Subject: H4A News Clips 6.28.15
From: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
To: Alexandria Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2015 10:59:02 -0400
List-Id: <HRCRapid.hillaryclinton.com>

*H4A News Clips*

*June 28, 2015*

*TODAY’S KEY
STORIES.....................................................................................
**4*

*Hillary Clinton Praises Gay Marriage Decision and Hounds GOP* // TIME //
Sam Frizell – June 27, 2015    4

*Cheering Marriage Decision, Hillary Clinton Heads to Provincetown* // NYT
// Amy Chozick – June 27,
2015.............................................................................................................................................
5

*SOCIAL
MEDIA.................................................................................................
**6*

*Ashley Killough (6/27/15, 11:11 AM)* - Man says he had a ticket to
@JebBush event but was told right before it was a private event and he
wasn't allowed
in...........................................................................
6

*Jenna Portnoy (6/27/15, 2:49 PM)* - The compromise takes it. @VA_GOP votes
42 to 39 to choose presidential nominee by primary in 2016 and gov nominee
by convention in 2017....................................... 6

*Ashley Killough (6/27/15, 8:47 PM)* - On beating Clinton @ScottWalker says
"if we’re going to beat a name from the past, we need a name from the
future—not a name from the past".............................. 6

*Wall Street Journal (6/28/15, 9:20 PM)* - Breaking: Iran, world powers
plan to continue nuclear talks beyond June 30, says senior U.S. official
wsj.com................................................................................
6

*HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE.............................................................................
**6*

*Hillary Clinton, Praising the Court's Marriage Decision, Pits Herself
Against 'the Party of the Past'* // National Journal // Emily Schultheis –
June 27,
2015............................................................................
8

*The latest mystery over Hillary’s missing e-mails* // NY Post // Post
Editorial Board - June 27, 2015           10

*Undo Obamacare? Dream on* // New York Daily News // James Warren - June
28, 2015........... 11

*Hillary Clinton in Minnesota: Quiet, but coordinating* // Minnesota Star
Tribune // Lori Sturdevant – June 27,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
13

*Hillary's list offers staffers cheap Brooklyn accommodation* // Telegraph
// Rob Crilly – June 27, 2015       15

*Clinton Ally Terry McAuliffe Suggests Hillary’s Leadership Is ‘Fitting’ Of
Charleston Victims* // IJReview // Katie Lapotin – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................
17

*Hillary Clinton establishes campaign presence in ND* // Dickinson Press //
Grace Lyden and Tu-Uyen Tran – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
17

*Dynasties aren’t all bad news* // Las Vegas Sun // Jamelle Bouie - June
28, 2015.................... 19

*Immigrant issues a priority for Clinton* // Las Vegas Sun // Rafael Lopez
– June 27, 2015......... 21

*OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL
COVERAGE.................................................. **21*

*DECLARED..................................................................................................
**21*

*O’MALLEY...............................................................................................
**21*

*O'Malley: Islamic State a result of 'mindless rush to war'* // AP // Ken
Thomas – June 27, 2015 21

*How pardons from O'Malley changed one man's course* // Delmarva Now //
Jennifer Cording and Phil Davis – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
22

*SANDERS.................................................................................................
**26*

*Sanders says he will significantly step up his outreach to minority voters*
// WaPo // John Wagner – June 27,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
27

*A Democratic senator attacked Bernie Sanders for being extreme. He should
thank her.* // WaPo // Amber Phillips – June 27,
2015........................................................................................................
28

*Sanders: I was ahead of the curve on gay rights* // The Hill // Mark
Hensch – June 27, 2015..... 29

*Bernie Sanders, Rising in Polls, Gets Standing Room Only Crowds in New
Hampshire* // National Journal // S. V. Dáte – June 27,
2015........................................................................................................
30

*Bernie Sanders’ surge is partly fueled by veterans* // Boston Globe //
Annie Linskey – June 28, 2015          31

*David M. Shribman: Democrats swoon for Sanders* // Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
// David M. Shribman – June 28,
2015...............................................................................................................................
34

*UNDECLARED............................................................................................
**36*

*WEBB......................................................................................................
**36*

*Webb close to 2016 decision, insiders say Clinton camp helped delay launch*
// Fox News // John Roberts – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
36

*OTHER....................................................................................................
**38*

*Joe Biden's presidential decision hinges on family* // Delaware Online //
Nicole Gaudiano – June 27,
2015...........................................................................................................................................
38

*With Sanders and Chafee in state, Clinton and O’Malley supporters on hand,
Democratic competition on full display in N.H.* // Concord Monitor // Casey
McDermott – June 28, 2015................................ 40

*GOP.................................................................................................................
**43*

*DECLARED.................................................................................................
**43*

*BUSH.......................................................................................................
**43*

*The Definition of Insanity: Jeb Bush still favors appointing judges “with
a proven record of judicial restraint”* // WaPo // Randy Barnett – June 27.
2015.............................................................................
43

*Bush to meet with Charleston pastors* // WaPo // Ed O’Keefe – June 27,
2015......................... 45

*Jeb Bush touts record on guns* // CNN // Ashley Killough – June 27,
2015............................... 45

*Jeb Bush: Charleston shootings wouldn't have been prevented by Obama
proposals* // CBS // Alan He – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................................................
47

*Jeb Bush: U.S. needs to strengthen economically and internationally* //
Las Vegas Review-Journal // Ben Botkin – June 27,
2015.........................................................................................................
48

*Jeb Bush says stricter US gun control laws aren't needed* // Sydney
Morning Herald // Kurtis Lee – June 27,
2015....................................................................................................................................
50

*RUBIO......................................................................................................
**51*

*Rubio Buys Airtime for Campaign Ads in First Four Nominating States* //
WSJ // Patrick O’Connor – June 27,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
51

*PAUL........................................................................................................
**52*

*Rand Paul silent on gay marriage ruling* // Politico // Daniel Strauss –
June 27, 2015.............. 52

*CRUZ........................................................................................................
**53*

*Ted Cruz calls for judicial retention elections for Supreme Court justices*
// WaPo // Katie Zezima – June 27,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
53

*Ted Cruz Recalls How Father Tried to Join Fidel Castro’s Army* // AP –
June 27, 2015.............. 54

*Cruz seeks to harness conservative outrage after Supreme Court decisions*
// CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................................................
56

*In northwest Iowa, Cruz calls court rulings 'lawless'* // Des Moines
Register // Matthew Patane – June 27,
2015............................................................................................................................................
57

*GRAHAM.................................................................................................
**59*

*In Lindsey Graham's hometown, resentment over the Confederate flag* //
Politico // Ben Schreckinger – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................................................
59

*Lindsey Graham’s Unique Way Of Handling A Voter’s Racist Comments* //
Buzzfeed // Rosie Grey – June 27,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
63

*SANTORUM.............................................................................................
**64*

*Santorum denounces marriage ruling as Supreme Court decision dominates
conservative gathering* // AP // Kristen Wyatt – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................
64

*Santorum Leads Off Speakers At Western Conservative Summit *// AP – June
27, 2015............ 65

*Rick Santorum: Justice Kennedy Is “Potentially Disrupting The Foundation
Of The World.”* // Buzzfeed News // Andrew Kaczynski – June 27,
2015....................................................................................
65

*HUCKABEE.............................................................................................
**66*

*Mike Huckabee: Conservatives can ignore gay marriage ruling like Lincoln
ignored Dred Scott* // The Washington Times // Valerie Richardson – June
27, 2015...................................................... 67

*Huckabee: Supreme Court is an ‘extreme court’* // The Hill // Martin
Matishak – June 27, 2015 68

*FIORINA..................................................................................................
**69*

*Carly Fiorina on Obamacare: Rich getting richer, while middle-class
getting squeezed* // The Washington Times // Valerie Richardson – June 27,
2015.........................................................................
69

*Fiorina: Marriage is 'grounded in spirituality'* // The Hill // Mark
Hensch – June 27, 2015....... 70

*Carly Fiorina fired up conservatives at Western Summit* // The Gazette //
Megan Schrader – June 27,
2015............................................................................................................................................
71

*TRUMP.....................................................................................................
**72*

*Hispanic leaders urge NBC to cut ties to Donald Trump* // CNN // Brian
Stelter – June 27, 2015 72

*Donald Trump Pushes Forward in Iowa Despite Republican Party Concern* //
ABC News // Benjamin Siegel – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
73

*Donald Trump is even more of a monster than you think: Why his golf
courses are environmental disasters* // Salon // Lindsay Abrams – June 27,
2015..............................................................................
74

*Donald Trump Presidential Campaign Dissected By Bill Maher And Panel* //
Deadline // Lisa de Moraes – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
76

*Hispanic Group Pressures NBC to Dump Donald Trump* // Hollywood Reporter
// Ryan Gajewski – June 27,
2015.....................................................................................................................................
77

*UNDECLARED............................................................................................
**78*

*WALKER.................................................................................................
**78*

*Scott Walker gives shout-out to Colorado Springs during Denver speech* //
Gazette // Megan Shrader – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................................................
78

*Scott Walker in Colorado to address conservative summit* // Milwaukee
Wisconsin Journal – Sentinel – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................................................
80

*CHRISTIE................................................................................................
**81*

*Chris Christie Sets Up Campaign Web Site Before Expected Presidential Run*
// WSJ // Heather Haddon – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
81

*Chris Christie Unveils Presidential Campaign Website* // Bloomberg //
Elizabeth Titus – June 27, 2015    82

*Chris Christie Launches Campaign Website Three Days Before His
Announcement* // National Journal // Nora Kelly – June 27,
2015............................................................................................................
82

*Will Christie have enough campaign cash for his 2016 White House run?* //
NJ // Claude Brodesser-Akner – June 28,
2015.......................................................................................................................
83

*Can Christie catch up to the other 2016 GOP contenders?* // NJ // Jonathan
D. Salant – June 27, 2015        85

*Has Christie's ship already sailed?* // Inquirer // Thomas Fitzgerald –
June 27, 2015............... 87

*JINDAL....................................................................................................
**91*

*Growing up in Baton Rouge, Bobby Jindal’s future passion for politics a
surprise to most* // The Advocate // Tyler Bridges – June 27,
2015................................................................................................
91

*Bobby Jindal sidesteps gay marriage ruling's meaning for Louisiana* //
Times-Picayune // Julia O’Donoghue – June 27,
2015.......................................................................................................................
95

*Renouncing roots: Here's why Bobby Jindal is not popular among the
Indian-American community in US* // India Times // Ishani Duttagupta – June
28, 2015................................................................. 96

*OTHER....................................................................................................
**99*

*Column: Most GOP voters support allowing undocumented immigrants to stay,
poll says* // Des Moines Register // Kathie Obradovich - June 27,
2015.......................................................................
99

*As Left Wins Culture Battles, G.O.P. Gains Opportunity to Pivot for 2016*
// NYT // Jonathan Martin – June 27,
2015...................................................................................................................................
101

*In a fast-changing culture, can the GOP get in step with modern America?*
// WaPo // Philip Rucker and Robert Costa – June 27,
2015...............................................................................................
104

*OTHER 2016
NEWS.......................................................................................
**108*

*The Straight Talk Express Gets a Few More Passengers* // TIME // Alex
Altman and Zeke J Miller – June 27,
2015...................................................................................................................................
108

*New Hampshire Poll: Sanders Inching Closer to Clinton, Bush Continues
Leading GOP* // Latin Post // Rodrigo Ugarte – June 27,
2015........................................................................................................
110

*TOP
NEWS......................................................................................................
**111*

*DOMESTIC.................................................................................................
**111*

*2 Charged in Confederate Flag Removal at South Carolina Capitol* // NYT //
Kenneth Rosen – June 27,
2015...........................................................................................................................................
111

*For Obama and Clinton, twisty paths to 'yes' on gay marriage* // AP // Jim
Kuhneman and Lisa Lerer – June 27,
2015..............................................................................................................................
112

*Obama's Charleston eulogy: 'Amazing Grace'* // CNN // Kevin Liptak – June
27, 2015............ 114

*INTERNATIONAL......................................................................................
**116*

*Greece on the brink of default after talks with creditors break down* //
WaPo // Griff Witte – June 27,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
116

*ISIS bomb plot on London military parade foiled, nation remains on high
alert* // New York Daily News // Dennis Slattery – June 27,
2015...........................................................................................
119

*OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS....................................................................
**119*

*Gay Marriage Is American As Apple Pie* // Daily Beast // Gil Troy – June
27, 2015.................. 119

*The monuments to the framers of The Southern Manifesto of 1956* //
American Thinker – June 27, 2015    121

*Clinton supports universal background checks* // Des Moines Register //
Sarah Mannheimer – June 27,
2015..........................................................................................................................................
122

*TODAY’S KEY STORIES*

*Hillary Clinton Praises Gay Marriage Decision and Hounds GOP
<http://time.com/3938898/hillary-clinton-gay-marriage/> // TIME // Sam
Frizell – June 27, 2015*

"Equality triumphed, and America triumphed"

Hillary Clinton praised the Supreme Court decision to guarantee same-sex
marriages on Friday night and forcefully condemned the Republicans’
response to the ruling, warning the GOP presidential field not to turn LGBT
issues into a “political football for this 2016 campaign.”

“It was an emotional roller coaster of a day, Clinton said. “This morning,
love triumphed in the highest court in our land. Equality triumphed, and
America triumphed.”

“Instead of trying to turn back the clock,” Clinton continued, Republicans
“should be joining us in saying no to discrimination once and for all.”

Clinton’s comments on Friday evening were her first public remarks in the
wake of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution guarantees the
right for same-sex couples to marry. Her campaign issued a statement Friday
in support of the decision and touted it on social media.

Nearly all the Republican presidential hopefuls have criticized the Supreme
Court’s decision, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker calling it a “grave
mistake” and Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee naming the Supreme Court
“an imperial court.” The Republicans have said the issue should be decided
by the states, and several called for a constitutional amendment.

Among the general electorate, the issue of gay marriage favors the
Democrats: nearly 60% of Americans support same-sex marriage, a count that
has grown rapidly in recent years. It is likely to be a boon for Democrats
in a general election.

Clinton called Friday’s Supreme Court decision a ruling that reinforced
American values. “Today was not about discovering new rights—it was about
getting closer to the ideals that have defined our nation from the very
beginning,” she said.

Much of the former secretary of state’s address was a preview of what her
stump speech in a general election might sound like. Clinton ticked off a
list of issues that she said made the Republicans sounds like the “party of
the past,” including gun control, immigration reform, same-sex marriage and
the Affordable Care Act.

She praised the Supreme Court for upholding the Obamacare subsidies in
states with federal-run exchanges, and called on all states to accept
funding for Medicaid expansion.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to
same-sex marriage, bringing an end to a patchwork of marriage laws across
the U.S. and decades of activism pushing for marriage equality.

Friday was Clinton’s first stop of her presidential election campaign in
Virginia, a purple state that Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012. It will be
a key state for Clinton in the 2016 election if she wins the Democratic
nomination, one that she will likely need to defeat a Republican opponent.

Virginia’s governor, Terry McAuliffe is a close ally of the Clintons and
will be a key player for her in the state. McAuliffe introduced Clinton
with an effusive speech, calling her a “tenacious fighter.”

“You know why else I love this woman? She’s been beaten up, she’s been
knocked down, but every time she does she gets right back up,” said
McAuliffe, echoing an oft-repeated theme of Clinton’s campaign stump speech.

McAuliffe, who vacations with the Clintons, told the crowd when he’s
traveling with them and wants a pre-dinner cocktail, “I don’t go looking
for Bill Clinton: I go looking for Hillary Clinton, because she’s a lot
more fun than him.”

*Cheering Marriage Decision, Hillary Clinton Heads to Provincetown
<http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/26/cheering-marriage-decision-hillary-clinton-heads-to-provincetown/>
// NYT // Amy Chozick – June 27, 2015*

Hillary Rodham Clinton transformed her H-and-an-arrow campaign logo into a
gay-rights rainbow on Friday to mark the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage
ruling. She issued a statement calling the court’s decision “an affirmation
of the commitment of couples across the country who love one another.” Her
campaign sells a variety of branded “Hillary” items timed to June’s Gay
Pride Month.

But on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton will make perhaps her most gay-friendly move:
She will visit Provincetown, Mass.

The seaside enclave — in the state that was first to legalize same-sex
marriage — has long been a Shangri-La for gay men and lesbians who enjoy
raucous, romantic or just relaxing weekends in the scenic city at the
northern tip of Cape Cod.

In 2012, the Census reported that Provincetown had 163.1 same-sex couples
per 1,000 people, the most of any city in the country.

As much as it may call to mind drag-queen pool parties or kitschy
rainbow-festooned nightclubs, Provincetown has served a far more serious
purpose: Historically, it was one of the few resort locales where gay men
and lesbians could openly enjoy a vacation without the threat of
discrimination or worse.

Mrs. Clinton, who maintains strong support among gay people, and whose
campaign recently released a video showing same-sex couples before and
during their weddings, will attend a fund-raiser in Provincetown hosted by
Bryan Rafanelli, an event planner, and Alix Ritchie, a prominent gay-rights
activist. The event is part of a string of fund-raisers Mrs. Clinton has
arranged in and around Boston in early July.

It was planned weeks ago — but just became extremely well timed.

*SOCIAL MEDIA*

*Ashley Killough (6/27/15, 11:11 AM)*
<file:///C:\Users\aphillips\Downloads\Man%20says%20he%20had%20a%20ticket%20to%20@JebBush%20event%20but%20was%20told%20right%20before%20it%20was%20a%20private%20event%20and%20he%20wasn't%20allowed%20in>*
- Man says he had a ticket to @JebBush event but was told right before it
was a private event and he wasn't allowed in.*

*Jenna Portnoy (6/27/15, 2:49 PM)*
<file:///C:\Users\aphillips\Downloads\The%20compromise%20takes%20it.%20@VA_GOP%20votes%2042%20to%2039%20to%20choose%20presidential%20nominee%20by%20primary%20in%202016%20and%20gov%20nominee%20by%20convention%20in%202017>*
- The compromise takes it. @VA_GOP votes 42 to 39 to choose presidential
nominee by primary in 2016 and gov nominee by convention in 2017.*

*Ashley Killough (6/27/15, 8:47 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/KilloughCNN/status/615003467174670336>* - On beating
Clinton @ScottWalker says "if we’re going to beat a name from the past, we
need a name from the future—not a name from the past"*

*Wall Street Journal (6/28/15, 9:20 PM)*
<https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/615142300973404160>* - Breaking: Iran,
world powers plan to continue nuclear talks beyond June 30, says senior
U.S. official wsj.com <http://wsj.com>*

*HRC** NATIONAL COVERAGE*

*Hillary Clinton says you can vote in Texas with a concealed-weapon permit,
but not a student ID*
<http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/jun/26/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-you-can-vote-texas-concealed-/>*
// Politifact // W. Gardner Selby – June 27, 2015*

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, campaigning in Texas,
called for citizens to be automatically registered to vote at age 18.
Speaking at Texas Southern University, Clinton also lashed out at the Texas
law reached by the Republican-steered Legislature in 2011 requiring voters
to present photo identification at the polls.

Rick Perry, the state’s governor into 2015, "signed a law that a federal
court said was actually written with the purpose of discriminating against
minority voters," Clinton said. Mostly True, PolitiFact in Washington, D.C.
recently found, noting that a federal judge had aired that conclusion,
though the judge’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional remains under
appeal.

A reader asked us to consider another Clinton charge from that Houston
appearance.

According to a New York Times account of her speech, Clinton said young
Texans had been disenfranchised by the voter ID law. "If you want to vote
in this state," she said, "you can use a concealed-weapon permit as a valid
form of identification, but a valid student ID isn’t good enough."

This claim took just a few key strokes and help from a state office to
confirm.

Prior to the change in law, Texas law didn’t require anyone to present a
photo ID to vote. However, Alicia Phillips Pierce, a spokeswoman for the
Texas secretary of state, confirmed by email that student ID’s previously
could have been presented to help officials pin down someone’s identity for
the purposes of voting though the law did not require anyone to present
more than a voter registration card. The old law broadly said a voter could
present a "form of identification containing the person’s photograph that
establishes the person’s identity."

The Texas secretary of state’s office says on its Frequently Asked
Questions web page that the current ID mandate enables a registered voter
to cast a ballot at a poll during early voting or on Election Day with one
of seven types of a photo ID:

A Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS.

Texas personal identification card issued by DPS.

Texas concealed handgun license issued by DPS.

U.S. military identification card containing the person’s photograph.

U.S. citizenship certificate containing the person’s photograph.

U.S. passport.

So, yes to voting in Texas with a concealed handgun license but no-go for
someone presenting a student ID.

Nationally, the National Conference of State Legislatures said in March
2015, 14 of 34 states with laws requiring voters to show identification at
the polls included a student ID option, including three states —
Mississippi, Virginia and Wisconsin — that, like Texas, were described by
the group as having "strict" photo ID voting laws.

Wondering if a student ID element was ever part of the legislation that
became the Texas law, we reviewed the varied versions of Senate Bill 14,
authored by Sen. Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay and fellow Republicans that
advanced in the 2011 legislative session. We found no "student" mentions.
Language permitting a state license to carry a concealed handgun to be
offered at the polls wasn’t in the original Fraser proposal; it was added,
though, before the Senate sent the proposal to the House, legislative
records show.

Voting by mail

We’ve noted before that Texas maintains a no-ID element for voting by mail,
in 2013 rating True a claim the Texas law doesn’t require a person voting
by mail to present a photo ID. That’s so, we found, for all but first-time
voters who did not present a photo ID number or the last four digits of
their Social Security number when registering to vote. Those voters who
seek to vote by mail can expect to be asked for a copy of their photo ID,
yet even they don’t have to do so if they are disabled, in the military or
living overseas.

A registered voter wishing to ballot by mail must say she or he will be out
of her or his home county on Election Day and during the early-voting
period or she or he is sick or disabled or will be 65 or older on Election
Day or confined in jail though still eligible to vote.

Our ruling

Clinton said: "If you want to vote in" Texas, "you can use a
concealed-weapon permit as a valid form of identification, but a valid
student ID isn’t good enough."

The photo IDs accepted at Texas polling places include the state’s
concealed-handgun license and not any student IDs. We rate this statement
True.

*Hillary Clinton, Praising the Court's Marriage Decision, Pits Herself
Against 'the Party of the Past'
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/hillary-clinton-marriage-gay-same-sex-court-republicans-supreme-20150627>
// National Journal // Emily Schultheis – June 27, 2015*

FAIRFAX, Va. — Energized by a major week of policy victories for Democrats,
which culminated with the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex
marriage nationwide, Hillary Clinton at a stop in Virginia on Friday
forcefully drew contrasts between herself and the 2016 Republican field on
issues ranging from same-sex marriage and health care to immigration,
women's health and gun control laws.

"A lot of the Republicans may talk about having new ideas and fresh faces,
but across the board they're the party of the past, not the future," she
told a crowd of about 1,800 supporters on George Mason University's campus
in Fairfax.

Clinton praised the Supreme Court for its same-sex marriage decision,
quoting from Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion. "This morning,
love triumphed in the highest court in our land," she said. "Equality
triumphed. America triumphed."

Though Friday's event was a fundraiser for the state Democratic Party,
which is neutral in the Democratic primaries, it felt like a de facto
Hillary Clinton pep rally. The coterie of local and state politicians who
spoke before her were effusive in praise, and virtually all of them
endorsed or advocated for her on stage.

"I don't know about you, but I made my choice—I'm ready for Hillary,"
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said, to applause.

Clinton's speech gave early but clear signs of how she'll paint herself
against a Republican opponent if she makes it to the general election, as
most assume she will. Clinton denounced a GOP field who, she said, "seemed
determined to lead us right back into the past," going after the Republican
candidates who had criticized the Court's decision earlier in the day.

"This morning they all decried the Supreme Court's ruling upholding
marriage equality—we even heard them call for a constitutional amendment to
strip away the right to equality from our gay brothers and sisters," she
said, seemingly alluding to amendment proposals from Scott Walker and Ted
Cruz. "Instead of trying to turn back the clock, they should be joining us
in saying loudly and clearly, 'No, no' to discrimination once and for all."

"I'm asking them, please: don't make the rights, the hopes, of any
American, a political football for this 2016 campaign," Clinton continued.

She went on to to contrast Democratic policies on health care, women's
health and gun control laws with those of Republicans. Pointing to a vote
in Congress over Centers for Disease Control and research on gun violence,
Clinton denounced Republicans for voting against the funding before the
funerals of those shot and killed in Charleston last week were over. "How
can you watch massacre after massacre and take that vote?" she said. "That
is wrong."

She said the country doesn't need leaders who "shame and blame women" for
medical decisions, calling out Republicans for restrictive policies on
abortion and other women's health issues.

"Ask them about women's reproductive health, they're likely to talk—about
defunding Planned Parenthood," she said. "Or maybe they'll insist on
forcing women to undergo some demeaning and invasive medical procedure, as
was attempted right here here in Virginia."

On health care, Clinton indicated that the Affordable Care Act isn't going
anywhere after the Court's King v. Burwell decision, and Republicans would
do well to fall in line. "All the Republicans candidates were furious that
earlier this week, the Supreme Court once again confirmed what we've all
known and believed for years—it is settled law and it is here to stay."

Clinton also showed how easily Republican candidate Donald Trump, who
referred to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "criminals" during his
campaign announcement, can be turned into a talking point for her campaign.
"Maybe he's never met them," she said. "Maybe he's never stopped to ask the
millions of people who love this country, work hard and want nothing more
than a chance to build a better life for themselves and their children,
what their lives are like."

Her speech came after a week particularly emboldening week Democrats, which
began with widespread removals of the Confederate flag. That glee was
apparent in speeches from the Virginia politicians who also appeared on
stage.

"What an incredible week," said Warner. "I mean, is there a week in modern
American history where so many fundamental things have changed?"

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said the week's victories made the country "a more
perfect Union"—and said that if Clinton is elected, "we will make it more
perfect again."

And Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and ally of the Clintons,
joined in as he introduced her on stage: "Yes, after 226 years, it is time
for a woman president of the United States!"

*The latest mystery over Hillary’s missing e-mails
<http://nypost.com/2015/06/27/the-latest-mystery-over-hillarys-missing-e-mails/>
// NY Post // Post Editorial Board - June 27, 2015*

The latest mystery over Hillary’s missing e-mails

Now this was predictable: The State Department on Thursday said Hillary
Clinton failed to turn over 15 work-related e-mails from her private
server, despite claiming she’d handed over everything.

Which raises the troubling question: How many more did she also, uh, “miss”?

Remember, the former secretary of state and her aides had insisted they’d
sent the department all her work-related e-mails from her personal server
after conducting a “careful” review.

Now it turns out she didn’t include 15 of those she’d exchanged with
longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal concerning Libya.

To comply with a subpoena, Blumenthal gave the House Select Committee on
Benghazi about 60 Libya-related e-mails he’d exchanged with Hillary. But
the committee found some of those were not included in the batch the State
Department gave it.

Now we know the reason: State didn’t actually get everything from Hillary.

Of course, Hillary & Co. are always ready with an answer: Her staff claims
it doesn’t “recognize many of those materials and cannot speak to their
origin.”

Hmm. Maybe George W. Bush secretly wrote them and planted them on
Blumenthal’s hard drive.

Sure, it’s possible those messages were missed accidentally in Hillary’s
search. The State Department also claims the content of the omitted
Blumenthal e-mails “is not relevant to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi” — a
key part of the committee’s probe.

But even if you give Hillary the undeserved benefit of the doubt, the
revelation is still

troubling.

“This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee’s
work,” says panel chairman Trey Gowdy. “This conclusively shows her e-mail
arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has
resulted in an incomplete public record.”

Indeed.

The point is, if she missed Blumenthal’s e-mails, she might have also
overlooked others — “accidentally” or not. In fact, the only reason anyone
even found out about Blumenthal’s stash is because hackers got them and
made them public.

Bottom line: Hillary failed to supply a complete record, despite her
assertions to the contrary. Once again the public may never know what it’s
missing.

And she wants Americans to trust her as their president?

*Undo Obamacare? Dream on
<http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/james-warren-undo-obamacare-dream-article-1.2273003>
// New York Daily News // James Warren - June 28, 2015*

Having ducked the need to replace Obamacare, Republicans can now bitch and
flail and face Washington’s most potent force: the status quo.

The Affordable Care Act is now the de facto status quo as a result of the
Supreme Court’s decision last week. And smart Republicans should know you
usually get only one shot at the king.

They tried by concocting a theory that was less about substance than
semantics: What did an exchange “established by the state” really mean?

Now they can rail against Obamacare and “activist” judges. GOP presidential
candidates can make that a campaign refrain and thus let the party keep the
issue without owning the outcome of the decision they sought, namely more
than 6 million losing their health care.

But do they really have a chance to change, even repeal, the law?

“It’s hard to fully repeal it, but it is not that hard to change it
substantially. The GOP has to have a strategy of fixing it, the more the
better,” says John Feehery, a Republican consultant and former top aide to
former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Minority Leader Tom DeLay.

Changing it substantially will be hard for a simple reason: the history of
entitlements screams out that the longer a law is in place, the harder it
is to ditch or dramatically alter it.

Indeed, there’s a lot of research about what the political scientists call
“positive feedback loops” when it comes to policy.

The academics can make it sound complex but it isn’t: You pass a law,
constituencies who rely on it are born and they and others proceed to
resist changes.

“Social Security is the classic case, of course,” says Andrew Rudalevige, a
political scientist at Bowdoin College.

There are a few examples to the contrary. For example, interest groups
fought ferociously to regain their tax breaks and undermined a historic
bipartisan tax reform in 1986 crafted under President George H.W. Bush.

But Social Security and other transformational changes, such as
transportation deregulation (trucking and airlines), proceeded apace and
suggest why Obamacare “has staying power,” as Rudalevige puts it.

It’s unleashed market forces that are hard to undo.

If you doubted that, be informed that HCA Holdings Inc., Tenet Healthcare
Corp. and Community Health Systems Inc. shares all gained at least 8%
shortly after Bloomberg News first broke word of the decision at 10:08:09
a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday (beating Thomson Reuters by all of
six seconds).

Further, Obamacare is pretty heavy on regulations, like Social Security and
Medicare. Those become tough to alter, while creating a huge number of
people with incentives to maintain their benefits.

It’s not guaranteed with metaphysical certitude but likely. One interesting
qualifier is broached in the work of Andrea Campbell at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, who talks about welfare politics and its key
constituents, the poor, voting infrequently and finding it harder to
organize.

So one trick for Obamacare might be to make sure it insinuates itself into
the middle class, which has more political clout and ability to resist
change.

But it’s not as if even proponents don’t concede issues with the law, which
did not alter the private health care system in any significant fashion.

“Basically the real challenge now is for delivery system reform — that is
improving quality and lowering cost,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist
and medical ethics and health policy expert at the University of
Pennsylvania and a former White House adviser on the health care law.

“The ACA galvanized that activity and is pushing it forward but a lot more
needs doing. That will continue now without distraction of will ACA be
repealed. That is good.

“And one would hope that there could be more bipartisan overlap to push
initiatives that would accelerate the transformation. It is happening but
could go faster.”

For sure. But, with a presidential campaign upon us, the near certainty is
that even as more Americans may benefit from the law, Republicans will beat
the drum.

And they’ll go after Hillary Clinton for her support, while she beats her
own drum among minorities, especially Latinos, and gains advantage.

The bottom line will be the same: The GOP can hector all it wants. But, as
with gay marriage, they’ve now lost the argument.

*Hillary Clinton in Minnesota: Quiet, but coordinating
<http://m.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/310188011.html> // Minnesota
Star Tribune // Lori Sturdevant – June 27, 2015*

Hillary Clinton did last week what candidates for president often do in
Minnesota. She quietly swooped into town, steered toward Lake Minnetonka
and switched on her campaign-finance vacuum cleaner. It went to work on a
crowd of about 120 that reportedly nibbled crab salad and vegetable-chèvre
crêpes while Clinton discussed the challenges facing America’s working
families.

You missed the big rally that followed? So did I — because there wasn’t one.

I’m not complaining (much). It’s early. As the far-and-away front-runner
for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton likely has all next
summer and September and October, too, to rent a local arena and put on a
show that in many Minnesota minds has become obligatory. The DFL faithful
who have worked to keep Minnesota reliably Democratic blue in every
presidential election save one since 1960 expect at least one such
performance.

Or next year, maybe more than one — given the year’s unusual state
political lineup.

Ever-turning four- and six-year election cycles have spun around to a
circumstance not seen in Minnesota since 1992, the first time the name
Clinton was on the presidential ballot. It’s a presidential year in which
no state constitutional office is at stake. Neither U.S. Senate seat is up
for grabs. The state’s eight U.S. House seats will be on the ballot, as
usual. So will all 201 seats of the Minnesota Legislature.

President, the U.S. House, and the Minnesota House and Senate. Toss in a
few county races and a ballot question or two, and that’s the entire
political dance card in 2016. (If your memory does not stretch back to
1992, try this variation: It’s 2004 plus the state Senate to boot.)

That means legislative candidates next year will be more vulnerable than
usual to the vagaries of presidential politics. The situation has DFL
legislators investing a lot of hope in Hillary — and last week, it had the
Minnesota Republican Party behaving as the anti-Welcome Wagon as Clinton
pulled into town.

The state GOP’s news conference pulled no punches. It called Clinton
“shady,” “dishonest and untrustworthy,” and prone to “secrecy and scandal.”

Only minutes later, the business-funded Minnesota Jobs Coalition piled on.
It released a poll of 600 likely voters conducted June 9-11 in 16 Minnesota
House districts that have proved prone to swing to either party in recent
years — 12 in Greater Minnesota, four in the suburbs.

The approve/disapprove results weren’t pretty for Clinton: 35 percent
approve, 49 percent disapprove, the coalition crowed. Coalition executive
director John Rouleau noted that even among female poll respondents —
voters who typically tilt toward the DFL — Hillary’s approval score lagged
6 percentage points behind her disapproval share.

Those numbers shouldn’t cause any panic attacks among DFLers — yet. The
poll did not pair Clinton with any GOP rival. And — did I mention? — it’s
early.

But the poll’s very design underscores this feature of 2016 Minnesota
politics: Control of the Legislature will be the year’s big prize. It
likely won’t turn on which presidential candidate carries this state. But
it may well turn on how the presidential contenders perform in a few dozen
key districts in Greater Minnesota and on the metro fringe.

And as the last several legislative elections showed, a big factor in
political performance is turnout. When it’s low — 1998, 2010, 2014 —
Republicans generally pick up legislative seats. When it’s 70-plus percent
— Minnesota’s usual presidential-year range — DFLers do better.

The question that’s got to be nagging at DFLers is whether a Hillary
Clinton presidential candidacy can gin up Minnesota’s customary turnout —
and whether that turnout will be substantial not only in Linden Hills and
Highland Park, but also Willmar, Brainerd and Albert Lea.

Clinton’s money-vacuum stop at Ellen Goldberg Luger’s back yard last week
provided little indication that she’s attuned to this local concern. Other
aspects of her campaign do.

Within days of announcing her candidacy on April 12, Clinton dispatched a
full-time organizer to every state in the country, assigned to work with
local Democratic parties and pols to enlist reliable volunteers. That’s an
earlier and bigger commitment to grass-roots organizing in states without
early primaries than presidential candidates typically make.

Clinton’s man on the ground in Minnesota, Scott Hogan, deflected my queries
about his activity to the campaign’s Brooklyn, N.Y., headquarters. There,
an official said that Hogan’s been plenty busy, arranging 24 events and
signing up more than 575 volunteers in less than two months. Notably, those
events have occurred in each of the eight congressional districts, not just
the DFL strongholds of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth.

That geographic reach undoubtedly pleases the DFL legislative campaign
crew. So does her professed interest in coordinating her campaign with the
DFL Party and legislative races, rather than operating as a free agent.

So do the candidate’s published assurances that she aims not just to win
her own election, but to bolster state and local political parties and
shore up democracy along the way. One such, from South Carolina: “I am
running to live again at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But I don’t want to be
there all by myself. I want Democrats elected from the local to the county
to the state to the federal level, once again making the case that when
Democrats win, Americans win.”

More than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Clinton is a
creature of the Democratic Party. She looks likely to be a team player who
will visibly ally herself with local candidates, show up a time or two and
spend some campaign cash in a traditionally blue state. That undoubtedly
sounds good to DFLers trying to hang on to the state Senate and recapture
the House.

But as the Jobs Coalition’s poll suggests, Clinton’s reputation as an
establishment Democrat may limit her appeal in legislative swing districts.
In those places, her efforts to be a DFL party-builder could be a two-edged
sword.

*Hillary's list offers staffers cheap Brooklyn accommodation
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/hillary-clinton/11703248/Hillarys-list-offers-staffers-cheap-Brooklyn-accommodation.html>
// Telegraph // Rob Crilly – June 27, 2015*

Hillary Clinton's decision to locate her campaign HQ in fashionable
Brooklyn has given staffers and volunteers a major headache - how to find
affordable accommodation in one of the country's most inflated housing
markets.

The campaign is running a spare room or couch surfing service - a sort of
politicos' Craig's List - pairing donors with its young army of workers who
need a bed for the night.

The scheme is part necessity, part useful branding exercise for a wealthy
politician frequently derided as out of touch with ordinary Americans and
their money worries.

One recent email put it bluntly.

“Do you have a spare room – or just a spare couch! – where a new staffer
could stay?”

“You and I both know that finding a place to live in New York can take
longer than an afternoon of apartment hunting,” it said.

“These folks will be working long days, so they really just need a place to
sleep, and they'll be so grateful to be staying with someone who shares
their beliefs and their goals.”

Mrs Clinton's run for the White House is based over two floors of an office
block in Brooklyn Heights.

In fact Brooklyn Heights lacks the hipster appeal of places such as
Williamsburg, but even so its historic brownstowns and views across the
East River to Manhattan, mean that rents are the highest in the entire
borough. Finding a shoe-box sized apartment for less than $2000 (£1270) is
a challenge.

Lena Dunham, writer and star of Girls, recently spent almost $5 million on
a home just around the corner.

For those on a more modest budget, it means hunting further afield –
scouting locations deeper into Brooklyn, in the sort of neighbourhoods that
have yet to get an artisan coffee shop - or apartment hopping using the
Clinton Campaign's host-a-staffer service.

Jasmin Harris, 22, stayed with a middle aged couple in their Brooklyn
Heights apartment, for six weeks, until they needed their spare room for
visiting relatives.

“I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I’ll be somewhere else tonight,”
she told The New York Times. “I have my bags packed and am waiting for an
email.”

It is not the only money-saving element of the campaign.

Workers have been told to take the bus wherever possible. That is in part
to keep costs down during the primary campaign when individual donations
are limited to $2700 per person, but also to show that lessons have been
learnt from the disastrous 2008 run when Mrs Clinton was seen as the
high-spending Washington insider upended by Barack Obama's shoestring
insurgents.

Although it still leaves Mrs Clinton with one other dilemma headache –
whether to take the usual summer break in the Hamptons where a holiday home
can cost $200,000 a month.

*Clinton Ally Terry McAuliffe Suggests Hillary’s Leadership Is ‘Fitting’ Of
Charleston Victims
<http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/354981-clinton-ally-terry-mcauliffe-suggests-hillarys-leadership-fitting-charleston-victims/>
// IJReview // Katie Lapotin – June 27, 2015*

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe told a crowd full of supporters Friday night
that the type of leadership former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would
bring to the White House is “fitting of the people who lost their lives
last week” during a mass shooting at a historically black church in
Charleston, S.C.

The former DNC chair was introducing the 2016 presidential candidate at the
state party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner when he made the remark.

“In the wake of that unspeakable tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina,
many politicians went out of their way to duck the tough issues that
terrible act raised. But not Hillary Clinton. Hillary stepped forward and
began a national conversation about race and gun violence,” he said.

“It is fitting of the people who lost their lives last week. Folks, this is
the type of leadership that we need from our next president.”

McAuliffe, who also served as chairman of her failed 2008 presidential bid,
quipped that he would rather share a cold one with Hillary than her
husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton returned the gesture from her longtime friend and political ally,
telling those in attendance:

“[McAuliffe’s] my kind of leader, a pragmatic progressive. He prefers
common ground to scorched earth.”

Clinton’s speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Friday was her first official
campaign visit to Virginia since launching her campaign in April. Despite
the state’s importance in 2016, however, party organizers ended up giving
away free tickets to the dinner late Friday in order to fill tables.

*Hillary Clinton establishes campaign presence in ND
<http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/north-dakota/3775656-hillary-clinton-establishes-campaign-presence-nd>
// Dickinson Press // Grace Lyden and Tu-Uyen Tran – June 27, 2015*

For three weeks, Clinton has had a staffer in town, Andrew Buis, who also
worked for President Barack Obama's campaign. But fitting with the name of
her "Ramp Up Grassroots Organizing Program," most of the events, such as
house parties and barbecues, have been hosted by local volunteers.

"We want people to get involved, not just people who are deeply entrenched
in politics, but everyone," said Jeffrey Eide, a 30-year-old volunteer who
lives in Fargo.

It's an approach Clinton is taking nationwide. Campaign spokesman Tyrone
Gayle said in an email that paid staffers like Buis are in all 50 states
and the territories through the end of June, but that Clinton's message
will be spread through "old-school organizing," complete with potlucks and
parades.

Eide, who's joined Buis in talking to people on the street, said this
attracts and gives voice to atypical voters, particularly millennials.
Obama appealed to that age group with his savvy social media, and Clinton
aims to get their vote with old-fashioned conversation.

"Amongst my friends, I sense oftentimes that people feel their concerns and
their political interests are not being attended to," Eide said. "As
important as social media is for getting out and maintaining and
reinforcing a strong message, face-to-face communication, in my opinion,
has always been the best way to get to know other people and hear what they
have to say."

Gayle said there have been grass-roots organizing meetings in Fargo, Grand
Forks, Bismarck and Belcourt.

Volunteer Mary Jo Cayley, who is housing Buis, said gatherings also create
momentum and, in turn, motivate people to vote. They build enthusiasm, she
said, and make for a more positive campaign.

"Last time, it was, 'Yes we can,' " she said. "Now, we know we can."

But how likely is a Clinton win in North Dakota?

Carma Hanson, vice chairwoman of the North Dakota Republican Party, sees
Clinton's early start as a sign that she knows what she's up against.

"She's going to be looking for votes wherever she can get them, and I think
she knows we are a very Republican state," Hanson said. "It will be a
battle for Democrats in the state to establish their presence, so I think
it's their way of reaching out and trying to grab that foothold in a state
that is very red."

No Republican presidential candidate has established a presence in North
Dakota yet.

"Members of the Republican Party have received materials in the mail and
that kind of thing, but as far as opening office doors and things like
that, I'm not aware of any at this time," Hanson said. She said one would
probably do so next spring or summer, once a front-runner appears.

But Cayley believes Clinton has the potential to appeal to North Dakotans.

"She's dedicated her life to public service. That's hard work," Cayley
said. "We have those values of working hard, and I think all North Dakotans
can stand behind that."

Robert Haider, executive director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party,
said he couldn't comment on whether other Democratic candidates were
planning North Dakota campaigns.

Buis declined an interview.

*Dynasties aren’t all bad news
<http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jun/28/dynasties-arent-all-bad-news/> //
Las Vegas Sun // Jamelle Bouie - June 28, 2015 *

Hillary Clinton is the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary,
and Jeb Bush is a front-runner in the Republican one. And although there is
a lifetime of politics between now and the next election, there’s a good
chance that, on Nov. 8, 2016, Americans will choose between a Bush and a
Clinton for the second time in 25 years. We could have our third Bush
presidency or another turn for the Clintons.

To many Americans, this is troubling. Last year, former first lady Barbara
Bush said that “there are more than two or three families that should run
for high office in America.” Sixty-nine percent of Americans agree,
according to a 2014 poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.

In March, in another NBC News/WSJ survey, 39 percent of voters said they
would think more or somewhat more favorably of a candidate whose last name
was not Bush or Clinton. Similarly, a majority said that electing Hillary
Clinton or Jeb Bush would represent a return to the policies of the past.

There’s no denying that the status quo — of a White House claimed by one or
the other family — is unusual, and I won’t criticize anyone disturbed by a
pattern of “Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush” or “Bush, Clinton, Bush,
Obama, Clinton.”

But I also don’t think it’s as bad as it looks.

Observers have called this a “dynastic” election. This headline from a
January edition of The New York Times is typical: “Are two dynasties our
destiny?”

“Dynasty” might apply to the Bush family. Indeed, Jeb Bush, in his
announcement speech, described himself as “a guy who met his first
president on the day he was born and his second on the day he was brought
home from the hospital,” before declaring that “not a one of us
(presidential candidates) deserves the job by right of resume, party,
seniority, family or family narrative. It’s nobody’s turn.”

But that term doesn’t apply to the Clintons. Hillary Clinton neither came
from a political family nor joined one. Instead, she entered politics as a
partner to Bill and, after two decades as a political spouse, set out on
her own career, first as a senator, then as a presidential candidate, then
as a top diplomat, and now — again — as a presidential candidate.

Given the degree to which she’s built her career in tandem with her
husband’s, Clinton isn’t a dynastic candidate as much as she’s a tightly
connected one.

For some, of course, this is a distinction without a difference, which is
why it’s important to note that national political dynasties are a
recurring part of American life.

The first father-son presidential duo, in the 19th century, was John Adams
and his son, John Quincy Adams, the second and sixth presidents of the
United States. The Harrison family also produced two presidents, William
Henry and Benjamin. The Breckinridges dominated Kentucky politics and sent
senators, House members and a vice president to Washington. Two other
antebellum presidents — John Tyler and Franklin Pierce — came from
distinctly political families.

The 20th century brings more familiar names: Theodore Roosevelt and his
cousin Franklin Roosevelt; William Howard Taft, his son Sen. Robert A.
Taft, his grandson Sen. Robert Taft Jr., and his great-grandson, former
Ohio Gov. Robert Taft III. Most famously, there’s the Kennedy clan.

The fact that dynasties are normal — that Senate seats, governorships and
presidencies have moved between and within families with ease — may be
alarming (America isn’t especially meritocratic), but it’s also mostly
harmless.

American democracy wasn’t stronger after two Adams presidencies in quick
succession, but it wasn’t weaker, either. Besides, despite the frequency of
dynasties, the vast majority of powerful positions in national politics go
to people who aren’t connected to political families.

One last point. George W. Bush was a very different president than his
father, and if elected, Hillary Clinton will be a different president than
her husband. Hillary faces a different Democratic Party than Bill did and
has to make different choices for different ends. The same is true for Jeb
and the Republican Party. Their surnames aside, neither is “more of the
same.”

When you vote for president, you’re voting for an administration of
bureaucrats and assistants and a whole host of appointees. What matters
most is the party and its network of operatives, activists and
policymakers, not the individual at the head of that party.

If Clinton had won in 2008, her administration would have looked a lot like
the one Obama put together. And on the same score, a Jeb Bush White House
probably wouldn’t look too different than a Scott Walker White House or a
Marco Rubio White House.

The aesthetics of another Clinton or Bush presidency don’t look great. But
optics have little bearing on what either candidate would do in office.

*Immigrant issues a priority for Clinton
<http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jun/27/immigrant-issues-priority-clinton/>
// Las Vegas Sun // Rafael Lopez – June 27, 2015*

I grew up like any other American child, but I didn’t have the same
opportunities. Why? I’m undocumented. I’ve lived in Nevada since I was a
baby, but my family got caught in our broken immigration system. We fell
victim to fraud: An attorney falsely promised to fix our statuses. Instead,
we received deportation orders.

But there is hope. Three years ago I woke to a phone call that changed my
life: My friend told me President Barack Obama had announced a deferred
action (DACA) program to help Dreamers. Through DACA, I obtained a work
permit, and my life instantly improved. I was able to afford tuition at
UNLV and I no longer lived in fear. Now, I’m in my last semester pursing a
degree in psychology and criminal justice.

But we still have much to do. Our next president must step up and defend
our families.

This May, I participated in a roundtable with Hillary Clinton to talk about
just that. Clinton strongly supported immigration reform. She answered our
questions with clarity, showed she understood our challenges and listened
with compassion. She defended DACA and pledged to strengthen protections
for undocumented immigrants.

It’s too early to tell which presidential candidates offer the best
solutions, but last week at the National Association of Latino Elected and
Appointed Officials conference in Las Vegas, Clinton again demonstrated she
will fight to keep families together.

I want to hear more from Clinton and other candidates about immigration
reform. I only hope others will talk to me with the same respect as Hillary
did.

*OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE*

*DECLARED*

*O’MALLEY*

*O'Malley: Islamic State a result of 'mindless rush to war'
<http://www.mintpressnews.com/omalley-isis-is-a-result-of-americas-mindless-rush-to-war/207052/>
// AP // Ken Thomas – June 27, 2015*

WASHINGTON  — Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley said Friday
the rise of the Islamic State group was an unintended consequence of a
“mindless rush to war” in Iraq and the U.S. must avoid “mission creep”
there now.

In a speech, the former Maryland governor said the invasion of Iraq was one
of the most tragic and costly blunders in U.S. history. He made no mention
of his Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who faced criticism during
her 2008 presidential campaign for her Senate vote in favor of the 2003
invasion, which she has since called a mistake.

“No threat probably better illustrates the unintended consequences of a
mindless rush to war — and a lack of understanding — than the emergence of
ISIS,” O’Malley said in his first foreign policy address as a presidential
candidate, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

He added: “We are still paying the price of a war pursued under false
pretenses and acquiesced to, in the words of Dr. (Martin Luther) King (Jr.)
by ‘the appalling silence of the good.’ ”

Speaking to the Truman National Security Project, O’Malley said there is a
risk that American military involvement in Iraq could be
counter-productive. He said the U.S. should work with partners to “contain,
degrade and ultimately wear down and defeat ISIS.”

O’Malley said American foreign and national security policies are directly
connected to economic stability around the globe and a rising global middle
class. He said the U.S. faces an array of threats, from violent extremism
and nuclear proliferation, to pandemics and cyberattacks. He advocated
tackling climate change, promoting fair trade and addressing poverty around
the world.

The ex-governor trails Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the early
stages of the Democratic primary campaign and could be at a disadvantage on
foreign policy against Clinton, who traveled the globe as President Barack
Obama’s secretary of state.

Ahead of next week’s deadline on Iran talks, O’Malley said a nuclear-armed
Iran is among the most immediate threats faced by the U.S. He said Congress
would be wise to support a “verifiable, enforceable agreement” that bars
Iran’s path to developing nuclear weapons.

O’Malley also said there are “real lessons” to be learned from the 2012
attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four
Americans, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens. A GOP-led House panel
has been investigating the attack and Clinton’s actions.

O’Malley said the Benghazi attack shows the need to “know in advance who is
likely to take power — or vie for it — once a dictator is toppled, not
after.”

Doug Wilson, O’Malley’s foreign policy adviser, said the speech was not
“about Hillary Clinton and the State Department,” but about how O’Malley
would conduct foreign policy if elected president.

*How pardons from O'Malley changed one man's course
<http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/maryland/2015/06/27/omalley-pardons/29394955/>
// Delmarva Now // Jennifer Cording and Phil Davis – June 27, 2015*

It was mid-July, and it was hot, but maybe that wasn't the only reason
Darnell Bowen's palms were damp. Most people in his shoes would be a bit
nervous.

He'd just seen the governor arrive — along with his big opportunity — at
the Crisfield clam bake.

So the Berlin native walked right up to then-Gov. Martin O'Malley and he
stuck out his hand. The men shook and exchanged how-are-you's.

Most folks were ready for a party and seafood that day, of course. But
Bowen was there for a very different reason.

He wanted to clear his name. He wanted a second chance for a better job and
a better life.

Bowen shook hands with the governor, and he asked O'Malley for a criminal
pardon.

And O'Malley blessed it — right there amongst the picnic tables of corn and
crab shells and seafood lovers — and with that unofficial approval, Bowen
had a fresh start in life.

Or, at least, the process of a gubernatorial pardon began.

For Bowen, convicted years earlier for a minor theft, it was like the
clouds lifted and the sun was shining for the first time in years at the
crowded clam bake that day.

"I guess I felt happy because it was coming directly from him, and I was
hoping he was telling me the truth," said Bowen.

"It's a weight off my shoulders"

Bowen, seated recently at his own picnic table in the freshly mowed yard of
his family's home in Berlin, told how much the pardon meant to him.

The misdemeanor conviction — he'd stolen a $5 canister of camera film —
showed up on a job background check, he said.

He'd lost a managerial job at Eastern Correctional Institution because the
conviction showed up during a background check, he said.

"They gave me the job and everything," he said. "They gave me a start date."

But the conviction was enough to derail all of it.

Bowen's was one of about 150 pardons O'Malley approved during his
just-completed eight-year tenure as Maryland's governor.

The former Baltimore mayor — who marketed himself as "tough on crime" —
recently announced a bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

And it's true he didn't hand out many pardons compared to the requests that
came across his desk, nor compared to those granted by other governors in
recent years.

When he finally heard from the pardons office that his record was wiped
clean, Bowen took to Facebook, he said, to celebrate the news.

When the piece of paper came in the mail, he had to register it at the
local courthouse. Court workers passed around the pardon, Bowen said.
They'd never seen one.

And it's true it took persistence to get it. The application process took
two years — even after the governor gave Bowen the nod at the festival.

"I wasn't going to give up," said Bowen. "It's a weight off my shoulders."

Pardons as a reflection of the politician

Voters like politicians who are tough on crime, it seems.

And, it seems politicians like to accommodate. O'Malley rejected nearly
1,300 pardon cases during his term.

The vast majority of his pardons covered minor crimes, such as misdemeanor
thefts and lesser drug charges. Outside of the commutations of four
death-row inmates — and a medical commutation of a convicted armed robber
who contracted AIDS — records show most people granted pardons served no
jail time and had short probationary periods.

Some other governors have been tough, too. In Kansas, former Democratic
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius issued only one pardon during her six years in
office between 2003 and 2009. Her successor, current Gov. Sam Brownback, a
Republican, once declared he would refuse to issue pardons for an entire
year in 2011.

However, in California, Gov. Jerry Brown issued 105 pardons on Christmas
Eve 2014 alone. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, granted clemency more
than 1,000 times in four years.

On a national level, Bowen's story highlights a delicate question
employers, both public and private, must weigh: How does someone's criminal
past affect his or her future?

According to a study done by the National Employment Law Project, an
estimated 70 million people in the United States have arrest or conviction
records.

Since "tough on crime" political platform swept the country in the 1980s
and 1990s, incarceration rates inflated from 150 people per 100,000
citizens in 1980 to as high as 753 people per 100,000 citizens in 2008.

"This is a huge problem all over this country," said Nayantara Mehta, a
senior staff attorney with the organization.

Citing the study, Mehta's organization and others have pushed for larger
reforms for "fair chance" employment.

According to Eastern Correctional Institution spokesman Gerard Shields, if
an applicant is disqualified if their misdemeanor crime carries a potential
penalty of a year or more in prison.

While Bowen's crime would not carry a penalty that large now, it did in
1997, when "theft under $300" could mean up to 18 months in jail in
Maryland.

"His story is really very, very similar with what most people experience,"
said Victor Dickson, president of Safer Foundation.

The foundation, based out of Chicago, helps ex-offenders find work and
supports the National Law Enforcement Project's advocacy for "fair chance"
employment.

For Dickson, Bowen's story is one he's heard before.

"We had another lady who ... had some drug charges, went to school and
actually wanted to get into the health care field," Dickson said. "She
started working for a hospital and was on the job — I think for two or
three months — and then the company did a background check, saw the drug
charges and then terminated her."

"That record is used to deny people a whole host of things that we consider
to be the basic right of a citizen," Dickson added, pointing to ranging
restrictions on public housing, voting and public benefits in various
states.

A life-changing encounter

Bowen, now 50, served his probationary period and was not convicted of
further crimes.

He bounced around the job market, but he also worked for a decade at a
local Salisbury upholstery business before it relocated farther south,
according to Bowen.

With his experience, he decided to apply for a management position
supervising prisoners in the upholstery work program at Eastern
Correctional Institution.

He was surprised to see how well the interview process went, at first.

"They gave me the job and everything," Bowen said. "They gave me a start
date."

But then he was sent to Baltimore for a background check, and he was told
he'd lost the job. He said he received no explanation. Bowen didn't think
the misdemeanor theft charge was relevant to working in upholstery.

"No, I don't think it was justified," Bowen said. He applied for a pardon
once, he said, and he was turned down. Someone in the pardons office told
him most people are turned down the first time, Bowen said.

Bowen said it set the stage for his experience at the J. Millard Tawes Clam
and Crab Bake.

For more than three decades the event has been perhaps the most distinctly
political gathering on the Eastern Shore. The shells of eaten crabs, corn
and other Shore seafood delicacies — toted from the food stands in
cardboard box plates — are strewn across vast picnic tables.

But past the picnic tables are the tents of legislative hopefuls and
dignitaries. State delegate and senate campaign slogans are emblazoned on
signs and baking on the backs of campaign managers in the hot July sun.

Bowen saw the governor. That day in 2012 was especially hot, he remembers.

"So I said 'OK, here's my chance.' So I went and shook his hand and
(asked), 'Could I have a few minutes of your time?'" Bowen said. "I just
threw my situation out to them."

Though he'd been denied previously, he hoped his story would strike a chord
with the Democratic governor. It did, and O'Malley told Bowen to reapply
for the pardon and to pass along O'Malley's verbal stamp of approval.

It took more than a year, still, but Bowen did receive a pardon from
O'Malley in 2013, records show. It was 16 years after the film theft.

He knows the job at ECI is gone, but Bowen said he still thinks about it
and how it'd be different now.

"But, every now and then, a thought comes back that if it would become
available again, I (maybe) would apply," said Bowen, who works now as a
field engineer for the Oracle Corp., a multinational computer technology
company.

But, even if the upholstery management job doesn't come up again, Bowen
says he's glad he'll never again need to worry about his former criminal
conviction.

It took persistence and determination, but Bowen had plenty of both. He
said it's how he finally cleared his name.

"I wasn't going to give up," he said.

*SANDERS*

*Sanders says he will significantly step up his outreach to minority voters
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/27/sanders-says-he-will-significantly-step-up-his-outreach-to-minority-voters/>
// WaPo // John Wagner – June 27, 2015*

NASHUA, N.H. -- Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who’s made limited headway
with African American voters despite drawing large crowds on the campaign
trail, on Saturday pledged “a significant expansion” in outreach to
minority communities.

“We’re going to significantly increase that,” the Democratic presidential
hopeful told reporters after a morning campaign stop here. “The views that
we hold are important to all Americans … but to be honest with you, they’re
probably more relevant to black and Hispanic voters … because the poverty
rate in those communities is even higher than whites.”

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, cited his support to raise
the minimum wage to $15 an hour and offer free college tuition as examples.

In a later interview, Sanders said he plans to add members to his campaign
staff to help with the effort.

“We’re going to be bringing people into our campaign who will give us
increased capability of reaching out to the African American community and
the Hispanic community,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Black voters are a crucial constituency in the Democratic nominating
process, particularly after the contest moves beyond Iowa and New Hampshire
to South Carolina and other states with larger African American
populations, where Hillary Rodham Clinton is a well-established figure.

In recent weeks, Sanders has seen his crowds swell in early nominating
states and other places where he’s traveled. His audiences numbered in the
thousands recently in both Minneapolis and Denver.

Sanders represents a state that is 95 percent white. In a piece in the New
York Times last week outlining his challenge, the senator’s advisers
acknowledged that he remains largely unknown among African American voters,
despite a civil rights record that includes leading sit-ins in the 1960s.

Speaking here to a crowd of more than 500 packed into a community college
gymnasium, Sanders made a passing reference to having more recently joined
African American workers in North Carolina on the picket lines in support
of raising the minimum wage.

During his hour-long stump speech, however, he made no mention of the
recent massacre at a historic African American church in Charleston, S.C.,
that left nine parishoners dead. The episode has prompted Clinton and
another Democratic, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D), to make
gun control a prominent part of their pitch.

Sanders, whose state is rural and home to many hunters, has a mixed record
on gun control, including a 1993 vote against the landmark Brady Bill,
which mandated federal background checks on firearms purchasers.

Asked by an audience member here Saturday if he is willing to take on the
National Rifle Association, Sanders defended his record, saying the gun
rights group has given him a lifetime rating of “somewhere between D and F.”

Sanders noted the rural nature of his state, saying that “guns in Chicago
and Los Angeles are not the same thing as guns in New Hampshire and
Vermont.”

But he relayed that he has during his career voted for bills to ban assault
weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

“I think my record is pretty strong,” he said.

*A Democratic senator attacked Bernie Sanders for being extreme. He should
thank her.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/27/a-democratic-senator-attacked-bernie-sanders-for-being-extreme-he-should-thank-her/>
// WaPo // Amber Phillips – June 27, 2015*

Bernie Sanders is "extreme," and if the media were to dig into him a little
more, he wouldn't be doing as well as he is.

That attack comes not from a Republican, but one of the Democratic senators
with whom Sanders caucuses.

"The media is giving Bernie a pass right now,” Sen. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.) said Thursday on MSNBC. “I very rarely read in any coverage of
Bernie that he’s a socialist.”

First of all: Wrong. It's hard to find an account of Sanders's personal
politics that doesn't include the s-word. It's all over the place.

And the Vermont senator is indeed a socialist. He's an independent who
caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate. He's also running for president
as a Democrat, and several polls show him gaining a bit on frontrunner
Hillary Clinton -- whom McCaskill supports -- while making headlines for
drawing thousands of people to campaign events as far off as Denver.

McCaskill argued Sanders wouldn't be doing so well if the media treated him
like other candidates. "I think everybody wants a fight," she continued.

That might be true. But in saying that, McCaskill has essentially set up
one. Her comments ring of the kind of intra-party snipes you'd expect to
see in a contested, genuinely competitive primary. Witness her start
comparing Clinton to Sanders:

"I think Bernie Sanders has a message that's touching people," McCaskill
said. "And I totally get that. But so does Hillary Clinton."

McCaskill said Sanders is "too liberal" to win, and she could be right.

As The Fix has pointed out several times, it's too soon to know whether
Sanders's impressive support this early on will translate into votes that
could actually give Clinton a run for her money. The other day, 92 percent
of Democratic-leaning voters said they'd be comfortable with Clinton as the
Democratic nominee. And she's still polling like a frontrunner; about 50
percent of Iowa Democrats told Bloomberg last week she's her first choice,
while 24 percent said Sanders is.

Sanders told Bloomberg later that day this is the first time he thinks a
Democratic colleague "has attacked me like this."

And he has better hope it isn't the last, because it's a sign that Clinton
supporters are at least mildly concerned.

*Sanders: I was ahead of the curve on gay rights
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/246370-sanders-i-was-ahead-of-the-curve-on-gay-rights>
// The Hill // Mark Hensch – June 27, 2015*

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Saturday he has been waiting for the
nation to catch up to his support for same-sex marriage.

Sanders’ remarks come a day after Friday’s landmark 5-4 Supreme Court
ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

He argued he was well ahead of the historic decision, unlike Hillary
Clinton, his main rival for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

“Back in 1996, that was a tough vote,” Sanders said of his opposition to
the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

“Not too many people voted against it, but I did,” he told listeners in
Nashua, N.H.

Sanders at the time served in the House of Representatives, which voted
342-67 in favor of DOMA. The Senate voted 85-14 in favor, before former
President Bill Clinton signed it into law.

“That was an anti-gay marriage piece of legislation,” he added of the law
that defined marriage at the federal level as the coupling of one man and
one woman.

Sanders on Saturday praised Americans for creating greater opportunities
for same-sex couples. Friday’s Supreme Court ruling, he charged, was not
possible without national pressure for gay rights.

“No one here should think for one second this starts with the Supreme
Court,” Sanders said.

“It starts at the grassroots level in all 50 states,” he said. “The
American people want to end discrimination in all its forms.”

“Because of the decency of the American people, because of the strength of
the gay rights movement, we have changed consciousness in this country,”
Sanders added.

The Vermont lawmaker criticized conservatives who reject same-sex marriage
on religious grounds.

“We disagree with right-wing Republicans’ definition of family values,”
Sanders said. “They think that family values are opposition to gay marriage
and gay rights.”

The 2016 White House hopeful also took aim at Wall Street and wealthy
special interests.

“The message we are sending to the billionaire class is that your greed has
got to end,” Sanders said of his presidential campaign.

“You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America without accepting
all the responsibilities of America,” he said. “That, to me, is not
democracy.”

Sanders said the rich and powerful had created an economic system with
fundamental flaws in its treatment of everyday Americans.

“In America today, we have more income and wealth inequality than any other
major industrialized country on Earth,” he said.

“Today, the top one tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much one wealth as
the bottom 90 percent,” Sanders said.

“That type of economy is immoral, it is unsustainable and it is
un-American,” Sanders added. “Together we have to change it.”

Sanders formally launched his presidential campaign May 26 in Burlington,
Vt.

He has since portrayed himself as a champion of progressive ideas to the
left of Clinton, the heavy favorite for the Democratic coronation next year.

*Bernie Sanders, Rising in Polls, Gets Standing Room Only Crowds in New
Hampshire
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/bernie-sanders-rising-in-polls-gets-standing-room-only-crowds-in-new-hampshire-20150627>
// National Journal // S. V. Dáte – June 27, 2015*

HENNIKER, N.H. – Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders brought his call for a
"political revolution" back to the first-in-the-nation primary state
Saturday, again drawing enthusiastic crowds who cheered his message of
curbing the influence of corporate interests in politics.

Sanders praised this week's Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and
same-sex marriage, but said the battle to reduce income and wealth
inequality would be far tougher. "It is a much more difficult thing to look
the billionaire class in the eye and say: you cannot have it all," Sanders
said during a speech and question-and-answer session at a town meeting here.

This weekend's New Hampshire appearances are Sanders' first since recent
polls show him emerging as the leading challenger to front runner Hillary
Clinton for the Democratic primary nomination. One poll released last week
by WMUR and CNN found Sanders just 8 points behind Clinton in New
Hampshire. (Although a second poll released the same day by Bloomberg and
St. Anselm College showed Clinton with a 32-point lead.)

The Clinton campaign, however, has enjoyed a big head start laying the
groundwork for its turnout efforts in the Democratic primary. It already
has opened a handful of field offices in the state and has two dozen paid
staff. The campaign spent Saturday morning in its first canvassing effort
aimed at likely primary voters.

Sanders' New Hampshire team is only just coming together. Sanders' New
Hampshire coordinator, Kurt Ehrenberg, was hired a month ago, and so far
has hired an operations manager and two field organizers. A state
headquarters office is set to open next week in Concord, with other offices
planned for the coming weeks, he said.

Sanders has been elected as an independent over his two-decade
congressional career, and describes his political philosophy as "democratic
socialism," as is practiced in much of Western Europe. Even some Democrats
argue that Sanders is unelectable to nationwide office in the United States
because of that label.

He has nevertheless drawn large audiences across the country, including
5,000 at a recent appearance in Denver.

Seth Kallman, a retired contractor from Harrisville who attended the
Henniker appearance, said he agrees the "socialist" label is likely
harmful. "I admire that he steps forward and uses it anyway, because he is
honest," Kallman said, calling that one of Sanders' best attributes. "You
couldn't get Hillary to speak that frankly. He is speaking frankly."

Sanders saw an audience of 500 at a morning town meeting in Nashua, about
150 at a house party in Bow, and 350 at the Henniker town meeting Saturday
evening. All three were standing room only, exceeding expected attendance.

*Bernie Sanders’ surge is partly fueled by veterans
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/06/27/bernie-sanders-surge-partly-fueled-veterans/e1qNTpzFpIaoxIGKygKa9J/story.html>
// Boston Globe // Annie Linskey – June 28, 2015*

DES MOINES — Vermont’s Bernie Sanders railed against the Vietnam War. He
voted against invading Iraq — both times. He wants to cut the defense
budget.

He might not be a friend to the military, but many veterans believe he’s
gone to war for them. And that’s why they’re out there cheering for a
socialist as he launches a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

There’s the former Marine who drove about six hours to hear Sanders speak
in Des Moines. There’s another former Marine, this one a registered
Republican, going door-to-door to collect signatures so Sanders’ name will
appear on the ballot in Indiana. Entire Reddit threads are dedicated to how
veterans can best pitch Sanders to other veterans.

“He is revered,” said Paul Loebe, a 31-year-old who served in both Iraq and
Afghanistan during eight years of active duty and spends three hours a day
updating a Facebook page promoting Sanders to veterans. “He’s very
consistent with where he stands. He’s the first politician that I’ve
believed in my life.”

Sanders battled over veterans issues as chairman of the Senate Veterans
Affairs Committee from 2013 until early this year, giving him an easy pitch
to a crucial voting bloc of veterans, particularly in South Carolina where
veterans make up more than 11 percent of the voting-aged population.
There’s stiff competition for these voters, with front-runner Hillary
Rodham Clinton wooing them this month during a round table in Nevada.

Even the leaders of veterans groups who praise Sanders acknowledge that the
73-year-old Democratic socialist isn’t an obvious champion for the
flag-waving set of former military officers and enlistees. When asked if
the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which recognized Sanders with its
Congressional Award in March, had ever bestowed the honor on a socialist
before, the group’s Washington executive director, Bob Wallace chuckled a
bit.

“No. No. No,” said Wallace, a man who won three Purple Heart medals during
Vietnam. “What you have to do is put aside his other interests.”

Enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders’s populist message is evident with crowds
swelling at events and supporters pushing the slogan “Feel the Bern,” a
play on the senator’s first name. It’s difficult to know, beyond anecdotal
evidence, how much of this support comes from veterans.

Sanders has previously courted veterans as part of an electoral strategy,
campaigning in 2006 for Senate with triple-amputee Max Cleland, the former
Democratic senator from Georgia and Veterans Affairs administrator. Sanders
has done little on the trail to seek out veterans for his 2016 bid.

But veterans interviewed for this story were well versed in Sanders’s
record, aware that, as Veterans Affairs chairman, he pushed to restore cost
of living raises, expand education opportunities, and add new dental care
benefits.

The effort came within a few votes of passing the Senate, but was blocked
by Republicans concerned about the $24 billion price tag.

Veterans also credit Sanders for striking a deal with Republicans to pass a
smaller — $16 billion — package aimed at erasing the lengthy wait times at
veterans hospitals. Passing it earned Sanders top awards from the American
Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Military Officers Association
of America.

For Louis Celli, at the American Legion, Sanders’s progressive views make
some sense in the context of advocating for veterans’ programs. “Who better
than a socialist to advocate for veterans’ health care?” he asked.

Passing the fix showed something else about Sanders: He was willing to make
a deal. It’s a notion that runs counter to commonly expressed concern —
even among some attendees at Sanders’s rallies — that the senator’s far
left views prevent him from working with others.

Last summer, the bill fixing wait times at hospitals appeared to be heading
for defeat. Faced with possibility that Congress would adjourn without
enacting it, Sanders joined forces with John McCain, the Arizona Republican
and GOP presidential nominee in 2008.

Sanders dropped his opposition to a provision that let veterans who live
far from VA hospitals use private doctors. In exchange, he got an
additional $5 billion to hire more staff and build more facilities,
according to a member of Sanders’s staff.

McCain said working with Sanders involved “very stimulating conversations,
and the occasional four-letter word.”

“He advocates vigorously for what he believes in, and so do I,” McCain
said. “I can’t say it was the most enjoyable experience, but it was
certainly one of the most interesting.”

Veterans are a group long courted by politicians. In the early primary
states, New Hampshire is home to 113,000 veterans, Iowa has 226,000, Nevada
has 227,000 and South Carolina has 392,000 — according to US Census figures.

Clinton held a round table for veterans in Nevada on June 18. She unveiled
a detailed plan that would make changes to the GI Bill meant to protect
veterans from what her campaign called “deceptive practices” by for-profit
colleges and universities who target veterans but fail to provide a quality
education.

Clinton, as is her custom at campaign events, didn’t take questions from
the audience.

Sanders typically does.

After speech at Drake University, the Vermont senator asked for questions.
Tyson Manker was right there in the front row. He stood up, identified
himself as a former Marine who drove six hours for the event, and said:
“Mr. Sanders, I look forward to the day I can call you Mr. President.”

*David M. Shribman: Democrats swoon for Sanders
<http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-shribman/2015/06/28/David-M-Shribman-Democrats-swoon-for-Sanders/stories/201506280098>
// Pittsburgh Post-Gazette // David M. Shribman – June 28, 2015*

Here are the elements of a presidential candidacy bound to go nowhere:
1960s radical leftist. Lived on a kibbutz. Moved to Vermont in the tumult
of 1968. Became a carpenter. Ran for governor twice and for Senate twice as
a candidate for the socialist Liberty Union Party. Jewish — not an
advantage in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina. Would be 79 at the end
of his first term. Bernie Sanders is not going to be president of the
United States.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t be a big factor in the 2016 presidential
race.

He polls about a third of the vote in New Hampshire, which, contrary to
popular perception, is not very much like its neighbor, Vermont. (In
northern New England folklore, adapted from Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” one
state is full of the “parsimonious emmet,” the other populated by those
known as “newts.”)

Mr. Sanders does less well in Iowa, though his iconoclasm suits the sort of
committed liberals who participate in that state’s February caucuses — plus
the United Auto Workers members who surely noticed that Mr. Sanders was
swift to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership while former Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton took weeks to decide.

This is not an argument that the Sanders surge threatens Ms. Clinton as she
glides toward the Democratic presidential nomination. It is, however, an
argument that he affects Ms. Clinton as she seeks the nomination.

This is all the more apparent now that it is also apparent that Sen.
Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the most prominent progressive in
Washington, is not going to run for the White House. All the unrequited
passion for Ms. Warren has been transferred to Mr. Sanders, with stunning
suddenness and seamlessness. Earlier this month, the Ready for Warren group
endorsed Mr. Sanders, saying he was the candidate “who best embodies the
values that Warren champions.”

Now we confront the nature of the Clinton campaign. It is fueled by
determination rather than passion. There’s nothing romantic to it, aside
from its historical significance as the vehicle for the first female
presidency — a factor not to be underestimated in November but less
powerful now. Her steady-as-you-go campaign is the political equivalent of
the line from the English novelist George Meredith that, a generation ago,
was emblazoned on thousands of trivets hanging on kitchen walls, tacked
against the rice wallpaper: “Kissing don’t last, cookery do.”

Ms. Clinton, the candidate of the cookery, is running the campaign of the
hot tuna casserole. Mr. Sanders, by contrast, is running the campaign of
the moonlight smooch.

Yet the Clinton campaign must deal with the factors that make all those
hearts flutter there by the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee or by the Raccoon
River in New Hampshire, for Mr. Sanders, who by appearance — floppy white
hair, rumpled suit — does not exactly possess the raw materials (or the raw
energy) that customarily make the masses swoon. He’s no Edward Rochester of
“Jane Eyre,” nor even Heathcliff of “Wuthering Heights.”

But the danger for the Clintonistas is that by its very existence, the
Sanders campaign reveals the character of the Clinton campaign.

While the Sanders campaign is supple, the Clinton campaign is clunky. The
Sanders campaign is ruled by instinct, the Clinton campaign by calculation.
The Sanders campaign is audacious, the Clinton campaign is cautious. The
Sanders campaign is roses and chocolates and chilled Champagne and a
hopelessly amorous stroll across pine needles through thick woods at dusk
(we’ll find our shoes later), while the Clinton campaign is geraniums and
rice pudding and V8 juice and a station-wagon trip across Interstate 80
(we’re wearing sensible shoes, double knotted).

The strong likelihood that the Clinton campaign will triumph is important
but, at this stage of the race, almost irrelevant.

Because it is Mr. Sanders (like Ms. Warren before him) who has the whip
hand. By not winning he may still prevail, in the way that Ms. Warren did
on income disparity. Just as Ms. Clinton embraced the signature Warren
message by characterizing her campaign as an effort on behalf of “everyday
Americans,” she also sought to embrace a principal Sanders message by
saying, finally, that she opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she
repeatedly supported while a member of the Obama administration.

The next issues to watch for the Warren/​Sanders effect: Single-payer
health insurance, student debt, Wall Street, fracking.

We know what Mr. Sanders believes and we know he will say almost anything.
We’re not quite sure what Ms. Clinton believes, but we know that she will
fashion her remarks with craftswoman-like care. People probably want the
latter in a president. They’re drawn to the former in a primary campaign —
which is why, in New Hampshire in 1984, Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, whose
very eyes transmitted a twinkle of romance, prevailed over former Vice
President Walter Mondale, whose fundamental decency suggested he was a
fuddy-duddy and whose native caution suggested he was rigidly conventional.

All of which brings us to the most natural Bernie Sanders analogue, the
1992 Republican struggle mounted against George H.W. Bush, who held the
presidency, by Patrick J. Buchanan, who in New Hampshire held a pitchfork.
Mr. Buchanan had more fun, was more unpredictable, had better lines (“All
the knights and barons will be riding into the castle pulling up the
drawbridge in a minute. All the peasants are coming with pitchforks.”) Mr.
Bush had better results, though he lost the general election to Mrs.
Clinton’s husband.

“I pulled Bush to the right on social and cultural issues, and he stopped
talking about the New World Order,” Mr. Buchanan said in a telephone
conversation last week. “I like Bernie — especially his independence — and
I think he can have the same effect on Hillary, moving her way to the left.”

Mr. Buchanan didn’t win a single primary or caucus in 1992, though he came
within 16 percentage points in New Hampshire (and actually won the primary
there four years later, edging Sen. Bob Dole by one percentage point.) But
he had a blast, and he didn’t allow Mr. Bush to wobble toward the center.

Similarly, Mr. Sanders will very likely win no primaries next year either.
But Ms. Clinton will feel his presence at every stop, in every state.

*UNDECLARED*

*WEBB*

*Webb close to 2016 decision, insiders say Clinton camp helped delay launch
<http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/27/webb-close-to-2016-decision-insiders-say-clinton-camp-helped-delay-launch/>
// Fox News // John Roberts – June 27, 2015*

CLINTON, Iowa –  Jim Webb was supposed to declare he was running for
president Friday night. At least that's what the prevailing belief was
inside his campaign.

Webb was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the Clinton County
Democratic Hall Of Fame dinner in Clinton, Iowa. While the timing was bad
(Friday night, where news goes to die), insiders said Webb thought it would
be a good place to drop the hammer on a presidential run.

Enter the Clinton campaign, which Webb confidantes grumble has been
sandbagging them at every turn. They convinced the Clinton County
Democratic Party to add Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar to the speakers
roster. The intention was for her to give a spirited sales pitch for
Hillary at the very same place and time Webb would launch his campaign.

For Webb, insiders say, that, plus the fact that a Friday night launch
could have gotten lost in the news cycle, was enough to convince him to
delay the announcement.

Until when, only Webb knows.

Fox News caught up with Webb before the dinner, after a three-hour drive
from Chicago which he described as "long." He wasn't giving up anything on
the Clinton campaign stealing his thunder. To do so would be to admit there
was thunder in the first place, which candidates are loath to do until the
words "I'm running for president" actually come out of their mouth. But he
did allow that he is getting close to pulling the trigger.

"We're pretty close to being done ... that's the best thing I can say,
really," Webb said.

It was typical understatement from a guy who plays his cards so close to
the vest that even his closest advisers are left to do a lot of tea-leaf
reading. But Webb himself has said he would make a decision sometime around
the end of June, so "close to being done" could be read as "imminent."

And it became clear Friday night that Webb's campaign will be one of
'themes' and not specific policy proposals. Go to the "issues" section of
his website and one can find his positions on the complex problems facing
the nation summed up in a single paragraph.

Ask him about specifics on, for example, what he would do to grow the
economy and he begins to bristle.

"I don't think that the issue right now for me is to bring in some sort of
a specific set of numbers that I would pull out of the air," Webb told Fox
News. "The issue is to lay down the themes that we would govern on and then
to bring good people in."

That's the Webb formula -- one he employed successfully as a senator from
Virginia. Take a problem, gather together the brightest minds you can find,
examine it from every angle, then chart a course to fix it. It doesn't fit
into a convenient sound bite, nor does it give the level of detail that
politically savvy voters in Iowa and New Hampshire want to chew over. But
it is classic Webb style.

"The most important thing a leader can do is to reach out and get good
people -- the best minds in the country to come together and figure out
solutions -- to give a vision of where you want the country to go," Webb
told Fox News.

Webb has a reputation for meticulously thinking through every issue with
the perseverance of an academic before rendering an opinion -- as he did
earlier this week with a Facebook posting about the Confederate flag. Webb
decreed that the issue was "complicated" and that any discussion about the
flag needed to recognize that the majority of soldiers who fought for the
South did not own slaves and that the nation needs "to respect good people
who fought on both sides."

Many of Webb's most ardent fans saw it as a defense of a flag that has come
to symbolize racism and vigorously disagreed with him.

"The Confederate battle flag was a battle flag," Webb told Fox News. "It
was misused particularly during the civil rights era as a racist and
political symbol.  And I am fine with it coming down from public fora. At
the same time, let's remember our history and let's not turn the acts of
people who fought on either side in the Civil War into something they were
not."

The nuance Webb expresses is a departure for most presidential candidates
who speak in short, declarative sentences. Between his thought processes
and his background in the military, politics and private sector, he has
been described as a person who has the potential to be 'the most
interesting candidate in the race.' Certainly, voters who spend time with
him come away with a favorable opinion. But the big question -- can Webb
take on the juggernaut that is the Hillary Clinton campaign?

Webb is confident.

"If I didn't think it was possible, I would not do it," Webb told Fox News.

Webb points to his Senate race, when he beat incumbent George Allen in
Virginia. Webb was 33 points behind nine months before the race and managed
to win. Of course, it helped that Allen imploded over his now-infamous
"macaca" comments.

Can lightning strike twice? Could Hillary falter? Talk to Democratic voters
in Iowa and many will tell you they are open to an alternative.

"We don't do coronations here, we do discussions," said Dr. Andy McGuire,
chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Even if Webb has no chance to become the nominee, his entry into the race
would certainly add new energy to the debate, though voters may be hungry
for a little more detail than Webb is presently willing to provide.

*OTHER*

*Joe Biden's presidential decision hinges on family
<http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/06/26/biden-presidential-decision-hinges-family/29356461/>
// Delaware Online // Nicole Gaudiano – June 27, 2015*

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden has a top concern as he considers
whether to run for president: family.

The two-time presidential candidate believes he would offer something
unique to the country as president, said supporter Dick Harpootlian, a
former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman. But he said Biden is
weighing the needs of his family following the May 30 death of his
46-year-old son Beau, Delaware's former attorney general.

"He is thinking about [a presidential run]," said Harpootlian, who spoke
with Biden on May 19 and had more recent talks with people close to the
vice president. "It's all about his personal situation – 'Can I do this and
not in any way deny my family what I can give them or do for them?' This is
a decision about his family."

Biden's supporters say it would be understandable if he decides to sit out
the 2016 presidential campaign. Beau Biden's death from brain cancer was
yet another tragic loss for the 72-year-old vice president. His first wife
Neilia and 13-month-old daughter Naomi were killed in a December 1972 car
accident that also injured Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter.

But the vice president has a history of working through overwhelming grief.

"No one would blame him if he said, 'You know, look, it's just too much,'"
Harpootlian said. But he added, "He's a tough guy and he fights his way
through tough times."

Biden served 36 years in the Senate representing Delaware after senators
persuaded him in January 1973 to take his first oath of office -- which he
did next to his son's hospital bed.

Biden has spent time in Delaware in recent weeks, but four days after his
son's funeral he returned to the White House for lunch with President
Barack Obama and an afternoon meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk to discuss that country's reform agenda.

"One thing about the vice president that we all know: He's very resilient,"
said William Pierce, executive director of the Draft Biden 2016 super PAC.

Biden is expected to announce in August whether he will run for president.
Draft Biden, launched by former staffers and campaign veterans, is hiring
staff in Iowa and New Hampshire and raising funds for independent
expenditures in support of a possible Biden candidacy. The group so far has
nearly 100,000 signatures on a petition urging Biden to run and is planning
a rally in Wilmington in late July.

"We're taking it to his backyard… just to show him that his community is
behind him as well," Pierce said.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a sizable lead in
polls that include Biden. In a Monmouth University Poll released June 16,
Clinton was supported by 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning
voters nationwide, compared to 12 percent for Biden and 12 percent for Sen.
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent running for the Democratic
nomination. Biden would be fighting for Clinton supporters, who are
ideologically similar, said Patrick Murray, director of the polling
institute.

But he said it would be a mistake to evaluate Biden's potential based on
early "horse race" polls. The June 16 survey also showed that 62 percent of
Democrats view Biden favorably, compared to 78 percent for Clinton.

"It suggests that there are people out there who would support him," Murray
said. "The question is whether there are enough to overcome Hillary's
initial advantage."

Biden has said he wouldn't be influenced by Clinton's decision to run.

"The only reason to run for the president of the United States is if you
truly believe you're in a better position to do what you think is most
needed in the country," Biden said in February on The View.

His supporters say there's still room for another Democratic candidate.

"I don't think Hillary is really the presumptive candidate everybody thinks
she is," said Iowa Rep. Bruce Hunter, a Biden supporter who represents
south and central Des Moines.

Harpootlian said Biden, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, knows foreign policy and the legislative process, and has
personal skills Clinton lacks.

"Joe Biden is a person that can speak to crowds and to people individually
and emote and inspire them and bring them to tears or bring them to their
feet cheering," Harpootlian said. "That ain't (Clinton's) skill."

Beau Biden clearly wanted his father to run for president, said
Harpootlian, who last saw the younger Biden at the 2012 Democratic National
Convention.

Harpootlian said he spoke with Joe Biden in May about presidential campaign
logistics, including how much it would cost for a vice president to visit
battleground states, and South Carolina's political landscape.

Biden would openly express pride in the Obama administration's
accomplishments if he runs for president, Harpootlian said. But he said
Biden realizes some Americans have missed out on the economic recovery
because of a financial system that favors the wealthy.

"I think he'd spend the next eight years trying to correct that," he said.

*With Sanders and Chafee in state, Clinton and O’Malley supporters on hand,
Democratic competition on full display in N.H.
<http://www.concordmonitor.com/readerservices/politicsblogxml/17514314-95/with-sanders-and-chafee-in-state-clinton-and-omalley-supporters-on-hand-democratic-competition>
// Concord Monitor // Casey McDermott – June 28, 2015*

You didn’t need to travel far in New Hampshire on Saturday to understand
this much about the Democratic presidential primary: It’s on.

In fact, if you were in Nashua on Saturday morning, you didn’t need to
travel more than a few miles.

Over at the Clinton campaign headquarters on Main Street at 10 a.m.,
Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III and others were galvanizing a few
dozen Hillary Clinton volunteers before spreading out for the campaign’s
first “Day of Action” – the first of many planned door-knocking efforts of
the 2016 primary. A similar kickoff rolled out in Concord, Keene,
Manchester, Portsmouth and a handful of other locations across the state.

Thirty minutes later, in the gymnasium of Nashua Community College on the
other side of Nashua, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was motivating
several hundred supporters of his own – urging them to believe in the
viability of his goal to take on “the billionaire class,” and not to give
in to those who would label his agenda as one that’s too extreme.

“This is the agenda of America,” Sanders declared after outlining a policy
vision that included calls for a move toward public financing of political
campaigns, a transition to a single-payer health system, a swift attempt to
curb the effects of climate change, guaranteed family and sick leave for
American workers and guaranteed vacation time. The senator brought the
audience to its feet several times during his speech.

“Don’t let anybody tell you or allow them to define me as some kind of
extremist, out-of-touch with the American people,” Sanders implored the
crowd. “Virtually every issue that I have talked about, every proposal I
have brought forth has the support of the vast majority of Americans. The
people who do not have the support of the American people are those
Republicans who want tax breaks for billionaires, to cut social security,
Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera. They are way out of touch.”

The main target of Sanders’ criticism was the Republican party, not any
Democratic opponent. He urged the audience in Nashua to challenge friends
and family who might think of voting with the other party, adding: “What I
will not accept is working class people in New Hampshire, in Vermont and
around this country voting against their own best interests and the
interests of their kids.”

Sanders continued on to several other stops: A house party in Bow that
attracted about 100 people from New Hampshire and neighboring states, a
Blue BBQ with the Hillsborough and Antrim Town Democrats and a “town
meeting” at New England College in Henniker. He had another full day of
events scheduled for Sunday, with more “town meetings” planned in
Rochester, Durham and Laconia.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s team brought in several out-of-state surrogates to
canvass on the candidate’s behalf this weekend: There was Kennedy in
Nashua, as well as Massachusetts Congresswoman Niki Tsongas in Salem, and
New York Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (a New Hampshire native) in
Manchester.

And all of the declared Democratic contenders’ campaigns converged – at one
point or another – at the barbecue in Hillsborough.

Former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee spoke at the event and spent
time mingling with attendees, one of several trips to the state he made
this week. Sanders was the only other candidate to speak in person – but
Maloney stopped by to speak on Clinton’s behalf, and former Maryland
governor Martin O’Malley sent a representative from his campaign, too.

Also at the event was campaign finance reformer and Harvard University
professor Lawrence Lessig, who continued his calls asking New Hampshire
residents to make election funding a priority as they vet candidates in the
months ahead.

While Clinton volunteers hit the streets and Sanders’s camp rallied
followers for a campaign that focused on “educat(ing) and organiz(ing),”
Chafee, in an interview at the picnic, was taking the long view. Unlike
Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley, he hasn’t yet hired staff in New Hampshire
or led any organized volunteers yet. As Clinton continues to lead in recent
polls, with Sanders not far behind, Chafee has not yet managed to pick up
much momentum. Still, Chafee said he’s optimistic that there’s room for him
in the race – he even pointed to Sanders’ recent surge in the polls as
proof that Democrats are eager for a competitive primary.

“I think the Democrats are kicking the tires,” Chafee said, sitting on a
picnic bench at the Hillsborough Fire Department Picnic Grounds on Saturday
afternoon. “They want to hear from the candidates. I don’t think they’re
100 percent committed to Hillary or Bernie or Linc or Marty yet. They’re
listening. That’s good.”

As some take sides, others still weighing options

Across the Democrats’ events in New Hampshire yesterday, there seemed to be
a consensus that – for the moment, at least – the main rivalry for the
liberal wing of the Granite State exists between Clinton and Sanders.

Clinton’s supporters at the Nashua office pointed to the former U.S.
senator and secretary of state’s credentials, leadership style and policy
expertise as key factors in their decision to back her bid for presidency.
Sanders, several said, has good ideas – but seemed less experienced on
foreign policy and perhaps too outspoken to work with other policymakers in
a meaningful way. Others expressed hesitancy because of his stance on gun
control. (Sanders has supported an assault weapons ban and backed President
Obama’s call for gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, as
noted by the Boston Globe earlier this month. On the other hand, the as
Globe reported, “Sanders voted against the landmark Brady Bill, which
required background checks and a waiting period before purchasing a
firearm. He supported legislation allowing guns to be transported on Amtrak
trains. He voted for a measure to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits
in cases of shootings.”

In comments Saturday and other recent interviews, he stressed that it’s
important to understand the significance of hunting and recreational gun
use for Americans in more rural areas.)

“I think Bernie might be her biggest competition. Vermont is a strong
liberal state, and I love him, and he’s doing so much. She’s my
preference,” said Sonia Prince, a Nashua resident who’s volunteering for
Clinton. “Sometimes he’s a little harsh, and I wonder how that would go
over in certain situations. I think she can handle herself better. And the
gun thing is a huge deal for me.”

Sanders’ supporters, meanwhile, voiced a sense of elation – and, in some
cases, pleasant surprise – that their candidate was attracting so much
enthusiasm at this stage in the race. New Hampshire voters (some sporting
“Feel the Bern” and “Bern, Baby, Bern”) were not turned off by the
Senator’s willingness to be blunt – indeed, that was part of what they
liked best. Some expressed skepticism that Clinton could be the same kind
of champion for middle class families that Sanders is trying to be, and
some said they were questioning Clinton’s trustworthiness because of the
issues recently raised surrounding her email practices as secretary of
state, among other things.

“He’s a stand-up man. And he tends to be kind of a firecracker, and if he
doesn’t agree with something, he says something. He does something,” said
Nashua resident Jennifer Craffey, who attended the rally in Nashua. “I like
that his initials are B.S. – and he’s sick of the B.S. down in D.C.”

And then, there are still plenty of residents who are still weighing their
options. Peter Beblowski and Martha Pinello, both of Antrim, said at the
Hillsborough picnic that they’re happy to have several strong potential
choices on the Democratic side.

“I think we’re looking at the retail politics that New Hampshire provides,”
Beblowski said. “This is way in advance of 2016.”

“One of the things that’s great is that you get to see candidates
repeatedly, so you not only get to read their positions but you get to see
how they interact with their staff and how they interact with voters,”
Pinello added.

Even for all of the talk of Clinton’s frontrunner status, the sense of
competition ahead of canvassing efforts was evident. In Nashua yesterday
morning, State Sen. Bette Lasky reminded the group that no New Hampshire
primary (in recent decades, at least) has been won with more than 50
percent of the vote.

“We know firsthand that we have to start working today, continue, don’t let
up,” Lasky told the group. “And do not leave any stone unturned until 8
p.m. on primary day.”

*GOP*

*DECLARED*

*BUSH*

*The Definition of Insanity: Jeb Bush still favors appointing judges “with
a proven record of judicial restraint”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/27/jeb-bush-still-favors-appointing-judges-with-a-proven-record-of-judicial-restraint/>
// WaPo // Randy Barnett – June 27. 2015*

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Jeb Bush responded to criticism of his
brother’s selection of John Roberts to be Chief Justice. Without intending
it, his answer revealed he would select judges by exactly the same criteria
that has given us our current problem with a Supreme Court that is
dominated by Republican nominated justices:

“When I was governor, we tried to find people with a proven record of
judicial restraint, and people that were committed to enforcing the
constitutional limits on government authority. In essence, what I’m saying
is I think we need to have people that have not just theoretically, but
have had a proven record of not legislating from the bench.”

He then doubled down:

“All justices disappoint their presidents some of the time but Souter was
like a 90 percent swing and miss,” Hewitt said. “How do you avoid Souters?”

“You focus on people to be Supreme Court justices who have a proven record
of judicial restraint,” Bush answered.

This is exactly the problem with the judicial philosophy promoted by many
conservatives for the past 30 years: “judicial restraint” in “enforcing
constitutional limits on government authority” leads to NFIB v. Sebelius.
In fairness, that is not what Bush actually said but, as George Will
recently observed, that is what this judicial philosophy produces in
practice.

Thoughtful conservatives today will insist that, properly defined,
“judicial restraint” includes enforcing constitutional limits, and the term
could be defined that way.  But that is not the mentality of “restraint” as
it was originally formulated by the Progressives and has been perpetuated
by some conservatives. For years, “judicial restraint” has been primarily
about not thwarting the will of “democratic majorities.” There are myriad
doctrines to accomplish this. For example, you adopt a “presumption of
constitutionality” that cannot be rebutted. Or find a “saving construction”
of a statute to avoid finding it unconstitutional. Or you “defer” to
administrative agencies’ interpretation of statutes. Or you make a statute
“work” as the “legislature intended” (even if that means ignoring the plain
or natural reading of its words).

Many good conservatives truly wanted Obamacare invalidated in NFIB because
it was unconstitutional. And they then sincerely wanted it to be enforced
according to its terms in King. But selecting judges with the judicial
mindset of “judicial restraint” and “deference” to the majoritarian
branches leads to the results we witnessed in NFIB and King. If
conservatives persist in supporting presidents who select judges on this
basis, they will persist in being disappointed.

I know, I know. What about Obergefell and gay marriage? Didn’t that result
from a lack of “restraint”? No, if you don’t approve of Obergefell, it is
because you do not agree with the constitutional rationale Justice Kennedy
articulated for invalidating the state laws at issue, not because he was
“unrestrained.” Winning Obergefell on the grounds urged by Chief Justice
Roberts in his dissenting opinion also gives you NFIB and King. If you want
to avoid the latter, then you should criticize the majority on the ground
that Justice Thomas did in his dissent: that the majority misinterpreted
the Due Process Clause, not that they were “unrestrained.” You will notice
that Chief Justice Roberts did not join Justice Thomas’s dissent (though
regrettably, Justices Thomas and Scalia joined his). The Chief Justice’s
dissent was all about restraint and only secondarily about correctness. He
cited Lochner v. New York 16 times because Lochner was supposedly about
activism, rather than appropriate restraint. In contrast, Justice Thomas
appealed to the original meaning of “the due process of law.” There is a
big big difference between these two judicial mindsets.

So, if conservative Republicans want a different performance from the
judiciary in the future, they must vet their presidential candidates to see
whether they understand this point. Jeb Bush clearly does not. And I have
personally heard Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina say much the same sort of
thing about judges, showing that they do not understand this either–at
least not yet. Only Rand Paul has been very clear about the duty of judges
to invalidate unconstitutional law without restraint or deference.

I haven’t heard yet what other candidates think about this, but everyone
should be listening closely. If you hear catch phrases like “judicial
restraint,” “deferring” to “the democratic branches,” or “not legislating
from the bench,” then you know this candidate intends to repeat the
mistakes of past Republican presidents.

Conservatives must learn from the recent past what not to look for in a
justice.

*Bush to meet with Charleston pastors
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/27/bush-to-meet-with-charleston-pastors/>
// WaPo // Ed O’Keefe – June 27, 2015*

Jeb Bush plans to meet privately on Monday with pastors in Charleston,
S.C., his campaign says.

The Republican presidential candidate was originally scheduled to be in
Charleston 10 days ago for an event scheduled for the morning after a
deadly shooting at a historic African American church in the city. After
arriving in the city just hours after the shooting, Bush canceled his
scheduled appearance, saying it would be inappropriate to campaign in the
city in the wake of the shooting.

His campaign declined to say with whom he will meet with on Monday.

Later in the day, the former Florida governor is scheduled to hold a
campaign event in West Columbia, S.C., at a pharmaceutical company.

*Jeb Bush touts record on guns
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/27/politics/jeb-bush-gun-control/index.html> //
CNN // Ashley Killough – June 27, 2015*

*Henderson, Nevada (CNN) *Jeb Bush on Saturday said he doubted gun control
measures supported by President Barack Obama would have prevented recent
tragedies, including the church massacre in South Carolina.

Instead, the former Florida governor, speaking at a town hall event in the
early caucus state of Nevada, touted his record on guns as a way to balance
public safety and Second Amendment rights.

"Florida is a pro-gun state. Gun violence has dropped. There's a reason for
it," he told reporters after the event. "We created a balance that's
focused on lowering gun violence but protecting the Second Amendment, and
it's a model for many other countries and many other states because of
that."

Bush proudly touted his A+ rating with the National Rifle Association and
called Florida a "freedom-loving state," but also cited his efforts to
combat crime through the "10-20-Life" law, a statute that he campaigned on
and enacted as governor.

The law, which is still in place, issues a minimum 10-year sentence for
anyone who pulls a gun while committing a crime, 20 years for pulling the
trigger during a crime and 25 years to life for injuring or killing someone
by firing a gun.

"And we advertised it in Spanish, Creole and English to make sure that
people knew that if they're going to commit gun crimes, that they were
going to pay a heavy price," he said in the town hall, adding that they saw
a "dramatic reductions in gun violence."

According to a 2013 report by the nonpartisan research arm of the
Connecticut General Assembly, which looked into the law using FBI crime
reporting statistics, gun violence in Florida indeed went down in the years
after the law was enacted in 1999 -- but it also went down across the
entire country.

Separately, an Orlando Sentinel report found that only a small percentage
of those charged with gun crime in Orange County from 2003 to 2007 actually
received the mandatory sentence.

Bush argued that none of the gun control proposals by the Obama
administration would have stopped recent mass shootings. Asked by reporters
afterwards if he could specify which proposals he was talking about, he
repeated, "all the ones."

"Every one of them. There's not been a single thing that he's proposed
recently that would have changed the course of any of these tragic cases,"
he said.

Following the Newtown elementary school shooting in 2012, the Obama
administration, with the help of a small number of Republicans, pushed for
legislation that would have applied background checks to all private sales
or transfers, but the measure failed to advance in the Senate two years ago.

While Bush said Florida requires background checks for gun purchases, he
told reporters that the state does not have checks for the kinds of private
transactions included in the Congressional push two years ago.

He said he doesn't think "we need to be politicizing this issue," and in
the town hall, he emphasized focusing on mental health issues as a way to
address the problem.

"I'd also say going forward that these cases -- that the race system in
Charleston or these cases of people who are just mentally deranged -- we as
a society better figure out how we identify these folks long before they
feel compelled to take up a gun and kill innocent people," he said.

In his first stop to Nevada as an official candidate, having announced his
presidential campaign earlier this month, the town hall in Henderson was
largely a friendly event for Bush. At one point, a voter stood up and told
him he'd been a Democrat for 50 years but last month switched to become a
registered Republican. Bush approached the voter and gave him a hug.

While he faced no confrontational questions at the event, a small group of
pro-immigration protesters with signs waited for Bush outside, standing
near reporters who were anticipating a small press conference. Bush's
campaign then moved reporters inside where the candidate answered questions.

Bush pledged to return to the early caucus state "a lot," not only for the
Republican nominating contest, but because Nevada is a swing state in the
general election.

He acknowledged that the Republican nominee won't be able to win Democratic
strongholds like New York and California next November, but he thinks
Republicans can expand the map to win Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa,
Colorado, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

"I'm going to do this to win," he said to applause during the town hall.
"And I want your support."

That will require campaigning in places where Republicans don't
traditionally go, he said, and appealing to groups like Latino voters,
repeating a message he often gives. This time, however, he tried using a
gambling term to get across his message.

"If we don't try to broaden out the map, we're going to have to win with an
inside straight, to use a Vegas term. Inside straight flush or whatever.
It's just not going to happen. I'm not a big gambler so I don't know any
gambling ... Does that sound stupid when you say that?" he asked, to
laughs. "You'll teach me about that later."

*Jeb Bush: Charleston shootings wouldn't have been prevented by Obama
proposals
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeb-bush-charleston-shootings-wouldnt-have-been-prevented-by-obama-proposals/>
// CBS // Alan He – June 27, 2015*

Jeb Bush told an audience today in Henderson, Nevada that "not a single
one" of the mass shootings in recent years would have been prevented by
President Obama's gun control ideas, and that more emphasis should be put
on the role of mental health in gun violence. Bush's comments came just a
day after President Obama said that the nation had been, "blind to the
unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts," for far too long.

Answering an audience question about his stance on gun control, Bush said
that, "all of these tragic incidents that have taken place in the past few
years, are heartbreaking," but that, "not a single one of them would have
been stopped by any of the ideas proposed by Barack Obama." The Republican
candidate referring to alleged killer Dylann Roof as the "racist in
Charleston," instead argued that, "we as a society better figure out how we
identify these folks long before they feel compelled to take up a gun and
kill innocent people."

On Monday, Bush heads to Charleston, South Carolina to meet privately with
community faith leaders who he described Saturday as having shown,
"incredible love and compassion" in the wake of the shooting.

During a press conference held in the hallway after the town hall in the
gymnasium had ended, the former Florida governor responded to reporters'
questions about the recent Supreme Court decisions upholding Obamacare and
the right to same-sex marriage. Bush said that he was "disappointed" by
both decisions. He described a constitutional amendment banning same sex
marriage as "unrealistic," calling for an environment where, "people aren't
discriminated against," while also allowing "people to act on their
religious conscience."

On the subject of Obamacare, Bush had told the town hall audience that his
solution would be to replace it with a system that provides people with
access to a high-deductible, low-premium catastrophic coverage.

Bush also touted his own openness and willingness to "step outside his
comfort zone," in contrast to the Democratic candidate, former Secretary
State, Hillary Clinton. He drew audience laughter when he invoked Clinton's
Scooby Van, saying. "I will make mistakes along the way because I'm going
to campaign outside my comfort zone. I'm not going to be in a little
protective shell, I'm not going to be inside of a bubble. I'm not going to
go on my Scooby Doo van and have everything screened out."

*Jeb Bush: U.S. needs to strengthen economically and internationally
<http://www.reviewjournal.com/politics/jeb-bush-us-needs-strengthen-economically-and-internationally>
// Las Vegas Review-Journal // Ben Botkin – June 27, 2015*

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told an audience in Henderson
that the United States needs to strengthen its economy and its
relationships with other nations, including Israel.

Speaking to about 300 people at a town hall meeting Saturday, he said
personal income and disposable income need to grow, which hasn’t happened
in this economy.

“More and more people are falling prey to the false choice of more
government to be able to take care of them,” Bush said at the city’s Valley
View Recreation Center.

Bush, the governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, touted key parts of his
campaign message, including reducing federal regulations that harm
businesses and reducing poverty.

“All of this can be fixed because it requires winning in a way that draws
people to our cause,” Bush said, adding “I’m going to run with heart.”

It was the Bush’s first visit to Southern Nevada since his June 15
announcement that he’s in the race. Bush, the brother of former President
George W. Bush and the son of the first President George Bush, visited Reno
and Las Vegas in May.

Bush, a friend of Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, also praised Nevada for
its work on education reform, particularly the new education savings
accounts.

The new voucher program will allow parents to put their child’s state
public school funding toward a private school or tutoring. Bush championed
a voucher program in Florida as governor.

Asked about the deadly June 17 shooting spree in Charleston, S.C., where a
gunman killed nine people in a church, Bush said a society needs to focus
on mental health issues and look for ways to identify and help people with
mental health problems sooner.

Bush drew frequent applause at the town hall, which offered online
registration for free tickets in advance.

Considered a GOP presidential race front-runner, Bush leads most polls in a
crowded field of at least a dozen Republican candidates. A recent NBC/Wall
Street Journal national survey placed him at the top, preferred by 22
percent of likely Republican primary voters.

Nevada has attracted attention from other candidates who have visited in
recent months. The list includes Republicans U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of
Florida, neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, and
Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of
Vermont.

Bush said accountability is needed at the federal Office of Personnel
Management, which suffered a data breach and did nothing after an Inspector
General report suggested the agency that houses the government workforce’s
personnel files wasn’t secure.

“The Chinese have broken into that system and now it’s possible they have
18 million separate records,” Bush said, adding that President Barack Obama
put his political director in charge of the agency rather than someone
qualified. Katherine Archuleta, who was Obama’s national political
director, heads the agency.

Bush criticized her for blaming the Chinese, saying people need to take
action and responsibility.

As Florida’s governor, “when there was a mistake, I cleaned it up,” he said.

Nevada’s status as a key swing state in the presidential election wasn’t
lost on Bush. Nevada’s February 2016 caucuses will play an early role in
determining who gets the Republican nomination, along with New Hampshire,
South Carolina and Iowa. In the November 2016 general election, Nevada is
expected to be competitive: It could swing for the GOP or the Democratic
ticket.

“We’re purple as well,” Bush said, referring to his Florida home state.
“And Republicans will win if we win purple states.”

Bush sharply criticized Obama’s foreign policy.

“This president is the first president in the post-World War II era that
believes we’re not a force for good,” Bush said.

He said the U.S. needs to be a “beacon of peace and security for the world.”

Asked about Iran and its nuclear capabilities, Bush said no option should
be taken off the table. Iran and its potential ability to have a nuclear
weapon have stoked fears in the Middle East.

Bush also took aim at Democratic front-runner Clinton, saying she only
sponsored three bills that became law during her eight years as a U.S.
senator representing New York.

The Democratic National Committee quickly pounced on Bush’s comments in
Henderson that Obama’s economics have been horrible for people in poverty
and disastrous for those in the middle. The committee said private-sector
jobs have expanded by 12.6 million jobs during 63 consecutive months and
wages and benefits increased last year at the quickest rate in six years.

Both Democratic and Republican candidates are courting the Latino vote as
demographics have shifted.

“The next president has to go to places where Republicans haven’t been seen
in a long, long while,” Bush said, referencing the Latino community.

He didn’t call for a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the
country illegally. Instead, he said they should be eligible for “earned
legal status.” That status would come through a provisional work permit
where they pay taxes and learn English and “over an extended period of
time” earn legal status, Bush said.

“I don’t see any other option,” Bush said. “I don’t think our country is
going to be the type of country that puts people in boxcars and sends them
away.”

Several Latino protesters were outside the building, holding signs that
said: “Jeb: Are you a supporter or a deporter?” and “Nothing less than
citizenship.”

Bush, speaking to reporters after his speech, said he believes in
traditional marriage and that it’s important to protect religious freedoms.
He was responding to a question about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling
Friday that the U.S. Constitution guarantees a nationwide right to same-sex
marriage.

Bush plans to meet with ministers in Charleston, S.C., on Monday.

*Jeb Bush says stricter US gun control laws aren't needed
<http://www.smh.com.au/world/jeb-bush-says-stricter-us-gun-control-laws-arent-needed-20150628-ghzn0p.html>
// Sydney Morning Herald // Kurtis Lee – June 27, 2015*

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has argued against calls from President
Barack Obama and other Democrats for stricter gun control laws after the
mass shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina, church that killed nine
people.

Mr Bush, who travelled to the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson on Saturday for
a campaign appearance, said he does not believe tougher gun laws would
prevent mass shootings.

"All of these tragic instances that have taken place in the last couple of
years are heartbreaking. They really are," said Mr Bush. "Not a single one
of them would have been stopped with any of the ideas proposed by Barack
Obama. Not a single one of them."

Mr Bush, among the front-runners in the race for the Republican
presidential nomination, said more emphasis should be placed on improving
access to mental health services. On Monday, he  plans to meet with black
ministers in Charleston.

Meanwhile, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic
presidential nomination, in recent days has called for universal background
checks for gun purchases, noting the "politics on the issue have been
poisoned".

Mr Bush has received strong support from the National Rifle Association,
and as Florida governor he signed the "stand your ground" law that received
attention after the Trayvon Martin shooting.

On Saturday, Mr Bush said gun laws should be a state issue.

"In Florida we had background checks, state by state I think these things
get sorted out based on tradition, based on the differences in our states,"
he said.

Mr Bush said he supported a Florida law that requires background checks on
some gun sales.

"We've created a balance that's focused on lowering gun violence, but
protecting the Second Amendment," he said regarding the  Florida laws.

*RUBIO*

*Rubio Buys Airtime for Campaign Ads in First Four Nominating States
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/06/27/rubio-buys-airtime-for-campaign-ads-in-first-four-nominating-states/>
// WSJ // Patrick O’Connor – June 27, 2015*

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a leading contender for the Republican
presidential nomination, has started reserving television airtime in the
first four nominating states, seven months before a vote is cast, according
to a people familiar with the advertising purchase.

The Florida senator has reserved airtime in Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina and Nevada that is set to run from November through February,
according to someone familiar with the reservation.

The Republican presidential nominating process gets under way in February,
when New Hampshire and South Carolina hold primaries, while Iowa and Nevada
are set for caucuses.

By reserving ads early, the Rubio team should be able to secure lower rates
than some of its rivals will pay if they buy airtime closer to the primary
voting.

Some of Mr. Rubio’s rivals have bigger war chests, particularly former
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

*PAUL*

*Rand Paul silent on gay marriage ruling
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/rand-paul-silent-gay-marriage-supreme-court-ruling-2016-119500.html?hp=r2_3>
// Politico // Daniel Strauss – June 27, 2015*

Ted Cruz called for impeachment. Bobby Jindal said he’d “just get rid of
the court” entirely. Scott Walker floated a Constitutional amendment. Mike
Huckabee hinted at civil disobedience.

But well over 24 hours after the Supreme Court’s historic ruling making
same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, one Republican 2016 candidate has
thus far remained silent: Rand Paul.

While other GOP hopefuls bashed the high court’s decision to one degree or
another, the Kentucky senator didn’t say anything or release a statement or
respond to requests for comment from POLITICO.

Paul’s silence stands in contrast to his voluble response on Thursday, when
the justices upheld a key part of the Affordable Care Act. He released a
statement saying the decision “turns both the rule of law and common sense
on its head.” He was still going on Friday afternoon, tweeting, “while some
in my party may want to wave the white flag, I am more determined than ever
to fight for total repeal of Obamacare.” No tweets, however, on gay
marriage.

By Saturday, Paul had also tweeted about his poll numbers and the
“hackathon for liberty and privacy” sponsored by his campaign and made
numerous requests for donation.

Again, though, there was no mention of gay marriage of the high court’s
landmark ruling earlier that day — on any of the candidate’s many social
media accounts.

Paul’s habit of initial silence on the hot political topic of the day has
been noted by the national press recently, especially his delayed response
to Mitt Romney’s call for the Confederate flag to be taken down from
Capitol grounds in South Carolina. Paul finally weighed in on Tuesday, days
after Romney’s Saturday tweet, and well after his rivals had already made
statements. The Kentucky senator’s silence on the gay marriage ruling is
another example of that pattern.

Paul hasn’t refrained from talking about gay marriage before, however. In
April, in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Paul said he believed “people
ought to be treated fairly under the law” but also said he believed in the
“traditional religious connotation” of marriage, usually defined by
religious conservatives as between a man and a woman.

“And you probably could have both,” Paul added. “You could have both
traditional marriage, which I believe in. And then you could also have the
neutrality of the law that allows people to have contracts with another.”

In a 2013 interview with the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer,
Paul voiced reservations about “federalizing” same-sex marriage.

“I’m not sure exactly how I’d come down on the federalization part,” Paul
said in the January 2013 interview. “My fear is that in federalizing it,
we’re going to lose the battle for the whole country. In keeping it state
by state, which is the way marriage has always been adjudicated, we’ll have
states that continue to have traditional marriage. I think we’re losing in
large areas of the country now. If the urban areas are able to dictate, for
the rest of the country, what our definition of marriage is, I’m really
concerned about that.”

*CRUZ*

*Ted Cruz calls for judicial retention elections for Supreme Court justices
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/27/ted-cruz-calls-for-judicial-retention-elections-for-supreme-court-justices/>
// WaPo // Katie Zezima – June 27, 2015*

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has proposed a constitutional amendment that would
subject Supreme Court justices to periodic judicial elections in the wake
of rulings that upheld a key portion of the Affordable Care Act and
affirmed gay couples' right to marriage.

“I am proposing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would subject
each and every justice of the United States Supreme Court to periodic
judicial retention elections," Cruz said Saturday, during a speech in Des
Moines, Iowa. He also called for such elections in the National Review on
Friday.

The proposal from Cruz, who once served as Supreme Court clerk, comes as he
is trying to position himself as the presidential candidate of choice for
conservatives and evangelicals who disagree with the court's decisions this
week. The Texas Republican is using the rulings to paint himself as a
stalwart defender of religious freedom, opponent of same-sex marriage and
reaffirm his pledge to abolish the Affordable Care Act should he win the
presidency.

Cruz is also using the rulings to reemphasize his assertion that he tacks
far to the right of the rest of the 2016 GOP field when it comes to social
issues, a point he started making in the wake of a controversial religious
freedom law Indiana passed in March.

"Sadly we’ve seen several 2016 candidates in response to yesterday’s
decision saying it is the law of the land, we must accept it and move on,"
Cruz said as the Des Moines audience booed. "When Republican candidates are
standing up and reciting Barack Obama's talking points things have gone
seriously wrong."

Earlier this year Cruz filed legislation that would protect states that
prohibit same-sex couples from getting married.

Cruz said last week in Iowa that some Republican presidential candidates
chose to "rearrange their sock drawers" in the wake of the Indiana
decision. After a backlash to the initial law, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R)
signed a revised version of the religious freedom bill making it clear that
businesses cannot use the legislation as the basis to discriminate based on
sexual orientation.

The Texas Republican, who had a tepid start in Iowa, tried to use
Saturday's speech, titled "Believe Again" as a way to both solidify his
presence in the state and as the uncompromising conservative in the 2016
field. Cruz has come up with a new phrase for the institution he said he is
fighting: the "Washington cartel," which he said is comprised by members of
both parties, lobbyists, and now Supreme Court justices.

"This week's assault was but the latest in a long line of judicial assaults
on our Constitution and Judeo-Christian values that have made America
great," he said. The Supreme Court "has now forced the disaster of a
health-care law called Obamacare on the American people and attempted to
redefine an institution that was ordained by God."

Cruz's strategy is to coalesce the support of his conservative base and
draw in support from evangelical Christians and conservative libertarians,
all but ignoring the Republican establishment and moderates. Cruz said he
is the only candidate in the field who is bucking Republican leadership,
and said those leaders have been "embarrassed" to stand up for traditional
marriage. He said both Democrats and Republicans were "popping Champagne"
after the court's rulings because it spared them from having the government
"actually follow the law."

The candidate also hit 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who held a Republican
summit earlier this month, for inviting all of the candidates who are
"pro-amnesty" on immigration to Utah.

*Ted Cruz Recalls How Father Tried to Join Fidel Castro’s Army
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/politics/ted-cruz-recalls-how-father-tried-to-join-fidel-castros-army.html?ref=politics>
// AP – June 27, 2015*

AUSTIN, Tex. — The father of Senator Ted Cruz was a 1950s Cuban
revolutionary who longed to slip into the island’s eastern mountains and
join Fidel Castro’s guerrilla army.

At 17, Rafael Cruz led a group of insurgents staging urban sabotage against
Fulgencio Batista, a Cuban dictator. Mr. Cruz was eventually jailed and
tortured, and upon his release wanted the underground to help him reach Mr.
Castro’s camp in the Sierra Maestra highlands.

“My dad asked if he could join Castro in the mountains and keep fighting,”
Senator Cruz, Republican of Texas and a presidential candidate, writes in
his book, “A Time For Truth,” which is being released on Tuesday. “But he
was told there was no way to get to the rebels.”

Instead, the elder Cruz bribed his way to a Cuban exit visa and headed to
the University of Texas.

He returned home shortly after Mr. Castro seized power in 1959, but, Ted
Cruz writes, was appalled to see Mr. Castro had “declared to the world that
he was a Communist.” Mr. Castro did not formally call his revolution
Socialist until the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

The Cruzes have long acknowledged that Rafael Cruz was an early Castro
sympathizer. But Ted Cruz’s memoir — a copy of which The Associated Press
purchased — provides new details about his desire to fight alongside the
guerrilla leader.

The Cuban government has not commented about Rafael Cruz, making the
anecdotes difficult to confirm. But Ted Cruz also writes that his father
had planned to join Mr. Castro and help attack an army barracks in the city
of Santiago in 1956, but did not because Mr. Castro was delayed in
returning to Cuba from Mexico.

Today, Rafael Cruz, 76, is a pastor who frequently quotes scripture in
antigovernment speeches to grass-roots groups. He has compared President
Obama to a young Castro.

Ted Cruz writes that his father did not open up about being tortured in
Cuban jails until the senator was a teenager, when the pair watched
“Rambo.” The movie features scenes in which the title character is tortured.

The senator describes how his father said he was beaten with clubs and
kicked in the head. That is also difficult to confirm, but the book
includes a Rafael Cruz mug shot in which his nose appears to be broken.

In the book, Mr. Cruz briefly tells how his elder half sister, Miriam, died
of a drug overdose in 2011. He discusses the bouts of depression that his
wife, Heidi, had in 2005 — which he chalks up to her having trouble
adjusting to Texas life after the couple moved to Austin from Washington.

Mr. Cruz also recalls heading to Maine in 2009 to meet former President
George H. W. Bush — whose son Jeb is now one of Mr. Cruz’s 2016
presidential campaign rivals. Mr. Cruz was invited to go sailing but was
wearing a suit, so Mr. Bush lent him clothes, including a “President of the
United States” belt buckle.

Mr. Cruz writes that the borrowed clothing felt “surreal.”

*Cruz seeks to harness conservative outrage after Supreme Court decisions
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/27/politics/ted-cruz-supreme-court-gay-marriage-obamacare/index.html>
// CNN // Theodore Schleifer – June 27, 2015*

Orange City, Iowa (CNN) Ted Cruz is moving quickly to galvanize
conservatives frustrated by the Supreme Court's landmark decisions this
week.

Hours after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage on Friday
morning, the Texas Republican senator looked to pivot the defeat for social
conservatives into a wedge issue between himself and his rival presidential
hopefuls. And by the end of his day in Iowa, Cruz was outflanking any of
the other aspirants on the right and was continuously accusing them of
doublespeak.

In stops across northwest Iowa, Cruz said many in the GOP were "popping
champagne" after the decision. He took swipes at both the integrity of the
Supreme Court and his longtime friend, Chief Justice John Roberts. He
suggested he would back a constitutional convention to scale back the high
court's power, and concluded the day by calling for an amendment to the
Constitution that would give voters the chance to end a Supreme Court
justice's lifetime tenure early.

If Cruz was looking to emerge as the presidential candidate who took the
most umbrage, who expressed the most disbelief after both the same-sex
marriage ruling and the Court's decision to uphold a key provision of
Obamacare this week, he made his best try here on Friday.

"This is not a typical moment in American history," Cruz told a crowd of
more than 100 Iowans gathered on a baseball diamond in the small town of
Pierson. "The last 24 hours at the United States Supreme Court were among
the darkest hours of our nation."

Cruz, a former clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist who later
represented the state of Texas in arguments at the Supreme Court, was
originally slow to respond to the news out of Washington on Friday morning.
His delay was especially surprising as the tea party hero is making an
aggressive play to win over the family-focused evangelical voters who are
expected to make up half of the electorate in next year's Republican Iowa
caucuses.

When he eventually registered his first reaction at a town hall meeting in
Sheldon, Cruz blasted the court for its "unadulterated judicial activism,"
just as many other 2016 candidates did. That was ordinary.

But Cruz went further, saying there was disconnect between what Republicans
in Washington were saying in their press releases and what they truly
believed. Several GOP candidates, including Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham,
issued tightly-parsed language urging their colleagues to focus on
protecting "religious freedom," while Ohio Gov. John Kasich urged
Republicans to respect the ruling and ditch the matter altogether. Mike
Huckabee and Bobby Jindal were a bit stronger, with the former Arkansas
governor calling for Americans to "reject judicial tyranny, not retreat."

But Cruz was skeptical that his opponents were committed to stopping
same-sex nuptials.

"As much as there were crocodile tears shed in Washington yesterday on
Obamacare, there were even bigger crocodile tears shed in Washington today
on marriage," Cruz said.

That is a contrast Cruz made sure to highlight to nearly every voter he met
in the Hawkeye State. The script at Dutch Bakery here was workmanlike:
Shake the hand. Share outrage at the decision. Ridicule Republicans' public
statements. Blast them for "popping champagne." Shake a new hand.

In those statements, some of Cruz's competitors, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker, did call for a constitutional amendment to protect so-called
traditional marriage. Cruz has introduced this amendment in the past, but
again, he went a step further, strongly implying that he would support a
constitutional convention to propose new amendments, a course of action
never before pursued though it is explicitly outlined in Article V of the
Constitution.

"I fully expect the drive for an Article V convention to get new energy and
new steam," Cruz said in Sheldon when a voter asked whether he would back
it.

By the end of the day, Cruz was bringing it up himself -- though always
stopping just short of saying he would support the call for a convention.
In a column posted on the National Review's website late Friday, Cruz was
not only floating the convention idea but proposing his own amendment:
judicial retention elections every eight years for Supreme Court justices.

"When they violate the constitutional amendment and the law, the American
people can remove them," Cruz said to his loudest applause of the evening
in Pierson. "We are not governed by a judicial priesthood. We are not
governed by judicial tyranny."

But Cruz reserved his toughest talk for the head of that tyranny: Roberts,
a justice who dissented with the Court's decision on Friday but who the day
before voted with the Court's liberal wing to uphold Obamacare subsidies.

"His decision yesterday and his decision a couple of years ago violated his
oath of office," Cruz said. "He knows full well that he's changing the law
and not following it."

*In northwest Iowa, Cruz calls court rulings 'lawless'
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/06/26/ted-cruz-supreme-court-sex-marriage-obamacare-iowa/29364855/>
// Des Moines Register // Matthew Patane – June 27, 2015*

PIERSON, Ia. – Two Supreme Court decisions in as many days have made 2016
an even more bitter fight for conservatives, Republican presidential
hopeful Ted Cruz said Friday.

Making three stops in northwest Iowa, Cruz railed against the court's
justices for what he called "naked and unadulterated judicial activism" in
a 5-4 ruling Friday that said same-sex marriages can take place in all 50
states.

"Religious liberty has never been so threatened as it is today," Cruz said
in Sheldon. "I'll tell you, today's lawless decision from the Supreme Court
puts religious liberty front and center in the target of the federal
government."

The U.S. senator from Texas also criticized some of his colleagues for
their responses to the same-sex marriage decision, saying they issued
"condemning statements, but were quietly thrilled, relieved, celebrating
and popping champagne because they're afraid to defend marriage."

"They don't want to have to talk about it anymore. Several 2016 candidates
today put out statements saying 'The matter is decided, it's the law of the
land, it's time to move on,' " Cruz told a crowd in Pierson. "We are in a
very strange place when Republican presidential candidates are echoing
Barack Obama's talking points."

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, also condemned the Supreme Court's ruling.

"Not one civilization in history has endorsed same-sex marriage, and they
believe somehow the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment or the Constitution
wrote it in in 1868," King told reporters. "I guarantee you, they weren't
writing same-sex marriage into the Constitution in 1868."

He said Congress could enact retribution on the court, such as cutting its
administrative budget.

"We can eliminate some of their staff to let them know that they have
overreached and they don't need all of that help to do the damage they have
done to the Constitution," said King, who attended the same event in
Pierson as Cruz.

The Supreme Court also overstepped its bounds, Cruz said, by upholding a
key provision of the federal health care law, more commonly known as
Obamacare.

"Well, I'll tell you one consequence of yesterday's decision: It has made
the 2016 election a referendum on repealing Obamacare," said Cruz, who has
campaigned around the full repeal of the health care law.

Bill Tentinger, an independent pork producer from Le Mars, spoke with Cruz
briefly during the candidate's Pierson stop.

Tentinger said Cruz appeard "down-to-earth," but it's too early for him to
back a candidate.

"I'd be looking for a candidate that'd be interested in understanding the
ramifications of increased regulations. … I think we've got way too much of
this stuff that is happening, regulations that are coming, without any
forethought of what it's going to do to the economy," Tentinger said.

Following his speech in Sheldon, Cruz made retail politics-style stops in
Orange City, interacting with Iowans while visiting three area businesses
and a cultural center.

Delores DeJohn, 75, was one of the first to speak to Cruz as he entered a
Dutch bakery off the city's main strip. DeJohn said she liked Cruz because
"we need to have someone with strong values."

"I believe God is in control of it all, and we need god-fearing men in (the
White House), otherwise this country will keep going down the other way,"
said DeJohn, who is retired.

AT THE EVENT

SETTING: In Sheldon, a meeting room at the Sheldon Community Services
Center. In Orange City, three local business and a cultural center. In
Pierson, a picnic, a baseball diamond and a city park. Organizers served
pork and a band played country and rock music.

CROWD: About 57 people in Sheldon. Cruz's Orange City stop saw the largest
crowd with about 12 people in a local bakery. About 130 people came to a
picnic in Pierson to see Cruz, King and State Sen. Bill Anderson,
R-Pierson, speak.

REACTION: A receptive audience in Sheldon, where Cruz received multiple
applause lines and laughter. Quiet conversations in Orange City. A standing
ovation in Pierson.

WHAT'S NEXT: Cruz will give a speech at Drake University in Des Moines on
Saturday, followed by a "Main Street walk" in Pella.

*GRAHAM*

*In Lindsey Graham's hometown, resentment over the Confederate flag
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/lindsey-graham-hometown-confederate-flag-central-south-carolina-119492.html#ixzz3eKMLLbzc>
// Politico // Ben Schreckinger – June 27, 2015*

CENTRAL, S.C. — Sen. Lindsey Graham’s home lies across the state from the
city where nine African-Americans were gunned down in the basement of their
church and the arena-turned-sanctuary where 5,500 mourners gathered Friday
to honor a slain pastor.

Here in the town where Graham grew up, there are still billiard tables in
the basement of the building where his family once lived in a back room and
ran a pool hall, a liquor store and bar. For much of Graham’s childhood,
sitting inside the bar was a privilege reserved for whites. Today, the
proprietor is a Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx.

Graham, in a short autobiography written as a preface to his presidential
run, takes a small share of credit for racial progress in a part of the
South where change never came quickly. He recounts a moment when, as a high
school student, he confronted his parents about the unwritten rule that
black patrons had to drink outside.

“The next time a black customer came into the place,” writes Graham in "My
Story," “my mom opened a bottle of beer, set it down on the bar, and
motioned for him to take a stool.” That was in the early 1970s, years after
the legal end of Jim Crow.

Last week, in the wake of the racially motivated massacre at Emanuel AME
Church by a white man in Charleston, as calls mounted to take down the
Confederate flag that flies in front of the South Carolina Statehouse,
Graham stood up for the banner. “It works here,” he said.

But on Monday afternoon, Graham stood quietly beside Gov. Nikki Haley as
she called for the flag to come down.

Call it a cave-in or a flip-flop or an evolution. In Pickens and Oconee
counties, where Graham was raised and remains today, the people know him —
firsthand or otherwise — and like him. Some resent him for turning on the
flag. Most understand it. On race and Confederate heritage, they express
the same mix of stubborn defensiveness, empathy and resignation that Graham
has. In that way, he represents the people here. But he certainly isn’t
leading them.

The battle standard still has its staunch defenders in Central. At the
Wal-Mart on Calhoun Memorial Highway, Confederate memorabilia had already
been cleared from the shelves on Friday, but the flag shone from the front
license-plate holder of a Chevy pickup in the parking lot. The truck’s
owner, Rita Haney, 28, said she wasn’t bowing to the flag’s opponents.
She’s planning to fly a big one in her front yard, “just to piss them the
f—- off.”

She expressed dismay that the group now includes her state’s senior
senator. “My dad loved Lindsey Graham,” Haney said. “He would roll over in
his grave.”

There were others in the diners and under the shade trees in and around the
town whose support Graham has lost in the past week. “He went from being
all right to a coward,” said Stanley, a 60-year-old logger wearing a
National Tractor Pullers Association hat in a booth at Paw’s Diner in
nearby Seneca, where Graham now lives.

At Margaret’s, another diner on another highway 10 miles away, 71-year-old
waitress Betty Smith sat in another booth, breaking from work to chat with
friend Betty Whitmire. She said she was so disgusted with the state’s
leaders that she would stop voting, and that she couldn’t abide Graham’s
change of course. “I don’t care what they do with the flag, but when you
stand up and lie like that …,” she said.

But Whitmire expressed a more common sentiment. She still liked Graham. He
had known her older brother, Leon, and showed up to his funeral as a
congressman 14 years ago. She said she understood Graham’s decision to
change course on the flag, even if she didn’t wholeheartedly endorse it.

Most white people around Central maintained the flag had nothing to do with
the massacre in Charleston, even if it had become the cause of more trouble
than it was worth. They said it didn’t stand for racism, even if the people
who chose to display it (whom they described as “rednecks,” though not for
attribution) were doing it to be racist. They said the flag at the
Statehouse belonged “in a museum,” even if politicians’ “knee-jerk
reaction” to the massacre was the wrong way to put it there.

If this moment presented Graham with an opportunity to lead the people of
his native Upstate South Carolina out of a tangled thicket of contradictory
feelings about race and heritage, he didn’t seize it. Instead, he only
stayed out of change’s way. As events overtook lingering loyalties to the
flag, Graham told NBC News this week, “I am not going to be part of
stopping the progress of my state.”

That doesn’t surprise people who knew Graham in his youth. In the senator’s
autobiography, he writes of himself as a child blessed with “the gift of
gab,” but others remember him as more reserved.

“Lindsey wasn’t a popular kid. He wasn’t outspoken. He was real quiet,”
said lifelong Central resident Jimmy Head, 63, sitting in the shade of a
tree with his father, John, 83, outside the family home.

Jimmy Head grew up next door to Graham’s babysitter and his first memories
of the senator are of a 5-year-old toddling over to shoot marbles on the
dirt in their backyard and staying to play by himself long after the other
kids had moved on to other games.

Head’s father, John, Central’s fire chief for 40 years, said he doesn’t
believe the flag’s removal will change much or satisfy anybody. “That flag
didn’t shoot them people,” he said. “To me, they agreed to take it off the
[Statehouse] 15 years ago. You put it in a museum, in 15 years they’ll go
and try to close down that museum. There ain’t no end.”

Back then, protesters led by the NAACP demanded the removal of the flag
from the dome of the South Carolina Statehouse, where it had flown since
the 1960s. In the resulting compromise, the flag was moved to a Confederate
war memorial in front of the Statehouse, where it remains today.

At the time, Graham, still in the House, stood with the people in his
district who felt a sentimental attachment to the flag.

“There is a guy out there named Bubba,” he said. ”He grew up when public
schools got integrated. He goes to work every day. There are women and
African-Americans in the workplace and he’s fine with that, but he thinks
the whole world is against him and has rights he doesn’t have. He thinks
the flag is the last thing he has going for him and he’s not going to take
it down. I don’t want to step on Bubba’s feelings. There are no groups
sticking up for the Bubbas of the world.”

Graham’s newfound support for the flag’s removal doesn’t change John Head’s
approval of him. “He has a good attitude. I would think he would have a
good opportunity to win the race. He’s well-knowledgeable,” said Head, who
last ran into Graham at the Waffle House in neighboring Clemson, home of
the university, on the Sunday before the Charleston shooting.

Al Cumbie, a former mayor of Central five years Graham’s senior, first knew
the senator when he was a “little bitty thing.” He, too, recalls a “quiet”
kid, though a loving one who took it upon himself to raise his teenage
sister Darline when both of their parents died during his college years and
Graham was struggling to pay Cumbie, also the town’s undertaker, for their
funerals.

Smiley Garvin, 52, the owner of Uptown Barbers on the town’s main, and
only, drag, said black people in Central look fondly on the Grahams. They
were poorer than the town’s whites, but Lindsey’s father was good about
extending them credit at his liquor store, and when Lindsey closed the
store down after his father’s death, they still remember that he forgave
the debts of people who had racked up tabs.

“I’m proud that he made the decision that he made,” Garvin said of Graham’s
new stance, but he said South Carolina faces more pressing issues. “They
could be spending time on something more beneficial than fussing over a
flag. Like minimum wages. They should be fussing over that.”

After 20 years in Washington, Graham hasn’t strayed far from his roots
here, said Cumbie. “You can see him in a Waffle House in blue jeans and a
hat. You wouldn’t necessarily know that he’s a politician if you saw him
out by himself.”

That endears him to people in South Carolina’s northwest corner. “He
doesn’t take being a senator as something of power. He’s a pretty
down-to-earth guy,” he said.

In other words, he’s not one to get way out ahead of his constituents. “I
think he tries his best to be a statesman,” said Cumbie.

But in Charleston, at the funeral on Friday for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney,
one of the shooting victims and a former state senator, it was Gov. Nikki
Haley who was praised because she was “bold enough to declare, ‘Take it
down.’” It was Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley whom President Barack Obama
praised for “good and wise leadership.” Graham was acknowledged for his
presence, to light applause.

Back in Paw’s Diner in Seneca, the late lunch stragglers paid little
attention to the images of the funeral beamed by Fox News to the television
behind the counter. For those caught up in the culture war, the Supreme
Court’s decisions on Obamacare and gay marriage offered fresher ammunition.
Most people, though, said they were none too eager to linger on issues of
race and heritage, and happy to move on.

Bill Wright, 67, gave Graham’s role in the drama of the past two weeks a
shrug. “He’s a politician,” said Wright, between bites of fried fish and
cornbread. “That’s basically the size of it.”

*Lindsey Graham’s Unique Way Of Handling A Voter’s Racist Comments
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/lindsey-grahams-unique-way-of-handling-a-voters-racist-comme?utm_term=.lhRl23b9L7#.tv7l5loLj>
// Buzzfeed // Rosie Grey – June 27, 2015*

TAMA, Iowa — Lindsey Graham was in the full swing of his pitch to a group
of potential voters gathered at a VFW hall in this small town an hour
outside Des Moines on Saturday when, while he was talking about his
relatively liberal stance on immigration, there came an unwelcome
interruption.

“Towel heads,” grumbled a man sitting at the bar, sporting a denim shirt
with the arms cut off. “Sand n*****s.”

Graham did what every candidate must in the age of smartphones and
opposition trackers following a candidate anywhere he or she goes.

“I totally dissociate myself from this guy,” Graham said. “What I would say
is that what he said is not who I am. I’m not running to be president to
please this guy.” He then moved on and continued on taking questions from
the other attendees.

At this early stage, running for president can be a weird thing —
especially in these tiny, intimate gatherings where people are able to to
speak their minds. In an earlier era, maybe before a woman once notoriously
insisted to John McCain that Barack Obama was an Arab, Graham could
probably have gotten away with ignoring the man; today, he had to act.

But Graham is also a long-shot candidate without much to lose, and his
response ended up being different from the kind of tight-lipped, efficient
shutdown one could imagine coming from someone for whom the stakes are
higher. A few minutes after the exchange, Graham concluded his spiel to the
15 or so people assembled in the dark, low-ceilinged room by drawing a
comparison between his own hardscrabble upbringing in a bar in small town
South Carolina and people like the man who had issued the slurs.

“I’m tired of telling people things they want to hear that I don’t believe.
I changed a long time ago as a politician. I was scared to death of going
into a room to be disagreed with. I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel
free. I feel able to tell you exactly what I believe and why I believe it,”
Graham said.

“Put me on your list of people to consider, talk to a neighbor, and if you
can support me, bring somebody to the caucus — that’s the only way I’m
going to make it, is to have people like you buy into what I’m trying to
do,” he said. “I grew up in a place just like this. This guy at the bar, I
grew up with people just like him.”

Graham then took it a step further: The event had been billed as “Politics
and Pool,” and he wanted to play pool with someone.

There was silence.

Finally, a couple guys suggested the very man who had offered the slurs —
the one Graham himself had called out, twice. The man agreed to play,
Graham shook his hand, and the men played pool. Graham won.

On the way out, BuzzFeed News asked Graham why he had played pool with the
man.

“Because he was the only one that would play,” Graham said. “And I wanted
to beat him. I was going to beat him if it’s the last thing I did in Iowa.”

*SANTORUM*

*Santorum denounces marriage ruling as Supreme Court decision dominates
conservative gathering
<http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/06/santorum-denounces-marriage-ruling-as-supreme-court-decision-dominates-conservative-gathering/>
// AP // Kristen Wyatt – June 27, 2015*

DENVER — Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum denounced the
landmark same-sex marriage ruling Friday in a fiery speech to about 4,000
conservatives gathered in Denver.

The former Pennsylvania senator told the Western Conservative Summit that
the Supreme Court’s decision making same-sex marriage the law of the land
is “based on a lie.”

“We have a Supreme Court that says the only reason that you could possibly
oppose changing marriage laws in America is because you hate people who
want to marry people of the same sex. That is not true,” Santorum said.
“It’s a decision based on a lie. Based on fundamental untruths.”

Santorum said he predicted a decade ago that gay marriage would be law
nationwide without an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He stopped short
of calling for a fresh effort to amend the Cponstitution, but he said the
nation needs to “heal” from the decision.

“My heart aches tonight. My heart aches tonight because that family unit
has further been assaulted,” Santorum said.

The crowd applauded Santorum’s remarks and gave him a standing ovation.
Santorum won Colorado’s GOP presidential caucuses in 2012 and 2008.

Santorum is one of six presidential hopefuls in Denver this weekend
addressing the Western Conservative Summit.

Colorado’s presidential preference primaries are nonbinding and play little
role in either party. But Colorado is a key battleground state in general
elections, and presidential candidates frequently test campaign themes here.

Addressing the conference Saturday are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and
former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Rounding out the slate are businesswoman
Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and neurosurgeon Ben
Carson.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul is visiting Colorado next week.

Outside Santorum’s remarks Friday, the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans
manned a free booth given to them by the state party.

The gay Republican group sought to buy a booth from the Western
Conservative Summit, organized by Colorado Christian University. The school
denied their request, prompting the state party to invite them to share
their booth.

“We really are part of the Republican Party, and we want to be part of the
conversation,” said Log Cabin Republicans member Jeff Bjorlin.

*Santorum Leads Off Speakers At Western Conservative Summit **//*
<https://www.cpr.org/news/story/santorum-leads-speakers-western-conservative-summit>*
AP – June 27, 2015*

Five Republican presidential hopefuls are in Denver Saturday talking to a
group of conservative activists.

The Western Conservative Summit is a gathering of about 4,000
conservatives. The crowd heard Friday speeches from tea party activists and
GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

So far the gathering has concentrated on last week's Supreme Court rulings
and what they mean for the GOP. The Court last week upheld President
Obama's health care overhaul and made gay marriage legal in all 50 states.

Santorum, who won Colorado's GOP presidential caucuses in 2012 and 2008,
said the gay marriage ruling was "based on a lie" that gay-marriage
opponents are motivated by discrimination.

He's is one of seven presidential hopefuls in Denver this weekend
addressing the Western Conservative Summit. Also attending the conference
are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Rounding
out the slate are businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike
Huckabee and neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

In addition to Walker, the crowd is hearing Saturday speeches from GOP
presidential hopefuls Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick
Perry.

*Rick Santorum: Justice Kennedy Is “Potentially Disrupting The Foundation
Of The World.”
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/rick-santorum-justice-kennedy-is-potentially-disrupting-the#.ajxP3Q4oe>
// Buzzfeed News // Andrew Kaczynski – June 27, 2015*

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum says the Supreme Court decision on
Friday ruling bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional is
“potentially disrupting the foundation of the world.”

Santorum, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said
he wasn’t surprised at the ruling, citing the previous ruling from the
court striking down the Defense of Marriage of Act. He called Friday a
“very sad day.”

“Justice Kennedy said — this is remarkable but listen to it — the only
reason that any could oppose gay marriage is because they hated gays and
lesbians. Which is almost stops you in your tracks,” Santorum said.

“That five thousand years of human history, a biblically-given thing that
God somehow gave us marriage as a man and woman, that that was, that
somehow that was intrinsically about hating other people. Which is very,
very sad to see how the culture’s changed and how this one man, this is it,
this one man, this one man, a 5-4 decision is going to try to affect the
basic foundation of America, and frankly, now, with America leading the
way, potentially disrupting the foundation of the world.”

Santorum said the next thing to do after the court ruling was to fight to
be able “to even to talk about it,” because people will try to “silence any
disagreement.” He said it was not time “to move on,” because then they
would lose ground in arguing for religious liberty.

“There’s no slippery slope here,” the former Pennsylvania senator added,
“religious liberty is under assault today, not going to be, it is, and it’s
going to be even more so as we say with this decision.”

“Now that this is the law of the land,” he said. “The question is going to
be whether we are going to allow people to actually dissent on this or
whether if they are going to be treated as the proponents of this position
have advocated: this is a civil rights position and if you oppose this
you’re the equivalent a racist back in the 50s and 60s.”

Santorum suggest churches and others who dissent could lose the privileges
of tax benefits.

*HUCKABEE*

*Huckabee, Other GOP Hopefuls Slam Gay Marriage Ruling*
<http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/huckabee-other-gop-hopefuls-slam-gay-marriage-ruling-n383111>*
// AP – June 28, 2015*

DENVER — Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told conservatives
Saturday that the Supreme Court tried to "unwrite the laws of nature and
the laws of nature's God" when it legalized gay marriage across the nation.

The former Arkansas governor suggested that people in the United States
flout the ruling, as President Abraham Lincoln did in the wake of the
justices' 1857 decision that blacks could not be citizens. Huckabee also
pointed out that President Barack Obama opposed gay marriage until 2012.

"He was either lying in 2008, or he's lying now, or God has rewritten the
Bible and only Barack Obama has gotten the new edition," Huckabee told the
crowd at the Western Conservative Summit.

Huckabee was among the GOP presidential hopefuls at the gathering, which
followed a week in which the high court also upheld Obama's signature
health care law. The Republicans offered few suggestions on what to do
about the gay marriage ruling, highlighting the party's challenges on
social issues ahead of the 2016 elections.

Joining Huckabee at the conference was Republican hopeful Carly Fiorina,
who said she supports civil unions. She said opponents of the ruling should
now focus efforts on religious freedom in public accommodations, such as
cases of bakers facing penalties for refusing to serve gay couples.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry derided the ruling but didn't suggest a next
step.

"These decisions need to be made in the states," said Perry, who noted that
his states' rights plank extends even to Colorado legalizing recreational
marijuana in defiance of federal drug law.

"I defend the right of Colorado to be wrong on that issue," Perry said. The
crowd chuckled.

Scheduled to conclude the gathering Saturday was Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker, who has called for a constitutional amendment to undo the marriage
ruling.

On Friday, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said the gay marriage
ruling was "based on a lie" that gay-marriage opponents are motivated by
discrimination.

"We have a Supreme Court that says the only reason that you could possibly
oppose changing marriage laws in America is because you hate people who
want to marry people of the same sex. That is not true," Santorum said.

*Mike Huckabee: Conservatives can ignore gay marriage ruling like Lincoln
ignored Dred Scott
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/27/mike-huckabee-conservatives-can-ignore-gay-marriag/>
// The Washington Times // Valerie Richardson – June 27, 2015*

DENVER — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee suggested Saturday that
conservatives treat the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision like Abraham
Lincoln treated the high court’s pro-slavery ruling in Dred Scott: Ignore
it.

“They can do same thing that Abraham Lincoln did about the Dred Scott
decision of 1857,” Mr. Huckabee said at the Western Conservative Summit.
“The Dred Scott decision said that African-Americans were not fully human,
that they need not be treated as fully human.”

“He [Lincoln] simply ignored the ruling and said, ‘That’s not correct,’ ”
Mr. Huckabee said. “And by the way, it may sound like, ‘Oh, that’s an
extreme position.’ Actually, it’s a constitutional position. Here’s why: If
we acquiesce immediately without review, without the other branches of
government, it goes back to my point, that this is judicial tyranny.”

He also said he wanted to warn his liberal friends — “both of them,” he
joked — that an activist court can swing the other way.

When that happens, “I hope they remember their jubilation,” Mr. Huckabee
said.

The Republican presidential hopeful and former Fox News host took a jab at
President Obama for reversing his past opposition to same-sex marriage.

“If he has so radically changed his view and now he believes that same-sex
marriage is the best thing that could happen to this country, one of three
things is true: He was either lying in 2008, he’s lying now, or God rewrote
the Bible and Barack Obama is the only one who got the new edition,” Mr.
Huckabee said to applause and laughter.

Mr. Huckabee is one of six would-be GOP presidential nominees scheduled to
speak at the three-day conference hosted by the Centennial Institute at the
Colorado Convention Center.

*Huckabee: Supreme Court is an ‘extreme court’
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/246372-huckabee-supreme-court-is-an-extreme-court>
// The Hill // Martin Matishak – June 27, 2015*

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Saturday skewered the Supreme
Court for ruling to legalize same-sex marriage and preserve Obamacare,
saying the decisions could lead to "judicial tyranny."

“Over the last couple of days, our country has seen two of the most
blatant, disturbing, disgusting examples of judicial activism in the
history of these United States,” the 2016 presidential candidate said in a
speech during the second day of the Western Conservative Summit in Denver.

“We don’t have a Supreme Court, we have an extreme court,” he added. “We
have a court that think it’s not just the Supreme Court, they thinks they
are the supreme branch” of government.

“They are not the supreme branch and they are most certainly not the
supreme being that can unwrite the laws of nature and the laws of nature’s
god, which is exactly what they’ve attempted to do this week,” according to
Huckabee.

He urged the audience not to “bow and worship at the alter of judicial
supremacy.”

Huckabee said letting the court overrule the two other branches of
government and election decisions opens the door to “something very
dangerous to our way of life and our great republic: Judicial tyranny where
the people no longer rule, five unelected black-robed lawyers rule.”

He said the decision should be up to local and state governments and
suggested conservatives simply ignore the ruling, likening it to President
Lincoln’s choice not to respect the court’s Dred Scott decision regarding
slavery.

Without review by the legislative and executive branches, the court
essentially chose to “reach out into thin air and created a law,” according
to Huckabee.

He also warned liberals who have celebrated the decision, including the
Obama administration, which lit up the White House Friday night with
gay-pride colors, to “remember their jubilation” because “someday there may
be a conservative court” that reverses the decision.

*FIORINA*

*Carly Fiorina on Obamacare: Rich getting richer, while middle-class
getting squeezed
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/27/carly-fiorina-on-obamacare-rich-getting-richer-whi/>
// The Washington Times // Valerie Richardson – June 27, 2015*

DENVER — Obamacare is fueling “crony capitalism” by driving out small
providers and ensuring that only the largest insurance companies and
hospitals can survive, says Republican presidential contender Carly Fiorina.

The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Ms. Fiorina said Saturday that the
Affordable Care Act has made the tax and regulatory codes so complicated
that only the biggest, richest businesses can afford to grapple with the
details.

“Why does Obamacare have to be repealed?” said Ms. Fiorina at the Western
Conservative Summit. “Not just because it’s failing by every measure —
emergency room visits are up over 20 percent, insurance premiums are up
over 35 percent, we’re dumping people into Medicaid, there aren’t enough
doctors in Medicaid any more — we’re not serving people.”

The ACA “is so many thousands of pages, literally tens of thousands of
pages, that what do you see happening right now? Insurance companies
consolidating. Big merger announced last week. Hospitals consolidating.
Drug companies consolidating. The big are getting bigger to handle big
government. That’s what’s happening,” she said.

The result is that “the wealthy are getting wealthier,” and “the small, the
powerless, the start-ups are getting crushed,” Ms. Fiorina said.

“Crony capitalism is alive and well now, and the reason for that is when
you have big complicated government, only the big, the powerful, the
wealthy, the well-connected can deal with it,” she said.

Ms. Fiorina spoke and signed copies of her recently released book, “Rising
to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey,” at the summit, which runs through
Sunday at the Colorado Convention Center.

*Fiorina: Marriage is 'grounded in spirituality'
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/246373-fiorina-marriage-is-grounded-in-spirituality>
// The Hill // Mark Hensch – June 27, 2015*

GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on Saturday said the Supreme
Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide ignores religious
history across most world faiths.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO argued history has almost always defined
marriage as the coupling of one man with one woman on spiritual grounds.

“Marriage is an institution grounded in spirituality,” she told listeners
at the Western Conservative Summit 2015 in Denver.

“For millennia, through every religion in the world, marriage has meant a
very specific thing,” Fiorina said.

“That is very different from five Supreme Court justices saying, ‘We’re
going to tell you what marriage is,’ ” she added.

The Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 5-4 decision Friday that all states
must recognize same-sex marriages under the 14th Amendment’s equal
protection clause.

Fiorina said Saturday their decision stole an opportunity from Americans to
organically decide the issue themselves.

“We saw over the last couple days an incredible example of judicial
overreach,” she said of the Supreme Court’s multiple rulings earlier this
week.

“We saw an example of people giving in to politics and giving up on
principles,” she said, criticizing the Supreme Court as “activist judges.”

“I am sorry the Supreme Court took up this case,” Fiorina added. “I think
it was best left up to the states and the people to continue this
discussion.”

Fiorina said her reaction to Obergefell v. Hodges’ decision did not mean
she opposes same-sex relationships.

She argued a better balance is possible between gay and religious rights.

“I have always been supportive of civil unions,” she said, citing moves
made during her tenure at Hewlett-Packard.

“I don’t think government should discriminate in the provision of benefits.”

The ex-technology executive argued Republicans should practice greater
inclusiveness towards potential voters.

Fiorina said any inability to connect with Americans could cost her party
the presidential election in 2016.

“We have to talk to everyone,” she said. “Our tone matters. Our language
matters.”

“We cannot be judgmental, we have to be empathetic,” Fiorina added.

Fiorina argued that as president, she would help Americans realize their
shared capability for achieving great things.

“Here, in this nation, every individual has the right to fulfill their
potential,” she said.

“Our Founders knew that everybody has God-given gifts,” Fiorina added.
“That right comes from God and cannot be taken away by man or government.”

*Carly Fiorina fired up conservatives at Western Summit
<http://gazette.com/carly-fiorina-fired-up-conservatives-at-western-summit/article/1554573>
// The Gazette // Megan Schrader – June 27, 2015*

The former CEO of the technology giant Hewlett-Packard wowed a crowd at the
Western Conservative Summit in Denver Saturday with her pitch for president.

Her fire and brimstone preaching of a keep-it-simple-stupid approach to
governing had the crowd on its feet.

Carly Fiorina hit foreign policy hard in her short speech at the Denver
Convention Center.

"The truth is I know more world leaders on the stage today than anyone else
running with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, only I didn’t do
photo ops," Fiorina said. "I had a private meeting with Vladimir Putin, a
private meeting with Bibi Netanyahu a private meeting with the king of
Jordan, a private meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, South Africa,
China, Brazil."

Fiorina said on her first day in office she'd call Benjamin (Bibi)
Netanyahu and show the world what a true ally the United States is. The
crowd erupted.

She said she'd draw a hard line in the sand for Iran - the new deal would
be access to all nuclear facilities or face crippling economic sanctions.

"Ladies and gentlemen we can defeat ISIS our allies will help us but we
must lead," she said.

Fiorina was one of the most talked about speakers at the conference. Coming
from a non-political background (like presidential hopeful Ben Carson who
will speak tonight) Fiorina has the draw of the unknown.

Bob Beauprez, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor in 2014,
said "Carly just knocked it out of the park."

"She's a remarkable talent," Beauprez said, adding that there are a whole
list of steller conservatives running this year and it'll be a hard
decision.

*TRUMP*

*Hispanic leaders urge NBC to cut ties to Donald Trump
<http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/27/media/donald-trump-nbc-univision/> // CNN
// Brian Stelter – June 27, 2015 *

In a statement on Saturday, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda
simultaneously applauded Univision's decision to sever ties with Trump and
urged NBC to "follow Univision's lead."

Members of the coalition, NHLA for short, include business, media, and
cultural advocacy groups like the National Council of La Raza, the United
States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Presente.org and the National Hispanic
Media Coalition.

It called on NBCUniversal to "withdraw from airing the Miss USA pageant and
terminate its financial ties to Donald Trump."

Univision similarly canceled its airing of Miss USA, slated for July 12, in
the wake of Trump's offensive remarks about Mexican immigrants. Trump, now
a presidential candidate, has called Mexicans "rapists" and "killers,"
among other things.

Univision's decision was announced on Thursday. The network had a long-term
contract with Trump to televise Miss USA and Miss Universe, and Trump has
threatened to sue over the breach of contract.

NBC's ties with Trump have since come under scrutiny. NBCUniversal owns
half of the pageant business while Trump owns the rest. So NBC is not just
a broadcaster of Miss USA, it's a business partner of The Trump
Organization.

CNNMoney reported on Friday that NBC is reviewing its contracts with Trump.
For now the network has distanced itself from the candidate's offensive
comments but said nothing about the business venture or the upcoming
broadcast.

One of the coalition members, Felix Sanchez, chairman of the National
Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, said Univision's decision "is civil
rights leadership in the digital age."

He said, "We implore NBCU to follow Univision's lead and take a similar
stance and sever their financial relationship with Mr. Trump, in light of
the bigoted way he has denigrated Mexicans and Mexican-Americans."

An representative of NBC, which is owned by Comcast (CCV), declined to
comment on Saturday.

*Donald Trump Pushes Forward in Iowa Despite Republican Party Concern
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-pushes-forward-iowa-republican-party-concern/story?id=32061025>
// ABC News // Benjamin Siegel – June 27, 2015*

Donald Trump attended two events in Iowa Saturday, continuing his campaign
push in the state despite drawing concern from the Republican party over
his recent comments about Mexican immigrants.

The real estate mogul appeared at a reception at the John Wayne Birthplace
and Museum ahead of headlining the Madison County GOP Dinner.

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus admits that Trump’s
comments were “not helpful to the party." But the party won’t condemn the
presidential candidate or ban him from the first primary debate due to his
comments, Priebus said.

"We're going to run a fair, clean primary system, which includes a debate
process that's up front and clear to people," Priebus said Friday regarding
Trump. “Whichever candidates make that process cutoff, those people are
going to be on the stage."

Trump said Mexican immigrants were bringing "drugs," "crime" and "rapists"
to the U.S. when announcing his candidacy earlier this month.

"Not everything is going to be a hundred percent copacetic all the time,"
said Priebus, who commissioned a report after the 2012 election that
determined the Republican party needed to improve its outreach to Hispanic
voter. "But again, it's not my decision to decide who the nominee is and
who we're going to support."

Trump, 69, is among the top 10 Republican presidential candidates in a
number of recent polls, which puts him on pace to qualify for the first two
Republican primary debates in the presidential cycle later this year.

Many party members are concerned the business mogul, who has not been
afraid to criticize fellow Republicans as a candidate, would serve as a
distraction in the primary process.

Spanish language television network Univison ended its Miss Universe
pageant relationship with Trump's business interests after his immigrant
comments. He has since banned the company and its leaders from using his
hotel and golf course in Doral, Florida*.*

*Donald Trump is even more of a monster than you think: Why his golf
courses are environmental disasters
<http://www.salon.com/2015/06/27/donald_trump_is_even_more_of_a_monster_than_you_think_why_his_golf_courses_are_environmental_disasters/>
// Salon // Lindsay Abrams – June 27, 2015*

Here in the United States, Donald Trump gets a lot of flak for the many,
many things you can hardly believe he said: claiming that a cold day
disproves the reality of global warming, for example, or, more recently,
declaring that most Mexican immigrants are “rapists.”

Trump’s no less loathed in Scotland. There, however, the problem is less
about what Trump says, and more about what he’s actually done — run
roughshod over protected dunes to build an elite golf course, attack an
offshore wind energy project because it “ruined” his view, cajole
politicians into supporting his every whim. He’s also run into trouble for
the promises he’s failed to keep — when the deal ultimately went sour, he
flew off in his private jet, leaving behind none of the economic prosperity
he’d sworn the project would create. His fate as one of the country’s top
villains was sealed with Anthony Baxter’s 2011 documentary, “You’ve Been
Trumped,” which documented a saga so egregious it inspired a folk song, and
made such waves that Trump finally agreed to sit down with Baxter on camera.

That interview could be read as the climax of Baxter’s newest documentary,
“A Dangerous Game,” which picks up where the last left off. But Trump knows
how to hold his own against angry activists — or, at least, he knows how to
deflect their questions. With no evidence to back himself up, he explains
at one point that he himself is a “great environmentalist.” The film’s more
alarming revelation is that it’s not just Trump: elitist billionaires, in
Baxter’s telling, have co-opted golf, creating vast artificial environments
for play that strain local resources and shut out all but the wealthy, and
which all too often subvert democracy. This plays out as tragedy in
Dubrovnik, Croatia — a World Heritage Site — where residents’ efforts to
keep out a golf resort result in the passing of a local referendum with an
84 percent majority, only to see the project green-lighted anyway.

Salon spoke with Baxter about the golf industry’s need to embrace a more
sustainable model, and about his continued pursuit of America’s would-be
45th president. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

To start, it would be great to hear about how you went from this one local
Donald Trump story, and then branched out into this larger problem of elite
golf courses.

It was through taking it to communities that really led me to make this
film, because people kept saying to me at screenings around the world that
they were having the same type of thing happening to them in their
communities. It’s not always Donald Trump, but it’s people like him. That
was really the journey I set out on.

I also wanted to focus in on the ludicrous situation of these golf courses
being built in places like the California desert, for example, which has
experienced the worst drought in history. And when you consider that the
average golf course uses 312,000 gallons of water per day, and the average
American family of four uses 400 gallons/day, it really is shocking, the
scale of this stuff. I wanted to explore how our planet cannot afford these
gated, super-luxury resorts for very wealthy people like Donald Trump, yet
they keep being built in places that are so unsustainable.

Donald Trump recently announced plans to build a new golf course designed
by Tiger Woods in Dubai, and it’s just crazy. I don’t think anybody could
make a case as to why, environmentally, that is a sound idea. They’re so
vulnerable as well to an economic downturn, as we’ve seen: the first golf
course of Tiger Woods’ design of the desert in Dubai has now been reclaimed
by the desert because the whole plan went belly up.

So yes, it was a case of wanting to explore that, but also to continue to
tell the story of what was happening in Scotland, because, despite having
had the first film on the BBC, where there is a real backlash against
Donald Trump, his organization, and the way they had treated those local
people, I was so shocked to find that that treatment was continuing, even
after that. So 90 year-old Molly Forbes still didn’t have a proper working
water supply several years after Donald Trump’s work was cut off while
building the golf course, and there were still mounds of earth being built
next to the residents’ homes and Donald Trump was telling the media that he
was treating them well. I think that those things were really the powerful
driver to want to continue to follow the story.

You really have a clear-cut villain in this one of Trump. I keep thinking
back to that image of Molly carrying the water up from her well to wash her
dishes …

Yes, I think the problem with Donald Trump, and the reason these late-night
chat shows have so much fun with him, are the inflammatory things he says.
Just take his comments about Mexico sending rapists and drugs dealers and
crime into the U.S., and his big idea to build a Berlin Wall-style barrier
between the two countries. That, of course, allows people to have a laugh
about those ridiculous ideas, but the point is, as we show in the film,
that it’s not just what he says that is bad and dangerous, but it’s what he
does.

In Scotland, he claimed that he was going to be creating 6,000 jobs, and he
invested one and a half billion dollars into what he claimed was going to
be the greatest golf course in the world. Now, that was 10 years ago, and
to date we have one golf course built, we have less than 200 jobs created,
we have tens of millions of dollars having been invested, and not the $1.5
billion — which was such a stupid number under any scrutiny. But the
Scottish government believed his promises, and that’s also part of the
problem with this whole thing, because we look to our governments to
protect us from these kinds of developments, and the Scottish government
completely failed in this case to protect a site of special scientific
interest, which was supposed to be protected for future generations to
enjoy, and that’s now been lost because of the golf course built there.

Donald Trump has now stabilized the dunes, he’s nailed them down, so that
they don’t move and shift as nature intended. He’s built a golf course,
which is for wealthy people to play, and he had plans to build another one,
which he pulled the plug on after the Scottish government won the battle
against him over the wind farm which he took great umbrage over.

The things that he does that we document in the film are simply dangerous
and worrying, and I hope as many people as possible in the United States
can see the film. Even seeing those polling numbers Tuesday, where he’s
polling No. 2 in New Hampshire, you have to ask yourself: Do people really
know what he does? They enjoy his entertainment value, maybe, but take a
look at this film and you’ll see what he actually does.

About those ridiculous things he says: As somebody who’s confronted Donald
Trump a few times, and then being finally able to sit and talk with him,
did you get the impression that he kind of plays dumb as part of a strategy
he uses for getting away with things?

Yes, well, he’s used to inviting people up to the boardroom in Trump Towers
for interviews, and the first question I’ll ask is about his hair, which he
obviously loves. But the point is, it’s that kind of deflection that’s the
real problem. He’ll make points to journalists that they’ll just repeat as
facts, and that’s what’s so concerning.

In the Scottish case, for example, he said he was going to be investing
$1.5 billion and clearly wasn’t. The thing is, he’s such an expert at
manipulating the media, and he also has access to the airwaves and the
lawyers that ordinary people don’t have; he just needs to jump onto Fox and
Friends for anything he wants to say, and it’ll just be believed. It’s a
very, very worrying situation. Yes, it’s entertaining, but it’s concerning
that a man who thinks he stands a chance of becoming the next president of
the United States could be making such ludicrous claims and saying such
inflammatory things on prime-time television.

*Donald Trump Presidential Campaign Dissected By Bill Maher And Panel
<http://deadline.com/2015/06/donald-trump-bill-maher-judd-apatow-video-1201460624/>
// Deadline // Lisa de Moraes – June 27, 2015*

Real estate mogul/reality TV Star/beauty pageant co-owner/GOP presidential
candidate Trump is “the Frankenstein monster,” created by the Tea Party,
who isn’t going away any time soon, Bill Maher pronounced last night on his
HBO late night show Real Time.  “He never apologizes – he’s never wrong, no
matter what crazy thing he says. He’s the white Kanye,” Maher  added for
good measure. “For a party whose base adores belligerence, this is The Guy.”

Most recently, Trump’s been in the news when Univision announced it would
not broadcast the Miss USA Pageant, which his organization co-owns with
NBC, owing to comments Trump made about Mexico in announcing his White
House bid.

Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, joining Maher in his show’s
panel discussion, said the problem Trump is going to have is that he is
viewed unfavorably by 3/4 of Republicans. Guess how long into the chat it
took her to blame the media for Trump’s current polling numbers?

“I indict the media on this one. Because any time Trump does anything
looney he gets so, so much press. He holds a press [conference] to be The
Birther In Chief, and everybody goes and watches,” she scolded.

“He’s the guy on The Bachelorette you don’t want to see kicked off the
show,” chimed in panelist Judd Apatow.

*Hispanic Group Pressures NBC to Dump Donald Trump
<http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hispanic-group-pressures-nbc-dump-805589>
// Hollywood Reporter // Ryan Gajewski – June 27, 2015*

Spanish-language network Univision cut ties with the mogul's Miss Universe
Organization on Thursday.

The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda issued a statement Saturday calling
on NBC to cut ties to the Miss Universe Organization, which counts Donald
Trump as a part-owner.

The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda issued a statement Saturday calling
on NBC to cut ties to the Miss Universe Organization, which counts Donald
Trump as a part-owner.

The coalition of 39 different Latino advocacy groups praised Univision for
ending its Miss Universe deal Thursday following Trump's disparaging
remarks about Mexican-Americans. In his speech earlier this month
announcing his presidential campaign, Trump said that immigrants from
Mexico are "bringing crime" and are "rapists."

"Aspirants to the highest office in the land must not use a national
electoral platform to spew venomous speech about Mexican immigrants and
Mexican-Americans," said NHLA chair and Labor Council for Latin American
Advancement executive director Hector Sanchez. "As a Mexican immigrant to
this country, I can personally attest to the falsity of Donald Trump's
statements."

Felix Sanchez, chairman and co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation
for the Arts, said: "Univision Communications’ courageous action to sever
ties with both the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants — which are partly
owned by Donald Trump — is civil rights leadership in the digital age. We
implore NBCU to follow Univision’s lead and take a similar stance and sever
their financial relationship with Mr. Trump, in light of the bigoted way he
has denigrated Mexicans and Mexican-Americans."

In a letter directed at Univision president Randy Falco on Friday, Trump
responded to Univision ending its deal by stating that Univision's
employees and representatives are not to step foot on Trump National Doral
property.

The Miss Universe pageant is set to air July 12 on NBC.

*UNDECLARED*

*WALKER*

*Scott Walker gives shout-out to Colorado Springs during Denver speech
<http://gazette.com/scott-walker-gives-shout-out-to-colorado-springs-during-denver-speech/article/1554594>
// Gazette // Megan Shrader – June 27, 2015*

DENVER - Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an all-but-announced 2016
presidential candidate, shouted out to his birthplace - Colorado Springs -
Saturday night before thousands at the Western Conservative Summit in
Denver.

Walker, who headlined the three-day event, said his father was a preacher
at a Baptist church in downtown Colorado Springs.

Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, introduced Walker,
touting Walker's ability to beat back an effort to recall him from office
after sweeping employment reforms that some considered anti-union became
law.

"They were trying to intimidate us. I'm proud to tell you tonight that we
were not intimidated. We took the power out of the hands of big special
interests," Walker said.

He said thousands of protestors arrived at his home, and that was the
origination of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"My apologies for starting that," he said.

"Our reforms not only changed unions in our state, we were able to change
our economic status," he said, adding that unemployment levels dropped,
labor participation rates rose and the economy recovered.

Walker was well received by all but one man in the crowd who interrupted
his response to a question by yelling out in the darkened theater. The man
asked Walker to talk about immigration and then continued yelling until
police removed him.

Walker's speech capped a day of speeches in which several GOP presidential
candidates ticked through their plans.

Earlier in the day, the even-tempered Ben Carson, with his subtle jokes and
stabs, methodically laid out his complex plans for such things as
overcoming the unfunded liability for Medicaid and Social Security and
fixing the Affordable Care Act.

"The longer you allow it to grow the deeper the pain, the more difficult it
will be to fix it," Carson said, noting that France had to cut benefits and
raise the retirement age to bail out its benefits.

Carson, a retired renowned neurosurgeon whose rise from poverty story is
the subject of a Cuba Gooding Jr. movie, has never held political office
and is considered a long shot for the office.

"People say to me you're a doctor and you've had an illustrious career why
would you sully that with politics, and I asked myself the same thing too,"
Carson said. He proposed a hiatus of corporate taxes to allow trillions in
off-shore tax-sheltered dollars to come home with the stipulation that 10
percent must be used for job creation.

When it comes to Obamacare, Carson envisions using Health Savings Accounts
to the level that ordinary people can self-insure and then would only need
to purchase insurance for catastrophes.

Carson won the straw poll in 2014 at the Western Conservative Summit and
some said it was likely he would win again. Attendees of the conference
were asked for their presidential pick and the results will be tallied
Sunday.

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of the technology-giant Hewlett-Packard, was
one of the most anticipated speakers Saturday and she did not disappoint.

Carole Cruson, 72, of Golden came last year and returned to see Rick
Santorum, the Pennsylvania Senator who is giving the White House a second
shot, on Friday night.

She's particularly excited about Carly Fiorina, however.

"I just think she's the most well-spoken person I've heard," Cruson said.
"She's an articulate woman with great poise."

Even Bob Beauprez, Colorado's retired congressman who ran for governor in
2014, was impressed with Fiorina, calling her a great talent.

Fiorina hit foreign policy hard in her short speech at the Denver
Convention Center.

"The truth is I know more world leaders on the stage today than anyone else
running with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, only I didn't do
photo ops," Fiorina said. "I had a private meeting with Vladimir Putin, a
private meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, a private meeting with the king of
Jordan, a private meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, South Africa,
China, Brazil."

Fiorina said on her first day in office she'd call Benjamin (Bibi)
Netanyahu and show the world what a true ally the United States is. The
crowd erupted.

Addressing her weak point, Fiorina said she did what she needed to do at HP
and is proud of her record even though it included layoffs.

She said sometimes you have to make tough decisions to live to fight
another day.

Long-time Texas Gov. Rick Perry brought on his southern drawl and charm for
his animated stump speech Saturday afternoon. Perry ran down how the Texas
economy flourished under his leadership.

"We believe that if you're free from overtaxation and overregulation, if
you're free from over litigation, if you've got accountable public schools
in place where you've got a skilled workforce, there is nothing you can't
accomplish," Perry said.

Perry ran in 2012 and lost in his primary pursuit. When asked why he was
more animated Saturday than he had been four years ago, Perry said it's
good to be healthy.

"There are already 13 or 14 in, so who knows how many are going to get into
this thing. But any of you who are thinking about it, don't have major back
surgery," Perry joked.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee joked that he plans to raise more money
this time around than in 2008 when he failed to win the GOP presidential
ticket.

He laid out his plan to reform the tax plan, get rid of the IRS and move to
a "fair tax." Instead of taxing income the nation should tax at the moment
of consumption, he said.

"It no longer punishes people for their productivity and rewards them for
their irresponsibility," Huckabee said. "I was raised with the idea that we
ought to reward people who work, who save, who invest and who leave
something behind for the next generation and yet our government, our
current tax code punishes every one of those activities."

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum mentioned a fair tax during his speech
Friday night at the event sponsored by the Lakewood-based Colorado
Christian University. It's the sixth annual "Rally on the Right" and
arguably the biggest year. It concludes Sunday with the straw poll.

*Scott Walker in Colorado to address conservative summit
<http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/310314091.html> // Milwaukee Wisconsin
Journal – Sentinel – June 27, 2015*

Gov. Scott Walker is scheduled to speak Saturday night at the Western
Conservative Summit in Denver.

At the event, Wisconsin's Republican governor and likely 2016 presidential
candidate will be doing a question-and-answer session with conservative
radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

Walker will be joined by other GOP presidential hopefuls, including former
Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former
Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Dr.
Ben Carson.

The gathering brings together about 4,000 conservatives at the Colorado
Convention Center in Denver.

It comes in the wake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling Friday that
extended same-sex marriage rights nationwide.

Walker deemed the decision a "grave mistake," and called for amending the
U.S. Constitution to allow states to ban gay marriage.

Walker plans to launch his bid for the presidency next month. He said
earlier this week he plans to announce his plans the week of July 13, a
date previously reported by Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Much of the talk among conservatives in Denver so far has concentrated on
that ruling, as well as another released Thursday upholding President
Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

*CHRISTIE*

*Chris Christie Sets Up Campaign Web Site Before Expected Presidential Run
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11871130314313103897904581073921507103548>
// WSJ // Heather Haddon – June 27, 2015*

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie launched a presidential campaign website
Saturday, another signal that he soon will enter the Republican primary
race.

The website, www.chrischristie.com, includes Mr. Christie’s slogan,
“Telling it Like it Is,” a phrase he’s used in town-hall meetings he’s held
in recent weeks in early primary states.

Mr. Christie is been expected to hold an event Tuesday to mark his formal
entry into the race. He would be the 14th major Republican in the primary
field.

The new website states that it was paid for by Chris Christie for President
Inc. Earlier, Mr. Christie had paid for political activities through a
leadership political-action committee, Leadership Matters for America. He
also has a super PAC, America Leads, that has been raising funds.

Once Mr. Christie officially announces a bid, the super PAC can’t
coordinate activities with his campaign.

The governor had said he would wait to announce his decision on a 2016
candidacy until after the state’s budget was set. On Friday, Mr. Christie
signed a $34 billion budget that vetoed tax increases and extended a credit
to working families.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Christie is set to “host a special announcement
event at Livingston High School,” his alma mater, according to a news
release. He will then travel to New Hampshire for an event in which he will
take unscripted questions from voters.

Mr. Christie is expected to hold campaign events in New Hampshire through
Independence Day.

The governor got his start in politics in the suburban Livingston High
School, where he was class president.

The public school is also the alma mater of David Wildstein, the former
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official and Christie aide who
pleaded guilty in May to charges related to the George Washington Bridge
lane closure scandal.

Mr. Christie was in the class behind Mr. Wildstein. He has distanced
himself from his former ally since the lane closure scandal came to light
last year.

Asked if there were concerns about using the same high school Mr. Wildstein
attended for the presidential announcement, an aide to Mr. Christie said
they weren’t worried about it.

*Chris Christie Unveils Presidential Campaign Website
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-06-27/chris-christie-unveils-presidential-campaign-website>
// Bloomberg // Elizabeth Titus – June 27, 2015*

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Saturday unveiled a presidential
campaign website ahead of his formal kickoff Tuesday.

The slogan “Telling It Like It Is” appears on the site, a nod to the
Republican's reputation for blunt talk in a state dominated by Democrats. A
disclaimer says “Paid for by Chris Christie for President, Inc.” He posted
a link to the site from his verified Twitter account.

A “special announcement event” is set for Tuesday at 11 a.m. local time at
Livingston High School in Christie's hometown, said a press release from
his campaign on Saturday. That evening, he plans to hold a town hall-style
meeting—a staple format of his time as governor—in Sandown, New Hampshire,
according to the release.

Christie will become the 14th candidate to join the Republican presidential
primary contest for 2016, after months of travel to early-voting states and
a stint as Republican Governors Association chairman that took him around
the country to raise funds and campaign for others following his decision
not to join the 2012 presidential race.

*Chris Christie Launches Campaign Website Three Days Before His
Announcement
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/chris-christie-launches-campaign-site-three-days-before-his-announcement-20150627>
// National Journal // Nora Kelly – June 27, 2015*

If the trips to New Hampshire and leaked announcement invitations weren't
big enough clues, Chris Christie is in for 2016.

Like several other campaigns this cycle, Christie's team went for a
digital-first approach ahead of any formal announcement: The New Jersey
governor launched a campaign website on Saturday, just three days before
he's expected to announce his White House bid from the gym of his high
school alma mater in Livingston, N.J.

He signaled the site's launch in a series of tweets Saturday morning.

The simply designed ChrisChristie.com is emblazoned with his signature
"Telling It Like It Is" slogan, has areas to sign up for the campaign and
donate, and includes links to social media. (There's no cheeky 404 page
just yet.)

Christie has been teasing a presidential run for months, making trips to
Iowa and holding multiple town halls in New Hampshire. Just two days ago,
he said on a New Jersey radio program that "there's been absolutely no
final decision made by me."

Christie has some hurdles to climb: In his home state, his approval rating
is at an all-time low at 30 percent. And as the 14th Republican to jump
into the race, several of his fellow candidates are months of campaigning
ahead of him.

*Will Christie have enough campaign cash for his 2016 White House run?
<http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/christies_2016_cash_plan_runs_into_largest_field_e.html>
// NJ // Claude Brodesser-Akner – June 28, 2015*

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie will declare his intent to seek the
presidency on Tuesday, but he's been competing in the "invisible primary"
for months now.

While not an officially sanctioned contest, it's considered the time from
when a candidate shows interest in running for president and when voters
start pulling levers for them during primaries. And it's a crucial period
to raise money and make friends among the GOP's donor class.

But something funny happened in the last six months, according to Christie.

"Jeb Bush's strategy failed," said the governor, speaking on his monthly
call-in radio show last week. "I mean, Jeb's strategy was to get in in
December of 2014, and to intimidate people out of the race. Right? I mean,
he was talking about all the money he was going to raise, and how it was
the Bush name, and he was going to dominate. Well that hasn't happened. In
fact, quite the opposite. In some ways, it's been a magnet."

The fact that the GOP field is the largest since Abraham Lincoln may have
changed the monetary calculus for Christie, according to some of the donors
supporting his run. They say rather than taking on one big-money candidate
such as Bush, Christie will simply need enough to compete with the crowd of
over a dozen, at least for now.

Christie's campaign, which went live on Saturday ahead of an formal
announcement  Tuesday, won't say officially just how much cash is needed
But top Christie donor Al Hill, Jr. — the Texas oilman who's the grandson
of billionaire H. L. Hunt — told NJ Advance Media: "My understanding is $20
million needs to be raised between now and the first of December."

Because federal election law limits the amount an individual can give to a
federal candidate or a candidate's committee to $2,700 per election, and
$5,000 per year to a political action committee, "obviously raising $20
million at $2,700 (per person) is a big road to get up," said Hill.

As the 14th contender to enter the race, Christie may be late in getting in
the game, but that might have been by design. The real reason why Christie
has waited so long, Hill says, likely has to do with those federal campaign
finance laws just mentioned: As soon as he's a candidate, he won't be
allowed to coordinate with his super-PAC, America Leads, and, as of only
today, can't ask for contributions in excess of $2,700 to it once he's a
candidate.

"The actual campaign fund (caps) start when you're an announced candidate –
that's why a lot of people may have waited," said Hill, "To let the PACs
raise as much as they can before they become announced candidates."

That actual campaign as begun as Christie began accepting donations for his
presidential run on Saturday. His supporters say their efforts were already
going well prior to the formal announcement.  Bobbie Kilberg, president of
the Northern Virginia Technology Council says her May 14 Virginia
fundraiser for Christie's PAC raised $180,000.

"My next phase of fundraising will start soon, and I'll have a lot more
people who want to contribute once he's a formal candidate," Kilberg said a
few days before the campaign launch.  "Lots of people want to wait and see
who's in the field."

So while Mitt Romney's entire 2012 campaign cost a combined $1.2 billion,
GOP strategists say Christie's narrow path to victory hinges on doing well
in the small state of New Hampshire.  Bill Greiner, a New Hampshire real
estate developer and banker who held a meet-and-greet for Christie in his
Bedford home on June 8, stressed:  "You don't have to have a fortune to win
this state."

An insider at Christie's nascent campaign echoes as much, saying that "you
don't have to have so much (cash)" in a tiny state like New Hampshire and a
field this large.

"If you have $100 million, or $50 million or $10 million, you're going to
be competitive," said the Christie campaign insider, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because the person is not authorized to speak to the
media about campaign matters. "It's going to be a crowded field where
message is going to matter. We feel pretty good about where we are. We're
going to have the resources."

Meanwhile, Hill says Christie's messaging is exceptional, even if standing
in the polls isn't.

"What I have heard most often is, 'I want a candidate who will win the
election.'" says Hill. "After the last few pretty close campaigns and
races, everyone is pretty well ready for the pick to be a winner. People
say, 'I've got my favorite, however I want someone who can win.'"

Hill thinks big ticket GOP donors are tired of candidates so conservative
they cannot win. "They like the fact that he's had to work with a
Democratic legislature. That's something that people continue to bring up
about him," he said.

But in the meantime, it's still exceptionally early in the 2016 fundraising
process, as Hill noted: "Most of my friends are in Colorado or Wyoming or
Montana or somewhere for the summer. I've really not sure who's committed
to do what for whom yet."

It's still early in New Hampshire, too, where a third of votes have yet to
make up their minds, according to a Suffolk University poll, and where
money isn't even being discussed yet among those circling Christie.

"I'm not on Team Christie but think a lot of him," said Tom Eaton, a former
New Hampshire Senate president who is hosting an event with Christie at his
lake house in Spofford, N.H. Thursday. "It's just a meet and greet, no talk
of fundraising or anything else," said Eaton, who'll also being doing a
similar event with Carly Fiorina in the weeks to come.

"They're not gonna open their wallets right at this point - that's a little
bit down the road. Once the kids get back into school, things start
happening."

*Can Christie catch up to the other 2016 GOP contenders?
<http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/christies_drop_in_opinion_polls.html>
// NJ // Jonathan D. Salant – June 27, 2015*

WASHINGTON — Gov. Chris Christie sat atop opinion polls just a year ago.
Then came Bridgegate. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. And a bevy of other
Republican candidates.

So Christie, who in July 2014 led an CNN/ORC International poll with 13
percent, fell to ninth place and 4 percent in the same survey in June 2015.

It shows that Christie, who plans to announce his candidacy for president
next week, will start his campaign with a very steep mountain to climb.

"He had phenomenally positive approval ratings and then it all went
downhill," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac
University Polling Institute in Hamden, Conn. "Although, given the crowded
field for the nomination anything is possible, he does not start out
impressive shape."

A summary of opinion polls by Real Clear Politics covering the period May
19 through June 23 placed Christie in ninth place with 4 percent. The top
10 candidates, as determined by an aggregation of polls, will be invited to
participate in the first two Republican presidential debates by Fox News
and CNN. The others will be invited to a separate event.

The latest Fox News survey, however, put Christie in 11th place. That one
survey provided a clear example of Christie's drop in opinion polls; he was
at 2 percent in June 2015 after receiving 15 percent in April 2014.

Christie led several opinion polls in 2013, including a November CNN survey
that gave him 24 percent, nine points higher than second-place finisher
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. As late as July of last year, he led all
comers in the CNN poll.

But Christie polled just 6 percent in a Marist College/McClatchy poll in
March of this year, and the June CNN survey put Christie in ninth place,
just 2 percentage points ahead of 12th place finisher Rick Santorum, the
former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

A December CNN poll put Christie at 13 percent, good enough for second
place but 10 points behind Bush. Since then, the New Jersey governor has
failed to reach double figures in any surveys, according to a compilation
by Real Clear Politics. That compares to a stretch of 16 surveys from April
2013 to April 2014 in which he fell below 10 percent just once.

"In a crowded field, without a core following, he ends up falling deeper
into the pack without a clear path to the nomination, said Lee Miringoff,
director of the Marist College poll in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

At the annual Conservative Political Action Committee Conference in
February, Christie insisted that his dismal showing in recent opinion polls
had no bearing on his chances to win the GOP nomination.

"If I decide to run for president, I'm not worried about what polls say 21
months before were going to elect the president of the United States," he
said at the conference. "I'll take my chances on me. I've done pretty well
so far."

While Christie was not indicted in the George Washington Bridge lane
closing scandal, the incident has taken its toll, Miringoff said.

"He had one of two routes to take at that point," Miringoff said. "One was
to admit that he messed up and ask forgiveness, the mea culpa route. The
other was to say, 'I'm shocked,' the Casablanca route. That means he was
not in charge of the details of staff management that he should have been."

Adding to Christie's problems is the perception that he has walked back his
previous support of positions anathema to the Republican right, already
skeptical of a governor who embraced President Obama after Hurricane Sandy.
For example, he called in May for scrapping national Common Core education
standards that he used to back.

"People have now seen him running around, somewhat adjusting positions,"
Miringoff said.

Bush's announcement in December that he was considering a presidential run
meant Christie faced strong competition for donors and supporters among the
Republican establishment. And the huge number of announced or potential
2016 GOP candidates is making it difficult for anyone to emerge as a clear
frontrunner.

"Newer candidates become fresh faces," Brown said. "As they come in and
join the race, Christie's numbers have deteriorated. There's more
competition. A lot of people have small slices of the pie. Nobody has very
much of the pie at this point."

Here's how Christie has fared in a sample of opinion polls over the last
two years:

2013

April, Quinnipiac, 14 percent

July, Marist/McClatchy, 15 percent

November, CNN/ORC, 24 percent

2014

February, Marist/McClatchy, 14 percent

April, Fox News, 15 percent

June, Quinnipiac, 10 percent

September, Marist/McClatchy, 12 percent

December, CNN/ORC, 13 percent

2015

February, Quinnipiac, 8 percent

April, Wall Street Journal/NBC News, 5 percent

June, Washington Post/ABC News, 6 percent

*Has Christie's ship already sailed?
<http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/20150628_Has_Christie_s_ship_already_sailed_.html>
// Inquirer // Thomas Fitzgerald – June 27, 2015*

He had them at "sit down and shut up!"

In the summer of 2011, some Republican leaders and billionaire donors
begged Gov. Christie to run for president to save the party. Less than
thrilled with the available options, they loved his blunt style and success
in a blue state. Christie wavered, but passed.

"Now is not my time," he said.

As Christie prepares to announce his 2016 presidential intentions Tuesday,
after months of travels to early-voting states, some question whether he
missed his moment. The Republican electorate seems to have given a
collective shrug and moved on; Christie is near the bottom of the polls.

"You need to go when it's your time," said Douglas Gross, a Des Moines
lawyer and GOP power broker. "The luster wore off. They pass the pie, and
you'd better take your piece, because it's not coming around again. I don't
sense a clamor for Christie."

His image has suffered some dents in the last 18 months, including the
scandal over the 2013 lane closures on the George Washington Bridge in
retribution against a Democratic mayor who would not endorse Christie's
reelection. Two Christie allies were indicted, and one pleaded guilty to
federal charges in the case. The governor has said he had no knowledge of
the shutdown.

Also, New Jersey's economy grew just 0.4 percent in 2014, ranking 46th. The
state's credit rating has been downgraded three times by each of the three
ratings agencies under the Christie administration. And Atlantic City is
falling apart.

Moreover, some on the GOP right mistrust Christie, considering him too
moderate on social issues.

He has among the highest unfavorable ratings of the Republican contenders
in most polls, a more reliable sign than horse-race numbers at this early
stage of a candidate's potential standing.

Monmouth University's June 15 national poll, for instance, found Christie
viewed favorably by 26 percent of likely Republican primary voters, and
unfavorably by 43 percent - for a net of minus 17 percentage points.
Fifty-five percent of Republicans in this month's Wall Street Journal/NBC
News poll said they would never consider voting for Christie.

"There's a path for Christie, but it's a narrow one," said Patrick Murray,
director of the Monmouth poll. "His high negatives and wide name
recognition put a ceiling on his growth. He doesn't have much room for
error."

And as for that blue-state electability, just 30 percent of New Jersey
voters last week approved of Christie's job performance in a Fairleigh
Dickinson University poll. And this is a governor who won reelection in a
landslide, including carrying the Hispanic vote and gaining support from a
majority of women - against a female opponent.

Christie's planning was based on his emerging as the establishment choice,
a conservative but pragmatic governor who could appeal to moderates and be
electable in November, strategists say. But he has been squeezed out.
Others are competing to be that candidate, including governors with better
economic records.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John
Kasich all have establishment appeal. And then there's Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker, son of a Baptist preacher, who has governing credibility and
support among evangelical Christian conservatives. Walker and Kasich have
not yet declared.

Even for voters who back Christie, he's not the only offering of whatever
it is they like about him. Christie took on public-employee unions, but
Walker went bigger, stripping bargaining rights from those workers and
pushing through right-to-work legislation.

Christie, who began his political career supporting abortion rights, now
brags about vetoing state funding for Planned Parenthood. Yet Bush became a
hero to pro-life groups as he fought to keep life support going for Terri
Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state. And Walker is pushing a
ban on all abortions in his state after 20 weeks' gestation.

"One obstacle Christie faces is, what's his argument for taking it to the
next level?" said Kevin Madden, a GOP consultant who was a senior adviser
to the party's 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney. "He doesn't have a defining
issue, a rationale."

Since his popularity began tumbling after "Bridgegate," Christie has sold
himself as an in-your-face truth-teller on issues such as pension reform
and as a champion of detailed conservative domestic policies, such as a
plan to cut Social Security and Medicare spending, as well as a muscular
foreign policy.

Christie also can try to set himself apart with the force of his
personality. He has charisma, but to some voters, there is a fine line
between tough talk and bullying.

Perry Hamilton, a Lower Merion activist who saw Christie speak June 19 at a
regional GOP conference in Philadelphia, illustrates the governor's
predicament.

"We have at least six guys just like him," said Hamilton, 63. While he
appreciates Christie's blunt manner, Hamilton said it's also a weakness.
"Attitude: Sometimes I could do without that."

The crowded field could have an upside for Christie.

As long as nobody is pulling away from the rest, almost anything is
possible, and it doesn't take much to win or place well in an early state.
The thinking of his strategists: Why not stick around and see what happens?
Maybe the governor will emerge from the rubble.

Another reason not to short Christie stock: He has a team of loyal donors
who include Home Depot CEO Ken Langone and hedge-fund manager Stanley
Druckenmiller. Both are expected to write big checks to the governor's
superPAC America Leads, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts.
Christie may not have Bush-scale dollars, but he'll be able to compete.

Christie's advisers say they're not writing off the other early states, but
they want to plant their flag in New Hampshire, which holds the first
primary and is traditionally friendly to moderate candidates. Christie has
spent at least 19 days in the state this year, more than most, taking
hundreds of questions from the public in the town-hall meetings that are
his political trademark back in New Jersey.

It could be paying off. While he is bunched in the middle of the pack (and
well behind celebrity Donald Trump), Christie has a better
favorable-to-unfavorable ratio in New Hampshire than he does nationally. A
Suffolk University poll last week found him viewed favorably by 44 percent
of Republican primary voters in the state, and unfavorably by 42 percent -
for a margin of plus-2 percentage points.

New Hampshire "is tailor-made for a Chris Christie-style retail campaign,"
pollster Murray said. "One on one, there's no better candidate in the
field."

Right after making his announcement Tuesday at his old high school in
Livingston, N.J., Christie is expected to head to the Granite State.

He's in a weaker position in the first-voting state, Iowa, which is
scheduled to hold caucuses Feb. 1. A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll
earlier this month found 58 percent of Iowa Republicans viewed Christie
negatively, with 45 percent ruling out a vote for him.

Even if Christie performs well in New Hampshire, it's unclear where that
might lead.

He'll immediately run into a GOP electorate in South Carolina that is
dominated by white evangelical Protestants. A Winthrop University poll in
April found that nearly 56 percent of evangelicals said they would not
consider voting for Christie, one of the highest negative rankings among
would-be candidates.

"He hasn't really been in consideration, part of the conversation," said
Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist in Greenville, S.C., who worked on the
campaigns of both Presidents Bush and is not aligned this time.

"He's viewed right now as a second-tier wannabe," Felkel said. "He's got to
find some way to get momentum. The question is, does Christie have the
ability to convince conservatives of his bona fides and not damage himself
for the general election?"

After South Carolina comes Nevada, then a succession of Southern states on
Super Tuesday. In early March, there's Florida, where Bush and Rubio are
expected to dominate.

For his part, Christie professes not to sweat the polls. "It's not
make-or-break," he told reporters in Iowa this month, "until people start
voting."

*JINDAL*

*Growing up in Baton Rouge, Bobby Jindal’s future passion for politics a
surprise to most
<http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/12751089-123/bobby-jindal-grew-up-in>
// The Advocate // Tyler Bridges – June 27, 2015*

At a competitive high school filled with Baton Rouge’s best and brightest,
he chummed with the brainiest and highest achievers of all.

That’s no surprise because Gov. Bobby Jindal is typically described these
days as the smartest person in the room. He’s a Brown University graduate
and Rhodes scholar, after all. And he scored a 4.62 grade-point average at
Baton Rouge Magnet High School when he graduated in 1988.

But this may be a surprise: He was not the valedictorian. Nor was he the
salutatorian.

He ranked third among the 232 students.

And if you had asked teachers and classmates back then who might become a
politician one day, they probably would have answered Tracy Smith. She was
the senior class president. Or they might have mentioned Martin Johnson. He
was one of the class’s two delegates to Boys State, a high school training
ground for aspiring politicians.

Jindal?

“He wanted to be a doctor at the time,” said Kathy Reznick, his high school
sweetheart, who went on to Tulane Law School and has returned to Baton
Rouge.

More than anything, Jindal’s demanding immigrant father EXPECTED him to
become a doctor.

As a result, best friend Kent Shih was perhaps the only one who knew of his
real ambition.

“His parents wanted him to go into medicine,” Shih said. “He always wanted
to go into politics.”

For the first time in its 198-year history, a native of Baton Rouge is
mounting a serious campaign to be president of the United States. And the
intriguing story is how unlikely it is that it would be Jindal, according
to nearly everyone who knew him in his formative years, except perhaps
Shih, now a doctor in Nashville, Tennessee.

Teachers and classmates knew Jindal had a bright future. He was voted “most
likely to succeed” among the boys in his class. And “Most Polite.”

But Jindal had a narrow circle that consisted of the kids who took honors
classes, got the best grades and organized parties where they challenged
one another with obscure mathematical equations rather than beer-chugging
contests. Jindal was typically home before midnight. He was more nerd than
politician-on-the-make.

“He didn’t hang out with the popular kids,” said Susan Yang, who was the
salutatorian and is now a doctor in St. Louis.

“He was reserved. He was not an extrovert,” said Anu Goel Bourgeois, a
close friend from the class of 1987 who is now a Georgia State University
professor of computer science.

Slightly built and not a fan of team sports, Jindal didn’t make a name for
himself among the student body by winning athletic championships.

Instead, his main extracurricular activity was Mu Alpha Theta, the math
club, which traveled to New Orleans and other cities on Saturdays to
compete against other schools and which won the state championship in
Jindal’s senior year. He gladly provided after-school tutoring for
classmates like Dione Hasse, now a management consultant in Nashville, who
couldn’t quite keep up.

“He showed up to meetings with bright green pants and a pink polo shirt
with an upturned collar,” Hasse said with a laugh. “He was trying to be Mr.
Preppy.”

The adolescent years are crucial for anyone, of course. In Jindal’s case,
while growing up in Baton Rouge, he Americanized his name, converted to
Christianity, began to show off his high-wattage brain power and only
occasionally flashed an interest in public policy, but always from a
conservative bent.

Thousands of articles have been written about Jindal since he first burst
onto the scene in 1996, when newly elected Gov. Mike Foster named him
secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals at the precocious age
of 24.

None have plumbed his years growing up.

Jindal’s parents moved from India to Baton Rouge on Feb. 1, 1971, so his
mother could study nuclear physics in graduate school at LSU. Their son,
whom they named Piyush, was born on June 10.

In a recent interview, Jindal said the family initially lived in Tiger Town
just off Nicholson Drive.

He was about 4 when his mother picked him up from school one day. As he
told the story, “a teacher said, ‘Look, your son came to school and asked
everyone to start calling him Bobby.’ ”

He took it from one of the characters on “The Brady Bunch,” the 1970s
sitcom.

“That was one of the shows I’d watch after school,” Jindal said. “Bobby was
about my age.”

His parents were concerned and asked, “ ‘Are you going to be Greg tomorrow?
Are you going to pick a different name the next day?’ Once they realized
that it was going to stick, they didn’t have any objection.”

In 1978 or so, the Jindals moved to Kenilworth, a new subdivision near LSU,
populated by university professors and oil industry engineers. By then,
Bobby had a brother named Nikesh, who is seven years younger.

His father, Amar, worked as a civil engineer, while his mother, Raj, worked
at the state labor department as a data processor.

The family’s new ranch-style home, at 7526 Cardiff Ave., had three
bedrooms, a brick exterior and a shingle roof. Bobby’s mother had exclusive
use of the master bathroom while the three males shared the hallway
bathroom. Bobby and his brother played in the yard and rode bikes in the
neighborhood. Bobby played tennis through BREC.

“Kenilworth was an idyllic place to grow up,” Jindal said. “It was one of
those neighborhoods where you could tell the kids to go and play outside
and come back when it’s dark.”

In his early years, no Hindu temple existed in Baton Rouge. So the Jindals
and other Indian families met on most Sundays at someone’s home for Hindu
ceremonies known as pujas, followed by meals featuring curries and other
Indian food.

The family didn’t socialize with the neighbors, remembered Barbara Michael,
who raised a family two houses down.

But his parents insisted that they assimilate into American culture, Jindal
said.

“My mom was fully committed to raising us as Americans,” he said. “That was
a conscious decision. We ate food that would be familiar to other families
in south Louisiana. She wanted to raise us like other kids in the
neighborhood.”

Jindal attended the private Runnels School through fourth grade and then
moved to the public Greenville Elementary School for fifth and then scored
well enough to attend Istrouma Middle Magnet for sixth grade and then moved
to McKinley Middle Magnet School for seventh and eighth grades. It was at
McKinley that Ajay Jindia, who was one year older, saw a flash of his later
career.

“I remember having a conversation at his house where he was preaching the
benefits of Reaganomics,” said Jindia, now an Atlanta lawyer, referring to
the economic philosophy of President Ronald Reagan.

From McKinley, Jindal moved on to Baton Rouge Magnet. The high school had
an unusual social dynamic. With no football, baseball or basketball teams —
and no cheerleaders — the brainiacs were almost cool.

Jindal is known today for talking fast. His high school friends talk fast,
too.

“You could be proud, be smart and be a nerd,” Yang said. “Nerds were not
outcasts.”

Most of Jindal’s closest friends were, like him, the children of Asian
immigrants who embraced the United States as the land of opportunity and
pushed their children to succeed by out-studying everyone else.

“My dad was always reinforcing to my brother and I that you should dream
big to achieve anything in life,” Nikesh said. “It requires a lot of hard
work and doing academically well in school. That was a message that was
continually reinforced by our parents, particularly our dad.”

Jindal and his brother (who would go on to Dartmouth University) took that
message to heart. Jindal got only a single B in high school, for a term
paper on Huey Long, said Shih, who added, “He was pissed.” (Through his
press secretary, Jindal said he got more than one B but wasn’t specific.)

Jindal was active in an array of extracurricular groups that would make a
college admissions officer swoon: the Beta Club, the Junior Academy of
Science, the Latin Club and Interact, a service club.

But his biggest passion was the math club.

The members raised money by working a concessions booth at LSU football
games and played spades on bus trips to tournaments outside of Baton Rouge.

Jindal captained the Equations team, which required quick thinking.

And he dressed like Alex P. Keaton, the conservative high schooler played
by Michael J. Fox in the ’80s sitcom “Family Ties.”

“He had a bow tie with dollar bills on it,” said Elaine Parsons, who is now
a history professor at Duquesne University. “When the movie ‘Wall Street’
came out, he’d go around saying, ‘Greed is good!’ People would roll their
eyes at him.”

For years, Jindal bought bags of candy that he would keep in his backpack
and sell individual pieces to sugar-craving students.

Some classmates view it now as a sign of a would-be political operator.

“But I always thought of it as more entrepreneurial,” said Johnson, who is
now a professor of political communication at LSU.

Classmates and others who knew Jindal during his formative years remember
him fondly. But they watch in awe or dismay, depending on their political
beliefs, at how he has transformed into a conservative firebrand.

They first began to see the inklings of his future political success after
he graduated from Baton Rouge Magnet.

Richard Juneau, who raised a family across the street from the Jindals, was
struck by his maturity when they talked one day when Jindal was visiting
Baton Rouge while a Rhodes scholar.

“I was so impressed with him,” Juneau said. “He was such a good
conversationalist. He was above and beyond the normal 20-year-old.”

Enoch Huang, a Baton Rouge Magnet classmate and friend, was struck by his
polish and confidence when Jindal as DHH secretary spoke at Tulane, where
Huang was attending medical school.

“It was a very different side of Bobby,” he said. “He was on top of
everything. It was very humbling.”

Jindal has little contact today with his high school friends. Many of them
last saw him when he hosted their 20th reunion at the Governor’s Mansion.

For an hour or so, his classmates pinched themselves on one of their own
holding the most important job in the state. Several of them made snarky
comments about how Jindal had developed a Southern accent during his
political climb in Louisiana.

But the conversation stopped when he and his wife, Supriya, appeared and
slowly made their way down the grand staircase. The crowd began to cheer,
and classmates lined up to shake his hand and ask for a photo.

*Bobby Jindal sidesteps gay marriage ruling's meaning for Louisiana
<http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/06/bobby_jindal_gay_marriage_1.html>
// Times-Picayune // Julia O’Donoghue – June 27, 2015*

Speaking on the front porch of the Governor's Mansion, incumbent Bobby
Jindal reiterated Saturday (June 27) that Louisiana eventually will comply
with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling legalizing gay marriage in all 50
states. But he wouldn't say exactly what that will mean for same-sex
couples in the state.

"Our agencies will follow the law and we will do it in a way that respects
individuals' religious liberty rights, but we'll follow the law," Jindal
said before heading into a reception for his staff and presidential
campaign supporters. The governor refused to say whether "following the
law" might let same-sex couples not only marry but receive other benefits
they don't currently enjoy.

Gay rights advocates assume the Supreme Court decision will give same-sex
couples not only access to marriage but also joint adoption, spousal
benefits in the workplace and joint tax filings like other legally married
couples in Louisiana.

Initially, Jindal stopped short of saying that these types of benefits
would be extended to same-sex couples. He said he had to wait on rulings
from lower courts before getting into specifics about what might change in
Louisiana.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and the Louisiana
Supreme Court currently are considering cases involving gay marriage. They
must take the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to affirm gay marriage into
account when issuing their own rulings.

Later on Saturday, after the governor's meeting with the press, Jindal's
presidential campaign spokesman Kyle Plotkin said the governor believes the
lower court decisions will result in same-sex married couples receiving
benefits in Louisiana.

"While we disagree... the state agencies will comply with the law, and that
will, of course, including benefits [for same-sex couples]," Plotkin
said.

A number of same-sex married couples also eagerly await being able to join
their spouse's health insurance and retirement plans, among other things.
Elaine Maccio, a professor at Louisiana State University, said she and her
partner had to pay "through the nose" for separate health care plans when
her partner lost a job. Now they are both employed, but the months of
paying for two different health care plans left them financially strapped.

Same-sex married couples, including those who have valid marriage licenses
from other states, also want to be able to collect government tax refunds
after having to pay state taxes as a single person for years. "There is the
possibility of amended returns for previous years. I know people who would
do that tomorrow if they could," said Matthew Patterson, research and
policy coordinator for Equality Louisiana.

Louisiana and Mississippi are outliers in their handling of the Supreme
Court's gay marriage decision. They are the only two states that refused to
issue marriage license to same-sex couples after the court's ruling was
issued Friday morning.

*Renouncing roots: Here's why Bobby Jindal is not popular among the
Indian-American community in US
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/renouncing-roots-heres-why-bobby-jindal-is-not-popular-among-the-indian-american-community-in-us/articleshow/47844752.cms>
// India Times // Ishani Duttagupta – June 28, 2015*

Bobby Jindal is so white, he refers to Indian food as "ethnic cuisine."
American stand-up comic Hari Kondabolu, on Twitter

It's not just the US that isn't quite sitting up to notice Bobby Jindal
throwing his hat into the 2016 presidential ring — the 44-year-old governor
of Louisiana is after all among 26 Republican candidates (at last count)
running for office. Even the desi community appears distinctly unmoved,
which is surprising if you consider that Jindal is the first
Indian-American to be running for America's top job.

There's of course a reason for that dispassion (along with digs like "Bobby
Jindal is so white, he beat himself up after 9/11," another Kondabolu
tweet). "Jindal's announcement that he is running for president could have
been the turning point for the entire community, but he does not enjoy
support of the Indian-Americans either at the grassroots level or from top
fundraisers because of his controversial comments about not wanting to be
seen as a hyphenated American," a prominent Indian-American Republican
fundraiser who didn't want to be identified said.

If there were any doubts about how close — or rather how far —Jindal is
from his local roots, he dispelled them in a spectacular style earlier this
week when he launched his presidential campaign. "We are not
Indian-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, rich Americans, or
poor Americans. We are all Americans," thundered the first Indian-American
to be elected a governor in the US.

It didn't take long for an eruption back home in India on social media, and
the hashtag #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite duly went to become one of the top
trending topics on Twitter on Thursday, a day after Jindal, who grew up as
a Hindu before converting to Christianity when in his teens, made the
statement.

Renouncing Roots

Niraj J Antani, 24, a Republican who was last year elected to the Ohio
House of Representatives, believes that the Indian-American community will
only support Jindal if he embraces his heritage. One of the youngest state
lawmakers in the US, Antani even believes that the governor can become
president if he embraces the reality of being an Indian-American.

"The American people want authenticity in their elected officials and
governor Jindal can show that by embracing his heritage," Antani told ET
Magazine. He adds that Jindal has made some remarks that are of particular
concern to the Indian-American community. "I am myself proud to be the
second Indian-American elected in Ohio's history. I hope that Jindal will
also be proud of being an Indian-American. Only then will he get the
support of the community," Antani added. If not, he feels, the campaign
will be a highly disappointing one.

A section of Indian-Americans, however doesn't foresee the governor
attempting to mend fences with the community.

"The basic issue for the support from the Indian-Americans would be the
image of Jindal in the community. He has not developed a positive
relationship and has not even identified himself as an Indian-American,"
says Piyush Agrawal, a Florida-based community activist, who was a close
associate of former president George W Bush and is seen as the mover a n d
shaker behind starting the tradition of Diwali being celebrated at the
White House for the first time in 2003.

Vinod Gupta, a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who in the past
has been considered among the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party,
too doesn't see much of support for Jindal from Indian-Americans. "Jindal
was born and raised in the US and hasn't been part of the Indian immigrant
experience and doesn't identify with it," Gupta said.

When announcing his presidential bid, Jindal did mention his parents who
immigrated from India, but that may not be enough to please the desi
community.

"Jindal is, to most Indian-Americans exactly what they do not want their
children to become — a person orphaned from traditions, heritage and
religion that nurtured him, who openly and publicly disavows his community.

His failure as a leader in Louisiana, and his embrace of a far-right
evangelical ideology, leaves him with nothing in common with most Indian
Americans," says Aseem Shukla, a member of the Hindu American Foundation
board of directors and associate professor of surgery at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He adds that Jindal had ample
opportunities to represent Indian-Americans — from supporting the
Congressional Diwali resolution when he was in Congress, to speaking up for
religious liberty issues — but he never reached out.

*Fractured Support*

Jindal, who became the second Indian-American to be elected to the US
Congress in 2004, was re-elected in 2006; according to Shukla, his journey
is inspiring for young Indian-Americans and it proves that it is possible
to overcome racial barriers in politics. "But his experience also proves
that the racial ceiling was broken over the back of religious identity
where an Indian rejected his heritage and religious traditions," Shukla
said.

Jindal's achievements in the political arena are not lost on the Indian
community despite his efforts to distance himself.

"What he has achieved in public life at such a young age is incredible and
he is definitely admired for that," says Sanjay Puri, chairman of the
Washington DC based US Indian Political Action Committee.

However, he thinks that the Indian-American support for Republican
candidates was likely to get fractured and divided because of the large
number in the running. "Jeb Bush has strong ties with Indian-American
Republicans in Florida while governor Chris Christie is from New Jersey
which has a large Indian-American population. Democratic candidate Hillary
Clinton too has long standing ties with the Indian-American community,"
Puri added.

*OTHER*

*Column: Most GOP voters support allowing undocumented immigrants to stay,
poll says
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/kathie-obradovich/caucus/2015/06/28/immigration-caucus-republican-undocumented-amnesty/29415703/>
// Des Moines Register // Kathie Obradovich - June 27, 2015*

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, making his first Iowa trip last week as a potential
presidential candidate, advocated for creating a path to legal status for
the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United
States.

“Well, look, we’re not going to ship all these people out. You know, they
ditched the line and they’re going to have to pay a penalty and we’ve got
to make sure they haven’t engaged in criminal activity and we have to
protect our border.”

Such a position runs against the grain of most Iowa Republicans who oppose
“amnesty” for people who live in this country illegally. Or does it?

Public-opinion research by a pro-immigration group in Iowa, New Hampshire
and South Carolina suggests narrow political definitions of “amnesty” don’t
match the attitudes of likely voters.

More than three-quarters of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers — 77 percent
— would support a candidate who favors a multi-step process allowing
undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship. An even greater majority, 81
percent, would support a candidate who favors a process leading to legal
residency but not citizenship.

That’s according to a poll of 400 likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers conducted in
April for the Partnership for a New American Economy by Burning Glass
Consulting. The consulting firm’s founding partner, Katie Packer Gage, was
the deputy communications manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign.

The Partnership for a New American Economy is a non-partisan group that
advocates for comprehensive immigration reform. It found similar
willingness among likely primary voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina
to consider a candidate who favored a process for letting undocumented
people stay.

John Stineman is a Republican consultant who works with the Partnership for
a New American Economy in Iowa and nationally. He said the organization
wanted to test the assumption that Republican candidates had to take a hard
line on immigration to win the Iowa caucuses or other early-state contests.

In fact, he said, polling and focus group interviews showed that once a
candidate specifies an intent to secure the border, plans aimed at allowing
undocumented immigrants already in the country to earn legal status or even
citizenship is far from a deal-breaker.

No more than one in five likely voters in the three early states is a
hard-line, single-issue voter on immigration, he said. That’s someone who
bases their vote largely on immigration and who wants no opportunity for
illegal immigrants to stay. Only 17 percent of likely Iowa Republican
caucus-goers fit that description.

“Toward the perception that if they go hard right in primary, than that’s
what they are going to need to do, but the reality is there’s no more than
one in five Republicans in any of the early states that are hard-line,
single-issue voters,” Stineman said.

Republicans generally disapprove of amnesty for illegal immigrants, but
what is amnesty? A majority of likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers — 63 percent—
agree that executive orders granting temporary legal status to 4 million
undocumented immigrants qualifies as amnesty. But that’s the limit of the
accord.

Half of likely caucusgoers think it’s amnesty if illegal immigrants are
given a pathway to citizenship if they pay a fine, any back taxes, pass a
background check, learn English and take other required steps. Only 40
percent call it amnesty if people complete all of those steps to receive
legal residency but not citizenship.

Only 28 percent define amnesty as any action short of securing the border
and stronger enforcement of existing law.

“We just need to delete the word ‘amnesty,’ “ Stineman said, noting that it
has ceased to mean anything.

Besides Kasich, who has yet to decide whether he’ll run for president, Jeb
Bush, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki have at some
point advocated for a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants.
Some of the other GOP candidates have made statements acknowledging the
improbability of deporting 11 million or 12 million people, but few have
offered detailed plans for moving candidates toward legal status.

Most of the Democrats in the race, including Hillary Clinton, Bernie
Sanders and Martin O’Malley, have called for comprehensive immigration
reform that includes a path to citizenship.

With such a huge field for the GOP nomination, it’s conceivable a candidate
could win the Iowa caucuses with less than 20 percent. That might make it
worthwhile for some candidates to attempt to unify that minority of
hard-line immigration voters.

However, there’s a price to pay in the general election for candidates who
do that, polling shows. The Partnership polled 800 likely general-election
voters in these battleground states: Iowa, Colorado, Florida, Michigan,
Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Single-issue voters who want comprehensive reform outnumber single-issue,
hard-line voters by a margin of 2 to 1.

Fifty-three percent of battleground-state voters said they would be less
likely to vote for a candidate they viewed as anti-immigration, compared
with 29 percent who said that wouldn’t matter to their vote.

This polling is from an issue advocate, to be sure, but the pollster has
been fully transparent in releasing data and methodology. It’s clear from
this that voters expect candidates — of both parties — to have a plan for
dealing with undocumented immigrants. Merely securing the border is not a
plan.

The Partnership for a New American Economy/Burning Glass Poll of 400 likely
GOP caucus or primary voters in each of the three early states, taken April
9-15, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The
swing-state poll of 804 voters, taken May 6-11, has a margin of error of
plus or minus 3.5 points.

*As Left Wins Culture Battles, G.O.P. Gains Opportunity to Pivot for 2016
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/politics/as-left-wins-culture-battles-gop-gains-opportunity-to-pivot-for-2016.html?ref=politics&_r=0>
// NYT // Jonathan Martin – June 27, 2015*

WASHINGTON — A cascade of events suggests that 2015 could be remembered as
a Liberal Spring: the moment when deeply divisive and consuming questions
of race, sexuality and broadened access to health care were settled in
quick succession, and social tolerance was cemented as a cornerstone of
American public life.

Yet what appears, in headlines and celebrations across the country, to
represent an unalloyed victory for Democrats, in which lawmakers and judges
alike seemed to give in to the leftward shift of public opinion, may
contain an opening for the Republican Party to move beyond losing battles
and seemingly lost causes.

Conservatives have, in short order, endured a series of setbacks on ideas
that, for some on the right, are definitional: that marriage is between a
man and a woman, that Southern heritage and its symbols are to be
unambivalently revered and that the federal government should play a
limited role in the lives of Americans.

Remarkably, some of these verities have been challenged not by liberals but
by figures from the right.

The past week and the month that preceded it have been nothing short of a
rout in the culture wars. Bruce Jenner, the famed Olympian, became Caitlyn
Jenner in the most prominent moment yet for transgender people. The
killings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., at once rendered
the Confederate battle flag unsuitable for government-sanctioned display.
And Friday’s legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide elevated a
community that had been consigned to the shadows for centuries of American
life.

But even as conservatives appear under siege, some Republicans predict that
this moment will be remembered as an effective wiping of the slate before
the nation begins focusing in earnest on the presidential race.

As important as some of these issues may be to the most conservative
elements of the party’s base and in the primaries ahead, few Republican
leaders want to contest the 2016 elections on social or cultural grounds,
where polls suggest that they are sharply out of step with the American
public.

“Every once in a while, we bring down the curtain on the politics of a
prior era,” said David Frum, the conservative writer. “The stage is now
cleared for the next generation of issues. And Republicans can say,
‘Whether you’re gay, black or a recent migrant to our country, we are going
to welcome you as a fully cherished member of our coalition.’ ”

The critical question is whether the Republican Party will embrace such a
message in order to seize what many party officials see as an opening to
turn the election toward economic and national security issues.

It will not happen easily: Every major Republican presidential candidate
criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday affirming same-sex marriage
as the law of the land.

Of course, many of the Republicans running for president are keen to move
on from the culture wars, but others, like Mike Huckabee and Senator Ted
Cruz of Texas, are already seizing on matters like same-sex marriage and
what they call judicial overreach to distinguish themselves in a crowded
primary field. And the conservative activists and interest groups that play
an important role in the primary will not let any of the candidates simply
move on.

“Our candidates running in a primary are put in a little bit of a box by
the events of this week, but at the same time, it does change the landscape
for the general election, which is a blessing,” said Carl Forti, a
Republican strategist who has worked on presidential races. “I’m glad I’m
not on a campaign and don’t have to advise my candidate on how to navigate
those three issues this week, because the answers for the primary and the
general are radically different.”

Privately, some of the strategists advising Republican hopefuls believe the
last week has been nothing short of a gift from above — a great unburdening
on issues of race and sexuality, and on health care a disaster averted.
Rhetorical opposition to the Affordable Care Act will still be de rigueur
in the primaries, but litigating the issue in theory is wholly different
from doing so with more than six million people deprived of their health
insurance.

Collectively, this optimistic thinking would have it, June will go down as
the month that dulled some of the wedge issues Democrats were hoping to
wield next year.

“Whether the presidential candidates agree or disagree with the results of
all this, it allows them to say these issues have been settled and move on
to things that offer more of a political home-field advantage,” said Tim
Pawlenty, the former Republican governor of Minnesota.

While acknowledging that the country has become more tolerant and, in some
ways, culturally liberal, many Republicans contend that America is still
receptive to a more conservative approach on economics and national
security. After all, the same week that highlighted the ascent of cultural
liberalism also illustrated the limitations of economic populism, as
organized labor was unable to block a measure giving President Obama
expansive trade authority.

“There will always be side issues, but none of that will compete with
people’s primary concerns, which are the economy and who is going to be
able to keep the country safe,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster
advising Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Yet as the 2012 presidential race demonstrated, the immediate demands of a
Republican primary can outweigh the eventual priorities of a general
election. And, given last week’s events, conservative hard-liners in the
coming Republican contest will be even hungrier for candidates to
demonstrate that they are willing to employ all possible means to repel
what they see as an assault on foundational values.

“We have been observing the deconstructing of America in the last six and a
half years,” said Tony Perkins, the head of the conservative Family
Research Council. “The tolerance level has been exceeded.”

What outrages social conservatives is not only the narrow issue of same-sex
marriage rights, but also what they see as a violation of religious
liberties that they believe are intrinsic to the country.

When Senator Cruz said the past week had featured “some of the darkest 24
hours in our history,” he spoke for those conservatives who believe the
America they know is slipping away.

What is unclear about the wide Republican field is whether a candidate has
yet surfaced who is deft enough to appeal to such devoted conservatives
without going so far to mollify them as to scare away less dogmatic voters.

Of the well-financed candidates, Jeb Bush has done the most, on matters of
race and marriage, to portray himself as a candidate who can appeal to a
more socially tolerant country. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who made
his name on fiscal issues, has surprised some in the party by positioning
himself on the right on cultural issues. Mr. Rubio has been more cautious,
trying not to inflame primary voters while also speaking in a measured
fashion to avoid harming himself if he is the nominee.

Yet even if the party’s eventual standard-bearer can win the nomination
without providing much fodder for Democrats to use in the general election,
he or she will not be able to ignore cultural issues entirely.
Self-identified white evangelical voters can make up as much as 40 percent
of a Republican presidential nominee’s vote.

That is what worries many of the party’s strategists. “Some of our
candidates will play to them and take positions that aren’t helpful in a
general election,” Mr. Forti said.

And while a window may be open for Republicans to shift the race in a
different direction, Democrats will do their best to keep the focus on
subjects many Republican candidates want to avoid. Many of them, Hillary
Rodham Clinton told Democrats on Friday night in Virginia, appear
“determined to lead us right back into the past.”

*In a fast-changing culture, can the GOP get in step with modern America?
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-a-fast-changing-culture-can-the-gop-get-in-step-with-modern-america/2015/06/27/2057bb30-1b95-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop_b>
// WaPo // Philip Rucker and Robert Costa – June 27, 2015*

CORYDON, Iowa — Mike Huckabee — former Fox News personality, Arkansas
governor and Baptist preacher — gathered with a modest crowd here in the
back of Breadeaux Pizza on his “Main Street American Family” tour and
opened the floor to questions.

The very first one set the tone. Jeff Hontz, 49, a Baptist pastor in town,
said he has been anxious because he sees “America going down the wrong
roads morally.” God decreed unchanging standards in Scripture, Hontz
argued, but society keeps changing — and fast.

“I saw a commercial this morning about a transgender show, and everybody
was praising it,” he said, prodding the presidential candidate.

Huckabee responded by declaring that the standard of all truth is the
Bible. Distorting the laws of nature, he said, is akin to playing the piano
without a tuning fork — or baking a cake without the proper measurements of
salt, flour and sugar. “You’re going to have a disaster on your hands,” he
said.

The exchange illustrates the vexing challenge now facing Republican
presidential candidates and the GOP itself: how to get in step with modern
America.

Across the cultural landscape, the national consensus is evolving rapidly,
epitomized by this year’s convulsions of celebrity, social issues and
politics — including the acceptance of Caitlyn Jenner’s gender identity,
Pope Francis’s climate-change decree and the widespread shunning of the
Confederate flag.

Then came Friday’s landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex
marriage. As rainbow colors bathed the White House and other landmarks in
celebration, the entire field of Republican presidential candidates
condemned the ruling.

This uneven terrain is now a key battlefield in the 2016 campaign,
unnerving red America and fueling intense debate within the Republican
Party about how to navigate such changes — or whether to adapt to the
mainstream at all.

“Most Republicans look at what’s happening and think we’re watching a new
stage of left-wing nuttiness,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich
(R-Ga.). “It’s just surreal.”

The GOP’s activist base wants its leaders to fight loudly for traditional,
Christian values and sew together a moral fabric they see as frayed, even
shredded. This is especially true here in Iowa, which hosts the first
caucuses and where candidates will not easily avoid pressure from the far
right. Yet political survival demands evolution with popular opinion.

So far, many contenders are giving the base what it wants.

“We’re called upon not to be the thermometers that reflect the temperature
in the culture,” Huckabee said in Corydon. “We’re called upon to be
thermostats, which can read the temperature and seek to adjust it to where
it should be.”

Democrats are hoping for just this approach. They argue — as many
Republican Party elites in Washington fear — that if Republicans don’t
moderate on issues such as gay rights and immigration and become more
tolerant, they will be locked out of the White House. Asked how Democratic
front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton could motivate voters, several top
Democratic officials said: The Republicans may do it for her.

“Republicans are going to have to make inner peace about living in a
same-sex marriage world,” said Pete Wehner, a former adviser to President
George W. Bush. “Our nominee can’t have serrated edges. Like it or not, any
effort to create moral or social order will be seen as rigid and
judgmental. . . . Grace and winsomeness are the ingredients for success in
a world where cultural issues are at the fore.”

‘Get with modern life’

This is a profound shift for a party that a decade earlier won national
elections under a banner of social conservatism. In 2004, Bush successfully
used his opposition to gay marriage as a wedge issue in his reelection
campaign.

“If these topics are the big ones in the general election — rather than the
failure of President Obama and Hillary Clinton as his third term, foreign
policy, and of course the economy — we can’t win,” said Austin Barbour, a
Mississippi-based operative who runs the super PAC supporting former Texas
governor Rick Perry. “We need to be sensible, logical and reasonable on the
social issues, but also make sure the debate isn’t entirely about them.”

The shifts to the left on social issues may be reinforcing pessimistic
beliefs among Republicans about the direction of the country. In a CBS/New
York Times poll last month, 88 percent of Republicans said the nation was
on the wrong track, compared with 63 percent of Americans as a whole.
Meanwhile, 57 percent of Democrats said the country was headed in the right
direction.

“When a young voter sees a Republican coming, many of them roll their eyes
and wonder why they can’t get with modern life,” said Ari Fleischer, White
House press secretary under George W. Bush.

The party’s business wing has been evolving quickly on many social issues,
particularly on gay rights. Religious liberty measures in Indiana and
Arkansas that many saw as discriminatory against gays drew immediate
backlash earlier this year from local chambers of commerce — not to mention
corporations such as Wal-Mart, the red-state retail giant — prompting
reversals from Republican governors.

“The country is changing, the culture is changing, the demographics are
changing and politics is changing,” said former Minnesota governor Tim
Pawlenty, now president of the Financial Services Roundtable. “The rhetoric
at the congressional level and with some of the candidates tends to be a
lagging indicator.”

In far-flung state capitols, legislatures that became more solidly
Republican during the past two midterm election sweeps are moving
aggressively with social policy designed to combat what conservative
lawmakers see as liberal encroachment from Washington. For instance, bills
to ban abortions after 20 weeks are moving in several state legislatures.

Politicians are responding to the deep angst conservative activists voice
in their communities. At a Huckabee event Wednesday night in Osceola, Iowa,
Mary Klein, a 79-year-old school nurse, invoked an urban legend.

“Have you heard about the frogs?” Klein asked. “When you put a bunch of
frogs in water and you heat it, they don’t realize the temperature is
getting warmer and warmer and warmer. Then it kills them. Our country is
getting neutralized, at small degrees at a time, and we won’t realize it
until we’re already sucked in and it’s too late.”

‘Kindness of conservatism’

Among the 16 declared or likely Republican presidential candidates, there
is general agreement on traditional social policies, such as opposing gay
marriage and abortion rights. The differences come in tone, emphasis and
countenance.

“We can share our views without sounding like avenging angels,” said Rep.
Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). “It’s the self-righteous tone that scares more than
the views themselves.”

Major GOP donors, especially those in high finance in New York, have been
privately quizzing leading presidential candidates on same-sex marriage.
Some have been turned off by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, thinking the son
of a Baptist preacher to be too strident in his opposition, and preferring
former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) because they
suggest a more laissez-faire attitude.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), an even-tempered ally of House Speaker John A.
Boehner (R-Ohio), recalled: “Ronald Reagan was awfully good at not backing
off his position while also never yelling or shouting or pounding the
table. Persuasion, persistence and resolve — that was his magic.”

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, said that
speaking only to the base about issues of God, guns, gays and abortion
isn’t enough to win. “Republicans need to recognize this and change the
terms of the conversation — or they’ll pay the price for decades,” Brooks
said.

One likely candidate trying to soften the party’s language is Ohio Gov.
John Kasich, who espouses what he calls “the kindness of conservatism.” A
devout Christian, Kasich looks to the activist pope as a model.

In Iowa last week, Kasich advocated a pathway to citizenship for illegal
immigrants — a lightning-rod issue in the Republican primary season. When
he encountered an undocumented woman and her young son, Kasich said, “They
are made in the image of the Lord.”

By contrast, businessman Donald Trump railed against illegal immigrants in
his campaign announcement speech. He said the United States had become a
“dumping ground” for drug abusers, “rapists” and other criminals from
Mexico.

On Thursday night in Iowa, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum gave a
fiery speech promising to lead what he called a cultural battle against the
“secular left.” He said, “It will be tough to stand against it, but we
must.”

Democrats are eager to portray Republicans as the party of Trump, Santorum
and Huckabee, as well as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz
(Tex.) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — all candidates who proudly resist
the shifting social mores.

In a particularly partisan speech Friday night in Northern Virginia,
Clinton said Republican candidates “seemed determined to lead us right back
into the past” with their responses to the high court’s gay marriage ruling.

“Instead of trying to turn back the clock, they should be joining us in
saying loudly and clearly: ‘No to discrimination once and for all,’ ”
Clinton said, adding, “A lot of Republicans may talk about having new ideas
and fresh faces, but across the board, they’re the party of the past, not
the future.”

Housing Secretary Julián Castro, a potential Democratic vice presidential
candidate whose ancestors emigrated from Mexico, criticized Trump in a
recent interview for “plainly insulting Mexicans and by extension folks who
are the descendants of Mexicans.

“He will be in this campaign in many ways the face of the Republican Party,
because he has higher name identification than almost all of them,” Castro
said.

‘Tolerance only goes so far’

Huckabee, asked during an interview in Iowa how he might modulate his
language on social issues, said he does not see any political disadvantage
in standing up for his conservative beliefs, as long as voters see them as
genuine.

“I think people are deeply interested in issues of morality, character, but
it all goes back to trustworthiness and authenticity,” Huckabee said. He
added, “The question is: Can I articulate my view, defend it, do it
rationally and in a way that’s intellectually honest, without being hateful
or spiteful?”

Along Huckabee’s tour in rural Iowa last week, voters dismissed any
suggestion that the GOP needed to modernize.

After seeing him campaign Thursday morning at the Dinky Diner in Decatur
City, Tracee Knapp, secretary of the Ringgold County Republican Party,
concluded that unlike party elites in Washington, “he’s not neutered.”

“I’m just sick of secular things,” she said. “Homosexual issues are on the
television all the time. I’ll be honest — we live on a farm. We have to
have a bull and a cow to make a baby. We have to have a rooster and a hen.
Maybe some Republicans need to come live on a farm.”

The night before in Osceola, Tawny Waske, 49, was celebrating her eighth
wedding anniversary with her husband, Tim, at Nana Greer’s Family Table
restaurant when Huckabee walked in to shake hands and answer questions.
She, too, fretted about cultural changes.

“It’s legalized here for gays [to marry], and we just bite our lips,” Waske
said. “As a Christian, we’re taught to love the sinner, not the sin. But
tolerance only goes so far.”

Waske brought up ABC’s prime-time special this spring on Jenner’s gender
transition.

“Is it him? Her? It? I don’t even know what to call it,” she said. “You
know, don’t shove this down my throat.”

*OTHER 2016 NEWS*

*The Straight Talk Express Gets a Few More Passengers
<http://time.com/3934812/straight-talk-candidates/> // TIME // Alex Altman
and Zeke J Miller – June 27, 2015*

It takes a savvy politician to run for president by telling people what
they don’t want to hear—or perhaps a crazy one. Yet here was Lindsey
Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator, shuffling into the state capitol
June 22 to advocate the removal of the Confederate flag. Graham’s nascent
presidential campaign depends on winning the Palmetto State — where six in
10 voters oppose the relocation of the rebel emblem.

But it wasn’t the first time Graham, who supports comprehensive immigration
reform and climate science, has put conscience ahead of his constituents.
And he’s hardly the only candidate risking the repercussions of defying the
party base as the race for the White House ramps up.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has stuck by his moderate positions on
education and immigration. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will make
controversial entitlement reforms a cornerstone of his comeback bid. Ohio
Gov. John Kasich infuriated conservative activists by expanding Medicaid in
Ohio. And long-shot candidate former New York Gov. George Pataki has made
disagreeing with his party’s mainstream a point of pride.

The maverick style has gone mainstream. Fifteen years after John McCain
tried to ride the Straight Talk Express to the GOP nomination, the
truth-telling persona has become as much a fixture of presidential
campaigning as the flag pin. And in the 2016 Republican primary, more
candidates than ever before are betting that a base-bucking approach will
pay off with voters sick of the quadrennial presidential pander.

“You have to understand,” Kasich explained to TIME in a recent interview,
“the Republican Party is my vehicle, and not my master.”

All this is a stark change from the 2012 campaign, when the GOP field was
desperate to indulge the activist base that seemed to hold the keys to the
White House. The rush to the right often manifested in ways that were
embarrassing or ugly. There was the debate where nearly the entire field
pledged to veto a 10-to-1 deal of spending cuts for new tax revenue—a pact
most sensible conservatives would snap up in a second. There was the
collective unwillingness to call out conservative radio host Rush
Limbaugh’s ad hominem attack against women’s rights’ activist Sandra Fluke.
There was the forum in Florida where the candidates stood idly by as a gay
soldier was booed on live television.

Yet four years later, the number of candidates eager to establish their
independence exceeds the number who are purely focused on pleasing the
base. “Voters are looking for leaders who treat them like adults and tell
them the truth,” says Mike DuHaime, Christie’s chief strategist. “They are
rejecting politicians who tell everyone what they want to hear and speak
only in cautious focus-grouped terms.”

In some ways, the tell-it-like-it-is caucus is responding to Americans’
well-documented dissatisfaction with the nation’s institutions—and
especially its elected officials.

“Most of these candidates understand that of the forces shaping the
electorate, there is nothing more dominating than the utter collapse of
trust between the American people and just about every institution you can
think of,” explains Steve Schmidt, McCain’s former top strategist. “What
they get is the macro-political climate in the country. They get the sour
mood of the American people, the collapse of trust between most American
institutions and the American people, and that they want a real leader.”

“Folks hate Washington, D.C.; its polices, it’s politics, it’s attitude,”
adds New Hampshire-based GOP strategist Dave Carney. “We thirst for someone
to treat us as adults, and be straight with us about the problems and
challenges we face as a nation.”

But that’s not the only reason why Ted Cruz, whose Oval Office aspirations
may hinge on winning the Iowa caucuses, called for an end to the ethanol
subsidies that have long fattened local interests. Or why Bush told the
Wall Street Journal last December that the next GOP nominee must be willing
to “lose the primary to win the general without violating your principles.”

“Folks will tell you in politics, ‘don’t talk about that subject,’”
Christie said in New Hampshire this month, in a reference to raising the
retirement age. “They call it the third rail of American politics. They
say, ‘don’t touch it.’ So we’re not going to touch it. We’re going to hug
it.”

The maverick shtick is popular because it can be good politics. Each of
these campaigns has mapped their paths to the White House through New
Hampshire, where style has always been as prized as substance. They know
that truth-telling can be a recipe for media attention, and that presenting
one’s self as an agent of change can help establish a niche in a crowded
field.

Their numbers are also growing as a side effect of new rules put in place
after the 2012 race to shorten the primary calendar and limit the number of
televised debates. The guidelines, imposed by the Republican National
Committee to limit the damage inflicted on the eventual nominee, have had
the unexpected effect of nationalizing the race. With more states voting
early on, contests in places like Iowa and South Carolina become less vital
to a candidate’s chances. That saps the power of hardcore activists and
hands more influence to moderate voters in bigger, more diverse states. And
with national polling being the standard to get on stage at the
all-important televised debates, candidates have to define themselves more.
“Loud doesn’t mean a lot,” Graham says.

The would-be mavericks are also responding to a well-documented hunger for
a virtuous statesman, as embodied by the cinematic archetypes of Frank
Capra’s Mr. Smith or Aaron Sorkin’s Jed Barlet. Or even the real-life
McCain, whose bull-shooting sessions with the press on the back of his bus
are the stuff of political legend.

Still, it’s a safe bet that political calculations will ultimately trump
conscience. Graham’s good friend McCain pandered on the Confederate flag in
his 2000 campaign and tapped Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 when
he needed to galvanize the base. And candidates of all stripes can cast the
same old red-meat as telling uncomfortable truths that somehow only
discomfort the other party.

“It remains to be seen,” Schmidt says, “whether we’re going to have
truth-telling candidates rather than candidates using ‘truth-telling’ as a
prop.”

*New Hampshire Poll: Sanders Inching Closer to Clinton, Bush Continues
Leading GOP
<http://www.latinpost.com/articles/62494/20150627/new-hampshire-poll-sanders-inching-closer-clinton-bush-continues-leading.htm>
// Latin Post // Rodrigo Ugarte – June 27, 2015*

New numbers out of New Hampshire show that many in the Granite State have
started making up their minds about how they will vote for in the state's
presidential primary. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
Democratic presidential hopefuls, are coming closer on the polls while
Republicans struggle to shine.

A new WMUR/CNN poll shows Sen. Sanders is closing the gap between him and
Clinton among Democratic primary voters. The poll, conducted by the
University of New Hampshire, surveyed 1,010 people and among the likely
Democratic primary voters Clinton still remained in the number one position
with 43 percent believing she should be the party's first choice. However,
Sen. Sanders was only eight points behind with 35 percent. None of the
other Democratic candidates or potential candidates broke past 10 percent.

Sen. Sanders' rise in the polls could coincide with a continued importance
on the economy among New Hampshire voters. Though it has declined in
importance from 35 percent in February to 24 percent in June, the economy
remains the top issue for New Hampshire Democratic primary voters.

Sen. Sanders has built his campaign on his views on economic inequality and
reform in various areas of the country.

His favorability rating of 66 percent is even closer to Clinton's 74
percent and she also enjoys the rank of top unfavorable Democratic
candidate with 11 percent. Yet, the former secretary of state continues to
lead.

Among Republicans, however, the race remains uneven with Jeb Bush leading
in the polls in the same survey. Sixteen percent of primary voters in the
state opted to vote for Bush. The next choice was Donald Trump with 11
percent.

However, when asked about whom they favor the most, Bush had a 50 percent
while Trump only 38 percent. Sen. Marco Rubio also from Florida came the
closest to Bush with 49 percent but only six percent would vote for him if
the primary election happened today.

The New Hampshire primary is the second in the country and it is slated to
happen in early February 2016.

*TOP NEWS*

*DOMESTIC*

*2 Charged in Confederate Flag Removal at South Carolina Capitol
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/us/2-charged-in-confederate-flag-removal-at-south-carolina-capitol.html?ref=politics>
// NYT // Kenneth Rosen – June 27, 2015*

A protester climbed a 30-foot flagpole and removed the Confederate battle
flag from its perch outside the South Carolina State House early Saturday,
before she was arrested and the flag replaced, the police said.

The protester, an African-American woman, was nearly halfway up the pole
when a State Capitol police officer on routine patrol ordered her to come
down. The authorities said the woman, who was wearing climbing gear, had
ignored the command.

She continued her climb to the top of the flagpole and unhooked and removed
the flag before descending.

An officer from the Bureau of Protective Services arrested her and a white
male who had aided her.

The police identified the woman as Brittany Ann Byuarim-Newsome, 30, of
Raleigh, N.C., and her purported accomplice as James Ian Tyson, 30, of
Charlotte, N.C.

They were charged with defacing a monument, the police said, a misdemeanor
that carries a fine of up to $5,000, a prison term of up to three years or
both.

About the time she was being arrested, Ms. Byuarim-Newsome sent a statement
to the news media via email. “We removed the flag today because we can’t
wait any longer. We can’t continue like this another day,” the statement
said. “It’s time for a new chapter where we are sincere about dismantling
white supremacy and building toward true racial justice and equality.”

Some opponents of the flag argued that the protesters’ actions had created
an opening to resolve a divisive issue.

“The flag is down now — we should keep it down,” Rashad Robinson, the
executive director of ColorOfChange.org, an advocacy group, said in a
statement.

But the flag in Columbia — which flies near the Confederate Monument on the
grounds of the State House — is protected by state law. A new flag was hung
within an hour after Saturday’s incident.

Around 10 a.m., about a dozen cars and trucks flying Confederate flags
circled the State House in advance of a pro-Confederate flag rally at the
monument. Protests against the Confederate battle flag and calls for it to
be removed from public display have escalated since the June 17 killings of
nine African-American churchgoers at the Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston. Gov. Nikki R. Haley, a Republican, has
called from the removal of the flag at the State House, but she said she
needed the cooperation of the legislature. On Tuesday, South Carolina
lawmakers agreed to allow discussion of the matter during the legislative
session.

The man charged in the attack at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church, Dylann Roof,
21, posted photographs on social media and the Internet showing him posing
with the Confederate flag. The police and prosecutors have said his attack
was racially motivated and have accused him of a hate crime.

*For Obama and Clinton, twisty paths to 'yes' on gay marriage
<http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article25650451.html>
// AP // Jim Kuhneman and Lisa Lerer – June 27, 2015*

When President Barack Obama praised the Supreme Court's watershed same-sex
marriage ruling, he held it up as evidence that a "shift in hearts and
minds is possible."

Obama may well have been describing his own public trajectory on gay unions
— a complicated path that took him through opposition and ambivalence to
enthusiastic embrace.

His journey is not unlike the rest of America. But over the years he has
worn his uncertainty on his sleeve, publicly musing about his stance before
becoming a full-throated advocate for marriage and other aspects of gay
rights.

"When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free," Obama
declared Friday.

As far as political figures go, Obama's road to "yes" is hardly unique.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign jumped on the Supreme Court
decision, changing its red campaign logo to a rainbow colored H, releasing
a gauzy video of gay wedding ceremonies, and blasting out supportive tweets
aimed at building its campaign list.

In a fiery speech Friday night to Democratic activists in Northern
Virginia, Clinton said that "love triumphed in the highest court" and
declared: "We can sum up the message from the court and the American people
in just two words: Move on."

But like Obama, such expressions of support mark a remarkable shift for
Clinton, who opposed gay marriage for more than two decades as a first
lady, a U.S. senator and a presidential candidate. Just three months ago,
Clinton's position was that while she personally supported gay marriage the
issue was best left for individual states to decide — a policy stance held
by most of the Republican presidential field.

"It has been an evolutionary process," said Fred Sainz of the Human Rights
Campaign, a national gay rights group. But he said Obama now stands as one
of the great champions of gay rights, up there with the likes of Harvey
Milk. As for Clinton, he said, "she connects with gay people on a level
that is beyond explanation."

Obama has carefully staked out his position on same-sex marriage throughout
his political career. During his 1996 Illinois state Senate race, he
replied to a questionnaire from a gay newspaper in Chicago: "I favor
legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such
marriages." Two years later, he declared himself undecided.

By 2004, as he ran for the U.S. Senate, he said he opposed gay marriage for
politically strategic reasons, saying Republicans would exploit the issue,
and he advocated instead for gay civil unions. In his 2006 book, "The
Audacity of Hope," he cited his own faith as a reason to oppose same-sex
marriage, though he also wondered whether "in years hence I may be seen as
someone who was on the wrong side of history."

He came out firmly for same-sex marriage in 2012 and called for it in his
second inaugural address. But earlier this year, his former top strategist,
David Axelrod, wrote that Obama had feigned opposition to gay marriage for
most of his political career, grudgingly taking Axelrod's advice that
African-American religious leaders and others would oppose him if he let it
be known he supported gay marriage.

"If Obama's views were 'evolving' publicly, they were fully evolved behind
closed doors," Axelrod wrote.

Obama disputed the account, telling BuzzFeed News that he thought civil
unions were "a sufficient way of squaring the circle," but that "the pain
and the sense of stigma that was being placed on same-sex couples who are
friends of mine" changed his mind.

"I think the notion that somehow I was always in favor of marriage per se
isn't quite accurate," Obama told BuzzFeed.

But even after he endorsed gay marriage, he took his time embracing other
aspects of the gay community's agenda.

It wasn't until July 2014 that Obama gave employment protection to gay and
transgender workers in the federal government and its contracting agencies.

Still, gay rights advocates hold him up as one of their biggest political
advocates.

"It's absolutely right to note that this administration did not get off to
a good start with LGBT advocates," Sainz said. "But the sheer volume of
what he has done will be hard for another president to replicate, simply
because so much of what he has done has been so incredibly powerful,
momentous and life changing for LGBT people."

Clinton's path into the embrace of the gay community has been similar. She
backed her husband's Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, described marriage
between a man and a woman as a "fundamental bedrock principle" in a 2004
Senate floor speech, and dodged the question when asked in 2007 whether she
agreed with Gen. Peter Pace, then the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, that
homosexuality was immoral.

But as secretary of state, Clinton emerged as a champion of gay rights,
declaring that "gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay
rights," at a 2011 conference in Geneva.

Sainz said that in Clinton, the LGBT community sees a kindred spirit. "It's
in our DNA to support her," he said. "We have been forced to deal with some
of lives greatest indignities and have come out on the other side."

*Obama's Charleston eulogy: 'Amazing Grace'
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/obama-charleston-eulogy-pastor/index.html>
// CNN // Kevin Liptak – June 27, 2015*

Charleston, South Carolina (CNN) President Barack Obama delivered a
touching eulogy, a rousing political speech and a thoughtful meditation on
race in America when he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina on Friday to
speak at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was gunned down
last week by a racist terrorist during Bible study.

But the President's speech will be remembered for a moment at the end when
he launched into a solo of "Amazing Grace," that at first stunned the
mourners and then brought them to their feet as they joined him in song.

"As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us
for he has allowed us to see where we've been blind," Obama said. "He's
given us the chance, where we've been lost, to find our best selves."

The President's remarks at times felt like a sermon, with organ chords
backing him during some of the most impassioned passages. The mostly
African-American crowd was, at the end of the eulogy, on its feet, clapping
and cheering Obama as he named each victim of the church shooting and
declaring each "had grace."

The President, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, a
bipartisan host of high-level members of Congress and Hillary Clinton all
attended the memorial service at TD Arena in downtown Charleston. Last
Wednesday, a 21-year-old man opened fire at a Bible study inside
Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, killing nine.

The shooter declared he was there to "kill black people," and an online
manifesto attributed to him contained white supremacist screeds.

Obama, in his eulogy, said the killer likely assumed he "would deepen
divisions that trace back to our nation's original sin."

"But God works in mysterious ways," Obama said. "God had different ideas.
He didn't know he was being used by God."

"The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of
the fallen would respond when they saw him in court in the midst of
unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness," Obama said.

The country, he argued, has responded to the church shooting "with a
thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in
public life."

Friday's funeral service for Pinckney wasn't the first time Obama delivered
a high-profile eulogy, and with a year and a half remaining in office, it
may not be the last.

But on Friday, Obama's speech moved beyond just grief for the victims --
the President stepped directly into a national conversation about race in
which he plays a central role.

He declared the Confederate flag a symbol of racial oppression, and praised
the renewed urgency in removing it from the South Carolina State Capitol.

"Removing the flag from this state's capital would not be an act of
political correctness," he said. "It would not an insult to the valor of
Confederate soldiers. It would simply be acknowledgment that the cause for
which they fought, the cause of slavery, was wrong."

Unlike past times Obama has confronted an act of violence, he knew the
highest profile victim of the Charleston shooting personally. Obama met
Pinckney as an early supporter of his 2008 presidential bid.

That personal connection differentiated Friday's eulogy from the funerals
Obama keynoted after previous shootings. So, too, did the renewed questions
on race spurred by the shooter's apparent motivations.

"None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations
overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, 'We have
to have a conversation about race,'" Obama said. "We talk a lot about race.
There's no shortcut. We don't need more talk."

Prior to the eulogy, Obama himself used some of his bluntest language to
date on race during an interview with comedian Marc Maron on Friday, saying
that just because the N-word is no longer used frequently in public,
"that's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not."

The moment was a distant cry from the earlier days of Obama's presidency,
when he studiously avoided discussing race or the implications of his
election to office.

At Friday's funeral, Obama called for greater attention to less apparent
forms of racism.

"Maybe we now realize the way a racial bias can infect us even when we
don't realize it so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but
we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a
job interview but not Jamal," he said.

*INTERNATIONAL*

*Greece on the brink of default after talks with creditors break down
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/greece-on-the-brink-of-default-after-negotiations-break-down/2015/06/27/5935a636-1ce1-11e5-bed8-1093ee58dad0_story.html>
// WaPo // Griff Witte – June 27, 2015*

LONDON — Greece’s long-running standoff with its European creditors
appeared headed on Saturday for an abrupt — and potentially cataclysmic —
ending as the continent’s finance ministers rejected an emergency Greek
request to help the cash-starved country meet a Tuesday deadline for paying
back its debts.

The development, just hours after Greece’s prime minister stunned the
continent with plans to hold a nationwide referendum on Europe’s latest
proposals, makes it increasingly likely that Greece will default — and
could soon crash out of the euro zone altogether.

Reflecting the newly dire outlook, people formed lines at ATMs across
Greece, seizing on perhaps their last chance to withdraw their savings.
Some went away empty-handed after the machines ran dry.

With speculation mounting that the banks may lack the funds to reopen
Monday morning, European officials huddled behind closed doors to plot out
how to contain the damage of a Greek financial meltdown. The Greek finance
minister was pointedly excluded from those talks, which ended with a
statement from the other 18 euro-zone countries urging Greek authorities to
implement capital controls.

The statement also highlighted the safeguards that have been implemented to
keep debt contagion from spreading to other vulnerable economies,
suggesting that if Greece is forced to abandon the euro, the collateral
damage may be limited. But because no country has left the euro zone in its
16-year history, no one knows just how extensive the impact may be.

The collapse of negotiations on Saturday was the most ominous turn in a
process that has been poisoned from the start by bitter mistrust between
Greece’s radical leftist government and the austerity-minded heavyweights
who set policy in Europe.

Although both sides have repeatedly expressed a determination to keep
Greece inside the common currency — and to avoid at all costs an
uncontrollable and potentially disastrous default — that shared aspiration
has not been enough to bridge the substantial divide.

As has become customary, each on Saturday blamed the other for the
breakdown.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis called Saturday “a sad day for
Europe” and said its decision to reject his request to extend Greece’s
bailout for several more weeks “will certainly damage the credibility of
the euro group as a democratic union.”

European officials countered that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had
blindsided them by calling a referendum early Sunday on a proposal that was
still being negotiated, a move that effectively torpedoed any chance for a
deal.

“The negotiations are clearly ended, if I understand Mr. Tsipras
correctly,” said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble as the
continent’s top finance officials gathered for their fifth emergency
meeting in the past two weeks. “We have no grounds for further discussions.”

Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem discusses Greek rejection of
European Union deal that could result in default and exit from the Euro.
(Reuters)

Varoufakis later challenged European leaders to come back with a new
proposal and signaled an openness to further talks. But the acrimony with
which talks ended Saturday suggested that a return to the negotiating table
is highly unlikely before two critical tests in the week ahead.

The first will come Monday, when Greek banks that have grown ever more
reliant on emergency loans from the European Central Bank face the prospect
of reopening for business without new lifelines.

The second will be Tuesday, when a $1.7 billion payment to the
International Monetary Fund comes due. The IMF has repeatedly said it will
not offer an extension on that deadline. Greek officials, meanwhile, say
they do not have the money to make the payment unless the country’s
creditors unlock $8 billion in bailout funds that have been frozen as the
negotiations have stalled.

Tsipras has set the referendum for July 5, although it is unclear exactly
what Greek voters will be deciding. In announcing the vote, Tsipras said he
wanted to give the Greek people the chance to vote on the latest proposal
by Greece’s creditors, which he attacked as “an ultimatum” that would place
“unbearable new burdens on the Greek people.”

But with Greece sliding toward default and a possible break with the euro
zone, there is no guarantee that the offer will remain viable by the time
of the referendum, even if Greece does vote “yes.”

The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the IMF have
together provided Greece with $264 billion in bailouts over the past five
years as the country has reckoned with sky-high debts.

After years of withering austerity policies imposed by European paymasters
as a condition of those deals, Greece in January rejected the medicine and
elected Syriza, a radical leftist party that promised to tear up the old
agreements and start anew.

Greece has repeatedly demanded that Europe reduce the nation’s debt load
and ease up on austerity, which officials say has devastated the economy
and sent unemployment rocketing to 25 percent. But European officials have
been unwilling to hand Syriza a victory and have insisted that the country
keep to strict targets for belt-tightening.

The past week began with rare optimism, as Greece submitted proposals that
European officials initially welcomed as a significant step forward after
months of deadlock. But by Wednesday, the creditors had submitted
counterproposals for slashing pensions and cutting spending. Greek
officials rejected them, saying they would cross the government’s red lines.

During debate in the Greek Parliament on Saturday over whether the
referendum should go ahead, Tsipras was given a standing ovation from
supporters who cheered his defiance of European authorities. But opposition
leaders and others accused him of recklessly endangering the country’s
place in Europe.

“The nation’s most vital interests demand that the country remains at the
heart of Europe. The E.U.’s actual shortcomings do not, in any way, negate
this,” said former prime minister Costas Karamanlis, who spoke out after a
long silence. “Foolish choices that undermine this principle push the
country to adventures, with unpredictable and possibly irreversible
consequences.”

*ISIS bomb plot on London military parade foiled, nation remains on high
alert
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/isis-bomb-plot-london-military-parade-foiled-article-1.2273681>
// New York Daily News // Dennis Slattery – June 27, 2015*

British security forces were on high alert Saturday at events marking Armed
Forces Day following reports that officials foiled an ISIS bomb plot on a
military parade in London, officials said.

Police foiled an attack on a London military parade Saturday after an
undercover reporter who obtained details on the plot alerted
counterterrorism officials, The Sun newspaper reported.

The plot included the use of pressure-cooker devices, similar to those used
during the deadly attacks on the Boston Marathon in 2013.

Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters “heightened security” would be
deployed at events paying tribute to Britain’s military in response to the
report.

Police said they were also beefing up security for the annual gay pride
parade in London on Saturday.

Britain’s terrorism threat remains at “severe,” meaning an attack is
considered highly likely.

The number of domestic terrorism-related arrests increased by about
one-third in 2014, as police try to halt those joining Islamic extremists
in Syria.

About 700 Britons are believed to have left the country to join militants.

The announcement followed bloody attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait on
Friday.

At least 15 Britons were among the 39 people — mostly tourists — who were
killed when a gunman attacked a Tunisian beach resort on Friday.

*OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS*

*Gay Marriage Is American As Apple Pie
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/27/gay-marriage-is-american-as-apple-pie.html>
// Daily Beast // Gil Troy – June 27, 2015*

Even before the Supreme Court decided on Friday in Obergefell v. Hodges
that same-sex marriage rights were universal, the popular verdict was in:
gay marriage—and gay life—had become as American as apple pie.

Two years ago, in June 2013 the Supreme Court refused to limit the words
“marriage” and “spouse” to heterosexual unions, invalidating the Defense of
Marriage Act. That November, the Senate passed ENDA, the Employment
Nondiscrimination Act banning anti-gay discrimination in the workplace 64
to 32—including 10 Republican votes, although the House of Representative
has yet to pass it. Until recently, Democrats often opposed gay marriage
publicly, even while approving it privately; now, Republicans are
increasingly supporting gay marriage publicly—or dodging the issue Chris
Christie style—even while disapproving it privately. This reversal in what
constitutes the politically safe position on gays probably represents
America’s fastest, sharpest U-turn on a fundamental social issue since the
1960s.

Twenty-two years ago, when the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton,
admitted he approved of gays serving in the military, the resulting
firestorm ultimately imposed “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Despite the
Democratic majority in Congress, only 69 House members signed a letter
supporting gay rights. Three years later in 1996, Clinton wooed the center
by signing the Defense of Marriage Act, whose key provision many Clinton
nominees to the Supreme Court eventually gutted in U.S. v. Windsor (2013)
as placing an unfair “stigma” on gay spouses. As of January 2004 gay
marriage was illegal in all 50 states.

Even as recently as seven years ago, when Barack Obama’s presidency began,
gays were weaker politically. Obama’s 2008 campaign triggered a surge of
socially conservative black and Hispanic voters who helped pass
California’s Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage. With many blacks—and
Democrats—still opposing civil unions, Obama had not endorsed gay marriage.
As president, he only approved same sex marriage on May 9, 2012, thanks to
Vice President Joe Biden’s blurting out his own endorsement days earlier on
“Meet the Press.”

What John Adams would have labeled a revolution “in the minds and hearts of
the people,” has been rapid and radical. Since Thomas Jefferson’s
wonderfully subversive phrase in the Declaration of Independence
proclaiming “all men are created equal,” gradually, “all” broadened to
include blacks, gays and others. “Men” expanded to include women; even the
notion of “equal” grew.

Those seeking to create a heroic history of gay liberation emphasize the
Stonewall protests of 1969, along with four decades’ worth of protests
producing legislative and legal victories. But in fact, a mass cultural
conversion precipitated this political change.

While rooted in the Sixties’ sexual revolution and the Seventies’ “Me
Decade,” this cultural revolution went national in the 1980s. Ironically,
the AIDS tragedy helped mainstream gay life. Many gays became more open
about their lifestyles, while many heterosexuals became more aware of gays
around them, especially after the disease killed President Ronald Reagan’s
friend, the Hollywood legend Rock Hudson, in 1985.

In the 1990s, despite the complex politics handcuffing Clinton, Hollywood
propagandized effectively for gay equality. Movie blockbusters like
Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, and The Birdcage,
starring Robin Williams and Gene Hackman, cast in celluloid the dominant
Hollywood stereotype of gays as normal, respectable, family-loving
Americans underneath whatever flamboyant facades some might choose—with
conservative opponents cast as Neanderthals awaiting redemption. A year
later, the comedienne Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet on The Oprah
Winfrey Show. With art first imitating, then shaping, life, DeGeneres’s
popular sitcom character “Ellen” subsequently came out to her therapist,
played by Oprah Winfrey.

Will and Grace debuted in 1998 introducing Will Truman, an openly-gay
lawyer sporting an all-American name and a conservative personality. By
2005, the American public proved surprisingly open to a sexually explicit
macho males’ love story in Brokeback Mountain. Movies and television had
not only normalized what most once deemed abnormal, they glamorized what
most once deemed repulsive.

As with the Reagan years, the George W. Bush years proved surprisingly good
for gays in their march to social and political acceptance. Mary Cheney’s
lesbianism was not that scandalous, and actually softened the George W.
Bush-Dick Cheney image. When Bush’s former Republican National Committee
chair, Ken Mehlman, came out in 2010, many emphasized the shocking fact
that few were shocked.

Cheney’s and Mehlman’s outsider-as-insider stories, paralleling millions of
others’ paths, reveal gays’ power as both an invisible minority and as the
privileged oppressed. Like Jews, gays frequently pass easily in society,
often asserting their distinct identity as they please. It becomes hard to
hate “them” when “they” are “us.”

And, like women, many gays sit at the most elite familial, corporate and
governmental tables in the land, giving them the exclusive access long
denied to African-Americans and other minorities. This growing intimacy,
familiarity, and prominence, with millions coming out to relatives and
colleagues, set the stage for this decade’s political and legal changes.
Before Friday, 37 states and Washington, D.C., allowed same-sex marriages.

Ironically—but cleverly—gays changed their collective image by embracing
marriage during an epidemic of heterosexual divorce. Emphasizing their
conventionality and familiarity, rather than flamboyance and
rebelliousness, gays have framed equal treatment as a civil rights issue,
appealing to an increasingly fluid and tolerant society that worships
individual rights and abhors discrimination.

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan taught that: “The central
conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics that determines the
success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change
a culture and save it from itself.” This time, cultural transformation
triggered liberal change. Especially in today’s horizontal democracy,
culture matters, ideas count, media transforms—and sometimes, politics and
the law just catch up.

*The monuments to the framers of The Southern Manifesto of 1956
<http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/the_monuments_to_the_framers_of_emthe_southern_manifesto_emof_1956.html>
// American Thinker – June 27, 2015*

As Confederate flags come down, so should the monuments that honor the
Democrat politicians who overwhelmingly supported The Southern Manifesto of
1956.

The Southern Manifesto – officially entitled The Decision of the Supreme
Court in the School Cases Declaration of Constitutional Principles – was
signed by 101 members of the U.S. Congress, including 19 senators and 82
members of the House of Representatives.  Ninety-nine of them were
Democrats.

All 19 Senate signatories were Democrats: Walter F. George, Richard B.
Russell, John Stennis, Sam J. Ervin, Jr., Strom Thurmond, Harry F. Byrd, A.
Willis Robertson, John L. McClellan, Allen J. Ellender, Russell B. Long,
Lister Hill, James O. Eastland, W. Kerr Scott, John Sparkman, Olin D.
Johnston, Price Daniel, J.W. Fulbright, George A. Smathers, Spessard L.
Holland.

The Manifesto was entered into the Congressional Record, 84th Congress,
Second Session, Vol. 102, Part 4, on March 12, 1956, as a response to the
1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

It included this language:

This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the
Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally
affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and
Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by
the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where
there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.

The effort underway today to shame the display of the Confederate flag
should be rightly accompanied by a removal of the monuments to those
national politicians who, 60 years ago, claimed that “amicable relations
between the white and Negro races” was being perpetuated by separate but
equal educational opportunities.

Those monuments include statues of Senator J. William Fulbright (who
received the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award from President William
Jefferson Clinton)...

...West Virginia senator (and former Ku Klux Klansman) Robert C. Byrd...

...South Carolina senator Sam Irwin...

...South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, drafter of the original version
of the Manifesto...

...and Louisiana senator Russell B. Long, son of Louisiana governor and
U.S. senator Huey Long.a

If there is no honor in the memories evoked by the Confederate flag, then
there is even less to be found in the statues depicting those prominent
politicians who fought for segregation well into the 20th century.

*Clinton supports universal background checks
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/06/28/hillary-stand-guns-mannheimer/29415777/>
// Des Moines Register // Sarah Mannheimer – June 27, 2015*

Late last year, three Des Moines-area schools went into lockdown on the
same morning after separate shooting incidents in our area. My 5-year-old
daughter asked me why she had to hide under her desk. I couldn’t bring
myself to tell her. I refuse to teach my children to live in fear.

Recently a young woman was gunned down at the Coral Ridge Mall near Iowa
City. And of course, last week, nine people were massacred at their church
in Charleston, S.C. It doesn’t end there; 88 people lose their lives to gun
violence every day in this country, many of them women and children.

Last week, Hillary Clinton asked the most urgent question facing our
country, “How many people do we need to see cut down before we act?”
Hillary supports universal background checks to keep weapons out of the
hands of domestic abusers, violent felons, and those suffering from mental
illness. Hillary Clinton is willing to fight for a future free from gun
violence. Are you?

I’m calling on all candidates to follow Hillary’s lead. I’m calling on
responsible gun owners to take a stand. I’m calling on Iowans to recognize
that gun violence affects every community. Together we can keep our
schools, churches and workplaces safe. Hillary Clinton is right. It is time
to act.