fact, a blocked Srinivasan vote could be Reid's best means of convincing recalcitrant Democrats to go nuclear in the July showdown. McConnell could also just be blowing a lot of hot air to try to minimize damage with the crazy base if Republicans do decide to allow the confirmation to go forward.

Either way, the Srinivasan vote could very well be the precursor for a larger fight in July.

Use this link to send an email to your Democratic senators telling them to re-open filibuster reform and make the Senate function again.

Obama's leak freakout

rss@dailykos.com (BrianMcFadden) — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:50:09 UTC

Click to enlarge.

Top House Republicans calls second round of sequester 'idiotic,' but says his hands are 'tied'

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:15:10 UTC

The Hill reports on the outlook for the second year of the sequester, which will reduce spending in FY2014 from $1.043 trillion to $967 billion. In all likelihood, the $76 billion in additional austerity will come from another round of indiscriminate cuts. And The Republican head of the House's Appropriations Committee isn't happy:

[Chairman Hal] Rogers called the sequester situation “idiotic” but said his hands are “tied” by the Budget Control Act, the House-passed budget and House rules.

Good to know he thinks the way Congress is doing business is "idiotic." If only he knew someone who could do something about that ...

Warren asks bullseye questions of Treasury Secretary Lew. Can we have 50 more like her, please?

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:08:57 UTC

Elizabeth Warren, who by Senate tradition ought to be a meek, eyes-down freshman, turned in another stellar performance Wednesday at a Banking Committee hearing with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in the hot seat.

Warren began by asking whether Treasury had changed its views on banks that were judged "too big to fail" back in 2008 since four of these institutions have grown 30 percent since then. “When we see the largest financial institutions getting bigger and bigger… it tells us that we are clearly not on the path to resolving too big to fail,” she said. She asked Lew:

“How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up? Do they have to double in size? Triple in size? Quadruple in size?”

Lew said it would not be a good idea to enact any new measures until Dodd-Frank, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is fully implemented. That law will have its third birthday in July. You can see the exchange below and a somewhat longer version here.

The four banks Warren was speaking of are JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. They're nearly $2 trillion larger now than they were when the financial crisis struck. With assets of $7.8 trillion, their combined assets are half the size of the entire U.S. economy and the banks hold more than half of America's $7 trillion in deposits.

In April, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Republican Sen. David Vitter introduced a too-big-to-fail bill that would impose capital restrictions on banks as a proportion of the assets. For community and mid-sized banks, that would be eight percent. For the giants of $500 billion or more in assets, 15 percent. Subsidiaries and affiliates of banks would have to be separately capitalized.

In addition, the bill would limit the government's safety net to traditional banking operations not the risky investment practices that led to federal bailouts. At the same time, the bill would reduce regulations on community banks.

The Independent Community Bankers of America support the Brown-Vitter bill as do some current U.S. regulators. Not surprisingly, the bill is under attack by the usual suspects.

Have Dems sold out too early on immigration? Not if they want something to actually pass

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:09:13 UTC

Get rid of the filibuster, win back the House, and THEN Orrin Hatch is irrelevant

Sally Kohn:

My friend John Fugelsang likes to say that the Democratic Party is like an S&M submissive who forgot his safety word. After the lame performance of Democrats in the immigration reform markup, I would say Fugelsang is being generous. Republicans are incredibly skilled at holding no actual power but nonetheless making wildly effective threats. Democrats on the other hand display the unique and vexing ability to have every political advantage and still cave on their own goals, more often than not preemptively.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I would not be surprised if the modern Democratic Party’s strategy is secretly being bankrolled by Eli Lilly as a ploy to sell Prozac to liberals.

What has Kohn so upset? That committee Democrats shelved Sen. Pat Leahy's amendment granting same-sex couples the same rights as everyone else when granting immigration visas, while agreeing to another amendment by Sen. Orrin Hatch to make it easier for U.S. companies to import workers from abroad.

The first is disappointing because Democrats should fight for equality, the latter because it makes it easier for companies to keep wages down by ostensibly importing lower-cost immigrant workers. And since Democrats have majorities in committee and the full Senate, Kohn argues, there was no need to court extra votes.

On the morality of those votes, Kohn is right of course. But not on the politics. Senate Democrats aren't engaging in a statement vote, a la the House's umpteenth vote to kill Obamacare. They are actually trying to make law. And that doesn't just require getting it through the Senate with that ridiculous 60-vote threshold, but through the tea party-controlled House as well.

Thus, Hatch's committee vote had less to do with getting his specific vote, and more to do with sending a message to conservative House members that even the conservative Orrin Hatch from Utah supported the bill. Of course, he doesn't actually support it. He's still threatening to vote against it in the full Senate if he doesn't get additional changes, none of which would be for the better. But that's why his vote was courted: The more conservatives they can bring aboard, the harder it is for the House to reject the bill.

And thus Leahy's amendment was doomed from the start. Not only were Senate Republicans threatening to blow up the bill over the provision, but it was a guaranteed non-starter in the House. Not to mention, the problem isn't that the immigration bill doesn't sufficiently protect the rights of gay Americans, it's that federal law currently discriminates against them. The place to fight that battle is over DOMA, particularly if the Supreme Court doesn't do the right thing by invalidating it. Get rid of that, and same-sex couples are on equal immigration footing. But blowing up Latinos' top policy priority, when Latinos are the most supportive racial or ethnic group on the issue of marriage equality, would be counterproductive.

If this was an exercise in political grandstanding, then sure, make the bill perfect and trumpet its purity to the high heavens. But this is an attempt at actual governance. And that requires compromises, many of which will be unpalatable. In other words, sausage-making.

If we want fewer concessions to asshole Republicans, the answer is simple: eliminate the filibuster, hold the Senate, win back the House. We do that, and Orrin Hatch and his friends in the House become irrelevant. Until then ... yeah, it sucks. But it's not a sell-out.

2:12 PM PT: Here's the argument, in short:

If the LGBT language is included, the bill is dead, LGBT couples are SOL on immigration matters.

If the bill passes, and DOMA is revoked, LGBT couples receive equal treatment under the law.

If the bill passes, and DOMA remains law, then LGBT couples are discriminated against.

Of the three scenarios, only one leads to non-discriminatory federal immigration policy, and that one requires that the bill pass without the LGBT language.

Midday open thread

rss@dailykos.com (Meteor Blades) — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:00:10 UTC

Today's comic by Jen Sorensen is Gap's reputation collapse:
No summer downtime for auto plants this year:
The three Detroit carmakers traditionally shut factories for two weeks around July 4 to do maintenance and change the machinery for new models. But they don’t have that luxury this year. U.S. demand for new cars and trucks has been strong, up 7 percent through April, led by soaring demand for full-size pickup trucks as home construction rebounds. And after closing more than two dozen factories during the recession, U.S. automakers need to use their remaining capacity to its fullest. [...]
Not all automakers are changing their schedule. Honda and Nissan said Tuesday they still plan to close their U.S. plants for a week around July 4. Toyota is also planning to shut down its U.S. plants for a week this summer.
Expelling performance-hurting stereotypes from the classroom:
Scientific American science writer Ed Yong explores new research on stereotype threat—the fear of confirming derogatory stereotypes about one's social group. Such anxiety can undermine people's performance in school, sports and the workplace. A girl in an advanced math class, for example, might worry that she will not test as well as the boys, because of the stereotype that boys are better at math. Her concerns might distract her and tax her mental resources so that she performs below her abilities. Similarly, a young white basketball player might play poorly because he is worried that he is not as skilled as his African-American peers. Stereotype threat is one of the explanations for certain achievement gaps.
Budget-cutting lay-offs allow woman to be raped: She called 911 to say her ex-boyfriend who had put her in the hospital a few weeks before was trying to break into her house.
But the dispatcher has no one to send. Because the local sheriff’s department recently lost millions in federal funds, it laid off 23 of its 29 deputies and limited their availability to eight hours on Mondays through Fridays. The woman’s call to 911 took place on a Saturday. [...]
Eventually, the ex-boyfriend, a man named Michael Bellah, pried open the woman’s front door. Choked her. And raped her. After he was caught, he plead[ed] guilty to kidnapping, assault, and sex abuse.
Ríos Montt's attorney says the general's genocide trial must restart: In Spanish, an attorney is an abogado, but the attorney of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, Francisco García Gudiel, is often referred to in Guatemala as an "abogangster." Now that the country's high court has overturned Montt's conviction for genocide for his ordering the killing in the early 1980s of more than 1,700 Ixil Indians, next steps are being considered.
[García said:] "You have to cancel the whole process and begin a new trial with new judges." [...]
Back in 1983, Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for human rights under President Ronald Reagan, once suggested that General Ríos Montt’s rule had “brought considerable progress” on human rights.
Hanging out at the White House in all his cuteness.
Origins of Human Culture Linked to Rapid Climate Change:
Rapid climate change during the Middle Stone Age, between 80,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age, sparked surges in cultural innovation in early modern human populations, according to new research. [...]
"The occurrence of several major Middle Stone Age industries fell tightly together with the onset of periods with increased rainfall."
"Similarly, the disappearance of the industries appears to coincide with the transition to drier climatic conditions."
Why are the "tone police" so one-sided?:
Basically, I think the problem is everyone knows that progressives are the good guys and reactionaries are the bad guys, and so the onus to take the high road is always and forever on progressives. The problem, of course, is the “high road” is a constantly shifting target. If you refrain from overt jokes about conservatives, the next thing you’re told is too far is sarcasm. If you cave into the intense pressure to stop using terms like “racist” and “sexist” accurately, as we’ve witnessed, even talking about the concept of privilege is considered a bridge too far. You begin to realize that speaking at all from the position of moral authority as a progressive is what is offensive, because you make people feel bad for, well, being bad people.
Arizona legislator Juan Mendez says he is an atheist during invocation:
A state lawmaker acknowledged that he is an atheist as he gave the daily House invocation Tuesday, urging legislators to look at each other, rather than bow their heads, and "celebrate our shared humanness."
Rep. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, who said it was freeing to be open about his secular views, also introduced about a dozen fellow members of the Secular Coalition for Arizona, who watched from the House gallery.
Take a break from the stress to check out some new images of Saturn & system. - DS
On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin on why there aren't more "safe rooms" and basements in homes in "Tornado Alley." More GunFAIL & passive voice. A note from alpaca farmer on one of the key arguments once made against a Utah bill to mandate alerting parents of armed teacher in their kid's classroom. And the guy quoted in support of armed teachers, whose argument rested on the extra protection of the permitting process, once lobbied to repeal the permitting requirement entirely! Plus, he's actually been on my GunFAIL list before! Moving on, more facts about tax-exempt political groups, and discussion of a possible "nuclear option" on filibusters.

Michele Bachmann says God will 'answer our prayers' and kill Obamacare

rss@dailykos.com (Hunter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:30:10 UTC

And then I sez to God, I sez ...

It is becoming profoundly difficult to give a damn about what Michele Bachmann thinks; despite this, however, she still insists on telling us. Here she is explaining to the nice radio theocrat James Dobson, who is crazier than she is, that God is going to "answer our prayers" and kill Obamacare:

That's why you saw the House of Representatives pass my bill, the full repeal of Obamacare last week, and that's why I have renewed confidence that we can see this bill pass in the Senate and I think the President will ultimately be forced to repudiate his own signature piece of legislation because the American people will demand it.
And I think before his second term is over, we're going to see a miracle before our eyes, I believe God is going to answer our prayers and we'll be freed from the yoke of Obamacare. I believe that's going to happen and we saw step one last week with the repeal of Obamacare in the House. We have two more steps. We serve a mighty God and I believe it can happen.

First off, if God Himself appeared in the Senate, James Inhofe would filibuster him. Second off, God works in mysterious ways, but if God works through Michele Bachmann's ever-incoherent legislative agenda I'll eat my left shoe. Third off, ever since I sat through two separate Michele Bachmann speeches at CPAC premised on the idea that government should immediately devote itself to curing Alzheimer's with absolutely no suggestion of how they should do that or why she was suddenly apparently for a massive federal involvement in America's health care after condemning that very thing in every other sentence and in every other context has forever soured me on the idea that Michele Bachmann even knows herself what the flying monkey-basted hell she's going on about.

So I think she's Elmer Gantrying this and then some, when she says God is going to present America with the "miracle" of crushing things basket-case conservatives don't like.

Also: We'll be "freed from the yoke of Obamacare"? Seriously? It's a "yoke," now? No, crazy lady, you're a yoke. You're a yoke and a half.

Filibuster fireworks likely for July

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:18:06 UTC

Time for these guys to be whipping filibuster reform.

It's pretty much official: Harry Reid will wait until July to have the big fight with Republicans over the filibuster. He had originally intended to hold the confirmation vote for Richard Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week, setting up a big fight before the Memorial Day recess. But with immigration reform out of committee and ready for the floor, Reid's colleagues asked that the fight be held until after its consideration in hopes of giving it every chance to pass.

The July tussle would focus on the logjammed nomination process, and could lead to eliminating the ability to filibuster some nominations, the so-called "nuclear" or "constitutional" option -- the word choice depending on whether one approves of it or not. At least 50 Senate Democrats are supportive of rules reform.
"July is the best time to have this debate over rules and nominees," said another Democratic aide. "After immigration, and before the budget battles." [...]

Regardless, several Senate Democrats signaled Tuesday that they're ready for a rules fight, with some pointing to specific instances where Republicans leaned on the filibuster to block broadly supported measures.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reacting with typical histrionics.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that the culture of intimidation is simply confined to the executive branch. The administration's allies here in the senate are trying to intimidate their political opponents as well," he said. "What I'm talking about is the persistent threat by the majority to break the rules of the senate in order to change the rules of the Senate—in other words, to use the nuclear option if they don't get their way."

That's rich, given the destruction McConnell and team have wrought in the Senate. It's a broken body thanks to their obstruction, so his lament for the rules is more than a little hypocritical. Whether or not McConnell really takes this threat seriously remains to be seen: If the stranglehold on nominations eases, then perhaps Reid's threats—and the growing possibility that he's ready to go nuclear at anytime—will have done the trick. But that's not too likely, not when colossal dicks like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are all trying to make their political name.

In that case, several Democrats won't be enough. Reid needs 51. We've got until July to find them.

Use this link to send an email to your Democratic senators telling them to re-open filibuster reform and make the Senate function again.

New report: More seniors living in poverty, and they want to cut Social Security?

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:50:16 UTC

The Kaiser Family Foundation released a report Monday showing that more seniors than previously thought are living in poverty. Instead of 1 in 10 seniors subsisting at poverty levels, it's actually 1 in 7.

Beginning in 2011, the Census Bureau started releasing data with both their standard measure of poverty, in use since the 1960s, and an alternative, or supplemental, measure that considers out-of-pocket health care spending and regional cost of living. According to the Kaiser analysis of this data, “The supplemental measure suggests that a greater share of seniors may already be struggling financially than is conveyed by the official measure.” This also means that the Medicare and Social Security benefits cuts President Obama included in his grand bargain offer could spike poverty in the elderly.

Some of the key findings in this analysis:

There are more seniors living in poverty in every state under the official masure, but in 12 states there are at least twice as many as under the official measure: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Under the supplemental measure, about 1 in 4 seniors in D.C. is living in poverty, and about 1 in 5 are in California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, Georgia and New York.
Nationally, 48 percent of seniors live with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty threshold using the supplemental measure. It's bad enough that under the standard measure, it's 34 percent. In other words, by the Census estimates our leaders make policy by, a third of seniors are living on the edge of poverty, but in reality, it's almost half.
Using the supplemental measure, 40 percent of seniors in 48 states and D.C. have incomes below 200 percent of the poverty threshold, but using the standard measure, that's true in only six states and D.C.

Half of America's seniors don't have what Social Security has always been intended to promise: security. The ideas being floated for a grand bargain would make it worse.

Instead of talking about cutting benefits for seniors, the discussion needs to be about restoring security to them. One way to do that is to coalesce support behind a bill like Sen. Tom Harkin's Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013 (S. 567). It would increase Social Security benefits and strengthen the program by: changing the method the Social Security Administration uses to calculate benefits to make sure those who need it most will have adequate payments; using a cost of living adjustment that actually reflects what seniors have to spend their money on, like health care; and phasing out the cap on taxable income, currently $113,700, so that every dollar of wages is subject to payroll taxes.

Please join with Daily Kos and Social Security Works by signing our petition telling every member of Congress to increase Social Security benefits by passing The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013.

Cuccinelli's running mate defended three-fifths clause as 'anti-slavery'

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:00:09 UTC

The more we learn about E.W. Jackson, nominated last weekend by Virginia Republicans as their nominee for lieutenant governor, the crazier it gets:

The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia has praised the Constitution’s original clause to count blacks as three-fifths of a person as an “anti-slavery amendment.”
In an April 28, 2011 statement while he was a Senate candidate, conservative minister and lawyer E.W. Jackson held up the three-fifths clause as an “anti-slavery amendment.” The context of his statement was to attack President Obama after a pastor at a church service he attended referred to the three-fifths clause as a historical marker of racism.

“Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states,” Jackson, an African-American, said in his statement.

Presumably, Jackson's rationale is that southern states wanted slaves to count for even more than three-fifths of a person when it came to allocating seats in Congress, so the fact that they didn't get everything they wanted was "anti-slavery." Of course, that misses the fact that the very existence of the three-fifths clause meant that slavery was written into the Constitution. In that sense, unlike the Thirteenth Amendment which banned slavery altogether, the three-fifths clause was pretty much the opposite of an anti-slavery amendment. Maybe slave states didn't get everything they wanted, but that certainly doesn't make it something to be proud of. And it's really bizarre that Jackson doesn't understand that fact.

Globe calls out Gomez for dishonest new ad

rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter) — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:22:58 UTC

Gomez digs himself a deeper hole.

Remember how Republican Gabriel Gomez tried to deflect his gun problem onto Ed Markey? A refresher: Markey has an ad pointing out that Gomez is opposed to both an assault weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines. Gomez responded to the ad with the hysterical, and ridiculous, claim that Markey was blaming him for the Newtown shootings. Insane? Yes, but apparently it's the best that he could come up with.

So Gomez made an ad out of it, still whining about being picked on by Markey, and still lying about Markey's ad. Gomez's ad is bad enough that the Boston Globe called it out in a news story. Not an editorial or a factcheck piece, but a news story.

Despite what the ad says, Markey has not blamed Gomez for the Newtown shooting. Markey has released an ad that highlights Gomez’s opposition to an assault weapons ban and to limits on high-capacity magazines, “like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting.”

Gomez's new ad also complains that Markey has an ad "comparing him to bin Laden," which is also bullshit. The Markey ad shows a split screen of an MSNBC segment in which Gomez is trying to defend his organization's effort to swiftboat President Obama over the bin Laden killing. Seems like Gomez wouldn't want to keep drawing the attention of Massachusetts voters to the fact that he tried to swiftboat Obama, but that's what desperation, and no real experience or policy ideas, gets you.

But for a former Navy SEAL, Gomez sure does have a thin skin.

Please contribute $3 to Ed Markey.

How Citizens United is saving progressive politics

rss@dailykos.com (kos) — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:40:09 UTC

Two data points. First up, EMILY's List:

EMILY's List raised $7.3 million in the first four months of 2013, a record for that period in the pro-abortion rights group's nearly three-decade existence. The group also tallied more donors than ever in the same time period.

The DCCC:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had a record-breaking fundraising haul in the first quarter, bringing in $22.6 million with strong support from members and online donations.

Once upon a time, these organizations and others like them received heavy support from wealthy individuals. Citizens United shifted those big-donor dollars into unregulated 527s, seemingly starving the party committees and other non-527 political organizations of a huge chunk of their budgets.

Instead, smart organizations have transitioned toward building their grassroots base, building out email action lists and integrating deeper into social networks. The results speak for themselves—they aren't just holding steady, they're breaking fundraising records. And not only are they bringing in more money, but an organization beholden to its grassroots will be far more responsive and less corruptible than one that depends on a few individuals.

Conservatives hoped this would cripple liberals, allowing their billionaires to swamp the political system with untold millions. Yet conservative Super PACs (like FreedomWorks and Karl Rove's Crossroads) have proven incredibly adept at syphoning up conservative millions without delivering anything much in the way of results. Meanwhile, less-funded progressive groups like American Bridge and Majority PAC have proven far more effective. Look at the comparative numbers here. It's not even close.

And that's not even including the rise of Michael Bloomberg's dual-headed anti-gun machine—Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Independence USA. Two organizations that are reshaping what was once a one-sided "debate" over guns.

Just because liberals are benefitting better from this fundraising regime doesn't mean it's ideal, and a Constitutional Amendment repealing Citizens United would still be the desired outcome. But liberal wishes alone won't make it happen. We need conservatives as well, and their inability to take advantage of this post-CU world might finally make that happen.

Indeed, at this pace, they may need it just to keep pace.

Virginia's 'Republican establishment' can't understand why they've nominated lunatics

rss@dailykos.com (Jed Lewison) — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:12 UTC

Ken Cuccinnelli praises E.W. Jackson, the extremist minister nominated last weekend by VA GOP for lt. gov.

Your eyes should already be rolling:

A minister who compared gays to pedophiles and Planned Parenthood to the Klu Klux Klan is not the No. 2 candidate Republican Party reformers had in mind for the marquee race of 2013.

And who might those reformers be?

“We learned a lot of lessons in 2012 that we’re trying to point out to people, but not all the people are going to listen,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary who helped lead the national party’s sweeping examination of the 2012 election and produce a 97-page report of recommendations.

Bush's press secretary, a reformer? Seriously? I'm not defending the tea party lunatics, but if the GOP's idea is reform is to listen to the guys who made opposition to marriage equality the centerpiece of their 2004 reelection campaign and presided over the worst presidency ever, then they've got some serious problems.

A more informal but similar soul-searching is taking place in Virginia, where the Republican establishment is worried the party will be better known for requiring women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds than for passing a sweeping transportation funding deal. A small group of Republican donors, business leaders, and former elected officials has met in Richmond twice since April about the tea-party’s movement’s impact on the GOP. According to a participant in both meetings, the group is concerned that Cuccinelli is too conservative to win a general election in state that voted twice for President Obama—and that was before Jackson joined the ticket.

If these guys were willing to say that they won't vote for their ticket, I'd at least have a little sympathy for them. But it's obvious why Republicans keep on nominating lunatics: It's because lunatics do a pretty damn good job of representing the GOP base. And the the fact that the establishment still wants the lunatics to win shows that they pretty much the same page as their base when it comes to substance. The main thing that separates the two groups is that the establishment is smart enough to know that most people don't see the world the same way they do.

FBI agent shoots man being questioned about Boston bombing

rss@dailykos.com (Jen Hayden) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:21:45 UTC

The details are slim, but FBI officials have confirmed an agent shot Ibragim Todashev while he was being questioned about the Boston bombing:

"There was some sort of aggressive movement that led the FBI agent to believe he was under threat and he opened fire," the law enforcement official told ABC News.
"(The FBI) took me and my friend, the suspect that got killed. They were talking to us, both of us, right? And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they're going to bring him back. They never brought him back," Taramiv said.

The statement from the FBI:

"We are currently responding to a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent," FBI spokesman Dave Couvertier said. "The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties. The suspect is deceased."

CBS News offers a few more details:

Miller reported that FBI agents went to Todashev's apartment complex after midnight Wednesday morning to question him. Todashev had been on the bureau's radar since Tsarnaev was identified as a suspect in the bombing.
"He had been interviewed along with a number of other people in the apartment complex, but the interest in him was higher because of a couple of factors: He was in contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He had been to Boston to visit him, and he was planning a trip to Chechnya," Miller said.

FBI agents went to question him overnight after there were indications that he canceled that trip, Miller said.

"In the encounter in the apartment, something went wrong," Miller said.

The FBI says they'll have more information available today. Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

Todashev, they say, had spent some time in the Boston area, where he was a mixed martial arts fighter, and knew Tsarnaev there. Investigators say he confessed to the agent in Florida that he played a role in a triple murder in 2011 in which three men were murdered in an apartment in Waltham, Mass.
Their throats had been cut, and their bodies were covered with marijuana. No suspects had been arrested in that case.

Officials say FBI agents were questioning Todashev on Tuesday. He was cooperative at first, they say, but late Tuesday night, he attacked the agent with a knife, who shot and killed him. Officials say Todashev became violent as he was about to sign a written statement based on his confession.

Gap's reputation collapse

rss@dailykos.com (Jen Sorensen) — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:50:09 UTC

(Click to enlarge)

The Independent UK has a good rundown of the Gap controversy. The Savar factory collapse did not involve The Gap, but the company has been outspoken about its opposition to any legally-binding plan to improve conditions for workers in Bangladesh.

Get a signed print of this cartoon from the artist.