Fox News chief Roger Ailes sent a memo to all employees at Fox News urging them to fight the intimidation of the Obama administration, the Washington Post reports.
Wrote Ailes: ”The administration’s attempt to intimidate Fox News and its employees will not succeed and their excuses will stand neither the test of law, the test of decency, nor the test of time. We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth.”
The Boy Scouts of America “have decided to allow gay youth to openly join its ranks, reversing a longstanding ban,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“More than 61% of Scouts leaders voted in support of a proposal to open Scouting’s membership to gay youth, but not gay adults in staff or volunteer leadership roles.”
Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of exempt organizations, has been placed on administrative leave, National Review reports.
At a House oversight-committee hearing yesterday, Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions posed to her by lawmakers, stating only, “I did nothing wrong.”
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Jon Stewart absolutely takes apart former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan.
A new Emerson College poll in Massachusetts finds Rep. Ed Markey (D) is widening his lead over Gabriel Gomez (R) in the U.S. Senate race to 12 points, 45% to 33%.
A similar poll earlier this month had Markey leading by just six points.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) took to the Senate floor to respond to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) charges that he doesn’t know how Congress works.
Said Lee: “In case no one noticed, the way Washington works stinks.”
Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL) will resign from Congress later this year to take a job at the University of Alabama, Roll Call reports.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told The Hill not to expect a Senate bid from Sarah Palin because she’s not really connected to Alaska anymore.
Said Murkowski: “I think there are a lot of outside interests that would like to see Sarah Palin in some form of elected office. Most in Alaska recognize our former governor is really not involved in or engaged in the state anymore, that she’s moved to other interests. In order for you to represent the state of Alaska, you’ve got to be in the state.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “comes to Iowa tonight amid speculation that he’d be a smash with Republicans here if he were to run for president, as some top Iowa politics watchers predict,” Des Moines Register reports.
USA Today: “Walker may be playing down the presidential talk, but there’s no question he’s making some moves that fuel such chatter. He’s also writing a book with former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen on his tenure as governor and the challenges facing the nation, due out sometime this fall.”
A clearly frustrated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) lashed out at Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) on the Senate floor suggesting, “Maybe the senator from Utah ought to learn a little bit more about how business has been done in the Congress of the United States.”
“National Republicans have dispatched staff to Massachusetts to assist with the Senate special election that has become tantalizingly close,” Roll Call reports.
The NRSC “has committed at least four staffers to help nominee Gabriel Gomez in the final weeks of the June 25 contest. The moves come amid fresh polling that showed Gomez running just behind Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey in this solidly Democratic state.”
“Shame on us.”
— New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), in an interview with the Syracuse Post-Standard, on if New York City elects Anthony Weiner as mayor.
In his first live interview since announcing a comeback mayoral bid, Anthony Weiner (D) told WNYC that he would continue to apologize to voters about the scandal that ousted him from office two years ago, and promised that the behavior would not occur again.
Said Weiner: “There’s no doubt about it. I made very big mistakes. I compounded it immeasurably by being dishonest about it. I have apologized many, many times to my wife, and frankly I know that part of this process is going to be doing a lot of apologizing.”
When asked if his illicit online activity could be described as an addiction, Weiner dismissed the characterization: “I don’t know what it was. It’s none of those things. It was simply a blind spot. It was a thoughtfulness I had about my private behavior.”
“They know they have a political problem–that’s obvious. But I don’t think they’ve come to grips with the fundamental issue, which is their governing philosophy. I think they’re going to have to lose one more.”
— Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, quoted by The Atlantic, on whether the Republican Party learned lessons from its defeat in 2012.
Karl Rove tells Newsmax that the questions surrounding the Benghazi attack of last September 11 is already undermining the Obama administration.
Said Rove: “These things will be corrosive. They’ll eat away at the president’s rating. We’ll see it over time and, particularly, as Congress asks more questions in the weeks ahead.”
He added: “This stuff is only starting to seep in. It will take a while for these things to sort of sink in. I am not surprised that it hasn’t begun to impact his job approval just yet.”
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Politico: “In the 2013 off-year elections, a state that once leaned solidly to the center-right has become the newest focal point in the national debate over same-sex relationships. A gubernatorial race already defined partly along culture-war lines has grown even more contentious since last weekend, when Virginia Republicans nominated as their lieutenant governor candidate a firebrand minister who has called gays ‘very sick people psychologically’ and suggested a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.”
“Remarkably, in a New South battleground where Democrats have
traditionally won by carving out independent, non-partisan reputations,
it’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe who’s most eager
to keep gay rights on the political front burner.”
“It’s pretty inconceivable to me that the president wouldn’t know. 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.”
— House Speaker John Boehner, quoted by the Washington Post, on whether President Obama knew of the IRS targeting of conservative groups.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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