Politics
Abortion
Democrats
Patty Murray in 19 takes. Jamelle Bouie and Patrick Caldwell at the American Prospect.
DOD
Sexual assault isn't a military problem. It's an American problem. "Unfortunately, however admirable the recent condemnations of sexual assault in the military, they're unlikely to have much impact, because sexual assault in the military is not a military problem. It is an American problem. ... As the Pentagon yet again renews its sexual assault prevention efforts, it must not discount the socialization of the American military." Micah Zenko and Amelia Wolf at Foreign Policy.
The Economy
Hundreds of low-wage workers in DC are going on strike. "Hundreds of low-wage employees of federal contractors walked off the job on Tuesday morning, demanding that President Obama sign legislation or an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay higher wages." Ned Resnikoff at MSNBC.
Elections
Study finds election officials are biased against Latino voters. "Faller, Nathan, and White 'contacted every local official or election commission responsible for overseeing elections for each county or municipality at which elections are administered in 48 states.' ... After all the responses were back, they had a sample including 6,825 sent e-mails to officials in 46 states.** At least 4,557 officials replied. But the interesting story is in who they did and didn’t reply to. 'Responses to Latino names,' the researchers write, 'are three-and-a-half to four percentage points less likely than to non-Latino white names.'" Dylan Matthews at Wonkblog.
The GOP isn't fixing their reproductive rights problem - Virginia edition. "E.W. Jackson, now the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. ... said, “Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.” Not to be confused with Mark Obenshain, the Republican nominee for attorney general, who previously introduced a bill that would criminalize women who didn’t report their miscarriages to the government. That’s before we even get to the fact that Cuccinelli himself was instrumental in the notorious transvaginal ultrasound bill .... Even if some Republicans do want reproductive rights issues to go away, they’re in too deep and it’s probably too late." Irin Carmon at Salon.
If I was a Virginia Republican, I'd be scared right now. "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. ... The GOP's slate is, by any fair measure, jarring. ... It's almost as if the state GOP went out of its way to think of a scheme to motivate the listless Democratic base, alienate as many women as possible, and drive moderate voters away from Republicans in droves." Steve Benen at Maddowblog.
Filibuster Fights
Food Safety
Food safety inspections aren't keeping up with imports from China. "Chinese food product imports to the U.S. are continuing to rise, but inspections in both China and the U.S. aren’t keeping pace, posing a growing danger to consumers. ... Reports on the state of Chinese food processing establishments are discouraging. More than half of food processing and packaging firms on the Chinese mainland failed safety inspections in 2011, according to a report by Asia Inspection, a China-based food quality control company. Meanwhile, in the U. S. ... FDA inspections were a mere 2.3 % of the total of all imported food products." Stanley Lubman in the Wall Street Journal.
Foreign Aid
Why can't we make some easy, common-sense reforms to food aid? I'm so glad you asked. "The opponents of food-aid reform consist of two main groups: 1) maritime companies and food-processing firms that are enriching themselves off of the current pork-barrel approach to delivering food aid; and, 2) timid members of Congress who worry about getting crossways with these shippers and Big Ag." John Norris at Foreign Policy.
GOP
Chris Christie is devolving on climate change. "Should New Jersey have prepared with climate change in mind? No, the governor said, '’cause I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change.' ... There have been some things to admire about Christie. The way he didn’t fear being seen with Obama ... The way he defended those Muslims he hired. And the way he wanted to be ... an environmental steward. ... But Monday Christie signaled he’s joined the yahoo caucus. He can’t buck the base on this litmus-test question and hold out any hope, he obviously feels, of winning the Republican nomination in 2016. It’s nonnegotiable, and he’s not even going to try." Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast.
Health
The final regulations on pre-exisiting conditions are almost here! "Final rules written to extend access to insurance for people with pre-existing conditions ... are set to be published this week in the Federal Register. Beginning in 2014, insurance providers would not be able to deny coverage for people with pre-existing conditions that currently make it impossible for them to get health insurance under current market realities." Ben Goad at the Hill.
Increase in suicide cannot be blamed on a decline in marriage or religion. "Contrary to what Douthat might expect, there’s no correlation—zero—between a states’ suicide rate and religion, marriage rates, or single occupancy homes. State economic growth or unemployment don’t line up, either." Nate Cohn at the New Republic.
Oklahoma
Offsets - same nonsense, different disaster. "In this era of heightened concerns over budget deficits, paying for relief becomes a political matter (as we saw with Hurricane Sandy relief funds). Along these lines ... Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says he will insist that any federal disaster aid be paid for with cuts elsewhere. ... Like with Sandy relief, it strikes me that if there was ever a time for Congress to authorize spending and not allow it to get caught up in deficit politics, it is at a moment of national tragedy. It is one of the fundamental functions of government (general welfare, and all that)." Steven Taylor at Outside the Beltway.
Why is it (still) so hard to predict tornadoes? "While meteorologists have made enormous strides in predicting tornadoes once an individual storm has actually formed, that’s still extremely difficult before the storm appears on the radar. ... 'There are so many mild adjustments, slight adjustments that can make a huge difference in whether you end up getting the formation of storms. The sensitivity the atmosphere has to ingredients in the formation of tornados and magnifying that slight change in something we can’t even observe can have a dramatic impact on the forecast.'" Brad Plumer at Wonkblog.
Scandals
GOP hypocrisy. Same old, same old. "It’s pretty rich ... to see conservatives, not so long ago such ferocious guardians of presidential prerogative, suddenly ... thumping their chests about presidential transparency? I bet we could count on one hand ... the number of conservative commentators who were insisting that the Bush White House should come clean about what Scooter Libby did in relation to the Valerie Plame matter. But now, suddenly, Barack Obama must come clean on all particulars ... It’s only when a Democrat is in, apparently, that democracy itself is on the line." Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast.
Obama's approval rating is holding, bolstered by economic optimism. "The president’s approval rating ... has remained steady in the face of fresh disclosures about the IRS, the Benghazi attack and the Justice Department’s secret collection of telephone records of Associated Press journalists as part of a leak investigation. ... Brighter assessments of the economy may be one reason that the president has been able to weather controversies. For the first time since the 100-day mark of Obama’s first term, most say they are optimistic about the direction of the economy. More than half, 56 percent, say the economy is on the mend, the most to say so in polls since 2009." Jon Cohen and Dan Balz in the Washington Post.
Scandals - Benghazi
Is the Benghazi 'scandal' just a ploy to neutralize Obama's credibility on terrorism? "It’s obvious the idea here is to contrast Obama’s allegedly indifferent behavior during Benghazi! with his high level of personal engagement during the operation to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan. And so the grainy details of the Benghazi! investigation are beginning to converge with its political aim: to neutralize the perceptions of Barack Obama as a tough commander-in-chief who can be trusted to protect our national security." Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly.
Scandals - IRS
If the IRS really wanted to crack down on political opponents, other tax collection agencies could give them some pointers. "Taxes are a testy subject the world over. ... In the United States, though, at least there are investigations into allegations of political intent; elsewhere, the politicization of the tax system is unambiguous. If the IRS is serious about hounding the political opposition, the agency's got a long way to go -- as these five countries attest." J. Dana Stuster at Foreign Policy.
SCOTUSwatch
Ruling on wiretapping may harm future environmental lawsuits. "In a 5-4 decision in February ... Conservative justices reversed a lower court ruling and said the challengers lacked standing -- meaning they failed to show they were harmed by the law -- because they couldn't prove their communications had in fact been tapped. That reasoning could create problems for environmentalists, for whom standing can be a problem since they typically argue that a government or industry action -- the issuance of federal permits for a mining project, for example -- will result in future air and water pollution." Jeremy Jacobs at E&E.
International
Asia
How to beat bird flu. "North Korea on Monday confirmed a bird flu outbreak at a Pyongyang duck farm and said it has killed as many as 160,000 ducks to contain the virus." Yonhap News.
Europe
Spain - you just failed. Real hard. "One of Spain’s largest defense splurges may also be one of its most embarrassing. After spending nearly one-third of a $3 billion budget to build four of the world’s most advanced submarines, the project’s engineers have run into a problem: the submarines are so heavy that they would sink to the bottom of the ocean." Roberto Ferdman at Quartz.
Middle East
UK finds more evidence of Syrian use of chemical weapons. "The United Kingdom is seeing additional 'limited but persuasive' indicators of chemical weapons use by the Bashar Assad's regime in the Syrian civil war, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said ... 'We have physiological samples from inside Syria which have shown the use of sarin, although it does not indicate the scale of that use,"'Hague said. 'Our assessment is that chemical weapons use in Syria is very likely to have been by the regime,' and no data suggests opposition fighters have conducted chemical strikes, he added." Global Security Newswire.
Science
Self-driving cars will generate some privacy problems. Who cares? "Will self-driving cars let the government track your every move? Yes ... Self-driving cars will make it easier for the authorities to track you everywhere you go. But the benefits of self-driving cars are likely to be so enormous that American consumers will sign up in droves, regardless of the privacy implications." Timothy Lee at Wonkblog.
3-D printers won't magically resolve global hunger. So much headdesk. "There's already enough food in the world for everyone to eat enough to survive, yet poor people still starve. How will this change if we're buying food cartridges at the store instead of just food? Somalia's famine didn't happen because Somalis can't make food, it happened because it was too dry to grow it, they were too poor to buy it, and other people were stealing it. If they had shiny new 3-D food printers, they would still have been too poor to buy it. If anything, it would only make the global poor more dependent on the companies producing the food." Joshua Keating at War of Ideas.
Miscellaneous
Dolphins are awesome. "The U.S. Navy doesn't yet exactly know how a 130-year-old brass torpedo got to the bottom of the Pacific off the coast of San Diego, but they have a couple of dolphins to thank for rediscovering the rare weapon." Alan Boyle at NBC News.
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