Elections
2013 - Massachusetts
Messaging problems for Gabriel Gomez. "Gabriel Gomez, the Republican candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, has taken to arguing lately that he is independent of the national GOP ... This message, however, is getting somewhat muddled by the fact that conservative Republican Senators keep sending out fundraising emails arguing that Gomez’s election is essential in order to restore GOP control of the Senate ... It may not even matter if Gomez argues that he is independent of the national GOP, because that doesn’t necessarily change the fact that a vote for Gomez is a vote to strengthen the Senate Republican caucus." Greg Sargent at the Plum Line.
And problems on the issues - climate change edition. "I asked his campaign to provide information about what policy directions Gomez supports to address the problem of climate change ... In short: Gomez hypothetically favors a policy that addresses global warming as long as it has no downsides or costs, but he will not say whether any actual policy does or does not do so. Really, the only thing you might take away from this statement is that Gomez is likely to oppose just about any actual legislative effort on climate change." David Bernstein at Boston Magazine.
2013 - New Jersey
Special election in October for Lautenberg's seat, it is. And Christie is going to take a lot of flack for this decision. "Gov. Chris Christie announced on Tuesday a highly unusual special election that was immediately criticized for costing the state $24 million and setting up a schedule that was likely to confuse the voting public. Voters will go to the polls on a Wednesday in October to cast ballots for a new senator, then return just three weeks later for the regularly scheduled general election, in which Mr. Christie will stand for a second term." Kate Zernike and David Halbfinger in the New York Times.
Republicans seem less than pleased. "Republicans are fuming over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's decision to hold an early special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, with several Washington-based operatives suggesting he's putting his own interests ahead of the GOP's ... The governor's decision ... means that the GOP's chance at a pickup now looks like a long shot. But Christie protected his own interests by scheduling a separate 2013 election, ensuring that Booker wouldn't usher a surge of Democratic voters that could hurt Christie's November prospects. That did little to mollify Republicans with a stake in retaking the Senate next year." Josh Kraushaar at the National Journal.
The October special election signals a weak GOP field. "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has scheduled an Oct. 16 special election to replace Frank R. Lautenberg, the Democratic senator who died on Monday ... His choice of timing for the special election, however, may indicate that he expects the Republican candidates to be weak ... Mr. Christie seems to view the Senate contest as a liability ... A strong G.O.P. nominee could potentially make the race competitive... But with a lackluster candidate in a blue-leaning state, the Republicans would be all but conceding the race to Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, the most likely Democratic nominee." Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.
And the real victor of Christie's decision is Cory Booker. "Booker is likely to be the real winner from Christie's decision. He has the money and name-recognition to win both a primary and general election in a short campaign. There's no real way that the state Democratic party can choose a different candidate. Finally, Booker can now dismiss the possibility that a popular Christie on the same ballot might have helped a Republican Senate candidate's odds." Harry Enten at the Guardian.
In the long term, Lautenberg's old New Jersey Senate seat will stay in Democratic hands. "Republicans remain long shots to hold the seat after an appointment. Republicans haven’t won a Senate race in New Jersey since Clifford Case was re-elected to a fourth term in 1972. Christie’s likely re-election notwithstanding, New Jersey is a blue state, not a purple state." Nathan Gonzales at the Rothenberg Political Report.
2014
Dems will embrace the Affordable Care Act for the 2014 midterms. "Party strategists believe that embracing the polarizing law — especially its more popular elements — is smarter politics than fleeing from it in the House elections. ... That doesn’t mean every Democrat in the country will be ... praising it ... But Democratic strategists are convinced there’s plenty to like in the law — such as coverage for pre-existing conditions, eliminating lifetime caps on coverage and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health care plans until they are 26 — and are coaching lawmakers and candidates girding for tough races next year to hammer home those benefits." Alex Isenstadt at Politico.
2020
The future of the 'Solid South.' "The Solid South is long gone. The politics of the region’s five most populous states—Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas—will be defined by the emerging majority that gave Obama his winning margins. The under-30 voters in these states are ethnically diverse, they lean heavily Democratic, and they are just beginning to vote. The white population percentage is steadily declining; in Georgia, just 52 percent of those under 18 are white, a number so low it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. By the 2020s, more than two-thirds of the South’s electoral votes could be up for grabs." Bob Moser at the American Prospect.
Gallup
The Gallup 'mea culpa.' "Gallup, the polling firm that took a major hit last year for finding better results for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney than other pollsters found, offered a detailed mea culpa on Tuesday, citing a confluence of small issues that tipped its results rightward ... 'None of these factors are large, in and of themselves,' ... However, each of the four nudged Gallup's numbers slightly in Romney's favor ... Misidentification of Likely Voters ... Under-Representation of Regions ... Faulty Representation of Race and Ethnicity ... Nonstandard Sampling Method." Mark Blumenthal and Ariel Edwards-Levy at the Huffington Post.
Middle East
Afghanistan
The Red Cross is pulling out of Afghanistan. "The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is removing some international staff and curtailing operations in Afghanistan following last week's fatal attack on their Jalalabad compound." Dylan Welch at Reuters.
Egypt
Egypt sentences 43 NGO staffers to jail time. "A court in Cairo has sentenced 43 people to between one and five years in prison for working for unregistered NGOs in Egypt. ... Twenty-seven defendants, all of whom were tried in absentia, received five-year jail sentences. Eleven received one-year suspended sentences, and five received two-year sentences. The accusations against the NGO staffers included ... conducting research, political training, surveys, and workshops without licences, and training political parties and groups and giving them media support to generate electoral votes." Ahram Online.
Syria is a humanitarian nightmare. "More than half the population of Syria is likely to be in need of aid by the end of the year, the UN high commissioner for refugees has warned, while labelling the ever-worsening crisis as the most serious the global body has dealt with. António Guterres, who has led the UNHCR through the worst of the refugee crises in Afghanistan and Iraq, said the Syrian civil war was more brutal and destructive than both and was already the worst humanitarian disaster since the end of the cold war." Martin Chulov at the Guardian.
And may become a disease hotspot, as well. "The World Health Organization reports that nearly eradicated diseases are returning to Syria ... Cases of measles have reappeared in Syria, due to problems running national vaccination campaigns ... There have also been reports of measles, tuberculosis and cutaneous leishmaniasis ... among displaced Syrians in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey ... 'The situation will deteriorate if prevention and control measures are not scaled up soon.'" David Bosco at the Multilateralist.
The protests might imperil Turkish democracy. "The people who have now taken to the streets all over the country represent a new majority of observant and non-observant Muslim Turks, as well as some Kurds who had supported Mr. Erdogan’s government because it seemed tolerant, pluralistic and cosmopolitan. But a new opposition, not only secularist and nationalist, is stirring. So far Mr. Erdogan has arrogantly dismissed his critics. If he continues to ignore their voices, the danger is that Turkey will descend further into violence and see its much-trumpeted experiment in Islamic democracy fail." Seyla Benhabib in the New York Times.
How does Erdogan view democracy? "'Democracy,' he declared, 'is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.' These stories go a long way toward explaining the demonstrations against Turkey’s prime minister ... He has done many things as prime minister to make the lives of Turks appreciably better. Advances in transportation, health care, and economic opportunity are profoundly important to a growing middle class who returns the favor in the form of votes ... The problem for Erdogan is that, despite his best efforts, the tram ... stopped in Taksim Square, where a lot of Turks are signaling they will no longer tolerate his authoritarian turn." Steven Cook at Foreign Affairs.
The Turkish Spring? "Wait, a 'Turkish Spring'? Really? Welcome to the Turkish protest name game. The comparison to the Arab Spring is itself tendentious -- Erdogan is no dictator, and Turkey isn't an Arab country -- but the images of thousands of Turks in the streets of Istanbul hurling rocks at police, setting fire to cars, and chanting anti-Erdogan slogans recall similar scenes in Tahrir Square back in 2011. Outraged at Erdogan's authoritarian tendencies, crony capitalism, and moderate Islamism, members of the urban middle class have taken to the streets to protest a government and a leader they feel has betrayed the legacy of the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk." Elias Groll at Foreign Policy.
Syria
Syria is a humanitarian nightmare. "More than half the population of Syria is likely to be in need of aid by the end of the year, the UN high commissioner for refugees has warned, while labelling the ever-worsening crisis as the most serious the global body has dealt with. António Guterres, who has led the UNHCR through the worst of the refugee crises in Afghanistan and Iraq, said the Syrian civil war was more brutal and destructive than both and was already the worst humanitarian disaster since the end of the cold war." Martin Chulov at the Guardian.
And may become a disease hotspot, as well. "The World Health Organization reports that nearly eradicated diseases are returning to Syria ... Cases of measles have reappeared in Syria, due to problems running national vaccination campaigns ... There have also been reports of measles, tuberculosis and cutaneous leishmaniasis ... among displaced Syrians in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey ... 'The situation will deteriorate if prevention and control measures are not scaled up soon.'" David Bosco at the Multilateralist.
Turkey
The protests might imperil Turkish democracy. "The people who have now taken to the streets all over the country represent a new majority of observant and non-observant Muslim Turks, as well as some Kurds who had supported Mr. Erdogan’s government because it seemed tolerant, pluralistic and cosmopolitan. But a new opposition, not only secularist and nationalist, is stirring. So far Mr. Erdogan has arrogantly dismissed his critics. If he continues to ignore their voices, the danger is that Turkey will descend further into violence and see its much-trumpeted experiment in Islamic democracy fail." Seyla Benhabib in the New York Times.
How does Erdogan view democracy? "'Democracy,' he declared, 'is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.' These stories go a long way toward explaining the demonstrations against Turkey’s prime minister ... He has done many things as prime minister to make the lives of Turks appreciably better. Advances in transportation, health care, and economic opportunity are profoundly important to a growing middle class who returns the favor in the form of votes ... The problem for Erdogan is that, despite his best efforts, the tram ... stopped in Taksim Square, where a lot of Turks are signaling they will no longer tolerate his authoritarian turn." Steven Cook at Foreign Affairs.
The Turkish Spring? "Wait, a 'Turkish Spring'? Really? Welcome to the Turkish protest name game. The comparison to the Arab Spring is itself tendentious -- Erdogan is no dictator, and Turkey isn't an Arab country -- but the images of thousands of Turks in the streets of Istanbul hurling rocks at police, setting fire to cars, and chanting anti-Erdogan slogans recall similar scenes in Tahrir Square back in 2011. Outraged at Erdogan's authoritarian tendencies, crony capitalism, and moderate Islamism, members of the urban middle class have taken to the streets to protest a government and a leader they feel has betrayed the legacy of the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk." Elias Groll at Foreign Policy.
Politics
Filibuster Fights
And away we go. "President Obama will nominate a slate of three candidates on Tuesday to fill the remaining vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ... Senate Republicans have not only been eager to block Obama's judicial nominees in general, but they've been terrified by the prospect of a D.C. Circuit with a center-left majority. With this in mind, GOP senators are very likely to block the three nominees ... If the Senate minority blocks three moderate/mainstream judicial nominees ... the Senate Democratic majority will likely feel as if they have no choice but to execute the 'nuclear option' and end filibusters on judicial nominees altogether." Steve Benen at Maddowblog.
This fight would be stupid. Except for the consequences. "It's worth emphasizing the stakes. There are a lot of issues that ... end up in the lap of the D.C. Circuit. The D.C. Circuit has ... undermined the Department of Education's efforts to regulate what publicly subsidized for-profit colleges may do while remaining eligible for public subsidies. The D.C. Circuit has undermined several regulations issued under the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill ... Most consequently, the shadow of EPA regulation of existing sources of climate pollution hangs ... but the D.C. Circuit is a powerful tool for undermining anything the EPA does in this regard." Matthew Yglesias at Slate.
But maybe the fight is overhyped? "Here's my guess ... based on past patterns. We'll continue to hear the insipid rhetoric about 'court packing' and how the DC Circuit doesn't need any judges ... One of the picks will get through fairly easily. One will be killed by filibuster. And the third will be a close call, but probably get through, perhaps with a few Republicans voting yes on cloture but against confirmation ... I do think it's more likely all three will be confirmed than that all three will be defeated. Far more likely." Jonathan Bernstein at A Plain Blog About Politics.
Either way, Obama's appointees should be confirmed, outside of special cases. "There is nothing special ... about a president making nominations for judicial vacancies ... It’s perfectly reasonable for opposition party senators to ... oppose some nominees on purely ideological grounds if they believe the nominees are outside of the 'mainstream.' ... To oppose some is part of normal checks and balances ... That said: The bottom line here is that Obama won the 2012 election, and Democrats won a solid Senate majority in that election. Intense minority opposition occasionally winning is reasonable in a democracy; a minority winning most or all of the time cannot be justified." Jonathan Bernstein at the Washington Post.
But we probably won't see anything for weeks. "President Barack Obama’s three nominees to the Washington, D.C., federal appeals court don’t appear likely to get confirmed anytime soon ... A GOP aide to the Judiciary Committee said that it would likely take at least 'a couple of months' until the three nominees get a hearing before the committee ... The Senate calendar before the August recess is already looking full, with plans to vote on immigration legislation and a possible Senate floor showdown in July over some of the president’s cabinet and regulatory nominees." Corey Boles at the Wall Street Journal.
Fiscal Fights
Throwing down the (veto threat) gauntlet. "The Obama administration on Monday threatened to veto any spending bills for the coming fiscal year unless Republicans and Democrats reach agreement on a broader budget plan that 'supports our recovery and enables sufficient investments' in White House priorities." Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post.
The sequester might still be able to cause the GOP reformation everyone has been waiting for. "John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, and ... a few other Senate Republicans seem increasingly concerned that Democrats aren't bluffing on military sequestration and that the only way to avoid a reduction in America's warmaking power would be to strike some kind of deal with Democrats that includes higher tax revenue. That was the Democrats' original theory of how sequestration was supposed to work ... The Obama administration ... has succeeded in creating a conflict and it's putting ... pressure on the GOP caucus ... If the logjam breaks, it'll be militarism not reformism that breaks it." Matthew Yglesias at Slate.
And there's always money for more missile defense. "The House Armed Services Committee is likely to approve an amendment Wednesday to build a third missile defense site on the East Coast by 2018. The amendment from Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) ... would direct $140 million in the 2014 Defense budget to go toward building the ground-based missile interceptors. A new East Coast missile site, which has the support of the committee’s Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), is poised to be one of the most contentious issues debated during the marathon mark-up of the Defense authorization bill." Jeremy Herb at the Hill.
Fort Hood
This strikes me as a bad legal strategy. "An Army psychiatrist charged with gunning down Fort Hood soldiers said Tuesday his defense would show that he was compelled to do so because deploying U.S. troops posed an imminent danger to Taliban fighters ... Such a defense requires Hasan to prove the 2009 killings were necessary to protect others from immediate harm or death, and military law experts not involved in the case said the judge is unlikely to allow him to present that defense ... Hasan, 42, faces the death penalty or life without parole if convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the 2009 attack at the Army post in Texas." The Associated Press.
Foreign Policy
A reasonable change to the Iranian sanctions program. "The Obama administration has made a useful modification to its Iran policy by lifting sanctions on companies that want to sell cellphones, laptops, encryption software and other similar technology to ordinary Iranians. This should improve the ability of Iranians to circumvent their government’s unrelenting crackdown on dissenting opinion and communicate with each other and the outside world without reprisal." The New York Times Editorial Board.
The GOP
The party which should not be trusted with the economy. "Let’s review. The only thing the Republicans have done to the economy since 2001 is make it worse. The tax cuts did not generate the great surge of activity that was predicted. Against Republican predictions and conservative economic belief, they drained the treasury. Later, GOP-led deregulation nearly destroyed the global economy. Then, when the new guy tried to rescue the economy, they opposed everything he tried. Today, with indicators clearly on the right track and clearly suggesting that more stimulus would help the recovery, they of course oppose that, too." Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast.
You cannot be a serious policy party, while pulling stunts like this. Pick one. "House Republicans are scheduled to vote on two separate budget bills this week, each of which would reject funding for the poverty activism group ACORN, despite the fact that ACORN disbanded three years ago." Zach Carter at the Huffington Post.
Or when you're controlled by FOX News. "It's conservative media that controls the GOP's fate. The Republican Party could almost certainly solve its problem if Fox News and the rest of the gang were on board. ... Right now, though, they can't do it because the Rush/Drudge/Fox axis will go ballistic ... The tail is now wagging the dog, and the Republican Party is being held hostage to the bottom line of the conservative media. This is the Republican Party's core problem. ... It makes the short-term risk of change too great to bear. Until the GOP fixes that, they're going to have a hard time fixing anything else." Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.
Health
South Carolina, still the leader in nullification. They better not pass this. "South Carolina ... could become the first state in the country to restrict the enactment of Obamacare since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that law last year. A proposed bill, on special order in the state Senate, would allow the state attorney general to take businesses, including health insurers, to court if he 'has reasonable cause to believe' they are harming people by implementing the law. The bill already has passed the House." Adam Beam at the Miami Herald.
Immigration
Border security is still the stumbling block. "The Gang of Eight’s hopes for a Senate supermajority is running into the GOP’s push for a dramatic crackdown on border security — testing the limits of the bipartisan coalition that’s propelling the bill through Congress. With Congress back this week to work on the measure, Senate negotiators want to pick up as many as two dozen Republican votes in a show of force that compels the House to act. But the result has to be much stricter than the current version of the bill to give it any hope of passing there either. They’ve got to do it without alienating the vast majority of Senate Democrats who like the bill as it is." Carrie Budoff Brown and Seung Min Kim at Politico.
Schumer seems optimistic about the fate of the immigration bill. "The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat predicted Sunday that a bipartisan immigration reform package will pass the full Senate with broad support by the Independence Day holiday. 'We’re going to put immigration on the floor starting on June 10. I predict it will pass the Senate by July 4,' Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said ... 'We’re hoping to get 70 votes — up to 70 votes, which means a lot of Republicans.'" Sean Sullivan in the Washington Post.
Libertarianism
The $64,000 question. "Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines? ... Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world." Michael Lind at Salon.
The Military and Sexual Assault
The Chiefs of Staff and lawmakers differ on solutions to sexual assault in the military. "The service chiefs ... made clear ... that they do not favor a leading proposal that would give uniformed prosecutors, instead of commanders, the authority to open criminal investigations into sexual-assault cases and bring them to trial. Such a change, they argued, would undermine ... military culture by sending a message that commanders cannot be trusted to make good decisions ... The chiefs’ stance puts them at odds with ... a rising number of lawmakers who note that commanders are legally untrained and argue that they have failed to address a pervasive problem of sexual assault in the ranks." Craig Whitlock in the Washington Post.
But everyone can agree that it's becoming a huge problem. "A Pentagon report released in early May estimated that as many as 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in 2012, up from an already unacceptable 19,000 in 2011. Only a small fraction of victims — 3,374 in all — reported their attacks, despite new assistance programs, with many fearing harm to their careers and that their complaints would not be taken seriously anyway." The New York Times Editorial Board.
There's a lot of headdesk involved in this debate. Sexual assault is not attributable to 'hormones,' Senator. "Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) called on the military to do more to crack down on sexual assault in its ranks on Tuesday, while also worrying that they may be hard to stop because of the natural 'hormone level' of the young men serving ... Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), co-chair of the Military Sexual Assault Prevention Caucus, slammed Chambliss' comments in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. 'It’s simple; criminals are responsible for sexual assaults, not hormones,' said Turner. 'Perpetuating this line of thinking does nothing to help change the culture of our military.' Amanda Terkel at the Huffington Post.
And this is just a waste of time. "Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) detoured from a line of questioning about sexual assault in the military to raise the possible connection between the availability of pornography on military bases and sexual attacks on servicemembers." Hayes Brown at Think Progress.
Scandals
Where there's horses, Republicans see pink zebras. "A third House committee joined the stampede to examine the IRS on Monday, and its chairman did exactly what you would expect somebody to do before launching a fair and impartial investigation: He went on Fox News Channel and implicated the White House ... Congressional investigators have not produced evidence to link the harassment of conservative groups to the White House or to higher-ups in the Obama administration. But the lack of evidence that any political appointee was involved hasn’t stopped the lawmakers from assuming that it simply must be true. And so, they are going to hold hearings until they confirm their conclusions." Dana Milbank at the Washington Post.
Democrats turn to Fox News, of all places, to rebut Rep. Darrell Issa on Benghazi. "House Democrats are turning to an unlikely source to rebut allegations by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa: Fox News ... the cable channel that has devoted the most air time to Obama's Benghazi critics, to rebut Issa's allegations, including claims that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally denied State Department security requests in Benghazi and that partisan motivations drove the editing of talking points used by United Nations ambassador Susan Rice." John Hudson + Video at the Cable.
SCOTUSwatch
In defense of the recent DNA/Fourth Amendment ruling. "Proper DNA testing can simultaneously exonerate innocent people who have been wrongly accused and find the bad guys — a true win-win situation — and in the process, this amazing new technology can powerfully deter crime. On the other hand, DNA testing without strict safeguards can reveal lots more personal information than a mere fingerprint ... Reasonable minds can differ on this. And therein lies the real genius of the Fourth Amendment ... Warrantless searches are unconstitutional only if they are 'unreasonable.' That rule, and no other, is the true 'heart of the Fourth Amendment.'" Akhil Reed Amar and Neal Katyal in the New York Times.
In opposition to the DNA/Fourth Amendment ruling. "The day that DNA cheek swabs officially became the new fingerprints deserves to be marked and remembered -- and not just because of the inevitable march of technology ... Fingerprints are a phenotype that reveals nothing except a random pattern that no two individuals share. DNA, however, is your genotype: the blueprint for your entire physical person. If the government has my fingerprints, it’s like they have my randomly assigned Social Security number. If it has my DNA, it’s like they have the entire operating system." Noah Feldman at Bloomberg.
War on Drugs
The black/white marijuana arrest gap, in nine charts. "As you’re probably aware, black Americans are arrested for marijuana possession far more frequently than whites. You may also know that there’s not much evidence that black people consume marijuana with greater regularity than whites do. But the extent of the disparity between the rate of arrest and the rate of use for white and black Americans may surprise you." Brad Plumer at Wonkblog.
International
Asia
Well, this is interesting. "China told an envoy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that Pyongyang should stop conducting nuclear and missile tests, but the North showed little sign of heeding the request ... China has grown increasingly frustrated with Pyongyang. It agreed to new U.N. sanctions after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test in February, and Chinese banks have curbed business with their North Korean counterparts in the wake of U.S. sanctions on the country's main foreign exchange bank. A former senior U.S. official said Beijing's insistence that North Korea halt testing would be in line with recent signs it was running out of patience with Pyongyang." Benjamin Kang Lim at Reuters.
This was expected. "South Korea and the United States failed ... to narrow differences on whether Washington would allow Seoul to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel for the South's civil nuclear energy program ... The agreement, last revised in 1974, bans Seoul from reprocessing spent fuel because it could yield plutonium that could be used to build atomic bombs. Seoul wants Washington to allow it to use a proliferation-resistant technology for enriching uranium and reprocessing spent atomic fuel, but Washington has been reluctant to do so ... because of proliferation concerns." Yonhap News.
South America
Argentina, with all due respect, you're going insane. "Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has hit on a novel way to try to alleviate her self-inflicted economic free fall and acute shortage of hard currency -- invite money launderers from around the world to put their dollars in Argentine banks with no questions asked ... That's not, of course, the official plan. But ... the government-sponsored amnesty to allow any amount of dollars from anywhere in the world to find a home in Argentina, with no questions asked, was passed into law last Wednesday." Douglas Farah at Foreign Policy.
Polisci
The diminishing returns of campaign spending. "John Sides and Lynn Vavreck found ... in their study of advertising in the 2012 presidential race. If one candidate doubled his amount of campaign advertisements, they found, his standing in the polls could go up by about a point. This proved to be a very ephemeral effect, though, disappearing after about a day. Now, none of this means that campaign spending doesn’t matter at all, of course. Even with very small effects, an absurdly huge expenditure of money could be critical. But there is a saturation point where you just can’t get any more ads in front of people’s eyes ... But the idea that voters can be bought with enough money just doesn’t hold water." Seth Masket at Pacific Standard Magazine.
Where the global 1 percent live. "The composition of the world's one percenters: We find the richest 12 percent of Americans ... and between 3 and 6 percent of the richest Britons, Japanese, Germans, and French. It is a 'club' still overwhelmingly composed of the 'old rich' world of western Europe, northern America and Japan. The richest 1% of the embattled Euro countries of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece are all part of the global top 1 percentile. However, the richest 1% of Brazilians, Russians and South Africans belong there, too." Joshua Keating at War of Ideas.
The politics of baby names. "As we see in patterns of baby names, liberal elites use esoteric cultural references to demonstrate their elevated social position just as conservatives invoke traditional signals of wealth and affluence. Instead of divides between 'Red and Blue states,' it is more accurate to say that America is divided not just by 'Red and Blue elites,' but also in the ways these elites seek to differentiate themselves from the largely 'purple' masses." John Sides at Wonkblog.
Science
Mind-controlled exoskeletons. "Melillo is one of the first people with lower limb paralysis to try out MindWalker – the world's first exoskeleton that aims to enable paralysed and locked-in people to walk using only their mind ... It's the end of a three-year development period for the project, which has three main elements. There is the exoskeleton itself, a contraption that holds a person's body weight and moves their legs when instructed. People learn how to use it in the second element: a virtual-reality environment. And then there's the mind-reading component." Helen Thomson at New Scientist.
And astronomical data converted into sound. "For most people ... astrophysics means poring over calculations, charts, texts and graphics. But Wanda Diaz-Merced ... and fellow researcher Gerhard Sonnert have pioneered a different approach. Its underlying motif is simple: Space produces music ... NASA-developed software called xSonify ... converts scientific data of all kinds into synthesized musical sounds, a process called sonification ... to analyze solar flares on the sun, as well as X-rays coming from the EX Hydrae star system." Joseph Stromberg at Smithsonian Magazine.
And Triceratops. "Near Newcastle, Wyo., paleontologists have potentially unearthed one of the most complete skeletons of a triceratops ever found ... The dig also unearthed two younger triceratops, which Larson said is also a rare occurrence. He said the three skeletons were most likely a family unit. 'The dig indicates that there was some sort of parental pair and nowhere in the literature has that ever been noted before, and that's unprecedented,' ... The triceratops is an herbivore that lived in massive herds throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It lived during the late Cretaceous period, which ended approximately 65 million years ago." Rapid City Journal.
And schadenfreude starts young. "Katrin Schulz and her colleagues presented simple picture stories to 100 children aged four to eight years ... The stories involved a child performing a good or bad deed ... and then experiencing a misfortune ... The kids of all ages showed evidence of schadenfreude, suggesting their emotional response to another person's distress was influenced by their moral judgements about that person. That is, they were more likely to say they were pleased and that it was funny if the story character experienced a misfortune while engaging in a bad deed. They were also less likely to say they'd help a bad character." Christian Jarrett at Research Digest.
Miscellaneous
In defense of 'derp.' "English has no word for 'the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors'. Yet it is a well-known phenomenon in the world of punditry, debate, and public affairs. On Twitter, we call it 'derp'. So 'derp' is a unique and useful English word. Let's keep using it." Noah Smith at Noahpinion.
Husky in the outfield! Video.
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