Josh Romney told the Deseret News he “isn’t ruling out following in his father Mitt’s footsteps and running for office but for now will campaign again for GOP congressional candidate Mia Love.”
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McAuliffe Tests Obama Playbook in Virginia
Terry McAuliffe (D) “has been trying to build an Obama-style, technologically savvy, grassroots campaign to crank out voters who helped the president carry the state twice but don’t normally vote in gubernatorial elections,” National Journal reports.
“The November vote will be the first statewide election since the 2012 vote to test whether the Obama campaign model can be applied to candidates other than the president.”
Dingell Set to Become Longest Serving Lawmaker
“In an institution where seniority has long been prized, Representative John D. Dingell Jr. of Michigan is about to set a new standard with 57 years, 5 months and 26 days of House service — a remarkable tenure that spans more than a quarter of the existence of Congress,” the New York Times reports.
Tom Bevan: “One need not be a term-limit zealot to feel unnerved at the idea that his Michigan district has been in the hands of the Dingell family for 80 straight years.”
Obamacare More Unpopular Than Ever
President Obama’s signature health care reform law “remains unpopular with the American public just months before it fully goes into effect,” according to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
“The poll shows 49% of Americans say they believe the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea. That’s the highest number recorded on this question since the poll began measuring it in 2009. Just 37% say the plan is a good idea.”
Emmer Likely Running for Bachmann’s Seat
Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for governor in 2010 who lost a close race to Mark Dayton, will likely make an announcement that he’s a likely candidate to run for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), MinnPost reports.
Most Back Same-Sex Marriage
A new Bloomberg poll finds that 52% of Americans “support allowing same-sex couples to marry, endorsing the goal of gay-rights activists as the U.S. Supreme Court this month prepares to rule on the issue for the first time.”
“Of those supporters, more than half — 61% — want a national law rather than a state-by-state approach. During arguments in March, the justices signaled a reluctance to declare a right to same-sex marriage nationwide.”
Quote of the Day
“I listened to that tape, and I couldn’t hear the word in question. I couldn’t hear it at all… I don’t know who it was. I’m not saying it couldn’t have been me. I thought OK, it probably was me… By the eighth time listening to it, I thought it wasn’t really worth my time.”
— California First Lady Anne Gust Brown, quoted by the Sacramento Bee, on whether hers was the anonymous voice who called 2010 gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R) a “whore” on an answering machine.
Massachusetts Candidates Clash in First Debate
Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Gabriel Gomez (R) “clashed in their first debate in Massachusetts’ special U.S. Senate election Wednesday, sparring on abortion, national security and gun issues. A recurring theme of the one-hour matchup at the WBZ-TV studios was Gomez’s claim that Markey is representative of old-style Washington politics while Markey suggested that Gomez would be another Republican vote for gridlock in Congress,” the Boston Globe reports.
Jim O’Sullivan notes the awkwardness of both candidates: “Neither Gomez nor Markey demonstrated himself as a forceful, effective debater, in line with expectations for many who observed the Republican and Democratic primary debates.”
Republican Reboot Not Working
Politico:
“Not every Republican learned Todd Akin’s lesson from 2012 – and
Democrats noticed. This week alone: Sen. Saxby Chambliss blamed sexual
assaults in the military on hormones, conservative pundit Erick Erickson
credited biology for male dominance in society and Mississippi Gov.
Phil Bryant said working moms are making kids fail in school.”
Tweet of the Day
In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13
— Al Gore (@algore) June 6, 2013
Government Secretly Collecting Phone Records of Millions
The National Security Agency “appears to be collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of American customers of Verizon, one of the nation’s largest phone companies, under a top-secret court order issued in April,” the Washington Post reports.
“The order, which was signed by a judge from the secret court that oversees domestic surveillance, was first reported on the Web site of the Guardian newspaper… If the document is genuine, it could represent the broadest surveillance order known to have been issued. It also would confirm long-standing suspicions of civil liberties advocates about the sweeping nature of U.S. surveillance through commercial carriers under laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
New York Times: “The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to inspire further controversy over the scope of government surveillance.”
IRS Staff Say They Were Directed from Washington
“Two Internal Revenue Service employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office told congressional investigators that IRS officials in Washington helped direct the probe of tea-party groups that began in 2010,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
FBI Links Democratic Consultant to Hijacked Email
A Democratic political consultant controlled a computer account that contained email allegedly hijacked from New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez’s (R) campaign system, the AP reports.
“FBI affidavits, which previously had been sealed court records, linked consultant Jason Loera to a former Martinez campaign manager who was indicted last week for allegedly taking unauthorized control over the campaign email system after Martinez became governor in 2011.”
Romney Disappointed in Rice Pick
Mitt Romney told CNN that he was disappointed with President Obama’s pick of UN Ambassador Susan Rice to be his next national security adviser.
Said Romney: “I find that a disappointing appointment on the part of the president. I think what she did was to very seriously mislead the American people about what happened in Benghazi. My greatest concern about the Benghazi events was the fact there was not a rescue effort attempted and that is very troubling to me.”
National Security Shuffle May Signal More Activist Stance
President Obama’s “major shuffle of his national security team” ushers out a cautious Washington insider and elevates “two long-time proponents of a larger American role in preventing humanitarian crises and protecting human rights,” the Washington Post reports.
“The ideological shift signaled by the choices highlights a central dilemma for Obama as he seeks to make a mark on the world at a time of austerity — and war weariness — at home. How ambitious Obama intends to be abroad at a time of stiff challenges on the domestic front has remained an open question well into his second term.”
Bipartisan Group Claims Immigration Deal
“A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has come to an agreement on immigration overhaul legislation, but one key Republican member will not sign off on it and will write his own proposal instead,” Roll Call reports.
Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID) “said he told the group that he would no longer work with it because language he had offered to prevent newly legalized immigrants who entered the country illegally from getting subsidized health care will not be included in the final version.”
CIA Didn’t Always Know Who Drones Were Killing
“The CIA did not always know who it was targeting and killing in drone strikes in Pakistan over a 14-month period,” an NBC News review of classified intelligence reports shows.
“About one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as ‘other militants,’ the documents detail. The ‘other militants’ label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.”
“The uncertainty appears to arise from the use of so-called ‘signature’
strikes to eliminate suspected terrorists — picking targets based in
part on their behavior and associates. A former White House official
said the U.S. sometimes executes people based on ‘circumstantial
evidence.'”
West Converts Campaign Into PAC
Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) has converted his campaign committee to a federal PAC and registered it as Deep Strike PAC, Roll Call reports.
