"Holly Lobby Hobby" Caught Cheating On Her Husband

By karoli

Who paid for Holly Hobby Lobby's birth control when she cheated on her active-duty military husband with a tea party video editor? We should totally ask Rush Limbaugh.

According to Johnson, multiple sources within the Tea Party confirmed that Fisher had a prolonged affair with Joel Frewa, a now-former video editor for the Tea Party News Network. Johnson says Frewa resigned after word of the affair began to leak out.

“The affair took place at a “Restoring the Dream” event, a Faith & Freedom conference, and on Election night 2014,” Johnson said.

Fisher claimed that the “rumors” were a product of “vengeful people” who were out to get her:

But then she saw the light and admitted the whole thing.

I lost my faith in this life that not only I’ve chosen for myself, but a life that I promote. Happy military wife with kids and church and happy, happy, happy. False. My life crumbled. My marriage crumbled. I lost my faith in God. I didn’t know where I was going to go next or what I was going to do. For a very short period in the middle of that, I actually believed my marriage was over and found someone else.”

It goes on.

Is there irony in the fact that Charles C. Johnson, smear merchant of the conservative blogger corps, finally hit a true story when he ratted out this conservative poster child? You betcha.

GOP Strategist Mocks Mitt Romney Trying To Run On Poverty While Owning Car Elevators

By John Amato

Mitt Romney has intimated that he's hoping the third time is the charm as he makes the case that he may enter into the 2016 presidential race.

Mitt Romney began to more forcefully articulate his case for a third run for the presidency Friday, telling a crowd of Republican activists and power brokers that the party needs to emphasize a more robust foreign policy, opportunity for all, and a fight against poverty.

This had Republican strategist Matthew Dowd shaking his head on ABC's This Week when asked about the prospects of another Mitt Romney run.

RADDATZ: OK, but look at -- look at Mitt Romney. And you saw him sort of lay out where he would go with this if he does it -- heavy on foreign policy, looking out to -- to solve the poverty question.
Does he risk having people say who is this guy?

DOWD: Well, I think that's a huge risk for Mitt Romney. And it's in -- it's not only a risk, it's a reality for Mitt Romney. He ran one campaign in 2008, a different campaign in 2012. And to me, this campaign he's now developing -- obviously, he should be talking about foreign policy. We have, as you led into all of this, we have huge foreign policy concerns.

I think it's very problematic for Mitt Romney, who has car elevators, to run a campaign on poverty. I think you want to be authentic and genuine on it. And that's not to say wealthy people can't talk about those issues.

It's difficult.

Wealthy people can of course run on an an anti-poverty platform, just not ones like Mitt Romney that have mocked the middle class by calling 47% of the country moochers.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.

That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax..."[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

When Harlem Was Occupied Territory

In 1966 James Baldwin wrote an essay in which he described the tense relationship—really no relationship at all—between the police and the people of Harlem. Sadly, it hasn’t dated much.

The thickety mash-up of police brutality and race is an irrefutable part of our history and our present reality. That in mind, we’re especially proud to share this piece—published for the first time online—by one of our most brilliant writers.

James Baldwin wrote “A Report from Occupied Territory” for The Nation on July 11, 1966. It is featured in the essential anthology, James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison and published by The Library of America. It appears here with permission from the James Baldwin Estate.—Alex Belth

On April 17, 1964, in Harlem, New York City, a young salesman, father of two, left a customer’s apartment and went into the streets. There was a great commotion in the streets, which, especially since it was a spring day, involved many people, including running, frightened, little boys. They were running from the police. Other people, in windows, left their windows, in terror of the police because the police had their guns out, and were aiming the guns at the roofs. Then the salesman noticed that two of the policemen were beating up a kid: “So I spoke up and asked them, ‘why are you beating him like that?’ Police jump up and start swinging on me. He put the gun on me and said, ‘get over there.’ I said, ‘what for?’ ”

An unwise question. Three of the policemen beat up the salesman in the streets. Then they took the young salesman, whose hands had been handcuffed behind his back, along with four others, much younger than the salesman, who were handcuffed in the same way, to the police station. There: “About thirty-five I’d say came into the room, and started beating, punching us in the jaw, in the stomach, in the chest, beating us with a padded club—spit on us, call us niggers, dogs, animals—they call us dogs and animals when I don’t see why we are the dogs and animals the way they are beating us. Like they beat me they beat the other kids and the elderly fellow. They throw him almost through one of the radiators. I thought he was dead over there.”

“The elderly fellow” was Fecundo Acion, a 47-year-old Puerto Rican seaman, who had also made the mistake of wanting to know why the police were beating up children. An adult eyewitness reports, “Now here come an old man walking out a stoop and asked one cop, ‘say, listen, sir, what’s going on out here?’ The cop turn around and smash him a couple of times in the head.” And one of the youngsters said, “He get that just for a question. No reason at all, just for a question.”

No one had, as yet, been charged with any crime. But the nightmare had not yet really begun. The salesman had been so badly beaten around one eye that it was found necessary to hospitalize him.

Perhaps some sense of what it means to live in occupied territory can be suggested by the fact that the police took him to Harlem Hospital themselves—nearly nineteen hours after the beating. For fourteen days, the doctors at Harlem Hospital told him that they could do nothing for his eye, and he was removed to Bellevue Hospital, where for fourteen days, the doctors tried to save the eye. At the end of fourteen days it was clear that the bad eye could not be saved and was endangering the good eye. All that could be done, then, was to take the bad eye out.

As of my last information, the salesman is on the streets again, with his attaché case, trying to feed his family. He is more visible now because he wears an eye patch; and because he questioned the right of two policemen to beat up one child, he is known as a “cop hater.” Therefore, “I have quite a few police look at me now pretty hard. My lawyer he axe (asked) me to keep somebody with me at all times ’cause the police may try to mess with me again.”

You will note that there is not a suggestion of any kind of appeal to justice, and no suggestion of any recompense for the grave and gratuitous damage which this man has endured. His tone is simply the tone of one who has miraculously survived—he might have died; as it is, he is merely half blind. You will also note that the patch over his eye has had the effect of making him, more than ever, the target of the police. It is a dishonorable wound, not earned in a foreign jungle but in the domestic one—not that this would make any difference at all to the nevertheless insuperably patriotic policeman—and it proves that he is a “bad nigger.” (“Bad niggers,” in America, as elsewhere, have always been watched and have usually been killed.) The police, who have certainly done their best to kill him, have also provided themselves with a pretext derisoire by filing three criminal charges against him. He is charged with beating up a schoolteacher, upsetting a fruit stand, and assaulting the (armed) police. Furthermore, he did all of these things in the space of a single city block, and simultaneously.
* * *
The salesman’s name is Frank Stafford. At the time all this happened, he was 31 years old. And all of this happened, all of this and a great deal more, just before the “long, hot summer” of 1964 which, to the astonishment of nearly all New Yorkers and nearly all Americans, to the extremely verbal anguish of The New York Times, and to the bewilderment of the rest of the world, eventually erupted into a race riot. It was the killing of a 15-year-old Negro boy by a white policeman which overflowed the unimaginably bitter cup.

As a result of the events of April 17, and of the police performance that day, and because Harlem is policed like occupied territory, six young Negro men, the oldest of whom is 20, are now in prison, facing life sentences for murder. Their names are Wallace Baker, Daniel Hamm, Walter Thomas, Willie Craig, Ronald Felder and Robert Rice. Perhaps their names don’t matter. They might be my brothers, they might also be yours.

My report is based, in part, on Truman Nelson’s The Torture of Mothers (The Garrison Press, 15 Olive Street, Newburyport, Mass., with an introduction by Maxwell Geismar). The Torture of Mothers is a detailed account of the case which is now known as the case of The Harlem Six. Mr. Nelson is not, as I have earlier misled certain people into believing, a white Southern novelist, but a white Northern one. It is a rather melancholy comment, I think, on the Northern intellectual community, and it reveals, rather to my despair, how little I have come to expect of it that I should have been led so irresistibly into this error. In a way, though, I certainly have no wish to blame Mr. Nelson for my errors, he is, nevertheless, somewhat himself to blame. His tone makes it clear that he means what he says and he knows what he means.

The tone is rare. I have come to expect it only of Southerners—or mainly from Southerners—since Southerners must pay so high a price for their private and their public liberation. But Mr. Nelson actually comes from New England, and is what another age would have called an abolitionist. No Northern liberal would have been capable of it because the Northern liberal considers himself as already saved, whereas the white Southerner has to pay the price for his soul’s salvation out of his own anguish and in his own flesh and in the only time he has. Mr. Nelson wrote the book in an attempt to create publicity and public indignation; whatever money the book makes goes into the effort to free The Harlem Six.

I think the book is an extraordinary moral achievement, in the great American tradition of Tom Paine and Frederick Douglass, but I will not be so dishonest as to pretend that I am writing a book review. No, I am writing a report, which is also a plea for the recognition of our common humanity. Without this recognition, our common humanity will be proved in unutterable ways. My report is also based on what I myself know, for I was born in Harlem and raised there. Neither I, nor my family, can be said ever really to have left; we are—perhaps—no longer as totally at the mercy of the cops and the landlords as once we were. In any case, our roots, our friends, our deepest associations are there, and “there” is only about fifteen blocks away.
* * *
This means that I also know, in my own flesh, and know, which is worse, in the scars borne by many of those dearest to me, the thunder and fire of the billy club, the paralyzing shock of spittle in the face, and I know what it is to find oneself blinded, on one’s hands and knees, at the bottom of the flight of steps down which one has just been hurled. I know something else: these young men have been in jail for two years now. Even if the attempts being put forth to free them should succeed, what has happened to them in these two years? People are destroyed very easily. Where is the civilization and where, indeed, is the morality which can afford to destroy so many?

They are, moreover—even in a country which makes the very grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty.

There was a game played for some time between certain highly placed people in Washington and myself before the administration changed and the Great Society reached the planning stage. The game went something like this around April or May, that is as the weather began to be warmer, my phone would ring. I would pick it up and find that Washington was on the line.

Washington: What are you doing for lunch—oh, say, tomorrow, Jim?
Jim: Oh—why—I guess I’m free.
Washington: Why don’t you take the shuttle down? We’ll send a car to the airport. One o’clock all right?
Jim: Sure. I’ll be there.
Washington: Good. Be glad to see you.

So there I would be the next day, like a good little soldier, seated (along with other good little soldiers) around a luncheon table in Washington. The first move was not mine to make, but I knew very well why I had been asked to be there.

Finally, someone would say—we would probably have arrived at the salad—“say, Jim, what’s going to happen this summer?”

This question, translated, meant: Do you think that any of those unemployed, unemployable Negroes who are going to be on the streets all summer will cause us any trouble? What do you think we should do about it? But, later on, I concluded that I had got the second part of the question wrong, they really meant, what was I going to do about it?

Then I would find myself trying patiently to explain that the Negro in America can scarcely yet be considered—for example—as a part of the labor unions—and he is certainly not so considered by the majority of these unions—and that, therefore, he lacks that protection and that incentive. The jobs that Negroes have always held, the lowest jobs, the most menial jobs, are now being destroyed by automation. No remote provision has yet been made to absorb this labor surplus. Furthermore, the Negro’s education, North and South, remains, almost totally, a segregated education, which is but another way of saying that he is taught the habits of inferiority every hour of every day that he lives. He will find it very difficult to overcome these habits.

Furthermore, every attempt he makes to overcome them will be painfully complicated by the fact that the ways of being, the ways of life of the despised and rejected, nevertheless, contain an incontestable vitality and authority. This is far more than can be said of the middle class which, in any case, and whether it be black or white, does not dare to cease despising him. He may prefer to remain where he is, given such unattractive choices, which means that he either remains in limbo, or finds a way to use the system in order to beat the system.

Thus, even when opportunities—my use of this word is here limited to the industrialized, competitive, contemporary North American sense—hitherto closed to Negroes begin, very grudgingly, to open up, few can be found to qualify for them for the reasons sketched above, and also because it demands a very rare person of any color to risk madness and heartbreak in an attempt to achieve the impossible. (I know Negroes who have gone literally mad because they wished to become commercial air-line pilots.) Nor is this the worst.

The children, having seen the spectacular defeat of their fathers—having seen what happens to any bad nigger and, still more, what happens to the good ones—cannot listen to their fathers and certainly will not listen to the society which is responsible for their orphaned condition. What to do in the face of this deep and dangerous estrangement? It seemed to me—I would say, sipping coffee and trying to be calm—that the principle of what had to be done was extremely simple; but before anything could be done, the principle had to be grasped. The principle on which one had to operate was that the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority to say that it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose.

Furthermore, no nation, wishing to call itself free, can possibly survive so massive a defection. What to do? Well, there is a real estate lobby in Albany, for example, and this lobby, which was able to rebuild all of New York, downtown, and for money, in less than twenty years, is also responsible for Harlem and the condition of the people there, and the condition of the schools there, and the future of the children there. What to do? Why is it not possible to attack the power of this lobby? Are their profits more important than the health of our children? What to do? Are textbooks printed in order to teach children, or are the contents of these textbooks to be controlled by the Southern oligarchy and the commercial health of publishing houses? What to do?

Why are Negroes and Puerto Ricans virtually the only people pushing trucks in the garment center, and what union has the right to trap and victimize Negroes and Puerto Ricans in this way? None of these things (I would say) could possibly be done without the consent, in fact, of the government, and we in Harlem know this even if some of you profess not to know how such a hideous state of affairs came about. If some of these things are not begun—I would say—then, of course, we will be sitting on a powder keg all summer. Of course, the powder keg may blow up; it will be a miracle if it doesn’t.

They thanked me. They didn’t believe me, as I conclude, since nothing was ever done. The summer was always violent. And, in the spring, the phone began to ring again.

Now, what I have said about Harlem is true of Chicago, Detroit, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco—is true of every Northern city with a large Negro population. And the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. They are, moreover—even in a country which makes the very grave error of equating ignorance with simplicity—quite stunningly ignorant; and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty.

This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect.
* * *
On April 17, some school children overturned a fruit stand in Harlem. This would have been a mere childish prank if the children had been white—had been, that is, the children of that portion of the citizenry for whom the police work and who have the power to control the police. But these children were black, and the police chased them and beat them and took out their guns; and Frank Stafford lost his eye in exactly the same way The Harlem Six lost their liberty—by trying to protect the younger children. Daniel Hamm, for example, tells us that “…we heard children scream. We turned around and walked back to see what happened. I saw this policeman with his gun out and with his billy in his hand. I like put myself in the way to keep him from shooting the kids. Because first of all he was shaking like a leaf and jumping all over the place. And I thought he might shoot one of them.”

He was arrested, along with Wallace Baker, carried to the police station, beaten—“six and twelve at a time would beat us. They got so tired beating us they just came in and started spitting on us—they even bring phlegm up and spit on me.” This went on all day in the evening. Wallace Baker and Daniel Hamm were taken to Harlem Hospital for X rays and then carried back to the police station, where the beating continued all night.

They were eventually released, with the fruit-stand charges pending, in spite of the testimony of the fruit-stand owner. This fruit-stand owner had already told the police that neither Wallace Baker nor Daniel Hamm had ever been at his store and that they certainly had had nothing to do with the fruit-stand incident. But this had no effect on the conduct of the police. The boys had already attracted the attention of the police, long before the fruit-stand riot, and in a perfectly innocent way.

They are pigeon fanciers and they keep—kept—pigeons on the roof. But the police are afraid of everything in Harlem and they are especially afraid of the roofs, which they consider to be guerrilla outposts. This means that the citizens of Harlem who, as we have seen, can come to grief at any hour in the streets, and who are not safe at their windows, are forbidden the very air. They are safe only in their houses—or were, until the city passed the No Knock, Stop and Frisk laws, which permit a policeman to enter one’s home without knocking and to stop anyone on the streets, at will, at any hour, and search him.

Harlem believes, and I certainly agree, that these laws are directed against Negroes. They are certainly not directed against anybody else. One day, “two carloads of detectives come and went up on the roof. They pulled their guns on the kids and searched them and made them all come down and they were going to take them down to the precinct.” But the boys put up a verbal fight and refused to go and attracted quite a crowd. “To get these boys to the precinct we would have to shoot them,” a policeman said, and “the police seemed like they was embarrassed. Because I don’t think they expected the kids to have as much sense as they had in speaking up for themselves.” They refused to go to the precinct, “and they didn’t,’’ and their exhibition of the spirit of ’76 marked them as dangerous.

Occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in that New World which the Europeans conquered, and it is axiomatic, in occupied territory, that any act of resistance, even though it be executed by a child, be answered at once, and with the full weight of the occupying forces. Furthermore, since the police, not at all surprisingly, are abysmally incompetent—for neither, in fact, do they have any respect for the law, which is not surprising, either—Harlem and all of New York City is full of unsolved crimes. A crime, as we know, is solved when someone is arrested and convicted. It is not indispensable, but it is useful, to have a confession. If one is carried back and forth from the precinct to the hospital long enough, one is likely to confess to anything.

Therefore, ten days later, following the slaying of Mrs. Margit Sugar in Mr. and Mrs. Sugar’s used-clothing store in Harlem, the police returned and took Daniel Hamm away again. This is how his mother tells it. “I think it was three (detectives) come up and they asked are you Danny Hamm? And he says yes and right away—gun right to the head and slapping him up, one gun here and one here—just all the way down the hall—beating him and knocking him around with the gun to his head.” The other boys were arrested in the same way, and, again of course, they were beaten, but this arrest was a far greater torture than the first one had been because some of the mothers did not know where the boys were, and the police, who were holding them, refused for many hours to say that they were holding them. The mothers did not know of what it was their children were accused until they learned, via television, that the charge was murder. At that time in the state of New York, this charge meant death in the electric chair.

Let us assume that all six boys are guilty as (eventually) charged. Can anyone pretend that the manner of their arrest, or their treatment, bears any resemblance to equal justice under the law? The Police Department has loftily refused to “dignify the charges.” But can anyone pretend that they would dare to take this tone if the case involved, say, the sons of Wall Street brokers? I have witnessed and endured the brutality of the police many more times than once—but, of course, I cannot prove it. I cannot prove it because the Police Department investigates itself, quite as though it were answerable only to itself. But it cannot be allowed to be answerable only to itself; it must be made to answer to the community which pays it, and which it is legally sworn to protect; and if American Negroes are not a part of the American community, then all of the American professions are a fraud.
* * *
This arrogant autonomy, which is guaranteed the police, not only in New York, by the most powerful forces in American life—otherwise, they would not dare to claim it, would indeed be unable to claim it—creates a situation which is as close to anarchy as it already, visibly, is close to martial law.

Here is Wallace Baker’s mother speaking, describing the night that a police officer came to her house to collect the evidence which he hoped would prove that her son was guilty of murder. The late Mrs. Sugar had run a used-clothing store and the policeman was looking for old coats. “Nasty as he was that night in my house. He didn’t ring the bell. So I said, have you got a search warrant? He say, no, I don’t have no search warrant and I’m going to search anyway. Well, he did. So I said, will you please step out of this room till I get dressed? He wouldn’t leave.”

This collector of evidence against the boys was later arrested on charges of possessing and passing counterfeit money (he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, “conspiring” to pass counterfeit money). The officer’s home in Hartsdale, N. Y., is valued at $35,000, he owns two cars, one a Cadillac, and when he was arrested, had $1,300 in his pockets. But the families of The Harlem Six do not have enough money for counsel. The court appointed counsel, and refused to allow the boys counsel of their own choice, even though the boys made it clear that they had no confidence in their court-appointed counsel, and even though four leading civil rights lawyers had asked to be allowed to handle the case. The boys were convicted of first-degree murder, and are now ending their childhood and may end their lives in jail.

These things happen, in all our Harlems, every single day. If we ignore this fact, and our common responsibility to change this fact, we are sealing our doom. Here is the boy, Daniel Hamm, speaking—speaking of his country, which has sworn to bring peace and freedom to so many millions: “They don’t want us here. They don’t want us—period! All they want us to do is work on these penny-ante jobs for them—and that’s it. And beat our heads in whenever they feel like it. They don’t want us on the street ’cause the World’s Fair is coming. And they figure that all black people are hoodlums anyway, or bums, with no character of our own. So they put us off the streets, so their friends from Europe, Paris or Vietnam—wherever they come from—can come and see this supposed-to-be great city.”

There is a very bitter prescience in what this boy—this “bad nigger”—is saying, and he was not born knowing it. We taught it to him in seventeen years. He is draft age now, and if he were not in jail, would very probably be on his way to Southeast Asia. Many of his contemporaries are there, and the American government and the American press are extremely proud of them. They are dying there like flies; they are dying in the streets of all our Harlems far more hideously than flies.

A member of my family said to me when we learned of the bombing of the four little girls in the Birmingham Sunday school, “Well, they don’t need us for work no more. Where are they building the gas ovens?” Many Negroes feel this; there is no way not to feel it. Alas, we know our countrymen, municipalities, judges, politicians, policemen and draft boards very well. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to get bad niggers off the streets. No one in Harlem will ever believe that The Harlem Six are guilty—God knows their guilt has certainly not been proved. Harlem knows, though, that they have been abused and possibly destroyed, and Harlem knows why—we have lived with it since our eyes opened on the world. One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one’s countrymen say.

“I can’t believe what you say,” the song goes, “because I see what you do”—and one is also under the necessity of escaping the jungle of one’s situation into any other jungle whatever. It is the bitterest possible comment on our situation now that the suspicion is alive in so many breasts that America has at last found a way of dealing with the Negro problem. 

“They don’t want us—period!" The meek shall inherit the earth, it is said. This presents a very bleak image to those who live in occupied territory. The meek Southeast Asians, those who remain, shall have their free elections, and the meek American Negroes—those who survive—shall enter the Great Society.

Paying employees fair wages

Bar Marco in Pittsburgh sets a golden standard for paying their employees a fair wage, along with giving benefits rarely granted to food service staff. Ed Schultz, co-owner Justin Steel, and employee Andrew Heffner discuss these incredible steps for worker’s rights.

If You Think Selma’s Snubbing Is a Fluke, Think Again. The Oscars Have Stiffed Lots of Black Films

Movies like The Help, with white protagonists, get lots of recognition, while cinematic classics like Do the Right Thing and Lumumba don’t get their due.

By Peniel E. Joseph

David Oyelowo as Selma’s Martin Luther King Jr. talks to director Ava DuVernay. Courtesy of Paramout Pictures

Social media is abuzz with news that Ava DuVernay’s towering film Selma received only two Academy Award nominations, for best picture and best song. The best film ever made about the civil rights movement, Selma was shut out of nominations for best director and actor that seemed inevitable just weeks ago. And the popular Twitter hashtag #OscarSoWhite, which is trending now, tells us only part of the story.

This is not the first time the Oscars have snubbed a black filmmaker whose artistic achievements seem to be overwhelmed by a storm of political controversy.

Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is rightly regarded as the director’s masterpiece, a scintillating meditation on American race relations that turned the summer of 1989 into a national conversation about racial conflicts simmering across the nation. Many in Hollywood, including actress Kim Basinger, who said as much during the 1990 Academy Award show, felt that Lee should have received a best director nomination, and the film nominated for best picture. Instead Lee was nominated, but did not win, for best original screenplay.

Three years later, Lee’s searing three-hour biopic, Malcolm X, was again shut out from the best picture and best director categories, although Denzel Washington did receive (but did not win) a best actor nomination.

A less-recognized and more recent slighting of a seminal black film is Raoul Peck’s woefully unrecognized Lumumba, which tells the story of Congolese prime minister and Pan-African icon Patrice Émery Lumumba, whose fight against colonialism influenced African-American leaders from Malcolm X to Amiri Baraka. Independently produced and helmed by a Haitian director, Lumumba features an electrifying performance by actor Eriq Ebouaney.

Selma is simply the latest black-directed masterpiece whose artistic integrity confronted the unapologetic racism of a film industry more comfortable with white fantasies of black life than the genuine article.

We live in a world where the 2012 film The Help, a fictionalized account of the civil rights era featuring actress Emma Stone as the Jackson, Miss., black community’s white savior, not only was nominated for four Oscars but also became a box office sensation, grossing $216 million worldwide.

Unfortunately for the brilliant and bold Ava DuVernay, many academy voters didn’t get the message that The Help was a work of fiction. Instead, as they watched Selma’s provocative and inspired blend of history and artistic integrity unfold, they waited. And waited. And waited. For the kind of white protagonist (read: hero) that enables white voters to identify with films presenting black subject matter. Even 12 Years a Slave provided white characters that allowed contemporary mainstream audiences to relate, even if simply through an act of personal revulsion that allowed 21st-century liberals a measure of moral superiority.

Selma offers no such embellishments.

Just the humbling experience of witnessing a period in American history when black folks stood at the cutting edge of a movement that was both morally specific and expansively universal. DuVernay’s camera does not avert its gaze from white violence or black resistance. Most important, she embraces, even takes as a given, the transcendent glory of African-American intelligence and self-determination. Black women and men, young and old, are portrayed as leaders, not victims; as strategists and tacticians, and not simply obedient followers of Martin Luther King Jr.

Selma’s purposely unglamorous depiction of a warts-and-all King offered a heartbreaking entree into the story of an icon and his wife whose images have become calcified to the point of being disfigured in our own time.

But it’s arguably the depiction of President Lyndon B. Johnson that sealed Selma’s Oscar fate.

DuVernay’s LBJ is presented as a wary ally of the movement; a man pulled by competing political interests who only grudgingly supported the voting-rights movement. This contrasts with the historical Johnson’s more robust support for civil rights, but did little to diminish the film’s artistic power and achievement. Yet the controversy over historical accuracy—one that largely escaped other prestige pictures, like American Sniper, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, all also based on historical events, and that have been accused of taking literary license with history—focused squarely on Selma, the awards season’s lone film directed by a black woman.

If there’s a silver lining to all this talk of Oscar snubs, disrespect, sexism and racism, it’s that it will both inspire more people to see the film and inspire more black women and men to—following in DuVernay’s footsteps—dare to make films of such power and grace that they defy conventional standards of artistic and commercial success, even as they take black culture to new cinematic heights.

Peniel E. Joseph, a contributing editor at The Root, is founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and a professor of history at Tufts University. He is the author of Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama and Stokely: A Life. Follow him on Twitter.

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Ron Paul Institute Publishes 'False Flag' Conspiracy About Paris Attacks

By John Amato



We've written for years on C&L of how much of a crackpot Ron Paul was while he served in Congress -- and still is. His rise to pseudo-political prominence came after he was a frequent guest and peddler of the 9/11 inside job conspiracy theories led by Alex Jones and his ilk. Yesterday The Ron Paul Institute published a piece called : Charlie Hebdo Shootings: False Flag?

The Charlie Hebdo affair has many of the characteristics of a false flag operation. The attack on the cartoonists’ office was a disciplined professional attack of the kind associated with highly trained special forces; yet the suspects who were later corralled and killed seemed bumbling and unprofessional. It is like two different sets of people.

If you read the whole thing you'll be sickened by it and it has caused quite a stir today from some of his libertarian allies like Matt Welsh at Reason Magazine. The Weekly Standard was equally horrified by this screed too.

It shouldn't surprise anyone who has covered Ron Paul in the past, but most of the media only focused on Paul's popularity rise during the 2008 Republican presidential primaries and never bothered to ask why he was able to raise so much money with his "money bombs.' Being a right wing extremist or a conspiracy theory nut pays good dollars and Ron Paul capitalized on it big time.

Senator Rand Paul, (his son) is no slouch when it comes to conspiracy theories either, but I do wonder if the media will ever ask Rand about his father's nutty proclivities? Don't hold your breath.

The Political Win That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of The United States

By Miles Mogulescu

Led by Elizabeth Warren, this week progressive Democrats and the American people scored an unusual victory over Wall Street, Too Big To Fail Banks, and corporate Democrats.

Wall Street investment banker Antonio Weiss -- President Obama's nominee for the third ranking position in the Treasury Department, who had helped Burger King merge with a Canadian company to avoid U.S. taxes and stood to receive a $20 million payout from his bank for taking the Treasury job - withdrew his nomination rather than face questioning on his Wall Street ties in a Senate confirmation hearing.

On its face, Weiss's withdrawal might seem like a relatively small thing. But in politics, this is the equivalent of a large earthquake, and a big boost to Elizabeth Warren's political influence.

A presidential appointee is almost never withdrawn because of opposition from the president's own party. The last case I can remember is in 2005 when George W. Bush withdrew the Supreme Court nomination of his friend Harriet Miers after she was opposed by Republican Senators and activists.

As Joe Biden is known to say, "This is a big deal".

This political earthquake is a barometer of the growing influence of Sen. Warren, without whose outspoken opposition - joined by a grassroots campaign which generated over tens of thousands of signatures -- the nomination would have sailed through.

Four weeks ago, I wrote a piece on The Huffington Post entitled The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States. Much to my surprise the piece went totally viral. Over the next few days, the piece was "Liked" by 243,000 readers, reposted by over 37,000 people on their own Facebook pages, and Tweeted by thousands more (including by Mark Ruffalo to his 1.2 million followers). The piece seemed to have touched a nerve in the political zeitgeist. The response indicated that there's a hunger for new leadership which is not bought and sold by corporate America, whether it's another Bush or another Clinton.

Even as Jeb Bush is staring to lock up Republican donors in the money primary that hugely influences who wins the actual voter primary, and Hillary adds top Clinton and Obama advisor John Podesta to her potential campaign staff, there's a growing grassroots outcry for a Warren candidacy.

MoveOn has raised $1m for a Draft Warren campaign, has opened staffed offices in Iowa, and has gathered over 200,000 signatures (sign here) which are growing daily. Democracy for America is launching an on-the-ground grassroots campaign this Saturday in New Hampshire. 300 former Obama campaign staffers have signed a letter urging Warren to run.

It's clear that if Warren runs, she'll have an army of experienced grassroots campaign organizers and donors. And unlike with Barack Obama, they're the type of grassroots organizers who would stay organized if she won to be sure that she and a reluctant Congress lived up to her campaign promises.

Even though it's early to put much stock in polls, a Colorado focus group of Republicans, Democrats and Independent organized by the Annenberg Center expressed widespread distaste for both Clinton and Bush and strong positive interest in Warren. A Republican-leaning independent, supported by half the participants, said "I wouldn't be opposed to Congress saying, 'If your last name is Clinton or Bush, you don't even get to run'". Words used by participants to describe Clinton were "Hopeful." "Crazy." "Strong." "Spitfire." "Untrustworthy." "More of the same." "Next candidate, please."

Comments on Jeb Bush were even worse.

But many participants responded positively when Elizabeth Warren's name was mentioned. Words used to describe her included "Passionate." "Smart." "Sincere." "Knowledgeable." "Intelligent." "Capable. Half of the participants said they'd pick Warren as their next door neighbor, including the most conservative member of the group. A Republican-leaning independent said, "She's personable and knowledgeable, and I think she's got a good handle on what's going on in the country". The Washington Post reported the pollster's takeaway:

"'One is [that] the political classes told us it's going to be Bush against Clinton. But these people are hundreds of miles away from that choice. Essentially what they're telling us is, 'I don't trust these people. They're part of an establishment that I don't like.'

That was one turning point, he said. The other was Warren. 'Elizabeth Warren, from every part of the compass, had a level of support," he said. "She's not invisible. She's not unknown. She's not undefined.' And, he added, she reached them on the issues so many people spoke about, which is their own economic concerns.

'You couldn't leave this without feeling how hard-pressed these people are and how they're looking for someone who will be a force for their cause. And Elizabeth Warren has broken through.'"

Given that Elizabeth Warren is the only national politician who addresses the economic concerns of the American people without the corporate ties of Bush, Inc. or Clinton, Inc., as an Atlantic Magazine" column put it, if Warren doesn't run, "she'll do a tremendous disservice to her principles and her party."

"Warren is the only person standing between the Democrats and an uncontested Hillary Clinton nomination. She has already made clear what she thinks of the Clintons.

Warren has suggested that President Bill Clinton's administration served the same "trickle down" economics as its Republicans and predecessors.

Warren has denounced the Clinton administration's senior economic appointees as servitors of the big banks.

Warren has blasted Bill Clinton's 1996 claim that the era of big government is over and his repeal of Glass-Steagall and other financial regulations...

Lead a fight for America's working people? Hillary Clinton wouldn't lead a fight for motherhood and apple pie if motherhood and apple pie were polling below 70 percent."

In contrast, Warren lays out a concrete program for giving average Americans a fighting chance in an increasingly unequal economy. As she told the National Summit on Raising Wages last week,

"We need to talk about what we believe:

• We believe that no one should work full time and still live in poverty - and that means raising the minimum wage.

• We believe workers have a right to come together, to bargain together and to rebuild America's middle class.

• We believe in enforcing labor laws, so that workers get overtime pay and pensions that are fully funded.

• We believe in equal pay for equal work.

• We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.

We also need a hard conversation about how we create jobs here in America. We need to talk about how to build a future. So let's say what we believe:

• We believe in making investments - in roads and bridges and power grids, in education, in research - investments that create good jobs in the short run and help us build new opportunities over the long run.

• And we believe in paying for them-not with magical accounting scams that pretend to cut taxes and raise revenue, but with real, honest-to-goodness changes that make sure that we pay-and corporations pay-a fair share to build a future for all of us.

• We believe in trade policies and tax codes that will strengthen our economy, raise our living standards, and create American jobs - and we will never give up on those three words: Made in America.

And one more point. If we're ever going to un-rig the system, then we need to make some important political changes. And here's where we start:

• We know that democracy doesn't work when congressmen and regulators bow down to Wall Street's political power - and that means it's time to break up the Wall Street banks and remind politicians that they don't work for the big banks, they work for US!"

Given the stark contrasts between Clinton's corporate bromides and Warren's specific plans to make the economy work for the 99%, how can Warren cede the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton without a contest?

Moreover, Warren's current political influence derives, in no small part, from her potential as a Presidential candidate. If she wins the Democratic nomination, she will become the most influential Democrat in the country, and if she wins the Presidency, she has a chance of effecting some of the transformational changes she proposes. Even if she loses a close nomination battle with Hillary, she will have established herself as a defining national figure and might force Hillary to move in a more populist direction.

But if, after all the fiery rhetoric, Warren sits out the presidential race, her political influence will quickly wane. She will become one more backbench Senator with little political influence. She'd be something like Bernie Sanders (whom I personally like) who's little more than a political gadfly but is unable to achieve much in the way of concrete accomplishments. And Elizabeth Warren doesn't strike me as the type of person who would be satisfied with talking big and accomplishing little.

So, Run Warren, Run. Anything less would be a disservice to yourself, your principles, your millions of supporters, and the American people.

FBI: John Boehner's Bartender Indicted For Plotting To Poison His Wine

By Karoli

It makes me sad that people feel so desperate and are so ill they would even consider attacking a public official. But the most shocking part of this sad story is how many times Michael Hoyt, former bartender at John Boehner's club, made threats before he was actually arrested.

WCPO Cincinnati:

“Hoyt told the officer he was Jesus Christ and he was going to kill Boehner because Boehner was mean to him at the country club and because Boehner is responsible for Ebola,” United States Capitol Police (USCP) Special Agent Christopher M. Desrosiers said. “Hoyt advised he had a loaded Beretta .380 automatic and he was going to shoot Boehner and take off.”

Officers said Hoyt told them he regretted not having enough time to put something in Boehner’s drink. It was also discovered Hoyt emailed Boehner’s wife about the plot a day before he called police, Desrosiers said.

Boy, is that email a doozy, too. Here's his reply to Mrs. Boehner after she emailed him back asking what the first one was all about.

Mrs. Boehner, I was fired. I could not email Mr. Boehner directly because of the zip code block on his email. It doesn’t matter anyway. If he took a real interest in anything he would insure his Club was better than the Country, but they are exactly the same and life goes on SSDD. Sincerely, Mike. Mike, your former bartender.

In addition to the emails and erratic behavior, Hoyt also posted his thoughts online. The Ebola crisis in particular was stressing him.

Authorities said Hoyt also typed an 11-page blog detailing his thoughts about Boehner being the devil and emailed it to his father, ex-girlfriend and neighbor.

Hoyt said he used to pour wine for Boehner often and could have easily poisoned his drink, but didn’t, special agents said.

He said no one checked the drinks he poured for Boehner, and it would have been “very easy to slip something in,” according to Desrosiers.

Hoyt also told agents he imagined a scenario where he confronted Boehner about Ebola in front of one of the sports stadiums in downtown Cincinnati. He said he wanted large crowds to be present.

Obviously Mr. Hoyt has serious psychiatric problems, which is why this find in his apartment is that much more disturbing:

Police searched Hoyt’s home on Oct. 31 and seized an SKS assault rifle magazine, two boxes of 7.62 ammo, 35 loose rounds, a speed loader and a box of .380 rounds. A notebook containing “John Boehner” and “Ebola” were among other writings found during the search, as well as two envelopes with lists of country club members, authorities said.

Agents said they also found a bullet hole in the upper wall of Hoyt’s first-floor bedroom.

When he voluntarily agreed to a 72-hour hold, police took his .380 handgun from him for safekeeping.

Officers said they later recovered Hoyt's SKS assault rifle at his mother’s home in Hebron, Ky. She told investigators she removed it from his home while he wasn’t there because she noticed he was not eating or sleeping and becoming increasingly agitated, Desrosiers said.

People so desperately ill should worry John Boehner and everyone else, too. I'm sure his mother was concerned, since he had suffered a previous psychotic episode but had discontinued his medications. But there wasn't a thing she could do, because the laws in this country are so incredibly draconian when it comes to dealing with the mentally ill. Family members have no rights without extensive and lengthy court proceedings.

I'm glad he didn't shoot John Boehner -- or poison him. But I do wish it would give Boehner pause about the ACA, which covers mental health issues as well as physical health.

Update: Please note: This response came from the right, not the left:

Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron Trailer #2

Ultron returns to cause even more trouble for our heroes in another trailer for Marvel's "Avengers: Age of Ultron," in theaters May 1!

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First on the list: Cut the disabled people

Posted by stbalbach

On the first day of the new Congress, a Texas Republican is leading an effort to make deep cuts in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to take effect within about a year. Democrats appear to have little recourse due to the recent election results. Fraud in SSDI is not a major problem despite Republican claims and mythmaking by NPR and 60 Minutes. The inspector general found only about 0.4 percent of cases were approved by fraudulent judges.

More and more people are on disability. This reflects an aging and sick population, not fraudulent activity. Demographics explains most of the increase. See Just The Facts on Disability.

Republicans fought against SSDI throughout the 50s its passage was a dramatic story that few know or remember today. The current "crisis" is a manufactured one, part of the long-view Republican strategy to eliminate SSDI and a broader attack on Social Security. In 1983, a Republican effort moved funds that had been allocated for the disabled into the Social Security Retirement program, artificially creating an imbalance that is coming due today.

The New Republican Attack on Social Security Starts Now.

Why Defending Social Security Needs to Be Next on Obama’s To-Do List

“[People in power] use the word ‘reform’ when they mean ‘privatize,’ and they use ‘strengthen’ when they really mean ‘dismantle.’ They tell us there’s a crisis to get us all riled up so we’ll sit down and listen to their plan to privatize … Democrats are absolutely united in the need to strengthen Social Security and make it solvent for future generations. We know that, and we want that.” (Senator Barack Obama, 2005)

Ted Cruz to oversee Nasa in Congress

Appointment to the space, science and competitiveness subcommittee raises fears Cruz will cut funding to US science programs

By Alan Yuhas

Senator Ted Cruz will chair the committee that oversees science and Nasa in the new Republican-controlled Congress, raising fears that the conservative Texan will cut funding to the space agency and science programs.

Cruz’s appointment to the space, science and competitiveness subcommittee comes amid a broad shift of power in the Senate, where the GOP won a majority in the 2014 midterm elections. Cruz was the top Republican on the subcommittee before the elections.

He has publicly stated support for Nasa but has also attempted at least once to cut the agency’s funding, arguing that larger government cuts necessitated changes to the space program’s budget. In 2013, Cruz both tried to reduce Nasa’s budget and said: “It’s critical that the United States ensure its continued leadership in space.”

Cruz has constituents invested in the space agency’s future – for instance, Nasa employees and contractors at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Cruz has also spoken out against decades of science that indicate climate change, telling CNN last year that in “the last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming” to support “a so-called scientific theory”. His vociferous opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and his support of extreme budget cuts could spell trouble for Nasa’s less prominent programs, such as its own climate research and sophisticated supercomputers.

His role on the front lines of the 2013 government shutdown, which critics say had lasting negative effects on public safety, Nasa research and EPA scientists’ ability to visit contaminated sites, also suggests at best a narrow focus on Nasa’s largest projects and at worst a disregard for agencies that require science funding.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican from Florida, was named chair to the subcommittee on oceans, atmosphere, fisheries and coast guard, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Nooa) and the protection of oceans and marine life in US jurisdiction. Rubio has said he does not “believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate”, which is a more lenient position than the new chair of the environment committee, Jim Inhofe, who denies climate science outright.

In December, Congress gave Nasa a boost to its 2015 budget, setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars for its planetary science program and new Space Launch System rocket, which aims to revolutionize advanced rocketry.

Due to budget cuts and programs that the government has allowed to lapse, Nasa has increasingly relied on private space companies in recent years, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX. On Saturday SpaceX tested its own experimental rocket system, delivering supplies to the International Space Station before failing to land its reusable rocket on a floating platform.

The Invasion of America

By Jason Kottke

From eHistory, a time lapse view from 1776 to the present day of how the US government systematically took land from Native Americans through treaties and executive orders that were rarely honored for long.



There's a companion piece at Aeon by Claudio Saunt as well as an interactive version of the map featured in the video.

The final assault on indigenous land tenure, lasting roughly from the mid-19th century to 1890, was rapid and murderous. (In the 20th century, the fight moved from the battlefield to the courts, where it continues to this day.) After John Sutter discovered gold in California's Central Valley in 1848, colonists launched slaving expeditions against native peoples in the region. 'That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between races, until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected,' the state's first governor instructed the legislature in 1851.

In the Great Plains, the US Army conducted a war of attrition, with success measured in the quantity of tipis burned, food supplies destroyed, and horse herds slaughtered. The result was a series of massacres: the Bear River Massacre in southern Idaho (1863), the Sand Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado (1864), the Washita Massacre in western Oklahoma (1868), and a host of others. In Florida in the 1850s, US troops waded through the Everglades in pursuit of the last holdouts among the Seminole peoples, who had once controlled much of the Florida peninsula. In short, in the mid-19th century, Americans were still fighting to reduce if not to eliminate the continent's original residents.

FYI, it's always a good rule of thumb to not read comments on YouTube, but in this case you really really shouldn't read the comments on this video unless you want a bunch of reasons why it was ok for Europeans to drive Native Americans to the brink of total genocide.

Tina Fey & Amy Poehler Burn the Fuck Out Of Bill Cosby at Golden Globes

Who Laughed at Tina Fey's Bill Cosby Joke? The Crowd Reaction Shot

By Max Read

Here's a high-res shot of the crowd just after Tina Fey's first Cosby joke. That's Jessica Chastain in the front with her mouth open. Check out Clooney cracking up way in the back, and then, two seats over, a stone silent Bill Murray (?).

David Brooks Only Enjoys the Farts of His Equals

Posted By Rude One

Everyone loves the parties thrown at the home of New York Times columnist David Brooks. Having downsized from an opulent house to an opulent apartment in the Cleveland Park neighborhood in Washington, DC, Brooks delights in inviting over only the most intelligent of the intellgentsia, only the most cognizant of the cogniscenti, all of whom must have degrees Ivy League and careers as thinking thinkers. Then he has the caterers serve dinner, a menu he has chosen to his particular purposes: a vegetarian meal, sometimes South Asian, sometimes East African, exotic sections of exotic continents, lentils and kale and broccoli and apricots and brown rice, rich in sauces that are filled with yogurts and creams, and only champagne to drink.

Once the meal is complete, Brooks looks from face to face around the table, seeing the growing intestinal discomfort in his guests, and then, Brooks farts, loudly, elegantly, even, a rotund, bassoonish sound. He closes his eyes and smells the air, using his hand like a conductor to waft the odors towards his nose. At first, people look at him oddly. Brooks knows the answer to their questioning faces. "Everything that emanates from you is worthier than that which emanates from others," he declares grandly. "Allow yourself to fart. Your farts are, indeed, more valuable than the finest perfumes. They are sublime for they are considered and educated farts."

Slowly, one guest accepts this obvious truth and farts, laughing, tickled by this liberation. Others follow suit until all around the table wealthy people in fine garments are making a flatulent symphony. Their smells commingle, creating new and never-before-sniffed fragrances. "Yes, yes, fart more," Brooks, the master of the moment, commands among the anal oboes and rectal trombones and a chorus of inhalations and moans. More than anyone, he is delirious, as if the musky clouds have formed a magic carpet that allows him to float away.

Once, only once, a waiter on the side, watching this exhibition, shrugged his shoulders and let out a fart that was immediately heard as a flat note in the orchestra. Brooks turned and fired him on the spot for allowing his pedestrian gas to dare to rise with the redolence of the respectable. Luckily, the party wasn't ruined for guests moved quickly to the spot and farted prodigiously in order to dilute the invading scent.

Today, in his "column" (if by "column," you mean "word farts"), Brooks uses the murder of the cartoonists at the French publication Charlie Hebdo to delineate what separates "us" (the Brooksites) from the "them" (the twaddling satirists) in what are two of the most smugly elitist paragraphs you're gonna read:

"In most societies, there’s the adults’ table and there’s the kids’ table. The people who read Le Monde or the establishment organs are at the adults’ table. The jesters, the holy fools and people like Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at the kids’ table. They’re not granted complete respectability, but they are heard because in their unguided missile manner, they sometimes say necessary things that no one else is saying.

"Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semi-respect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct."

Yes, ahh, the delightful tang of the farts of your equals, those are all that should be smelled. Dare not breathe in the farts of the fools for they can only eat cotton candy and popcorn. They are just one level above racists.

We let the "wise and considerate scholars" who Brooks supports lead this country for a long, long time, using their "establishment organs" to penetrate our politics and economy.  They are far more foolish, far more ignorant, far less connected to reality than the satirists and the crude humorists who have to work in practice, not just theory. And let's remember that, for years, Brooks's party took its marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, who is not generally noted for either his wisdom, his consideration, or his scholarship. Also, his farts smell like cigars and Dominican boy semen.

What Brooks sets up is a world where those who get to be part of the discourse of power have to be approved by those who are already part of the discourse. What are the chances of that group allowing their air to be poisoned by the farts of the outsiders? It's an ideological daisy chain that most of us just get to watch. You can spend your time wondering where you can fit in or you can say, "Fuck that" and walk away.

One huge thing that Brooks misses is that it's often the "jesters" who are the initiators of change. See, you can build towers with your peas and potatoes at the kids' table. You have freedom to play.

In Tremendous Display of Incompetence, GOP FAILS to pass first major bill of 114th Congress

By Daniel Strauss

Something surprising happened in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon: the chamber, with a large Republican majority, failed to pass a GOP-backed jobs regulation and reform bill.

The bill was expected to pass handily but since it was being treated as a "suspension" Democrats were able to defeat it.

Unforced error for House GOP. House unexpectedly defeats job creation & regulation reform bill. Comms dir's had press releases ready to go. — Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 7, 2015

Jobs/regs bill got 276 yeas, 146 nays. But was treated as a "suspension" which needs 2/3 to pass. With 422 ballots, needed 282. — Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 7, 2015

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) quickly released a statement hailing the unexpected victory and highlighted aspects of the legislation that would have undercut parts of Dodd-Frank and the Volcker rule in particular.

"I’m proud House Democrats stood together today to protect critical Wall Street reforms," Ellison said in a statement. "Families are only now starting to recover from the devastating financial crisis. Congress must strengthen and fully enforce the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act."

The surprising defeat is reminiscent of a surprise rejection of a farm bill House Republicans brought to a vote June 2013 even though they controlled the chamber.

Other Democrats said the entire skirmish showed the level of Wall Street's infestation in Congress.

"Bringing this bill to the floor just two days into a new session of Congress is more evidence of the stranglehold that Wall Street has on Washington," Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) said. "Do we represent all Americans, or just the wealthy and well-connected who would benefit from this legislation?"

GOP's Sneak Attack on Social Security

Thom Hartmann talks with Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) about the GOP's sneak attack on social security.

Obama to Propose 2 Year Tuition Free Community College Program

The president released a preview message saying that he plans to propose a program to make community college “free for everybody who is willing to work for it.” 

By Breanna Edwards

Forget about making education simply “affordable.”

President Barack Obama is planning to announce a program to make the first two years of community college free “for those willing to work for it,” as he revealed in a recent video message made while he was aboard Air Force One, which was posted to the White House’s Facebook page Thursday.

The president is expected to formally announce the plans on Friday at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tenn.

According to the White House, the proposed plan, for which more details are to come, will be in partnership with states and is inspired by programs in Tennessee and Chicago. The administration predicts that if all states participate, approximately 9 million students could benefit, saving a full-time community college student an average of $3,800 in yearly tuition.

“I think everybody understands [education] is the key to success for our kids in the 21st century,” the president said in his video message. “But what we also understand is that it’s not just for kids. We also have to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to constantly train themselves for better jobs, better wages, better benefits.”

The conditions for students to have their tuition eliminated include being enrolled at least half-time, maintaining a 2.5 GPA and making “steady progress toward completing their program.”

The budget needed to undertake the ambitious endeavor was not made immediately clear. However, the proposal is for federal funding to cover about 75 percent of the cost, while states pick up the remainder.

The only other question is whether the Republican-led Congress will agree to the proposal. The initial announcement drew criticism from House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Cory Fritz, who said in a statement, “With no details or information on the cost, this seems more like a talking point than a plan,” ABC News reported.

Read more at ABC News.

Romney to GOP donors: ‘I want to be President.’

By Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Matea Gold

In this July 2, 2014, file photo, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney addresses a crowd of supporters in New Hampshire. Romney told a small group of donors that he's considering a third run at the White House. (Charles Krupa/AP)

Mitt Romney forcefully declared his interest in a third presidential run to a room full of powerful Republican donors Friday, disrupting the fluid 2016 GOP field as would-be rival Jeb Bush was moving swiftly to consolidate establishment support.

Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, has been mulling another campaign for several months, but his comments Friday marked a clear step forward in his thinking and come amid mounting tensions between the Romney and Bush camps.

“I want to be president,” Romney told about 30 donors in New York. He said that his wife, Ann — who last fall said she was emphatically against a run — had changed her mind and was now “very encouraging,” although their five sons remain split, according to multiple attendees.

Advisers said Romney discussed the race with his family over the holidays, when they spent time skiing in Park City, Utah, but he insisted that he has not made up his mind whether to run. Advisers said he recognizes that he would not be able to waltz into the nomination and that the intra-party competition is shaping up to be stiffer in next year’s primaries than it was in 2012.

Bush’s sudden focus on the race in recent weeks has put pressure on Romney to decide soon.

Romney has been in regular conversations with major donors, some of whom are pushing him to run again, but confidants have also warned him that his window of opportunity could shut if he does not declare his intentions within 30 to 60 days.

Romney’s comments at Friday’s meeting, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, electrified the world of Republican financiers, who are being courted aggressively by Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and other hopefuls. Romney’s dalliance could freeze enough donors to spoil Bush’s plan to post an intimidatingly huge first-quarter fundraising haul this spring.

“What he has said to me before is, ‘I am preserving my options.’ What he is now saying is, ‘I am seriously considering a run,’ ” said Bobbie Kilberg, a top donor from Virginia who raised millions of dollars for Romney’s 2012 bid. She was briefed by attendees on Romney’s Friday comments. “And he said that in a room with 30 people. That is a different degree of intensity.”

Striving to keep his network intact, Romney on Friday also e-mailed his donors with invitations to his fourth annual policy summit in Park City, scheduled for June 11-13. Called the E2 Summit, the event is billed as an “intimate” gathering of Wall Street titans, politicos and former government officials.

Romney’s associates said that he has become restless since conceding to President Obama on a cold night in Boston two years ago. Romney’s motivation to run again stems from a lingering dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies, both economic and foreign, and a belief that he would have set the country on a better course.

Romney also harbors doubts that Bush and other Republican contenders can defeat likely Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, advisers said, and is wary in particular about Bush’s political skills.

“I believe Mitt Romney is too much of a patriot to sit on the sidelines and concede the presidency to Hillary Clinton or [Massachusetts Sen.] Elizabeth Warren when he knows that he can fix the country,” said Spencer Zwick, Romney’s 2012 national finance chairman, who accompanied Romney to Friday’s New York meeting.

“I think, at the end of the day, he believes he could actually make a difference,” Zwick said. “He won’t make a decision to run for president based on who else is in the race. He will make a decision based on his own desire and his own abilities.”

Romney’s advisers said he is approaching the decision pragmatically. “He does not go into things looking through rose-colored glasses,” said one Romney adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk candidly.

This adviser said Romney is far from having his mind made up: “He knows he’ll have to earn it, and he believes in that; that the presidency is too important to hand it over to somebody. He doesn’t talk like that at all. He wants to go out and make his case to the American people and see what happens. But he’s not that far.”

One immediate hurdle Romney would face is that many of the prominent donors that backed his last campaign, as well as some senior operatives who worked for him before, have already been scooped up by Bush or other candidates. GOP lawyer Charlie Spies, who co-founded the pro-Romney super PAC Restore our Future, is now representing Bush’s leadership committee, the Right to Rise PAC, as well as a pro-Bush super PAC of the same name.

Some Republicans have sharply criticized him since 2012 over his missteps on the campaign trail and his final performance — he lost every swing state except North Carolina and finished with 206 electoral votes to Obama’s 332. Democrats successfully cast him as out of touch with the middle class after he was caught on video telling wealthy donors that 47 percent of Americans do not take personal responsibility for their lives.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), a 2016 presidential hopeful, assailed Romney shortly after the 2012 election: “We have to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), also eyeing a 2016 run, wrote in his 2013 book that Romney did a “lousy job” talking about the economy “in a way that is relevant to people’s lives.”

Friday’s declaration of interest by Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and businessman, was not welcomed by all of his former allies — especially those close to the Bush family.

“Frankly, he has been bypassed by Jeb,” said Doug Gross, Romney’s 2008 Iowa campaign chairman and longtime Bush ally. “The time for Governor Romney has probably passed. He has already lost twice. The jury is very much out on whether Republican voters would go with him again.”

Romney’s relationship with Bush’s orbit has evolved from warm to strained in recent months.

Bush’s chief political strategist is Mike Murphy, who also is close to Romney and advised his successful 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Last year, Murphy helped Romney on TV ads for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, shooting on a California set that bore more than a passing resemblance to the Oval Office.

But as Bush has ramped up his own efforts, Romney’s coziness with Murphy has dissipated. They last met shortly before Christmas, when Romney asked Murphy about preparations for Bush’s campaign and told Murphy he had not ruled out a bid of his own, according to Romney backers with knowledge of the conversation.

Romney has been talking frequently with Stuart Stevens, his top 2012 strategist and a Murphy rival, while keeping a watchful eye on Bush’s moves to woo Romney’s former supporters. On Friday, Bush was in Boston, Romney’s home base where he headquartered his past campaigns, trying to persuade Romney donors to get behind his effort.

Veteran GOP consultant Ed Rollins said, “Romney knows that he can block donors from going to Bush if he sends a clear enough message.”
 
“If you put Romney and Bush head to head, I think Romney probably wins that fight,” Rollins said. “Nobody is wholesale walking away from him. The donor base and operatives are still there. Bush thought he’d have an open field to easily beat Christie. Romney, if he gets in, changes that plan.”

On Wednesday, Romney lectured at Stanford University in a class titled “Understanding the 2016 Campaign from Start to Finish,” which is taught by his former policy director, Lanhee Chen.

Romney later had dinner in Menlo Park, Calif., with Chen, former spokeswoman Andrea Saul and former campaign lawyers Ben Ginsberg and Katie Biber Chen.

Romney has remained close to such power brokers as New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, a Republican fundraiser who co-chaired Romney’s 2012 campaign and who attended Friday’s meeting.

“When I walked into Woody’s box a few weeks ago, Romney was sitting there in a turtleneck,” recalled former New Jersey governor Tom Kean. “He was in good spirits.”

Dan Balz contributed to this report.

 

Robert Costa is a national political reporter at The Washington Post.

 

Matea Gold covers money in politics for The Washington Post.