What Carlyle Says

That old, arrogant, white Congress is helping us depopulate. We have thousands of children trying to get into the country and the politicos are screaming invasion! We have thousands of educated and loyal "Dreamers", raised in this country that Congress wants to send back to their parents country. Are we nuts? -- Carlyle, Reality Chex contributor, Commentariat July 26

... I’m hoping that my governor will utilize Article 1, Section 10, that allows a state that is being invaded — in our case more than twice as many just in recent months, more than twice as many than invaded France on D-Day with a doubling of that coming en route, on their way here now under Article 1, Section 10, the state of Texas would appear to have the right, not only to use whatever means, whether it’s troops, even using ships of war, even exacting a tax on interstate commerce that wouldn’t normally be allowed to have or utilize, they’d be entitled in order to pay to stop the invasion. -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (RDumb-Texas), ca. July 10, 2014

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.' ... This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now? -- Tom Perkins, billionaire venture capitalist, Wall Street Journal op-ed, January 24

... there are 47 percent ... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.... These are people who pay no income tax.  -- Mitt Romney, GOP presidential nominee, September 18, 2012

We risk hitting a tipping point in our society where we have more takers than makers in society, where we will have turned our safety net into a hammock that lulls able bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency. -- Rep. Paul Ryan, Summer, 2012

Meghan Crepeau of Red Eye Chicago: "More than 1,000 fast-food workers from around the country gathered Friday and Saturday [in Villa Park, Illinois,] to support an agenda including a $15 minimum wage and the right to unionize. The convention was mainly funded by the Service Employees International Union and other labor organizations." One of their biggest targets: McDonalds.

 
From Saturday at noon till Sunday night, I drove 1,520 miles. To keep myself alert, I stopped at no fewer than six McDonalds along the route for iced tea or hot coffee. Every person who served me was a person of color. (So good for McDonalds for its colorblind hiring practices.) Every one of those servers was super-courteous and friendly. They all completed my orders in a matter of seconds, not minutes.

The one exception was at my last stop, which I made at around the 1,375 mile-mark. When I arrived, the counterperson was out of sight, though I guessed s/he was preparing the order of a customer who had arrived before I did & seemed to be waiting to collect his Happy Meals or whatever. For reasons having nothing to do with McDonalds, I was a little miffed that I wasn't getting that immediate service to which I had so recently become accustomed. I had not veered into Perkins/Romney territory, but I did think, "Hey, kid, whoever & wherever you are, get with it."

Then the server -- a young man whom I guess to be of Central American origin -- came from the kitchen with the waiting customer's order in hand. He moved quickly, then just as quickly took & filled my order. Like the other servers I met on my trip, he was friendly & cheerful.

Mitt Romney is right about one thing: Those workers should not be "dependent upon government." Instead, they should be receiving a living wage for the hard, stressful work they do with skill & good humor. They should not need to supplement their meager wages with food stamps & other government programs that subsidize the businesses of the one-percenters who employ them. And, yes, these workers should be paying taxes -- because they should be earning enough to pay taxes. As for all that mooching & taxlaxity, not a one of them will ever get a "government handout" of the size Mitt Romney (and likely Tom Perkins) takes every year in Congress-blessed tax breaks & offshore schemes. Every one of those workers, as far as I would guess, has more character than these whiney, resentful, selfish rich guys & those stupid, nasty Congressmen.

Paul Ryan is right, too. We need more makers like the people who work at McDonalds & fewer takers like vulture capitalists & so-called citizen-legislators who spend their time in Congress trying to shaft poor workers & further enrich vultures like Perkins & Romney.

That last server, the one I thought might be a tad too slow to satisfy my ridiculous demand for instant service? When I write, "he took my order in hand," I mean that literally. He had only one arm.

I don't know how that young man lost his arm, but it would not be surprising to find he had been the victim of a Central American gang. Mutiliation & dismemberment are what those gangsters do.

So, yeah, I'm with Carlyle. There's very little question in my mind that the people who served me at McDonalds are better, more productive Americans than the uber-wealthy venture capitalists who liken workers' demands for a reasonable minimum wage to the Kristallnacht mobs or who call underpaid workers moochers. They are better Americans than a life-long government dependent who uses his government "service" to deprive people of the types of benefits he himself received. They are better Americans than a rabblerouser who would wage war on child refugees.

To the young people who have lived in this country most of their lives & want to stay, I say, "Thank you for coming. I hope you didn't make a mistake in choosing to stay." To the children fleeing violence & death, I say, "Bienvenidos." And "Buena suerte."

The Commentariat -- July 26, 2014

Michael Shear & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "President Obama on Friday urged the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to exercise what he called their 'shared responsibility' to help stem the flow of migrant children toward the United States border, but the Central American leaders said America shares some of the blame for the crisis." The presidents met for 90-minutes in the White House Cabinet Room:

... Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "Three Central American leaders met President Obama on Friday to tell him that billions of dollars poured into attempting to prevent migrant children crossing the US border would be better spent addressing the root causes of the crisis in their countries." ...

... Pamela Constable of the Washington Post: "Some immigration experts and advocates suggest [a major cause of the migrant children influx was] U.S. policies of the 1990s and 2000s that deported thousands of gang members back to Central America. At the time, authorities were attempting to root out Latino gang violence in American cities.... The gangs took new root in Central America, abetted by the push of drug-trafficking routes into Central America from Mexico. The gangs grew more ruthless and expanded into international drug trade and other crimes, leading to escalating violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Critics of proposals to deport the new crop of youths warn that the United States risks making the same mistake twice, accelerating violence over the border by condemning those fleeing the gang explosion to become either gang members or victims."

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "Over the past several months, [Former CIA Director George Slam-Dunk] Tenet has quietly engineered a counterattack against the Senate committee's voluminous report [on the CIA's detention & interrogation program], which could become public next month. The effort to discredit the report has set up a three-way showdown among former C.I.A. officials who believe history has been distorted, a White House carefully managing the process and politics of declassifying the document, and Senate Democrats convinced that the Obama administration is trying to protect the C.I.A. at all costs."

Yesterday I linked to a story featuring a videotape of a January 2012 talk by Jonathan Gruber -- one of the architects of the ACA, who said, in response to a question, "... if you're a state and you don't set up an Exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill." This is the same argument conservative plaintiffs made in the Halbig case, & the D.C. Circuit Court agreed. In an interview with Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic, Gruber said, "I honestly don't remember why I said that. I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake." Both Gruber & Cohn offer evidence that the intention of Congress was always to grant tax subsidies to eligible citizens of every state -- whether the state had established its own exchange or not.

     ... BUT, in an update, Cohn links to a Breitbart audio in which Gruber says the same thing, in another venue, in the same time frame. So, not a mistake. CW: Clearly, this is what Gruber believed at the time. It helps explain, IMO, how the language got into the bill. If Halbig eventually comes before the Supreme Court, the justices won't hear this new information, but you can bet the conservative justices will know about it. Yesterday, I was skeptical that this was a smoking gun; I'm not skeptical any more, unless the Breitbart audio is a mashup of some sort (not an impossibility, given Brietbart's record). ...

     ... Adam Serwer of MSNBC: "Asked over email whether those remarks [in the Brietbart audio] were a mistake, too, Gruber wrote back, 'same answer.'"

     ... Jon Walker of Firedoglake: "Either Gruber was misleading these people earlier, perhaps in an attempt to promote his consulting work or trick more states into adopting exchanges to make the law seem more popular, or he is misleading people now."

** Never Mind. Katie Zavadski of New York: "When the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped in the West Bank, were found late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not mince words. "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay," he said, initiating a campaign that eventually escalated into the present conflict in the region. But now, officials admit the kidnappings were not Hamas's handiwork after all." Israel now says the kidnapping & murders were committed by members of a "lone cell."

Paternalism doesn't change through the ages. It just dresses differently. -- Charles Pierce, on Paul Ryan's latest granny-starving scheme

Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "Starting this Wednesday, Twitter users began pointing out instances in which a BuzzFeed writer, Benny Johnson, had lifted phrases and sentences from other websites. After carefully reviewing more than 500 of Benny's posts, we have found 41 instances of sentences or phrases copied word for word from other sites. Benny is a friend, colleague and, at his best, a creative force, but we had no choice other than letting him go." ...

     ... CW: BuzzFeed, not the NYT, fired Johnson for plagiarizing posts, the content of which were intentionally inconsequential; e.g., "15 things to avoid if you don't want to eat horse meat." These were not exactly master's theses. Apparently BuzzFeed is way more serious than the U.S. Senate. Also probably more serious than the Army War College: contributor Citizen 625 invites you to read Senator General John Walsh's "master's thesis": "If you want to read one god-damn lame masters thesis by John Walsh. The Army War College ought to be embarrassed for their obvious support for grade inflation."

Ed Pilkington, et al., of the Guardian: "Leading experts on the use of medical drugs in capital punishment have accused death penalty states of conducting a 'failed experiment' with new drug combinations following a recent run of drawn-out executions in which prisoners have shown signs of distress on the gurney."

One More Way Fox "News" Undermines Democracy. April Sorrow in Science Daily: "When asked who is going to win an election, people tend to predict their own candidate will come out on top. When that doesn't happen, according to a new study from the University of Georgia, these 'surprised losers' often have less trust in government and democracy.... Despite all evidence to the contrary, 78 percent of Mitt Romney supporters during the 2012 election believed he would win.... Among Romney supporters, watching Fox News Channel had a unique effect.... Those who watched Fox News Channel were even more likely to predict Romney would win, and this in turn had an effect on whether or not they thought government posed a threat." Thanks to James S. for the link.

My New Congressman Is Just as Great as My Old Congressman
                          -- Constant Weader

Sahil Kapur of TPM: "In an extraordinary -- and extraordinarily awkward -- failure of basic situational awareness, a U.S. congressman [Curt Clawson (R-Fla.)] apparently mistook American government officials for Indian government officials during a congressional hearing.... 'I'm familiar with your country. I love your country. And I understand the complications of so many languages and so many cultures and so many histories all rolled up in one,' Clawson said. He added: 'Anything I can do to make the relationship with India better, I'm willing and enthusiastic about doing so.' ... Clawson took office on June 25, replacing Rep. Trey Radel (R), who resigned after getting arrested for cocaine possession last fall." ...

     ... CW: Hey, how was Clawson to know? (Well, okay, maybe from cheat sheet on his table that identified all the hearing participants.) The officials didn't "look American." Clawson also told Rep. Colleen Wakako Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) that he was famililar with Japan & loved Godzilla movies. He greeted Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) with a hearty "Hola, Amigo!" & told him he was familiar with Taco Bell. ...

     ... CW Update: Since I can't access Foreign Policy, which was the source for the story, I read secondary sources. I missed this Gawker piece, which cites the FP story (Update update: the FP story is available here):

During the hearing, [Clawson] repeatedly touted his deep knowledge of the Indian subcontinent and his favorite Bollywood movies.

You cannot satirize this guy.

Beyond the Beltway

Meghan Keneally, et al., of ABC News: "A doctor with a semi-automatic gun and a caseworker who was 'nothing short of heroic' were able to wound and then subdue an armed psychiatric patient after he had killed another caseworker and appeared intent of reloading and shooting more people in a Pennsylvania hospital, police said today." After the assailant Richard Plotts killed the caseworker, Dr. Lee "Silverman dove to the floor, pulled a semi-automatic pistol out his pocket and had a furious close range gun battle with Plotts." CW: We'll be hearing about this from the NRA & their supporters, even though the person who actually subdued Plotts was unarmed caseworker John D'Alonzo. Another doctor, also unarmed, assisted him.

Presidential Race

Charles Pierce is not impressed with Aqua Buddha's outreach to the people his former employee & co-author the Southern Avenger asked to apologize to white people for their high crime rate. CW: I'm not sure if it's guts or chutzpah, but Paul's efforts seem okay to me so far.

News Ledes

AP: "The United States shut down its embassy in Libya on Saturday and evacuated its diplomats to neighboring Tunisia under U.S. military escort amid a significant deterioration in security in Tripoli as fighting intensified between rival militias, the State Department said."

Washington Post: "Large Palestinian protests against Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip spread across the West Bank on Friday, as U.S.-led talks to secure a lasting truce sputtered. But a brief 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire did begin as promised Saturday and ambulances rushed into no-go zones to look for dead and wounded." ...

... AP: "Israeli aircraft struck 30 houses in the Gaza Strip early Friday, killing a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group and two of his sons, as Israel's Security Cabinet was to decide whether to expand its operation or consider ideas for a cease-fire."

AP: "The European Union on Friday extended its Ukraine-related sanctions to target top Russian intelligence officials and leaders of the pro-Russia revolt in eastern Ukraine, official documents showed."

The Commentariat -- July 25, 2014

Internal links removed.

Look Out, Poor People. Paul Ryan Is Here to Help. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times: "Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, outlined a plan to combat poverty on Thursday that would consolidate a dozen programs into a single 'Opportunity Grant' that largely shifts antipoverty efforts from the federal government to the states." ...

... CW: Sounds like a Tenther Plan to me.

... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "... it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it’s still driven by the longstanding conservative desire to limit the help we give to the poor.... Ryan's plan assumes that the same Republican states that rejected the federal government's offer to insure poor citizens through the expansion of Medicaid -- in other words, who would rather see poor people go uninsured than get coverage from the government -- are now going to be spectacularly committed and creative in working to help those same poor citizens through their time of need.... One of the real dangers of Ryan's approach is that it would render the programs unable to deal with economic downturns unless Congress stepped in and supplied more money, which would be unlikely as long as Republicans control at least one house." ...

... Steve Benen: "In the interest of magnanimity, let's acknowledge some of the good stuff. Ryan bucks his party, for example, by endorsing expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), an issue on which Democrats can and should welcome the opportunity to work with him. He's also prepared to embrace sentencing reforms, which is heartening, and his recommendations on occupational licensing aren't bad, either.... [And] Ryan doesn't include any of the deep spending cuts to the safety net that have helped define the congressman's far-right budget proposals." But then, a person who needs help has to sign a contract (promising to be a better, more responsible person, I guess, with a sort of life coach who evidently determines what measureable markers constitute better-personhood. If the impoverished person doesn't meet her part of the deal, she'll be subject to some kind of "sanctions." So demeaning, threatening AND weird. Great. ...

... Annie Lowrey, in New York, explains how this "condescending and wrongheaded" program is supposed to work. It "presupposes that the poor somehow want to be poor; that they don't have the skills to plan and achieve and grow their way out of poverty.... It isolates the poor. Middle-class families don't need to justify and prostrate themselves for tax credits.... It threatens to punish the poorest and most unstable families for their poverty and instability.... It does not address the core problem of a lack of jobs -- or the problem of a lack of jobs paying a living wage and affording a middle-class lifestyle." ...

... As Emily Badger of the Washington Post puts it, "the idea is fundamentally punitive. It betrays the fact that Ryan's latest thinking has not strayed all that far from the simplistic notion that people in poverty are solely to blame for their own circumstances. An incentive system like this assumes that end goals such as employment are entirely within the control of a poor people if they would just try hard enough." ...

... for a party that does absolutely nothing, Republicans are awfully concerned about how much work other people do. -- Akhilleus, in today's Comments (read his entire comment)

... See today's Comments for the context on this:

... AND, according to House Democrats, the Ryan plan is not "revenue neutral," as Ryan claims. Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Ryan ... cast his new initiative as a plan that wouldn't roll back resources for the poor but would change how the money is delivered and spent.... Ryan also insisted that his new grant plan, which would consolidate 11 separate federal anti-poverty programs into one funding stream for participating states, was not a block grant.... Van Hollen, on the other hand, said that's exactly what the plan was, and he was surprised Ryan would do little more than dress up his previous ideas.... Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) added that two-thirds of the cuts in Ryan's latest budget would hit low- and middle-income families, and railed against the Wisconsin Republican's idea to block-grant the Head Start program for early education.... The 11 programs that Ryan wants to consolidate would get hit with 20 percent cuts, Van Hollen noted, even as Ryan said he envisioned a deficit-neutral plan."

... In his critique of Ryan's plan (linked above), Paul Waldman writes, "The devil would be in the details; what if a state decided to take its entire block grant and devote it to giving lectures to poor people on why they should get married?" Florida doesn't need a block grant for that. We have Sen. Marco Rubio, who's providing the life-coaching advice -- while also serving as a role model -- for free! ...

... Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post: In a address at Catholic University Wednesday Rubio said, "'I consider myself to be a child of privilege,"' because being 'raised by two parents who were married to each other ... led me to live my life in a sequence that has a proven track record of success.' Specifically, this sequence: Get an education, then a job, then marry and have children. Stick to that order and you'll be better off by virtually every measure, he said...."

Cristina Marcos of the Hill: "The House on Thursday narrowly defeated a Democratic motion to instruct House conferees on the Department of Veterans Affairs overhaul to simply adopt the Senate-passed bill. The motion offered by Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) was rejected in a close 205-207 vote, with 13 Republicans voting in favor. All 207 no votes were from Republicans." ...

... Burgess Everett & Lauren French of Politico: "Democrats and Republicans are struggling to agree on how to pay for [VA overhaul] legislation that could cost between $25 billion and $30 billion. That logjam is transforming the VA debate from one that united both parties to yet another fiscal fight, prompting the same type of partisan finger pointing that has become familiar after years of budget showdowns." ...

... The Hill story, by Martin Matishak, is here.

Sarah Mimms of the National Journal: "House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that the House will not deal with funding the government before the August recess.... Boehner told reporters that the House will pass a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open sometime in September, avoiding a government shutdown that would otherwise occur on the last day of the month. The legislation would likely expire in early December, he said, punting decisions about the nation's spending to a lame-duck Congress just after the midterm election."

Lauren French: "The House Rules Committee approved a resolution Thursday allowing the full House to vote on authorizing a lawsuit against President Barack Obama accusing him of abusing executive authority. The 7-4 vote was split along partisan lines...." ...

... Paul Steinhauser of CNN: A CNN poll finds that "By a 57%-41% margin, Americans say House Republicans shouldn't file the suit. As with the question on impeachment, there's a wide partisan divide over the lawsuit.... Only 35% want Obama impeached, with nearly two-thirds saying the President should not be removed from office." ...

... CW: So why the suit? According to the poll (page 8), 75 percent of Republican respondents favor the suit.

Frances Robles & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Hoping to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the dangerous trek through Mexico.... If approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the first American refugee effort in a nation reachable by land to the United States, the White House said, putting the violence in Honduras on the level of humanitarian emergencies in Haiti and Vietnam, where such programs have been conducted in the past amid war and major crises."

Nick Corasaniti & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The United States Army War College determined in a preliminary review on Thursday that Senator John Walsh of Montana appeared to have plagiarized his final paper to earn a master's degree from the institution, and sent a letter to the senator instructing him that an investigative panel will meet next month to conclusively assess any culpability." The whole story is worth reading. ...

... CW: The paper was only 14 pages long. (I've never heard of a 14-page master's thesis, except perhaps in math & science fields where the "paper" might be one long equation.) He couldn't write 14 pages with plagiarizing half of it? I love the way Democrats are standing by this guy who IMHO did something just as bad, or worse, than did Anthony Weiner with his foray into dick pix. National Democrats couldn't dump Weiner fast enough. ...

... NEW. CW: Paul Waldman agrees with me here: "What the hell are the standards at the Army War College that you can write a 14-page paper and get a master's degree? Is it like that at the colleges the other services run? It might be OK if it was 14 pages of dense calculations for a degree in economics or something, but it reads like a paper written by a reasonably bright high school sophomore in his international relations class, not somebody getting an advanced degree. Not only that, there's no original research in it, which is usually a requirement of a graduate thesis." ...

     ... AND Waldman is with me on the PTSD "excuse" (see my comment to yesterday's Commentariat. Waldman write,

That's an insult to the thousands of veterans who have suffered from PTSD. It can be a terrible ailment, but one thing it doesn't do is make you plagiarize other people's work on your "thesis." What, did Walsh wake up in the middle of the night and think he was back in Iraq, in a firefight where the only way to save his comrades was to cut and paste a bunch of articles and then put his name on the top of the resulting paper? Give me a break.

     ... "Elvan," a commenter on Waldman's post asks a question I've had, too (but haven't expressed & would not have expressed as cleverly as Elvan did): "What faculty member couldn't detect such blatant plagiarism in this paper? Or is military science to science what military music is to music?"

... NEW. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post has a good piece on "John Walsh and how not to respond to a political scandal."

Paul Krugman: After years of dysfunctional government, the Democratic majority in the California state legislature grew large enough to override Republican obstruction & impose a mildly "liberal agenda." Conservatives predicted disaster; instead, California is doing very well. And then there's Kansas.

No Surprises Here. Paul Krugman Sen. Rob Portman (R-Wis.Ohio), rich guy & "debt disaster dead-ender," has written a Wall Street Journal op-ed on how we must curb entitlements, etc. "And it is an interesting piece -- it's a very good illustration both of the desperate desire to see a debt crisis, and what happens when someone (Portman, or more likely the staffer who wrote it) tries to be a Very Serious Person without actually understanding the numbers or having followed any of the analysis.... The main thing that struck me was the policy recommendations, written as if he knows nothing about the ongoing discussion of these issues over the past decade and more."

Winger Peter Suderman of Hit & Run (republished here in the libertarian Reason) thinks he has found the smoking gun in the Halbig anti-ACA case when he catches (via a commenter to another blog) Jonathan Gruber during a January 2012 talk saying, "... if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits." ...

... The Long Arm of the Kochs. Steve M. points out, "This was found by a guy at the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute and published on the blog of the Koch-funded Reason magazine, in support of a lawsuit pushed by the partly Koch-controlled Cato Institute. The Kochs and their bleeding-edge wingnut billionaire allies can't wait.... Their goal is to win this war. And it's total war." ...

... Dave Weigel has the background: "By late Thursday night, the entire conservative/libertarian blogosphere/twittersphere was crowing about the video.... The timing of the speech is important. Gruber said this in January 2012. It wasn't until May 2012 that the IRS issued a rule, clarifying that subsidies would also be available to the states that joined the federal exchange.... But this bolsters the libertarians' case. Gruber is acknowledged, by everyone, as an architect of the ACA.... It just happens that in early 2012, when [Halbig architect Michael] Cannon was barnstorming states to get them to avoid creating exchanges, Gruber was telling them they had better create exchanges or they wouldn't get subsidies." ...

... Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, who's usually fairly silly, makes a compelling prognostication that the conservative Supremes will pretend that they are preserving "legislative integrity" by taking literally the ACA phrase "an exchange established by the State." I also agree with her that if the Court takes the case, the law's best chance of survival lies with Justice Kennedy, because I think he may not be quite as mean-spirited as the other righty-rights on the Court.

NEW. Forgot this one. Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and two other groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Warren, Mich., who banned an atheist group from setting up a station alongside one run by a prayer group in the city hall atrium. Mayor Jim Fouts (R) said that the group's 'reason station' would be opposed to prayer and compared atheists to Nazis and members of the Klu Klux Klan."

News Ledes

** New York Times: "Russia has increased its direct involvement in fighting between the Ukrainian military and separatist insurgents, moving more of its own troops to the border and preparing to arm the rebels with ever more potent weapons, including high-powered Tornado rocket launchers, American and Ukrainian officials said on Friday."

New York Times: "Secretary of State John Kerry has proposed a two-stage plan to halt the fighting in the Gaza Strip that would first impose a weeklong truce starting Sunday, an official involved in the negotiations said on Friday. As soon as the truce took effect Palestinian and Israeli officials would begin negotiations on the principal economic, political and security concerns about Gaza, with other nations attending." ...

     ... Update: "Israel agreed to halt its military offensive in Gaza for 12 hours starting Saturday morning amid intense international efforts to seal a broader cease-fire deal and a new explosion of violence in the West Bank.... The announcement by the military came early Saturday, hours after Israel's security cabinet rejected Secretary of State John Kerry's proposal for a seven-day cease-fire in Gaza and further talks...."

... AFP: "Israeli fire Friday pushed the Palestinian death toll in Gaza to above 800, as Washington pressed Israel and Hamas to agree a week-long umanitarian ceasefire and thrash out a durable truce."

AFP: "The United States on Thursday said it had evidence Russian forces were firing artillery from inside Russia on Ukrainian troops, in what officials called a 'clear escalation' of the conflict. Moscow is also planning to 'deliver heavier and more powerful multiple rocket launchers' to the pro-Russian separatist forces in Ukraine, US deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said." ...

... AFP: "Ukraine's prime minister resigned after his governing coalition collapsed, plunging the former Soviet state into political limbo as it struggles to quell a deadly rebellion in the east.... Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he was stepping down over the "dissolution of the parliamentary coalition and the blocking of government initiatives" after several parties walked out on the ruling group. The collapse of the ruling coalition paves the way for early elections to be called by President Petro Poroshenko within 30 days."

New York Times: "As a detachment of French soldiers reached the crash site in Mali of an Air Algérie jetliner, officials in Paris said Friday that the accident was most likely weather-related and that the distribution of the wreckage over a limited area suggested that the plane probably hit the ground intact."

Guardian: "The Washington Post's correspondent in Tehran has been arrested along with his Iranian wife and two American photojournalists. Iranian judicial officials confirmed on Friday that Jason Rezaian, who holds dual American and Iranian citizenship, had been detained and is under investigation."