Subject: H4A News Clips 6.24.15
From: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
To: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 07:28:45 -0400
List-Id: <HRCRapid.hillaryclinton.com>

*H4A News Clips*

*June 24, 2015*

*LAST NIGHT’S EVENING NEWS*

ABC and CBS did not report on 2016 issues. CBS had a segment stating that
Lindsey Graham claimed he has shifted his stance on the Confederate flag
and that it should be removed from the South Carolina state house.

*LAST NIGHT’S EVENING
NEWS........................................................................
**1*

*TODAY’S KEY
STORIES.....................................................................................
**5*

Hillary Clinton, near Ferguson, calls for confronting ‘hard truths’ about
race // Politico // Annie Karni – June 23,
2015.................................................................................................................................
5

Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag Debate Is Just the Beginning //
Bloomberg // Jennifer Epstein – June 23,
2015.................................................................................................................................
7

The Republican Party needs to catch up with Hillary Clinton on race // WaPo
// Jonathan Capehart – June 23,
2015......................................................................................................................................
8

*SOCIAL
MEDIA................................................................................................
**10*

Dan Merica (6/23/15, 5:02 PM) – Clinton gets big applause in MO when she
says, “We need to come together for common sense gun reforms that keep our
communities safe.”............................................ 10

Ronald Brownstein (6/23/15, 8:48 PM) – In ’12 O lost whites by 20 pts.  In
@NBC @WSJ poll, @HillaryClinton trails w/whites by 7 vs @JebBush, 6 vs
@marcorubio, even w/@ScottWalker.......................... 10

Rick Klein (6/23/15, 10:37 AM) – Rand Paul today on Confederate flag: ‘Now
it’s a symbol of murder – it’s time to put it in a museum.” Via
@JTSantucci...............................................................................
10

Heather Haddon (6/23/15, 6:37 PM) – @GovChristie commends Gov. Haley on
taking down confederate flag; says it’s time to “condemn the symbols of
hate”.....................................................................
10

Alex Moe (6/23/15, 3:04 PM) – Rep. Hoyer says the #CharlestonShooting was a
“horrific act” and plans to attend funeral on Friday in
SC...............................................................................................
10

Ed O’Keefe (6/23/15, 5:52 PM) – INBOX: @SpeakerBoehner to lead bipartisan
congressional delegation to #Charleston on
Friday..........................................................................................................
10

Ed Schultz (6/23/15, 5:00 PM) – 1 hour to #edshow with @BernieSanders on
#FeelTheBern at 5pET/4pCT/3pMT/2pPT on @msnbc!
#TeamEdShow............................................................ 10

Jennifer Jacobs (6/23/15, 8:13 PM) – NEW: Jeb Bush returns to Iowa July
13-14. Will speak in Ames, Sioux City and Councils Bluffs.
#IAcaucus.......................................................................................
10

Zeke Miller (6/23/15, 11:43 AM) – Right to Rise USA @r2rusa super PAC is
out with a video explainer: “our goal is to show you Jeb’s
heart”.....................................................................................................
11

*HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE............................................................................
**11*

Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag ‘Shouldn’t Fly Anywhere’ // NYT //
Amy Chozick – June 23, 2015    11

Fast-Track Trade Bill Clears Key Hurdle in Senate // WSJ // Siobhan Hughes
– June 23, 2015. 12

Hillary Clinton: Charleston shooting ‘an act of racist terrorism’ // WaPo
// Jose A. DelReal – June 23,
2015............................................................................................................................................
15

What primary? 92 percent of Democrats are comfortable voting for Hillary.
// WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 23,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
17

Schumer: Carbon tax has a chance if Clinton wins // Politico // Elana Schor
– June 23, 2015.... 18

More changes rock pro-Clinton super PAC // Politico // Glenn Thrush – June
23, 2015............. 19

Holy %$#@! Rahm’s Clinton White House files due out // Politico // Josh
Gerstein – June 23, 2015            20

Clinton says Confederate flag has no place in US // AP // Ken Thomas – June
23, 2015............ 21

Clinton Campaigns at Christ the King United Church of Christ // KMOX CBS //
Carol Daniel - June 24,
2015............................................................................................................................................
22

Hillary Clinton engages in conversation on race at Christ The King // STL
American // Rebecca Rivas - June 23,
2015...............................................................................................................................
25

Clinton in Florissant calls Confederate flag, Charleston murders "racist"
// St. Louis Public Radio // Jo Mannies – June 23,
2015.......................................................................................................
26

After S.C. tragedy, Nevada draws praise for lawmakers’ restraint on guns //
Las Vegas Sun // Kyle Roerink - June 24,
2015.......................................................................................................................
29

Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag
removal to a 'Stalinist purge' // Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June
23, 2015................................................................. 31

Hillary Clinton’s on aggressive fundraising push // CNN // Jeff Zeleny and
Dan Merica – June 24, 2015    32

Clinton commends effort to remove Confederate flag? // CNN // Dan Merica –
June 23, 2015... 35

Clinton to say removing the Confederate flag is important, but not the
solution // CNN // Dan Merica – June 23,
2015...............................................................................................................................
37

’92 Confederate buttons weren’t ours: Former Clinton aide // CBS // Hannah
Fraser-Chanpong – June 23,
2015............................................................................................................................................
39

Hillary Clinton: Country’s Struggle With Race ‘Far From Over’ // NBC //
Andrew Rafferty – June 23,
2015............................................................................................................................................
39

More retailers should remove Confederate flag products, Hillary Clinton
says // LA Times // Kathleen Hennessey – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................
40

Hillary Clinton on course to win 2016 presidential election: Poll //
Economic Times – June 24, 2015           42

Does Hillary Really Believe in the Hillary Doctrine? // New Republic //
Jordan Michael Smith – June 23,
2015............................................................................................................................................
43

Hillary’s Bernie Sanders problem: She wants to embrace populism and Wall
Street at the same time // Salon // Adam Green – June 23,
2015.............................................................................................
45

How Much Will Demographics Help Hillary Clinton? // NY Mag // Jonathan
Chait – June 23, 2015             47

If You Buy a Onesie From the Hillary Clinton Campaign Store, You Are
Basically Selling Your Soul // NY Post // Jaime Fuller – June 23,
2015.................................................................................................
47

Pataki: Hillary Clinton likely broke law // Boston Herald // Chris Cassidy
– June 23, 2015....... 48

Hillary Clinton on course to win presidential election, poll says //
Guardian // Jessica Glenza – June 23,
2015............................................................................................................................................
49

Clinton on Flying Confederate Flag: Not in South Carolina, Not Anywhere //
National Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 23,
2015....................................................................................................
50

Hillary Clinton Has an Idea Conservatives Should Get Behind // National
Review // Reihan Salam – June 23,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
51

Beghazi panel chairman: State Dept. didn’t hand over requested emails //
The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 23,
2015...............................................................................................................................
54

The Clintons, immune to scandal // The Hill // Richard Benedetto – June 23,
2015................. 55

Back to the 1990s: Fact-checking Whitewater // Politifact // Christian
Belanger Linda Qiu – June 24,
2015............................................................................................................................................
57

Did Hillary Clinton have her name on only three laws in eight years as Jeb
Bush says? // PolitiFact // Amy Sherman – June 23,
2015......................................................................................................
57

No media coverage of Hillary Clinton’s ‘exoneration’ in Whitewater, says
Bill Clinton // PolitiFact // Christian Belanger and Linda Qiu – June 23,
2015................................................................................
59

Clinton campaign video highlights ‘equal’ marriage rights // The Blade //
Chris Johnson – June 24, 2015 62

Clinton Aide Worked on UAE Project While at State Department // Free Beacon
// Alana Goodman - June 24,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
63

For-Profit Schools Target Vulnerable Vets, Give to Clinton Foundation //
Washington Free Beacon // Brent Scher – June 23,
2015...........................................................................................................
65

MSNBC Guest: Clinton Reminiscient of Nixon With Suspicion and ‘Nipping’
Scandals // Washington Free Beacon // Andrew Kugle – June 23,
2015...............................................................................
67

Hillary Clinton tells Americans to face their racism // Washington Times //
S.A. Miller – June 23, 2015     68

Hillary Clinton a ‘LINO’ – Liberal in Name Only? // Fox // Elizabeth
MacDonald – June 23, 2015 69

Hillary arrives by private jet for Ferguson-area speech on race relations
and Charleston ‘terrorism’ – but friend of Michael Brown hammers her:
‘Where you been, Hillary? It’s been ten months, girl!’ // Daily Mail //
David Martosko – June 23,
2015.....................................................................................................
70

Hillary Clinton camp won’t say if Confederate flag button was official part
of the ’92 presidential campaign // Daily Mail // Kate Pickles and Evan
Bleier – June 23, 2015.....................................................
71

Former Clinton Advisor: Hillary ‘Absolutely’ Has to Answer for Arkansas’
Confederate Flag // Mediaite // Alex Griswold – June 23,
2015......................................................................................................
73

*OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL
COVERAGE.................................................. **73*

*DECLARED..................................................................................................
**73*

*O’MALLEY...............................................................................................
**73*

Martin O’Malley, the Confederacy, and the Maryland state song // CBS //
Jake Miller – June 23, 2015       73

O’Malley returning to Iowa on Sunday // Des Moines Register // Grant
Rodgers – June 23, 2015 75

*SANDERS.................................................................................................
**75*

Meet the Hilarious Comedian Now Impersonating Bernie Sanders // Bloomberg
// David Weigel – June 23,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
76

Will Sanders stun Hillary in 2016 like Obama did in 2008? // Market Watch
// Darrell Delmaide – June 24,
2015....................................................................................................................................
78

Sanders crowds show Iowa Democrats’ passion // Quad-City Times // James Q.
Lynch – June 23, 2015     80

Bernie Sanders plans 6 stops this weekend // Union Leader // June 23,
2015.......................... 81

*CHAFEE..................................................................................................
**82*

Verbatim: Lincoln Chafee on His High School Years With Jeb Bush // NYT //
June 23, 2015.... 82

*WEBB......................................................................................................
**82*

Jim Webb Is the Only Presidential Hopeful Who Won’t Comment on the
Confederate Flag Controversy // Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal and Tim
Murphy – June 23, 2015...................................... 82

*OTHER....................................................................................................
**83*

Haley’s stock rises amid flag furor // The Hill // Niall Stanage – June 24,
2015........................ 84

Clay endorses Hillary Clinton for president // St. Louis Post-Dispatch //
Chuck Raasch – June 23, 2015     86

How Obama Can Heal the Democrats’ Split on Trade // The Daily Beast //
Jonathan Alter – June 24,
2015...........................................................................................................................................
86

Democrats work to blunt GOP attacks on global affairs in 2016 // Politico
// Nahal Toosi – June 23, 2015   90

*GOP.................................................................................................................
**92*

*DECLARED.................................................................................................
**92*

*BUSH.......................................................................................................
**92*

Jeb Bush: I would fire OPM director over hack attack // WaPo // Ed O’Keefe
– June 23, 2015... 92

Jeb Bush goes after Hillary Clinton, de Blasio on education // CNN //
Ashley Killough – June 23, 2015      93

14 Years Ago, Jeb Bush Removed Confederate Flag In Florida // CBS // June
23, 2015............. 95

#Millennials: Want to #Hang With #JebBush // Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff
– June 23, 2015 97

Why Jeb Bush Wants the United States to Be More Like Estonia // Mother
Jones // Max J. Rosenthal – June 23,
2015...............................................................................................................................
98

Jeb Bush: Obama Should Fire His ‘Political Hack’ OPM Director // National
Journal // Dustin Volz – June 23,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
99

School choice is the best hope for New York’s kids – and America’s // NY
Post // Jeb Bush – June 23,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
101

Jeb Bush blasts the White House on cybersecurity // Fortune // Robert
Hackett – June 23, 2015 102

Jeb Bush: Obama caused ‘massive’ tax increase on middle class // PolitiFact
// Lauren Carroll – June 23,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
105

*RUBIO....................................................................................................
**107*

Rubio hasn’t learned running for president is different // Chicago
Sun-Times // Mark Shields – June 23,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
107

*PAUL......................................................................................................
**109*

Rand Paul: Flag ‘inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery’ //
Politico // Adam B. Lerner – June 23,
2015..............................................................................................................................
109

Rand Paul Says Confederate Flag Belongs in Museum // Bloomberg // Ben Brody
– June 23, 2015               109

Rand Paul Super-PAC Slams “Bailout Bu$h” in Bizarre Web Ad // Mother Jones
// Patrick Caldwell – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................................................
110

Rand Paul weighs in on Confederate flag: It’s a symbol of slavery // MSNBC
// Benjy Sarlin – June 23,
2015...........................................................................................................................................
111

*CRUZ......................................................................................................
**112*

Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill, blasts GOP leaders // Politico //
Manu Raju – June 23, 2015         112

Why Ted Cruz Can’t Quit the Gay Marriage Fight // Bloomberg // Heidi
Przybyla – June 23, 2015                113

Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag
removal to a 'Stalinist purge' // Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June
23, 2015............................................................... 116

*PERRY....................................................................................................
**117*

Rick Perry Is Still on the Payroll of a Controversial Pipeline Company //
Mother Jones // Patrick Caldwell – June 22,
2015......................................................................................................................
117

*HUCKABEE............................................................................................
**118*

Mike Huckabee Backs Nikki Haley on Confederate Flag Removal // Bloomberg //
Ali Elkin – June 23,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
118

Mike Huckabee: ‘I salute’ S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley on Confederate flag issue’
// Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................
119

*FIORINA.................................................................................................
**121*

Carly Fiorina: Cybersecurity ‘Has To Be a Central Part of Any Homeland
Security Strategy’ // Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................
121

*TRUMP...................................................................................................
**122*

Trump Surges in Popularity in N.H., Taking Second Place in Suffolk Poll //
WSJ // Reid J. Epstein – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................................................
122

Poll: Trump near top of GOP pack in New Hampshire // CNN // Theodore
Schleifer – June 23, 2015            123

Trump’s Running – but the Joke’s on You // Daily Beast // Charles Gasparino
– June 22, 2015 124

*UNDECLARED...........................................................................................
**126*

*WALKER................................................................................................
**126*

Scott Walker, Promising ‘Bold Leadership,’ Faces G.O.P. Discord in
Wisconsin // NYT // Trip Gabriel – June 23,
2015..............................................................................................................................
126

Scott Walker Reportedly Requested 20-Week Ban Without Exceptions For Rape,
Incest // HuffPo // Laura Bassett – June 23,
2015.......................................................................................................
129

The true payoff from Scott Walker’s war on tenure // NY Post // Naomi
Schaefer Riley – June 22, 2015       130

*CHRISTIE...............................................................................................
**131*

Chris Christie to announce 2016 bid as early as next week // Politico //
Alex Isenstadt – June 23, 2015      132

Chris Christie’s approval rating: 30 percent // Politico // Nick Gass –
June 23, 2015............... 133

Watch Chris Christie’s Approval Rating Free Fall in One Chart // Bloomberg
// Andrew Feather – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................................................
134

Christie’s home-state support sinks to new depths // MSNBC // Steve Benen –
June 23, 2015 134

Christie Backs Haley on Confederate Flag // Daily Beast // June 23,
2015.............................. 135

*OTHER...................................................................................................
**135*

Bush leads in N.H. polls.  Trump is second. // Politico // Nick Gass – June
23, 2015............... 135

‘Selzer Score’ gives clarity on Republican field // Politico // Hadas Gold
– June 23, 2015........ 136

2016ers embrace flag removal after hedging // CNN // Maeve Reston – June
23, 2015............ 137

What the GOP Lost When It Won the South // Daily Beast // Matt Lewis – June
23, 2015...... 140

GOP candidates seek distance from white supremacist group // Des Moines
Register // June 22, 2015       141

*OTHER 2016
NEWS.......................................................................................
**144*

The Best and Worst of the 2016 Campaign Merch // NY Mag // Véronique Hyland
– June 23, 2015               144

Why are so many running for president? // Philadelphia Tribune // Julian
Zelizer – June 22, 2015              144

South Carolina Dems Blast DCCC for Using Confederate Flag Issue to
Fundraise // The Blaze // Kaitlyn Schallhorn – June 23,
2015..................................................................................................
146

*TOP
NEWS.....................................................................................................
**147*

*DOMESTIC.................................................................................................
**147*

Obama Ordering Changes in U.S. Hostage Policies // NYT // Julie Hirschfeld
Davis – June 23, 2015           147

Amazon to Remove Confederate Flag Items, Following eBay and Others // WSJ
// Greg Bensinger – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................................................
150

Dems weigh last-ditch move to sink trade bill // Politico // Lauren French
and John Bresnahan – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................................................
151

Obamacare repeal still vexes GOP // Politico // Rachel Bade – June 23,
2015........................ 153

Meet the Diehard Right Wingers Who Just Can’t Quit Obamacare // TPM // Gus
Garcia-Roberts – June 23,
2015...................................................................................................................................
155

Legislature to tackle removal of Confederate battle flag // Post and
Courier // Cynthia Roldan – June 23,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
163

*INTERNATIONAL......................................................................................
**163*

A border village in Haiti struggles with new Dominican rules // WaPo //
Joshua Partlow – June 24, 2015 163

Iran’s Supreme Leader Seems to Pull Back on Nuclear Talks // NYT // Thomas
Erdbrink And David E. Sanger - June 23,
2015......................................................................................................................
167

*OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS...................................................................
**169*

Bill Clinton, the Confederacy, and the Arkansas State Flag // WSJ // Peter
Nicholas – June 23, 2015           169

Cyberterror, China, and the Clinton competency deficit // WaPo // Jennifer
Rubin – June 23, 2015             170

Hillary, pay your interns // USA Today // Carolyn Osorio – June 23,
2015.............................. 172

‘Clinton Cash’ author demolishes Hillary’s self-defense // NY Post // Peter
Schweizer – June 22, 2015        174

*TODAY’S KEY STORIES*

*Hillary Clinton, near Ferguson, calls for confronting ‘hard truths’ about
race
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-ferguson-talk-on-race-119346.html#ixzz3dvUUZKlU>
// Politico // Annie Karni – June 23, 2015 *

For the third time since the Charleston massacre last week, Hillary Clinton
addressed head on the “hard truths” about race the country needs to
confront.

“Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle
with race is far from finished,” Clinton said at a forum at the Christ the
King Church of Christ near Ferguson, Missouri, a city ripped apart by the
shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in 2014. “We can’t
hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them, own
them and change them,” Clinton said.

She called Wednesday’s slayings “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in
a house of God.”

The key to change, Clinton said, was the ballot box — “finally persuading
the 50 million Americans who do not vote that by not voting they make it
possible for people who do not agree with them, do not support their
aspirations, to call the shots,” she said.

Her comments in Missouri followed an emotional address over the weekend,
where she said the problems of racism in America go far beyond a horrific
shooting, and that “millions of people of color still experience racism in
their everyday lives.”

Clinton — who called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from
the South Carolina state Capitol back in 2007 — on Tuesday also commended
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for urging that it finally be removed from
the statehouse, calling it “a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has
no place in our nation’s present or future. It shouldn’t fly there, it
shouldn’t fly anywhere.”

Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton speaks to supporters Saturday, June 13, 2015, on Roosevelt Island
in New York, in a speech promoted as her formal presidential campaign
debut.

Clinton also encouraged all retailers to follow the lead of Wal-mart,
Amazon, Ebay and Sears, who have announced that they would stop selling
products depicting Confederate flag imagery.

Supporters said Clinton’s focus on racial injustice in America is
resonating across the country, and that her forceful remarks have helped to
buck the perception of Clinton as a cautious politician.

“Her comments personally resonate with me as an African American,” said
Nevada State Sen. Aaron Ford, who supported Barack Obama in 2008. “This
morning at the gym I spoke with a couple people who were appreciative of
the stance she has taken on this. Her courage in this instance is shining
through.”

Longtime Clinton ally Terry Shumaker, a New Hampshire attorney who
co-chaired both of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, said her comments
on race and gun control “blow a hole in the notion that she’s overly
cautious, overly scripted, that she has nothing but platitudes to say. With
her comments on race, she’s right out there in front.”

In the hour-long forum in Missouri, Clinton heard from a local developer
trying to create a community, not just buildings; a teacher at an
under-funded school discussing the importance of early childhood education;
and an educator who sits on President Barack Obama’s task force for
policing, assembled after the Ferguson shooting.

Toward the end of the forum, Clinton was asked how the country can build
more momentum for change.

“I don’t want to sound like a civics teacher 101, but this is how I feel,”
she said. “If people voted for people who would represent them about these
interests, that’s the way we run. … The hardest thing to do in a campaign
is to convince people to actually take the time to vote. That’s the
clearest way to give the will.”

*Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag Debate Is Just the Beginning*
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/hillary-clinton-says-confederate-flag-debate-is-just-the-beginning>*
// Bloomberg // Jennifer Epstein – June 23, 2015*

Less than a week after a mass shooting at a black church situated in one
community with a history of racial tensions, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday
visited another black church in another community struggling with racial
relations.

Speaking at Christ the King Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri,
Clinton welcomed the new push to abandon the Confederate flag but said it
must be paired with renewed efforts to confront the deeper issues at the
core of racial divisions, from policing to jobs to health care. That, she
said, is the way to honor memories of the nine people killed last week at
Charleston's Emanuel AME Church.

The shooting was "an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of
God," Clinton said from the pulpit here, in a St. Louis suburb that
neighbors Ferguson. "Let us be resolved to make sure they did not die in
vain. Do not be overcome by evil but let evil be overcome by good."

Clinton said she appreciates the calls from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
and other politicians to stop flying the Confederate flag on the grounds of
the state capitol. "It shouldn't fly there," she said. "It shouldn't fly
anywhere." She also commended Walmart, where she was once a board member,
Amazon, eBay and Sears for announcing that they will stop selling the
products adorned with the flag.

In an appearance that her campaign said was aimed at turning "grief, anger
and despair into purpose and action," Clinton spoke to a predominantly
African American group of ministers and locals, and joined a roundtable
discussion that included Jason Purnell, an assistant professor at
Washington University, and Tiffany Anderson, superintendent of the
once-floundering Jennings School District. The church's leader Rev. Traci
Blackmon, a member of the Ferguson Commission, a group working to rebuild
the community and tackle some of the issues underlying last year's
protests, and Rev. Karen Anderson, who heads neighboring Ward Chapel AME
Church, led the discussion.

Clinton's response to the Charleston shootings reflects a significant
change in strategy and her emphasis on enhanced political nimbleness.
Clinton's 2008 campaign was often slow to respond to events but the current
team–and the candidate herself–have taken strides to react more quickly.
There are still layers of internal debates, but they generally take hours
to resolve rather than days. She tweeted her condolences three hours after
the Charleston shooting and used her first public appearance the next day
to offer extended sympathies and begin talking about race.

The Clinton campaign had planned for weeks to have an event that would be
open to press in the St. Louis area while the candidate was in town for a
fundraiser hosted by an heiress to the Anheuser-Busch fortune. But
Charleston's aftermath led Clinton to ask her staff over the weekend to
focus the conversation on race and violence, a campaign official said.

Since Wednesday's shooting, Clinton has spoken more extensively on race
relations and gun violence than any other presidential hopeful (former
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has focused his energy solely on arguing for
stronger gun control laws, saying that the shooting "pissed" him off).
Addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Saturday,
Clinton called for "common sense" gun control and added that the election
of the first black president had not brought “America’s long struggle with
race" to an end. “Our problem is not all kooks and Klansmen," she said.
"It's also the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It's the offhand comment
about not wanting those people in the neighborhood."

In preparing for her public remarks, Clinton has talked through her
thoughts on race with a range of people, including two top campaign
staffers: senior policy adviser Maya Harris and Marlon Marshall, director
of state campaigns and political engagement. Harris is a civil rights
lawyer who has written about engaging women of color in the political
process. Marshall grew up in Richmond Heights, a suburb about 15 miles
south of Ferguson, and attended Michael Brown’s funeral on behalf of the
White House, where he was deputy director of public engagement until late
last year. He joined Clinton in Florissant on Tuesday.

As the debate over South Carolina's Confederate flag heated up over the
weekend and on Monday, Clinton stayed quiet on the issue as her aides
debated how to respond, as her spokespeople pointed reporters to comments
she made in a 2007 interview, in which she said the flag should be removed
from the grounds of the state capitol.

After South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley joined with other prominent
Republicans in the state on Monday afternoon to call for the flag to be
taken down, Clinton applauded the announcement. Haley “is right to call for
removal of a symbol of hate in SC," Clinton wrote on Twitter. "As I’ve said
for years, taking down Confederate flag is long overdue.”

It took 19 days for Clinton to respond to Brown’s August killing, drawing
some criticism from impatient commentators, but when she did weigh in, her
response was well-received by black leaders. She spoke about “the
inequities that persist in our justice system” – an issue upon which she
expanded in an April speech  – and urged white Americans to imagine what it
would be like if the criminal justice system treated them the same way it
treats blacks.

*The Republican Party needs to catch up with Hillary Clinton on race*
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/06/23/the-republican-party-needs-to-catch-up-with-hillary-clinton-on-race/>*
// WaPo // Jonathan Capehart – June 23, 2015*

As the nation tried to make sense of the murder last week of nine African
Americans in a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., Hillary Clinton
delivered a powerful call to action to the nation on Saturday on race at
the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in San Francisco. I put it on par
with President Obama’s 2008 speech on race because not only did she
forthrightly confront some hard truths on America’s “deep fault line,” she
also urged us to do something about it. And she will do it again today in
St. Louis.

Clinton had left Charleston hours before the shooting. In her speech the
next day in Las Vegas to the National Association of Latino Elected and
Appointed Officials (NALEO), Clinton said we “have to face hard truths
about race, violence, guns and division.” She added, “Let’s unite in
partnership, not just to talk, but to act.” When Clinton got to the
Conference of Mayors gathering in San Francisco, the Democratic
presidential candidate went further.

“Once again, racist rhetoric has metastasized into racist violence,”
Clinton said. “[D]espite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s
long struggle with race is far from finished. … I know there are truths we
don’t like to say out loud or discuss with our children. But we have to.
That’s the only way we can possibly move forward together.” And then
Clinton spoke with an honesty I have not heard from a white politician
since her husband President Clinton tried to lead a national “conversation
about race” in the late 1990s.

And our problem is not all kooks and Klansman.  It’s also in the cruel joke
that goes unchallenged.  It’s in the off-hand comments about not wanting
“those people” in the neighborhood.

Let’s be honest: For a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the
sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear.  And
news reports about poverty and crime and discrimination evoke sympathy,
even empathy, but too rarely do they spur us to action or prompt us to
question our own assumptions and privilege.

We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in
America. We have to name them and own them and then change them.

Clinton’s “kooks and klansman” line echoes the tart observation made by
President Obama in his podcast interview with Marc Maron over the weekend.
The one where he said that “the measure of whether racism exists” is “not
just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘n—-r’ in public.” Whereas the
president said we must figure out “what more we can do,” the candidate who
hopes to succeed him urged all of us to no longer remain silent in the face
of overt or insidious forms of racism.

Clinton was already slated to be in St. Louis for a fundraiser. But a
campaign aide told me that the events of Charleston so moved her that she
insisted on doing more. That’s why this afternoon, she will meet with
education, community and religious leaders working on issues that impact
systemic racism at a black church in Florissant, Mo., near Ferguson,
another flashpoint in America’s troubled racial history. I expect Clinton
to reiterate her themes from San Francisco and to focus on ideas and
solutions that address how the nation moves forward to tackle these issues.

Clinton’s willingness to go all-in on race at this point of the
presidential campaign stands in stark contrast to the dodging on the
Republican side. Questions about race in general and the Confederate battle
flag in particular have left the GOP tied up in knots. To be fair, the
Democratic Party has had a decades-long head start in grappling with and
understanding the myriad issues and nuances involved in talking about race.
But after watching heartbreaking videos from Staten Island and Cleveland,
McKinney, Tex., and North Charleston, silence is not an option.

Anyone who wants to be seriously considered for president of the United
States must take race and racism seriously. He must be ready to discuss
both with the thoughtfulness they require and be ready to offer solutions
that can be implemented. I say “He” because the only viable woman in the
race for the White House already has it covered.

*SOCIAL MEDIA*

*Dan Merica (6/23/15, 5:02 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/danmericaCNN/status/613436978105745408>* – Clinton
gets big applause in MO when she says, “We need to come together for common
sense gun reforms that keep our communities safe.”*

*Ronald Brownstein (6/23/15, 8:48 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/RonBrownstein/status/613493778922385409>* – In ’12 O
lost whites by 20 pts.  In @NBC @WSJ poll, @HillaryClinton trails w/whites
by 7 vs @JebBush, 6 vs @marcorubio, even w/@ScottWalker*

*Rick Klein (6/23/15, 10:37 AM)*
<https://twitter.com/rickklein/status/613340127671255040>* – Rand Paul
today on Confederate flag: ‘Now it’s a symbol of murder – it’s time to put
it in a museum.” Via @JTSantucci*

*Heather Haddon (6/23/15, 6:37 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/heatherhaddon/status/613460906568253444>* –
@GovChristie commends Gov. Haley on taking down confederate flag; says it’s
time to “condemn the symbols of hate”*

*Alex Moe (6/23/15, 3:04 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/613407405196447745>* – Rep. Hoyer
says the #CharlestonShooting was a “horrific act” and plans to attend
funeral on Friday in SC*

*Ed O’Keefe (6/23/15, 5:52 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/edatpost/status/613449603145297920>* – INBOX:
@SpeakerBoehner to lead bipartisan congressional delegation to #Charleston
on Friday*

*Ed Schultz (6/23/15, 5:00 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/edshow/status/613436451640836096>* – 1 hour to #edshow
with @BernieSanders on #FeelTheBern at 5pET/4pCT/3pMT/2pPT on @msnbc!
#TeamEdShow*

*Jennifer Jacobs (6/23/15, 8:13 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/613485014118850561>* – NEW: Jeb
Bush returns to Iowa July 13-14. Will speak in Ames, Sioux City and
Councils Bluffs. #IAcaucus*

*Zeke Miller (6/23/15, 11:43 AM)*
<https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/613356776956760064>* – Right to
Rise USA @r2rusa super PAC is out with a video explainer: “our goal is to
show you Jeb’s heart”*

*HRC** NATIONAL COVERAGE*

*Hillary Clinton Says Confederate Flag ‘Shouldn’t Fly Anywhere’*
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/politics/hillary-clinton-says-confederate-flag-shouldnt-fly-anywhere.html>*
// NYT // Amy Chozick – June 23, 2015*

As lawmakers across the South spoke out against the Confederate battle flag
and the nation’s largest retailers pulled items with its image from their
shelves, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday called the flag “a symbol of our
nation’s racist past.”

Speaking at an African-American church just outside Ferguson, Mo., an
impoverished black community where protests against a mostly white police
force erupted in violence last summer, Mrs. Clinton made a forceful plea to
remove the Confederate flag wherever it flew. And she encouraged other
retailers to follow Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Sears/Kmart in discontinuing
sales of items that display the flag.

“It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said of
South Carolina, where a white gunman killed nine African-Americans last
Wednesday during a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston.

“That night, word of the killings struck like a blow to the soul,” she
said. “How do we make sense of such an evil act — an act of racist
terrorism perpetrated in a house of God?”

Mrs. Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, spoke a day after Gov.
Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina called for the Confederate flag to be
removed from the grounds of the State House in Columbia. Ms. Haley, a
Republican, called the flag a “deeply offensive symbol of a brutally
oppressive past.”

The Charleston attack forced the wide field of presidential candidates to
wade into issues of racism, injustice, and fierce debates in the South over
the meaning and misuses of Confederate symbolism. The suspect in the
murders, Dylann Roof, 21, had brandished the flag on social media and
posted deeply racist tirades.

Until Ms. Haley called for the Confederate flag’s removal, several
Republican presidential hopefuls had issued vague statements or said the
matter was a state issue that should be left to South Carolina. One
Republican candidate, Ben Carson, who is black, faulted his opponents on
Monday for not calling “this tragedy an act of racism.”

Mrs. Clinton spoke out against the Confederate flag in 2007 when she told
The Associated Press while campaigning in South Carolina that she “would
like to see it removed” from the State House grounds. But until Tuesday,
she had not commented on the current debate.

In her discussion Tuesday with community leaders at Christ the King United
Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo., Mrs. Clinton said the flag’s removal
would be “just the beginning of what we have to do” to combat racism.

She proceeded to list statistics about the economic disparities between
black and white Americans, saying schools are more segregated today than
they were in the 1960s, with 23 percent of black students in the South
attending majority white schools in 2011, slightly lower than the
percentage in 1968, according to her campaign.

It was no accident that Mrs. Clinton chose a town near Ferguson to hold the
campaign event, one of only a handful of public appearances on her schedule
in the coming weeks. The early months of her presidential campaign have
been marked by sweeping speeches about race relations and issues like
criminal justice reform and voting rights that may particularly resonate
with African-American voters.

Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis on race has been largely motivated by current
events, with her campaign unfolding against the backdrop of riots in
Baltimore this spring after the death of a black man who had been in police
custody and, more immediately, the slaughter in Charleston.

Mrs. Clinton’s approach also distinguishes her from her potential
Republican rivals who have mostly only dipped a cautious toe into issues of
racism. Candid talks like the one in Florissant could help Mrs. Clinton
shore up support among the Democratic Party’s base who overwhelmingly
supported Barack Obama during her failed 2008 presidential campaign.

Throughout the event, Mrs. Clinton spoke frequently about her own Methodist
faith and her regular Bible study classes and churchgoing. The Florissant
church’s pastor, the Rev. Traci Blackmon, ended the day’s discussion with a
prayer, asking the Lord to make sure Mrs. Clinton listens to the people she
hopes to represent.

“There are those who are still suffering from injustice,” Ms. Blackmon
said. “There are those who we still walk by every day and forget.”

*Fast-Track Trade Bill Clears Key Hurdle in Senate
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/trade-bill-clears-key-hurdle-in-senate-1435071011>
// WSJ // Siobhan Hughes – June 23, 2015 *

The Senate on Tuesday gave President Barack Obama’s trade agenda a big push
forward, in a pivotal vote that clears the highest remaining procedural
hurdle to granting the president expanded trade-negotiating power.

The 60-37 vote effectively precludes any filibuster opponents might mount
and sets up the fast-track bill to pass the Senate by Wednesday. The House
has already passed the measure, a priority for Mr. Obama that would stand
as one of the most significant legislative acts of his presidency and a
monument to the power of divided government to cut through partisan
gridlock.

More Republicans support fast-track than Democrats, but GOP supporters had
to rely on the votes of 13 business-friendly Democrats to advance the
legislation, which would give Mr. Obama the power to submit trade deals to
Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments. Five Republicans and
the chamber’s two independents joined 30 Democrats in voting no.

The success in getting around the Senate’s last procedural hurdle—with no
votes to spare, since 60 were needed—was a victory for the White House,
businesses and Republican leaders. It was a crushing blow to labor unions
and environmentalists, who helped elect Mr. Obama and view his trade
agenda—and the intensity with which he has fought for it—as a betrayal.

“This has been a long and rather twisted path to where we are today but
it’s a very, very important accomplishment for the country,” Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the Senate floor after
the vote.

Some Democrats are concerned because the fast-track bill was separated from
one that would extend a program to help workers hurt by international
trade. Pro-trade Democrats who supported the bill Tuesday are essentially
trusting GOP leaders to follow through on their promise to bring the aid
measure to a vote and get it to Mr. Obama, as soon as this week.

The bill is seen as essential for Mr. Obama to wrap up negotiations on the
12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal involving countries
around the Pacific Ocean. White House press secretary Josh Earnest praised
the Senate vote, saying the legislation “will help America write the rules
of the road.”

Opponents of the fast-track measure were disappointed.

“This is a day of celebration in the corporate suites of this country,”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said. “They’ve got another
corporate-sponsored trade agreement that will mean more money in some
investors’ pockets. It will mean more plant closings in Ohio and Arizona
and Delaware and Rhode Island and West Virginia and Maine and all over this
country.”

Tuesday’s outcome was made possible by last November’s elections, which
gave Republicans control of the Senate for the first time in eight years
and meant that both chambers of Congress were in Republican hands for the
first time in Mr. Obama’s presidency. It also represented a personal
victory for Mr. McConnell, who won re-election last year by saying he had
the clout to assemble bipartisan majorities.

For his part, Mr. Obama put aside his disagreements with Mr. McConnell and
instead threw himself into the task of lining up support for the fast-track
bill with gusto—so much, in fact, that Mr. McConnell told reporters that
after communicating with Mr. Obama and being on the same side of the issue
he was practically having an “out-of-body experience.”

The outcome of Tuesday’s vote had been in doubt as late as Monday night,
hinging on whether enough of the 14 pro-trade Senate Democrats who had
voted for a fast-track bill last month would do so again.

Only one of them, Ben Cardin of Maryland, switched his vote to no saying
that “the Republican leadership put worker protections at great risk”
because with the fast-track bill about to pass, there was no guarantee that
a program to help workers hurt by trade deals would also pass.

A last-minute defection on the Republican side came from Sen. Ted Cruz of
Texas, who complained that negotiations had involved too much backroom
dealing. His switch created more uncertainty about the vote and lowered the
margin of victory from the last Senate vote on trade.

The workers-aid program, called Trade Adjustment Assistance, is expected to
be on the Senate floor Wednesday for its own procedural vote, as part of a
separate measure to extend trade preference for sub-Saharan African
nations. The Senate would then pass that measure on Thursday and the House
would get it to the president by the end of the week.

A third bill, to step up enforcement of trade laws, must be reconciled with
a House version, a process leaders also hope to start by the end of the
week before Congress leaves town for its July 4 recess.

Mr. Earnest urged Congress to pass trade-enforcement legislation “promptly.”

Even if GOP leaders live up to their promises to Democrats and get all
three bills to the president, the votes won’t end trade fights in
Washington, but instead will open up a new front in the battle. If the
Senate passes the fast-track bill by Wednesday, as expected, the White
House will then have to turn its attention to wrapping up the Trans-Pacific
Partnershipand convincing Congress to ratify it.

Because the fast-track bill will expedite passage of trade deals negotiated
over the next six years but not guarantee their passage, the next phase of
the fight will be even more important than the first round. Some Democrats
who voted for fast-track legislation have warned Mr. Obama not to presume
that they will also vote for the Pacific deal, the largest in history.

The coming battle will shift away from the process for ratifying trade
deals and toward the substance of the pacts themselves. Trade negotiators
have been working in secret on the trade accord, and lawmakers are able to
study the text only by going into a secure room in which they are banned
from taking any notes.

The fast-track bill will force the text into the public eye, requiring
publication of the agreement 60 days before the president signs the accord.
The president would then still have to submit implementation legislation to
Congress before the deal is ratified.

The uncertain potential for Congress to ratify a new trade pact speaks to
the open wounds left by the fast-track fight, which was brutal even by
contemporary Washington standards. Mr. Obama blasted Democrats for
distorting the issues, and said that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a
liberal standard-bearer, was “wrong on this.”

The liberal wing of the party gave as good as it got, with AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumka outlining a plan to freeze campaign contributions
until after the fast-track vote played out. Other liberal groups chased
Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) around his state with a blimp and a recreational
vehicle to pressure him to back off the fast-track bill that he helped
write.

*Hillary Clinton: Charleston shooting ‘an act of racist terrorism’
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/23/hillary-clinton-takes-her-message-of-racial-reconciliation-to-missouri/>
// WaPo // Jose A. DelReal – June 23, 2015 *

On the heels of delivering an impassioned speech on race relations last
weekend, Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the shooting of nine people at a
church in Charleston as "an act of racist terrorism," and called for the
removal of the Confederate flag from public spaces nationwide.

Clinton — who called for the flag to be removed from South Carolina
statehouse grounds eight years ago, during her first presidential bid —
praised South Carolina officials for making the same call Monday.

“I appreciate the actions begun yesterday by the governor and others in
South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse,
recognizing it as a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in
our present or our future," she said. "It shouldn’t fly there, it shouldn’t
fly anywhere.”

She also commended retailers Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay and Sears by name for
announcing that they would no longer sell products that feature the flag.

The Democratic presidential contender was here to meet with community
leaders at a mostly black church located near Ferguson, Mo., where race
riots last year sparked a national debate on discrimination and policing.

Her emphasis on racial issues follows the tragic shooting at the
historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Charleston, where a gunman killed nine people last Wednesday as they
gathered for a Bible study. The attack will be the focus of Clinton’s
“community meeting” Tuesday afternoon at the United Church of Christ in
Florissant, Mo.

Clinton has confidently waded into conversations on race relations on
several occasions in recent months, with a particular emphasis on
discussing the need for criminal justice reform in the United States. Her
most recent string of speeches and appearances also serves as a clear
message to communities of color: I'm with you — and I want your vote.

"Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle
with race is far from finished," Clinton said at the annual Conference of
Mayors on Saturday. "I know this is a difficult topic to talk about. I know
that so many of us hoped by electing our first black president, we had
turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we
do not like to say out loud or discus with our children. But we have to."

Clinton’s visit Tuesday came amid questions over her ability to reassemble
the “Obama coalition” during the 2016 election, a coalition she is
aggressively courting as she seeks the Democratic nomination. But six years
into President Obama's tenure, parts of that coalition of young, female and
ethnically diverse voters has become discouraged by the lack of political
progress they see in Washington.

Clinton's campaign is seeking to cast her as a transformative figure
similar to Obama — a “fighter,” in the words of her campaign, and
potentially the first female president — in hopes of sparking the same kind
of political energy that propelled Obama to the White House in 2008.

"This is no longer what has been called a 'Ferguson issue.' It's a
community issue. Change is needed," said Cynthia Donaldson, 54, a local
resident and a Democratic voter who supports Clinton. "We also want to know
her stance on unemployment and other issues. This is personal for me."

Donaldson, who says her daughter has struggled to find employment since
graduating with a master's degree, says she is interested in hearing
Clinton talk about expanding economic opportunity for everyone. "These
things are not just happening in the black community."

While most of those in attendance live in the community — the group
included several local elected officials — several students who attend
university in the area also arrived hoping to see the former secretary of
state.

“I think it’s important to learn how to create diverse and inclusive
communities, especially now and especially in St. Louis,” said Kalie Penn,
19, a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, about 20 miles
away from Florissant. "She's here to talk about equality in our community,
which is such a hot button issue.... It doesn't surprise me at all — she's
been an advocate for equality."

Already Clinton has shown that reaching out to black and Hispanic voters is
a top priority for her campaign team. In her first major policy address
after declaring her presidential candidacy in April, Clinton spoke at
Columbia University in New York about criminal justice reform, calling for
the "end to the era of mass incarceration."

"Not only as a mother and grandmother, but as a citizen, as a human being,
my heart breaks for these young men and their families," Clinton said then.
"We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in
America."

Clinton’s frank and, at times, highly personal statements on issues of gun
violence and policy brutality stand in contrast to the responses by her GOP
rivals, who last week fumbled questions about the motivation behind the
attack in Charleston — the accused shooter has since been associated with
white supremacist beliefs — and whether it is appropriate for the
Confederate flag to continue flying outside the South Carolina state
Capitol.

Her comments have also surprised many critics who accuse her of being
politically guarded.

“It’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to
believe that in today’s America bigotry is largely behind us,” Clinton said
Saturday. “But despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s
long struggle with race is far from finished.”

*What primary? 92 percent of Democrats are comfortable voting for Hillary.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/23/theres-a-new-poll-number-that-shows-just-how-likely-hillary-clinton-is-to-be-the-democratic-nominee/>
// WaPo // Chris Cillizza – June 23, 2015 *

Ninety-two percent.

That's how many Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in a new
NBC-Wall Street Journal poll said they could see themselves supporting
Hillary Clinton for the party's nomination in 2016, a stark sign of how
little genuine resistance there is within the party to the idea of the
former secretary of state as the nominee.

In fact, support for Clinton on that question has risen since NBC-WSJ last
asked it in March, even as Bernie Sanders appears to be picking up momentum
in his primary challenge to Clinton. In March, 86 percent of Democrats and
Democratic-leaning independents said they could see themselves supporting
Clinton, while 13 percent said they could not imagine themselves supporting
her.

Compare that to where the Republican field stands on that same question.
Jeb Bush leads the way with 75 percent of Republicans and
Republican-leaning independents saying they could support him, while 74
percent said the same of Marco Rubio. Mike Huckabee (65 percent could
support), Scott Walker (57 percent) and Rick Perry (53 percent) round out
the top five for the GOP.

The simple fact is that for all the chatter about discontent toward
Clinton, it's indisputable that her side is not only very comfortable with
the idea of her as the nominee but significantly more so than Republicans
are with any of their options.

How then to reconcile that 92 percent number with the fact that six in 10
(62 percent) of those same Democrats said they prefer a "challenging
primary" over an "easy" one for Clinton?  A couple of ways: (1) Human
nature makes us like some level of competition. We like the idea that no
one gets anything without hard work. (2) There is a desire to see Clinton
tested in some way to prove that she is ready for what Republicans are
going to throw at her. It's the same sort of mentality that suggests that a
boxer who has been out of the game for a while needs to do some sparring
before entering a prizefight.

The desire for Clinton to have a somewhat serious primary is, almost
exclusively, born of a desire to make her stronger and more ready for the
general election, not out of a belief that she has something to prove
before she can be an acceptable choice for most Democrats.

The way that someone who is as big a favorite as Clinton loses a party
nomination (or comes close to losing one) is a failure to understand that a
significant pocket of discontent — ideological, generally — exists and is
in search of a candidate. It doesn't exist in this race, and to the extent
it ever did, the trend line on Clinton's numbers suggests that she has
effectively shrunk that group to a relatively meaningless number.

So yes, Sanders (or maybe Martin O'Malley) will clean up among the 8
percent of Democrats who say they simply can't support Clinton. And it
won't worry Clinton or her team in the least. Nor should it. She is, in the
minds of almost every Democrat, the party's de facto nominee. And almost no
one has a problem with that.

*Schumer: Carbon tax has a chance if Clinton wins
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/schumer-carbon-tax-has-a-chance-if-clinton-wins-119352.html?hp=rc2_4>
// Politico // Elana Schor – June 23, 2015 *

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlined a path Tuesday for Hillary Clinton to
enact a carbon tax if the Democrats prevail in the 2016 elections.

Schumer, the Senate Democrats’ leader-in-waiting, said that a Clinton
presidency and the return of his party to the Senate majority in 2017 could
pave the way for lawmakers to enact a carbon tax to help fund the
government.

The mere suggestion of a new fee on the emissions blamed for climate
change, however, could become a political headache for Clinton and other
Democrats, and it’s routinely dismissed by Republicans. The Obama
administration disavowed the idea after the 2012 election.

“If Hillary wins and we take back the Senate, I believe many of our
Republican friends will say we’ve been starving the government for
revenues,” Schumer told an environmental event on Capitol Hill, “but many
of them will not be for raising rates.”

Noting that half a dozen European oil and gas CEOs came out in favor of a
price on carbon this month, and that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has
expressed openness to the idea, “you might get a compromise” carbon tax in
that event, Schumer added.

“I think in 2017 people of both parties might come to that as the best way
to fund the government,” he said.

Schumer’s comments came at an event hosted by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-R.I.), who recently unveiled a carbon tax proposal at the conservative
American Enterprise Institute that would offset the funds raised by cutting
corporate taxes and returning rebates to the public.

The New York Democrat hinted at the potential controversy of his carbon-tax
prediction by first asking if his remarks the event, which was streamed
live online, would be “on the record” for the press.

Schumer also vowed that Democrats would successfully defend President
Barack Obama’s landmark climate change rules for power plants from GOP
attacks, saying, “We will hold that — they’ll need 60 votes to change
things, and we’re not going to let that happen.”

Three Democrats considered swing votes on any Republican bid to unravel
Obama’s climate rules, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and
Joe Donnelly (Ind.), face reelection in 2018.

*More changes rock pro-Clinton super PAC
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/priorities-usa-super-pac-hillary-clinton-staff-shakeup-changes-119337.html>
// Politico // Glenn Thrush – June 23, 2015 *

Guy Cecil, the new head of Priorities USA, has replaced the group’s
recently hired finance director and hired two major ad-firms – the latest
moves in a major makeover of the underperforming pro-Clinton super PAC.

Kim Kauffman, a longtime Cecil associate, will take over as deputy
executive director in charge of finance for Justin Brennan, who has been on
the job since January; Brennan, according to a Democrat with knowledge of
the situation, is leaving to take a senior fundraising role with Ted
Strickland’s campaign for Senate in Ohio.

Cecil, former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – and a
top official with Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign — has also tapped the
group’s first-ever digital director, Tara McGowan, reflecting Priorities’
intention to invest significant resources in social media and online
advertising. McGowan worked on the Obama campaign’s rapid-response team.

Priorities’ current director of research, Patrick McHugh, is being promoted
to the title of deputy director.

“Priorities is building a top-notch team of the best strategists and
tacticians in the country,” Cecil wrote in an email after POLITICO
contacted him to confirm the moves. “Along with our new Executive Director
Anne Caprara, Patrick, Kim, and Tara bring experience and passion to their
work. We are lucky to have them.”

Priorities – which produced a series of much-lauded ads on behalf of
President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 – has re-signed Shorr
Johnson Magnus, a Philadelphia firm recently known for its controversial
“Wheelchair” ad attacking handicapped Texas Republican gubernatorial
candidate Gregory Abbott in 2014, and added Ralston Lapp, a
Washington-based firm run by veteran Democratic adman Jason Ralston.

“[Shorr Johnson Magnus] did some of the best advertising in 2012 and I’m
looking forward to working with them again, along with the great team at
Ralston Lapp,” Cecil said. “We will have an aggressive and creative media
strategy backing up all of our work.”

The changes, made during a series of closed-door staff meetings over the
past week, came after Cecil replaced the group’s former executive director
Buffy Wicks, who was closely allied to Obama, with Caprara, who worked
closely with Cecil at the DSCC.

Cecil’s appointment was intended to bolster the group, which is expected to
report anemic fundraising numbers later this month, a stumbling start for a
group that hopes to raise as much as $300 million for the 2016 cycle to
compete with juggernaut GOP super PACS.

Priorities eventually raised and spent about $79 million on behalf of Obama
– but got off to a late start because Obama and his staff refused to
endorse the concept of a super PAC – on good-government grounds – until
January 2012. Hillary Clinton has no such qualms, and has appeared at
several meet-and-greets for potential super-PAC donors during a recent
campaign trip to California

*Holy %$#@! Rahm’s Clinton White House files due out
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/06/holy-rahms-clinton-white-house-files-due-out-209345.html>
// Politico // Josh Gerstein – June 23, 2015 *

Is Rahm Emanuel as profane on paper as he famously is in real life?

The answer to that long-simmering question could be laid bare soon with the
Clinton Presidential Library set to release nearly 20,000 pages of files
Emanuel accumulated during his almost six years as a top aide in the
Clinton White House.

The trove of Emanuel files slated to go public "include books,
publications, reports, memoranda, speech drafts, press releases, polls,
newspaper articles, pamphlets, emails, talking points, and correspondence,"
according to a notice the National Archives sent Monday to the Obama White
House and a representative of former President Bill Clinton. "These
materials cover a broad range of topics including education, crime, NAFTA,
and health care."

After his stint in the Clinton White House, Emanuel was elected to the
House of Representatives from Illinois, ran the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee and returned to the White House in 2009 as President
Barack Obama's first chief of staff. He now serves as mayor of Chicago,
where he was re-elected to a second term in April.

Barring a last-minute hitch, Emanuel's files are likely to go public in
September. Archives records show the papers were requested in 2008 by
then-Washington Post reporter James V. Grimaldi.

Records of Emanuel's service in Obama's White House are not likely to
emerge until 2022 or later.

*Clinton says Confederate flag has no place in US
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/77edff9891a543a18a1524c7e9e8d46d/clinton-meet-church-officials-near-ferguson-unrest>
// AP // Ken Thomas – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the Confederate battle flag should not
be displayed "anywhere," weighing in as South Carolina lawmakers seek to
remove it from the grounds of their statehouse.

The Democratic presidential candidate called the deadly shootings of nine
black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, "an act of racist
terrorism perpetrated in a house of God."

Clinton called the Confederate flag a "symbol of our nation's racist past
that has no place in our present or our future. It shouldn't fly there. It
shouldn't fly anywhere."

Clinton joined with church members in the St. Louis suburbs, near the
violent protests touched off last year in nearby Ferguson after the death
of Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man who was shot by a white police
officer.

Clinton said she appreciated the work of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a
Republican, and state lawmakers who are working to remove the Confederate
flag from the statehouse grounds. She also commended Wal-Mart Stores Inc.,
the Arkansas-based company on whose board she once served, for announcing
it would remove any product from its stores that features the Confederate
flag.

She encouraged other companies to follow that example while noting that
Amazon, eBay and Sears have done so.

Clinton has put America's struggle with race relations at the forefront of
her presidential campaign in recent weeks and urged church members here to
find ways to turn their grief, anger and despair into purpose and action.
The Clinton campaign said she was initially scheduled to discuss economic
issues during her stop in Missouri, but after the Charleston shooting, she
said she wanted to hold the event in a church and discuss race.

Clinton largely avoided giving race relations a prominent place in her 2008
Democratic campaign against Barack Obama, who was vying to become the
nation's first black president at the time. Yet she's leaned into a number
of issues closely watched by African-Americans this time, discussing the
need to change the criminal justice system, improve access to voting and
help minority small business owners.

Clinton's campaign hopes to mobilize black voters in large numbers in the
2016 election, building upon the coalition of minority, young and liberal
voters who powered Obama's two White House campaigns. The message has taken
on fresh urgency since last week's church massacre in Charleston, South
Carolina, which happened shortly after Clinton campaigned in the city.

In Florissant, Clinton proposed a package of policies to promote racial
equality, including tax breaks for struggling communities, help for
minority and female entrepreneurs, early childhood education, "common
sense" gun restrictions and universal voter registration. She told
congregants that "all lives matter," a variation of the "Black Lives
Matter" slogan that arose from the Florida shooting death of black teenager
Trayvon Martin.

Clinton cited her background growing up in the Methodist church, recalling:
"I grew up in an all-white middle-class suburb. I didn't have a black
friend, neighbor or classmate until I went to college and I am so blessed
to have so many in my life since."

Pointing to the Charleston shooting, she urged attendees, "Do not be
overcome with evil but overcome evil with good."

The former secretary of state was greeted by the Rev. Traci Blackmon,
pastor of Christ the King United Church of Christ, which hosted the event.
She told the audience that the Charleston shooting shows "we also must take
this moment to not just focus who pulled the trigger that day but on the
policies, the people and the structures that are pulling the trigger daily."

*Clinton Campaigns at Christ the King United Church of Christ
<http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2015/06/24/clinton-campaigns-at-christ-the-king-united-church-of-christ/>
// KMOX CBS // Carol Daniel - June 24, 2015*

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – A packed church in North St. Louis County, just a few
miles from where Michael Brown was killed and protesting and rioting raged
for months, became the setting for Former Secretary of State, now
Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s first campaign stop in
Missouri.

Co-hosts Rev. Traci Blackmon of Christ the King United Church of Christ and
Rev. Karen Anderson of Ward Chapel AME Clinton planned a listening session
for Clinton in just 48 hours. It included a panel of area leaders working
in education, healthcare, housing and social justice reform.

The listening session included: Jason Purnell; PhD, assistant professor at
the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Tiffany
Anderson; Superintendent of the Jennings School District, Chris Krehmeyer;
President/CEO of Beyond Housing and Brittany Packnett; Executive Director
of Teach for America-STL and a member of the Ferguson Commission.

Clinton spoke before hearing from the panel and said she was in Charleston,
South Carolina just before the shootings. She said, “Word of the killings
struck like a blow to the soul. How do we make sense of such an act?”

She stood at the podium in front of about 500 people in the sanctuary and
asked, “How do we turn grief, anger and despair into action?”  She went on
to say, that those of us who are Christians are to forgive, quoting
scripture which says that Jesus called us to forgive 70 times seven,
calling it a daunting task. “But when fear, doubt and a desire for revenge
might have been expected, what we saw was forgiveness.”

She spoke of the need to confront racism after the killings in South
Carolina, “Hate cannot win,” says Clinton. “We can’t hide from hard truths
about race and justice. We have to name them, own them and change them.”

At one point, Clinton took a page out of the Ferguson protests saying, “All
lives matter.”  She also applauded efforts to take down Confederate flags
after the church massacre.

“I appreciate the actions begun Monday by the Governor of South Carolina to
remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse,” says Clinton.

Clinton called it a symbol of the nation’s racist past that has no place in
our present or future. She said, “It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly
anywhere.”  She also commended Walmart for deciding to remove any product
that uses the flag and urged all sellers to do the same.

Rev. Blackmon introduced Clinton, who became a familiar face and voice
during the Ferguson unrest. Prior to the introduction she spoke about the
Charleston killings.

“We can’t focus on the one who pulled the trigger that day, but on the
policies and structures that pull the trigger every day,” says Blackmon (to
Clinton). “St. Louis is a tale of two cities. We live in a region that has
some of the best education the nation has to offer. Yet in this region we
have children attending unaccredited schools.  We live in a region with
supreme healthcare and yet have failed to expand Medicaid. In this region,
you can travel 10 miles and that will determine if you live in a mansion or
in misery. We are 19th in region but 43rd in economic mobility and we have
division where we should have solidarity. Secretary Clinton can’t answer
all these questions today, but we are grateful she came here to listen.”

During the panel discussion and listening session, Rev. Blackmon asked
activists who sprang up for the Ferguson protests, to stand. Turning to
Clinton, she said, “We are intergenerational. We come from various races
and ethnicities. We’re in this together and we aren’t going away.”

Each panelist told Secretary Clinton of the work they are doing to change
the lives of St. Louisans. Dr. Tiffany Anderson got a standing ovation
after explaining how the district is achieving.

“We pretty much have year-round school.” Anderson described what it means
to educate the child. “We have a pediatrician on staff that anyone in
Jennings can make use of. We have mental health therapists in every school
and we even making washers and dryers available to parents to use in
exchange for one hour of volunteer time. “This is why we have packed PTO
meetings.”

Beyond Housing’s Krehmeyer described the “Viking Advantage” college savings
program that has given 800 Normandy students $500 MOST Scholarships and
resulted in 85 percent graduating from college. “Community happens at the
speed of trust” Krehmeyer says.

Clinton responded, “If it works in Jennings and Normandy, we need to make
sure it keeps working.”

Prior to Clinton’s remarks, those in attendance were asked to write
questions on notecards and place them in a basket. After collection, there
was only time for three questions and one of those pertained to what
Clinton felt about the mass incarceration of African-Americans and what has
been termed the “School to Prison Pipeline.”

Clinton responded that the vast majority of kids need something besides
being thrown out of school or being referred to the juvenile justice
system. Listen to her response below:

Many KMOX’s Carol Daniel spoke to, felt Ferguson Commission member Brittnay
Packnett, was the most pointed in her remarks. “Kids can’t learn if they’re
dead. All of the conversations we’re having about education are for naught
if they end up like Mike Brown or Tamir Rice.”  A portion of her remarks
directed at Secretary Clinton are below:

Clinton spent at least 15 minutes taking pictures and signing autographs
and even a baseball cap after the discussion ended. As her motorcade pulled
out of the church parking lot onto Old Halls Ferry Road a man and woman
across the street were holding a large sign. The sign had large red block
letters that read, “JUSTICE BENGHAZI.”

Rev. Starsky Wilson, a member of the Ferguson Commission, said after the
discussion, “The key is will we see Secretary Clinton acting on what she’s
heard here today and will we hear her echoing and amplifying the voices
heard here today.”

For those who may question Clinton’s timing or choice of location for the
discussion, Rev. Wilson said, “Quite frankly this is home base for a
discussion about criminalization of youth of reform in criminal justice
system and municipal courts in America. It became home base on Aug 9th.”

Monday evening, Clinton attended a private fundraiser at Grant’s Farm the
ancestral mansion of the Busch Brewing family and former home of President
Ulysses S. Grant. The event was hosted by Trudy Busch Valentine, the
daughter of late chairman of the Anheuser-Busch Companies.

John Hancock, Chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, released the
following statement on Hillary Clinton’s campaign visits in St Louis:

“The number of Americans who view Hillary Clinton unfavorably is increasing
the longer she campaigns, so we are thrilled she is visiting the Show-Me
State. Now Missourians will have an opportunity to see the real Hillary:
out-of-touch, untrustworthy, and scandal-plagued. Next November,
Missourians will soundly reject the liberal policies of Hillary Clinton—or
whoever is the Democratic nominee for president—just as they twice rejected
Barack Obama.”

*Hillary Clinton engages in conversation on race at Christ The King
<http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_393dbb2a-1a0c-11e5-a9fc-f7ce0adb6b3e.html>
// STL American // Rebecca Rivas - June 23, 2015*

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a roaring applause from the majority
black audience at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant
when she told them that the Confederate battle flag, “shouldn’t fly
anywhere.”

Rev. Traci Blackmon, pastor of the church, said Tuesday’s community meeting
with Clinton was meant to discuss the impacts of racism, including the
recent massacre where Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, allegedly murdered
nine men and women at a historic African-American church in Charleston,
South Carolina.

To an audience of about 200 church members and elected officials, Clinton
commended the response of Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, who
Monday called for the flag to be removed from state property. Soon after,
large retailers, including Walmart, Sears, eBay and Amazon, announced that
they are prohibiting any Confederate flag merchandise from being sold in
their stores.

Clinton said the flag is, “a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no
place in our present or our future.”

Clinton also called the shooting “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in
a house of God.”

However, as Blackmon stated at the beginning of the meeting, our nation’s
leaders need to recognize the policies that are “pulling the trigger
daily.” She thanked Clinton for coming to listen, “so that we might be
heard,” she said.

Blackmon invited four panelists to speak about the work they have been
doing in the community to address racial inequality in various arenas.
Jason Purnell, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington
University, spoke about the health disparities among African Americans in
St. Louis, which is the focus of a study he leads called For the Sake of
All.

In St. Louis, he said there is an 18-year gap in age expectancy within less
than 10 miles, and an African-American baby is three times more likely to
die in St. Louis city and county.

Clinton said his work is important because legislators need evidence-based
research to push forward policies that address disparities.

Tiffany Anderson, superintendent of the Jennings School District, talked
about changes in their schools that have made helped raise the academic
performance, including providing free lunch to every student and going to a
year-round schedule.

Chris Krehmeyer, CEO and president of Beyond Housing, talked on the “24: 1”
initiative to holistically address problems in the majority black
municipalities that “you’ve probably heard in the news.” He noted that the
group has started $500 college saving accounts for kindergarteners in the
Normandy schools.

Clinton looked Brittany Packnett in the eye and continuously nodded as
Packnett spoke about the damning effects of criminalizing African-American
children in schools.

“We can’t move forward until we are consistently incentivizing
culturally-responsible leadership training for all public servants,
especially people who have the ability to impact the lives of children,”
said Packnett, Teach for America – St. Louis’ executive director and
Ferguson Commissioner. She also served on President Obama’s taskforce on
police reform.

During Clinton’s introductory remarks, she said, “All lives matter” while
telling a story about her mother. Immediately, members of the Ferguson
movement in the audience took to Twitter condemning Clinton for using a
phrase that is often used as a dismissal to “Black lives matter.”

She said about her mother: “Her own parents abandoned her. By 14 she was
out on her own, working as a housemaid. Years later, when I was old enough
to understand, I asked her, ‘What kept you going?’ Her answer was very
simple: Kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered. All
lives matter.”

John Gaskin III, a member of the NAACP national board and of St. Louis
County NAACP, said in the context, he did not feel it was offense. But he
did make him pause when he heard it.

“She was honest about race today,” he said. “She spoke about what many
people in this demographic want to hear, and that is for advancing civil
rights, health care and issues that affect our folks disproportionately. As
we look at her campaign trail, we haven’t seen any meeting like this in a
house of faith.”

*Clinton in Florissant calls Confederate flag, Charleston murders "racist"
<http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/clinton-florissant-calls-confederate-flag-charleston-murders-racist>
// St. Louis Public Radio // Jo Mannies – June 23, 2015*

Although her comments about race and racism were national in scope, Hillary
Clinton spent much of Tuesday’s visit at a Florissant church listening to
the local challenges that many in her audience grapple with daily.

The Rev. Traci Blackmon talked of the “tale of two cities,’’ where some St.
Louisans easily partake of some of the best education and health care that
the nation has to offer. But others only have access to the worst.

A stretch of 10 miles, said Blackmon, determines “whether you live in a
mansion, or in misery.”

Blackmon sits on the Ferguson Commission, set up by Gov. Jay Nixon after
the Aug. 9 police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown touched off
months of local, national and international outrage.

Clinton, now a Democratic candidate for president, listened to Blackmon and
others during much of her two-hour stop at the Christ the King United
Church of Christ in Florissant.

For the most part, neither the candidate nor the other speakers said much
specifically about Ferguson or its local aftermath.  Rather, most of their
hour-long discussion focused the broader related issues – such as racism,
poverty and inequality – that Clinton agrees must be addressed.

“I am here to listen, but also to engage in the kind of open and honest
discussion that I hope is happening all over America,’’ Clinton said during
her opening 20-minute address.

Says racism behind Charleston killings, use of Confederate flag

To that end, Clinton didn’t shy away from the word “racist.’’

Last week’s murder of nine African-Americans at a Charleston, S.C. church,
she said, was “an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a House of God.”

Clinton recalled that she had been in Charleston just hours before the
killings, which “struck like a blow to the soul.”

Clinton called for an end to the flying of the Confederate flag, which she
called “a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our
present or our future.”

Referring to South Carolina, she added, “It shouldn’t fly there. It
shouldn’t fly anywhere.”

Clinton also called for the nation, and its leaders, to confront certain
realities.

“I know it’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated
incident,” she said. “To believe that in today’s America, bigotry is
largely behind use. That institutional racism no longer exists.”

But lamentably, that’s not the case, Clinton continued. “Despite our best
efforts and highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from
finished.

“We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name
them and own them and change them.”

Zeroing in on the local angles

Her audience appeared to welcome such candor.

“I think Hillary Clinton did an excellent job of addressing a lot of local
issues here that started in Ferguson, that now have become part of the
conversation nationwide,’’ said Nicole Gipson of Hazelwood, a substitute
teacher and a parent.

Gipson particularly welcomed the panel’s discussion of “a lot of disparity
of how African-American boys are treated in the classroom, compared to
their white peers.”

Morton Todd, Democratic Party chairman for St. Charles County observed, “It
wasn’t just a rally. It was a conversation.”

Todd was among a number of Democratic officials and activists who shared
the pews for Tuesday’s visit – exemplifying that there was a political
aspect to Clinton’s presence as well.

As a Democrat, Clinton will need strong support from the party’s
African-American base if she is to win the White House in 2016.

She got a local boost shortly before her address when U.S. Rep. William
Lacy Clay,D-University City and the region’s most prominent
African-American official, announced that he was endorsing her for
president.

“I am now part of Team Hillary,’’ Clay said in a telephone interview from
Washington, where he had to remain because of congressional business.

In an accompanying statement, the congressman said, “I will be advising her
on critical issues including economic empowerment, protecting the right to
vote and reforming the criminal justice system…. Missouri is ready for
Hillary, and so am I."

Although Clinton focused on issues, not politics, during the church visit,
Todd was among the attendees who grasped the political stakes.

“I think she has a real good chance,” said Todd. “I think she’s going to
make Missouri more significant in 2016.”

As evidence, Todd pointed to the GOP’s reaction to Clinton visit. He
singled out last weekend’s announcement by the campaign of Sen. Roy Blunt,
R-Mo. – who is likely to run for re-election in 2016 – that it’s involved
in an official “Stop Hillary’’ effort.

State Republican Party chairman John Hancock asserted in a statement that
Democrats were wasting their time to woo Missouri voters. “The number of
Americans who view Hillary Clinton unfavorably is increasing the longer she
campaigns, so we are thrilled she is visiting the Show-Me State," he said.
"Now Missourians will have an opportunity to see the real Hillary:
out-of-touch, untrustworthy, and scandal-plagued….”

Clay noted that it was Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, who was the
last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Missouri, in 1996. Clay
predicted that Hillary Clinton’s status as the first major woman
presidential contender will help give her an edge in Missouri 20 years
later.

The congressman added that the nation also is ready and eager to embrace
Hillary Clinton's plain-speaking approach on such issues as race.

*After S.C. tragedy, Nevada draws praise for lawmakers’ restraint on guns
<http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jun/24/after-sc-tragedy-nevada-draws-praise-lawmakers-res/>
// Las Vegas Sun // Kyle Roerink - June 24, 2015*

Mourners Cynthia Wright-Murphy, right, hugs her sister Carolyn
Wright-Porcher, right, outside the Emanuel AME Church, Saturday, June 20,
2015 in Charleston, S.C. A steady stream of people brought flowers and
notes and shared somber thoughts at a growing memorial in front of the
church.

From its Wild West past to its multitude of modern gun-related attractions,
like firing fully automatic machine guns and posing for wedding photos with
military-inspired weapons, Nevada isn't often recognized for its restraint
on firearms.

But that's what has happened with help from Everytown in the wake of a
shooting that left nine dead at a historic church in Charleston. Everytown
for Gun Safety, the nation’s top gun control advocacy group, has praised
Nevada legislators for blocking a measure to allow firearms to be carried
in an expanded list of places and approving a bill outlawing gun possession
by domestic violence offenders.

The gun control group, backed by former New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, lists Nevada as one of at least 15 states that defeated
controversial, pro-gun measures proposed this year in legislatures across
the country.

After failed efforts to reform gun laws in Congress, Bloomberg pledged $50
million to launch a state-by-state grassroots campaign to battle the NRA
and other pro-gun groups. The push came last year after Congress failed to
expand background checks in the aftermath of the 2012 massacre of 20
students at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

Erika Soto Lamb, communications director for Everytown, said the 2015
Legislature was supposed to be the “gun session” in Nevada, but parents,
students, law enforcement and activists rallied to block NRA-backed
proposals.

“Nevada, like many other states we work in, is an example of where the gun
lobby didn’t have a clear course to impose its will,” she said.

In January, gun-control advocates were not optimistic when Nevada
Republicans introduced at least 27 pro-gun measures. The state GOP came
into the session in control of the governor’s office and both chambers of
the Legislature, and it expressed an appetite to loosen restrictions while
expanding where people could carry firearms. The controversial bills came
from Nevada GOP Assembly members who called to allow guns on school grounds
and enable concealed carry without a permit.

Everytown lobbyists lined up with Democrats to fight back against the
measures. By May, the fears were largely eliminated.

But it was GOP extremists — not Everytown and Democrats — who influenced
the demise of the gun legislation. The Senate’s GOP leaders ignored the
controversial proposals from the Assembly’s far-right members. The move
kept incendiary bills off Gov. Brian Sandoval’s desk and cleared Republican
senators from casting votes that pro-gun groups like the NRA could use
against them during campaign season.

Of the 27 pro-gun bills tracked by the Nevada Firearms Coalition — the
state’s NRA affiliate — 18 didn’t receive a hearing in the Senate, said Don
Turner, the group’s president.

“It was political maneuvering,” Turner said.

But the pro-gun lobby didn’t go away without victories. Lawmakers approved
bills to eliminate a Clark County gun registration program and allow car
owners to defend themselves with deadly force inside of vehicles.

“Like with everything else, you ask Santa for presents and you’re not going
to get everything you want,” Turner said.

Pro-Second Amendment lawmakers and gun-control advocates compromised on one
bill — the one preventing those convicted of domestic abuse from buying
guns.

GOP Assemblyman Ira Hansen, one of the state’s outspoken pro Second
Amendment advocates from Sparks, fought until the last hours of the session
to pass a measure that would allow students to carry concealed firearms on
college campuses in the state.

His efforts fell short.

“In all honesty, I predicted the pro Second Amendment agenda would go
through with no problem,” he said.

Because of the GOP divide on firearms, Turner and Hansen downplayed
Everytown’s role in the session. But they didn’t shrug at its influence in
the state.

Everytown is the driving force of a 2016 ballot initiative that will ask
voters to expand background checks on gun purchases. The push stems from
Sandoval’s 2013 veto of a bill to require background checks on all gun
sales in the state — including those between family members.

In Nevada, Everytown collected more signatures than any group in state
history to land the measure on the ballot, surpassing the requirement by
more than 50,000 names.

Their efforts failed in Congress in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook
shootings, prompting them to start the grassroots effort now on display in
Nevada. With Everytown’s influence, Washington and Oregon recently approved
background checks in the past year.

Hansen said he was “fearful” that voters would pass the initiative in 2016
— a presidential election where Democrats who support gun reforms would be
likely to vote.

“I am sure Bloomberg can easily sink a few million into a very aggressive
public relations campaign,” Hansen said.

The hope among the initiative's proponents is that expanded background
checks will keep firearms away from the mentally ill, convicted criminals
and people like Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old South Carolina man
accused of killing nine people inside the Emanuel African Episcopal
Methodist Church on June 17.

Currently, 18 states require all gun purchasers to submit background checks
to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Speaking in Las Vegas last week, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton signaled that she would tackle gun reform if elected to office.

Tuesday on the Senate floor, the Minority Leader Harry Reid, called for
action.

"The United States is the only advanced country where this type of mass
violence occurs," Reid said. "Let's do something. We can expand, for
example, background checks. ... We should support not giving guns to people
who are mentally ill and felons."

Without new legislation, Reid said, “we will be here again. Our hearts will
be broken again.”

*Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag
removal to a 'Stalinist purge'
<http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-campaign-aide-compared-confederate-flag-removal-to-stalinist-purge-2015-6>
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June 23, 2015*

Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair
for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the
calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home
state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those
comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue.

"What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South
Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're
watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation
with Business Insider on Tuesday evening.

The shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina
that left nine people dead on June 17 has reignited a nationwide debate
over the flag. The alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, has been linked to a
website that featured Confederate imagery and a racist manifesto. This
prompted South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to call for the flag to be
removed from the capitol on Monday.

Bright made his comment when he was asked about Haley's move by the
Charleston Post and Courier. He elaborated on it in an interview with
Politico that was published Tuesday.

"It’s not just the flag," Bright said. "They want to take down the
Confederate monuments, I’ve gotten emails from people who want to rename
streets … anytime you want to basically remove the symbols of history from
a state, that’s something that just is very bad … these are honorable men
who fought for their homes, their home state, to disgrace them in the name
of political correctness is just wrong. They’re not here to defend
themselves."

Bright told Politico the Cruz campaign had not discussed the issue with
him, but he said he hoped presidential candidates would not tell South
Carolina how to handle the issue.

"I would encourage presidential candidates to let us deal with this,"
Bright said. "It’s deeply rooted history for a lot of us. I’m not going to
stand by and let our ancestors’ memories be besmirched. It’s one thing to
just take down the flag. They want us to concede that the soldiers that
fell for the Confederacy were a bunch of racists and I’m not going to
concede that."

Tyler, the Cruz campaign spokesman, said the senator agrees with the notion
the issue should be decided by people in South Carolina.

"The idea of outsiders coming in to South Carolina and telling them how
they should deal with their issue, the senator ... I think correctly, his
view is, let South Carolinians work it out amongst themselves and sort it
out," Tyler said. "And that's what's happening, there's a disagreement of
opinion, but that's part of the process."

Bright did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Business
Insider.

*Hillary Clinton’s on aggressive fundraising push
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/24/politics/hillary-clinton-lady-gaga-fundraising-2016-election/http:/www.cnn.com/2015/06/24/politics/hillary-clinton-lady-gaga-fundraising-2016-election/>
// CNN // Jeff Zeleny and Dan Merica – June 24, 2015*

St. Louis - Hillary Clinton is racing across red states and blue states at
a frenetic pace for a frontrunner, hoping to show that her early dominance
in the Democratic presidential race will also translate into a muscular
financial advantage as the campaign's first fundraising period ends next
week.

The first true measure of Clinton's strength will come when she reveals how
much money she has collected during the first three months of her
candidacy. The specific figure is guarded with high secrecy inside her
campaign, but several party fundraisers told CNN they believe she is on
track to raise more than $30 million.

For a famous candidate who is universally known, Clinton has been working
the circuit with unusual fervor to rebuild her base of donors and to inject
an element of enthusiasm into the campaign, rather than sitting back and
waiting for checks to arrive. Her Rolodex may be golden, but several
fundraisers say it's also somewhat outdated, adding a layer of complexity
to her early efforts.

She has personally attended nearly 50 closed-door fundraising events so
far, according to a CNN tally, which vastly outnumbers the introductory
sessions she has held with voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond.

Based on attendance figures provided by campaign aides, Clinton-headlined
events have brought in around $21 million, according to CNN analysis. Her
top aides and operatives have headlined dozens more.

A concert featuring Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett on Wednesday night in New
York is intended to entice donors before her June 30 fundraising deadline.
It comes on the heels of a star-studded series of events last weekend in
California, where a bearded Leonardo Dicaprio attended a fundraiser at
Tobey Maguire's home.

But the majority of Clinton's fundraising activity has been far removed
from the bright lights of Broadway or Hollywood. This week alone, she's
visited Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri, standing before small
audiences to collect checks of no more than $2,700, the maximum allowed for
the primary campaign.

Here in south St. Louis County on Tuesday night, she arrived at Grant's
Farm, the 281-acre ancestral home of the Busch family, which is named after
former President Ulysses S. Grant. Trudy Busch Valentine, heir to the
well-known brewing family, hosted the event.

Two campaign volunteers checked people outside the gates, asking attendees
to provide photo identification to verify they had paid for the event. A
line of cars idled outside, waiting to get in. A campaign aide said 250
people were on hand and gave the maximum amount, which means she raised at
least $675,000 for her afternoon in St. Louis.

The fundraiser has been on her calendar for weeks. But Clinton added a
public event to her schedule at a church in nearby Florissant on Tuesday,
where she addressed the South Carolina church shooting, which she called an
"act of racist terrorism."

The fundraising activity of the Clinton campaign is seldom discussed beyond
the closed-door sessions. Only a few hosts contacted by CNN were willing to
talk about the events they organized for Clinton's campaign.

"It was an amazing event," said Ellen Luger, the former head of the General
Mills Foundation who hosted a fundraiser at her Minneapolis, Minnesota,
home on Monday. Then, she quickly rang off, saying: "Bye."

Cindy Simon Skjodt, who hosted a fundraiser in Carmel, Indiana, said
Clinton's remarks during the event were "engaging" and full of policy, but
not wonky.

"Her remarks are brief," said an equally brief Skjodt, adding that Clinton
spent more time taking pictures and shaking hands at the event than
speaking.

The Clinton campaign has announced its intention to raise at least $100
million before the end of the year. But several fundraisers told CNN the
effort has been more laborious than they expected, with some Democrats
lacking a sense of excitement or urgency about the need to contribute.

With enthusiasm growing among some liberals for the candidacy of Sen.
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton has redoubled her efforts to post a
strong fundraising figure when the report is filed with the Federal
Election Commission by July 15.

In her first presidential race, Clinton raised primary and general election
money together, a strategy that allowed her to collect twice as much. She
raised $26 million during her first fundraising period of 2007, but only
some of it could be used during her primary race, with the remainder
returned to donors after she lost to Barack Obama.

This time, campaign manager Robby Mook announced that Clinton would only
raise primary money -- a maximum of $2,700 per check. This approach raised
the burden for fundraisers, but also sent the signal that she was intent on
fighting for the Democratic nomination.

Alan Patricof, the co-host of one of the Clinton's first fundraisers in New
York, said the campaign was intently focusing on a robust fundraising
report in July to quiet any doubts about the strength of her candidacy.

"You do the math of how many fundraisers you have to have to get to $25
million," he told CNN. "You just have to have a lot of people contributing."

At one of her first events, Patricof said Clinton made clear the
"importance at the early stage, were the donors who were able to contribute
or raise more significant amounts."

After that, he said, she would focus on smaller donors.

Clinton has spent far more time talking to donors than ordinary voters
during the opening phase of her campaign. She is asking her top donors,
known as Hillstarters, to recruit 10 people to each contribute $2,700.

"It is a warm gathering, these are not state of the union speeches," said
Robert Zimmerman, a donor who attended one of Clinton's early New York
fundraisers and is a member of her Hillstarter fundraising group.

She has held fundraising events in at least 17 states, including: Georgia,
Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, South Carolina and Washington. She has also dispatched her top
campaign advisers to attend fundraising events across the country.

"There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all fundraising strategy," said
Josh Schwerin, a campaign spokesman. "We're using a wide array of
techniques to cultivate a diverse donor base and putting a premium on
growing our list to give as many people as possible the opportunity to play
a role in this campaign."

*Clinton commends effort to remove Confederate flag?
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/hillary-clinton-confederate-flag-missouri/>
// CNN // Dan Merica – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton commended the groundswell in anti-Confederate flag
sentiment at an event in Missouri on Tuesday, calling the battle flag "a
symbol of our nation's racist past."

Clinton's comments about the flag come days after Dylann Roof, a white
supremacist, killed nine men and women at a historic African-American
church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The shooting, Clinton said, was "an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in
a house of God," but one where the men and women killed "did not die in
vain, did not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

The shooting has sparked a conversation about the Confederate flag that led
Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, to call for its removal from
state property.

"I appreciate the actions begun yesterday by the governor and other leaders
of South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State
House, recognizing it as a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no
place in our present or our future," Clinton said. "It shouldn't fly there,
it shouldn't fly anywhere."

In response to the surge in focus, some of the nation's biggest retailers
-- Walmart, Sears, eBay and Amazon -- also announced this week that they
are prohibiting any Confederate flag merchandise from being sold in their
stores.

Clinton commended those companies for their decision and urged "all sellers
to do the very same."

"We can't hide from hard truths about race and justice, we have to name
them, and own them, and change them," she added.

But Clinton's statement did not portray removing the flag from statehouses
and stores as a cure to race issues in the United States. She said,
instead, that it was "just the beginning of what we have to do."

Clinton's comments came during a roundtable event at Christ the King Church
in Florissant, Missouri, a community just miles from Ferguson, where the
shooting of a black male by a police officer in 2014 sparked protests and
started an ongoing conversation about race and policing.

"Whether you live in Ferguson or West Baltimore, in coal country or Indian
country, you should have the same chance as any American anywhere to get
ahead and stay ahead," Clinton said.

Clinton also used the phrase "All lives matter" during a story about her
mother, an interesting remark given how the phrase "Black Lives Matter"
rose to national prominence during the Ferguson protests. "All Lives
Matter" was a response by some to say no lives matter more than others.

In 2007, Hillary Clinton said she believed the Confederate flag should be
"removed from the State House grounds" in part because "we should have one
flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina
do every single day."

On Saturday, as the conversation swirled, Brian Fallon, the Clinton
campaign's press secretary, said the former presidential candidate's
"position is unchanged from 2007."

After Haley announced her decision, Clinton tweeted: ".@nikkihaley is right
2 call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC. As I've said for years,
taking down Confederate flag is long overdue. --H"

Other 2016 Democrats -- like former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders -- have called for the flag to be removed. And
a handful of Republicans, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, supported Haley's decision to call for the flag
removal.

Tuesday's event was hosted by Reverend Karen Anderson of Ward Chapel AME
and Pastor Traci Blackmon of Christ the King, United Church of Christ. Both
women have been involved in the post-Ferguson protests and conversation,
including ministering to the protesters and preaching about the impact of
Michael Brown's shooting in 2014.

Clinton's campaign announced last month she would be visiting Missouri,
particularly for a fundraiser hosted by Trudy Busch Valentine, the heir to
the well-known St. Louis brewing family.

But in light of the shooting in Charleston and the unrest in Ferguson, a
Clinton aide said the candidate instructed her staff to find a church where
she could meet with community leaders and talk about their work on race
issues.

Clinton has run headfirst into issues of race since announcing her campaign
in April, a departure from her failed 2008 bid.

On Saturday, Clinton told an audience in San Francisco that "America's long
struggle with race is far from finished," despite how "tempting" it might
be to isolate the Charleston shooting as a random event.

"I know this is a difficult topic to talk about," she said then. "I know
that so many of us hoped by electing our first black President we had
turned the page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we
don't like to say out loud in discussions with our children, but we have
to. That is the only way we can possibly move forward together."

Earlier in the week, Clinton called for a "candid national conversation
about race and about discrimination, prejudice, hatred" in an interview,
and said it was time for the United States to "face hard truths" about race
in a speech before a host of Latino elected officials in Las Vegas.

*Clinton to say removing the Confederate flag is important, but not the
solution
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/hillary-clinton-confederate-flag-missouri/index.html>
// CNN // Dan Merica – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton will argue Tuesday at an event near St. Louis that the
groundswell of support in favor of removing the Confederate flag from
statehouses and stores is an important step for the United States, but not
the solution to addressing racial tensions.

Clinton will give remarks and participate in a roundtable at Christ the
King Church in Florissant, Missouri, a community just miles from Ferguson,
where the shooting of a black male by a police officer in 2014 sparked
protests and started ongoing conversation about race and policing.

Clinton will "urge that in addition to the renewed conversation about the
Confederate flag we can have, we must confront deeper, substantive issues
around the racial divide that persists in America," an aide said ahead of
the event.

Clinton's comments about the Confederate flag come days after Dylann Roof,
a white supremacist killed nine men and women at a historic African
American church in Charleston, South Carolina last week. The shooting has
sparked a conversation about the Confederate flag, particularly the fact
that the flag still flies in front of the South Carolina statehouse.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for the flag to be removed from the
grounds earlier this week as pressure mounted.

In 2007, Hillary Clinton said she believed the Confederate flag should be
"removed from the Statehouse grounds" in part because "we should have one
flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina
do every single day."

On Saturday, as the conversation swirled, Brian Fallon, the Clinton
campaign's press secretary, said the former presidential candidate's
"position is unchanged from 2007."

After Haley announced her decision, Clinton tweeted: ".@nikkihaley is right
2 call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC. As I've said for years,
taking down Confederate flag is long overdue. -H"

Other 2016 Democrats - like former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders - have called for the flag to be removed. And a
handful of Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul and former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush, supported Haley's decision to call for the flag removal.

Some of the nation's biggest retailers - Walmart, Sears, and eBay - also
announced this week that they are prohibiting any Confederate flag
merchandise for being sold in their stores.

"We never want to offend anyone with the products that we offer," Walmart
spokesman Brian Nick said.

In addition to addressing the Confederate flag conversation, Clinton will
"talk about how we turn grief, anger and despair into purpose and action
that will address the persistent problems facing communities like
Florissant," the aide said.

The event will be hosted by Reverend Karen Anderson of Ward Chapel AME and
Pastor Traci Blackmon of Christ the King, United Church of Christ. Both
women have been involved involved in the post-Ferguson protests and
conversation, including ministering to the protestors and preaching about
the impact of Michael Brown's shooting in 2014.

Clinton's campaign announced she would be visiting Missouri last month,
particularly for a fundraiser hosted by Trudy Busch Valentine, the heir to
the well-known St. Louis brewing family.

But in light of the shooting in Charleston and the unrest in Ferguson, the
Clinton aide said the candidate instructed her staff to find a church where
she could meet with community leaders and talk about their work on race
issues.

Clinton has run head first into issues of race since announcing her
campaign in April, a departure from her failed 2008 bid.

On Saturday, Clinton told an audience in San Francisco that the United
States' struggle with race is not over, arguing that as "tempting" as it is
to isolate the Charleston shooting as a random event, "America's long
struggle with race is far from finished."

"I know this is a difficult topic to talk about," she said. "I know that so
many of us hoped by electing our first black President we had turned the
page on this chapter in our history. I know there are truths we don't like
to say out loud in discussions with our children, but we have to. That is
the only way we can possibly move forward together."

Earlier in the week, Clinton called for a "candid national conversation
about race and about discrimination, prejudice, hatred" in an interview,
and said it was time for the United states to "face hard truths" about race
in a speech before a host of Latino elected officials in Las Vegas.

*’92 Confederate buttons weren’t ours: Former Clinton aide
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-clinton-aide-calls-out-confederate-flag-buttons/>
// CBS // Hannah Fraser-Chanpong – June 23, 2015 *

A campaign button bearing the Confederate flag and emblazoned with the
words "Clinton-Gore" sold for $8 on eBay but, according to a longtime aide
to former President Bill Clinton, the button was not an official campaign
item.

"I've never seen these buttons," Craig Smith told CBS News. "Don't have
them, haven't seen them."

Ditch Confederate flag? Many S.C. lawmakers say yes

Smith oversaw state operations for Mr. Clinton's campaign in 1992, before
moving on to work in the Clinton White House. Among his responsibilities on
the trail was allocating staff to states and sending out campaign
materials, like house party kits, t-shirts, yard signs and buttons,
nationwide. Every item, he said, had to be made in the United States by
union workers.

"If it didn't have a union bug, we weren't making them," he said, "and we
definitely weren't handing them out."

The button in question, and others featuring similar designs for sale or
sold on eBay, does not show any indication of being union-made.

Smith added that individual states were given their own, small budget for
"discretionary items" like state-specific merchandise. But those items had
to include the state's name and follow the same production guidelines as
items made for national distribution.

"It would have been in violation of multiple campaign policies," he said of
a state producing a button like the ones sold online. "I just don't think
they did it."

Smith said he thought the buttons were likely made by someone unaffiliated
with the campaign looking to make a buck. He said if it had been pitched to
him, it wouldn't have gotten past his desk.

"Not appropriate then," he said, "and not appropriate now."

*Hillary Clinton: Country’s Struggle With Race ‘Far From Over’*
<http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/hillary-clinton-countrys-struggle-race-far-over-n380556>*
// NBC // Andrew Rafferty – June 23, 2015*

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said racism in
America is "far from finished" and called the Confederate flag "a symbol of
our nation's racist past" during a discussion at a church near last year's
violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

The presidential frontrunner has focused her campaign on race relations
following last week's deadly shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, where
a white gunman is suspected of killing nine African-American church
members. Her remarks at Christ the King United Church of Christ in
Florissant, Missouri, marked the third time she has spoken about the hate
crime since Thursday.

"I know it's tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated
incident, to believe that in today's America, bigotry is largely behind us,
that institutionalized racism no longer exists," Clinton said. "But,
despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle
with race is far from finished."

The former secretary of State called the shooting "an act of racist
terrorism" and applauded Republican leaders in South Carolina for pushing
for the Confederate flag to be removed from the Capitol grounds.

She called the flag "a symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place
in our present or our future, it shouldn't fly there, it shouldn't fly
anywhere."

She also called on sellers to follow Wal-Mart's lead and stop selling
products that include the Confederate flag. Amazon, eBay and Sears have
also stopped selling it.

Clinton said the country must give minorities the tools to "overcome the
legacy of discrimination." That begins with early childhood education and
continues with easier access to vote, including universal registration when
Americans turn 18, she said.

She also called for "common sense gun reform" and increasing communication
between both police and the communities they serve.

The church she spoke at Tuesday was just a short drive from last year's
violent protests in Ferguson after an 18-year-old unarmed black man was
shot and killed by a white police officer. The officer was cleared of any
wrongdoing after investigators found he acted in self-defense.

*More retailers should remove Confederate flag products, Hillary Clinton
says <http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-clinton-flag-20150623-story.html>
// LA Times // Kathleen Hennessey – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday praised Wal-Mart and other retailers for
refusing to sell products bearing the Confederate flag, as she pushed for a
broader conversation about modern-day, institutionalized racism and
policies to address it.

Speaking at a black church near Ferguson, Mo., Clinton, who once served on
the Wal-Mart board, urged “all sellers” to follow the lead set by the
Arkansas-based retailer, as well as eBay, Amazon and Sears. Those companies
have announced plans to purge their inventories of the Confederate symbol
in the wake of the massacre in a Charleston, S.C., church.

Clinton also praised South Carolina leaders for steps toward removing the
flag from the statehouse grounds. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and other
state leaders have recognized the Confederate banner "as a symbol of our
nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future,”
Clinton said to cheers. “It shouldn’t fly there, it shouldn’t fly anywhere.”

The remarks represented Clinton's second extended discussion of racism in
America since the shooting in a historically black church left nine black
churchgoers dead last week.

As the leading Democratic contender for the presidency, Clinton has jumped
into the national conversation that has followed the shooting. It has given
her an opportunity to burnish her standing among her party’s liberal core,
including African American voters, and to strike a strong contrast with
Republicans.

On Tuesday, she took her campaign to Florissant, Mo., less than four miles
from the spot where Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old, was shot last
August by a white police officer, fueling the recent national debate over
race and inequities in the justice system.

"All lives matter," Clinton declared, picking up on the rallying cry --
"black lives matter" -- of the movement that grew out of the protests in
Ferguson, Mo.

In her brief remarks before a community meeting at Christ the King church
in Florissant, Clinton labeled the attack on the Emanuel AME Church in
Charleston an act of “racist terrorism.”

Many people, particularly in black communities, have suggested that
"terrorism" is a word that would have immediately been applied to the
shooting had the race of the suspected assailant and the victims been
reversed.  Authorities have charged Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man
who appeared to embrace the Confederate flag as a symbol of his racist
ideology, with murder and hate crimes.

"How do we make sense of such an evil act, an act of racist terrorism
perpetrated in a house of God?" Clinton asked in her remarks Tuesday. "How
do we turn grief, anger and despair into purpose and action?"

The former secretary of State linked the current conversation to her
domestic platform. She called for better early childhood education, changes
to voting rules and reform of the criminal justice system.

"I know it’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated
incident, to believe that in today’s America, bigotry is behind us, that
institutionalized racism no longer exists," she said.

"But in spite our best efforts and highest hopes, America’s long struggle
with race is far from finished."

*Hillary Clinton on course to win 2016 presidential election: Poll
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/hillary-clinton-on-course-to-win-2016-presidential-election-poll/articleshow/47799481.cms>
// Economic Times – June 24, 2015*

WASHINGTON:  Hillary Clinton is the firm favourite to be chosen as the
Democratic Party nominee for 2016 US presidential polls and go on to be
elected as the first woman president of America, according to a new poll.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News  poll taken in the days after Clinton held
her first public rally earlier this month, showed the former secretary of
state garnering broad support for being chosen the Democratic presidential
nominee.

Three-quarters of Democratic primary voters said Clinton was their top pick
to be the nominee, compared with the 15 per cent who selected Bernie
Sanders.

Clinton, 67, enters the 2016 contest with unusually broad support from
fellow Democrats with some 92 per cent of Democratic primary voters saying
they could see themselves supporting her and just 8 per cent saying they
could not, according to the poll.

But it is not that Clinton just emerges as the strongest contender in the
primary vote but the poll shows that she is looking set for a successful
November 2016 election bid to become the first woman president of America.

The poll asked 1,000 likely voters about their opinions on potential
presidential candidates, both  Republican and Democrat.

It showed Clinton polling at 48 per cent to 40 per cent against her closest
Republican contender, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the brother of
former president George W Bush and son of former president George HW Bush.

Against the Florida senator Marco Rubio, Clinton polled 50 per cent against
40 per cent. And against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker she polled 51 per
cent to 37 per cent.

The survey found that Americans are divided on whether they want the next
president to be a Republican or a Democrat. But among many key demographic
groups, Clinton outpaces the support for her party.

"The poll underscores Clinton's strength as a candidate, both among
Democrats and key constituencies that could tip the balance in a general
election. But the results also show a clear desire among Democratic voters
for a rival to emerge and hint at potential cracks in her support," the
Wall Street Journal said.

Among Republican primary voters, the poll showed Bush ahead with 22 per
cent of the vote. Walker was next with 17 per cent and Rubio third with 14
per cent.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson had 11 per cent, while former Arkansas
governor Mike Huckabee 9 per cent, libertarian senator Rand Paul 7 per
cent, former Texas governor Rick Perry 5 per cent, New Jersey governor
Chris Christie 4 per cent and Texas senator Ted Cruz 4 per cent were all in
single figures.

*Does Hillary Really Believe in the Hillary Doctrine?*
<http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122132/does-hillary-really-believe-hillary-doctrine>*
// New Republic // Jordan Michael Smith – June 23, 2015*

In the run-up to her official 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton
spoke at the Women in the World Summit in New York City in April. Some
interpreted Clinton’s remarks as evidence of her commitment to feminism.
“The choice of the location in itself sends a strong signal,” wrote Slate’s
Amanda Marcotte; “If there was any doubt that Clinton intends to run a
woman-centric campaign, her speech erased it.” Others viewed the speech as
just another calculated exercise. “Hillary Unveils Her Plan to Advance
Women’s Rights (and Her Own Campaign)” read the headline of an article on
New York magazine’s website.

Such is the ambiguous nature of Clinton’s image: Even more than most
politicians, she inspires contrasting views about her authenticity. Does
she really mean what she says?

Valerie M. Hudson and Patricia Leidl, the authors of The Hillary Doctrine:
Sex and American Foreign Policy, have no doubts about the subject. “While
perhaps others in the Obama administration might feel that the Hillary
Doctrine is some type of rhetorical flourish, it is impossible to believe
that is the case for Clinton herself,” they write. The idea of a “Hillary
Doctrine” was first propagated in a 2011 Newsweek cover story that defined
it as the belief that “the subjugation of women is a direct threat to the
security of the United States.” Hillary first espoused this idea in a
speech to the United Nations delivered as Secretary of State, and she
reinforced it with policies, ordering all components of the State
Department to undertake gender analyses of their areas of responsibility,
for example.

Well, that’s the Hillary Doctrine they discuss. Different "Hillary
Doctrines" have been proclaimed by others. David Rohde (or his headline
writers) defined it as belief that a bipartisan, long-term commitment to
stabilizing far-off nations is essential to American security. Last August,
John Cassidy argued that the Hillary Doctrine could be found in the
Clinton’s idea of “a sustained global campaign targeting radical Islam
(some, doubtless, will call it a ‘crusade’) that encompasses all of the
options at the disposal of the United States and its allies: military,
diplomatic, economic, political, and rhetorical.” Most recently, James
Goldgeier, a State Department official during Bill Clinton’s presidency,
outlined the Hillary Doctrine as a worldview that “appreciates the
limitations of U.S. power and yet still maintains the resolve to identify
opportunities to lead the world.” Clinton certainly highlighted issues
facing girls and women as Secretary of State. But did she devote most of
the considerable resources of her office toward implementing her rhetoric
surrounding this issue?

Professors at Texas A&M and Michigan State, respectively, Hudson and Leidl
make significant efforts to suggest that she did. After a brief history of
the evolution of gender’s place in American foreign-policymaking, they
present research demonstrating the relationship between a nation’s
stability and its gender equality. Some of this pioneering research was
conducted by Hudson herself; she examined 141 nations and found that the
best predictor of a state’s internal and external peacefulness was its
level of violence against women. The Hillary Doctrine presents Guatemala as
a case study in the argument that there is a “link between gendercide and
genocide,” and Saudi Arabia as a case for the argument that there is a link
between a nation’s attitudes toward its women and the risk that the country
poses to the international community.

They note “a conspicuous silence” from Clinton about Saudi Arabia’s brutal
gender abuses, however, which underlines a wrinkle in their thesis. The
Hillary Doctrine generously suggests that “perhaps Clinton believes that
issues of women’s status are best left to private conversations are the
highest level of diplomacy.” Perhaps. Or perhaps Clinton prioritizes the
preservation of good relations with a major oil-producing country in the
Gulf favorable to America over issues of human rights, like every other
Secretary of State since Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.

It would be an overstatement to say that the book is a glowing endorsement
of the likely 2016 Democratic nominee. Hudson and Leidl freely admit that
“the scorecard for the Hillary Doctrine is mixed.” In areas such as the
number of female ambassadors, the increased scrutiny the State Department
gave to other nations’ records on gender, and the inclusion of women in
peace talks in Sudan and Afghanistan, Clinton’s record shines. But
Afghanistan can be seen as something of a failure failure, one where “the
rights of women and girls continue to be cynically disregarded even as the
[Western] coalition mumbles about the necessity of gender equality.”

What The Hillary Doctrine fails to do is to justify the premise behind “The
Hillary Doctrine:” that achieving gender equality is essential to the
direct security of the United States. Achieving equality for girls and
women around the world is a worthy aim, and America should pursue it for
that reason alone. But arguing that America cannot be secure unless women
are on par with men in every country in the world is an exercise in threat
inflation. It also establishes a bar for American security that is both
unrealizable and unnecessary.

No nation is perfectly secure, but America is as secure as any major power
in world history. As Michael Cohen and Micah Zenko put it in a brilliant
2012 Foreign Affairs essay, “The United States faces no plausible
existential threats, no great-power rival, and no near-term competition for
the role of global hegemon.” And yet, analysts continue to act as though
America is beset by dangers. Yes, it is in America’s “national security
interests” to operate in a less sexist world. But it is not clear that it
is in America’s vital interests to operate in such a world. At least not if
one defines “vital interest” as something that is necessary for a country
to function with secure territory and sovereignty.

The Hillary Doctrine admirably forefronts the idea that the safety of women
worldwide is a pressing moral issue. But it would have been more effective
if it had better explained why this moral issue merits policymakers’ finite
attention and money. Instead, it endorses the idea that the country cannot
be safe unless one of the world’s most universal, long-standing, and
intractable inequities is rectified. If Hillary Clinton is elected
president next year, let’s hope she knows the difference.

*Hillary’s Bernie Sanders problem: She wants to embrace populism and Wall
Street at the same time
<http://www.salon.com/2015/06/23/hillarys_bernie_sanders_problem_shes_wants_to_embrace_populism_and_wall_street_at_the_same_time/>
// Salon // Adam Green – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton wants to be known as an economic populist. She also wants
to be known as a supporter of the American Dream who celebrates when people
move from rags to riches.

These two ideals are not mutually exclusive, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren
proves consistently when she tells her story of moving up from the ragged
edges of the middle class while calling for our economic system to be
unrigged so more Americans can enjoy upward mobility. But Clinton appears
to be feeling a tension right now, trying to figure out how to present a
vision that represents both of these ideals.

Two months ago she said, “The deck is stacked in favor of those at the top”
and “my job is to reshuffle the cards.” At her kickoff rally this weekend,
she said “everybody will have a better time” on her watch – Wall Street
bankers and the poor alike.

These are vastly different things. One signals she will challenge power,
the other does not. One challenges ill-gotten gains, the other does not.

Clinton seems more pensive now than in 2008 – attempting to apply a
heightened authenticity and level of reflection. But her laudable attempt
to find language that meshes populism with an optimistic celebration of
success has resulted in unnecessarily parsed words that risk hurting her
authenticity and could be read as taking positions that one hopes she does
not actually hold.

Rhetoric about lifting the fortunes of “all Americans” sounds good until
you consider bad actors: Wall Street bankers who break the law and pad
their pockets as millions of people lose their jobs and homes. Hedge fund
managers who enrich themselves by gambling away people’s pensions. Credit
card scammers who profit by miring people in years of spiraling debt. Crony
capitalists who invest millions in political donations in order to skew the
tax and regulatory codes and get a return on investment of billions.

This is the opposite of the American Dream – some Americans actively
hurting other Americans, cutting corners to enrich themselves while taking
away the dream for others. Clinton’s pronouncement that “I’m not running
for some Americans, but for all Americans” papers over the question of
whether she will pick a side when powerful interests attack everyday
families.

Especially after Wall Street banks admitted to fraud, the illegal taking of
people’s homes, and other criminal activity that hurt millions of families,
Americans need to hear more than a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats message from
our next president. To inspire voters, and be a populist champion in this
populist moment, Clinton needs to acknowledge that bad actors exist and
show that she will fight to take away their power and ill-gotten gains.

To be clear, this does not mean vilifying all wealth or success. After all,
most Americans don’t lump the Google and Netflix founders in the same class
as the Koch brothers, Jamie Dimon or Bernie Madoff. Clinton is right when
she said recently in New Hampshire, “I don’t think Americans are against
success.”

But she limits the potential of a Clinton presidency, and hurts her
authenticity and populist bona fides as she seeks that presidency, when she
unnecessarily narrows the scope of her argument to saying, “Americans are
against people who get on the top of the ladder and start pulling it up.”

Greed is one thing. Law breaking that destroys our economy and hurts
millions of people’s lives is another. Greed has existed forever. Law
breaking by increasingly large Wall Street actors is what led to the
financial collapse that took away the American Dream for so many everyday
families.

There are more than 400,000 chief executives across our nation. If Clinton
wants most CEOs to see their own economic fortunes rise by paying employees
larger wages and pumping up the demand side of our economy, that’s great.
If she wants to make America’s economic pie bigger so everyone has a shot
at earning a bigger piece, that’s a great part of the solution.

But when we know that some of the most powerful CEOs and hedge fund
managers break the law and profit by taking away people’s dreams, and when
we know crony capitalists use campaign donations to bend the law and avoid
taxes and regulation, it is insufficient to say, “Prosperity can’t be just
for CEOs and hedge fund managers.”

Americans need to hear explicitly that Wall Street lawbreakers and crony
capitalists would not see their piece of the economic pie grow under a
Clinton presidency. Instead, the ill-gotten gains and power of bad actors
must be reduced – not because of jealousy, but because they are mutually
exclusive with millions of hardworking Americans being able to fully live
out their dreams.

Therefore, Clinton saying “prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund
managers” is good, but not sufficient.

It should not be controversial for Clinton to say what Martin O’Malley and
Bernie Sanders have both said – that if a bank is too big to fail, it is
too big to exist. That’s just obvious. So is the idea that Wall Street
bankers who break the law should go to jail – a proposition that Iowa
voters agree with by nearly 20-to-1. And Clinton should assure voters that
her Treasury secretary, attorney general, SEC commissioners and appointed
regulators would crack down on Wall Street bad actors who put our economy
at risk.

For Clinton to embrace this economic populist moment and inspire primary
and general election voters alike, she must show a willingness to challenge
power – plus offer big ideas that invest in our economy like debt-free
college, massive investment in infrastructure and clean-energy jobs, higher
worker wages, and expanding Social Security benefits. That’s the bold
economic vision Americans want and need.

*How Much Will Demographics Help Hillary Clinton?
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/how-much-will-demographics-help-hillary-clinton.html>
// NY Mag // Jonathan Chait – June 23, 2015 *

Only a few years ago, the basic premise of the Emerging Democratic Majority
— the theory that Democratic-leaning constituencies were growing as a share
of the population — was deeply controversial. Analysts like Sean Trende
denied before the 2012 election that the nonwhite vote was likely to
continue rising at all. Now it is more or less a matter of general
agreement, and the dispute has moved on to what it means.

David Wasserman crunches some numbers and predicts the level of demographic
change that will be brought to bear on the 2016 electorate. The white vote
is expected to drop from 72 percent of the electorate to 70 percent.
Wasserman calculates that if every cohort votes the same way as in 2012,
the Democratic margin will grow from the 3.85 percent margin that separated
Barack Obama from Mitt Romney to 5.4 percent. Here is the state-by-state
breakdown:

Supporters cheer as Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and 2016
Democratic presidential candidate, bottom center, arrives to speak at her
first campaign rally at Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York,
U.S., on Saturday, June 13, 2015.

Like many neutral and even liberal analysts, Wasserman frames this finding
in a very cautious way. His headline is “Mapping the 2016 Electorate:
Demographics Don’t Guarantee a Democratic White House.” And, of course,
nobody thinks demographics guarantee a Democratic White House. Maybe
Republicans can do a much better job of mobilizing their base than the
Democrats this time, or maybe a big event like a recession will darken the
skies for the Democrats. But in a closely divided electorate with
relatively few swing voters, one and a half percentage points is a lot.

*If You Buy a Onesie From the Hillary Clinton Campaign Store, You Are
Basically Selling Your Soul*
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/what-happens-when-you-buy-a-onesie-from-hillary.html>*
// NY Post // Jaime Fuller – June 23, 2015*

Peak campaign-email season has not arrived just yet. The primaries are
still many months away, and although candidates want to make sure that you
know they exist, they know they probably have money and resources to pilfer
from you yet.

Now, in the lazy summer heat, campaigns are content to simply get to know
you, and one of the best ways to do that, as the New York Times shows, is
by convincing you to buy an incredibly useless bit of merchandise from
their online stores.

There, candidates aren't only getting you to wear their brand out in broad
daylight; they are learning your fears and dreams and whether you are the
sort of person who will wear a pantsuit T-shirt in public. Even Rand Paul,
patron saint of privacy, is not above using his campaign store to find out
if you are a libertarian millennial who likes to party — otherwise known as
someone who bought a Rand Paul cornhole set — or a libertarian yuppie who
wears turtlenecks and invites friends over to eat cheese — otherwise known
as someone who doesn't mind that their wine glasses say Rand Paul on them.

This is valuable information. As the campaigns learn more about individual
voters they will be able to target them in a way that convinces supporters
to give more money or volunteer for the campaign — just like Amazon learns
how to read your mind and puts products you desperately want to buy on your
homepage.

If you buy a pride T-shirt from Bernie Sanders, you will likely get an
email from his campaign on how he feels about the upcoming Supreme Court
decision on marriage equality. If you buy a "Future Voter" onesie from
Hillary Clinton, she is going to start giving you updates on Charlotte
Clinton Mezvinsky — and tell you about her stance on paid leave. If you buy
a Ted Cruz phone case, his campaign might send you an email about signing
up for text updates or his social-media accounts. If you buy a Mike
Huckabee polo shirt, you will probably get all the emails because you have
signaled that you will spend money on anything.

This isn't the only way that campaigns are learning about you online, as
National Journal points out. Even the emails you get after you buy
something are testing what you like and what words are going to be most
effective in getting you to part with your money, thanks to A/B testing, a
practice now used by basically all organizations that send out emails for
profit or fund-raising. "Looking at it cynically," National Journal
concludes, "mining Internet users' data for political gain sounds vaguely
Orwellian, where voters are turned into unwitting guinea pigs in a giant
social experiment. Looking at it pragmatically, it's just smart business."

If this freaks you out, you can always wait until Urban Outfitters releases
the 2015 version of its "2 Legit 2 Mitt" T-shirts, although no studies have
proven that receiving daily "25 percent off" emails from Urban Outfitters
is a slower way to make you lose your mind than daily emails from a 2016
candidate — or 20.

*Pataki: Hillary Clinton likely broke law
<http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/us_politics/2015/06/pataki_hillary_clinton_likely_broke_law>
// Boston Herald // Chris Cassidy – June 23, 2015 *

Former New York Gov. George Pataki slammed Democratic front-runner Hillary
Clinton yesterday for “probably” breaking the law by erasing emails on a
private server that likely left information open to Chinese hackers.

“It’s clear to me that having that home server not only violated State
Department rules and regulations, deleting those emails was probably a
crime because she had good reason to know that Congress wanted to see what
was in them,” Pataki said on Boston Herald

Radio.

“But what is most disturbing to me is that the Chinese in all likelihood
know what every one of those 30,000 emails said. The American people don’t.
Congress doesn’t. The State Department don’t. That is wrong.”

Pataki also criticized New Hampshire television station WMUR for not
pressing Clinton harder during a one-on-one last week, when she lamented
the vulnerability of the State Department’s servers, but never mentioned
her own.

“That’s exactly the question that any decent reporter would ask if they
were trying to get to really learn something and get some real answers,”
said Pataki, who made the comments on Herald

Radio’s “Morning Meeting” show.

“And I can’t believe they didn’t ask it. Well, actually I can believe they
didn’t ask it.”

Pataki claimed the entire incident shows that Clinton is more concerned
about her own political reputation than protecting the security of
sensitive information.

“Clearly, Hillary’s basement server isn’t going to have that level of
protection,” he added.

“It was grossly irresponsible for her to do this. It poses a tremendous
security risk to America. But more importantly, it raises questions about
her judgment in so many ways. She is so concerned about her political
career that she will jeopardize

critical American communications.”

*Hillary Clinton on course to win presidential election, poll says
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/23/hillary-clinton-presidential-election-poll>
// Guardian // Jessica Glenza – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton is on course to win the Democratic primary and would go on
to trounce her Republican opponents, according to a new poll.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that the former secretary of
state was the first choice for nominee of 75% of her party, with Vermont
socialist Bernie Sanders far behind on 15%.

Analysis Clinton v Bush: America is getting the dynastic matchup it said it
didn't want

Despite rivals’ protestations, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush enjoy the
support of their own party’s voters. But the other party’s dynasty
candidate? Not a chance

Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, was on 2%, while Lincoln
Chafee, the former governor of Rhode Island, polled less than 1%. Former
Virginia senator Jim Webb, who has not yet formally declared he is running,
was on 4%.

According to the poll, 92% of likely Democratic voters said they could see
themselves supporting Clinton.

The poll asked 1,000 likely voters about their opinions on potential
presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat.

It showed Clinton polling at 48% to 40% against her closest Republican
contender, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the brother of former
president George W Bush and son of former president George HW Bush.

Against the Florida senator Marco Rubio, Clinton polled 50% against 40%.
And against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker she polled 51% to 37%.

Among Republican primary voters, the poll showed Bush ahead with 22% of the
vote. Walker was next with 17% and Rubio third with 14%. Retired
neurosurgeon Ben Carson had 11%, while former Arkansas governor Mike
Huckabee (9%), libertarian senator Rand Paul (7%), former Texas governor
Rick Perry (5%), New Jersey governor Chris Christie (4%) and Texas senator
Ted Cruz (4%) were all in single figures.

The poll is likely to encourage the Clinton camp, whose campaign got off to
a rough start when questions arose about Clinton’s use of personal email as
secretary of state, this spring. But it is possible that early polls may
not reflect the true strength of Clinton’s challengers.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff told the Wall Street Journal that
Clinton had “the strongest and most advantageous” standing among Democrats
he had seen in 35 years of campaign polling. “She starts with advantages
among very important groups,” he said. McInturff conducted the poll with
Democrat Fred Yang.

Clinton’s high rankings could be buoyed by increasingly positive support
numbers for her 2008 rival Barack Obama, whose approval rating is up by 8
percentage points to 48% since September 2014, when it hit an all-time low
of 40% according to the same polls.

Among Republican candidates, Bush and Rubio remain neck and neck, with 75%
and 74% of respondents saying they could see themselves supporting the
candidates in a Republican primary. Bush pulls away slightly in
favorability rankings, pulling 5% ahead of Walker with 22%, and 8% ahead of
Rubio.

Most see Clinton as a moderate candidate (58%) who is trustworthy because
of her “experience and background” (59%).

Respondents were fairly split over which party the next president should be
from, with Republicans scoring 36% and Democrats 39%.

Ongoing concerns going into the election could set the mood for the
campaign. A “decline in traditional moral values” was rated as the most
alarming trend in America of all respondents (25%), seconded by possible
terrorist attacks on the US (18%), while corporate and wealthy individuals’
influence over elections was rated as the most disconcerting facet of the
upcoming campaign (33%).

*Clinton on Flying Confederate Flag: Not in South Carolina, Not Anywhere //
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/clinton-on-flying-confederate-flag-not-in-south-carolina-not-anywhere-20150623>
National Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton Tuesday praised the South Carolina legislature for its
decision to take down the Confederate flag—but she that it is only an
initial step in "America's long struggle with race."

"It shouldn't fly there, it shouldn't fly anywhere," Clinton told a
community meeting at Christ the King church in Florissant, Missouri,
Tuesday afternoon.

Clinton also said she wanted to "commend" Walmart (she once sat on the
company's board) for ceasing to sell items that picture the Confederate
flag, noting that other companies—Amazon, eBay, and Sears among them—have
followed. "I urge all sellers to do the very same," she said.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced Monday that the flag would be
taken down from the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia, the week
after a white-supremacist gunman killed nine African-Americans in a
Charleston church. The killings brought new attention to the flag's
history, prompting most of the 2016 field to weigh in on whether or not it
should be flown.

Clinton's speech was in Florissant, a Missouri town near Ferguson, where
questions about race and violence flared last summer after unarmed black
teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer.

Clinton told her audience that getting the country to a better place on
questions of race and violence will involve dealing with broader issues of
inequality, access to education, and economic opportunity. "You know and I
know that's just the beginning of what we have to do," she said. "The truth
is equality, opportunity, civil rights in America are still far from where
they need to be."

To that end, Clinton repeated her calls for "common-sense gun reforms" and
voting reforms like automatic universal voter registration and early voting
for every state. "Whether you live in Ferguson or West Baltimore, coal
country or Indian country, you should have the same chance … to get ahead
and stay ahead," she said.

On Monday, The Huffington Post reported on Confederate symbolism on the
Arkansas flag, noting that Clinton's husband—former President Bill
Clinton—had not moved to remove the symbols during his time as Arkansas
governor.

*Hillary Clinton Has an Idea Conservatives Should Get Behind
<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420156/hillary-clinton-apprenticeships-tax-credit-republicans>
// National Review // Reihan Salam – June 23, 2015 *

Rather surprisingly, Hillary Clinton made a shrewd policy announcement last
week. Until recently, Clinton’s main answer to sluggish wage growth has
been to cheer on labor activists calling for a higher minimum wage. Yet she
has just embraced a far more attractive policy proposal that enjoys
considerable bipartisan support. Drawing on legislation backed by Senators
Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Clinton is calling for a
new tax credit that would encourage employers to create and expand
apprenticeship programs. Conservatives would do well to follow her lead,
and to go further.

To understand the appeal of apprenticeships, consider a central dilemma
facing employers and workers alike. Many employers report that they are
struggling to find qualified workers to fill vacant jobs, despite high
levels of unemployment and underemployment, particularly among young
adults. One obvious solution would be for employers to hire on the basis of
a worker’s potential to do a job well rather than her ability to do it well
right off the bat, and then to provide the worker in question with the
necessary training. This is easier said than done, however, as this
training process can be costly. And once a worker is fully trained, she may
well jump ship to another employer, in which case the employer who provided
the training will have wasted a lot of time and money.

Workers could endeavor to ready themselves for the labor market by, say,
enrolling in a local community college. But even the best vocational
curriculum is no substitute for on-the-job learning. As Peter Cappelli, a
leading expert on job training at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton
School, has observed, schools are not well-suited to providing work-based
skills and experience. “Instead,” he argues, “employers need to be much
more involved, not just in telling schools what they want but in providing
opportunities for new grads to get work experience and learn the relevant
expertise.” Apprenticeships are one way to square this circle. Essentially,
apprenticeships allow entry-level workers to gain work-based skills and
experience at a wage commensurate with the fact that they have yet to
master their new jobs. As a general rule, apprenticeships combine work with
classroom instruction, and they culminate in some kind of occupational
credential. Employers benefit by expanding the ranks of qualified workers
they can hire as full-fledged employees. Workers benefit by gaining skills
and experience they couldn’t gain otherwise.

Given the potential benefits of apprenticeships, why are they so rare in
the U.S.? Why aren’t employers flocking to establish apprenticeship
programs, even in the absence of a tax credit? Don’t forget the risk that
newly trained workers might decide to go from one employer to another.
Employers can mitigate this risk by paying an apprentice a somewhat lower
wage while she gains skills and experience, but not necessarily by enough
to make an apprenticeship program an attractive proposition. By offering a
modest public subsidy, like the tax credit proposed by Scott and Booker
(and now Clinton), apprenticeship programs would become a better bet for
more employers.

Of course, money doesn’t grow on trees. Why should we spend scarce
resources on increasing funding for apprenticeships rather than something
else entirely? Robert Lerman of the Brookings Institution, an economist who
has been advocating the expansion of apprenticeships for years, has cited
promising research from Washington State on the long-term impact of
apprenticeships:

Studies show U.S. apprenticeships are extraordinarily cost-effective.
Analyses conducted for Washington State’s Workforce Board show that
taxpayers net almost three times their spending on apprenticeships within
two and a half years of the program’s completion, and the combined benefits
accruing to participants and taxpayers are about five times the costs. By
the time former apprentices reach age 65, benefits to taxpayers reach $23
for each dollar spent.

These findings should not be treated as definitive, and it is entirely
possible that Washington State is an idiosyncratic case and that its
experience might not apply elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is mounting
evidence that on-the-job learning has benefits that traditional higher
education does not, which makes it all the more striking that taxpayers
spend so much on higher education while spending so little on helping young
people gain meaningful work experience. Lerman has noted that increasing
federal and state funding for apprenticeships threefold would mean spending
a small fraction (2 percent) of the 2013 increase in funding for college
loans. The case for rebalancing federal spending from traditional higher
education to other post-secondary alternatives, including apprenticeship
programs, is quite strong.

Even if we accept that it makes sense for the public sector to invest in
apprenticeship programs, why should the federal government play a role?
South Carolina, for example, has created a successful statewide
apprenticeship program at relatively low cost. While state initiatives can
and should continue, the case for a federal role is simply that state
governments don’t have a strong incentive to finance the training of
workers who might eventually move to other states to take full advantage of
their skills. Workers enrolled in apprenticeship programs in South Carolina
might eventually make their way to North Dakota, and while that might not
be ideal from the perspective of South Carolina, it’s not a bad thing at
all for the country as a whole. This isn’t to say that the federal
government should micromanage apprenticeship programs — far from it.
Ideally, different firms and jurisdictions would pursue different
approaches, tailored to different job functions and to different
populations of workers. But a modest federal tax credit is a perfectly
reasonable first step to take.

There is another reason to support the expansion of apprenticeship
programs, albeit a more tentative one. Lerman has suggested that on-the-job
training can engage many young people who struggle with formal education,
and that it can help them become better husbands and fathers. University of
Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox has in a similar vein identified
apprenticeships as a key part of a broader strategy to strengthen the
economic foundations of marriage. Are they right to suggest that
apprenticeships will make much of a difference in promoting family
stability? I can’t say. Yet the possibility is intriguing, particularly for
those who see the presence of stable male parents in the home as important
to the success of young men.

Clinton is the first presidential candidate to make apprenticeships a
centerpiece of her domestic-policy agenda. But there is no reason she
should be the last. Indeed, one could argue that apprenticeships are a
better fit for conservatives than for liberals. After all, it’s the
left-of-center coalition to which Clinton belongs that is so committed to
the care and feeding of the public higher-education institutions that have
done such a poor job of preparing young Americans for the workforce.

*Beghazi panel chairman: State Dept. didn’t hand over requested emails /
<http://thehill.com/policy/defense/245876-benghazi-panel-chairman-state-dept-didnt-hand-over-requested-emails>/
The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 23, 2015 *

The leader of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says the State
Department has failed to produce any copies it might possess of recently
disclosed emails between Hillary Clinton and adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

"This is a straightforward question — State Department either has them or
they do not," chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement Tuesday.

“State should immediately produce to the committee emails that should have
been produced months ago or explain why it is not in possession of these
emails from Secretary Clinton,” he added. “Either response has
ramifications toward a full public record. This should be neither
complicated nor time consuming."

Gowdy criticized the department the day after his panel released nearly 60
emails Blumenthal turned over to the select committee earlier this month.

He challenged the State Department to determine whether or not the agency
already possessed them, giving the agency until close of business Monday to
respond.

The department has asked for an extension, according to Gowdy.

The memos between Blumenthal and Clinton are separate from a batch of
nearly 300 messages from Clinton’s private email server that the State
Department made public last month.

That initial cache showed Clinton had received about 25 memos from
Blumenthal regarding Libya while she was secretary of State.

On Monday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the agency was
“working through” its inventory of messages to “determine if there are
emails in that batch that we either didn't have or may have not provided.”

“Now I will say at least that the more that is asked for in terms of scope,
the more resources it will consume here at the State Department, and the
more time it will take. There's no doubt about that,” he added. “But ...
it's up to them to determine what they want to look at.”

Gowdy dismissed that argument.

"Every request to State is met with delay, a request for extension and
pleading to narrow the scope," he said. "The reality is the State
Department under both Secretaries [John] Kerry and Clinton has failed in
its obligation to provide transparency for the American people and
congressional investigators.”

Gowdy added that panel Democrats "could help speed the process if they
would stop providing cover and join the majority in demanding State step-up
production."

"In the end, if President Obama and Secretary Kerry want to fulfill the
President's pledge of the most transparent administration in history, they
will ensure the Executive Branch complies with the Select Committee's
outstanding requests," he added.

*The Clintons, immune to scandal
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/245794-the-clintons-immune-to-scandal>
// The Hill // Richard Benedetto – June 23, 2015 *

Ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton publicly inoculated themselves on CBS's
"60 Minutes" on Super Bowl Sunday in 1992 by admitting to "problems" in
their marriage, they have been largely immune from a steady stream of
maladies that might have killed most politicians.

From Gennifer Flowers to Paula Jones to Monica Lewinsky, it helped them
survive a series of so-called "bimbo eruptions" — as Betsey Wright, Bill
Clinton's deputy campaign chair in 1992, referred to them — that could have
blocked or ended Bill's presidency.

As a bonus side-effect, the injected serum produced a thick skin and the
keen ability to display pluck, defiance, combativeness and a skill for
bending the truth that helped weather a long string of '90s scandals and
controversies. They included Bill Clinton's past efforts to avoid the
military draft during the Vietnam War, the questionable Whitewater land
deal, various controversial presidential pardons, playing fast and loose
with campaign fundraising rules, mishandling FBI background files on
Republicans and "renting" the Lincoln bedroom to contributors.

And now, that serum seems still effective against a fusillade of charges
focused on Hillary Clinton's secretive handling of her emails while
secretary of State, her reaction to the Benghazi attack in Libya, her
high-priced speaking fees and the financial sleight of hand between the
couple's charitable foundation and foreign donors seeking approvals from
the U.S. government while she was in the Obama Cabinet.

If any one of the current band of 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls was
faced with just one such allegation, chances are they would be shamed and
forced out of the race, hounded by a news media and a political opposition
that would not let them talk about anything else.

But Hillary Clinton skates on in her 2016 Democratic bid for the White
House largely immune. Despite the well-publicized controversies, polls show
that although ratings of her character and integrity have taken a big hit,
she still would beat any one of her many potential GOP rivals in the 2016
election. The serum is still potent.

It wasn't long ago that far-smaller transgressions than the Clintons'
brought lightning-quick ends to presidential candidacies. Hillary Clinton
need look no farther than the current vice president, Joe Biden, who had
his 1988 run for the Democratic presidential nomination brought down in
flames in 1987 by charges of plagiarism and exaggeration of his academic
record.

Democratic front-runner Sen. Gary Hart (Colo.) was chased out earlier that
same year for having an extramarital affair with model Donna Rice.

And the end came quickly. An embarrassed Biden quit the race just two weeks
after the plagiarism charges surfaced. A defiant Hart was out in less than
a week, only to return six months later in a woeful comeback attempt.

Biden, then a U.S. senator, said in his dropout statement that the
incessant pressure from the news media hampered his ability to campaign and
at the same time chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was then
considering President Reagan's controversial nomination of Robert Bork to
the Supreme Court.

Some might argue that Biden and Hart flopped in a far different time, and
that such behaviors might be more easily tolerated in today's evolving
live-and-let-live atmosphere. But then again, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer
(D) resigned in 2008 when it was revealed that he hired prostitutes. And
New York Rep. Anthony Weiner (D) quit his House seat in 2011 after texting
suggestive photos and messages to young women. Ironically, Weiner's wife,
Huma Abedin, is a top aide in Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Which brings us back to the Clintons, and more specifically Hillary and her
various ethical and veracity problems, not to mention questions about her
competence to serve in the highest office in the land. By far, the most
serious allegation against the Clintons is that they extorted millions of
dollars in speaking fees and six-figure donations to their charitable
foundation in return for State Department favors while Hillary was
secretary of State.

If that could be proved, such behavior might bring criminal charges and
possibly prison terms. But with Hillary Clinton having sole control of her
government and personal emails, and having said that she destroyed those
emails she deemed personal, legal proof of a quid pro quo would be nearly
impossible to secure. The only other way would be if donors were willing to
talk under oath in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

A recent high-profile case has some parallels. Former Virginia Gov. Robert
F. McDonnell (R), a rising GOP star, and his wife, Maureen, were found
guilty last year of public corruption after they were charged with
providing preferred government treatment to Johnnie Williams Sr., a
businessman with a dietary supplement to sell. Federal prosecutors charged
that Williams bribed the McDonnells for state favors with golf outings,
fancy vacations, expensive gifts such as a Rolex watch and $120,000 in
sweetheart loans. Williams, who had immunity, testified against the
McDonnells, saying they helped him set up meetings with state officials to
pitch his product.

The gifts and loans to the McDonnells are chickenfeed compared to the money
lavished on the Clintons and their foundation. Yet, the McDonnells, whose
convictions are on appeal, are facing prison terms. No federal prosecutors
appear eager to look into the Clintons' case, as they were to investigate
the McDonnells. Could that be because President Obama is their boss?

Talk about immunity.

*Back to the 1990s: Fact-checking Whitewater
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/jun/24/looking-back-whitewater/>
// Politifact // Christian Belanger Linda Qiu – June 24, 2015*

Former President Bill Clinton said in a recent interview that questions
over Hillary Clinton’s trustworthiness have been put to rest in the past
and will be again.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Clinton compared the media frenzy
over leaked emails, speaking fees, and Clinton Foundation donations with a
1995 Whitewater report that he said "completely exonerated" Hillary Clinton.

"There had been a lot of discussion in this period about disclosure," he
said. "You know, everybody wants disclosure, but I think what's good for
the goose is good for the gander here. For example, I remember when Hillary
was completely exonerated, when I was in the White House, in all that
Whitewater business, when an official federal inquiry said that her billing
records, they wished for her sake could have been found earlier, because
they completely corroborated everything she'd said.

"And the next day, there was nothing in the media about it. There was
stunning nondisclosure. So, now we have got social media, and we can have
disclosure. And we can all live under the same rules. And it's going to be
fine."

We delved into the details of Clinton's comments in two fact-checks. As for
whether Hillary Clinton was "completely exonerated," we rated that Mostly
True. As for whether the media ignored the story the next day, we rated
that Half True. Read our fact-checks to take a trip in time back to the
'90s.

*Did Hillary Clinton have her name on only three laws in eight years as Jeb
Bush says?
<http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/jun/23/jeb-bush/did-hillary-clinton-have-her-name-only-three-laws-/>
// PolitiFact // Amy Sherman – June 23, 2015 *

As Jeb Bush reels off his accomplishments as governor cutting taxes and
slashing state jobs, he says he’s ready to put his record up against
Hillary Clinton’s.

A day after his announcement speech at Miami Dade College, Fox News’ Sean
Hannity asked Bush to comment on the Democrat’s record.

Hannity: "Can you name in a serious way one specific Hillary
accomplishment, or what would you say that's good about her?"

Bush: "She's smart. I think she's smart. I think she loves her country. I
don't ascribe bad motives for people that I don't agree with. But as a
senator, I think she passed -- she has her name on three laws in eight
years."

There is some truth to Bush’s claim about laws passed, but it doesn’t tell
the full story about her legislative accomplishments as a senator.

Laws with Clinton’s name

Clinton was first elected as a senator from New York in 2000 and re-elected
in 2006. She resigned to become secretary of state, so her Senate tenure
was from January 2001 to January 2009.

Bush’s spokesman sent us a list of three bills Clinton sponsored hat became
law. These laws were uncontroversial matters that passed by unanimous
consent in the Senate and voice vote in the House and then were signed by
President George W. Bush:

S. 1241:  A bill to establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site in
the State of New York. Bush signed the bill Dec. 3, 2004.

S. 3613: A bill to name a post office the "Major George Quamo Post Office
Building." Bush signed the bill Oct. 6, 2006.

S. 3145: A bill to designate a highway in New York as the Timothy J.
Russert highway. Bush signed the bill July 23, 2008.

But there are other ways that Senators can influence legislation even if
they don’t end up as the sponsor of the final version:

Co-sponsored bills: There were 74 bills that became law that Clinton
co-sponsored. For example, she was one of 54 cosponsors on the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed in January 2009 by President Barack Obama.
(The fact that she co-sponsored these bills doesn’t tell us much about her
role in their passage, but Bush referred to bills that "she has her name"
on, so it’s worth noting those she co-sponsored.)

She co-sponsored one version but another version passed: For example, she
co-sponsored S.1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in January
2009 while the version that passed was H.R. 1.

Sponsored amendments: She put forward amendments that influenced laws
sponsored by others. She sponsored three amendments on a bill for security
and disaster funding. The amendments passed in 2007 and the bill passed in
2008.

Two experts who study Congress -- Norman Ornstein, a scholar at American
Enterprise Institute, and Sarah Binder, a political science professor at
George Washington University and Brookings Institution scholar -- said that
the number of sponsored or co-sponsored bills signed into law isn’t a
thorough measure of effectiveness or productivity for a member of the
Senate.

"Offering amendments on the floor, holding hearings, contributing to
oversight, helping to negotiate agreements, pushing federal agencies to be
responsive to constituents back home -- all of these might contribute to
making a senator ‘effective,’ but none of these endeavors of course would
show up in a count of bills sponsored or passed or enacted," Binder said.

As for Bush’s claim about the number of laws "she has her name on," Binder
said that it’s fair game to also look at the number of bills Clinton
co-sponsored.

"Because ‘have her name on’ is so vague, I don't see the grounds on which
to exclude co-sponsored bills," she said.

Ornstein said that the names that go on bills of any real significance are
the committee chairs -- for example the Dodd-Frank 2010 banking reform
bill. Sen. Chris Dodd and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank were the major figures
behind the law, but other senators also had roles and don’t have their
names on the bill.

Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act "does not have Al Franken's name on it,
but a really important provision, the medical-loss ratio, was his
handiwork," Ornstein said. "Effectiveness can be a behind-the-scenes role,
adding a serious amendment, working inside to get the language exactly
right. By any reasonable standard, including the private comments of her
colleagues on both sides of the aisle when she was in the Senate, she was
very effective."

Our ruling

Bush said that as a senator, Clinton had her name "on three laws in eight
years."

Bush used vague language here, so it’s fair game to look at the three
sponsored bills and the 74 co-sponsored ones that passed. Also,
congressional experts warn that legislative influence goes beyond having
your name as a sponsor or co-sponsor. Senators weigh in with amendments,
debate and negotiations.

The statement is partially accurate, but leaves out important details so we
rate this claim Half True.

*No media coverage of Hillary Clinton’s ‘exoneration’ in Whitewater, says
Bill Clinton
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/23/bill-clinton/no-media-coverage-hillary-clintons-exoneration-whi/>
// PolitiFact // Christian Belanger and Linda Qiu – June 23, 2015 *

Former President Bill Clinton said in a recent interview that questions
over his wife’s trustworthiness have been put to rest in the past and will
be again.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Clinton compared the media frenzy
over leaked emails, speaking fees, and Clinton Foundation donations with a
1995 Whitewater report that he said "completely exonerated" Hillary Clinton.

Back then, the alleged exoneration didn’t get much traction in the news, he
said.

"The next day, there was nothing in the media about it. There was stunning
nondisclosure," he said on June 14. "So, now we have got social media, and
we can have disclosure. And we can all live under the same rules. And it's
going to be fine."

His claim about missing coverage of Whitewater was as surprising to us as
it was to the incredulous Clinton, so we decided to delve into the archives
and see if we could confirm his claim. In a separate fact-check, we looked
at the claim that the report "completely exonerated" her. That earned a
rating of Mostly True.

Investigating Whitewater

The long, long Whitewater saga first came to public attention during Bill
Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, when the New York Times published an
article detailing the Clintons’ involvement in the late 1970s with
Whitewater Development, a real estate corporation. Together with a longtime
friend, James B. McDougal, the Clintons formed the company in order to buy
and sell vacation property in the Ozark Mountains.

McDougal, however, was also the president of Madison Guaranty, a savings
and loan association. Over the following decade, the company became engaged
in a number of risky real estate ventures and lending deals, including a
number of political donations to Bill Clinton’s Arkansas gubernatorial
campaign.

When Madison Guaranty finally collapsed in 1989, McDougal was indicted on
federal fraud charges; though he was later acquitted, a separate
investigation ensued, one that eventually implicated the Clintons as
potential beneficiaries of illegal activity. To further complicate matters,
Hillary Clinton’s law firm had also represented Madison Guaranty as it
fought unsuccessfully to prevent insolvency.

After Clinton won the presidency, a confused mass of probes, committees,
hearings, and special investigations ensued, proceedings that dogged
Clinton through most of his tenure in the Oval Office. Questions were
raised, as Republicans in Congress searched for a smoking gun: The only
problem, to stretch a metaphor, was that nobody knew the make, the model,
or even the existential status of the alleged firearm.

The investigation was rife with leaks of undisclosed documents that dripped
out slowly, and as we’ll see, that contributed a good bit to why the media
covered the scandal the way they did.

The 1995 Pillsbury Report

The Pillsbury Report sat squarely in the midst of this bureaucratic tangle.
Commissioned in order to investigate the Clintons’ involvement in the
Whitewater venture, it concluded that no civil action should be taken
against anyone involved in the real estate deals.

This is not the first time Clinton has expressed his disapproval over the
media’s coverage of the 1995 report in question, which was authored by
independent law firm Pillsbury, Madison, & Sutro and commissioned by the
Resolution Trust Corporation, a now-defunct federal agency involved in the
Whitewater investigation.

In his autobiography, My Life, Clinton writes that he "eagerly awaited" the
coverage of the New York Times and Washington Post on the report’s
findings, but was disappointed by the results: "Immediately after the RTC
report was released, the Post mentioned it in passing, in the 11th
paragraph of a front-page story...and the New York Times didn’t run a word.
The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Times ran an
Associated Press story of about four hundred words on the inside pages of
their papers."

In acknowledging that there was any press coverage at all, Clinton
contradicts his recent statement that there was "nothing in the media" the
day after the report was released. Nevertheless, his larger point seems to
be that the press coverage of the event was severely lacking.

So, is Clinton’s claim of "stunning nondisclosure" factual? The answer is
slightly murky, since it’s unclear when the report’s findings came to
light, and therefore how quickly news organizations responded to it. There
exists a preliminary report dated to April 24, 1995, but it does not appear
to have been released to the media at the time (more on this below).

It seems more likely that Clinton is referring to the Dec. 13, 1995, report
to the RTC, which concluded, "It is recommended that no further resources
be expended on the Whitewater part of the investigation."

The earliest media mention we could find of the December report is from the
Dec. 16, 1995, Washington Post story that Clinton mentions in his book. The
story focused on the White House easing conditions for the release of
certain documents, noting that the report was sent to congressional
committees two days earlier.

Over the next week, articles about the Pillsbury report trickled out. On
Dec. 18, both the Wall Street Journal and the San Jose Mercury News ran
short stories, less than 150 words, giving succinct summaries of the report.

The next day, ABC’s evening news program Nightline briefly discussed the
findings, while the New York Times, like the Washington Post, mentioned the
report within a larger story on missing Whitewater files. Later that week,
the New York Times’ Sunday edition contained a story focused solely on the
Pillsbury report.

On Dec. 20, the New York Daily News ran two editorials on the Pillsbury
report, one giving a nod and the other exploring the findings at length.

So there was some press coverage, even if it wasn’t sufficiently
exculpatory for Clinton’s taste. In fact, Howard Kurtz, in an editorial for
the Washington Post on Dec. 22 (one praised by Clinton in his
autobiography) discussed why there was scant media attention.

Kurtz quoted several reporters from major newspapers as saying that the
report was old news — a draft had been leaked that June — and beside the
point: Attention to the Clintons’ participation in the land venture itself
had dissipated, replaced instead by questions surrounding Hillary Clinton’s
role as legal adviser to Madison Guaranty, the firm embroiled in the real
estate deals surrounding the scandal.

That particular issue would not be resolved until the Dec. 28 report on
Clinton’s Rose Law Firm was released, which concluded on a similar note to
the other report: "It is recommended that no further resources be expended
on this investigation."

We looked back to see if it was true that the December report’s findings
had already been covered in the summer, and discovered that it was: Seven
different newspapers wrote about the April 24 Pillsbury report on June 26
or 27, with the Washington Post devoting two separate stories to the issue.

Kurtz’s article also supplies another reason why media outlets might have
been reluctant to devote too much coverage to the Pillsbury report, even
after its findings were made public in December: It wasn’t available to
them in its entirety.

"As soon as we can get ahold of the report, it's our intention to write an
article about it," a New York Times editor told Kurtz, "There's a lot of
spin that goes along with these reports. That's why you have to look at
them."

The New York Daily News, in its article from Dec. 20, gives the reason for
this, writing that the report "was shown to the Daily News by congressional
Democrats," but "the not-guilty verdict cannot be made public. It contains
advice on how to prosecute other Arkansas figures, including their business
partner James McDougal, and the government does not want that information
to fall into the hands of defense attorneys."

Our ruling

Bill Clinton said that after a federal inquiry substantially cleared
Hillary Clinton on the Whitewater scandal, "The next day, there was nothing
in the media about it. There was stunning nondisclosure."

While the former president might technically be correct — after the Dec. 13
report was sent to Congress, nothing appeared in the papers the following
day — there was some amount of press coverage over the following week and a
half, including a discussion of why that press coverage was not more
amplified, a discussion that Clinton himself acknowledges in his
autobiography. Additionally, there had been substantial press coverage of
the findings of a preliminary report once the media managed to obtain
information from it.

We rate Clinton’s statement Half True.

*Clinton campaign video highlights ‘equal’ marriage rights
<http://www.washingtonblade.com/2015/06/24/clinton-campaign-video-highlights-equal-marriage-rights/>
// The Blade // Chris Johnson – June 24, 2015 *

The campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unveiled
on Wednesday a new video celebrating same-sex marriage days before an
expected decision

The two-and-a-half minute video, titled “Equal,” shows various same-sex
couples in happy moments, including several who are in the course of
exchanging vows for their wedding ceremonies. One the early clips in the
video shows the same footage from Clinton’s campaign announcement video of
Jared Milrad and Nathan Johnson, a Chicago same-sex couple who support
Clinton and are planning to wed this summer.

Overheard in the video are recorded audio clips of Clinton’s speech earlier
this month in New York City in which formally launched her 2016
presidential campaign and her 2011 speech on international LGBT rights in
Geneva, where she articulated the now popular line: “Gay rights are human
rights, and human rights are gay rights.” As Republican presidential
candidate tout their opposition to same-sex marriage, Clinton is running a
campaign in support of LGBT rights and right of same-sex couples to marry.
In addition to this video, she’s the only presidential candidate to issue a
written statement recognizing June as Pride month.

Watch the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Y9abmNuRw

*Clinton Aide Worked on UAE Project While at State Department
<http://freebeacon.com/politics/clinton-aide-worked-on-uae-project-while-at-state-department/>
// Free Beacon // Alana Goodman - June 24, 2015*

Hillary Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills held several outside roles,
including a board position with a UAE-funded university in Abu Dhabi, while
working as chief of staff and counselor at the State Department, the
Washington Free Beacon has learned.

After joining the State Department in the beginning of 2009, Mills
continued to serve as general counsel for New York University for several
months. She also sat on the board of the “NYU in Abu Dhabi Corporation,”
the fundraising arm for the university’s UAE satellite campus. The school
is bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi government and has been criticized by NYU
professors and human rights activists for alleged labor abuses.

Mills resigned both positions in May 2009, according to a university
spokesperson. Although she did not receive a direct salary from the Abu
Dhabi board, she collected $198,000 over four months from NYU.

While the State Department told the Free Beacon that Mills did not start
working as Clinton’s chief of staff until May 24, 2009, internal agency
documents indicate she began months earlier.

Mills is identified as Clinton’s chief of staff in several U.S. diplomatic
cables prior to May 2009. One confidential dispatch published by Wikileaks
described a Feb. 5, 2009 meeting in Washington between Haitian President
Rene Preval and Secretary Clinton.

“On the U.S. side, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson … Special
Advisor Vicki Huddleston, and Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills joined the
Secretary,” said the cable, which was sent from Hillary Clinton’s office to
the U.S. embassy in Port au Prince on Feb. 11, 2009.

Mills is also copied on over a dozen internal State Department memos
vetting Bill Clinton’s paid speaking engagements between February and May
2009. The documents were released last year under a Freedom of Information
Act request from Judicial Watch.

In the memos, drafted by the State Department’s deputy legal advisor, James
Thessin, Mills is identified as “Counselor and Chief of Staff, U.S.
Department of State.”

On February 17, 2009, Thessin sent a memo to Bill Clinton’s scheduler,
recommending “To expedite these [conflict of interest assessment] requests
in the future, you may wish to forward the request directly to me, with a
copy to Waldo (Chip) Brooks, my Senior Ethics counsel … his deputy,
Violanda Botet … and Cheryl Mills.”

As the Free Beacon previously reported, Mills was still on the board of the
William J. Clinton Foundation during this time.

A Clinton Foundation official told the Free Beacon that Mills resigned from
its board in March 2009, but did not provide the specific date. The
official also said the position was unpaid and “there was no board activity
[involving Mills] after December 2008.”

While Mills is also listed in some Clinton Foundation records as a director
until as late as 2012, the foundation and its filing vendor told the Free
Beacon this was due to an inadvertent filing error.

Mills’ outside roles could have opened her up to potential criminal
conflict of interest violations, according to ethics experts.

“A key element of those laws is whether the executive branch employee is
making decisions or playing an important role in a particular matter which
involves their other interest,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National
Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group. “At the minimum the
whole thing is fraught with danger.”

Mills would have been exempt from some ethics restrictions if she was
granted “special government employee” status at the time, which would allow
her to work in a part-time consulting role at the agency.

Last year, the State Department released a list of all of its SGE employees
under Hillary Clinton in response to a Freedom of Information Act request
from ProPublica. According to the list, Mills was classified as an SGE in
2013 but she is not listed in 2009.

The State Department told the Free Beacon on Friday that it is currently
trying to determine whether Mills was a special government employee in
2009. It was not able to produce a response by publication time. Mills did
not respond to request for comment.

Another Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, was classified as an SGE during her last
few months at the State Department. During this time, Abedin also worked as
a consultant at the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a company founded by
long-time Clinton associate Doug Band.

Ethics experts said even if Mills did have special government employee
status, she could not be involved in government matters that would help NYU
or the Clinton Foundation financially.

“The only rule that applies to both [SGE’s and regular government
employees] is that she cannot participate in matters that would financially
benefit a current employer, for example NYU,” said Richard Painter, who
served as chief White House ethics counselor under President George W.
Bush. “Same for anyone else or any foundation she worked for while working
at State.”

The Clintons maintained close relationships with NYU and the UAE during and
after Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department.

The secretary of state gave the NYU commencement address on May 13, 2009.

Bill Clinton was paid $175,000 in November 2009 for a speech in Abu Dhabi,
according to Peter Schweitzer’s book Clinton Cash. He also reportedly
received $600,000 for a UAE government event in 2011. Since then, the
former president has given additional paid speeches in the UAE, including a
controversial 2013 address at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus.

The Clinton Foundation has also received between $1 million and $5 million
from the UAE government.

“Federal of conflict interest statutes are very strict, and they want to
ensure that federal employees, especially very senior special employees
like Cheryl Mills, do not have any conflicts of interest in any matter that
they have a hand in,” said Boehm. “Given her position, the dual position of
counselor and chief of staff, presumably she would have access to almost
any decision of importance that came out of the State Department.”

Mills currently runs the BlackIvy Group, a consulting firm that focuses on
Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013 she rejoined the board of the Clinton
Foundation.

*For-Profit Schools Target Vulnerable Vets, Give to Clinton Foundation
<http://freebeacon.com/politics/for-profit-schools-target-vulnerable-vets-give-to-clinton-foundation/>
// Washington Free Beacon // Brent Scher – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton took aim at the for-profit education industry last week
saying it lies to military veterans to boost profits, but the industry’s
most predatory schools are Clinton Foundation donors.

Clinton during an event in Nevada last Thursday accused for-profit schools
of exploiting the so-called 90-10 rule in order to “target service members,
veterans, and their families with false promises and deceptive marketing”;
the rule, established by the amended Higher Education Act of 1965, caps the
percentage of total revenue for-profit schools can receive from Title IV
federal financial aid. The rule forbids for-profit schools from receiving
90 percent of their revenue from federal financial aid—but the amount of
federal money they receive in the form of veterans’ benefits is not
restricted—making service members and veterans attractive prey for the
revenue hungry industry.

The school relying on veterans’ benefits most has been the for-profit
University of Phoenix, which took in nearly $1 billion in G.I. Bill funds
from 2009 to 2014 according to PBS.

The Apollo Group, which is the parent company of the University of Phoenix,
has donated up to $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation and at least part of
that donation came as recently as 2014.

The University of Phoenix is highly effective at recruiting veterans. The
school’s San Diego campus, which has a high veteran population, took in $95
million through the G.I. Bill during that five-year span, which is more
than any other college in the country.

Unfortunately, much of that money is going to waste. A recent study found
that only 16 percent of University of Phoenix students graduate within six
years. For online students, the graduation rate is just 5 percent.

Brown Mackie College, also a 2014 Clinton Foundation donor, is part of the
Education Management Corporation (EDMC), which is the country’s second
largest for-profit college company.

A lawsuit from whistle-blowers against EDMC that became public in 2014
alleged that it was recruiting veterans by overpromising on post-graduate
employment prospects, and that EDMC was lowering the reported incomes of
its applicants with the goal of receiving more G.I. Bill funds.

“[EDMC’s] business is not that of an educational institution. It is a sales
company,” argued the attorneys in the suit. “Defendants place virtually no
stock in providing students with quality educational services and therefore
are not entitled to participate in the federal financial aid program.”

An earlier lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice argued many of the
same points, stating that EDMC disqualified itself from $11 billion in
federal and state funds due its recruitment practices.

The DOJ complaint stated that EDMC, which is partially owned by Goldman
Sachs, operated a “boiler-room style” sales team.

Recruiters were instructed to “exploit applicants’ psychological
vulnerabilities,” and targeted applicants “who were unable to write
coherently, who appeared to be under the influence of drugs, or who sought
to enroll in an online program but had no computer,” according to the suit.

Clinton’s criticism of the industry extended beyond its abuse of the 90-10
loophole.

“Unfortunately there are some programs that take people’s money and do not
produce the results that were promised, and we’ve got to crack down on that
and put them out of business,” said Clinton last week during an event at
Trident Technical College.

The Laureate International Universities, partially owned by the liberal
billionaire George Soros, have donated between $1 million and $5 million to
the Clinton Foundation. New York Magazine characterized Bill Clinton as the
“face” of Laureate, which enrolls 800,000 students worldwide.

Clinton was paid an undisclosed salary for his “honorary chancellor”
position with Laureate, but resigned earlier this year.

Laureate has been criticized for “turbocharging” enrollment at its schools
and lowering admission standards to the point that its schools are now “the
place you go when no one else will accept you.”

The Clinton Foundation also received money from Kaplan in 2014, which
earlier this year made a $1.3 million settlement payment to DOJ for using
unqualified instructors to teach students that were paying for their
education with federal funds.

Kaplan has been criticized for targeting students who would likely
drop-out—so it can receive government aid money without providing any
service.

The main target was “African-American women who were raising two children
by themselves,” according to a whistle-blower. Other markers that those in
the sales department were looking out for were “low self-esteem, reliance
on public assistance, being fired, laid off, incarcerated, or physically or
mentally abused.”

Kaplan derives 88 percent of its revenues from federal funding.

The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment.

*MSNBC Guest: Clinton Reminiscient of Nixon With Suspicion and ‘Nipping’
Scandals
<http://freebeacon.com/politics/msnbc-guest-clinton-reminiscent-of-nixon-with-her-suspicion-and-nipping-scandals/>
// Washington Free Beacon // Andrew Kugle – June 23, 2015 *

New York Times bestselling author Evan Thomas said Hillary Clinton has
President Richard Nixon’s qualities of suspicion and scandals nipping at
her.

Thomas wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he compared the
similarities between Clinton and Nixon.

MSNBC host Abby Huntsman said, “You say like Nixon, Hillary sees enemies
everywhere. She’s guarded, she’s secretive, and an awkward campaigner
hardly comes across as a politician who loves people, or the media, for
that matter.”

“Hillary is not Nixon; obviously she is not,” Thomas said. “But she has
some of the same qualities of suspicion and these little scandals that kind
of nip at her and she risks making them worse by stonewalling, and by
fending them off, and manipulating the press. Didn’t work for Nixon. May
not work for Mrs. Clinton if she keeps at it.”

Clinton has been criticized for her lack of access to members of the press
and the number of scandals that she hasn’t addressed.

*Hillary Clinton tells Americans to face their racism
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/23/hillary-clinton-tells-americans-face-their-racism/>
// Washington Times // S.A. Miller – June 23, 2015 *

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Americans
on Tuesday to take action against the persistence of racism in the country,
commending political and business leaders who have taken the initiative to
remove the Confederate battle flag from public display.

The former secretary of state plunged into the race debate following the
shooting massacre at a historic black church last week in Charleston, South
Carolina.

“I know it is tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated
incident, to believe that in today’s America bigotry is largely behind us,
that institutionalized racism no longer exists. But despite out best
efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far
from finished,” Mrs. Clinton said in a speech at church near Ferguson,
Missouri, where violent protests erupted last summer following the shooting
of a young black man by a white police officer.

“We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name
them and own them and change them,” she told the crowd at Christ the King
United Church of Christ in Flouissant, Missouri.

Mrs. Clinton, who has been aggressively wooing black voters, began focusing
on race relations early in the campaign. She called for justice reforms
after Baltimore’s race riots in April.

She has made several speeches on race since the shooting Wednesday killed
nine people at a Bible study meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Charleston.

Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man with ties to white supremacists, has
been charged with nine counts of murder in the attack, which appears to
have been motivate by racial hatred. The Justice Department is
investigating the killings as a hate crime.

In the speech, Mrs. Clinton called the church massacre an “act of racist
terrorism.”

She commended South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, for announcing
her support for removing the Confederate battle flag from the State House
grounds.

“It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said.

She also applauded Wal-Mart for taking the lead in announcing it would
remove Confederate flag merchandise from its shelves. Several major
retailers followed, including Amazon, eBay and Sears.

*Hillary Clinton a ‘LINO’ – Liberal in Name Only?
<http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2015/06/23/hillary-clinton-lino-liberal-in-name-only/>
// Fox // Elizabeth MacDonald – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton has rebooted her campaign as a classic Democrat liberal,
with a 45-minute policy speech on New York City’s Roosevelt Island last
week, named for President Franklin D. Roosevelt who launched the social
welfare state. Income inequality, higher minimum wage, pre-kindergarten
education, and tax credits were on tap, and it’s anticipated her campaign
will roll out new policies in stages in coming months.

The former secretary of state is racing across the country with her
policies in hand, with more than 20 fundraisers scheduled through July 3,
as Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders threatens to undercut her
progressive leanings.

But as Hillary Clinton declares war on the billionaire class, her
six-figure speeches, deep pocket donors on Wall Street and corporate
America from places like Citigroup (C) and Goldman Sachs (GS), already has
the presidential hopeful talked about as a “LINO”—a liberal in name only.

Clinton really isn’t running for a third term of an Obama presidency, an
Administration that, it turns out, relied on what I called back in 2010 on
Forbes on Fox “trickle down government” (which GOP presidential hopeful
Mitt Romney quoted two years later).

One thing Hillary Clinton is that President Barack Obama was not—a deal
maker just like FDR, Ronald Reagan (who both cut and raised taxes), and her
husband Bill Clinton. Republicans in control of Congress often depict
Clinton as someone who listens and is willing to horse-trade just like her
husband, who cut deals on financial deregulation (hotly debated), a
balanced budget, welfare reform, and trade.

Hillary Clinton’s progressive leanings are there. Clinton now decries
President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy in favor of tax cuts
for the middle class. Clinton is also taking a page from her husband who
campaigned on a middle class tax cut, but instead delivered a child care
tax credit (and cut capital gains taxes).

Clinton now wants tax credits for things such as student loans, and
repeatedly voted against repealing the estate tax on millionaires, which
slams small business. Clinton backed Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, fought for a nationalized health
insurance system, and comprehensive immigration reform.

But Clinton’s business leanings are also there, with speeches talking of
the need for a strong private sector that’s necessary to create jobs.
Bubbling up, too, is the still serious controversy about her State Dept.
email server and the Clinton Foundation, with “pay to play” charges over
cash donations from companies and foreign donors.

As secretary of state, Clinton worked on behalf of the private sector, for
companies like American Airlines (AAL), General Electric (GE), Microsoft
(MSFT), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Corning (GLW), FedEx (FDX), and Boeing (BA).
Nearly five dozen companies donated more than $26 million to the Clinton
Foundation also had lobbied the State Department during her tenure, says
the Wall Street Journal. Other outlets put the number as at least 181
Clinton Foundation donors that lobbied the U.S. State Department while
Hillary Clinton was in charge.

*Hillary arrives by private jet for Ferguson-area speech on race relations
and Charleston ‘terrorism’ – but friend of Michael Brown hammers her:
‘Where you been, Hillary? It’s been ten months, girl!’
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3136628/Hillary-arrives-private-jet-Ferguson-area-speech-race-relations-Charleston-terrorism-friend-Michael-Brown-hammers-Hillary-s-ten-months-girl.html>
// Daily Mail // David Martosko – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton arrived in a private jet on Tuesday to talk race relations
at a church whose rooftops can see Ferguson, Missouri. And she left some in
St. Louis's urban black community feeling cold, coming to town for a
campaign speech nearly a year after the riot-inducing shooting death of
Michael Brown.

In the neighborhood where Brown died in August 2014, his longtime friend
Robert Nettles told DailyMail.com that Clinton's brief visit to the scarred
town is 'just a little late.'

'Where you been, Hillary?' Nettles asked Tuesday afternoon. 'It's been ten
months, girl!'

Clinton's somber talk at an all-black church just up the road from the
Ferguson riots' boarded-up windows was a stark contrast from her
high-flying arrival at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, in a
private part of the facility most people never see.

Exclusive DailyMail.com photos show her descending the steps of a large
private jet and getting into a white van for a 10-minute ride to Christ the
King United Church of Christ in nearby Florissant.

She will hold court Tuesday night at a $2,700-per-person fundraising event
in St. Louis's deepest pocket of wealth, hosted by an Anheuser-Busch
heiress at an wildlife preserve once owned by President Ulysses S. Grant's
family.

But in the afternoon her rhetoric was focused at the chronic street-level
drama that has pitted black against white, and calmly wrapped itself up in
last week's racist mass-murder at a South Carolina church – an event that
she called 'an act of racist terror.'

'I know it's tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated
incident,' Clinton told the mostly black audience, 'to believe that in
today's America bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism
no longer exists.'

'But despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long
struggle with race is far from finished. We can't hide from hard truths
about race and justice. We have to name them, own them and change them.'

And speaking about this week's swift move in South Carolina toward removing
a Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds, Clinton said
still more action is needed.

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, she said, was right to see the flag 'as a
symbol of our nation's racist past that has no place in our nation's
present or future.'

'It shouldn't fly there,' Clinton said. 'It shouldn't fly anywhere.'

Clinton herself is now facing public doubts about the role of the
Confederate 'stars and bars' emblem in her own campaign, along with those
of her husband Bill when he was governor of Arkansas.

The pair presided over eight years of Confederate Flag Day commemorations.
Bill, himself a future president, signed a bill that described the Arkansas
state flag as including a singular blue star to commemorate the
slaveholding confederacy.

Four separate interviews in Ferguson suggest African-Americans at the
epicenter of last year's marquee race-politics story aren't ready to have
Clinton lead America out of its past and into a more color-blind future.

*Hillary Clinton camp won’t say if Confederate flag button was official
part of the ’92 presidential campaign
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3135820/Hillary-Clinton-camp-won-t-say-Confederate-flag-button-official-92-presidential-campaign.html>
// Daily Mail // Kate Pickles and Evan Bleier – June 23, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton is refusing to say whether a Clinton-Gore pin featuring a
Confederate flag was part of her husband's official campaign merchandise.

Examples of the distinctive red and blue badge, from the 1992 election, are
now being sold on Ebay.

It comes as politicians, including President Obama, called for the
Confederate battle flag to be taken down in the state capitol, a week after
a white gunman allegedly shot dead nine black worshipers at a church in
South Carolina.

Many argue the flag which  21-year-old Dylann Roof, charged in the
Charleston church shootings, was pictured with the Confederate, is a symbol
of hatred and should be consigned to museums.

But the former Arkansas first lady has not responded to questions by The
Blaze over whether she knew if the pin was part of the official campaign.
She has also failed to respond to requests over whether she is opposed now,
or opposed then, to an act signed by her husband honoring the Confederate
flag, the website said.

Mrs. Clinton weighed in on the South Carolina confederate flag debate back
in 2007 and still holds the view that it should be taken down.

America's largest retailer Walmart said on Monday that it will be removing
all products promoting the Confederate flag from its stores in the wake of
controversy following the South Carolina shootings.

As South Carolina leaders are pushing to remove the flag that flies at the
statehouse in Columbia, officials in Mississippi and Tennessee are
grappling with whether to retain Old South symbols.

Mississippi voters decided by a 2-to-1 margin in 2001 to keep the state
flag that has been used since 1894.

It features the Confederate battle emblem in the upper left corner - a blue
X with 13 stars, over a red field.

Republican Governor Phil Bryant on Monday repeated his long-held position
that the state should keep the flag as is.

'A vast majority of Mississippians voted to keep the state's flag, and I
don't believe the Mississippi Legislature will act to supersede the will of
the people on this issue,' Bryant said in a statement.

Democratic Senator Kenny Wayne Jones of Canton, chairman of the Legislative
Black Caucus, said the Confederate emblem is a 'symbol of hatred' often
associated with racial violence.

Jones said the flag represents the power structure's resistance to change
during the 1960s and '70s, when civil rights activists were pushing to
dismantle segregation and expand voting rights.

'We should be constantly re-examining these types of stereotypes that label
our state for what it used to be a long time ago,' Jones told The
Associated Press.

Since the 2001 Mississippi election, bills that proposed changing the flag
have gained no traction, with legislators saying voters settled the issue.

At the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville, a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a
Confederate general and an early Ku Klux Klan leader, has sat in an alcove
outside the Senate chamber for decades.

Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for the bust to be removed.

Craig Fitzhugh, the state House Democratic leader, said it should go to the
archives or a museum and be replaced in the Capitol by a statue of Lois
DeBerry, an African-American who became the first female speaker pro
tempore of the Tennessee House.

Women and minorities are underrepresented in government symbols, Fitzhugh
wrote.

'We need to revisit what we have displayed in the Capitol so that it better
represents a Tennessee for all of us,' he wrote Monday.

*Former Clinton Advisor: Hillary ‘Absolutely’ Has to Answer for Arkansas’
Confederate Flag
<http://www.mediaite.com/tv/former-clinton-advisor-hillary-absolutely-has-to-answer-for-arkansas-confederate-flag/>
// Mediaite // Alex Griswold – June 23, 2015 *

Appearing on CNN’s New Day, former Clinton advisor Paul Begala said that
Hillary Clinton “absolutely” had to answer for her husband’s embrace of
Confederate symbols as Governor of Arkansas.

“The Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign comes out and says, as she said back
in 2007, ‘I don’t like the Confederate flag, you should take it down,'”
host Chris Cuomo noted. “Does she have to answer for her time as first lady
in Arkansas with Bill standing by the Arkansas flag proudly when it, too,
is said to borrow from the Confederate symbology?”

“Well sure, absolutely,” Begala responded. “Times change, circumstances
change.”

The Confederate image in the Arkansas flag is not as blatant as other
states’ (such as Mississippi). But in 1987, Bill Clinton signed a bill
designating that a blue star added to the flag was in honor of Arkansas’
Confederate past.

*OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE*

*DECLARED*

*O’MALLEY*

*Martin O’Malley, the Confederacy, and the Maryland state song
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016-martin-omalley-the-confederacy-maryland-state-song/>
// CBS // Jake Miller – June 23, 2015 *

Martin O'Malley has waded aggressively into the recent debate over the
Confederate flag, but he wasn't so vocal about another Confederacy-related
dispute that arose in Maryland while he was the state's governor.

O'Malley called Sunday for South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag
from the grounds of the state capitol in the wake of a church shooting in
Charleston that claimed the lives of nine black parishioners.

"What a terribly jarring and callous sight then--in the wake of this racist
massacre--to see the American flag at half staff, while above it at full
staff over the state Capitol of South Carolina flew a Confederate flag,"
O'Malley, a long-shot Democratic candidate for president in 2016, told the
U.S. Conference of Mayors. "If the families of Charleston can forgive, can
let go of their anger, is it really too much to ask the state government
officials of South Carolina to retire the Confederate flag to a museum?
America must do better."

He continued in the same vein with an email to supporters on Monday,
calling the flag a "rallying banner for hate" and a "symbol of 150 years of
bigotry and racism."

But Maryland, too, has its own complicated history with the Confederacy.
The state never seceded from the union, but it might have done so absent an
intervention by the federal government. Many Marylanders, particularly in
the eastern part of the state, were sympathetic to the confederate cause.

That complicated history is reflected in the state's official song,
"Maryland, My Maryland," which was adopted in 1939 by the state
legislature. The song urges Maryland to secede, referring to Abraham
Lincoln as a "despot" and the Union itself as "northern scum."

"Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain," the sixth verse reads. "Virginia
should not call in vain."

The song has never erupted into a full-blown controversy like the one
currently surrounding the flag in South Carolina. But there have been
periodic attempts to change the song's lyrics, most recently in 2009, when
then-state Sen. Jennie Forehand, a Democrat, sponsored a bill to do just
that.

Forehand told the Washington Post that she couldn't recall O'Malley, then
the state's governor, speaking out on the issue. The paper reports O'Malley
was even "among several state leaders coaxed by a Washington Post reporter
that year into singing bits of the song that were posted online."

CBS News has reached out to O'Malley's campaign for comment, but no
response has yet been received.

The shooting in Charleston, allegedly committed by a 23-year-old white man
with white supremacist leanings, has breathed new life into a debate that
has persisted for generations across much of the American South.

Under the terms of a compromise struck in 2000, the Confederate flag was
removed from atop South Carolina's capitol dome and relocated to a civil
war memorial on the statehouse grounds. But South Carolina Gov. Nikki
Haley, a Republican, called Monday for the flag to be moved from the
capitol premises entirely, saying the controversial banner "does not
represent the future of our great state."

The move drew support from the Republican Party's roster of presidential
canddiates, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, offered similar praise for
Haley's decision. She also made sure voters knew she's been pushing to
retire the flag for years:

.@nikkihaley is right 2 call for removal of a symbol of hate in SC. As I've
said for years, taking down Confederate flag is long overdue. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 22, 2015

*O’Malley returning to Iowa on Sunday
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/06/23/omalley-returns-june-visit/29185449/>
// Des Moines Register // Grant Rodgers – June 23, 2015 *

Former Democratic Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin
O’Malley will return to Iowa on Sunday for house parties in Sioux City,
Carroll and Ames.

Sunday’s visit will be O’Malley’s third trip to Iowa since he announced his
candidacy May 30 in Baltimore. He attended house parties on June 11 in
Marshalltown and Mount Vernon before drawing approximately 150 people to
Iowa City pub the Sanctuary for an evening event.

The noon event in Sioux City is set for the house of Ben Nesselhuf and
Angie Schneiderman. Nesselhuf is a former South Dakota Democratic Party
chairman and the former campaign manager for 2014 Iowa Democratic 4th
District congressional candidate Jim Mowrer.

A 3:30 p.m. event in Carroll will be hosted by Carroll County Democratic
Chair Tim Tracy, and a 6:30 p.m. Ames event will be hosted by John and
Carolyn Klaus.

O’Malley is scheduled to return to the state again July 17 in Cedar Rapids
to appear alongside fellow Democratic contenders Lincoln Chafee, Hillary
Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Jim Webb at the Iowa Democratic Party’s “Hall
of Fame” dinner.

*SANDERS*

*Meet the Hilarious Comedian Now Impersonating Bernie Sanders
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/meet-the-hilarious-comedian-now-impersonating-bernie-sanders>
// Bloomberg // David Weigel – June 23, 2015 *

"Bernie Sanders" fixes his eyes on the camera and shares his pain. His
presidential campaign is not getting taken as seriously as it deserves.

"Despite the fact that 80 percent of everyone agrees with me on 90 percent
of everything," he says, "the corporate-controlled media says that I look
like a train conductor with cotton candy hair, and I sound like a bullfrog
with the personality of a library card."

To prove the media wrong, "Sanders" heads off on a tour of various
extreme-fun settings. He skateboards. He moshes at an LMFAO concert (or the
concert of a band that's as much LMFAO as he is "Bernie Sanders"). He drops
acid. All of this to prove that he's not boring, by rattling off statistics
in his brittle Brooklyn accent.

The Bernie Sanders in this Funny or Die video is not the Bernie Sanders
who's serving his third term in the United States Senate. This Bernie
Sanders is the latest interpretation of James Adomian, a 35-year old
comedian who previously perfected a dopey version of George W. Bush and a
realistically paranoid spin on Jesse Ventura. For a decade, Adomian has
done for put-upon white male politicians what Wendy Carlos did for
synthesizers.

"I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders," says Adomian, who lives in Los Angeles.
"I’ve always wanted to do a Bernie Sanders impression, but I didn’t believe
people were familiar enough with him to pull it off. And I’ve gone down the
rabbit hole of doing impressions that not everybody gets. It's not fun.
Sometimes, when you do Christopher Hitchens, the audience says, ‘Who?’ and
you want to say, 'Don’t you people read the news?' But I always wanted to
do Sanders. When he ran for president, I just pounced on it. Ah-hah! Well,
he’s running–everyone has to know who he is."

Adomian had tried out the Sanders persona before, briefly, when performing
in front of Washington, D.C. audiences that might have recognized it. Over
the last month, as Sanders has campaigned for president, Adomian has taken
"Bernie Sanders" onto other stages, and onto comedy podcasts. On May 18,
"Sanders" walked onto Community creator Dan Harmon's podcast Harmontown,
wearing a blazer, slacks, and vest that Adomian had cobbled together
because he did not own a suit.

"I'm a presidential candidate that everyone agrees with on everything, but
no one will vote for me," Adomian-as-Sanders said. "If one third of the two
thirds that support my position were to vote for me, that would be one
sixth of the population and I still would not win."

"So you think it would be tough—you don't think you're going to win?" asked
Harmon.

"Look, I'm not here to talk about winning and losing," said the
"candidate," wearing two white wigs on either side of his dome to simulate
the Sanders hairstyle. "That's the problem with American capitalism. We've
been too obsessed with the losers. That's how the middle $40 billion in the
federal budget goes to the top 1 percent of the top 2 percent of the top,
let's say, 17 percent of the country."

On the May 29 episode of "Sklarborough Country," Adomian had further
refined the character. He was less self-deprecating, more wonkish; he'd
spit out numbers and statistics faster than hosts Randy and Jason Sklar
could process them.

"Let’s talk hard numbers," said Adomian-as-Sanders. "The top 10 percent of
the top 12 percent controls over 40 percent out of the top 80 percent of
all of the income that’s enjoyed by the bottom 4 percent of the top 9
percent of the bottom 9 percent. That’s the kind of numbers we’re looking
at. There was a time in this country, 1950, a family of four could afford a
house for only $50,000. Now, for that same amount of money, $50,000, year
on year, inflation adjusted–you can only afford a doorknob and turn it
halfway."

The first version of "Bernie Sanders" was not unlike the lovable, obsessive
losers Adomian had inhabited for years—Paul Giamatti, Orson Welles, Jesse
Ventura. The former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler, who has
spent his post-government years wading further and further into fever
swamps, became a regular Adomian character. He would fill his voice with
gravel, pace around the stage, and see if anyone was ready to go off the
grid with him, or join the presidential campaign he was always five minutes
away from starting. "I'd not necessarily take questions, but take
everything back to either conspiracies or wrestling," says Adomian.

The Sanders impression is something else—something much more sympathetic.
"If you look at not just me, but at anybody doing an impression, you can
tell when the comedian is drawing blood and when they’re not," says
Adomian. "When I’m doing an impression this way, nobody’s going to think
I’m Bernie Sanders. They're going to see how I perceive him and how I
choose to bring him to life. I like this guy. You’re presumably going to
see that. When he’s doing interviews, he doesn’t answer the question the
way it’s wanted. He doesn’t get railroaded. He sort of corrects the
interviewer. I love that. It’s been a while since I had a character or an
impression that was juicy enough to let me improvise like that."

Adomian wasn't too fond of the last character that let him improvise. In
his mid-twenties, he got his first major national exposure for an
immaculate impersonation of George W. Bush. Plenty of Bush mimics imitated
the president's occasional word-mangling; Adomian blended that with a
doppleganger physical imitation. "From 2004 to the end of his presidency,
I’d go around at live shows and take questions from the audience," he
recalls. "It was really fun. People loved it. If I didn’t know the answer
to something, he certainly wouldn’t either. There was no way I’d be
stumped."

Adomian brought out "George W. Bush" on TV (Mind of Mencia, MAD TV), at
shows, even at the progressive blogger conference that's now called
Netroots Nation. In 2008, Adomian provided the voice of Bush for the HBO
drama about the 2000 Florida election, Recount. That same year, in Harold
and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Adomian played Bush as a simple,
hard-partying stoner who retreats to his man cave with a bag of "Alabama
kush" whenever Dick Cheney nears. Egged on by the titular potheads,
Adomian's Bush got high, then called former President George H.W. Bush to
declare his independence from the neocons. "Daddy," he said, "I don’t need
your friends to tell me what to do anymore!"

George W. Bush kicked open doors for Adomian, bringing him national
audiences and regular work, establishing him as a peerless mimic. The only
problem: George W. Bush was president. Most Bush imitators lost a vocation
when Barack Obama became president. Adomian was happy to move on.

"It’s fun to be able to celebrate the positive aspects of life, as opposed
to what it was like with George W. Bush," he says. "That was more like:
Jesus Christ, does it have to be this much of a nightmare? I’d much rather
live in a world where I get to make fun of things that are good and
awesome. Hopefully, Bernie Sanders will go a long way."

Adomian's thinking syncs up perfectly with the thinking at Funny or Die.
The eight-year old website tilts strongly and openly to the left. In 2010,
it reunited the actors who'd played presidents on Saturday Night Live (with
Jim Carrey taking the late Phil Hartman's role) for a video supporting the
creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Last year, it produced
an episode of Zach Galifianakis and Scott Aukerman's nihilistic interview
show "Between Two Ferns," where President Obama traded insults and promoted
the Affordable Care Act's enrollment period.

Funny or Die's bet was that comedy could be earnest, and could side with a
politician, without sacrificing laughs. Adomian's "Bernie Sanders" is
working in the same space. The portrayal of Sanders as a lovable,
numbers-obsessed square is not far from the image that's getting thousands
of progressives to turn out for the candidate's speeches. When asked if
he'd play "Sanders" to raise money for the campaign, Adomian considered it.

"I guess I’d have to research campaign finance laws, which would be a
hassle," he said. "I don’t know if Citizens United prevents me from working
for a campaign–I’m not a corporation, maybe there are more rules for a real
person. But I'm open to it. I am prepared, by the way, to continue doing a
Bernie Sanders impression should he win the presidency."

*Will Sanders stun Hillary in 2016 like Obama did in 2008?
<http://www.marketwatch.com/story/will-sanders-stun-hillary-in-2016-like-obama-did-in-2008-2015-06-24>
// Market Watch // Darrell Delmaide – June 24, 2015*

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren has officially missed the boat on running for
president, but that doesn’t mean Hillary Clinton has clear sailing to the
Democratic nomination.

Two leaders of the “Ready for Warren” movement that sought to draft the
Massachusetts Democrat have accepted her decision not to run and switched
their support to Vermont independent Bernie Sanders as the new standard
bearer for progressive policies.

Best of the Web Columnist James Taranto on the history of the Confederate
flag and federalism. Photo credit: Getty Images.

These policies, which are resonating with enthusiastic crowds, include
federal investment in infrastructure to create jobs; a higher minimum wage;
paid sick leave; higher tax rates for the rich; campaign finance reform; a
tougher line on trade accords; subsidies for higher education; and further
reforms to guarantee health care for all, among others.

“While Warren is the champion who inspired this movement, the draft effort
was never just about her — it’s about her message and the values she
represents,” Erica Sagrans and Charles Lenchner wrote last week in a blog
post on CNN. “Bernie Sanders has caught fire in a way that’s reminiscent of
the draft-Warren movement itself — from the Internet to town halls in Iowa,
Sanders has captured the imagination and support of people looking for a
real progressive challenger in the 2016 Democratic primary.”

Indeed, as reports flood in from Iowa, New Hampshire, Las Vegas, Denver,
Minneapolis, and elsewhere of standing-room-only crowds, switches to larger
venues to accommodate the thousands of people who show up for his rallies,
and impassioned testimonials from Democratic voters, Sanders is clearly on
his way to realizing the hopes many had pinned on Warren.

So “Ready for Warren” has become “Ready to Fight” and endorsed Sanders for
president, a move that could bolster his nascent campaign infrastructure
and channel grassroots donations to the Vermont senator.

While Sagrans and Lenchner don’t completely abandon hope of convincing
Warren to run, the success of Sanders on the campaign trail and their
support for him make it less likelier than ever that she will enter the
race.

None of this matters, however, to the Beltway pundits who continue to smirk
at the mention of “socialist” Sanders and see him at best as a slightly
clownish sparring partner for Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the
Democratic nomination.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll out this week delivered the latest
confirmation of Clinton’s position at the head of the pack — with 75% of
Democratic primary voters saying she is their preferred candidate, compared
to 15% for Sanders, and registered voters saying she would defeat any of
the three leading Republican candidates in the general election.

But the perceptions reflected in the polls and inside the Beltway are
lagging the reality on the ground, much as they did when Barack Obama built
up a groundswell of support against frontrunner Hillary Clinton in 2008.

An embarrassingly obtuse Chris Matthews led a “Hardball” panel last week in
cheerleading for Clinton because “she’s a Democrat and he’s a socialist.”

He dug the hole deeper as he caricatured Sanders’ policies as meaning “take
from the rich and use it for school programs and stuff like that.”

Needless to say, his panelists — including former Obama campaign adviser
David Axelrod and former Clinton speechwriter Lissa Muscatine — agreed with
Matthews’ glib assessment.

“I think Hillary`s fundamental approach reflects the mainstream of the
Democratic Party,” Axelrod opined, before continuing dismissively on
Sanders’ chances. “I think people will have a fling with Bernie. Bernie’s
like a great fun date because you know he`s not going to be around too
long.” Cue laughter from the audience.

Muscatine continued the charade by pretending like Matthews that Sanders’
desire for a more equitable distribution of wealth excludes growth while
Clinton’s lip service to greater equality is based on growing the pie,
raising all boats with a rising tide, or whatever cliché you prefer.

It is a media bubble like this that explains why MSNBC, which bills itself
as a liberal counterweight to the conservative viewpoint of Fox News, is
circling the drain in ratings as it misses the point of what’s going on in
this country.

Sanders has drawn within 10 points of Clinton among Democratic primary
voters in New Hampshire, site of the first primary, and he has just begun
to campaign.

Meanwhile, the barrage of news about Clinton’s deleted emails and conflicts
of interest inherent in Clinton Foundation donations and speechifying for
exorbitant fees by both Bill and Hillary Clinton has eroded support for the
former first lady more than the polls indicate.

As Clinton’s trustworthiness sinks into negative territory and more people
get exposure to Sanders without the filter of a dismissive media
establishment, what began as an impossible campaign and is now in the realm
of only the improbable may end up surprising the political establishment in
the same way Obama’s success did in 2008.

*Sanders crowds show Iowa Democrats’ passion
<http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/elections/sanders-crowds-show-iowa-democrats-passion/article_383a7490-bd3f-5d69-933e-cc1ff36d1c1f.html>
// Quad-City Times // James Q. Lynch – June 23, 2015 *

The crowds Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is drawing at campaign stops are a
sign of Iowa Democrats’ passion for the issues he is talking about, but
they don’t mean former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 precinct
caucus campaign is in trouble.

“You can never go wrong being the most liberal candidate” in the Iowa
Democratic caucus campaign, longtime Democratic strategist Joe Shanahan
said Tuesday.

But it’s often the establishment candidates who come out on top at the
caucuses, he told news reporters from across the country at a Poynter
Institute workshop on covering the caucuses at Drake University. He cited
the example of Howard Dean, a Vermont governor who took the 2004 caucus
campaign by storm but finished a distant third to John Kerry.

Shanahan, whose campaign experience stretches back to early campaigns for
former Sen. Tom Harkin, expects many Democrats to vote their consciences on
issues such as income inequality, peace and health care.

Republican caucus-goers also are likely to vote their consciences at the
February caucuses, said Tim Albrecht of Redwave Digital in Des Moines.

He cautioned reporters against handicapping the caucus race by who can win,
because activists often cast a “conscience-clearing vote” for the candidate
who most closely aligns with their beliefs “even if they can’t win.”

Albrecht and Chuck Larson Jr., Shanahan’s partner at LS2 Group, predicted
that Iowa Republicans will quickly get behind the party’s nominee because
the GOP base is so hungry for victory.

“We want victory. We want to change the course of the country,” Larson
said. “We will see a highly motivated and united GOP.”

Democrats’ response to Sanders doesn’t mean Democrats will be divided when
they have a nominee, said Brad Anderson, who ran President Barack Obama’s
campaigns in Iowa.

He’s been “genuinely surprised” by the size of Sanders’ crowds in Iowa —
700 in Des Moines and Davenport and 500 in Iowa City — and attributes that
to Sanders addressing Iowa Democrats’ top three issues: “income inequality,
income inequality and income inequality.”

Anderson doubts Sanders was able to capitalize on those audiences because
he didn’t have enough staff to capture names, addresses and phone numbers
of the people who attended the rallies.

In the end, he predicted that the enthusiasm Sanders is generating will
help the party.

“Everyone is thankful for the excitement Bernie Sanders brings,” said
Anderson, who works for Link Strategies, a Des Moines-based campaign
consulting firm. “It will make Clinton a stronger candidate.”

*Bernie Sanders plans 6 stops this weekend
<http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150623/NEWS0605/150629642> // Union
Leader // June 23, 2015 *

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has six campaign stops
Saturday and Sunday in New Hampshire.

The U.S. senator from Vermont is also secured a campaign office in Concord,
starting July 1, the Union Leader has learned.

Sanders begins the two-day swing with a 10:30 a.m. town hall-style meeting
at Nashua Community College. He is scheduled to speak at a house party at
the Bow home of Ron and Meredith Abramson at 2 p.m., then speak at a town
hall meeting at New England College in Henniker.

Sanders has three town meetings on Sunday:  10:30 a.m. at the Governor’s
Inn in Rochester, 1:30 p.m. at Oyster River High School in Durham, and 4
p.m. at Lake Opechee Inn in Laconia.

*CHAFEE*

*Verbatim: Lincoln Chafee on His High School Years With Jeb Bush
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/23/verbatim-lincoln-chafee-on-his-high-school-years-with-jeb-bush/>
// NYT // June 23, 2015 *

One of my dorm mates in 10th grade is running for president also, Jeb Bush.
We had some spirited games of Ping-Pong and our paths have not crossed much
since high school, but I think we still consider each other friends.”

— Former Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, discussing the subject of
high school friends in an interview with The Skimm. Mr. Chafee and Mr. Bush
went to Phillips Academy (known as Andover), a boarding school in
Massachusetts, from 1967 to 1971.

*WEBB*

*Jim Webb Is the Only Presidential Hopeful Who Won’t Comment on the
Confederate Flag Controversy
<http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/jim-webb-confederate-flag-south-carolina>
// Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal and Tim Murphy – June 23, 2015 *

By now, every 2016 presidential contender from both parties—those
announced, those undeclared—has weighed in on the Confederate flag
controversy that erupted after last week's mass shooting at the Emanuel AME
Church in Charleston, South Carolina, except for one: Democrat Jim Webb.

A former senator from Virginia, Webb has defended the Confederate Army and
the rebel flag in the past. But on Monday, when contacted by the Washington
Times, he declined to comment on the ongoing controversy over whether the
Confederate banner should continue to fly on the grounds of the state
Capitol in South Carolina. On Tuesday, Webb's spokesman, Craig Crawford,
told Mother Jones in an email that Webb "just has not been on the habit of
commenting on news of the day. He's not an official candidate." Webb has
previously said he plans to make an official announcement on running for
president by the end of June.

The silence makes Webb the only candidate in the field who has not
commented on the movement to take down the Confederate battle flag, which
Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley publicly backed on Monday
afternoon. All the Democratic candidates have supported this proposal, with
Hillary Clinton saying the Confederate flag "shouldn't fly anywhere."
Almost all the Republican candidates have backed Haley's move as well, with
some qualifying their statements to say that removing the flag is an issue
for South Carolina's residents to decide. But Webb has been conspicuously
mum.

Webb, who has two relatives who served in the Confederate Army, has a long
history of contrarian stances on the Confederacy, which headquartered its
capital in Richmond for the majority of the war. In a 1990 speech at the
Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, which Webb called a
"deeply inspiring memorial," he argued that Confederate soldiers' "enormous
suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by
most Americans."

"I am not here to apologize for why they fought," Webb also said in that
speech, "although modern historians might contemplate that there truly were
different perceptions in the North and South about those reasons, and that
most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather
than slavery." Many historians consider that view a whitewashing of the
Civil War's origins.

In his 2004 book Born Fighting, a popular history of Scots-Irish immigrants
in the United States, Webb complained that present-day attacks on the
Confederacy and the Confederate flag were part of "the Nazification of the
Confederacy." The book included a lengthy attack on post-Civil War
Reconstruction policies, and Webb claimed that the federal government
"raped the region" during this period. The passage was repeated in his
memoir, published in 2014.

"The entire region has been colonized from the outside, impoverishing basic
infrastructure such as schools and roads while the banking system and
corporate ownership sent revenues from Southern labor to the communities of
the north," he wrote in his memoir. The damage done, he contended, "in some
measure validated much of the resentment expressed toward the Yankee and
his minions."

That assessment is based on a 1938 report to President Franklin Roosevelt
on the economy of the South. Webb has also referred to this report during
his current tour of Iowa, as he decides whether to run for the White House.

Webb's longtime strategist, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, is an even more ardent
fan and defender of the Confederacy. As the New Yorker reported in 2008,
Saunders "sleeps under a Rebel-flag quilt, and when challenged on such
matters he has invited his inquisitors to 'kiss my Rebel ass'—his way of
making the point that when Democrats are drawn into culture battles by
prissy liberal sensitivities they usually lose the larger war." Saunders is
currently advising Webb on his potential presidential campaign.

*OTHER*

*Haley’s stock rises amid flag furor
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/245931-haleys-stock-rises-amid-flag-furor>
// The Hill // Niall Stanage – June 24, 2015*

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is attracting widespread praise for
leading the bipartisan effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from
the grounds of the Statehouse.

Haley’s swift response has put her back in the national spotlight, stoking
speculation that she could be the vice presidential nominee on the GOP’s
2016 presidential ticket. The 43-year-old governor saved her party from
divisive bickering and damaging headlines that could have lingered for
months.

While other prominent Republicans hemmed and hawed, Haley was clear  at her
press conference Monday that the flag must come down. Defenders of the
flag, meanwhile, largely remained silent.

The long-term political impact of Haley’s new stance — which is much
different than her position last year — is unclear. But the short-term
effect is obvious.

“It’s been her finest hour as governor,” said David Woodard, a Clemson
University professor who also serves as a Republican consultant in the
state. Woodard noted that he had worked for one of Haley’s rivals in the
GOP primary when she was first elected in 2010 and has never been
particularly enthused about her.

“I think she has handled it about as well as could be imagined,” said Will
Folks, the South Carolina political blogger who sparked a firestorm in that
same 2010 campaign when he claimed he had an affair with the married Haley.
(Haley denied his story.)

Folks added that he thought she had “done a good job of being a uniter. And
I say that as someone who has been critical of the governor on a wide range
of issues. I don’t think she’s done a good job as governor.”

Republican consultant Ford O’Connell also extolled Haley’s performance and,
asked about the broader political implications, suggested that “her VP
stock is probably on the rise again at the moment.”

Haley, whose national persona is that of a self-controlled politician, let
her emotions show in the aftermath of the killing of nine African-Americans
at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., last Wednesday evening.

When she appeared at a press conference announcing the arrest of the
suspected perpetrator of the attack, Dylann Roof, Haley’s voice cracked and
she became tearful.

“We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,”
she said. “And so we have some grieving to do, and we’ve got some pain we
have to go through.”

Haley’s actions in the heat of the moment have not won universal acclaim. A
Facebook post she wrote shortly after the atrocity noted that “we’ll never
understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and
take the life of another.” Some critics suggested those words were evasive
given the broad understanding even at the earliest stages that the attack
was racially motivated.

Others have pointed out that, as recently as last year, Haley suggested
during a televised debate in her reelection campaign that the Confederate
flag did not need to be removed from the Capitol grounds. She said that the
flag was “a very sensitive issue” and that perceptions of the Palmetto
State were important. But she also said of her efforts to attract new
employment to the state, “I can honestly say I have not had one
conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.”

That changed abruptly on Monday with Haley’s news conference urging the
flag’s removal. Standing by her side were many of the major political
figures in the state, including Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey
Graham, House Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn and GOP Rep. Mark
Sanford, who also served as Haley’s predecessor as governor.

In February, the Public Policy Polling firm found that 50 percent of those
surveyed in South Carolina supported keeping the Confederate flag, while 40
percent were opposed. The shooting appears to have changed that sentiment.

“I thought the people she had with her [helped create] a tremendous amount
of momentum now to do this thing,” Woodard said.

The political agility of Haley’s remarks drew accolades, as she emphasized
how private citizens would retain the right to fly the flag if they wished
and insisted that Roof had exhibited “a sick and twisted view” of the
emblem.

However, she added, “for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a
deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. … It’s time to move
the flag from the Capitol grounds.”

During her remarks, Haley mentioned her own election — she is the nation’s
second Indian-American governor, after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) — as
evidence that South Carolina could transcend the wounds of its past. She
had made the same point in the 2014 TV debate that touched on the flag
issue, suggesting her election was one of the things that had “fixed”
public perceptions of the state.

That point also highlights a reason for attractiveness on the national
level to a Republican Party that has struggled with crucial demographic
groups, including younger women and non-whites.

O’Connell said that Haley could potentially help with this problem were she
to be added to a presidential ticket. One asset, he suggested, is that “she
could stop the bleeding of women to Hillary Clinton.”

In 2012, there had been some speculation that Republican presidential
nominee Mitt Romney could choose Haley as his running mate. That didn’t
happen, and some have suggested that Haley could struggle with the rigorous
vetting that is required of vice presidential nominees.

During her first term, a data breach at the state’s Department of Revenue
resulted in personal information from almost 4 million people being
exposed. In 2013, she was fined $3,500 by the state ethics commission for
failing to disclose the addresses of eight campaign donors. Still, Haley
won reelection handily in 2014.

Earlier this year, Haley took some heat from the right when said she could
accept an increase in the gas tax if it was coupled with other tax cuts.
That issue is likely to resurface if she were being vetted for the No. 2
slot in 2016.

Now in her second term, Haley is scheduled to leave the governor’s mansion
at the start of 2019.

Many people believe she has national aspirations.

“There’s no more room for her to run for office here,” Woodard said. “I
think she would look for something at a national political level.”

*Clay endorses Hillary Clinton for president //
<http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/gateway-to-dc/clay-endorses-hillary-clinton-for-president/article_36c0f541-f99f-5137-a017-efd2c5c8cb34.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed>
St. Louis Post-Dispatch // Chuck Raasch – June 23, 2015 *

Rep. William Lacy Clay has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

That announcement came today from Clay, D-St. Louis, who said in a
statement that Hillary and Bill Clinton "share my lifelong commitment to
expanding opportunities for women, minorities and working families who are
struggling to achieve economic security and a chance at a better life for
their children."

Clinton is in the St. Louis area Tuesday for a community meeting at a
church in Florissant and a closed fund-raiser Tuesday night at Grant's
Farm. Clay called Hillary Clinton a "long-time friend."

Clinton leads polls ranking Democratic primary contenders in a field that
includes Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; and former Maryland Gov. Martin
O'Malley.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., previously endorsed Clinton.

*How Obama Can Heal the Democrats’ Split on Trade
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/how-obama-can-heal-the-democrats-split-on-trade.html>
// The Daily Beast // Jonathan Alter – June 24, 2015*

The White House looks to make a big push for infrastructure spending to
unite the Party, fix our bridges and roads, and save Obama’s legacy.

President Obama won a major bipartisan victory in the Senate Tuesday on
trade promotion authority, clearing the way for approval in 2016 of the
largest trade agreement in world history. But Obama has a problem: He won
with the help of only 13 of the Senate’s 44 Democrats. House Democrats are
even more annoyed with their president, who has leaned into trade
legislation more aggressively than he has other parts of his economic
agenda.

Those Democrats badly miscalculated this month. As Democratic Rep. Gerald
E. Connolly put it, their tactical vote to kill one of the party’s
priorities—trade adjustment assistance (TAA), an important progressive
program to help laid-off workers get re-trained at community colleges—was
like the sheriff in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles putting a gun to his head
and holding himself hostage.

Having lost what they mistakenly thought was their leverage, Democrats will
now reverse themselves and vote this week for TAA, a program they think
doesn’t do nearly enough to protect workers from the harsh winds of global
trade but is still better than nothing at all. And to make matters worse,
they’ll need the Republican congressional leadership to help them keep it.

This week’s bill signing will hardly end the trade debate. The
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal itself won’t be finalized until this
fall and submitted for ratification until early next year—just in time for
the first presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton will have to keep bobbing
and weaving on trade all the way to the 2016 general election.

In the meantime, Obama needs to figure out how to repair the rift in the
Democratic Party and show the country that he can deliver something big for
working people who don’t see much for themselves in trade deals. White
House officials tell me they are working hard to fund a big infrastructure
bill, but they are doing so amid a new oppositional liberal climate.

The latest trouble began when large numbers of liberal Democrats started
acting like the Tea Party Republicans who broke from the leadership of
their party to oppose the trade deal. From the anti-establishment base of
both parties came an understandable but ultimately irrational cry of
defiance, like King Canute raising his arms to stop the global tides from
rolling in.

That bipartisan resistance to reason—whether genuine or political—is
problematic in the 21st Century. Labor on the left and Tea Party
isolationists on the right have made trade deals a scapegoat for the
often-harsh consequences of globalization. But the global economy is not a
threat; it’s a fact. Our challenge isn’t to stand athwart history yelling
stop; it’s to nudge it and shape it for the long-term interests of the
country as a whole.

With the highway trust fund and tax reform both on the table, Obama should
devote the rest of 2015 on the domestic side to finding the money for
infrastructure.

Like Obamacare and any other landmark legislation, TPP has winners and
losers, but the winners aren’t just pharmaceutical companies and other big
corporations. Sharp reduction or elimination of tariffs and other barriers
in Asia will, on balance, help American workers. For instance, removing
Vietnam’s 80 percent tariff on U.S. autos will almost certainly mean jobs
for Detroit autoworkers over the next decade, and there’s a big boost in
TPP for the U.S.’s job-creating heavy equipment manufacturers (John Deere
tractors are popular everywhere but often too expensive to buy with all the
tariffs). The U.S. has major competitive advantages in services and IT that
will be enhanced by the deal. And all of our new mom-and-pop online
businesses will get a chance to export more, creating jobs.

The Obama Administration made a big mistake in not letting the details
circulate more widely. Secrecy breeds suspicion. It didn’t help that the
news media and social media are largely bored by global trade, which means
that vested interests are often the only voices. And the current deal has
shortcomings, especially in the enforcement provisions. As Sen. Elizabeth
Warren points out, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process
makes it easy for corporations to bring claims against governments, but
difficult for unions and environmentalists to do so. This needs to be fixed
at the bargaining table over the next couple of months.

But whatever the deal’s shortcomings, it is clearly advantageous to the
U.S. to set the trade rules for 38 percent of the global economy. The
alternative is to let China (not a party to the TPP) cut its own
preferential deals with its neighbors, which would be terrible for Asian
workers, the environment and U.S. strategic interests. Even with the
enforcement problems, the deal is a big win for the international
environmental and labor standards that, well, environmentalists and labor
leaders have been arguing for since the 1970s.

Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative, tells me that on everything
from intellectual property to Internet freedom to bans on expropriation,
“we’ve taken U.S. law as our starting point in these negotiations.” Froman,
a friend of Obama from Harvard Law School days, has received a chilly
reception from many congressional Democrats who are mindlessly leery of his
background at Citibank. They should listen more to his logic, which
suggests that it’s not in our interests to set off a competition for which
nations can have the fewest environmental and labor regulations and the
lowest wages: “We’re fighting to see a race to the top in the global
economy, not a race to the bottom that we can’t win and shouldn’t even try
to run.”

Of course the debate is not really about a logical assessment of the
advantages and disadvantages of TPP. It’s about the financial and emotional
body blows inflicted on organized labor and middle-class Americans in
recent decades—blows that Obama understands abstractly but has not
countered with sustained legislative efforts. His many speeches about jobs
and infrastructure—the same thing, since construction jobs can’t be
out-sourced—have been necessary but hardly sufficient.

So far, Obama hasn’t played good poker on his economic agenda. He should
have recognized that the Republicans needed a trade deal to show the
country they could get something positive done, then linked TPP to a jobs
program.

Fortunately there’s still time for the president to put his nose to the
grindstone on jobs in the same way he has with trade. With the highway
trust fund and tax reform both on the table, Obama should devote the rest
of 2015 on the domestic side to finding the money for infrastructure.
Unlike immigration reform or gun safety, this is achievable with
Republicans.

Few Republicans recall that the GOP was founded in the 1850s on what were
then known as “internal improvements” as well as opposition to slavery in
the territories. But many seem ready for creative policy-making on the
issue. Rep. Barbara Comstock and other influential conservatives I’ve
spoken with are open to a big transportation bill if a way can be found to
pay for it other than an increase in the gas tax.

The best solution (after a gas tax hike) lies in repatriated earnings. As
Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee explains: If American companies that have fled
overseas were taxed at a low rate (well below the capital gains rate) on
their repatriated earnings, the receipts would fund as much as $500 billion
in infrastructure investment. Matched by the private sector (quite likely,
actually), about $1 trillion would be available over ten years for
rebuilding the roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, rails and sewage systems
of the United States—enough (with the spin-off businesses) to offer jobs to
millions of the unemployed and propel a whole generation of older displaced
construction workers to retirement with some dignity. With interest rates
still at historic lows, we have an historic opportunity to lock in huge
projects that will quickly pay for themselves.

Republicans have other ideas for funding the transportation bill and
establishing an infrastructure bank. Several have offered a deal involving
offshore drilling rights. Or maybe it can be part of a Grand Bargain with
Rep. Paul Ryan on tax reform.

Whatever the solution, it should be sold not as stimulus—a dead-on-arrival
argument with the Republican Congress—but as a matter of strength and
competitiveness and national greatness. China spends ten times as much on
infrastructure as the U.S. as a percentage of its GDP. Do we really want
China to have a better infrastructure than ours?

Of course “infrastructure” sounds like a snooze. Many Americans don’t even
know what it means. So the domestic agenda of the end of the Obama era is
better framed as simply: Rebuild America.

Thinking big this way is terribly out of fashion in cynical, polarized
Washington. But both parties have an interest in using the bipartisanship
of the trade agreement as a model for the huge infrastructure investments
that can help rebuild this country. Republican members need to show the
public that their congressional majority can keep working positively, as
well as bring home long-overdue local projects to their constituents.
Democratic members, frustrated by their loss on trade, need a big win for
working people and for themselves. So does the president.

In fact, his legacy depends on it.

*Democrats work to blunt GOP attacks on global affairs in 2016
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/democrats-work-to-blunt-gop-attacks-on-global-affairs-in-2016-119305.html>
// Politico // Nahal Toosi – June 23, 2015 *

Democrats may nominate a former secretary of state as their presidential
nominee, but they’re still worried Republicans could win the 2016 foreign
policy debate.

On Tuesday, a progressive network of foreign affairs experts plans to
release a document aimed in part at influencing the White House race, one
of several formal and informal attempts in the works aimed at shaping an
already lively back-and-forth on America’s role in the world.

The Truman National Security Project’s platform touches on subjects ranging
from countering violent extremism to upgrading the U.S. energy grid. At
times deeply wonky and somewhat idealistic, the paper calls for ambitious
American leadership at a time of “blurring borders” and “contested spaces,”
according to an advance copy.

The Truman platform comes amid growing recognition that foreign policy and
national security, which rarely decide presidential elections, may play an
outsized role this time for at least two key reasons: the U.S. economy is
less of a concern and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group in an
increasingly tumultuous Middle East.

With the election still a year and a half away, Democrats insist they have
plenty of confidence and time to prepare. The Democratic front-runner for
president is, after all, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who can
boast more foreign policy and national security experience than any of the
many candidates on the GOP side.

Still, there is a lingering worry that Republican allegations that
President Barack Obama has diminished America’s stature will overshadow
Democratic efforts to promote solutions to a host of global challenges.

“It’s incumbent on progressives and on Democrats to put forward a
compelling, clear, forward-looking affirmative vision,” said Michael Breen,
executive director of the Truman Project.

Republicans have traditionally been viewed by voters as stronger on
national security, but the turmoil following the U.S. invasion of Iraq
briefly helped give Democrats the advantage. In more recent years, however,
the Republicans have rebounded: A Gallup poll last September that asked
which party would better protect the U.S. against terrorism gave the GOP a
23-point edge.

Those numbers weigh on Democrats, some of whom have been engaged in formal
and unofficial efforts to change the trajectory.

Over the past year, some 40 Democratic foreign policy wonks have been
meeting informally every six weeks or so to discuss the challenges facing
the party and a future administration. The so-called “Unison group,” named
after the Virginia town in which an early meeting was held, doesn’t plan to
issue papers or take official positions, and it is not affiliated with a
campaign. Participants work both in and out of government but attend
meetings in their personal capacity.

Still, the sessions give attendees ideas to chew over that they can
potentially use to advise campaigns. The group was born out of the
recognition that Democrats need to come up with innovative, out-of-the-box
ideas even when they are in control of the executive branch — and that they
shouldn’t just leave that work to the Obama administration.

Vikram Singh, one of the group’s coordinators, said that although Democrats
realize they face a challenge on foreign policy and national security in
2016, they don’t feel that Republicans have put forth much in the way of
alternatives.

He and others said that Republican calls for tougher policies and better
leadership, for example, haven’t been accompanied by concrete pledges, say,
to send U.S. combat troops to Syria to fight the Islamic State.

“When you dig in to what Republicans are saying, they have a really hard
time,” said Singh, who also is a vice president at the left-leaning Center
for American Progress.

Foreign policy and national security wonks on the right have long assumed
those issues will be a major part of the 2016 election, and they have
launched their own initiatives aimed at influencing the race. Perhaps the
best known is the John Hay Initiative, which brings together more than 250
experts and former senior officials, has some 23 working groups and has
helped staff some of the Republican campaigns.

The group was launched by some of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s
former advisers in the days after his loss in 2012.

“We have tried to be a resource on foreign policy and national security to
a number of candidates,” said co-founder Brian Hook, a former assistant
secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration. “We work with them
in varying ways.”

Republicans already are going after Clinton’s foreign policy credentials
and trying to tie her to the Obama administration’s perceived weaknesses,
even though Clinton has long been considered more of a hawk than the
president in whose Cabinet she served.

GOP candidates question whether Clinton’s tenure at the State Department
was fruitful, pointing out that her attempts to “reset” the relationship
with Russia yielded little, and criticizing her response to the attacks on
American officials in Benghazi, Libya.

Aside from think tank types (some of whom may be angling for a job in a
future Democratic administration and thus are careful in their comments),
some Democrats currently in public office also are speaking out about the
need for a new foreign policy vision.

In an essay earlier this month for Foreign Affairs titled “Principles for a
Progressive Foreign Policy,” Sens. Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz and Martin
Heinrich sketched out a more active role for Congress, saying it can “no
longer stand idly by, simply reacting to world events.”

The Democratic senators’ eight principles touched on many of the same
topics as the Truman Project’s strategic platform, including the potential
security threats posed by climate change and the importance of defending
human rights and gender equality abroad.

Heather Hurlburt, who studies policy and political discourse at the New
America think tank, said Democrats or Republicans trying to influence 2016
should try to do so soon, before the various campaigns lock down all their
foreign policy advisers, carve out their positions — and expect the wonks
to fall in line.

“This is the moment that, when people have smart ideas and thoughts,
there’s an incentive to get them out there in public,” Hurlburt said. “Now
is the time for ideas.”

*GOP*

*DECLARED*

*BUSH*

*Jeb Bush: I would fire OPM director over hack attack
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/23/jeb-bush-i-would-fire-opm-director-over-hack-attack/?postshare=9911435071071508>
// WaPo // Ed O’Keefe – June 23, 2015 *

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called for the ouster of the federal
government's personnel chief for failing to heed a watchdog's warnings of
potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

The recently disclosed breach of the Office of Personnel Management’s
security-clearance computer system took place a year ago and is now
believed to have affected the personal data of more than 18 million
current, former and potential federal workers.

Those disclosures have come as Bush has launched a new focus in recent days
on cybersecurity and the ongoing dangers faced by the public and private
sector. On Tuesday morning, Bush, appearing on the radio program, "Bill
Bennett's Morning in America," strongly criticized the Obama
administration's lax management of the situation.

"It's outrageous," he said, recounting recent reports that Chinese hackers
had access to the personal data for more than a year, and that federal
officials now believe the number of people affected is much greater than
initially acknowledged.

Bush also called on Obama to fire Katherine Archuleta, the head of OPM, who
has led the agency since Nov. 2013. Previously, she served as national
political director of Obama's 2012 reelection campaign.

"You have a political hack -- you have the national political director of
the Obama reelection campaign as the head of this," Bush told Bennett. "And
just as has been the case across the board when we have this sheer
incompetence or scandalous behavior, there's no accountability. No one
seems to be fired. If I was president of the United States, that person
would be fired.

"They did not follow up on inspector general's recommendations to tighten
up security to create a stronger firewall," he added. "The net result is
that the Chinese, apparently the Chinese have had access to this
information for over a year and it's a dangerous threat to our national
security."

The White House said last week that President Obama remains confident that
Archuleta "is the right person for the job."

In an op-ed about cybersecurity for the Web site Medium, Bush endorsed
House Republican legislation that calls for improved information-sharing
between the federal government and the private sector.

"Cybersecurity should be considered a critical element of our national
defense, economic well-being, and national resilience," he wrote. "We need
a President with the experience and trust necessary to mobilize public and
private resources to ensure that our critical infrastructure, networks, and
communications remain secure. These efforts will help guarantee America
remains on top throughout the ongoing technological and communications
revolutions that will transform fundamental aspects of our world, economy,
and society."

*Jeb Bush goes after Hillary Clinton, de Blasio on education
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/jeb-bush-hillary-education/index.html>
// CNN // Ashley Killough – June 23, 2015 *

A little more than a week into becoming an official presidential candidate,
Jeb Bush is sharpening his policy attacks against the left, attempting to
underscore his own experience by drawing contrasts with the country's top
Democrats.

On Tuesday, Bush went after President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential
frontrunner Hillary Clinton and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio by
playing offense on two issues he wants to own: education and national
security.

Education

In an op-ed for the New York Post published Tuesday, Bush lambasted de
Blasio over his high-profile fights with charter schools, accusing the
mayor of "doing everything in his power" to deprive "low-income kids of the
education they need to succeed."

He was referring in part to de Blasio's showdown last year with charter
schools, which are publicly funded but privately run. The public dispute
started after the mayor, citing spacing and financial concerns that he said
could affect public school students, denied requests from some charter
schools to use rent-free, unused public space.

But after sharp backlash, he ultimately decided to provide the free space,
due in part from pressure by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who sided with
the charter schools.

In the op-ed, Bush also hit Clinton, saying the Clintons "have an outsize
influence in New York politics" and "have largely" defended the mayor. Bush
did not state specifically how the Clintons have stood by de Blasio, though
Bill Clinton reportedly advised de Blasio at the time on the charter school
issue.

Although the mayor has longtime ties to Hillary Clinton -- he helped run
her 2000 Senate campaign in New York -- he has yet to endorse her
presidential run and did not attend her major campaign speech in New York
earlier this month, sparking speculation of tension between the two.

Representatives for Clinton and de Blasio did not immediately return
requests for comment on the op-ed.

While a number of Republican presidential candidates are staunch advocates
for school choice, Bush is attempting to become the leading voice on the
issue and make it a defining hallmark of his campaign.

He's making the school voucher program he implemented as governor a key
part of his presidential platform and has been a longtime supporter of
Success Academy -- the network of charter schools that fought with de
Blasio -- and stood by the organization during the battle last year.

The former governor frequently mentions in his stump speech the story of
Denisha, an African-American woman who went to a private school as part of
the Florida voucher system and became the first person in her family to
graduate high school, then later college. She was featured in his
presidential announcement video, and the campaign released an expanded
version of her testimony on Tuesday.

But he has also faced public fights of his own over school-choice issues. A
major provision of his voucher program, known as Opportunity Scholarship
Program, was struck down in 2006 by the Florida Supreme Court, which said
the program was using state dollars to fund private schools, some of which
were religious. (The program still provides vouchers to students in failing
schools who want to attend higher performing public schools, but not
private ones.)

Bush, however, also ushered in another program as governor that gives
businesses tax credits for donating to nonprofit scholarship organizations
that help send students to private schools. Still in place, that program is
currently facing legal challenges from opponents.

As he's pursued a presidential bid, Bush has also faced pushback from the
right over his support for Common Core standards. In an interview with
conservative radio host Bill Bennett Tuesday morning, Bush acknowledged
that the standards have become so controversial that perhaps it's necessary
to omit the term "Common Core" from the education conversation altogether,
something he's readily done on the trail in recent months.

"Obviously that term -- Common Core -- is poisonous because it means
different things to different people, which I respect," he said. "But ...
I've not met someone that says, 'hey give me lower standards' or 'let's
don't have any accountability.' That's the common ground amongst
Republicans and frankly amongst a lot of frustrated liberals as well."

National security

While Bush has gradually begun to take subtle digs at his Republican
opponents in the presidential race, his comments on Tuesday showed that
he's fully on board with taking aim at Democrats, an approach that signals
his strategy of focusing more on the general election than the Republican
primary.

In the same interview, Bush harpooned the Obama administration on matters
of national security, saying the head of the Office of Personnel Management
-- the government agency that recently experienced a massive cyberbreach
allegedly at the hands of the Chinese government -- should have been fired.

"If I was President of the United States, that person would be fired," he
said. "They did not follow up on the inspector general's recommendations to
tighten up security to create a stronger firewall."

And on ISIS, Bush tore into Obama's foreign policy, using strong rhetoric
to blame the President and Clinton, the former secretary of state, for the
unrest that has developed in Iraq after the U.S. withdrew its remaining
combat troops four years ago.

"There's no question that the President and Hillary Clinton have created a
maddening situation where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their
lives tragically," he said. "But we've created such instability by the lack
of involvement after we promised to do so, that we have to stick with it. I
don't think it's going to take a generation, but we can't expect this to
happen in a week, either."

*14 Years Ago, Jeb Bush Removed Confederate Flag In Florida
<http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015/06/23/14-years-ago-jeb-bush-removed-confederate-flag-in-florida/>
// CBS // June 23, 2015 *

More than a decade ago, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush faced a
similar decision as South Carolina officials—whether to remove the
Confederate flag from state grounds.

Bush as Florida’s governor, 14 years ago and with far less fanfare, removed
the Confederate flag from the state capitol in Tallahassee.

“Regardless of our views about the symbolism of the … flags — and people of
goodwill can disagree on the subject — the governor believes that most
Floridians would agree that the symbols of Florida’s past should not be
displayed in a manner that may divide Floridians today,” a Bush spokeswoman
said at the time.

On Feb. 2, 2001, Bush quietly retired the flag and placed it in the Museum
of Florida History.

Though his action drew scant public attention at that moment, Floridians
soon responded with a mix of praise and vile for the then-governor’s
decision, according to a review of his email correspondence.

“It is deeply disturbing to see all of this ethnic cleansing that has
suddenly emerged in almost all the Southern states today,” one Republican
supporter wrote Bush a month later. “I am very proud of my Confederate
ancestors and I feel I have rights too, but I feel my rights are being
trampled on and the various government officials are standing by and
letting these loud-mouth people ignorant of history, remove all the symbols
of the Confederacy and my ancestors.”

Another supporter told Bush his decision saddened her.

“We should be able to remember ‘all’ of the history from the South which
includes this,” she wrote that February. “History is history! It is not
discrimination but history and ‘everyone’ should realize that. I think by
removing the flag you are bowing to minority pressure vs. taking a stand
and leaving up another portion of the Southern heritage.

“The Civil War was not fought only for slavery, but for independence. I
wish people of all races would realize what the Confederate flag really
represents and if they did, they would not resent the flag.”

In 2004, three years after the flag was retired, tensions still stirred for
some.

“I would like to know why we can have a whole month to hear about black
history. But every time a southerner raises his heritage the proud
CONFEDERATE Flag we are considered a hate group or racist,” another
correspondent wrote. “The Confederate flag is Southern Heritage not HATE.”

A year later, in December 2005, a writer ended his email plea to Bush in
all capital letters. “PLEASE GIVE US BACK OUR HERITAGE, REPLACE THE
CONFEDERATE FLAG TO ITS PROPER PLACE, ABOVE THE CAPITAL BUILDING,” he
wrote. “YOU WILL SOON BE GONE FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA, BUT THE SCARS YOU
LEAVE WILL ALWAYS BE HERE.”

In 2001, one writer said Bush “risks the next election by taking the action
he took on removing the flag.”

Yet Bush won the next election in Florida — and not everyone was as
outraged by his decision to move the flag to a history museum.

One fellow Republican, from Orange County in the Orlando area, told Bush he
disagreed with those in the party who had criticized his move.

“I believe that the action to remove the confederate flag was an
appropriate and appreciated act of respect to many Floridians — especially
African-Americans — for whom it holds a very different, and far less
positive meaning,” he wrote in March 2001, a month after the flag came
down. “I applaud you for respecting those wishes and sensibilities from
communities whose wishes and sensibilities have not always been respected.”

Just after the flag came down in 2001, a woman wrote Bush, “You have no
right to impose your northern prejudices and misconceptions on the people
of Florida and to snub your nose at its history.”

The governor replied that the flags would be “respectfully displayed” at
the history museum. And he added a P.S.: “I am a Floridian born and raised
in Texas.”

*#Millennials: Want to #Hang With #JebBush
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/millennials-want-to-hang-with-jebbush.html>
// Daily Beast // Betsy Woodruff – June 23, 2015 *

Being a young Jeb Bush donor has some pretty sweet perks.

According to documents obtained by The Daily Beast, the campaign is looking
to motivate millennial would-be backers with the possibility of joining a
reception with “special guests” in Kennebunkport, the picturesque seaside
town where generations of Bushes have summered.

“Please accept Jeb Bush, Jr.’s challenge to become a member of the Young
Professionals 15 in FIFTEEN team in support of Jeb 2016!” read a document
circulated among wealthy Republican millennials. Jeb Bush, Jr. is Bush’s
youngest son.

The first 20 young professionals who raise $15,000 for Jeb Bush before the
June 30 deadline will be invited to Kennebunkport for an “Evening Picnic”
on July 9. That event will feature said special guest attendees.

The Bush campaign didn’t respond to a request for further details on the
picnic plans and mysterious guests.

All the Emerging Leaders also get “Limited edition YP 15 in FIFTEEN gifts”
and the privilege of being on a conference call with Jeb Jr. And, per the
document, they’ll be listed on the host committee for a “Young
Professionals” launch party in the Hamptons.

“YP 15 in FIFTEEN includes direct solicited contributions only,” says the
document.

Participants get a tracking number so the campaign can follow who’s raised
how much money.

Elder Kennebunkport aspirants needn’t fear. Members of the over-32 set can
be part of the 27-in-FIFTEEN team if they raise $27,000 by the deadline.
Documents indicate that there’s no twenty-person cut-off for them; if you
crack $27,000, that golden picnic ticket is yours.

The first 20 young professionals who raise $15,000 for Jeb Bush before the
June 30 deadline will be invited to Kennebunkport for an “Evening Picnic”
on July 9.

Plus, there are even cooler bonuses for the $27,000-raisers: They get to
stick around past the picnic for a “Morning Political and Campaign Briefing
with Jeb 2016 Senior Staff.” And they get to be on a conference call with
Jeb Sr. Yee-haw.

But the youths stuck with just a Jeb Jr. conference call aren’t necessarily
getting sold short. The Washington Post reported that the younger Jeb --
nickname: Jebby -- is “a frequent travel companion and active campaign
surrogate for his father, with a focus on building support among Hispanic
and millennial voters.” The paper also noted that Jeb Jr. has helmed
fundraisers for his old man in Miami nightclubs, New York apartments, and
Washington D.C. restaurants (presumably at the few that don’t suck).

It’s unclear if the Kennebunkport event will be inside the Bush family
grounds. If they do, construction is currently underway for a house on that
compound that will be designated as Jeb’s. The Boston Globe reported that
the home is going up on an acre worth $1.3 million

“[A]s he tries to appeal to middle-class Americans in his likely Republican
presidential campaign — and distinguish himself as his own man, distinct
from the legacies of his father and brother — having a vacation home
erected on a spit of land in coastal Maine could be a vivid reminder of the
complications facing his campaign,” wrote the paper.

The Globe’s warnings may not be packing much punch. Inviting generous
millennials out to the family’s ancestral town could indicate that Bush
isn’t as concerned about his family’s #brand as the paper suggests he needs
to be.

*Why Jeb Bush Wants the United States to Be More Like Estonia*
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/jeb-bush-cybersecurity-estonia>*
// Mother Jones // Max J. Rosenthal – June 23, 2015*

On Monday, Jeb Bush posted a column on Medium touting the need for
ramped-up cybersecurity efforts. "Given the reliance of the United States
government and the private sector on the internet, it is disturbing we
remain vulnerable to its disruption and misuse," he wrote.

The piece was mostly devoid of specific ways to fix those vulnerabilities,
but what Bush did propose raises some privacy concerns. The former Florida
governor cited Estonia, a tiny Baltic nation that's a world leader in
cybersecurity efforts, as a model to emulate. What he didn't say was that
Estonia's model is predicated on pervasive government involvement in
policing the country's internet infrastructure, with the central government
establishing a secure online national ID system for citizens. This is a
digital version of what US conservatives have long opposed: a national
identity card.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian president who's perhaps best known for
yelling at Paul Krugman on Twitter in 2012, wrote in a New York Times op-ed
the following year that people should in fact be more concerned with
cybercrime and hacking than government intrusion on privacy.

"At a time when the greatest threats to our privacy and the security of our
data come from criminal hackers and foreign countries (often working
together), we remain fixed on the idea that Big Brother, our own
government, is the danger," he noted.

In his Medium post, Bush offered one concrete suggestion: backing the
Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill that would give private
companies greater legal cover to share information on potential
cybersecurity threats with the government. Bush called the failure to pass
the bill a "critical impediment to cybersecurity," but privacy advocates
and technical experts who spoke to Mother Jones last week disagreed, noting
the measure would result in private-sector companies passing information on
consumers and citizens to government agencies.

"This isn't a cybersecurity bill—it's a surveillance bill," said Elizabeth
Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the
Brennan Center for Justice. "There is absolutely no reason to think that
that is going to provide any significant cybersecurity benefits."

*Jeb Bush: Obama Should Fire His ‘Political Hack’ OPM Director
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/jeb-bush-obama-should-fire-his-political-hack-opm-director-20150623>
// National Journal // Dustin Volz – June 23, 2015 *

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wants President Obama to fire the head of the
Office of Personnel Management amid a cascade of revelations about the size
and scope of an enormous hack of federal employee data from the agency.

The Republican presidential candidate Tuesday sharply condemned the
president's handling of the theft of personal data of millions of former
and current government workers, and said OPM Director Katherine Archuleta
needs to be removed.

"You have a political hack—you have the national political director of the
Obama reelection campaign as the head of this," Bush said on Bill Bennett's
Morning in America radio program. "And just as has been the case across the
board when we have this sheer incompetence or scandalous behavior, there's
no accountability. No one ever seems—no one seems to be fired. If I was
president of the United States, that person would be fired."

Bush's call for Archuleta's ouster is similar to statements made by a
handful of lawmakers—both Republicans and Democrats—last week following her
testimony before the House Oversight Committee. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the
panel's chairman, said that Archuleta, in addition to Donna Seymour, OPM's
chief information officer, should be fired for ignoring cybersecurity
recommendations made in inspector general reports issued over the past
several years.

Reps. Ted Lieu and Jim Langevin, both Democrats, also have said Archuleta,
who has been at the helm of OPM since late 2013, needs to go. Despite the
pressure, the White House press secretary Josh Earnest has said the
administration stands firmly behind Archuleta.

Bush, in his radio interview, echoed many of the grievances bubbling up on
Capitol Hill.

"They did not follow up on inspector general's recommendations to tighten
up security to create a stronger firewall," Bush said. "The net result is
that the Chinese—apparently the Chinese—have had access to this information
for over a year and it's a dangerous threat to our national security."

Archuleta began a week-long gauntlet of testimony Tuesday before the Senate
Appropriations Committee's Financial Services and General Government
subcommittee. In response to a series of questions about who should be held
accountable for for the two massive breaches disclosed over the past month,
Archuleta said: "I don't believe anyone is personally responsible."

"If there's anyone to blame, it's the perpetrators," Archuleta said, later
adding, "I'm angry as you are that this has happened to OPM."

Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican and chair of the Senate
Appropriations subcommittee, told reporters after Tuesday's hearing that he
was not ready to call for resignations at OPM, though he said that may
change as he learns more about the situation.

"I don't know exactly the extent of the second breach that's been
classified, so we'll do that this afternoon and we'll have her on," Boozman
said, referring to a closed-door briefing the Senate was scheduled to
receive from administration officials on Tuesday. "I don't think it's fair
for me to do that without having all the information."

Senior administration officials investigating the breach of employee
records and security-clearance information believe China to be the culprit,
but the White House has not publicly condemned Beijing.

*School choice is the best hope for New York’s kids – and America’s
<http://nypost.com/2015/06/23/school-choice-is-the-best-hope-for-new-yorks-kids-and-americas/?utm_content=buffer269d9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer>
// NY Post // Jeb Bush – June 23, 2015 *

Last year, I met a 14-year-old student who is thriving through his
attendance at a Success Academy school, a high-performing charter-school
network serving New York City’s poorest communities.

He’s an excellent student and debating champion. He also lives in poverty,
facing hardships most of us can’t imagine.

And yet the school he attends has him believing it’s possible to achieve
the American Dream.

As a decades-long advocate for school choice, I have met countless parents
and their children who have been given a second chance because of charter
and private schools.

We know school choice works just by looking at New York City’s network of
charter schools.

According to a study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at
Stanford University, “the typical student who remained in a NYC charter
school for four years was about two years ahead of his or her traditional
public school counterpart on math and four months ahead on reading.”

Our experience in Florida provides important lessons for the nation as well.

Prior to the adoption of our A+ reforms, graduation rates in Florida had
declined for several consecutive years to one of the lowest in the country.

During my governorship, we adopted three separate voucher programs and
nearly tripled the number of charter schools to spark competition in our
public K-12 system.

The teachers unions in Tallahassee fought us every step of the way.

But we pushed back for students and their parents, and the results speak
for themselves.

We delivered some of the most dramatic gains in student achievement in the
nation, especially among kids in poverty and students with learning
disabilities.

I am proud that more than 300,000 students in Florida are now benefitting
from a school-choice program.

I am more heartened that our high-school graduation rates have increased by
nearly 50 percent since we made choice a staple of our education system.

Sadly, teachers unions and much of the education establishment in America
continues to fight against parental control of education.

Mayor de Blasio, a protégé of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has taken up their
cause, fighting to undercut school choice at every turn.

While calling New York a tale of two cities, the mayor appears to be doing
everything in his power to keep it that way — depriving low-income kids of
the education they need to succeed.

The families of New York City charter-school students have not taken this
treatment lying down.

They’ve rallied by the thousands under the slogan “don’t steal possible,”
and at their urging, Gov. Cuomo and the state Legislature passed a law
guaranteeing charters rent-free access to unused public-school facilities.

Yet these schools continue to face a constant barrage of political attacks
and policies that constrain their growth.

The Clintons, who have an outsize influence in New York politics, have
largely stood by as Mayor de Blasio has attempted to undermine the benefits
that the Success Academies and other school-choice programs have provided
to low-income children.

Will former Secretary Clinton continue to put the interests of the
entrenched education establishment above the interests of kids in America?

There should be no doubt about my priorities.

As president of the United States, I will reduce the power and authority of
the federal Department of Education, sending more money and flexibility
back to the states so greater school-choice opportunities can be made
available to parents and their children.

It makes no sense to force students to attend schools where they aren’t
learning.

And it doesn’t make sense to spend taxpayer dollars on programs that aren’t
getting the results families deserve.

Few things are more important to the future of our nation than giving our
children the opportunity to receive a high-quality education that equips
them to compete in the modern economy.

*Jeb Bush blasts the White House on cybersecurity*
<https://fortune.com/2015/06/23/jeb-bush-cybsersecurity/>* // Fortune //
Robert Hackett – June 23, 2015*

Politicians are hitching their wagons to the star of cybersecurity.

Earlier this year, President Obama called for a cybersecurity summit at
Stanford University, using the occasion to push for new legislation and
announce new executive orders. Presidential hopeful Rand Paul raised his
profile recently by filibustering a key portion of the Patriot Act on the
Senate floor. And Jeb Bush has gotten in on the act, calling out what he
deems the nation’s digital defense failings in a post on the social
blogging platform Medium.

Bush’s thousand word proclamation—titled “The President Must Prioritize
Cybersecurity”–is mostly rhetoric. In it he praises the economic potential
of the Internet and admonishes attackers that have burglarized businesses
and the public sector. He lauds Estonian ingenuity and decries the
leadership of the Obama administration. He blasts defense budget cuts and
defends the oft-vilified snoop work of the U.S. National Security Agency.

In word, he plants his flag. And that flag bears the distinct marks of
hawkish heraldry.

“We have allowed these adversaries to threaten our citizens’ inherent right
to a trusted, free and open internet,” he writes, censuring the attackers
that have lately targeted retailers, health care companies, federal
agencies, and others. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Bush’s statement sets his political platform into motion on the digital
front. Using the example of the bleeding edge electronic reforms of the
post-Soviet state Estonia, he says, “if you rely on the internet, you need
to invest in protecting it.” And he asserts of the Internet and its central
role in U.S. commerce: “Something so important must be a priority for the
U.S. government, and yet it is not.”

He’s not wrong. Government has the poorest record of any industry sector
when it comes to fixing software vulnerabilities, according to a recent
report by the application security company Veracode. It also scores the
lowest in adopting commonly accepted web application security measures. In
an interview with Fortune, Veracode CTO and chief information security
officer Chris Wysopal said: “The government sector—it shouldn’t be a
surprise—is actually the worst over all industry vertical we looked at.
Worse than retail.”

Still, there’s no denying that cybersecurity has become a top priority for
the Obama administration, which has presided over a nation wracked with
revelations of NSA leaker Edward Snowden; beset by endless cyberattacks;
and left limping after embarrassing breaches of federal data. President
Obama unprecedentedly named, shamed, and sanctioned North Korea for its
role in hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment at the end of last year. He
also passed executive orders boosting federal power to impose economic
sanctions against hackers overseas.

But Bush points to the recent data breaches at the Office of Personnel
Management as “emblematic of the cultural failure of the Obama
Administration to take these threats seriously.” Then he uses the
opportunity to pile on with a barrage of rhetorical questions:

What use is it that President Obama issued an Executive Order or gave a
thoughtful speech about cybersecurity if his own Office of Personnel
Management — the human resources department of the entire US
Government — failed
to take basic steps to protect the sensitive personal information of
millions of its employees?

Where is the accountability? What consequences will there be for political
appointees or bureaucrats who failed to heed warnings and adequately
protect these key databases? What will happen to Katherine Archuleta who
served as the National Political Director For President Obama’s 2012
reelection campaign before assuming her role as OPM Director? What message
will it send to other managers throughout the government — and private
sector — if there isn’t accountability?

Bush falls just short of calling for Archuleta’s head. He stands opposed,
he says, to the current leadership’s policies. Never mind that Bush
supports increased cybersecurity information sharing between the corporate
world and government—a position he shares with president Obama, even if the
latter disagrees with the Republican-backed bill that’s now wending its
away through Capitol Hill.

In general, Bush asks a lot of questions but doesn’t answer many. That’s
probably because the answers are tough, technical, and to be determined. As
far as a plan goes, the only concretely stated one is to increase
investment and spending in cybersecurity. But one should keep in mind that
it’s not necessarily more money—more defense, military, and intelligence
agency spending—that will beget better cybersecurity. After all, the U.S.
spends more on defense than any other country by a long shot. It’s just as
important to infuse the culture with better processes and practices.

Bush also takes a moment to side with the controversial work of the NSA.
“The NSA is critical to our defense against foreign cyber-threats, and yet
the political class in Washington has been more interested in treating the
NSA as an enemy of the state rather than its defender,” he says. “We need
to preserve and enhance the capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community
and law enforcement to identify, deter, and respond to cyber-attacks.”

Overall, Bush’s post sets out to differentiate his position from
competitors like Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who,
aside from being a former member of the Obama administration, has been
skewered for her unsecure email practices. And his stance puts him in
direct opposition to contenders such as the libertarian Kentucky senator
Paul, who have come down hard on NSA spying and on military spending.

Jeb Bush’s record, of course, isn’t blemish-free. Earlier this year he
accidentally exposed nearly 13,000 social security numbers when making the
contents of his email archive public. (In his defense, the Florida
Department of State had reportedly approved the cache for publishing.) But
the point is: Poor security is endemic to the Internet. And while it may be
convenient to lambast the opposition for an ever escalating spate of
hacking catastrophes, cybersecurity should be a nonpartisan issue. No doubt
there will be a high hurdle for any politician to convince the public that
there’s a simple solution to the nation’s security woes.

*Jeb Bush: Obama caused ‘massive’ tax increase on middle class
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/23/jeb-bush/jeb-bush-obama-caused-massive-tax-increase-middle-/>
// PolitiFact // Lauren Carroll – June 23, 2015 *

After six years with a Democrat in the White House, middle-class Americans
face a bigger tax bill than they did before, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
said in a speech launching his 2016 presidential campaign.

"The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a
no-change election," he said in his June 15 remarks in Miami. "They are
responsible for the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt
increases ever, a massive tax increase on the middle class, the relentless
buildup of the regulatory state, and the swift, mindless drawdown of a
military that was generations in the making."

The claim that President Barack Obama and the Democrats have significantly
raised taxes is bound to come up frequently in the 2016 election, so we
decided to take a whack at it now.

When we asked Bush’s campaign specifically what tax increases he was
talking about, they pointed to the Affordable Care Act.

It's a claim we heard before, and one that is flawed. Bush is correct that
the Affordable Care Act raises taxes. But pinpointing the middle class as
the recipient of "a massive tax increase" is misleading. It's the
upper-class that is feeling the brunt of the impact. And health care
subsidies, in some cases, may be offsetting tax increases.

A note: The term "middle class" is hard to define, but for the purposes of
this article, we are roughly looking at a generous threshold that comprises
households making up to $250,000 a year.

Health care taxes

Let's get the big number out of the way. The health care law is expected
bring in more than $1 trillion in new taxes over 10 years, according to a
2013 Joint Committee on Taxation report. The revenue is coming in through
21 new or increased taxes.

Of those 21, 12 could affect households making less than $250,000 a year,
according to the Tax Foundation.

We’ve looked at this list of 12 before. Some primarily target the middle
class, others could hit certain people within the middle class, and others
are debatable. Bush’s campaign specifically sent us a list of the
conservative Americans for Tax Reform’s "top-five" Obamacare middle class
tax increases. The five Bush cited are all included in our larger list of
12.

A couple of the taxes are obvious, direct taxes on individuals -- such as a
tax on indoor tanning services and the penalty for not complying with the
individual mandate to have insurance. These only apply to select
individuals.

Many more are applied to companies, such as the excise tax on certain
medical device manufacturers or the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-cost
health insurance plans. Many economists anticipate that companies will pass
these taxes along to consumers in the form of higher premiums or more
expensive products.

In any case, none of these taxes affects every single member of the middle
class. It’s possible there are individuals who will incur most of these
additional costs, while others face a couple.

Whether or not these taxes are -- as Bush put it -- "massive" increases on
the middle class depends on individual circumstances, said Kyle Pomerleau,
a Tax Foundation economist.

"I would say that the tax increase in total was large and that some of it
definitely hits the middle class in some way," he said. "The degree to
which individuals are impacted depends on their situation."

For some perspective, total federal revenues are estimated to be about $40
trillion over 10 years. Tax revenue from the health care law, about $1
trillion, accounts for about 2.5 percent. Looking at the revenue just from
the 12 that might affect middle-class taxpayers (as well as those in other
income brackets), it’s about 1.25 percent of overall tax revenue.

"Almost certainly, yes, taxes have gone up for lower- and middle-income
people," said Roberton Williams, a fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax
Policy Center. "But have they gone up a lot? Probably not."

"If I were pulling words out of the air, ‘massive’ is not the word I would
pull," Williams said.

Many of these taxes tend to affect more people at the upper-end of middle
class, because people with lower incomes are less likely to opt for the
taxed services -- such as optional medical procedures or flexible savings
accounts, Williams said

Conversesly, some middle-income households might even see tax benefits of
the Affordable Care Act -- namely, insurance premium subsidies -- outweigh
any tax increases, he added.

Premium tax credits will save taxpayers about $19 billion in 2015, while
the five taxes cited by Bush and the Americans for Tax Reform list are
worth much less, said Laurel Lucia, health care program manager at
University of California Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and
Education. In total, those five taxes are worth about $11 billion per year,
she said, citing congressional research.

"I certainly agree Obamacare has increased taxes on the middle class," said
University of California Los Angeles law professor Eric Zold. "But it is
not clear that the middle class as a group are not better off by the
combination of Obamacare costs and benefits."

Other tax policies

It's worth noting, of course, that the health care law isn’t the only
policy that has impacted taxes in the last few years.

Some changes have had a positive impact on the wallets of the middle class.
Some changes have had a negative impact.

Soon after taking office, Obama signed a bill raising the sales tax on
cigarettes and other tobacco products to support the State Children's
Health Insurance Program. Less than 20 percent of the population smokes,
though polling shows that the percentage of the population that smokes
decreases as income increases.

In terms of tax cuts, Obama extended the Bush-era tax cuts for people
making below $250,000, as well as an array of beneficial measures for small
businesses. Additionally, he signed off on several stimulus tax measures to
assist with the 2008 economic recovery -- such as a temporarily reduced
payroll tax and an increased earned income tax credit. Some are still
around, but others have phased out.

It's fair to say that under Obama, for the most part, taxes have decreased
for lower-income people and increased for upper-income people, Williams
said. And it's a mixed bag for the middle class.

Our ruling

Bush said, "The party in the White House" is responsible for "a massive tax
increase on the middle class."

Bush pointed to the Affordable Care Act, which certainly does involve tax
increases -- some of which affect the middle class, though not exclusively.
It’s not accurate to call the tax increases for the middle class "massive."
Some individuals might see their tax bill go up, while others see the tax
benefits of the health care law outweigh the costs, and some might
experience a change so small they don’t notice it.

Looking only at the health care law also ignores other pieces of tax policy
that have affected the bottom line for the middle class.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

*RUBIO*

*Rubio hasn’t learned running for president is different
<http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/7/71/714484/opinon-rubio-hasnt-learned-running-president-different>
// Chicago Sun-Times // Mark Shields – June 23, 2015 *

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. – who, according to polls of Republican voters
nationally, wins higher favorable and lower unfavorable ratings than any of
the potential 2016 presidential candidates — has shown some real nerve and
more than a little brass. After The New York Times reported on Rubio’s
unorthodox personal finances— including his use, as speaker of the Florida
House, of the state GOP’s credit card for personal expenses, cashing in his
retirement account, and buying, with effectively no money down, three
houses (one of which he was forced to sell after five months of missed
mortgage payments) — Rubio did not retreat. Instead, he used a fund-raising
mailing to attack the Times for implying that he is not “rich enough to be
president,” seeking to turn the story against the Democratic front-runner,
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “It’s true, I didn’t make over
$11 million last year giving speeches to special interests. And we don’t
have a family foundation that has raised $2 billion from Wall Street and
foreign interests.”

Nice try, senator, but no sale. Running for the White House is totally
different from running for governor or senator. In the words of former
presidential pollster Peter D. Hart, “when you run for president, you are
flying at a much higher altitude than you have ever before experienced.”
The scrutiny, the pressure and the demands increase exponentially. The
American voter is far likelier to cast her ballot based on issues —
education, health care, taxes — in a vote for the House or the Senate,
where we have less feeling of actually knowing the nominees. But our vote
for the White House is almost always the most “personal” we cast. We are
bombarded with information and impressions of the individual candidates. We
hear from their high-school classmates, their car pool colleagues, people
they worked for (or who worked for them), their siblings, their in-laws and
their old neighbors.

We have also learned, painfully, that failed American presidents have been
failures not of intellect or education or experience but rather of
character, values and personality. In fact, Richard M. Nixon, our only
chief executive to resign in disgrace, had a first-rate mind. He had
graduated from Duke University School of Law, served as a Navy officer,
been both a U.S. representative and a U.S. senator from California, and
served two terms as vice president before being elected and re-elected
president.

In our most recent presidential election, Mitt Romney, the Republican
nominee, had been attacked in the primaries by former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich for his work as a venture capitalist leader of a bunch of “rich
people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company” and by then-Texas
Gov. Rick Perry for being a “vulture capitalist” whose Bain Capital laid
off workers in acquired companies solely to improve the bottom line.

This, reinforced by similar attacks from President Barack Obama’s campaign,
helps explain why Romney lost to Obama by an 81-18 percent margin when it
came to the quality of “cares about people like me,” which 21 percent of
voters told exit pollsters on Election Day is the most important one for
presidential candidates. Romney won majorities among voters who identified
“vision for the future” (29 percent), “shares my values,” (27 percent) and
“strong leader” (18 percent) as their most important presidential quality.
But he flunked the empathy test.

So it’s totally legitimate for the press and the voters to look at and
examine how a would-be president, especially one who makes fiscal austerity
a central issue, has made and has managed his or her own money. Because
Heraclitus remains as right today as he was 25 centuries ago, when he
wrote, “Character is destiny.”

*PAUL*

*Rand Paul: Flag ‘inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery’
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/rand-paul-confederate-flag-slavery-119322.html?ml=tl_27_b>
// Politico // Adam B. Lerner – June 23, 2015 *

Rand Paul waited until Tuesday to take a stand on the debate over the
Confederate flag, but he minced few words.

In an interview on WRKO radio in Boston, the Kentucky senator said he
agrees with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call Monday for the flag to
be taken down.

“I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery, and
particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify hated
so vicious that you would kill somebody, I think that that symbolism needs
to end, and I think South Carolina is doing the right thing,” Paul said.

The American flag and Mississippi state flag fly at half staff outside the
Forrest County Courthouse in Hattiesburg, Miss., Monday, May 11, 2015, in
honor of Hattiesburg police officers Benjamin Deen and Liquori Tate, who
were shot to death Saturday night. Four people have been arrested and
charged in their deaths and are to make their initial court appearance on
Monday afternoon.

“Obviously it’s a decision for South Carolina to make, but if I were in
South Carolina that’s what I would vote to do and that’s what I would
recommend to anybody who asked me my opinion,” he said.

Paul’s reaction, which came a day after Haley’s announcement and after the
reactions of a number of other prominent 2016 contenders, drew a far firmer
connection between the flag and slavery. Others, including Scott Walker,
Jeb Bush and John Kasich, praised Haley’s decision without commenting
directly on the symbolism of the flag itself.

“There have been people who have used it for Southern pride and heritage
and all that, but really to every African-American in the country it’s a
symbolism of slavery to them and now it’s a symbol of murder to this young
man,” Paul said.

*Rand Paul Says Confederate Flag Belongs in Museum
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/meet-the-hilarious-comedian-now-impersonating-bernie-sanders>
// Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23, 2015 *

Weighing in on the South Carolina Confederate flag debate for the first
time since the shooting of nine African-American church worshippers last
week, Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said Tuesday that the
“symbolism needs to end.”

“I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery,”
the Kentucky senator said in an interview with with Florida-based WKRO
radio, according to audio posted by BuzzFeed. “Particularly when people use
it obviously for murder and to justify hatred so vicious that you would
kill somebody, I think that that symbolism needs to end.”

Paul, who has made minority outreach a centerpiece of his campaign, said
it's up to South Carolina whether it removes the flag from the grounds of
the state's capitol, as Governor Nikki Haley urged Monday, prompting
support from other presidential candidates.

“But if I were in South Carolina, that’s what I would vote to do,” he said.
The flag's presence at a war memorial is controlled by the state
legislature.

Since last week's killings in a Charleston church, for which a white man
has been charged, the debate over the flag has also spread to Mississippi
and Virginia.

“There have been people who have used it for southern pride and heritage
and all of that, but really to I think to every African-American in the
country, it’s a symbolism of slavery to them," Paul said. “Now it’s a
symbol of murder for this young man and so I think it’s time to put it in a
museum.”

A Paul campaign spokesman, Sergio Gor, said in an e-mail the interview
reflected the senator's stance. “You should have his position from that,”
Gor said.

On Sunday, Paul came under scrutiny for receiving campaign money from a man
said to be a white nationalist whose group inspired the accused Charleston
shooter. Paul's campaign said he would donate the money to a fund to help
the shooting victims' families.

*Rand Paul Super-PAC Slams “Bailout Bu$h” in Bizarre Web Ad
<http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/06/rand-paul-super-pac-bailout-bush>
// Mother Jones // Patrick Caldwell – June 23, 2015*

Here come the crazed attack ads. More than seven months out from the first
votes in the 2016 presidential primaries, America's Liberty, a super-PAC
backing Sen. Rand Paul's bid for the Republican nomination, has put out an
online ad attacking Jeb "Bailout" Bush. It is…strange.

The video, which had more than 10,000 views as of Tuesday afternoon, is
framed as an infomercial, with an exuberant, wild-bearded speaker named Max
Power (perhaps borrowed from Homer Simpson, who took the same name from a
hair dryer) serving as the pitchman. The ad offers a Bailout Bu$h action
figure—which sadly does not actually seem to be for sale, probably because
it appears to be a different action figure with an image of Bush's face
pasted on—as Power shouts about how Jeb worked for Lehman Brothers right
before the crash and supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program. "This
offer guarantees a presidential candidate cannot win a single primary
state, let alone the general election," a voice-over says at the end of the
ad as Power bathes in a tub of money.

Per the Washington Times, America's Liberty is spending in the five figures
to run the ad online in early primary states, though it is also clearly
running in DC, since I encountered it when it popped up before a music
video on YouTube.

America's Liberty has close connections to the Paul camp. The super-PAC's
founder and president is John Tate, who worked as Ron Paul's presidential
campaign manager in 2012 and currently also serves as president of Campaign
for Liberty, a longtime Ron Paul organization.

*Rand Paul weighs in on Confederate flag: It’s a symbol of slavery
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rand-paul-weighs-confederate-flag-its-symbol-slavery>
// MSNBC // Benjy Sarlin – June 23, 2015 *

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday praised South Carolina Gov.
Nikki Haley’s call to remove the Confederate flag from state capitol
grounds, making him the final major GOP contender to weigh in on the issue.

“I think the flag is inescapably a symbol of human bondage and slavery —
and particularly when people use it obviously for murder and to justify
hatred so vicious that you would kill somebody — I think that that
symbolism needs to end, and I think South Carolina is doing the right
thing,” Paul told radio station WKRO.

Paul had kept quiet on the topic in the days following the massacre at
Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historic black
house of worship, that left nine people dead. A spokesman for the senator
told the Washington Post on Monday that he was “out of pocket” and not
available for comment.

“There have been people who have used [the flag] for Southern pride and
heritage and all of that, but really … to every African-American in the
country it’s a symbolism of slavery to them,” Paul said on WKRO. “And now
it’s a symbol of murder for this young man, and so I think it’s time to put
it in a museum.”

While the other major candidates weighed in before Paul via statements and
interviews, they carefully avoided taking a substantive position on the
issue until Haley joined a bipartisan group of top state officials on
Monday in calling on the legislature to take down the flag. Haley’s move,
which provided political cover for candidates wary of upsetting voters in
the early primary state, garnered immediate praise former Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Paul’s absence from the debate was especially glaring given his unusual
role in the party on matters of race. The senator has called on his party
to aggressively court African-American votes and has put in major work on
issues like criminal justice reform, which civil rights groups have made a
top priority in recent years.

There’s also an uncomfortable history for Paul, however: He gained national
attention criticizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act during his 2010 Senate run
(he later indicated his support for the law), and co-wrote a book with a
radio shock jock, Jack Hunter— who dubbed himself the “Southern Avenger”
and wore a Confederate flag mask. Paul also notably supported the
presidential campaigns of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who
has fiercely criticized Abraham Lincoln and published years of racially
inflammatory newsletters.

*CRUZ*

*Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill, blasts GOP leaders
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/ted-cruz-no-support-tpa-trade-bill-119319.html>
// Politico // Manu Raju – June 23, 2015 *

Ted Cruz is reversing his position on a major trade bill, calling it a
“corrupt” backdoor deal between Republican leaders and the White House.

The Texas firebrand and Republican 2016 presidential hopeful had been a
vocal supporter of trade legislation, even co-authoring a Wall Street
Journal op-ed in April saying that the fast-track bill, known as Trade
Promotion Authority, is a “fair deal” for the American worker. In May, he
voted to advance the TPA bill, which also included a worker aid package
favored by Democrats.

But just hours before a decisive Tuesday vote, Cruz is changing his tune.
He says he will vote to block the TPA bill, citing a series of deals
between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner
and Senate Democrats — namely over an unrelated issue dealing with the
Export-Import Bank. He also contends that a separate trade deal being
worked out by Obama could change immigration laws and not give Congress a
say.

In a fiery op-ed on the conservative Breitbart website, Cruz lashes Obama
and GOP leaders, saying the American people “do not trust” them.

“Enough is enough,” Cruz said. “I cannot vote for TPA unless McConnell and
Boehner both commit publicly to allow the Ex-Im Bank to expire—and stay
expired.”

The announcement is significant because free-trade proponents have no
margin for error. They cannot lose more than three Senate votes from last
May on the procedural motion to end debate on the TPA bill. If they do, the
fast-track bill could die — and with it, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the
most sweeping trade bill in history.

“Why does Republican Leadership always give in to the Democrats? Why does
Leadership always disregard the promises made to the conservative
grassroots?” he wrote.

Cruz, who has long aligned himself with the tea party wing of the party,
has taken some flak from the right for backing the trade bill initially —
so voting “no” now could insulate himself from some of that criticism. Yet
it could further alienate himself from big business and deep-pocketed
donors who are staunch proponents of expanded markets.

Cruz cites a deal cut on the Senate floor last month between McConnell and
Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Patty Murray
(D-Wash.) that would give Congress a vote to extend the charter of the
expiring Ex-Im Bank, an entity that Cruz says is riddled with “corporate
welfare.”

Cruz suggests that McConnell misled him last month on the day of the trade
vote.

“At lunch that day, I asked Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell what
precise deal had been cut to pass TPA,” Cruz wrote. “Visibly irritated, he
told me and all my Republican colleagues that there was no deal whatsoever;
rather, he simply told them they could use the ordinary rules to offer
whatever amendments they wanted on future legislation. “

He added: “Taking McConnell at his word that there was no deal on Ex-Im, I
voted yes on TPA because I believe the U.S. generally benefits from free
trade, and without TPA historically there have been no free-trade
agreements.”

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office, meanwhile, disputes Cruz’s
assertions in his Breitbart op-ed that the TPA could change federal
immigration law.

“We have been abundantly clear that we are not proposing and will not agree
to anything that changes U.S. immigration law, procedure, or practice,”
said U.S. Trade Representative spokesman Matt McAlvanah.

*Why Ted Cruz Can’t Quit the Gay Marriage Fight
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/why-ted-cruz-can-t-quit-the-gay-marriage-fight>
// Bloomberg // Heidi Przybyla – June 23, 2015 *

The Republican Party is hoping that a Supreme Court ruling before month's
end will close a chapter in American politics that has caught much of the
party between evangelicals who emphatically opposes gay marriage and many
voters who are supportive of same-sex couples.

Ted Cruz is trying to ensure that the debate is far from over.

While Republican leaders hope that the issue will be neutralized either way
the high court rules—by affirming social conservatives seeking to protect
states that still bar same-sex marriages or by issuing an unambiguous
statement in support of gay couples—Cruz has other goals.

The Texas senator is making evangelicals a bedrock of his 2016 presidential
campaign. He's making it clear that regardless of the case's outcome, he'll
keep pressing the issue.

'Religious Liberty'

"I believe 2016 will be the religious liberty election," Cruz said at a
gathering of faith activists in Washington last week. "Religious liberty
has never been more threatened in America than right now today.'"

Cruz has legislative, political and fund-raising motivation. In the Senate,
he's sponsoring a constitutional amendment shielding states that still bar
gay marriage, and he's already attacking his competitors. In his speech
last week, he derided Republicans who weren't supportive of religious
liberty laws in Indiana and Arkansas that opponents said would allow
businesses to discriminate against gay customers.

"I'll tell you what was saddest, just how many Republicans ran for the
hills," Cruz said, adding that Indiana was "a time for choosing."

Cruz's legislative challenge is going nowhere fast, given that it requires
a two-thirds majority of both chambers of Congress and ratification by
three-fourths of the state legislatures to amend the Constitution. But by
using his power to sponsor legislation, he can distinguish himself from
other conservatives in the crowded 2016 presidential field. That may help
him with the party's coveted evangelical base.

In the process, Cruz can also create headaches for more centrist (and more
front-of-the-pack) candidates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and
Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who need to get through the nominating process
without having to take stands that could hurt them in a general election.

Underlining the concerns of some party strategists, Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker, also among the Republican field's top-polling candidates,
recently threw his support behind a constitutional amendment to allow
states to ban gay marriage.

Practically Silent

Congressional Republican leaders are using megaphones to blast President
Barack Obama's health care law, which also figures in a major case the
court will decide by the end of June. By contrast, they've been practically
silent on gay marriage.

The same goes for Bush and Rubio. It's a reflection of the party's desire
to downplay a matter on which polls show they are at odds with the public.
A Gallup poll in May found that a record 60 percent of Americans support
gay marriage.

"The reality is the ground is shifting on this issue because of people
getting to know more about the fact that, for the vast majority of people,
this is not a choice, this is who they are," Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a
Republican whose son is gay and who supports gay marriage, said in an
interview. "Most of the candidates are not talking about it, which is
different than it would have been eight years ago.''

On the other side of the debate, Gary Bauer, president of American Values
and one of the nation's most vocal social conservatives, agrees that "the
party establishment and some of the donor base is very uncomfortable with
these issues.''

Voter Turnout

"What they need to ponder is the very real chance of demoralization among
voters that care about these issues that would suppress voter turnout,''
Bauer said.

As a senator, Cruz can introduce legislation on gay marriage, but there are
other Republican candidates who are competing for the evangelical vote and
who are eager to make an issue of gay marriage.

In May, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed a religious freedom
executive order. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, is promising to
fight "judicial tyranny'' and calling on his fellow candidates to join him.

"If you lack the backbone to reject judicial tyranny and fight for
religious liberty, you have no business serving our nation as President of
the United States,'' Huckabee said in a letter last week to more than 100
conservative leaders and organizations.

Cruz and the others are backed by activists who say the gay marriage debate
is a part of a broader assault on religious liberty that will eventually
strip them of their ability to openly practice their beliefs.

Religious leaders are concerned the ruling will force Catholic and other
religious-based adoption services to give same-sex couples equal
preference, Bauer said. "The battle is morphing away from just the question
of the definition of marriage,'' he said. `"That's going to be a huge
battle that is likely to be very divisive.''

King's Call

Iowa Representative Steve King, a Republican who is heavily courted by
Republican presidential candidates because he's from the state where the
first ballots of the presidential election will be cast,  has called for
"civil disobedience'' if the court rules in favor of same-sex marriages.
The National Organization for Marriage is urging all the Republican
candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination to sign a pledge promising
to support a constitutional amendment similar to what Cruz has proposed
defending marriage as between one man and one woman. And the Southern
Baptist Convention says it will reject any ruling affirming gay marriage.

Meanwhile, other Republicans are making clear it's a fight they'd rather
not have. During last week's Faith & Freedom Coalition meeting in
Washington, D.C., Cruz was the only 2016 candidate to aggressively address
the gay marriage issue.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican facing a tough reelection
battle, said his priorities are addressing the nation's debt and deficit
and turning back Obamacare.

'Pretty Definitive'

Once the court rules, "I would move on," he said in an interview. "The
Supreme Court rulings are pretty definitive. They just are."

That won't be easy to do for the 2016 field of Republicans because of
voters like Linda Cleaver of Cochranville, Pennsylvania, a member of the
Faith & Freedom Coalition.

"It will go everywhere and affect everything,'' she said of the ruling.
"It's Bill of Rights time,'' she said in rejecting the argument that
forcing Bush, Rubio and Walker into an aggressive posture against gay
marriage will hurt them if they become the party's nominee.

"I don't care what they think,'' she said of Republican strategists who
argue the party has a better chance of winning the White House if it avoids
divisive social issues. "They have their opinion, but they're out of
touch.''

*Ted Cruz's team stands by campaign aide who compared Confederate flag
removal to a 'Stalinist purge'
<http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-campaign-aide-compared-confederate-flag-removal-to-stalinist-purge-2015-6>
// Business Insider // Hunter Walker - June 23, 2015*

Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair
for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the
calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home
state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those
comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue.

"What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South
Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're
watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation
with Business Insider on Tuesday evening.

The shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina
that left nine people dead on June 17 has reignited a nationwide debate
over the flag. The alleged shooter, Dylann Roof, has been linked to a
website that featured Confederate imagery and a racist manifesto. This
prompted South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to call for the flag to be
removed from the capitol on Monday.

Bright made his comment when he was asked about Haley's move by the
Charleston Post and Courier. He elaborated on it in an interview with
Politico that was published Tuesday.

"It’s not just the flag," Bright said. "They want to take down the
Confederate monuments, I’ve gotten emails from people who want to rename
streets … anytime you want to basically remove the symbols of history from
a state, that’s something that just is very bad … these are honorable men
who fought for their homes, their home state, to disgrace them in the name
of political correctness is just wrong. They’re not here to defend
themselves."

Bright told Politico the Cruz campaign had not discussed the issue with
him, but he said he hoped presidential candidates would not tell South
Carolina how to handle the issue.

"I would encourage presidential candidates to let us deal with this,"
Bright said. "It’s deeply rooted history for a lot of us. I’m not going to
stand by and let our ancestors’ memories be besmirched. It’s one thing to
just take down the flag. They want us to concede that the soldiers that
fell for the Confederacy were a bunch of racists and I’m not going to
concede that."

Tyler, the Cruz campaign spokesman, said the senator agrees with the notion
the issue should be decided by people in South Carolina.

"The idea of outsiders coming in to South Carolina and telling them how
they should deal with their issue, the senator ... I think correctly, his
view is, let South Carolinians work it out amongst themselves and sort it
out," Tyler said. "And that's what's happening, there's a disagreement of
opinion, but that's part of the process."

Bright did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Business
Insider.

*PERRY*

*Rick Perry Is Still on the Payroll of a Controversial Pipeline Company //
Mother Jones
<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/rick-perry-energy-transfer-partners-pipeline-board>
// Patrick Caldwell – June 22, 2015 *

When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry launched his bid for the Republican
presidential nomination earlier this month, he declared his campaign would
emphasize energy policy. "Energy is vital to our economy, and to our
national security," Perry said during his announcement speech. He vowed to
green-light the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

Perry's staunch support of the energy industry is nothing new; he was a
reliable ally of the energy sector throughout his 14 years as governor. But
this year, Perry gained a new incentive for helping energy companies: He
started working for one. And two weeks into his presidential campaign, he's
still on its payroll.

On February 3, two weeks after ending his term as governor, Perry took a
position on the corporate board of Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based
pipeline company that transports natural gas and crude oil. "The Board
selected Mr. Perry to serve as a director because of his vast experience as
an executive in the highest office of state government," ETP's website
says. "In addition, Mr. Perry has been involved in finance and budget
planning processes throughout his career in government as a member of the
Texas House Appropriations Committee, the Legislative Budget Board and as
Governor."

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, ETP said Perry
could "receive cash compensation" as well as "equity compensation." The
company declined to disclose how much Perry will be paid for the gig and
isn't required to file disclosures revealing that figure until next year,
but in the past the post has come with about $50,000 in annual salary. "You
can expect compensation to be along the same lines as what was [last]
reported," an ETP spokesperson wrote in an email to Mother Jones.

Politicians running for higher office typically step down from corporate
positions while campaigning in order to avoid a conflict of interest. Jeb
Bush, for example, began to leave his spots on corporate boards last year
in preparation for his presidential run. The ETP spokesperson confirmed
Perry still sits on the board. (He's listed as one of seven members of the
board on the company's website.) A spokesperson for Perry's campaign didn't
respond to a request for comment.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Kelcy Warren, the company's CEO, has been a
major backer of Perry's political career. The billionaire contributed more
than $250,000 to Perry's super-PAC in 2012 during his first campaign for
president.

As Mother Jones' Bryan Schatz detailed last month, ETP is embroiled in a
controversial natural gas pipeline project that has riled up locals in
Texas. The company—working with the Mexico-based Grupo Carso, an industrial
conglomerate owned by billionaire Carlos Slim—is getting ready to start
construction later this year of a 42-inch-wide, 143-mile-long pipeline that
will run outside Big Bend National Park and is scheduled to be finished in
2017.

An ETP subsidiary is also seeking permission to construct the 1,100-mile
Bakken Pipeline, which would carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois,
and from there to refineries in Texas. If regulators in Iowa grant
permission to ETP, this 30-inch pipeline could transport up to 570,000
barrels of oil per day—about half the amount that would flow through the
Keystone XL pipeline. Just days before joining ETP's board, Perry appeared
on Iowa television and endorsed construction of the Bakken Pipeline. "I
don't have a problem with that—it's a pipeline, it's underground," Perry
said when asked about farmers' land possibly being seized by eminent domain
for this pipeline project. He added, "We probably have as safe a pipeline
industry in the country as there is in the world."

Twenty local groups have formed the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition to
fight the project. Even some Republicans have expressed opposition,
including Republican state Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, who objected to the use of
eminent domain. The Iowa Utilities Board isn't planning to hold a public
hearing on the proposal until November, when Perry will likely be
crisscrossing the state to gain votes before the February Iowa caucuses.
Certainly, ETP won't object if Perry, as he stumps, talks about the need to
build more pipelines. But as he pitches his drill-drill-drill energy
vision, will Perry tell voters he's on the pipeline payroll?

*HUCKABEE*

*Mike Huckabee Backs Nikki Haley on Confederate Flag Removal
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/mike-huckabee-backs-nikki-haley-on-confederate-flag-removal>
// Bloomberg // Ali Elkin – June 23, 2015 *

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Tuesday said he supports
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's call to remove the Confederate flag
from the state capitol grounds.

His comments come after he said Sunday the flag debate, which erupted after
the shooting of nine African-American worshippers in a Charleston church
last week, was “not an issue for a person running for president.”

“Now that Republican governor has spoken out and has said that it is an
awful symbol and she wants it to come down. Do you agree with her? Yes or
no,” interviewer Ed Henry asked Huckabee on Fox on Tuesday.

“Absolutely, because that's where it needed to be settled,” said Huckabee,
a former governor of Arkansas, a former Fox host, and winner of the 2008
Iowa caucuses. “She took leadership of her state and that's what governors
do. She was accompanied by the congressmen, by the senators, by the leaders
of the House and Senate. That's where this issue should be and it is being
settled. It shouldn't be settled by the New York Times or a bunch of
talking heads from the Washington roundtable. It ought to be decided by the
people who live in that state. That's what's happening and I salute
Governor Haley and the other people of South Carolina for saying 'Look, if
this is a distraction, this is something that inflames people, it's not
that important to us.'”

He denied that he had punted on the question earlier. He said on NBC's Meet
the Press on Sunday that while he didn't personally display the Confederate
flag anywhere but stopped short of stating his position on South Carolina's
display.

“I didn't punt at all,” Huckabee said. “I just simply said that the
president of the United States has nothing to do with what flags go on
capitol grounds.”

He isn't the only 2016 Republican candidate who came to support Haley's
move on Monday. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, former Florida
Governor Jeb Bush, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (who hasn't declared
his candidacy yet) also did.

Huckabee also said faith was a more critical topic for the country to
tackle than race in the wake of the shooting.

“I keep hearing, Ed, people talk about, 'We need more conversations about
race,'” Huckabee said. “Actually, we don't need more conversations, what we
need is conversions, because the reconciliation that changes people is not
a racial reconciliation, it's a spiritual reconciliation. When people are
reconciled to God—we saw it in those church members—when I love God, and I
know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as He
made me, I don't have a problem with racism. It's solved.”

*Mike Huckabee: ‘I salute’ S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley on Confederate flag issue’
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/23/mike-huckabee-i-salute-sc-gov-nikki-haley-confeder/>
// Washington Times // David Sherfinski – June 23, 2015 *

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he is saluting South Carolina Gov.
Nikki Haley, who called Monday to remove the Confederate flag from the
state Capitol grounds.

“I salute Governor Haley and the other people of South Carolina for saying
look, if this is a distraction, if this is something that inflames people,
it’s not that important to us,” Mr. Huckabee, a 2016 GOP presidential
candidate, said on Fox News. “What’s more important is a state where we can
create the kind of atmosphere that we saw out of the church members of
Charleston.”

Ms. Haley and other South Carolina leaders on Monday called for removing
the flag from the state Capitol in Columbia, less than a week after a white
gunman killed nine black parishioners in a Charleston church. Images have
since surfaced online of the suspected gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, holding the
Confederate flag and a gun.

“And I keep hearing … people talk about, we need more conversations about
race,” Mr. Huckabee said. “Actually, we don’t need more conversations. What
we need is conversions. Because the reconciliation that changes people is
not a racial reconciliation; it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people
are reconciled to God. We saw it in those church members. When I love God
and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much
as he made me, I don’t have a problem with racism. It’s solved.”

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, Mr. Huckabee had said the issue over
the flag is “not an issue for a person running for president” and that if
the state government of South Carolina wanted to address the issue, that’s
fine.

“But … if you can point me to an article and section of the Constitution in
which a United States president ought to weigh in on what states use as
symbols, then please refresh my memory on that,” he said. “But for those of
us running for president, everyone’s being baited with this question as if
somehow that has anything to do whatsoever with running for president. And
my position is, it most certainly does not.”

“As president, you’re focused on the economy, keeping America safe,” Mr.
Huckabee continued. “Some really big issues for the nation. I don’t think
they want us to weigh in on every little issue in all 50 states that might
be an important issue to the people of that state but not on the desk of
the president.”

Mr. Huckabee said in the Tuesday interview on Fox that he had not been
punting on the issue.

“I didn’t punt at all — I just simply said that the president of the United
States has nothing to do with what flags go on … Capitol grounds,” he said.
“Look, I think that we miss the real point of this, and when I’m asked that
question as a presidential candidate, what I’m being baited for is, ‘Is
South Carolina a racist state?’

“And so what I said was … as a frequent visitor to South Carolina, I look
at this objectively,” Mr. Huckabee continued. “You’ve got a female governor
who is of Indian descent, you have the only elected African-American U.S.
senator in the south from a state of 4.8 million people elected largely by
people who are mostly white. That’s not racism. And so the flag is an
important issue for South Carolina, but I don’t think the president of the
United States needs to be picking the symbols that fly on state Capitol
grounds. It wasn’t a punt, I didn’t squirm, I didn’t vacillate on it.”

He went on to say that the issue shouldn’t be settled “by The New York
Times or a bunch of talking heads from a Washington roundtable — it ought
to be decided by the people who live in that state.”

*FIORINA*

*Carly Fiorina: Cybersecurity ‘Has To Be a Central Part of Any Homeland
Security Strategy’
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/carly-fiorina-cybersecurity-has-to-be-a-central-part-of-any-homeland-security-strategy->
// Bloomberg // Ben Brody – June 23, 2015 *

Despite a Republican presidential field that (mostly) says the U.S. needs
to get more aggressive on national security, the candidates have been muted
on recent revelations that China has pilfered a massive cache of personal
information on millions of U.S. government employees.

But cybersecurity should be a "huge" part of the general security
conversation, and now is the right time to talk about it, according to
Carly Fiorina, who is among those seeking the Republican nomination.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, who has had first-hand experience with
cyber-security issues, sent out a statement in reaction to the hack at the
government's Office of Personnel Management, which could have exposed data
from up to 14 million current and former government employees, including
127-page applications for security clearances. Bloomberg invited her to
expand.

"This has to be a central part of any homeland security strategy," Fiorina
said in the interview. "The Chinese have had a long-term effort to hack
into our databases and systems, which suggests that we should have been on
guard for a very long time.

"I’m outraged about this," she added. "It is yet another example of the
complete breakdown of government competence."

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters,
U.S. officials investigating the intrusions at OPM and a number of
government contractors have confirmed that the hacks have been traced to
the Chinese intelligence service.

As a Republican presidential hopeful, Fiorina has political reasons to cast
doubts on the competence of President Barack Obama's Democratic
administration. Her background as a technology executive also makes talking
about cybersecurity an opportunity for her to distinguish herself in the
crowded field.

Her experience, however, is indisputable. She served on civilian advisory
boards for the CIA and National Security Agency. She was also instrumental
in securing a literal truck-load of servers for the NSA in the weeks after
9/11, according to the National Review.

So what would be her first concrete policy suggestion for preventing
another hack? Centralize the government's cybersecurity operation and put
it in the Department of Defense or the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence.

"You have to have a consolidated command that has the accountability, the
responsibility, for protecting the security of all government systems and
databases," she said. "You can’t have this piece-mealed throughout
government."

On this, she seems to agree with the president, who directed the government
to centralize cybersecurity efforts after a 2009 report found that "The
Federal government is not organized to address this growing problem
effectively now or in the future" and that "Responsibilities for
cybersecurity are distributed across a wide array of federal departments
and agencies, many with overlapping authorities, and none with sufficient
decision authority...."

The effort is far from complete, though. Even the deployment of hack
detection and prevention is still ongoing and a patchwork of agencies, from
the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security to the FBI are taking
responsibility for the security of government computers.

Fiorina also spoke about streamlining government bureaucracy.

"You have to have exceedingly competent people who are there because of
their particular expertise, not simply there because they’ve been in
government long enough to get there," she said. "Not everybody has the
skills to do this work."

In addition to a centralizing cybersecurity, Fiorina said the government
should work with the private sector to detect and repel attacks, although
Congress has hampered this by declining to pass legislation that would
protect companies that report breaches to the government from legal action.

"Everything in our nation now is dependent in very real ways in
network-centric technologies," she said. "While that gives us great
capability, it also gives us great vulnerability."

*TRUMP*

*Trump Surges in Popularity in N.H., Taking Second Place in Suffolk Poll
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/06/23/trump-surges-in-popularity-in-n-h-taking-second-place-in-suffolk-poll/>
// WSJ // Reid J. Epstein – June 23, 2015 *

He’s dismissed by the political professionals, but there is no denying that
the appetite for Donald Trump among Republican primary voters is real.

The New York developer and reality television star is second among 2016
presidential candidates in a new Suffolk University poll of New Hampshire
Republicans – behind only former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The poll of 500 likely GOP presidential primary voters found 14% back Mr.
Bush. Mr. Trump is right behind at 11%. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio come next, with 8% and 7%, respectively. The poll
tested 19 GOP candidates – a rare survey that included ultra-longshots like
Mark Everson and former Govs. Bob Ehrlich and Jim Gilmore.

While Mr. Trump is experiencing a bump in popularity after announcing the
launch of his campaign last week (he filed formal Federal Elections
Commission paperwork Monday), he remains the most disliked GOP candidate in
the field. Suffolk found he is the only GOP candidate with a net
unfavorable rating in New Hampshire — 37% of those surveyed had a favorable
opinion of Mr. Trump, compared to 49% who had an unfavorable view.

The candidate with the largest gap between favorable and unfavorable
ratings is Mr. Rubio, at 61% favorable to 14% unfavorable. Mr. Rubio was
also chosen as the second choice by 13% of poll respondents. Mr. Bush was
the second-choice pick of 14% of those surveyed.

The poll of 500 likely New Hampshire Republican presidential primary voters
was conducted from June 18, the day after Mr. Trump announced his campaign,
through June 22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage
points.

*Poll: Trump near top of GOP pack in New Hampshire
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/23/politics/donald-trump-second-place-new-hampshire-poll/>
// CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 23, 2015 *

Donald Trump is outpolling all other Republican candidates in New Hampshire
except for Jeb Bush, according to a new survey released Tuesday.

In a poll fielded immediately after their presidential announcements last
week, Bush earned 14% of the vote in the crowded GOP field, followed by
Trump with 11%. Nearly a third of respondents said they were undecided.

The results from Suffolk University are the clearest indication yet that
Trump, the billionaire with a penchant for bombastic rhetoric and
unorthodox claims, is catching on with Republican voters early on in the
cycle.

Pollsters tend to caution that surveys more than six months before any
votes are cast may simply be registering each contender's name recognition
-- of which Trump has plenty. Trump also joins a crowded GOP field in which
none of the candidates — including Bush — have been able to break out of
the pack.

In the 2012 cycle, several candidates with a penchant for making headlines
with their controversial claims -- such as businessman Herman Cain and
former Rep. Michele Bachmann and even Trump himself (though not an official
candidate) -- also garnered top spots in early polls only to crash to Earth
as the campaign dragged on.

Trump, as well, is a deeply polarizing figure in the Granite State -- 49%
of respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of him, while only 37%
viewed him positively.

"Trump's controversial candidacy is being constructed in a way that gives
him visibility and exposure in the short term but may also limit his growth
in the long run, like a glass ceiling," David Paleologos, who directed the
poll, said in a statement.

New Hampshire, with its first-in-the-nation primary, is a key battleground
for 2016 hopefuls.Trump has made five visits to the Granite State this
year, according to p2016, a website that tracks candidate visits to the
early states.

Trailing Bush and Trump were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 8%, Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio at 7%, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 6% and New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 5%. No other candidates earned more than 5%
in the Suffolk survey.

When asked for their second choice candidate, 14% of likely GOP voters
named Bush, 13% selected Rubio, 10% picked Walker, 7% said Trump and 6%
said businesswoman Carly Fiorina.

Suffolk surveyed 500 likely New Hampshire Republican voters between June 18
and June 22, yielding a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage
points.

*Trump’s Running – but the Joke’s on You*
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/how-much-is-trump-is-really-worth.html>*
// Daily Beast // Charles Gasparino – June 22, 2015*

Donald Trump says he’s really rich—worth nearly $9 billion ($8,737,540,000
to be exact). Forbes estimates that he’s worth less than half that much,
around $4 billion. Does it matter? The answer is definitively no, because
once the Donald Trump presidential charade is over he’s gonna be worth much
more than $8 billion—and worth every penny of it.

I have to say up front I’ve known Trump for years and I like him even if
much of his presidential announcement speech had my skin crawling.
(Describing many Mexican immigrants as “rapists” is at the top of my list.)
But I have long appreciated Trump’s resilience both in business and in his
personal life; anyone who remembers the early 1990s vintage Trump, when he
was both mocked as a business has-been and was by some estimates insolvent,
also knows that more recently his name and brand keeps getting bigger and
his wives keep getting hotter.

All of which leads me to believe that this man—who needs to brag about his
wealth and intelligence like most people need to breathe—is looking at this
presidential thing like he looks at everything else: how to make a brand
that’s big and profitable even more so.

For the record, I don’t know how much Donald Trump is worth, and in the
past he has been touchy when reporters have challenged his fortune’s size.
(He sued one reporter who quoted unnamed sources saying Trump was merely
worth hundreds of millions instead of billions for libel. In 2011, a New
Jersey appellate judge dismissed the case, saying Trump failed to prove
“actual malice.”)

Even so, every Wall Street firm I covered wanted Trump’s business as he
pulled himself back from his near-death experience in the early 1990s, when
some of his Atlantic City properties filed for bankruptcy. Trump himself
never filed for bankruptcy, which is probably why, as he began to rebuild
himself, his Wall Street broker was none other than the late Alan “Ace”
Greenberg, the legendary stock trader who only handled accounts of the
megawealthy.

Donald Trump isn’t really running for president; he’s running to make more
money and enhance a brand that’s bigger than his real-estate holdings and
golf courses.

To be sure, in his announcement speech Trump offered scant evidence that
he’s worth what he says he is; indeed, he has just filed the standard forms
with the Federal Election Commission, which will start a more-intensive
vetting process over his financial disclosures.

Those forms are pretty exhaustive, I might add; just go to the website of
the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and take a look at what candidates
need to disclose and you’ll understand why rich people generally don’t run
for president. Candidates are required to disclose, in detail, assets and
income, then transactions and gifts and travel reimbursements. Another
layer of detail involves disclosing liabilities and something called
“agreements or arrangements.”

Lastly, presidential candidates must disclose “positions (other than with
the U.S. government)” and “sources of income in excess of $5,000.” This is
why Karl Rove said on Fox News Sunday that other candidates should “ignore”
Trump until he files with the FEC, which he did late Monday afternoon.

Trump fired back on Twitter: “@KarlRove still thinks Romney won! He doesn’t
have a clue! @FoxNews,” and in another he vowed to make his initial
financial disclosures this week: “@KarlRove, who spent $430 million in the
last cycle and didn’t win one race, said I’m not a candidate until I file
papers. Next week Karl!”

Trump’s campaign manager told me that the full disclosure will be completed
in 30 days; Trump, he said, won’t seek extensions as Rove and others have
predicted.

We shall see. In any event, like Rove, I had my doubts that Trump would go
through with the whole disclosure process. What I never doubted is that he
loves the attention because the debate over the net worth of the new and
improved Donald Trump no longer turns on the vagaries of the real-estate
market but on the value of his brand.

Keep in mind much of the difference between the Forbes net worth estimate
and Trump’s own, which he says was compiled by “highly respected”
accountants, is the value of the Trump brand, which Forbes says isn’t worth
the $3 billion-plus Trump says it is.

But how do you really value a brand? Brands are worth what people think
they’re worth, and when you’re name is everywhere from hotels and
apartments buildings to reality TV, it’s easy to see how the numbers add up
and will keep adding up as he does this presidential dance that, quite
frankly, is amazing reality television.

That’s why I have no doubt that Trump will turn this new “serious” stage of
his life into a business winner. The way I see it, Donald Trump isn’t
really running for president; he’s running to make more money and enhance a
brand that’s bigger than his real-estate holdings and golf courses. And
with the people who matter to him the most, it doesn’t get cheapened by
occasionally disgusting rhetoric about immigrants or possible exaggerations
about his wealth.

He’s playing to his fans and there are many millions of them. They like him
on television and they like his real estate and golf courses. Another bet:
I don’t think Donald will run for president after all, regardless of
Monday’s FEC filing, or even if he does make those detailed financial
disclosures and somehow gins up enough publicity to get into the first GOP
debate in August.

In the end, I think he will call it quits because, after awhile, Donald is
going to realize he’s squeezed all the marketing juice out of the
presidential lemon that is possible, and anything more will end up hurting,
not helping, one of the world’s great brands.

He knows that, and that’s why he’s so rich.

*UNDECLARED*

*WALKER*

*Scott Walker, Promising ‘Bold Leadership,’ Faces G.O.P. Discord in
Wisconsin
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/politics/scott-walker-promising-bold-leadership-faces-gop-discord-in-wisconsin.html?_r=1>
// NYT // Trip Gabriel – June 23, 2015 *

As Gov. Scott Walker prepares to announce his campaign for president next
month, promising to bring what he calls “big bold leadership” to
Washington, as he did in Wisconsin, he faces a cloud over that story line:
Republicans back home are in revolt.

Leaders of Mr. Walker’s party, which controls the Legislature, are balking
at his demands for the state’s budget. Critics say the governor’s spending
blueprint is aimed more at appealing to conservatives in early-voting
states like Iowa than doing what is best for Wisconsin.

Lawmakers are stymied over how to pay for road and bridge repairs without
raising taxes or fees, which Mr. Walker has ruled out. The governor’s
fellow Republicans rejected his proposal to borrow $1.3 billion for the
roadwork, arguing that adding to the state’s debt is irresponsible.

“The governor rolled out $1.3 billion in bonding,” Scott Fitzgerald, the
Senate majority leader, said in an interview. “It’s not been well received,
is the best way to put it.”

The budget stalemate forced Mr. Walker late last week to move the goal
posts on the announcement of his all-but-certain presidential candidacy.
For months, he said it would come after he signed a new budget — timing
meant to contrast his ability to get things done with Washington
dysfunction.

But last Thursday, Mr. Walker said he would announce after “the end of the
budget year.” That is, any time after June 30, the last day of the fiscal
year. With lawmakers saying they might not finish their work before
mid-July, he will not wait for a finished budget.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, AshLee Strong, said the governor “is
optimistic an agreement will be reached in the coming weeks.”

It is unclear if Mr. Walker’s family feud with his Legislature will ripple
out to voter perceptions beyond Wisconsin. Polls suggest that he is the
early front-runner in Iowa and a top-tier candidate nationally, thanks to
his reputation with conservatives for defeating public-sector unions and
surviving a recall election in his first term.

Mr. Walker is making the case that unlike the senators in the Republican
race, who include Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul
of Kentucky, he has a record of hard-won policy achievements.

“Some want you to think they fight,” Mr. Walker wrote of his rivals on the
conservative website RedState last week. “But speeches aren’t fighting or
winning.”

In front of partisan audiences around the country, Mr. Walker often
portrays himself as more ideologically conservative than he has been in
Wisconsin. He takes credit, for example, for signing an anti-union “right
to work” law this year, something that actually bubbled up from his
Legislature after the governor insisted in his re-election race in 2014
that it was not a priority.

“I don’t think he’d be in the position he’s in right now if it wasn’t for
the Republican Legislature,” said Mr. Fitzgerald, who sponsored the bill.
“We’ve been a big part of that list of reforms.”

Mr. Walker has notched other recent successes in the Legislature that are
red-meat issues on the campaign trail, such as requiring drug testing for
people on public assistance and loosening tenure protection for professors.

One issue he played down in 2014 but has seized on in early nominating
states, where social conservatives are highly influential, is banning
abortions after 20 weeks.

Mr. Walker repeatedly refused to say if he favored such a ban during his
close re-election last year, when polls showed him unpopular among women.
In March, as doubts about his anti-abortion credentials were raised by
national conservatives, he pledged to sign a 20-week ban that was “likely
to come to my desk.”

What he did not explain was that he had asked Wisconsin lawmakers to send
him just such a bill, during a meeting in his office with Mr. Fitzgerald
and Robin Vos, the speaker of the State Assembly, also a Republican.

“Walker weighed in and said the 20-week abortion ban is something he would
like to see hit his desk,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “It sent a message to us.”

The governor specified that the bill should include no exceptions for rape
or incest, according to Mr. Fitzgerald.

The dispute with the Legislature is, at root, a debate over what is best
for Wisconsin’s economy. Republican lawmakers favor investments in
infrastructure and higher education, and the governor is committed to not
raising taxes.

Mr. Vos has accused Mr. Walker of avoiding an “adult conversation” on
infrastructure costs.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Walker boasts of lowering taxes by $2 billion
and presiding over a drop in unemployment from 7.7 percent in January 2011,
when he took office, to 4.6 percent. His fiscal discipline is echoed in his
penny-pinching lifestyle (he recently told of buying a $1 sweater at
Kohl’s.)

What he does not mention is that Wisconsin ranked 35th in job growth in the
nation during his first term, and that it trails its neighbors in the upper
Midwest.

The tax cuts and weakening of public sector unions have not spurred the
economy enough to avoid a projected budget deficit over the coming two
years.

The state’s nonpartisan budget office estimated this year that Wisconsin
would save $345 million in its budget over two years by accepting Medicaid
expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Unlike the Republican governors of
four nearby states, Mr. Walker refused expansion, a litmus test for
conservatives.

The governor got the greatest resistance on his budget blueprint, which
covers two years, over two proposals: to fill a hole in the transportation
fund with the debt financing, and to cut $300 million from the University
of Wisconsin system.

“The university doesn’t deserve this cut,” said Senator Luther Olsen, a
Republican, as lawmakers voted last month to restore $50 million of the
governor’s cuts. “We are fools if we go around bashing one of the best
things in the State of Wisconsin.”

To pay for road and bridge projects, Mr. Vos, the Assembly speaker, and
other Republicans favor raising vehicle registration fees. Mr. Walker
labeled a fee increase the same as a tax increase, and promised a veto.

“He wants to make a political point that ‘I didn’t increase fees or taxes,’
” said Representative Gordon Hintz, a Democrat on the Joint Finance
Committee, which crafts the budget. “The false choice created by the
governor’s presidential politics leads to outcomes which negatively impact
the people of Wisconsin.”

To accommodate the governor, Republicans are wrangling behind closed doors
over some combination of borrowing and delaying needed projects.

The governor’s press secretary, Laurel Patrick, said Mr. Walker has been
consistent in opposing an increase in the gas tax or vehicle fees without a
corresponding cut in taxes. “While obviously not our preferred option, if
legislators choose to reduce bonding for transportation in the budget,
Governor Walker would sign it,” Ms. Patrick said in a statement.

Mr. Fitzgerald, the Senate majority leader, said he did not have the votes
to pass a budget yet. “We’re trying to figure out how to get out of the
box,” he said.

*Scott Walker Reportedly Requested 20-Week Ban Without Exceptions For Rape,
Incest
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/23/scott-walker-abortion_n_7648740.html?1435093563>
// HuffPo // Laura Bassett – June 23, 2015 *

After declining to say whether he would support a 20-week abortion ban
during the 2014 election, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) specifically
requested that state legislators send such a bill to his desk without
exceptions for cases of rape and incest, according to a report by The New
York Times.

Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) told the Times that
Walker met with him and Robin Vos, the Republican state Assembly speaker,
and told them he wanted to see a 20-week abortion ban on his desk that did
not contain exceptions for rape or incest victims.

“It sent a message to us," Fitzgerald said of the meeting.

A spokesperson for Walker, who is running for president, did not
immediately return a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

The state Senate passed a 20-week ban without exceptions earlier this
month, and Walker told reporters that he would sign it.

“I think for most people who are concerned about that, it’s in the initial
months when they are most concerned about it,” said the 2016 presidential
hopeful. “In this case, it’s an unborn life, it’s an unborn child, that’s
why we feel strongly about it. I’m prepared to sign it either way they send
it to us.”

If Walker signs the bill, it will likely face a court challenge. The
Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that states cannot ban
abortions before the fetus would be viable outside the womb, which is
estimated to occur between 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. A federal appeals
court struck down Idaho's 20-week ban earlier this year, ruling it
"unconstitutional because it categorically bans some abortions before
viability."

*The true payoff from Scott Walker’s war on tenure
<http://nypost.com/2015/06/22/the-true-payoff-from-scott-walkers-war-on-tenure/>
// NY Post // Naomi Schaefer Riley – June 22, 2015 *

“For the love of God, tenure does not mean you have a job for life.” So
says Rebecca Schuman of Slate, fuming about the vote by the Wisconsin
Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee that would remove tenure at public
universities from the current state law.

Instead, Wisconsin’s board of regents, appointed by the governor, would be
able to fire faculty “when such an action is deemed necessary due to a
budget or program decision requiring program discontinuance, curtailment,
modification or redirection.”

Schuman, like the faculty at Wisconsin, is outraged by this development and
at Gov. Scott Walker for putting it into motion.

But she also suggests that tenure does not mean what we think it means.
Faculty are fond of saying that tenure is not total job security —
professors can be fired for just cause — but they have little evidence for
the case. Schuman absurdly writes that “tenured professors get fired all
the time.”

Like so much else in academia, perhaps the phrase “all the time” doesn’t
mean what the rest of us think it means.

Indeed, defending one tenured professor who was fired, a blogger for
Academe (a publication of the American Association for University
Professors) wrote, “Normally, the firing of a tenured professor is such an
extraordinary event that it involves acts of breathtaking misconduct or
total incompetence.”

Which comes much closer to the truth. So what’s the point of getting rid of
tenure?

Sadly, it will not do much for the bottom line.

Eliminating tenure, or at least loosening its grip, will allow the
university more flexibility in cutting programs with too few students.

Which is a shame, because even if only a few people want to take Russian
literature, it would be nice if the university could offer it. But this is
a public school, accountable to taxpayers.

Moreover, the fact is that more and more of the classes students take are
not classes like Russian literature or philosophy. They’re taking
vocational classes where the protections of “academic freedom” are simply
unnecessary.

Professors who teach computer science or engineering, let alone dairy
science or agricultural business management, simply don’t need to say
controversial things in class.

Eliminating tenure would have some real benefits, though. First, it would
send a message that the school cares about teaching.

Tenure is a system that rewards research. It gives teachers a permanent job
for what they’ve already published.

But teaching is a dynamic profession, and it needs to be evaluated
regularly and thoroughly. It’s rare for a tenured professor (or any
professor) to find his or her teaching evaluated by other faculty members
or administrators.

Yet, as any student could tell you, they should be.

Ending tenure would also send the message that the university is looking
for a different kind of professor. Right now college teaching attracts some
of the least entrepreneurial types. They are people looking for job
security, not high salaries.

Indeed, tenure is a perk, and just like health insurance or pension plans,
it means that colleges can pay people less. Richard Miller, the president
of the Olin College of Engineering (which does not offer tenure), told me
that having tenure is like being placed in “golden handcuffs.”

But “there are more important things than permanent employment.” Sadly, too
many professors seem to have forgotten that.

The real problem with tenure, though, is that it fails to do what its
proponents suggest. Universities are bastions of ideological uniformity.

At the Ivy League, for instance, 96 percent of donations in the 2012
presidential election went to Barack Obama. And it’s only been getting
worse in recent years.

Professors who don’t adhere to the orthodoxy on race, gender and politics
in general will find themselves not only ostracized, but investigated by
federal authorities.

University faculty simply hire clones of themselves year after year, and
then give those clones permanent jobs if they can survive seven years of
keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. It’s not a process that
encourages much disagreement or fresh thinking.

Fortunately, the process for becoming governor is a little different.

*CHRISTIE*

*Chris Christie to announce 2016 bid as early as next week
<file:///C:\Users\aphillips\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\K5560UZE\ry\2015\06\chris-christie-2016-bid-announcement-119354.html>
// Politico // Alex Isenstadt – June 23, 2015 *

Chris Christie is in the final stages of preparing his 2016 presidential
bid, with a formal announcement possible as soon as next week, according to
several sources familiar with the discussions.

The New Jersey governor’s planning has intensified in recent days. On
Monday, his campaign-in-waiting announced that he’d hired two additional
staffers in New Hampshire, a state seen as critical to his White House
hopes. Earlier this month, Maria Comella, a longtime Christie aide,
departed the governor’s official office to take a senior position at his
political action committee.

A Christie spokeswoman, Samantha Smith, declined to comment. The governor’s
aides have previously said that he isn’t likely to launch his presidential
campaign until the New Jersey legislature finalizes the state budget —
expected to be around the end of June.

The announcement will mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous political
career. After defeating a Democratic incumbent in 2009, Christie
established himself as the GOP’s foremost rising star — a swaggering,
tell-it-like-it-is pol who seemed to be the antidote for a party that was
struggling to win over voters in blue states. In the years since, however,
Christie’s national prospects have been damaged — especially by the
revelations that his top aides concocted a plan to close lanes on the
George Washington Bridge in an act of political retribution against a local
mayor who refused to endorse the governor’s 2013 reelection bid.

Christie’s once-stratospheric poll numbers — both nationally and in his
home state — have since plummeted. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll
released on Tuesday showed Christie with just a 30 percent approval rating
in New Jersey, while a Suffolk University poll showed him winning the
support of only 5 percent of likely voters in New Hampshire.

But Christie’s aides insist there’s room for him in the 2016 field. With
Jeb Bush struggling to distance himself from the rest of the pack, they
say, the lane for an establishment candidate remains open. Aides to Ohio
Gov. John Kasich, who is also contemplating a run, have put forward a
similar argument for his potential candidacy.

The hope, Christie’s team says, is that his authentic, tell-it-like-it-is
political brand will style will shine through, both on the debate stage —
Republicans are preparing to hold their first primary debate in August —
and in New Hampshire. The state has a history of breaking for moderate,
independent-minded Republican candidates, and Christie has been a frequent
visitor there. Those familiar with his early planning for a 2016 bid say
he’s prepared to make it the cornerstone of his electoral strategy.

In anticipation of his announcement, Christie has been hopscotching the
country in recent weeks, attending Republican cattle calls in Oklahoma
City, Utah and Washington, D.C., where he delivered fiery speeches
castigating a Republican rival, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, over national
security.

“If you want to know how little [senators] know, watch what Rand Paul’s
done the last two weeks,” Christie told Republican donors at a conference
in Deer Valley, Utah, hosted by Mitt Romney, referring to Paul’s opposition
to the Patriot Act. “Because I will tell you, he’s made America weaker and
more vulnerable, and he’s done it for his own personal and political gain,
and he’s done it to raise money.”

Christie has also delivered speeches in early primary states in which he’s
detailed his policy proposals on issues like entitlements, taxes, and
electronic surveillance.

In addition to building a campaign apparatus, Christie has also hired for a
super PAC, America Leads, that will be supporting his candidacy. The group
recently announced that it had brought on Gene Ulm, a veteran Republican
pollster, and Mike Leavitt, a mail consultant.

While Christie won’t be nearly as heavily funded as Bush — whose super PAC
is believed to have brought in around $100 million so far — the New Jersey
governor has a team of donors that includes Home Depot CEO Ken Langone and
hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller. Both are expected to write big
checks. (“I am going to work my ass off to make sure that Chris Christie
never needs money,” Langone told POLITICO in January.)

Earlier this month, Christie dropped another hint that he was nearing a
run. While campaigning in New Hampshire, the governor said that his family
— one of the last major hurdles to his entering the race — was on board.

“This is about me now,” he said.

*Chris Christie’s approval rating: 30 percent
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/poll-chris-christie-approval-rating-30-percent-119316.html>
// Politico // Nick Gass – June 23, 2015 *

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is still not winning any favor with Garden
State voters, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll released
Tuesday.

Christie, who is in the midst of planning a presidential run, has an
approval rating of 30 percent, below what is usually expected for a White
House hopeful in his own state, where 55 percent disapprove of his
performance. His numbers are down from the last FDU poll in April, in which
36 percent of voters approved of the job he was doing,

compared to 50 percent who did not.

“The good news is that none of his potential presidential opponents have
emerged with a decisive lead yet. The bad news is that he is the governor
in a state where a sizable majority give a thumbs down to his leadership,”
said Krista Jenkins, professor of political science and director of
PublicMind.

Christie’s job approval numbers are similar to those of fellow Republican
Gov. Bobby Jindal, whose Louisiana electorate has shown disapproval with
that presidential aspirant as well.

A plurality of Garden State voters (42 percent) said that they like
Christie less than when he first took office. A plurality of Republican
voters (38 percent) said the same thing. At the same time, 41 percent said
their opinion of him was unchanged, well within the margin of error.

Voters also disapproved of the job their state legislature is doing, 24
percent approving to 44 percent disapproving.

The poll was conducted June 15-21, surveying 792 registered voters via
landline and cellphone, with an overall margin of error of plus-or-minus
3.7 percentage points.

*Watch Chris Christie’s Approval Rating Free Fall in One Chart*
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-23/watch-chris-christie-s-approval-rating-free-fall-in-one-chart>*
// Bloomberg // Andrew Feather – June 23, 2015*

Gov. Chris Christie demonstrated his political strength in 2013, winning 60
percent of the vote and maintaining his strength in public opinion polls.
That, however, didn't last long. His approval rating soon went into free
fall as the "Bridgegate" investigation ramped up, along with other
allegations, such as those made by the mayor of Hoboken on Hurricane Sandy
funds.

Christie's approval rating is now at a record low 30 percent, which is six
percent less than the lowest approval rating of his predecessor, Jon
Corzine, according to the October 2009 edition of the Farleigh Dickinson
University Public Mind Poll.

Christie may seem to be in a uniquely difficult position for a presidential
run, but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's approval rating fell to just 41
percent in April, according to a Marquette University Law School Poll, and
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who is announcing his 2016 decision on
Wednesday, had an approval rating of 31 percent in April, according to a
poll by Southern Media Research Group.

*Christie’s home-state support sinks to new depths
<http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/christies-home-state-support-sinks-new-depths>
// MSNBC // Steve Benen – June 23, 2015 *

Every presidential candidate wants to be able to brag about the home-state
support he or she enjoys. It makes sense – a policymaker’s constituents had
an opportunity to see his or her work up close. The more those voters were
impressed, the more a White House hopeful can ride a wave of popularity
onto the national stage.

But as the 2016 race unfolds, a “home-state haters” problem is kicking in.
Louisianans, for example, have soured on Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). Marylanders
aren’t at all excited about former Gov. Martin O’Malley’s (D) presidential
campaign.

And in New Jersey, the bottom has fallen out on Gov. Chris Christie’s (R)
support. Last month, a Monmouth University poll put the Republican
governor’s approval rating at just 35%. This morning, Politico reports an
even lower number.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is still not winning any favor with Garden
State voters, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson PublicMind poll released
Tuesday.

Christie, who is in the midst of planning a presidential run, has an
approval rating of 30 percent, below what is usually expected for a White
House hopeful in his own state, where 55 percent disapprove of his
performance. His numbers are down from the last FDU poll in April, in which
36 percent of voters approved of the job he was doing, compared to 50
percent who did not.

In case it’s not obvious, 30% is a dreadful number. It’s the kind of
approval rating a politician will find difficult to explain away when he’s
seeking a promotion.

In fact, it’s arguably the kind of number that should keep Christie out of
the race. The beleaguered governor has prepared all kinds of answers to
dismiss his many problems – the scandals, the downgrades, the pension mess,
the policy missteps – but there is no talking point that can adequately
explain a 30% approval rating.

There are only laughable excuses. Last month, Fox’s Megyn Kelly reminded
the governor that two-thirds of his own constituents do not believe he’d be
a good president. Christie replied, in reference to New Jersey residents,
“They want me to stay. A lot of those people that 65 percent want me to
stay. I’ve heard that from lots of people at town hall meetings, ‘Don’t
leave,’ and ‘Don’t run for president because we want you to stay.’”

There’s a point at which the line between arrogance and delusion blurs. As
we talked about at the time, the notion that New Jersey voters are so in
love with Christie that they can’t bear the thought of him moving to the
White House is plainly silly. Garden State voters are being asked if they
approve of Christie, not whether they hope to keep him in Trenton.

*Christie Backs Haley on Confederate Flag
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/06/23/christie-finally-talks-confederate-flag.html?via=twitter_page>
// Daily Beast // June 23, 2015*

Chris Christie finally broke his silence on the Confederate flag in a
statement to The Daily Beast on Tuesday. "Governor Haley has demonstrated
what it means to be a leader during extremely difficult and tragic times
for her state and our country. I commend Governor Haley for her decision to
remove the flag from the grounds of the state capitol," Christie, the last
presidential candidate to stay mum on the issue, said. "While this is a
necessary step towards addressing a divisive symbol of racism in our
country, this step will mean little if we do not also honestly confront and
discuss the fact that these murders were born out of ugly hate and racism.
That is what we must stand up against and fight even more than any symbol;
it is long overdue that we not only shine a light on and condemn the
symbols of hate, but on the haters themselves as well."

*OTHER*

*Bush leads in N.H. polls.  Trump is second.*
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/poll-new-hampshire-donald-trump-jeb-bush-119324.html?hp=lc2_4>*
// Politico // Nick Gass – June 23, 2015*

Jeb Bush leads the crowded field of Republican presidential contenders in
New Hampshire, according to a Suffolk University poll released Tuesday.
Donald Trump is in second.

The poll represents more good news for Bush in the Granite State, where he
has led by an average of 4.2 percentage points in recent months, according
to the RealClearPolitics average.

Among likely Republican primary voters, former Florida Gov. Bush picked up
14 percent, while the billionaire real-estate mogul Trump grabbed 11
percent. Most respondents—29 percent—are undecided.

No other candidates are in double digits, with 8 percent for Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker, 7 percent for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, 6 percent for retired
neurosurgeon Ben Carson, 5 percent for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and
4 percent each for businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Jeb Bush continues to lead, but Donald Trump has emerged as an anti-Jeb
Bush alternative in New Hampshire,” said David Paleologos, the director of
the Suffolk University poll. “Many of those who like Trump are voting for
him, and although many more dislike him, the unfavorables are split up
among many other candidates. It’s the politics of plurality.”

At the same time, voters are seemingly more hesitant to allow Trump on the
debate stage. Asked whom they would approve if they had the opportunity to
approve or deny each candidate, Trump came in 11th place, with 60 percent
saying they would allow him. More than eight-in-ten (83 percent) voters
said they would approve Bush, the highest percentage of any candidate.

Among all likely GOP voters, 49 percent said they have an unfavorable
opinion of Trump, while 37 percent said they see him in a positive light.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee sit at 2
percent, and six other Republicans are tied at 1 percent, including former
New York Gov. George Pataki, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina
Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former
Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich.

The poll was conducted June 18-22 among 500 likely Republican primary
voters, carrying an overall margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.4 percentage
points.

*‘Selzer Score’ gives clarity on Republican field
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/06/selzer-score-gives-clarity-on-republican-field-209348.html>
// Politico // Hadas Gold – June 23, 2015 *

Hoping to offer a more accurate read on the crowded, contentious Republican
primary race, the legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer has developed an
intriguing new method called the "Selzer Score."

Selzer, the pollster for The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics,
developed the system by giving different weights to varying criteria,
including a voter's first choice (double the weight), a voter's second
choice (normal weight) and candidates who a voter "could ever consider
voting for" (half the weight). The weights are all added together, and that
becomes the candidate's "Selzer Score."

Using Selzer's method on a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of (a
relatively small group of 236) GOP primary voters, National Journal's
Charlie Cook found that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (77.5), Florida Sen.
Marco Rubio (71) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (62.5) easily make the top
three, which more or less mirrors most national polls. Where the Selzer
score makes things more interesting is in the rest of the field, where
candidates such as Carly Fiorina barely register nationally.

"Our problem is, we have a group of people who are huddled at the bottom,"
Selzer said earlier this month on Bloomberg Politics. "How could we spread
the field was my goal."

Fiorina's Selzer score is 18.5, fourth from last, putting her 4 points
above South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and even further ahead of Ohio
Gov. John Kasich and former New York Gov. George Pataki. Donald Trump's
Selzer score is 20, putting him in the lower tier, though his "could not
see supporting" score is the highest of all the candidates, at 66 percent.

It's not perfect, but it probably gets closer to the true lay of the land
than straightforward horse-race numbers, especially since many voters are
likely to shift from their first to second (and even third or fourth)
choice over the course of next six or seven months. (Voters who refuse to
even consider voting for a certain candidate are certainly far less
malleable.)

At the very least, it's something journalists can have fun with.

*2016ers embrace flag removal after hedging
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/confederate-flag-2016-republican-candidates/index.html>
// CNN // Maeve Reston – June 23, 2015 *

All of a sudden, Republican presidential candidates found a position on the
Confederate flag Monday.

In the days after the racially-motivated massacre of nine African-Americans
at a church in Charleston, many of the GOP candidates tried to skirt the
issue of the Confederate flag -- calling for prayer, a time for grieving,
and support for the families of the nine victims. In some cases, they
chided reporters for bringing up "politics" at such a sensitive time.

But within seconds of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's statement that
South Carolina should honor its heritage but remove the flag from state
grounds -- and her pledge to use her authority to force the legislature to
deal with the issue this summer -- the candidates dispensed with their
maneuvering and articulated clearer positions on the flag.

Jeb Bush -- who had originally noted that he sent the flag to a museum as
governor of Florida, but had only vaguely called for South Carolinians to
"do the right thing" -- moved quickly to define what he thought that "right
thing" was.

Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Scott Walker, had all
insisted that the aftermath of the tragedy was a time to grieve, not to
engage in a political debate. But on Monday afternoon, Walker tweeted that
he was glad Haley was calling for removing the Confederate flag from state
grounds: "I support her decision," he tweeted. Kasich, Ohio's governor,
similarly said he shared Haley's view that the flag "should come down."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had staked out the politically safe route of
calling for more debate, said Monday that removing the flag was "an act of
healing and unity that allows us to find a shared purpose based on the
values that unify us." The next day, Rand Paul said in a radio interview
with WRKO in Boston that he would vote to take down the flag were he a
South Carolina legislator.

And Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator, who had called for more
debate during an interview with CNN Friday, released a far more forceful
statement Monday after appearing with Haley and many other state officials.
The Confederate flag, he said, should be taken off the Capitol grounds to
deal with the issue "once and for all" after the "horrific, racially
motivated shooting."

The outlier among the candidates on Monday was Marco Rubio, who stuck by
his original position that removal of the Confederate flag was an issue for
the "people of South Carolina."

"I appreciate and respect (Haley's) statement that 'This is South
Carolina's statehouse, it is South Carolina's historic moment, and this
will be South Carolina's decision,'" Rubio said in a statement. "I have no
doubt that given how the people of South Carolina have dealt with this
tragedy so far, they will continue to inspire the nation with their
courage, compassion and unity."

For the GOP candidates who wrestled with the issue over the past few days,
the difficulty of staking out a position boiled down to this: How does a
presidential candidate -- aiming to alienate as few voters as possible --
deal with the volatile stew of issues that campaigns are loathe to touch.
This case set off simultaneous debates over racism, gun rights, and whether
the Confederate flag can legitimately be couched as a "state's rights"
issues.

"This is an issue that has an exceedingly high number of threads in it. It
involves race, it involves culture, it involves crime, it involves
justice," said Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for President George W.
Bush. "And then you have politicians who are incredibly scared of their own
shadow, because they are so afraid they are going to be jumped on by what I
would call the 'conserva-gensia', who don't necessarily represent real
people -- whether its someone on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh."

In a news cycle keyed to rapid response, Dowd added that it's very
difficult for politicians "to really be thoughtful about an issue, as
opposed to giving a microwaved answer."

Still, the killings in Charleston happened during a period when the
Republican Party is straining to expand its appeal to minorities. Steve
Schmidt, a Republican strategist who advised George W. Bush and 2008
presidential nominee John McCain, said many of the candidates missed a
clear chance to show leadership by quickly stating a bold position on an
issue that resonates not only with African-Americans, but with voters of
all races who were horrified by Wednesday's shooting at Emanuel AME Church
in Charleston.

"A presidential candidate who seeks to be the nominee of the party of
[President Abraham] Lincoln should be able to talk contextually and
historically about this flag, about these issues, about what it once meant
and what it means today," Schmidt said. "This is one of those moments where
the right thing to say and do is so obvious --- and you watch, one by one
by one by one, how the political calculations and maneuverings take place
at the expense of doing the right thing," Schmidt said.

He added: "This is something most people would regard as a pretty simple
and easy thing to get right."

The balance that many candidates were trying to strike, said Ari Fleischer,
former press secretary to Bush, was in respecting the rights of South
Carolinians to decide what to do with the flag.

"There's a higher principle about the role of the federal government that
runs into conflict with the raw emotions that play out after a tragedy and
it squeezes Republicans," Fleischer said. "They're squeezed because the
higher principle is Republican federal candidates place a lot of value in
the right of states to decide these matters without federal interference --
whether it's an emotional issue like the flag, or whether it's gun rights,
gay marriage" -- even nutrition standards, he said.

In a politically important state like South Carolina, which will hold one
of the first presidential primaries, many voters see no need for
out-of-state politicians to meddle in their affairs -- as Haley obliquely
stated during her press conference on Monday.

Fleischer said he disagreed with those who have framed the flag issue as a
test of character. "The test of character is the ability to see long term,
and to know what the role of the federal government is, and should be,
while also creating an environment to actually solve the problem," he said.

Still, many unaligned political strategists, watching the maneuverings of
the last few days were puzzled by why it took so long for candidates to
parse their positions.

Moments after the presidential candidates flooded Twitter with newly formed
opinions about the Confederate flag following Haley's press conference,
Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party,
tweeted incredulously: "A president can encourage a foreign country to tear
down a wall, but a presidential candidate can't encourage a state to take
down a flag?"

*What the GOP Lost When It Won the South
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/what-the-gop-lost-when-it-won-the-south.html>
// Daily Beast // Matt Lewis – June 23, 2015 *

As the Republican field and corporations like Wal-Mart slowly but surely
distance themselves from the Confederate flag, a subplot involves a trend
I’ve been documenting for a while now: How the GOP is being forced to
engage in some major soul searching.

The coalition the GOP assembled in order to win national elections in the
latter part of the 20th century has delivered the popular vote in just one
of the last six presidential elections, and it’s not realistic to expect
they can win many more by relying solely on old, rural, non-college
educated white men.

Not only have the demographics changed—but so have a lot of attitudes.

That’s not to say the way to save conservatism is to embrace liberalism—far
from it. But it is to say that conservatives must shed negative stereotypes
that, after all, have nothing to do with conservatism to begin with. My
forthcoming book, Too Dumb to Fail, is subtitled: “How the GOP Won
Elections by Sacrificing Its Ideas (And How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative
Roots)” largely about how conservatives can adapt to the 21st century.

Regardless of his ethnicity, I think a young urbanite who manages his stock
portfolio on his smart phone and then orders an Uber should be a
conservative. And he might—if when he thinks of “conservative” he pictures
someone like AEI president and author Arthur Brooks. Someone who is
sophisticated, tolerant, and thoroughly modern. But he won’t if he
associates that word with an image of, say, a fat, intolerant redneck.
(This is not to suggest many Southerners fit this description. There are
many things about the South I love. But this is a stereotype.)

The injection of Southerners into the Republican coalition—a coalition they
ultimately came to dominate—couldn’t help but change the image of the GOP.
There were racial, cultural, political, and even religious implications.
Republicans captured the South, yes, but the South also captured the GOP.
There were no doubt many salutary benefits to this arrangement—most
obviously, an electoral boon that lasted for decades. But it also
guaranteed we would eventually see a day of reckoning.

First, though, some background. You’ve probably heard of The Southern
Strategy, but might not know exactly what it means, or how the Republican
Party allegedly employed it. The Southern Strategy, As Mike Allen defined
it in the Washington Post, “described Republican efforts to use race as a
wedge issue—on matters such as desegregation and busing—to appeal to white
southern voters.”

“The electorate is rapidly becoming less white, less rural, and better
educated. Yet the GOP is still culturally synonymous with, well, white,
rural, less-educated southern whites, who remain a major pillar of the
party’s support.”

Whether or not you accept that this was an intentional strategy, or just
how things shook out, this much is true: Around 1964, the once reliably
Democratic South started to become a Republican stronghold. We may differ
about what this means, and about whether the GOP deserves culpability for
stirring up racial animus in order to achieve it. (As Sean Trende notes,
the trend actually began in the 1920s, and that long before civil rights
became a hot-button political issue, “FDR performed worse in the South in
every election following his 1932 election.”)

In one of the chapters, Too Dumb to Fail details the many ways the
so-called Southern Strategy impacted conservative policy—but the impact it
had in terms of cultural signaling is among the most important, if more
superficial, effects.

(And here I’m not talking about overt racism, which I think we all condemn,
but instead subtle cultural customs and signals that may seem out of touch
in an America that is increasingly cosmopolitan.)

Let’s take George W. Bush, the most successful Republican politician of the
post-Southern Strategy, post-Reagan era. After losing a Congressional race,
George W. Bush (possibly as a reference to a much worse George Wallace
line? ) vowed “never to get out-countried again. ” This was smart politics
for Bush, who ultimately went on to become President of the United States,
but it helped reinforce the image of a Republicans as someone who, well,
looks and talks like George W. Bush. (I realize that Texas is often
considered more Western than part of the “Deep South,” but you get my
point.)

This brings us to today. As we all know, the demographics of the country
are changing rapidly. The electorate is rapidly becoming less white, less
rural, and better educated. Yet the GOP is still culturally synonymous
with, well, white, rural, less-educated southern whites, who remain a major
pillar of the party’s support. And so you get to the point where guys like
Scott Walker and Rand Paul spend a week ducking questions about whether the
Confederate flag should be flown on government property…in 2015.

So here’s what the GOP has to figure it out: how do they continue to get
the Bubba vote while shedding appeals to the cultural symbolism of the
past? How do they sell their conservative ideas about free markets, strong
national defense, and conservative family values to 21st century Americans?

The seeds of this challenge were partly planted when the GOP became the de
facto party of the South—with all the good and bad that that entails. And
now the chickens have come to roost. As you watch Republicans scramble to
address the changing political landscape—some more nimbly than others—keep
in mind this is the backdrop.

*GOP candidates seek distance from white supremacist group
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/06/22/charleston-shootings-donations-presidential-candidates-steve-king/29113999/>
// Des Moines Register // June 22, 2015 *

Republican presidential candidates moved Monday to quickly distance
themselves from the leader of a white supremacist group whose views appear
to have influenced Dylann Roof, the suspect in the murders of nine African
Americans at a Charleston, S.C., church.

Earl Holt, who describes himself as president of the Council of
Conservative Citizens, has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to
Republican candidates in recent years, including to four current White
House contenders: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Wisconsin
Gov. Scott Walker, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, according to
news accounts and campaign-finance records.

By late Monday afternoon, all four said they were donating Holt's
contributions to charity.

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst and U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa and other Republican
members of Congress also received donations from Holt. In 2014, Ernst
received a $1,000 contribution. King has received $2,500 (five $500
contributions) since 2012, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Ernst is donating that money to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, set up to aid
victims' families, spokeswoman Brook Hougesen told the Register.

King will donate the money to both the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund and to the
Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, where the slayings occurred, according to
a statement on his campaign website.

"Our prayers are with the families and friends of those affected by this
tragedy," the statement says.

Cruz, who initially planned to refund the campaign contributions, later
concluded the funds would be better used to help the victims' families and
will contribute the $11,000 to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, his spokesman,
Rick Tyler, said in a statement.

Paul's leadership PAC has received $2,250 from Holt. In an email Monday,
Paul's spokesman, Doug Stafford, said the PAC also is donating the
contributions to the victims' fund.

Santorum said he also would give away the money. "Rather than put more
money back in the pockets of such an individual, my 2012 campaign committee
will be donating the amount of his past donations to the Mother Emanuel
Hope Fund to support the victims of this tragedy," he said in a statement.

"I abhor the sentiments Mr. Holt has expressed," he added. "These
statements and sentiments are unacceptable. Period. End of sentence. Our
campaign is about, and has always been about, uniting America, not dividing
her."

Walker, who has received $3,500 from Holt since 2011, will give the money
to charity, his spokeswoman, AshLee Strong said.

The Guardian first disclosed the Holt contributions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group based in Alabama, has
described the Council of Conservative Citizens as a "hate group."

The organization's "statement of principles" includes the goal of ensuring
that "the American people and government should remain European in their
composition and character." The council also opposes "all efforts to mix
the races of mankind."

In a "manifesto" on a website linked to Roof, the murder suspect said he
learned details about black-on-white crime from the Council of Conservative
Citizens' website.

The council has condemned the killings. In a statement posted Sunday on the
council's website, Holt said it "was not surprising" that Roof credited his
group for information on black-on-white crime. But he added that his
organization is "hardly responsible for the actions of this deranged
individual merely because he gleaned accurate information from our website."

On Monday, the council's spokesman, Jared Taylor, said Holt was not
granting interviews.

Taylor said the shedding of donations amounted to "grandstanding" by
candidates and said they were infringing on Holt's free-speech rights. "Are
they really trying to deny Mr. Holt the ability to donate to campaigns?"

Asked about the group's mission, Taylor said: "We don't hate anyone... We
take the view that whites as a group have legitimate interests, and it's
entirely good and proper that they should get together to discuss them."

Holt, whose occupation is sometimes is listed as "slumlord" in federal
election records, has donated more than $60,000 to GOP candidates in recent
years, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Federal campaign records list Holt as living in Longview, Texas. The
council is based in St. Louis, Mo., and in a 2014 article, Holt said he
lived in St. Louis between 1983 and 2009.

Other recipients of Holt donations include Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Ohio
Sen. Rob Portman, former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and Utah Rep. Mia Love, the first
black Republican woman elected to the U.S. House, federal records show.

As the news of Holt's ties to the council spread Monday, congressional
candidates quickly announced they were dumping the contributions. Portman's
aides, for instance, said they already had donated to charity the $250 that
the Ohio Republican received from Holt in 2010.

*OTHER 2016 NEWS*

*The Best and Worst of the 2016 Campaign Merch
<http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/06/best-and-worst-of-the-2016-campaign-merch.html>
// NY Mag // Véronique Hyland – June 23, 2015 *

Forget the 2016 candidates' political platforms — everything you need to
know about them can be read in their sartorial offerings. Whether their
e-store contains rumpled polos (Ted Cruz) or pantsuit T-shirts (Hillary
Clinton), they're clearly very much on message. And while the merch may be
as much of an electoral data-gathering mechanism as it is clothing, that
doesn't mean it can't have fashion merit.

While she doesn't have a full-fledged Seventh Avenue–designed collection
like Obama did, Clinton definitely wins in the arena of design, not to
mention cheeky copywriting — even the ad copy on a humble iced-coffee
tumbler notes, "Please note: Sweet tea is also acceptable." (Way to make a
play for the southern vote.)

The rest are varying degrees of fashion-backward, from Rand Paul's take on
athleisure to Rubio's "Marco Polo" shirt and Bernie Sanders's sub–Word
Art–caliber slogan tees; Scott Walker and Rick Santorum haven't yet opened
merchandise arms, so the jury is out for now.  Click through the slideshow
for a partisan assessment of which ones got our vote, and which ones we'd
veto.

*Why are so many running for president?
<http://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/why-are-so-many-running-for-president/article_4454b240-1766-50a7-a1e2-586a59aceec5.html>
// Philadelphia Tribune // Julian Zelizer – June 22, 2015 *

Why are so many people running for president in 2016?

A bunch of candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring -- Donald
Trump, George Pataki, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Bernie
Sanders, Martin O'Malley -- have little chance of winning, so one is left
to wonder: What do they hope to achieve?

If winning isn't probable, what else can primary candidates intend to
accomplish?

There are a number of things that candidates can achieve for themselves or
their parties without actually becoming the nominee.

Selling a message: Often candidates want to make sure that their party
colleagues are paying attention to certain issues. They feel that the
existing leadership and crop of candidates are ignoring key problems that
are central to the health of the nation. There are many people in public
life who find this to be enough reason to undertake a serious campaign.
This was why Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota entered the Democratic
primaries in 1968, with the goal of making sure that Democrats who opposed
the Vietnam War had a seat at the table.

As a political veteran, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont must realize that
the odds of defeating Hillary Clinton are slim. Yet regardless of the
outcome, he is bringing to the forefront of the party debate concerns about
economic inequality, a broken political process and the rapid deterioration
of the environment. Even if Sanders doesn't gain much traction in terms of
actual votes, his ability to push Clinton toward dealing more squarely with
these problems would be considered a victory.

Mobilizing new constituencies: Sometimes losing politicians help to
mobilize new constituencies into the party. Ronald Reagan did this with
right-wing Southern conservatives in the 1976 Republican primaries when he
challenged President Gerald Ford. Ford defeated Reagan, though barely, but
Reagan brought into the party and energized conservatives who ordinarily
had not voted in primaries like Texas.

In 2004, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean used pioneering social media technology
to attract younger liberals into the Democratic selection process. Although
John Kerry won the nomination, only to lose to George W. Bush in the
general election, the groups Dean energized would be central to Barack
Obama's 2008 victory.

Among the Republicans in 2015, Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz -- both still
long shots for the victory against a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio -- have the
possibility of reaching libertarian and social conservative Republicans who
have become disaffected with the GOP over the past decade. Even if they
don't win, they can bring into the party new groups of voters who can help
the GOP in this and other elections, as well as their own future
candidacies.

Selling themselves: There are some candidates who get into the primaries
these days as a vehicle for their own careers. Donald Trump, the real
estate mogul and former reality television star, appears to see the
selection contest as a way to advance his own fame and reputation. Running
for president has been just another way to keep his name alive in the
national media.

Others, like Ben Carson, jump into the contest without a clear agenda or
connection to broader groups. Their goal seems to be a desire to elevate
their own role in the public arena. With such a vibrant world of political
media, consulting and think tanks, running for president can enhance a
person's stature and offer opportunities. Mike Huckabee earned himself a
spot on Fox News after previous runs.

With Trump, one lure may be that he has name recognition and can likely get
into the first GOP debate (on Fox, limited to 10 candidates) and the first
tier of the first CNN debate (the network will have a second debate for
those who don't make the first cut). That is priceless national exposure.

Another big outcome of a presidential run could be a vice presidential or
Cabinet slot, and this must be on the minds of some of the longer shots.
The visibility and stature that can come from running could enhance the
appeal of a future appointment of someone like Pataki or Chris Christie.

Testing the waters: For many other candidates, it is clear that winning in
American politics can take several tries. Entering the primaries and
caucuses is a learning experience. When Mitt Romney ran in 2008, he
believed that he had a good chance for the nomination. But even when he
lost, the experience helped him be a stronger candidate in 2012, when he
won the nomination. Running is also an effort to solidify the credentials
needed to approach campaign contributors and super PACs in future years
with the hope of being a credible candidate.

There are lower-key candidates, like John Kasich, Scott Walker, and Martin
O'Malley, who have high aspirations in the near future but also realize
that getting through the competition in 2016 can make them stronger for the
next time around.

The primaries and caucuses continue to serve as a powerful national forum
through which to achieve a large number of goals. Particularly in an age
when there is so much politically centered media, constantly covering the
endless campaign and giving attention to any candidate who enters, and when
super PACs can single-handedly finance campaigns, the temptations to
declare for the presidency are stronger than ever.

*South Carolina Dems Blast DCCC for Using Confederate Flag Issue to
Fundraise
<http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/23/south-carolina-dems-blast-dccc-for-using-confederate-flag-issue-to-fundraise/>
// The Blaze // Kaitlyn Schallhorn – June 23, 2015 *

Prominent South Carolina Democrats are speaking out against the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee for fundraising off the Confederate flag
issue that has engulfed the country less than a week after nine
parishioners were shot dead in a church.

A DCCC email sent shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday asked people to vote on
whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed from the South
Carolina Capitol grounds, a divisive issue that was reignited in the
Palmetto State after authorities say Dylann Roof, 21, attempted to start a
race war by gunning down nine members of Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston.

Once recipients of the email submit their vote on the flag, they are taken
to a donation page where they’re asked to make a recurring monthly donation
or a one-time $3 donation in order to receive a free “Yes, I Voted Obama”
sticker in the mail.

Another email, sent after 7 p.m. Tuesday, again asked recipients to vote on
the flag issue and attempted to take credit for Gov. Nikki Haley’s (R-S.C.)
call for the flag’s removal.

FIRST: President Obama, Hillary Clinton and leaders nationwide demanded
South Carolina take down the Confederate flag.

THEN: 41,338 Democrats signed our grassroots petition to DEMAND South
Carolina take down the Confederate flag.

NOW: The South Carolina Governor has responded to our demands. She just
called on South Carolina legislators to act!

“I have a great deal of respect for the DCCC, but this is just an
inappropriate time to be raising money off of this,” Bakari Sellers, an
influential South Carolina Democrat and former state House member, told
TheBlaze. “We haven’t even had our first funeral.”

Sellers, who does support the removal of the Confederate flag, is an
attorney who was first elected to the state House at age 22.

In an email to TheBlaze, Antjuan Seawright, political advisor to the South
Carolina Senate Democrats, said he has also asked for the DCCC to cease the
emails. Seawright said Senator Clementa Pinckney, who died in the shooting,
was a friend.

One of the emails sent out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee using the Confederate flag issue in South Carolina to solicit
donations.

One of the emails sent by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
using the Confederate flag issue in South Carolina to solicit donations.

State Democrats responded to the email blasts on social media as well.
Jamie Harrison, chair of the South Carolina Democrats, said in a tweet that
he has asked for the DCCC to stop the fundraising campaign.

Tyler Jones, political director and spokesman for the South Carolina House
Democrats, also spoke out about the DCCC’s email.

Despite the DCCC’s claim in the email blast, Hillary Clinton has remained
relatively mum on the Confederate flag issue this go around — she spoke out
against the flag in 2007 during her first bid for president — except for a
single tweet after Haley’s Monday afternoon press conference.

In fact, while addressing the Charleston tragedy in San Francisco on
Sunday, the 2016 presidential hopeful spoke of the country’s purported
problem with gun violence and racism — but made no mention of the flag.

Clinton’s campaign also remained silent Monday after images of Clinton-Gore
1992 campaign paraphernalia featuring the Confederate flag cropped up on
social media.

The DCCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TheBlaze.

*TOP NEWS*

*DOMESTIC*

*Obama Ordering Changes in U.S. Hostage Policies
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/world/obama-ordering-changes-in-us-hostage-policies.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0>
// NYT // Julie Hirschfeld Davis – June 23, 2015 *

President Obama on Wednesday will announce that the government will no
longer threaten criminal prosecution of the families of American hostages
who are held abroad by groups like the Islamic State if they attempt to pay
ransom for the release of their loved ones. The change is one of many that
are intended to fix what the administration has acknowledged is a broken
policy on United States captives, a senior administration official said.

In a presidential directive and an executive order, Mr. Obama also plans to
make clear that while he is keeping a longstanding federal prohibition
against making concessions to those who take hostages, the government can
communicate and negotiate with captors holding Americans or help family
members seeking to do so in order to ensure their safe return.

American officials negotiated a swap to win the freedom of Bowe Bergdahl
from his captors in Afghanistan, trading five Taliban detainees held at the
military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But they have told the families of
Islamic State and Al Qaeda hostages that the “no-concessions” policy
prevented them even from talking about potential terms of release in those
cases, and warned that relatives could face criminal charges for offering
ransoms themselves.

At times, families were given conflicting messages, as in the case of Theo
Padnos, who was held by the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda for nearly two years
before his release last summer. His mother, Nancy Curtis, has said the
State Department threatened her with prosecution should she attempt to pay
a ransom, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation offered to help her
execute the transaction.

The Department of Justice “does not intend to add to the families’ pain in
such cases by suggesting they could face criminal prosecution,” a report
describing the changes will say, according to the official familiar with
it, who would detail it only on the condition of anonymity ahead of Mr.
Obama’s public statement.

The announcement will be the culmination of a wide-ranging review ordered
by Mr. Obama in December on how the government treats hostages captured
overseas. The phenomenon has emerged as a particularly wrenching one during
his presidency with the rise of the Islamic State, whose kidnappings for
ransom and videotaped beheadings of captives have focused public attention
on the issue.

Family members of American hostages who have been vocal critics of Mr.
Obama’s policy, some of whom were interviewed extensively as part of the
review, are scheduled to be briefed on the recommendations on Tuesday.

The families have complained that the United States policy on their cases
was confusing, and they said they felt bullied, neglected and trapped in a
bureaucratic vortex of low-level officials with clashing agendas and
conflicting information. Some have talked about what they considered the
ultimate indignity: being threatened by officials of their own government
if they tried to muster ransom in an attempt to free their family member.

Among those facing such warnings was Diane Foley, the mother of the
American journalist James Foley whose videotaped killing by a militant of
the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, was widely circulated on the
Internet.

As the review has drawn to a close, Mr. Obama has increasingly met in
person with those most familiar with the issues it is seeking to address.
He met briefly with Ms. Foley in April, when she visited Washington to talk
with the review team, led by the National Counterterrorism Center. And
during a visit to Miami in May, he met with the parents of Steven J.
Sotloff, another American journalist held with Mr. Foley, who was also
killed.

Those deaths dramatized the dilemma inherent in the American
“no-concessions” policy toward hostage-takers, which stands in stark
contrast to many European countries that routinely pay ransoms for
captives. American officials have said doing so would reward and enrich
kidnappers, both emboldening them and enabling them to capture more United
States citizens.

By taking the executive action, the president is acknowledging that the
prohibition has created confusion inside and outside the government,
sometimes handcuffing officials charged with recovering captives or their
families.

The overhaul notably does not include a move urged by family members and
some lawmakers to create a high-level hostage czar who would report
directly to the White House and have primary responsibility, across the
federal government, for freeing American captives. Instead, it creates an
interagency hostage recovery “fusion cell” to be headquartered at the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, which would include a senior-level “family
engagement coordinator” to support relatives and keep them informed.

In addition, Mr. Obama will create a new White House team to oversee
hostage policy, and appoint a special envoy at the State Department to lead
the government’s contacts with foreign nations on hostage issues. A new
“issue manager” in the intelligence community will coordinate
hostage-related intelligence, including working “systematically and
proactively” to declassify information that could be shared with captives’
family members.

The report will say that “whenever possible, families will receive more
information, faster, on their loved ones and the efforts to recover them,”
an official said.

That was one of the principal requests by the relatives of hostages and
former hostages, who said they had come to detest the phrase “We’re doing
everything we can,” doled out, they said, as government officials kept them
in the dark about crucial details of their family members’ situations.

Mr. Obama will acknowledge many of those problems and seek to confront them
in part by creating a small family engagement team with a coordinator who
would serve as a point of contact for relatives to the fusion cell and be a
part of the White House hostage policy team. The report will say that
officials should “clearly and accurately articulate to families what
efforts the United States government is undertaking to locate and recover
their loved ones.”

Under the new policy, all government officials who interact with hostages’
families must also receive specialized training on the dynamics of
hostage-taking, its impact on victims’ relatives and how to support both
current and recovered hostages and their families.

*Amazon to Remove Confederate Flag Items, Following eBay and Others
<http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/23/amazon-to-remove-confederate-flag-items-following-ebay-and-others/>
// WSJ // Greg Bensinger – June 23, 2015 *

Amazon.com will remove merchandise depicting the Confederate battle flag,
according to a person familiar with the matter. The online store joined
other national retailers that have banned the symbol following the killings
of a nine African-Americans in South Carolina.

EBay, Sears and Wal-Mart also have vowed to remove from their stores some
merchandise that depicts the flag. Pressure has mounted on retailers to
stop the sale of the flag after it was discovered that Dylann Roof, the
alleged shooter in South Carolina, had a Confederate vanity license plate
on his car and displayed the flag in photographs on social media sites.

In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley called for the removal of the flag from
the statehouse grounds, though the legislature has not yet agreed to take
it down. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said he asked the state attorney
general to take steps to halt the sale of license plates featuring the flag.

Drawing a line around goods deemed to be offensive can be tricky. Amazon’s
policy, which is posted on the site, says it doesn’t allow the sale of
“products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or
religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.” However,
the site has long permitted the sale of Confederate flag merchandise.

EBay has a similar policy but allows the sale of some Nazi-related
merchandise, noting its historical significance. The retailer said it
prohibited the sale of goods that “amount to Nazi propaganda.” Shoppers on
the site can find currency, stamps and model kits that feature the swastika
symbol.

EBay said it would begin today removing some merchandise from its site. “We
have decided to prohibit Confederate flags and many items containing this
image, because we believe it has become a contemporary symbol of
divisiveness and racism,” said an eBay spokeswoman.

Reggie VandenBosch, vice president of sales for Valley Forge Flag Co.,
which sells Confederate flags among other items, said Amazon had not
informed him of its decision, but he said the site’s ban would not make a
big business impact.

“They have the perfect right to do it,” said Mr. VandenBosch. “The market
is so very small compared to the American flag, I really don’t even think
about the Confederate flag.”

*Dems weigh last-ditch move to sink trade bill
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/democrats-last-ditch-move-sink-trade-bill-worker-aid-119348.html>
// Politico // Lauren French and John Bresnahan – June 23, 2015 *

With the Senate poised to clear a high-profile trade bill sought by
President Barack Obama, the onus is shifting back to House Democrats. And
the big decision they’re wrestling with is this: whether to vote against a
related worker aid program they’ve long supported in a last-ditch bid to
derail fast-track.

It’s the second time in as many weeks they face that choice, but the stakes
are dramatically higher this time.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer
(D-Md.) have yet to say how they will vote when the House takes up Trade
Adjustment Authority legislation, which could happen as early as this week
as part of a bill to expand trade with Africa.

If House Democrats vote against TAA and it’s defeated a second time, it
would put Obama in the awkward position of deciding whether to sign a
fast-track bill without government help Democrats say is essential for
workers whose jobs move overseas because of free trade.

Obama appeared at a fundraiser for House Democrats on Friday in San
Francisco, and both the White House and the California Democrat insist
their relationship is fine. But Democrats opposed to the president’s trade
initiative will be watching Pelosi for signs on how they should vote on the
TAA measure, which Obama wants.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) walks with others to a vote on
Trade Promotion Authority on Capitol Hill June 12, 2015 in Washington, DC.
The House of Representatives voted down a bill that will could effect the
fast tracking of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Republican leaders separated the fast-track bill, known as Trade Promotion
Authority, from TAA as a way to isolate House Democrats and stop them from
using worker aid as a bargaining chip. That strategy appears to be on the
brink of succeeding, after the Senate voted Tuesday to advance TPA with an
assurance from GOP leaders that they’d take up TAA in subsequent votes.

Now House Democrats will have to choose whether to try and block worker aid
again, even though the fast-track bill is likely to become law regardless.
Critics have said doing so would be tantamount to punishing laid-off
workers because Democrats lost the bigger political fight.

The uncertainty among House Democratic leaders about how to proceed
underscores how divisive trade has become within the party, and how bent
labor and progressives are to defeat the fast-track bill. The Senate is
expected to approve the aid measure this week and Obama has been courting
lawmakers aggressively for their support.

Hoyer, who broke with Pelosi and the majority of other Democrats to back
TAA earlier this month, said Tuesday he wouldn’t “speculate” on which way
he would vote until the Senate sends the House a worker assistance bill.

“We haven’t seen the TAA [bill] yet,” Hoyer told reporters on Tuesday. The
Senate isn’t expected to have a final vote on TAA until later this week. “I
am not going to speculate until we see the bill.”

When pressed by reporters — a half-dozen times in total — Hoyer declined to
offer any further clue about how he would vote.

Pelosi’s office said she’s discussing the issue with fellow Democrats. A
Democratic leadership aide said Pelosi, who voted against both TAA and
fast-track, wouldn’t decide until after a Democratic Caucus meeting on
Wednesday. Senior Democrats are also gathering Tuesday evening for two
leadership meetings that will focus on the trade vote.

When the trade package hit the House floor two weeks ago, Pelosi refused to
say how she planned to vote until right before the voting started, when she
announced her opposition.

The majority of House Democrats opposed both bills after unions made the
trade votes a litmus test. It’s unclear how aggressively unions will target
members on a standalone aid bill, but top activists like the AFL-CIO and
the Coalition to Stop Fast Track have linked the fast track and TAA votes
over the past week, slamming Democrats who back either measure.

Pelosi and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke over the weekend about
the upcoming TAA vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

Unions kept pressure up on senators early this week with protests at the
district offices of wavering Democrats. The United Food & Commercial
Workers International Union had planned events in California, Delaware,
Florida and Maryland to ratchet up pressure on Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Tom
Carper, Chris Coons, Bill Nelson and Ben Cardin, among others.

The White House hasn’t ruled out signing a fast-track bill without a
separate worker assistance measure but Obama has said he strongly prefers
that both bills become law. But if House Democrats sink TAA again in order
to register their opposition to the larger trade agenda, it could force
Obama to decide whether to sign one without the other.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a trade pact supporter, said last week that the
president has indicated he will sign TPA before Congress passes TAA, in
order to remove any incentive for Democrats to vote against the worker aid
program again.

The overwhelming majority of House Democrats were opposed to granting Obama
“fast track authority” to help hash out the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a
massive trade package that would include the United States and 11 other
Pacific Rim nations. But Republicans and pro-trade Democrats are hoping
that once the Senate passes fast-track, Democrats will blink and allow the
aid bill to move forward to protect workers.

*Obamacare repeal still vexes GOP
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/obamacare-repeal-gop-issues-119308.html>
// Politico // Rachel Bade – June 23, 2015 *

Republicans for months have been planning to use a fast-track budget
procedure to extend Obamacare subsidies if the Supreme Court strikes them
down — all while completely gutting the underlying law.

But just days before the court’s ruling, the party is still grappling with
the question of how much of the law to repeal, in part because of its
exorbitant cost.

The plan to use the expedited procedure — called reconciliation — is in
flux as lawmakers realize they would have to come up with hundreds of
billions in spending cuts to pay for a full repeal of Obamacare. And some
Republicans aren’t sure they want to go there.

A new cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office underscored the
magnitude of the task: The budget scorekeeper last Friday said a full
Obamacare repeal would add $353 billion to the deficit over the next
decade. That price tag jeopardizes the GOP plan to use the expedited
legislative process for a full repeal because any bill that uses the
fast-track procedure, such as subsidy extensions followed by a fuller
repeal, must reduce — not increase — the deficit.

That means Republicans will either have to forgo part of the Obamacare
repeal they’ve promised for years — threatening to peel away the
conservative support needed to pass their Plan B; or they’ll have to expand
their package to include budget cuts to things like education, in order to
pay for a fuller repeal. The latter could meet opposition from moderates or
vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in 2016.

“They could still repeal major elements of the ACA and offset with other
provisions to meet the net figure, but for the love of me I don’t know what
those offsets would be unless it were tax increases, which obviously would
not be considered,” said Bill Hoagland, longtime GOP budget expert who has
advised Republicans on how the process works.

Republicans, after all, have been unable to agree on the needed $60 billion
to patch up crumbling roads and bridges over the next several years.

Policy writers in the House and Senate face a conundrum: They’ll have to
walk a very tight rope between appeasing conservatives — despite the
growing cost of repeal announced last week — and ensuring they don’t
alienate moderate Republicans who fear leaving constituents without a
viable alternative to help pay for health care.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The nation’s highest court will deliver
its verdict any day now, which could constitute the biggest blow to
Obamacare yet, stripping 6 million of their Obamacare subsidies and leaving
them unable to afford coverage.

Republicans in both chambers are coalescing around a plan to continue
Obamacare subsides for a time to ensure millions don’t lose the means to
pay for coverage.

“While Republicans did not create this mess, we are ready, we are willing,
and we are able to do our best to protect the American people from any more
harm caused by the president’s flawed law,” said No. 2 Senate Republican
leader John Cornyn (R-Texas) on the Senate floor Monday, adding that the
plan “will empower the states to opt out of Obamacare, allowing them the
flexibility to more effectively lower costs and increase choices … [and]
promote market-based options without the threat of harmful, onerous,
expensive mandates.”

But a major unanswered question is what to do after the so-called bridge
period ends. Should the reconciliation bill commit to repealing as much as
possible under budget rules thereafter? Or will Republicans keep some of
the Medicaid expansion, Medicare savings and taxes?

The Confederate flag is seen next to the monument of the victims of the
Civil War in Columbia, South Carolina on June 20, 2015. The racially
divisive Confederate battle flag flew at full-mast despite others flying at
half-staff in South Carolina after the killing of nine black people in an
historic African-American church in Charleston on June 17. Dylann Roof, the
21-year-old white male suspected of carrying out the Emanuel African
Episcopal Methodist Church bloodbath, was one of many southern Americans
who identified with the 13-star saltire in red, white and blue.

A House GOP leadership staffer said they’re interested in repealing as much
as possible under reconciliation rules, though a plan discussed last week
included only a partial repeal.

“Obviously, we wouldn’t be moving an Obamacare replacement without
repealing the law too, so that’s a given,” the aide said.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has backed a
contingency plan by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that would simply repeal the
mandates.

Meanwhile, presidential candidates Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz
(R-Texas) are tacking right, pouring cold water on extending subsidies
without a full repeal. And as soon as this week, a group of 25 conservative
Senate Republicans are preparing to send McConnell a letter urging him to
include a full repeal “in any legislation considered pursuant to the
reconciliation instructions” in the budget.

“This letter is to affirm our shared commitment to repealing the Affordable
Care Act, and to use every procedural tool at our disposal to repeal
Obamacare at the earliest possible opportunity,” the letter reads,
according to a copy obtained by POLITICO. “The American people expect and
deserve no less from the new Republican Congress they elected last fall.”

But whether that’s even possible is up for debate, especially considering
the CBO’s new report.

Repealing the individual and employer mandates as well as all the other
Obamacare taxes and fees would cost more than $1.1 trillion. Eliminating
the Medicare savings also included in ACA would tack on another nearly $879
billion.

According to the new score, Republicans can save $822 billion over a decade
by repealing subsidies and $824 billion more if they repeal the Medicaid
and CHIP expansions — but at least some Senate Republicans have shown
they’re a bit squeamish about doing so without providing an alternative.

“The political rationale behind the need to do a Burwell response
presumably suggests that the GOP would pay a cost if it simply repealed the
subsidies or if it also repealed Medicaid expansion,” said one staunch
conservative Senate aide who thinks the logic is flawed.

Another option being discussed includes finding savings outside of health
care to offset the cost of a larger repeal, such as education cuts. But
that could be like searching for pennies under couch cushions since
lawmakers have already cut to the bone in recent years.

*Meet the Diehard Right Wingers Who Just Can’t Quit Obamacare
<http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/conservatives-obamacare-scotus-subsidies-arizona>
// TPM // Gus Garcia-Roberts – June 23, 2015 *

In the day I meet Steve Pierce, his forehead is raw and glistening from
just having been blasted by liquid nitrogen, treatment for the skin cancer
which seems to ail virtually every old sun-blasted rancher like him. “Feels
like just about the world’s worst ice cream headache,” he complains.

We’re driving his giant red GMC Yukon SUV from Prescott, Arizona, the
idyllic desert mountain town where Barry Goldwater announced his 1964 run
for president, to Pierce’s ranch 30 minutes away, where plump cattle graze
on bleached, windblown grass next to the little chapel where his daughter
was married. The sprawling property is called Las Vegas Ranch, and it’s
been in the Pierce family longer than the gambling town has been around.

A Republican lifer in Wranglers and cowboy boots, Pierce is his party’s old
school ideal: a self-sufficient small business owner living off the land,
growing steaks for people who can afford them. He’s also a prominent
Arizona state senator, formerly president of the senate and majority whip.

So it’s somewhat surprising that he has invited me to his home district in
order to sell me on the benefits of Obamacare.

Here in Yavapai County, most everybody you’ll meet is Republican. In 2012,
Mitt Romney received nearly two votes here to each of Obama’s. And yet in
this rural red county in a very red state, it’s only taken a couple of
years for federally-subsidized health care to quietly seep into the hinges
of everyday life and governance. The rate of signups for the program in the
county has nearly doubled from 2014, when 22 percent of the area’s
potential market share signed up for a plan through the federal exchange,
to March 2015, when 43 percent did, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation. The latter figure ranks the county sixth among 54 areas in the
state in percentage of the potential market share which has signed up,
outranking far more liberal areas in Arizona. This is what Obamacare
Country looks like.

After a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 that allowed states to opt out of
Medicaid expansion, the ACA is once again in danger of being undercut in
court. In King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit on
the legality of federal health care subsidies in Arizona and 33 other
states that have not set up their own healthcare exchanges. Before the end
of June, 6.4 million Americans could lose subsidies across the country,
according to data from Kaiser, including 126,506 in Arizona, where roughly
77 percent of those who have signed up for the ACA receive subsidies.

The possibility that the country’s highest court could kneecap the ACA has
Republicans strategizing feverishly, and often at odds with each other,
about how to lessen the backlash from millions of Americans who would have
to pay more or lose health care coverage. In Arizona, Republican Governor
Doug Ducey has pre-emptively dug in his heels, signing a law designed to
prevent the state from setting up its own exchange in order to keep ACA
subsidies coming in. Yavapai County acts as a pop.-200,000 lab slide of a
phenomenon occurring in conservative regions around the country, where
party politics have been pitted against everyday pragmatism, often
resulting in spectacular GOP infighting.

In this rural red county, it’s only taken a couple of years for the ACA to
seep into the hinges of everyday life.

Ducey’s predecessor, Jan Brewer, was once the darling of the right wing,
including for her harsh stance on health care. In 2011, she helped close a
budget gap by slashing Medicaid eligibility in the state. But she stepped
into the conservative maw less than two years later when she began to push
for Obamacare-funded Medicaid expansion. “Jesus had Judas,” Maricopa County
Republican Committee chairman A.J. LaFaro testified at the time.
“Republicans have Governor Brewer.”

When Pierce backed up the governor with a vote in the state senate, he
became a magnet for the ire of conservatives. The powerful conservative
group Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire Koch brothers,
listed him in its “Hall of Shame” for his “disgusting” act of “betrayal.”
County Republicans voted to censure him, a largely symbolic gesture of
scorn.

Brewer, whose gubernatorial term expired in January, says she still has
“the scars on my back” from clashing with Arizona’s Republican hardliners.
“We have some really, really—I don’t even know if they’re right wing
Republicans, they’re libertarians,” she tells me in an interview in a
downtown Phoenix law office. “They’re anarchists. And they’re mean!”

Probably no Republican politician in Arizona has poked the far-right flank
of the party with quite as much abandon as State Senator Steve Pierce. Once
an invited speaker at Tea Party rallies and the owner of about five dozen
guns, Pierce agreed with Arizona’s notorious Senate Bill 1070 that forced
aliens to carry registration documents, and he is a climate change skeptic.
(“I tend to just believe we’re in a severe drought,” he told me.) Yet
despite these conservative bona fides, he lost the senate presidency after
clashes with the party and was censured by Republicans for his support of
federally-funded health care.

Pierce’s bouts with his own party have been legion: He’s voted against a
bill which allowed private property owners to build their own gun ranges;
last year, he asked then-Gov. Brewer to veto a polemic "religious freedom"
bill allowing Arizona business owners to discriminate against gays, after
he had initially voted for it; and this March, he helped kill a bill that
would’ve allowed Arizonans to carry guns into public buildings, such as
courthouses or schools. After one such standoff with fellow
Republicans—over his vote with Democrats on an amendment requiring
background checks for purchases at gun shows—Pierce says he “told them all
to go fuck themselves” and bolted to his ranch, where he was deluged with
angry emails from pro-gun activists around the country.

Ideologically, Pierce is opposed to federally subsidized health care, which
he believes is a government “intrusion” and part of a “huge overreach in
federal power” under Obama. But in 2013 when Brewer introduced her plan to
expand Medicaid with ACA funds, Pierce seems to have taken a surprising
tack: He gauged his constituency. His was an aging district with a retiree
town for a county seat—the median age in Prescott is around 54—with a
financially failing community hospital and a jail overrun with the mentally
ill. He says he decided that voting for Medicaid expansion was “the right
thing to do. I don’t represent the people on the far right, or the
Republicans. I represent everybody who lives out here.”

Steve Pierce on the way to his ranch

Pierce didn’t stand alone; 14 out of the state’s 15 sheriffs, nine of whom
were Republican, backed the expansion. One of those sheriffs was Yavapai
County’s Scott Mascher, whose own conservative bona fides include vowing
not to enforce federal gun control laws, but who argued that the Medicaid
expansion would help reduce recidivism and length of stays for mentally ill
prisoners. (The lone holdout among the sheriffs was Maricopa County Sheriff
Joe Arpaio, who that year was busy losing a federal lawsuit that accused
him of racial profiling in targeting Latinos during traffic stops.)

The expansion of Medicaid, following the Arizona legislature’s deep cuts to
who was eligible for the state health care program, was a lifeline for
dozens of hospitals and medical centers which were in danger of closing
because so many uninsured people could not pay. After Obamacare coverage
went into effect in January 1, 2014, hundreds of thousands of
residents—including those with new Medicaid cards and people with
subsidized private insurance—could suddenly pay their bills.

If the Supreme Court rules that federal subsidies are unconstitutional for
enrollees in the 34 states without their own exchanges, the loss of health
care for up to 126,506 Arizona residents will have a domino effect on
health providers in the area. While only subsidies for private insurance
are at stake in Burwell, people in Arizona worry that the loss of that
revenue will hit clinics hard and threaten some of them with closure,
limiting access to health care for everyone, including Medicaid recipients.

It’s an issue driven home at, of all places, the bleak Yavapai County Jail.
Sheriff’s office captain David Rhodes shows me the mental health unit, home
to mentally ill prisoners who have committed minor crimes akin to vagrancy.
According to Rhodes, that has included a homeless man who spent a six-month
stint here for defecating in a Prescott bush simply because, with the
dismal state of available mental health facilities at the time, there was
nowhere else to send him.

“For us in law enforcement, it really comes down to common sense.”

Now that health care coverage is more widespread, Rhodes has implemented a
surprisingly progressive program, designed to get mentally ill prisoners
back to state-deemed competency and their jail time diverted to private
outside mental health care agencies.

Rhodes, who is Republican, says his months-old approach relies on an intact
Affordable Care Act, and that cutting subsidies would create a chain
reaction resulting in private mental health agencies dipping back into the
red and in many cases cutting services. “Ideologically, it’s a
controversial issue,” Rhodes says of Obamacare. “But for us in law
enforcement it really comes down to common sense. What kind of services are
available for people who are mentally ill? It wasn’t as if by not allowing
them to have coverage those people went away.”

Laura Norman of the West Yavapai Guidance Clinic, a 16-bed operation which
takes many of Rhodes’s released prisoners, says the local mental health
community will be watching the SCOTUS decision closely. “We actually have a
very good idea of what will happen, because we’ve seen it before,” says
Norman. “People who don’t need to be in jail will be in jail. Psychiatric
issues will go unaddressed. People who don’t need to go to the ER will be
in the ER. There are many people who are functioning extremely well in our
community who will no longer be able to do that.” At the moment, Arizona
receives $145 million in active grants through the ACA, part of which goes
to funding clinicians in rural areas.

The only hospital within 90 miles of Prescott, and the county’s biggest
employer, is the not-for-profit Yavapai Regional Medical Center West. Its
Republican CEO, John Amos, is a buff former physical therapist who worked
his way up the hospital’s ranks to his top position. Like the other
hospital chiefs represented by the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare
Association, Amos lobbied for the passage of Medicaid expansion. Amos told
Pierce, in convincing him of the importance of the expansion, that in the
two years after childless adults were disqualified from Arizona’s Medicaid
program in July 2011, uncompensated care at the hospital—the all-important
rate of bills that aren’t getting paid—had rocketed from 3.5 percent to 8.5
percent. Without enough patients on private health care plans and revenue
plummeting, the hospital had to cut more than 100 fulltime positions.
Pierce says Amos was concerned that he might have to close the maternity
ward and the cardiac unit.

Only 13 other Republican lawmakers in Arizona—nine state representatives
and four senators—joined Pierce in voting for Brewer’s plan to expand
Medicaid. But the numbers have been favorable to Pierce. Amos, the CEO of
the local hospital, says that uncompensated care has dipped back to around
3.5 percent, close to what it was in 2011 before the Arizona legislature
pushed childless adults off of Medicaid. No longer are there threats of
closing medical wards.

And then there’s this figure: 98.38 percent, Pierce’s take of the vote in
2014, his most recent bid for re-election, when rival Republicans couldn’t
find anybody to run against him.

Pierce will be term-limited out of the senate next year, his eighth, and
has no plans to continue his political career by jumping to Arizona’s House
of Representatives, mostly because he’s weary of battling the right wing
fringe: “There’s twice as many crazy people in the House.”

Given the political costs, it doesn’t surprise me that Pierce and Brewer
are the only Republican politicians in favor of Arizona’s Medicaid
expansion—and by proxy, Obamacare—who agree to speak to me, even after I
repeatedly email and call every state rep and senator who voted for it. But
it is the evasive nature of their constituents, those everyday Republican
Arizonans who have signed up for private insurance through the ACA, that
really catches me off guard. Simple math suggests there are a good number
of them: In 2012, just over 100,000 citizens of Yavapai County voted in the
presidential election, with more than 64,000 of those opting for Romney. In
the same county, 8,846 people signed up for the ACA at the last open
enrollment.

I came to Arizona wanting to know: Who were these people, and how did they
feel about the prospect of their newly affordable health care wiped away
with a Supreme Court decision?

But these are not the sort of people who write letters to the editor of
their local newspapers. I know because I scoured back issues of Prescott’s
The Daily Courier, where letters from the populace included one titled
“Obamacare lies are Hitler-esque” but none from self-identifying
Republicans expressing their first-hand experiences with the program. And
these are not the sort of people who reach out to organizations like
Families USA, which is building a story bank of Americans in danger of
losing their ACA subsidies.

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” Rhodes tells me when I ask him if he knows
of any regular Republican Joes getting their coverage through Obamacare
subsidies.

“It’s not the sort of thing people want to talk about.”

“It sounds like you have your work cut out for you,” writes Barry Denton,
president of the Yavapai Republican Men’s Forum. “I personally do not know
of any Republican that has signed up for the Affordable Care Act. I truly
believe most try to avoid it.”

The owner of the best Indian restaurant in Prescott is also no help. I’m
failed by the bartender at the town square saloon. The League of Women
Voters of Central Yavapai County hangs up on me. The Highway 69 Republican
Club, Republican Women of Prescott, Yavapai County Young Republicans, and a
host of other such political groups—and non-political ones; I’m looking at
you, Italian/American Social Club and Yavapai County Jeep Posse—ignore my
overtures.

The social stigma inherent in having to rely on any public subsidy and,
worse, doing so through the enemy camp of Obamacare is probably why I’m
striking out, says Richard Dehnert, vice mayor of Yavapai’s town of
Clarksdale and community relations coordinator for a local health clinic.
“It’s not the sort of thing people want to talk about,” Dehnert says. He
tells me he’ll reach out to a Republican doctor friend of his who, while
between jobs, signed up his wife for the ACA so that she could get care for
some pre-existing conditions. I never hear from them.

Phoenix-based insurance agent Steven Pettit, who bills himself as an
“Obamacare expert,” says he doesn’t learn his clients’ political
affiliation but that it’s not hard to tell. “Most people tend to be pretty
excited to be getting covered,” Pettit says. “But a few seem to be doing it
begrudgingly, like they’re almost upset to be signing up, and I’d guess
those are the Republicans.”

Because of the Sasquatch-like elusiveness of these characters, and their
talismanic political value, when a Republican does publicly acknowledge
participating in—and even appreciating—Obamacare, it tends to go viral
quickly. Butch Matthews of Little Rock got his taste of Internet fame after
telling ThinkProgress in 2013 that he was ecstatic with the $13,000 he was
saving per year through the Affordable Care Act. Self-proclaimed “Tea Party
Patriot” James Webb got heaps of attention when he made the unverifiable
claim that he was voting for Hillary Clinton because he loves his Obacamare
plan. Then there was the factually-porous ordeal of Luis Lang, a South
Carolina Republican who the Charlotte Observer reported had refused to sign
up for Obamacare but then repented after he was stricken with an affliction
which threatened to make him blind. By then, the sign-up period was over,
and he reportedly blamed the president for making the coverage too
complicated.

When I recently asked Lang about the viral article he said that he never
mentioned Obama during an hour-and-a-half interview with the Observer, and
is only a registered Republican because “you gotta pick something.” “The
last president I did vote for, believe it or not,” he added, “was Clinton.”

Ironically, the one Republican I meet in Arizona who admits to even
considering signing up for a plan through the federal ACA exchange is the
same one who just recently complained of “a dictator in Washington who
tells us how to do our health care.”

It’s 105 degrees, and Arizona’s special strand of conservative politics has
been in full weird desert bloom during my visit in late May. On the second
day, gun-toting “free speech” protesters announce a plan to meet at a
Denny’s in Phoenix before descending on a local mosque to draw pictures of
Muhammad. (The Denny’s, in a plot twist, closes to thwart them.)

Across town in a Mexican restaurant, Richard Mack is explaining to me that
he just flew in from Houston, where he was stumping for office on behalf of
Carl Pittman, a member of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers
Association, which Mack founded.

“Here’s another thing about him,” Mack says of sheriff candidate Pittman.
“He’s black. That dispels another rumor about me: that I’m racist.”

'Well, we helped 50 million people’...Does that make it constitutional?

Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County and a human bullhorn against
Obamacare, commands attention like a stern step-dad. Deeply tanned, he
wears his thick head of hair slicked back and is sporting an Arizona State
Sun Devils shirt. He totes a large computer bag from which he pulls a
seemingly bottomless supply of reading materials, including a booklet
detailing his lawsuit which successfully challenged a provision of the
Clinton-era gun control Brady Bill before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Mack has recently achieved a new fame of the sort that he hasn’t approached
since then. That’s because Mack’s son started an online crowdfunding page
to raise money for medical bills after his parents both suffered health
crises.

Liberals lapped up the irony that Mack had blasted the idea of health
coverage for those in need and then was left uncovered himself.
Conservatives admired his principled refusal to sign up despite grave
personal peril to himself and his wife.

Since the GoFundMe page first went up six months ago, Mack has received
$45,489, some of which he says he has already started to spend. No small
amount of that bounty was donated by people who use the page to criticize
his decision not to sign up for Obamacare.

“We have raised—and this is a guestimate—$15,000 from liberals wanting to
tell us to go to hell,” says Mack.

The family portrait on Mack's GoFundMe page

Richard Ivan Mack’s saga of social enlightenment and financial malaise
began with a tenure at the Provo Police Department in Utah, where he spent
most of 1982 as an undercover cop driving a taxicab and attempting to worm
his way into illegal activities. (A Supreme Court of Utah decision which
reversed a drug dealing conviction he secured describes Mack hounding the
suspect for psychedelic mushrooms multiple times, even knocking on the
suspect’s door during a birthday party for his young son, before the target
finally relented and arranged for him to purchase $40 of marijuana.)

Mack was a Graham County sheriff from 1989 to 1997, when he lost in an
election. The subsequent jobs he tells me about were diverse: customer
service for a health systems company, teacher at a juvenile detention
center, used car salesman. He declared bankruptcy in 2004. Mack’s luck
began to change in 2009 when he self-published a 50-page booklet called The
County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, which he claims was a runaway hit. He
started getting so many speaking requests —he charged $500 at first; now he
bills $3,000—that he quit his job, giving up his health benefits despite
having suffered a minor heart attack during his car dealership days, in
order to hit the circuit and write books full-time.

In January, Mack survived a massive heart attack while working out on a
treadmill at the gym. The medical bills from that emergency were compounded
by the fact that a month earlier, his wife, who suffered from arthritis,
had been in the hospital with a severe MRSA infection.

“I’ve always put money away for our hospital bills, but not $130,000,” Mack
tells me incredulously.

Mack believes that the “founding fathers were against the establishment of
a welfare state” and that the Constitution they wrote does not allow
Congress to provide national health care to Americans.

“‘Well, we helped 50 million people,’” Mack mimics in a do-gooder voice,
then rebuts himself: “Does that make it constitutional?”

The way Mack tells it, the answer is no, and that is all that matters—until
about three-quarters of his way through his bean and cheese tostada. That’s
when he tells me that he and his wife considered signing up for the ACA
many times after she was hospitalized.

“We both have talked about, ‘Yeah, maybe we should just sign up,’” Mack
says. “We’re in such hot water here, you know. But this was after we had
this [infection], so it wouldn’t have paid for her MRSA hospital stay. Hers
was only about $30,000 so I thought, ‘Well, we’ll work it out, pay that one
off.’ But then I had a heart attack, and then we couldn’t do it anyway.”
The massive emergency room bills seemed to make signing up for future
coverage pointless.

Perhaps more notable is Mack’s casual admission that he currently has
health care coverage. He received it recently as part of his impending
employment at the Phoenix-area private school Heritage Academy, where he
will be teaching American History starting in August.

Mack can sleep better with this arrangement. “Getting insurance through a
job is fine with me,” says Mack. “Going to the government website and
saying, ‘Yes, I want to do this because it’s such a wonderful program’—I
don’t believe that.”

*Legislature to tackle removal of Confederate battle flag
<http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150623/PC1603/150629765/1484/palmetto-sunrise-legislature-to-tackle-removal-of-confederate-battle-flag&source%3DRSS&newsletter%3Dnews>
// Post and Courier // Cynthia Roldan – June 23, 2015 *

Members in both chambers of the state’s General Assembly return to the
capital today after one of their own and eight churchgoers were killed by a
gunman last week.

They are expected to tackle how to address the removal of the Confederate
battle flag from the Statehouse grounds, a day after Gov. Nikki Haley
called on its removal while flanked by more than two dozen national, state
and local lawmakers.

How they’re going to remove the flag remained unclear as of Monday
afternoon. House Minority Leader Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, said
there are multiple ways. But first, two-thirds of each chamber have to vote
to amend the resolution that called them back to into special session to
have it include the battle flag’s removal as one of the issues they must
discuss.

After that, a bill can be filed that tackles the issue, Rutherford said.
The House would likely vote on a bill the week of July 6, after the bill
makes it through committees.

“Because we were scheduled to come back tomorrow, it’s something that we
cannot ignore,” Rutherford said. “While we respect the victims, the rights
of the victims and the families, we can’t just walk away from the
legislative calendar. Otherwise we’d miss the opportunity to do anything.”

There is a faster way. After the resolution is amended, the House can pull
the bill once it’s filled directly to the floor. But every lawmaker in the
chamber has to agree with that move, which is unlikely, Rutherford said.

*INTERNATIONAL*

*A border village in Haiti struggles with new Dominican rules
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/dominican-immigration-rules-throw-haitian-lives-into-limbo/2015/06/23/7a2fbace-192c-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html>
// WaPo // Joshua Partlow – June 24, 2015 *

OUANAMINTHE, Haiti — Several mornings a week for the past five years, Smith
Laflur has left his one-room cinder-block shack, walked past the stray
goats and the sour cherry tree, down the quiet dirt lanes and out into the
shouts and motorcycle roar of this clamoring border town.

He has stepped around the smoldering trash piles and the clothes drying on
the bank of the Massacre River, which separates Haiti from the Dominican
Republic, and hopped up onto the border bridge on his way to another day’s
work. At the metal gate, he hasn’t showed a passport — or papers of any
kind — but mentioned his boss, a customs official who owns several houses,
and with that he has crossed into Dajabon.

Over the years, Laflur has built a swimming pool, erected concrete walls,
fixed toilets and swept the patio at the Drink Bar — the type of hard
manual labor that feeds his five children and that is far harder to find in
his native Haiti. But his daily routine, and the livelihoods for hundreds
of thousands of Haitians, has been put at risk by new immigration rules
that intend to oust Haitians who don’t have documentation to stay in the
Dominican Republic, even those who were born there.

“Everything we can get is here,” Laflur said at one of the Drink Bar’s
wooden tables. “I don’t know how to find work in Haiti.”

In the days before the June 17 deadline for undocumented migrants to
register for residency permits — if they could prove they lived in the
Dominican Republic before 2011 — many predicted police roundups and waves
of deportations. So far, what has happened instead is voluntary departure
by more than 12,000 Haitians who fear that such a crackdown could turn
violent.

Ouanaminthe is now the scene of returning Haitian families packed into
trucks lashed high with suitcases and burlap sacks. In their rush to leave,
they abandoned furniture and appliances; some said immigration agents stole
money or threatened harm if they didn’t flee. Smith Blanco, a 23-year-old
who worked as a cook in Santo Domingo, stood in a dirt lot with his
belongings, not sure where to go next.

“I didn’t want to come here, but I was worried,” he said.“Their president
wants all the Haitians to leave. So we’re leaving.”

The Dominican government has encouraged these departures, with free bus
rides to the border.

“The government of the Dominican Republic has not expelled one person as of
this hour,” Roberto Rodriguez Marchena, the president’s spokesman, said in
an interview Monday night. “We didn’t create this; we didn’t invent this to
mistreat people or expel people. What we want — and the international
community has to understand this — we want to order our country. Please,
let us bring order to our country.”

The roots of the current immigration policies date to a 2004 law that was
challenged in court and not implemented until last year, during the
presidency of Danilo Medina. The law calls for registering the estimated
600,000 people — Haitians or people of Haitian descent — living without
documents in the country. Rodriguez, the spokesman, said that a quarter of
the country’s health budget is consumed by Haitians living in the country
illegally and not paying taxes, and more than 40 percent of the births
along the border are to Haitian women.

The government has described its new program as measured — and with an eye
to avoiding disruptions to industries relying on manual labor and to the
human rights of Haitians. There are exceptions for retirees and university
students. So far, 288,000 people have begun the registration process. The
remainder, roughly the same number, are subject to deportations if the
government chooses.

“These people,” Rodriguez said, “that are in our territory should go to
Haiti and look for their documents, and then request to come to our country
with a student visa, or a work visa.

“What we can do is apply [the law] with humanity, and this is what we’re
going to do. In our government, we’re not going to abuse a single person.”

‘Things are too hot’

The country’s far northern border has seen some of the worst moments in the
troubled relationship between these island-locked neighbors. When sugar
prices fell in the 1930s, the Dominican government sought to drive out
Haitian cane cutters. Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered a bloody
military campaign that became known as “The Harvest,” with soldiers
slaughtering more than 10,000 Haitians along the Massacre River using
machetes and shovels.

Leonilda Jus moved with her aunt to the Dominican Republic decades after
that, in 1974, but the jobs available were the same. She grew up cutting
sugar cane, picking tomatoes, digging onions. She gave birth to 12 children
there, nine of whom survived, and eventually moved from the outskirts of
the capital to the northern city of Santiago. The sugar cane industry has
shriveled, but her sons found jobs in construction and on farms.

On Saturday, two of them, Thony Dume, 29, and Felix Mondesir, 24, worked on
an addition to the rented shack in Ouanaminthe where they had moved four
days before, to make room for more relatives returning from the Dominican
Republic.

“It wasn’t a problem living there before. The police and many others knew
me,” Dume said. “But now things are too hot.”

On March 2, before deciding to move, Dume stood in line at one of the
government’s immigration offices to register himself — Ministry of Interior
and Police number DO-29-000345. That gave him 45 days to prove he had the
right to live in the Dominican Republic, even though he was born there.
During that time, he needed to get written documentation from seven
neighbors to vouch for his existence, plus testimony from a corner store
where he shopped, and proof of residency from his landlord, in addition to
a birth certificate or other government papers, none of which he had. To
hire a lawyer to complete the process would cost up to $900, he said, equal
to what he could earn in five months at his job milking cows in Santiago.

Instead, he got on a bus and headed for Dajabon.

Over the years, the Dominican border town has grown into a bustling
commercial center, with vendors from around the country selling their wares
at the market to Haitian customers. The shoppers crowd the border bridge
with goods stacked on their heads, loaded into wheelbarrows and motorcycle
carts.

"They make our economy dynamic," said Ana Carrasco, 53, who retired from
local government to run a restaurant in Dajabon. “People come to buy eggs,
chicken, spaghetti. If they don't buy it in this market, they don’t eat.
Hunger doesn’t have a flag, nor a border, nor a color, nor politics. It’s
hunger. It’s necessity.”

Until last week, when they couldn’t cross the border, Carrasco used Haitian
laborers to work in her restaurant and clean her home. She said she
supported the registration effortbut she worried about the harm the policy
might cause to the economy . Dominicans in town have come to rely on the
shadow services offered by Haitians. All day at her restaurant, Haitians
drop by with their offers and wares: shoeshine boys, girls selling baby
clothes, a woman who sells brand-name tampons at half the price offered in
the stores.

“This issue affects my business, because my employees can’t come to work,”
she said. “But we have to resolve this — the country should be able to know
who they are. You have to do it, for everyone’s sanity. No matter what the
cost, it needs to happen.”

Other Dajabon business owners have more to lose. On the 1,700 acres of
Hiroshi Rodriguez’s rice farms, the manual labor is done by trucked-in
Haitian workers, because, as he said, “Dominicans don’t want to work.”

On separate occasions over the past two months, soldiers and immigration
officials have come and taken them away. He finds it particularly
frustrating because soldiers, he said, take bribes from the farmers to let
the day laborers pass the highway checkpoints.

“This makes me enraged. They don’t let me work but they're trafficking
Haitians.”

“The government is going to have to recognize that all the companies need
them,” he added. “Pretty soon this is going to explode.”

Tired of sneaking around

On Saturday morning, Smith Laflur headed for the bridge. It was his son’s
third birthday, and if he was going to afford a present, he needed to get
to the Drink Bar. He pushed through the crowd to the border gate. He told
him who he was, and his boss’s name, but this time the guard shook his head.

“Not today,” he said. “Things aren’t good right now.”

Laflur argued for a while, then turned away and sat on the railing over the
river. In the past, he’d considered trying to get to the United States, but
he was afraid of the open ocean. He didn’t have the money to apply for a
Haitian passport, and his boss in the Dominican Republic had never helped
him with a work permit. He was tired of sneaking around.

“I want to arrive in a country with my own papers,” he said. “I want to be
able to walk as a free man.”

*Iran’s Supreme Leader Seems to Pull Back on Nuclear Talks
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/world/middleeast/irans-supreme-leader-stiffens-his-position-on-nuclear-talks.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news>
// NYT // Thomas Erdbrink And David E. Sanger - June 23, 2015*

TEHRAN — With exactly a week left before the deadline for a final agreement
to limit Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader appeared to
undercut several of the central agreements his negotiators have already
reached with the West.

In a speech broadcast live on Iran state television, the supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, demanded that most sanctions be lifted before
Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before
international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its
commitments. He also ruled out any freeze on Iran’s sensitive nuclear
enrichment for as long as a decade, as a preliminary understanding
announced in April stipulates, and he repeated his refusal to allow
inspections of Iranian military sites.

American officials said they would not be baited into a public debate with
the ayatollah, who has the final word on nuclear matters. But with Western
foreign ministers already hinting that the negotiations may go past the
June 30 deadline, both American and European officials have said in recent
weeks that they are increasingly concerned about the possible effects of
the ayatollah’s statements.

Even if the remarks were made chiefly to mollify hard-liners and military
leaders, they say, they could sharply limit the flexibility of Iran’s chief
negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as he heads into the
week when the most difficult concessions are likely on both sides.

It is possible, outside experts say, that the ayatollah’s series of
statements over the past two months, seemingly stepping back from major
commitments made by Mr. Zarif’s team, are carefully choreographed to
bolster Iran’s negotiators, who can argue that they cannot deviate from the
supreme leader’s strictures.

“My best judgment is that this is about leverage,” Cliff Kupchan, the
chairman of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm in
Washington, said in a telephone interview. “This is the last time to get
the best possible deal. I think what he’s shooting for is the most
sanctions relief he can get as soon as he can get it, and the least
intrusive inspection regime going forward.”

Almost as interesting as what Ayatollah Khamenei said is what he omitted.
He said nothing about lifting the United Nations arms embargo on Iran,
which the United States is resisting. Nor did he rule out inspections under
the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “additional protocol,” a set of
inspection standards that more than 100 other nations allow — and that
permit some inspections on military sites. But he did object to
“unconventional inspections, interrogating certain Iranian individuals and
inspecting military sites.”

Iran has distrusted the nuclear watchdog agency since five of its nuclear
scientists were blown up or shot on the streets of Tehran, a series of
assassinations the Iranians accuse the United States and Israel of
organizing.

By contrast, in the State Department’s “fact sheet” about the preliminary
agreements struck in Lausanne, Switzerland, in late March and early April,
the United States summarized the agreement on inspections this way: “Iran
will be required to grant access to the I.A.E.A. to investigate suspicious
sites or allegations of a covert enrichment facility, conversion facility,
centrifuge production facility, or yellowcake production facility anywhere
in the country.”

The ayatollah has repeatedly mixed his unyielding statements with
assurances that he supports the negotiations, and tributes to the
patriotism of the negotiators. But his remarks on Tuesday were his
strongest yet, and came just two or three days before Secretary of State
John Kerry and other foreign leaders are supposed to convene in Vienna.

One of his statements, for example, suggested that a central premise of the
deal — that sanctions would be lifted only in close coordination with
Iran’s dismantlement of centrifuges and reduction of its stocks of
low-enriched uranium — is not possible.

“All economic, financial and banking sanctions, implemented either by the
United Nations Security Council, the United States Congress or the
administration, must be lifted immediately when the deal is signed,” the
ayatollah said, according to his personal website, Khamenei.ir.

Only after that has happened will Iran start abiding by its commitments, he
said. “The rest of the sanctions must be lifted in rational intervals,” he
said.

Much may depend on what the ayatollah means by the word “signed.” It is
possible that Iran will reach an understanding with the United States,
Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, but not “sign” the agreement
for months. That would give Iran time to come into compliance with the
terms, allowing President Obama to “lift” oil and financial sanctions on
the first day of the accord. But the ayatollah seemed to rule out any
linkage between Iran’s actions and the lifting of sanctions.

Tehran, he said, does not accept the “strange formula” for removing the
sanctions, adding that “removing the sanctions must not be dependent on
implementing Iran’s commitments.”

The ayatollah also said that verification of Iran’s actions by the
International Atomic Energy Agency was out of the question.

“We have said from the first place that we want cruel sanctions to be
lifted,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “You cannot ask us to fulfill our
commitments and wait for the I.A.E.A.’s confirmation for removing the
sanctions. We completely disagree with it.”

The ayatollah also vowed to maintain an active nuclear program, which he
says is for peaceful purposes. “Freezing Iran’s research and development
for a long time, like 10 years or 12 years, is not acceptable,” he said.

Under the preliminary agreements described in April by the United States,
some research work would be permitted, but Iran could not operate new,
advanced centrifuges for more than a decade.

*OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS*

*Bill Clinton, the Confederacy, and the Arkansas State Flag
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/06/23/bill-clinton-signed-law-affirming-arkansas-state-flag-includes-star-for-confederacy/>
// WSJ // Peter Nicholas – June 23, 2015 *

As a national debate rages over the symbolism of the Confederate flag, some
critics of the Clintons have questioned why as governor of Arkansas Bill
Clinton approved a state flag design that carried a reference to the
Confederacy.

In 1987, Mr. Clinton signed Act 116 reaffirming a state flag design that
included a star symbolizing the state’s membership in the Confederacy.

Hillary Clinton was the state’s first lady at the time. The law passed
unanimously — 29-0 in the state Senate, 93-0 in the House.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton praised South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call for
the rebel flag to be taken down from the capitol grounds in that state.

“It shouldn’t fly there,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It shouldn’t fly anywhere.”

The measure codified a package of resolutions passed by the Arkansas
legislature in the early 1920s establishing the basic design of the
Arkansas state flag. In 1923, Arkansas lawmakers added to the flag a star
representing Arkansas’s participation in the Confederacy, according to the
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

The action taken by Mr. Clinton and the legislature appears to have been
part of a broader state celebration marking Arkansas’s sesquicentennial.
Between 1985 and 1987, the legislature also passed measures establishing
the state beverage (milk), musical instrument (the fiddle), and
fruit/vegetable (the vine ripe pink tomato).

Why did Arkansas lawmakers in 1923 tack on the extra star?

In part it was an expression of regret over the demise of the Confederacy,
experts say.

Michael B. Dougan, a history professor emeritus at Arkansas State
University, said the legislature in 1923 “stuck an extra star in there for
the Confederacy.

“It stands for the affirmation of the constitutionality of the doctrine of
secession: While they might take away Arkansas’s freedom to perpetuate
slavery forever, at least the star of the Confederacy would shine on the
flag.”

These days the star – which sits above the word “Arkansas” on the flag –
doesn’t seem to stir up much bitterness.

Sharon Pruitt, an NAACP official in Arkansas, said in an interview that she
sees the star as an unobjectionable part of the state’s heritage.

“To me, it shows the progressivism of Arkansas,” Ms. Pruitt said. “We once
belonged to this Confederacy, however, today, we have our own state flag
and we actually represent the United States of America.”

*Cyberterror, China, and the Clinton competency deficit
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/06/23/cyberterror-china-and-the-clinton-competency-deficit/>
// WaPo // Jennifer Rubin – June 23, 2015 *

Understandably, much of the focus in the 2016 race and in the media more
generally, when it comes to foreign policy, concerns the Middle East,
jihadist terrorism and, to some extent, Russia. But it may have taken a
“cyber 9/11″ or “cyber Pearl Harbor,” as the recent hack of the Office of
Personnel Management is being called, to wake people up to the
extraordinary incompetence and dereliction on the Obama administration’s
part regarding China. CNN reports:

The personal data of an estimated 18 million current, former and
prospective federal employees were affected by a cyber breach at the Office
of Personnel Management — more than four times the 4.2 million the agency
has publicly acknowledged. The number is expected to grow, according to
U.S. officials briefed on the investigation.

FBI Director James Comey gave the 18 million estimate in a closed-door
briefing to Senators in recent weeks, using the OPM’s own internal data,
according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. Those affected could
include people who applied for government jobs, but never actually ended up
working for the government. . . . U.S. investigators believe the Chinese
government is behind the cyber intrusion, which are considered the worst
ever against the U.S. government.

The Post reports on the extent of the internal malfeasance:

The computer upgrade that federal officials tout as having detected —
although not prevented — a massive breach of information on federal
employees is itself at high risk of failure, according to a new internal
audit.

The independent inspector general’s office within the Office of Personnel
Management is conducting a thorough review of the upgrade but issued a
“flash audit alert” to top agency leaders “to bring to your immediate
attention serious concerns we have” that require “immediate action.”

“There is a high risk that this project will fail to meet the objectives of
providing a secure operating environment for OPM systems and applications,”
the alert says.

This technological failure cannot be separated from yet another foreign
policy failure: the inability of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team to manage the
threat from China. You would think, for one thing, that the attack on the
government would have required a strong response against China, but nothing
of the sort seems to be in the works. That’s par for the course for this
administration.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) issued a statement Tuesday, properly laying
blame at the feet of the administration:

At this week’s U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, our country must
forcefully raise concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly
aggressive actions.

We must confront China about its persistent cyber attacks against our
government and companies, such as the recent hack of the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management, which resulted in the theft of up to four million
federal employee’s personal information. The United States needs to
establish an effective deterrent, unambiguously signaling to Chinese rulers
that the costs of attacking us substantially outweigh the benefits.
President Obama’s inability to defend our networks from these attacks,
despite spending $12.7 billion on cybersecurity last year, is yet another
example of his and Secretary Clinton’s weakness toward China.

In order to safeguard freedom of the seas and human rights, which are in
our national interest, we must press China to cease its provocations in the
South China Sea and support the rights of its people.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton has been mute. This is not surprising. As
secretary of state she did everything but offer the Chinese a “reset
button.” You might recall that in 2009, right out of the box, she traveled
to China to assure its people that she wasn’t going to be hassling them
about human rights. (“Successive administrations and Chinese governments
have been poised back and forth on these issues, and we have to continue to
press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the
global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security
crisis.”) Predictably, human rights in China have gotten worse and worse
over the course of Obama’s tenure.

In 2012, Mitt Romney urged that we take a stronger stance against China’s
domestic repression and regional aggression, calling for “a strategy that
makes the path of regional hegemony for China far more costly than the
alternative path of becoming a responsible partner in the international
system.” That never happened, nor did the promised “pivot to Asia” that
Clinton talked about ever take concrete form. Instead, we left our allies
feeling neglected, and the Chinese continuing to assert their sovereignty
in the South China Sea, steal U.S. businesses’ intellectual property and
engage in cyberterrorism. And we are slashing our navy, demonstrating to
friend and foe alike that we do not intend to project U.S. power. China’s
ascendancy is one more legacy of Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.

And don’t expect anything to change if she gets into office. Bloomberg
reports:

A Hillary Clinton presidency would be “friendly” toward China despite the
perception the architect of the U.S. military rebalance to Asia was a
combative secretary of state, according to Chinese billionaire Yan Jiehe.

Yan Jiehe said he has met former U.S. President Bill Clinton at least five
times since 2010, with Clinton attending the Shanghai wedding celebrations
for Yan’s son, and met Hillary in the U.S. A sizable donor to the Clinton
Foundation, Yan is the founder of China Pacific Construction Group.

If she clinches the Democratic Party nomination and then the presidency in
2016, Hillary Clinton would face a resurgent China that is challenging
decades of U.S.-led economic and military order. Her time as secretary of
state from 2009 to 2013 is already being scrutinized for how she’d confront
the prospect of China as a major global power.

Maybe Clinton was not influenced by the donations or her husband’s
relationship with Chinese moguls. Maybe she was just snookered and entirely
clueless as to China’s ambitions, just as she was with Russia. In either
case, one has to ask — as with so many other aspects of her record — why in
the world would we give someone with such a rotten record, who let so many
American foes grow bolder and more aggressive, a promotion to commander in
chief?

*Hillary, pay your interns
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/06/23/hillary-clinton-unpaid-intern-millenials-column/28936259/>
// USA Today // Carolyn Osorio – June 23, 2015 *

As the high school girl who slept in a Hillary for President T-shirt for
most of 2007, cried when she conceded to Barack Obama, railed at Congress
during the Benghazi hearings and was an early follower of Texts from
Hillary, I took heart from the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling
Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign had created.

When Hillary announced her second run for the White House, I felt my
passion for politics reignite. I quickly applied for and was offered a
position as a Hillary for America fellow to work on the campaign. I
couldn't have been more excited until I was told I'd have to move to Nevada
and work full time on my own dime.

I couldn't believe my ears. I did not apply as a routine volunteer but as a
fellow. Its application process with an elaborate screening and interview
process was now revealed to be an ugly lie. If Hillary hopes to inspire
young people, to prove she understands our interests she should offer
substance to earn our votes.

Cheap, cheap

The campaign's "cheapness" is being lauded as a successful step away from
her failure in 2008. Voters are evidently supposed to feel pleased with
Hillary's miserly commercial flights (in first class) and economical Amtrak
trips while discounting her unpaid staff's out-of-pocket expenses as simply
smart business.

I had hoped a trailblazer would be more willing to break the mold of
indentured servitude that haunts my generation. Finding out Hillary
perpetuates the exploitation known as unpaid internships was like
discovering that Santa wasn't real.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Unpaid work is common in campaigns, and
as secretary of State, Hillary worked for the Obama administration. At the
same time it was cracking down on unpaid internships in the private sector,
it continued not paying the 300 annual interns in the White House.

Obama's wave of Millennial support in 2008 has emphasized the importance of
the youth vote. The Clinton campaign has already started to court young
people as evident in her huge social media efforts right out of the gate,
even enlisting Beyoncé.

But it doesn't bode well that a campaign seeking younger votes would
callously overlook my generation's biggest struggle: employment. Nearly 14%
of us are unemployed. After two straight years of unemployment, I thought
things were looking up with a potential Hillary victory.

Internships, once a prestigious foot-in-the-door experience, have
increasingly been shown to be an abusive way for employers to gain free
labo.." I myself had bad experiences at unpaid internships in both
California and New York. I promised myself that when I graduated two years
ago to never let anyone do that to me again.

Minimum wage

For a woman whom I supported to demand this of me felt repulsive. Forget
arguments about raising the minimum wage. I can't even get a wage. What
exactly are Hillary Clinton's priorities and how do I change them?

I'm sure people will read this and think, "Well, that's how it's always
been. Who is this 20-something girl to complain?" To that I say: the
traditional family used to be the "way it's always been," until we changed
it.

So, Hillary, I ask you to question your role in this exploitative system.
My generation is in trouble. Young people today are put in the impossible
position of trading their self-worth just to survive.

Our struggles are devalued as the first world problems of ungrateful
children. At what point do the expectations that young people ought be
grateful go too far? If we aren't getting paid, we should be grateful to
have the experience. If we don't get the job, we should be grateful we even
got the interview. If we're passed up for a promotion, we should be
grateful we have a job; if we lose our job, we should be grateful we have a
spouse or parent who can take care of us. At what point is it actually
worse?

It might make me sound like a Stockholm syndrome victim, but after all of
this, Hillary is still the best chance we have. If there is to be a better
world for my future children, she's the only hope.

Hillary will get my free vote even if she will never have my free help.

*‘Clinton Cash’ author demolishes Hillary’s self-defense
<http://nypost.com/2015/06/22/clinton-cash-author-demolishes-hillarys-self-defense/>
// NY Post // Peter Schweizer – June 22, 2015 *

Grave incompetence or brazen dishonesty?

Those are the only two conclusions one can reasonably come to after
reviewing Hillary Clinton’s stunning Sunday interview on local New
Hampshire TV.

When WMUR local TV host Josh McElveen asked Clinton why her State
Department greenlit the transfer of 20 percent of all US uranium to the
Russian government, Clinton claimed she had no involvement in her own State
Department’s decision to approve the sale of Uranium One to Russia.

“I was not personally involved because that wasn’t something the secretary
of state did,” said Clinton.

The transfer of 20 percent of US uranium — the stuff used to build nuclear
weapons — to Vladimir Putin did not rise to the level of Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton’s time and attention?

Beyond being an admission of extreme executive negligence on an issue of
utmost national security, Hillary’s statement strains credulity to the
breaking point for at least three other reasons.

First, nine investors who profited from the uranium deal collectively
donated $145 million to Hillary’s family foundation, including Clinton
Foundation mega-donor and Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra, who
pledged $100 million.

Since 2005, Giustra and Bill Clinton have frequently globetrotted together,
and there’s even a Clinton Foundation initiative named the Clinton-Giustra
initiative.

But Hillary expects Americans to believe she had no knowledge that a man
who made a nine-figure donation to her foundation was deeply involved in
the deal? Nor eight other mining executives, all of whom also donated to
her foundation?

Second, during her Sunday interview, Clinton was asked about the
Kremlin-backed bank that paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a single speech
delivered in Moscow. Hillary’s response? She dodged the question completely
and instead offered this blurry evasion.

“The timing doesn’t work,” said Clinton. “It happened in terms of the
support for the foundation before I was secretary of state.”

Hillary added that such “allegations” are being “made by people who are
wielding the partisan ax.”

The reason Hillary ignored addressing the $500,000 direct payment from the
Kremlin-backed bank to her husband is because that payment occurred, as the
Times confirms, “shortly after the Russians announced their intention to
acquire a majority stake in Uranium One.”

And as for her comment that the timing of the uranium investors’ donations
“doesn’t work” as a damning revelation: In fact, the timing works perfectly.

As “Clinton Cash” revealed and others have confirmed, Uranium One’s
then-chief Ian Telfer made donations totaling $2.35 million that Hillary
Clinton’s foundation kept hidden. Telfer’s donations occurred as Hillary’s
State Department was considering the Uranium One deal.

Third, Clinton correctly notes in the interview that “there were nine
government agencies who had to sign off on that deal.” What she leaves out,
of course, is that her State Department was one of them, and the only
agency whose chief received $145 million in donations from shareholders in
the deal.

Does she honestly expect Americans to believe she was simply unaware that
the deal was even under consideration in her own State Department?

Moreover, is that really the leadership statement she wants front and
center heading into a presidential campaign? That in the critical moment of
global leadership, with the Russians poised to seize 20 percent of US
uranium, she was simply out to lunch?

Perhaps a review of her emails would settle the accuracy of her Sunday
claim. But, of course, she erased her emails and wiped clean the secret
server housed in her Chappaqua home.

To be sure, like those emails, Hillary Clinton wishes questions about her
role in the transfer of US uranium to the Russian government would simply
vanish.

But that’s unlikely. A recent polling memo by the Republican National
Committee finds that the uranium transfer issue is “the most persuasive
message tested” and one that “severely undercuts her perceived strength of
resume.”

Hillary’s Sunday comments only served to elevate and amplify the need for
serious answers to axial questions.

In the absence of such answers, Americans are left to believe only one of
two potentialities regarding her involvement in the transfer of 20 percent
of US uranium to Vladimir Putin: She was either dangerously incompetent or
remains deeply dishonest.