Tierney Sneed is at the Supreme Court for us this morning for oral arguments in Zubik v. Burwell, better known as the Little Sisters of the Poor case. This is the challenge to the Obamacare contraception mandate in which religious-affiliated employers claim that even filling out the form to opt out of providing contraception coverage amounts to a violation of their religious freedom. Here’s Tierney on what to watch for.
Utah teen injured in the Brussels airport attack was also about a block away from the Boston marathon bombing.
TPM Reader RM responds to John Judis:
I disagree with John Judis’ analysis regarding the terrorist attack in Europe. I think he conflates issues in the Middle East with those of the Muslim community living abroad. I don’t think the two are linked as closely as he assumes. I also think he conflates terrorism (a tactic) with the ideology of militant Islamic fundamentalism.
After you read this, you might miss Dick Cheney’s credulous legalisms, squirmy rationales, and unconvincing denials on torture.
From John Judis ...
Another terrorist attack, this time in Brussels. I don’t see an end to these, and at the same time I don’t think Americans or Europeans will accept a strategy of letting them play out on the grounds that less people die in terrorist attacks than in highway accidents or bathtub electrocutions. They will strengthen the hand of interventionists, but not sufficiently so that the threat can finally be eliminated rather than exacerbated. They will draw the United States and Europe into a conflict that it is not prepared to fight to the end, which would involve not just the military, but unprecedented diplomatic moves that would undo 150 years of Western intervention in the Middle East and North Africa.
Several points here:
Michael Levi, the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of THE POWER SURGE, is hosting a live chat on all things related to energy security. Topics can include climate change, energy policy, weapons of mass destruction, science and technology in the Islamic world, energy security and nuclear terrorism. Drop your questions in and join us on Thursday!
Site Update: We will be taking our comments system offline to upgrade our software tomorrow night at 10 PM eastern. This means that both article comments and The Hive will be offline at that time. We anticipate that both will be back up and online by midnight eastern.
I’m not sure anything better captures the GOP’s inability to grasp what’s happening to it than the House Freedom Caucus wrestling with how to grapple with the rise of Donald Trump and how to resist his candidacy. Donald Trump is the Freedom Caucus. You might even say, in the beginning was the Freedom Caucus. And then the Freedom Caucus became flesh and walked among us. And his name was Donald Trump.
Meet the archeo-Trump, hair helmet and all: the man who brought you O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Colbert, Trump and so many others. Meet Wally George. Here’s his story.
The #NeverTrump non-movement has taken a blow, as Rick Perry has apparently taken himself out of contention as the standard bearer of a #NeverTrump third party conservative ticket. A deeper issue is that, remember, Rick Perry was basically drummed out to the 2012 and 2016 elections as something close to a laughing stock. In 2016, he barely rose to the level of a laughingstock since no one was even paying attention. This isn’t meant as ridicule. It was a more a matter of expectations: the million term governor of the biggest red state in the country, couldn’t even make a respectable showing in a run for president. #NeverTrump looks very much like a vehicle with which DC power brokers take the guys they wanted in the first place but couldn’t get through primary process and nominate them by acclamation through what amounts to a GOP in exile.