First Read: “While there is still no evidence connecting the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups directly to the White House or to the president personally, or to his re-election campaign, it doesn’t mean the White House doesn’t have a P.R. problem on its hands. And this P.R. mess is largely self-inflicted. For starters, its explanation about when it learned of the inspector general’s IRS investigation keeps changing… Then we discover that the IRS official Lois Lerner plans to plead the 5th Amendment at today’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Both developments make it SEEM like the White House or the administration has something to hide — even if the evidence (so far) is that Team Obama wasn’t directly connected to this IRS story.”
Campaign 2012 and the Battle for the Soul of America
Here’s a must-read for the holiday weekend:
Reckoning: Campaign 2012 and the Battle for the Soul of America by Roger Simon.
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. to Step Down
Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Tim Murray (D) is expected to resign today to take a private sector job.
‘Sources close to Murray tell WBZ-TV Murray is poised to leave his office as early as today. There is some speculation he has another position lined up.”
Boston Globe: “He has been dogged by questions about a 2011 early-morning car crash in a state vehicle and his ties to former Chelsea Housing Authority director Michael McLaughlin, who earlier this year pleaded guilty to federal felony charges of concealing his salary.”
Former Miss America Mulls Senate Bid in Kentucky
Former Miss America Heather French Henry (D) said that “public and private figures are encouraging her to run for the U.S. Senate next year, but she is ‘not ready to confirm or deny’ that possibility,” the Lexington Herald-Leader reports.
Said French Henry: “I am completely honored that people are talking to me about this but I have made no decision.”
McCain Snaps Over GOP Roadblocks
Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) blasted his GOP colleagues for grandstanding on the budget, Ezra Klein notes.
“The quick background here is that congressional Republicans have spent years calling for a return to ‘regular order’ in which the House writes a budget, the Senate writes a budget, and the two chambers move to a conference committee to hash out their differences. This year, for the first time since 2009, Senate Democrats wrote and passed a full budget, shepherding it to passage through an open amendment process. Now various Senate Republicans are blocking the move towards conference — blocking, in other words, the move towards the regular order they demanded.”
McCain unloaded last night: “What are we on my side of the aisle doing? We don’t want a budget unless we put requirements on the conferees that are absolutely out of line and unprecedented?”
Why You Should Care About Investigations of Journalists
Dana Millbank: “Liberals may not be particularly bothered because the targeted journalist works for Fox News. Conservatives may not be concerned because of their antipathy toward the news media generally. And the general public certainly doesn’t have much patience for journalists’ whining.”
“But here’s why you should care — and why this case, along with the administration’s broad snooping into Associated Press phone records, is more serious than the other supposed Obama administration scandals regarding Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service. The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.”
Biden Jokes About Obama’s Use of Teleprompter
At a reception last night, Vice President Joe Biden requested the “teleprompter in the room to be taken down,” the Weekly Standard reports.
Then he made a joke: “You can’t tell Barack that the teleprompter’s down. The standing joke in the office is Barack’s learning to speak without a teleprompter; I’m learning to speak with one.”
Quote of the Day
“For the president to deny any knowledge of what was brewing and to claim to know nothing about the Benghazi cover-up or anything about anything White House-related lately, he’s either a liar or a hugely incompetent CEO. You decide.”
–Sarah Palin, writing for Breitbart.
Weiner Announces Campaign for Mayor
The New York Times reports that Anthony Weiner, “once a rising star of New York politics whose career cratered over revelations of his sexually explicit life online, announced an improbable bid on Wednesday for the job he has long coveted: mayor.”
“After a rocky re-emergence into public life over the past few weeks, marked by circuslike scenes of tabloid photographers chasing him onto the subway, Mr. Weiner opted to declare his candidacy from the safe remove of a video.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Christine Quinn leading the pack for the Democratic nomination with 25%, followed by Weiner at 15% with Bill de Blasio and William Thompson in a horse race for third place at 10% each.
O’Brien Possibly Sees Politics in His Future
Pat O’Brien, the former host of Access Hollywood and a longtime sportscaster told Adam Carolla that he has an interest in entering politics, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports.
“Of course, O’Brien brings with him his share of baggage. He’s had a high-profile battle with alcoholism that climaxed with ‘sexually graphic’ voicemails placed while drunk — a gift from heaven for an opposition researcher.”
Garcetti Wins Los Angeles Mayoral Race
Los Angeles Times: “Wendy Greuel called Eric Garcetti early Wednesday morning to concede the mayoral election, a Greuel campaign source told the Times, ending a two-year campaign to determine Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s successor and the new political leader of Los Angeles.”
Garcetti beat Greuel 54% to 46%. He will take office on July 1.
King Would Give Tornado Relief Without Budget Offsets
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is “ready for another intraparty fight over whether emergency disaster aid should be offset, after a tornado ravaged parts of Oklahoma,” Roll Call reports.
Said King: “I think they should get every penny they need. I’ve been through this. We can do the political games later on, the important thing is to get them the aid as quickly as they need it and not to make a political issue out of it.”
Study Finds Election Officials Biased Against Latino Voters
A new Harvard study contacted over 7,000 election administrators in 28 states and found they provided different information about voter ID requirements to voters of different ethnicities.
Dylan Matthews: “The finding holds up when you drop certain regions, when you drop small towns, and when you control for whether officials are elected or appointed. What’s more, they find that there are actually statistically significant differences in the quality of response from officials, depending on what kind of name is used.”
Majority of Republicans Don’t Think Election Was Fair
A new Hamilton College poll finds that heading into the 2012 election, “both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about the fairness of the election. Only 15% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats were very confident that the election would be decided fairly.”
“After the election, fears about voter fraud abated among Democrats but skyrocketed among Republicans, with 58% of Republicans not confident at all about the fairness of the election.”
O’Malley Testing the Waters for 2016
Associated Press: “His latest legislative achievements put him in the vanguard of his party’s liberal base. He’s been a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama. And he’s ramping up his travel to help fellow Democrats around the country.”
“Little-known outside his home state, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has methodically checked the necessary boxes toward earning the reputation of good Democratic soldier as he considers whether to run for president in 2016 – a White House bid that would face long odds.”
Inhofe Says Tornado Aid is Different Than Hurricane Aid
In the wake of the devastating tornado in Oklahoma, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) “rejected comparisons between federal aid for this disaster and the Hurricane Sandy relief package he voted against,” the Washington Post reports.
Inhofe said that was a “totally different” situation arguing that the Sandy aid was filled with pork.
Said Inhofe: “Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy taking place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”
Wonk Wire: Will Tornado relief need to be deficit neutral?
Hatch Becomes Key Player on Immigration Reform
New York Times: “As proponents of a new immigration overhaul cast about for a Republican ally to help give their bill an extra boost, they have focused on a 79-year-old lawmaker with new hipster glasses (from Costco), black Nike sneakers (for his bad arches) and, perhaps most important, a deep and complicated relationship with immigration policy: Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.”
Quote of the Day
“We’re going to win when we look like America. We need to be white, we need to be brown, we need to be black, we need to with tattoos, without tattoos, with pony tails, without pony tails, with beards, without.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by the Louisville Courier-Journal.
