“I actually think of the irony as a virtue. This is the age of Colbert. So hacking the super PAC to end the super PAC is a completely viable and obvious strategy that everybody is happy to get behind.” Lawrence Lessig on his plan to raise $700 million for a PAC to end SuperPacs. And for all the freedom to spend without limit bequeathed by the Supreme Court, what about the great majority of billionaires who don’t donate any more to campaigns that your average small town doctor?
A senior operations manager at Princeton University has been told to choose between his job and medical marijuana.
The latest details of the horrific accident with the 9 year old and the Uzi almost perfectly captures the term ‘tragicomic’. Not surprisingly, after the shooting, the 9 year old complained that the gun was too powerful for her and complained to her parents of shoulder pain. Her parents were so focused on her apparent injury that they did not at first notice that instructor Charles Vacca was lying on the ground with a mortal wound to the head.
ISIS has released a video showing what purports to be beheading of a second journalist in its custody, Steven Sotloff.
As I mentioned just below, there’s some movement toward red states adopting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. But the holdout states are clustered in the South, where African Americans are most affected by the lack of Medicaid coverage.
The idea that Medicaid expansion in red states is a dead letter until Obama leaves office may not entirely hold up. The financial incentives to expand sooner are so great that even very conservative states (at least outside the South) are starting to see the light.
Jon Stewart on whether he’s a “self-hating Jew” …
“Look, there’s a lot of reasons why I hate myself — being Jewish isn’t one of them,” Stewart told the reporter. “So when someone starts throwing that around, or throwing around you’re pro-terrorist, it’s more just disappointing than anything else. I’ve made a living for 16 years criticizing certain policies that I think are not good for America. That doesn’t make me anti-American. And if I do the same with Israel, that doesn’t make me anti-Israel. You cannot outsmart dogma, no matter what you do. If there is something constructive in what they’re saying, hopefully I’m still open enough … to take it in and let it further inform my position. But I’m pretty impermeable to yelling. As soon as they go to, ‘Your real name is Leibowitz!’ that’s when I change the channel.”
Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager has announced his resignation, effective Saturday, amid questions over his alleged role in a 2012 Iowa bribery scandal when he was working for Ron Paul.