If you’re wondering what just happened in the Senate, Sahil Kapur explains why members of the president’s own party torpedoed a top civil rights nominee at the Department of Justice.
Pope Francis suggests he’s open to civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.
Not that the Pope hasn’t given us some forewarning. He’s not endorsing it exactly. And he’s making clear that it’s not marriage, which is between a man and a woman. But, c’mon, the Catholic Church drives a pretty hard line in some cases about when opposite sex couples can get married (i.e., post divorce). So this is a pretty big deal.
Fascinating letter from TPM Reader RS (and one of the many reasons I love email channel with readers, going strong for more than thirteen years ) …
A bit of background- my family immigrated from Kiev to Philadelphia in 1992 during the last great wave of Jewish migration from the former Soviet Union. I was 10 years old. As you can imagine, my feelings towards modern Ukraine are quite mixed and probably somewhat contradictory. We still have friends and family in Kiev, and while my grandparents continued to visit almost annually while their health allowed, my parents have never gone back even once. My sole visit back was in 2009, which simultaneously served to strengthen my connection to my place of birth and dramatically increase the appreciation I have of the all the substantial benefits of being an American.
Chairman Issa says his IRS investigation may have hit a “dead end.”
The Texas tea party may not have won any federal nominations last night, but Ed Kilgore points out that they’re winning at something much more important: Moving the Republican party to the right.
In terms of return on investment, English Language Learning is just as important as investment as pre-K, yet, as Conor P. Williams points out at TPM Cafe today, it doesn’t get nearly as much time, money or attention.
Today at TPM Cafe Book Club, The Leading Indicators author Zachary Karabell looks into the power of inflation and that pesky Consumer Price Index indicator: “given that cost-of-living adjustments in wages and benefits are often pegged to inflation, the CPI may be the leading indicator that most directly impacts our everyday lives. It was never intended to carry such weight.”
Join us for a live author chat (sub. req.) with Karabell on Friday at noon.
A House oversight hearing about the IRS scandal today was supposed to be Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) moment in the spotlight. But he was completely upstaged by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat, leading Issa to cut off his microphone and adjourn the hearing. We have the video and story here.
“Ready for Hillary” is ready to mow you down.
If you plan to run for president.
This is sort of fascinating as a history guy but somewhat terrifying as a human. It’s all very 1914ish. CNN (which is wildly outclassing the other cable nets on this story) just had a guy doing a live shot from a boat in the Bosphorus trailing a Ukrainian Navy vessel heading up the strait toward the Black Sea. This follows at least two Russian Navy vessels who did the same thing earlier in the day.
