Manu Raju and Byron Tau report at Politico that Democrats are exploring ways to leverage Super PACs “to dedicate huge resources to usually low-key state races to help their respective parties change the partisan makeup of legislatures across the country.
Tell it straight, rag of record. It’s Kamikaze Republicans, not “Kamikaze Congress.”
This will probably shock his tea party base. It’s not quite as assertive as McCain’s “In the United States Senate, we will not repeal or defund Obamacare. We will not. And to think we can is not rational,” but it does appear that some Republicans are making a break to join the reality-based community as regards the Affordable Care Act.
E. J. Dionne, Jr. reports on why two more Republican governors have seen the light on Obamacare.
At Op-Ed News, James Thindwa notes in his post against felon-disenfranchisement, “A study by sociologists Chris Uggen and Jeff Manza found that former felons could have changed the outcomes of seven U.S Senate elections between 1978 and 2000.” Thindwa adds “Progressives could tip the scales in this internecine struggle and cause a tectonic shift in the incarceration debate. An important source of energy and inspiration is the army of grassroots and legal organizations that blocked, diluted, repealed or postponed anti-voter laws in 14 states over the last two years. Another key model is creative action such as North Carolina’s “Moral Mondays.” The weekly rallies and civil disobedience right at the seat of state power brought national focus to the state’s nefarious voter suppression laws and lowered Gov Pat McCrory’s approval ratings from 48 percent to 39 percent. This organizing model could be especially effective if it incorporated real institution building and expansive voter registration.”
Rand Paul is clearly hoping that his libertarian philosophy will resonate with young people, many of whom like libertarian views on social issues, like same-sex marriage, pot and isolationism. But the ‘Achilles heel’ of libertarian philosophy with respect to young people is opposition to environmental protection, and that’s exactly where Paul should be challenged. On his website, Paul, who tried to gut the Cross State Air Pollution Rule in 2011, also writes on his website: “By subsidizing certain new energies like solar and wind we distort the marketplace and make it impossible for companies to know what is really the most efficient solution.”
At Media Matters for America Meagan Hatcher-Mays skewers the Wall St. Journal for for shameless distortion in explaining the decline of labor, while ignoring the role of anti-labor court decisions and state legislation. Her article also explains some key reasons behind the erosion of the middle class in the U.S.
Vague poll questions are generally useless from a policy-making point of view, none more so than “Do you think gun control laws should be made more or less strict than they are now?” Down in the fifth graph of this post, however, we get “A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in August found that 79 percent of Americans support universal background checks, including for gun shows and private sales.”
Good forum here. The Catholic right is going to have a cow.
