The Commentariat -- April 14, 2014

Internal links removed.

Paul Krugman: "... society is devoting an ever-growing share of its resources to financial wheeling and dealing, while getting little or nothing in return.... There is a clear correlation between the rise of modern finance and America's return to Gilded Age levels of inequality. So never mind the debate about exactly how much damage high-frequency trading does. It;s the whole financial industry, not just that piece, that's undermining our economy and our society." P.S. Chris Christie is a jerk.

** Bernie Sanders brings the reality of inequality to the floor of the Senate:

Philip Elliott of the AP: "An overhaul to the nation's broken immigration system remains stalled because 'the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism,' the head of the House committee to elect Democratic lawmakers said Sunday. Rep. Steve Israel's comments are in line with those from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi earlier this week, in which she blamed racial issues for the GOP's failure to act on comprehensive immigration legislation.

Seung Min Kim & Burgess Everett of Politico: "Republicans hope to turn Sylvia Mathews Burwell's nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services -- announced by President Barack Obama on Friday -- into a proxy war over Obamacare.... [Despite the Senate's unanimous vote for her confirmation as OMB director last year,] the Republican message, according to one senior aide: 'We would argue that there is no person on earth capable of making this horrible law work.'" ...

... Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "Outgoing Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she was 'flat-out wrong' to believe that HealthCare.gov was ready to go on Oct. 1, 2013.... Sebelius did not mince words when describing the pressure of last fall, calling October and November a 'dismal time.'" ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Sebelius leaves the office having enrolled some 10 million people in health care coverage. This was only possible because she convinced numerous Republican lawmakers in bright red states to extend health care coverage to the poorest Americans. No one is talking about it, but it is her biggest and most impressive achievement as secretary."

Anemona Hartocollis of the New York Times: "... New York State, almost from the start, has provided a textbook lesson in how to make the Affordable Care Act work.... New York has signed up more than 900,000 people for commercial or government plans, lured 16 insurance companies onto its exchange, provided subsidies for most customers and reduced premiums across the board.... But New York also took some aggressive and unpopular steps that few other states have taken, by creating a highly centralized system limiting consumer choice, essentially giving insurance seekers little incentive to shop off the exchange. As a result, most New Yorkers who are not insured through an employer are effectively barred from choosing any doctors or hospitals they want."

Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: Virginia "hospitals, the state chamber of commerce and corporate leaders have been calling, writing, visiting and buttonholing, pushing what they call 'the business case' for expanding coverage to thousands of uninsured under the health-care law, with the federal government promising to pay most of the cost." But Republican state legislators -- united behind opposition to ObamaCare -- are unmoved. ...

     ... CW: This would be a good time to highlight a few Virginia tragedies like the horrifying story of the death of Floridian Charlene Dill (see Beutler's piece below). ...

... Brian Beutler of the New Republic thinks Democrats should exploit this story: "On Wednesday, the Orlando Weekly published the explosive and infuriating story of Charlene Dill, a struggling, 32 year old mother of three who collapsed and died on a stranger's floor late last month. According to Weekly reporter Billy Manes, Dill suffered from a treatable heart condition. She also fell into what policy experts call the Medicaid coverage gap -- a hole the Supreme Court punctured in the health safety net when seven of its justices rendered the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion entirely voluntary." ...

     ... CW: Beutler is right. However, using Dill & similar victims to tell the story of GOP obstructionism, Koch money & Supreme Court stupidity (six other justices voted with Roberts) must be done with exquisite consideration for victims & their families. But the know-nothing public has a crying need to know what state GOP legislators, aided & abetted by the entire anti-Obama coterie, are doing to end and/or ruin the lives of the most vulnerable Americans. The GOP has convinced the voting public that ObamaCare is about expanding bureaucracy, depriving innocent Americans of their wonderful, cheap insurance policies & giving free health insurance to lazy bums of the darker complexions. The public should find out its about negligent homicide on a massive scale.

Chris Wallace is sick of the IRS "scandal". Via Josh Israel of Think Progress:

"Hate of an Ancient Vintage." David Von Drehle of Time on the murders at the Jewish centers in Overland, Kansas. ...

... Chicago Tribune: "The suspect in the Passover Eve killings of three people at two Jewish community centers in the Kansas City area was scheduled to appear in court Monday to face murder charges. Police said it was too early to determine if Sunday's killings were motivated by anti-Semitism, but a leading anti-hate group [the Southern Poverty Law Center] said the suspect was a former senior member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan movement."

Parade of Horribles. Janet Allon of AlterNet, in Salon, picks the seven worst right-wing moments of last week. It's hard to pick a favorite. ...

... CW: I'd add an 8th: the decision of Miami-Dade County Board of Elections supervisor John Mendez & a deputy county attorney to ban voters from using restrooms at polling places. Patrizia Mazzei of the Miami Herald: "Emails from a deputy elections supervisor and an assistant county attorney say Miami-Dade voters are banned from using restrooms at polling places. But the chief deputy elections supervisor pooh-poohed the notion." (I suspect the pun was intended.) The reputed reason? Some precincts are located in private buildings that have bathrooms that don't meet federal ADA standards. If the disabled can't pee, no one can pee.

Ben Fox of the AP: "... two separate but related events are forcing [the secret Camp 7 of the Guantanamo prison] into the limelight." ...

There's no way to explain the security measures that they use from the perspective of the safety of the guards or the safety of the detainees, beyond that they must be hiding something. -- Suzanne Lachelier, an attorney for Camp 7 inmate Ramzi Binalshibh

Presidential Race

Jill Lepore of the New Yorker reviews Elizabeth Warren's oeuvre, including Warren's new book, an autobiography titled A Fighting Chance, which "only adds to the speculation that Warren is considering challenging [Hillary] Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016. And, even if Warren doesn't run, this book is part of that race." My favorite bit of the review:

In the spring of 2009, after the [bailout oversight] panel [on which Warren sat] issued its third report, critical of the bailout, Larry Summers took Warren out to dinner in Washington and, she recalls, told her that she had a choice to make. She could be an insider or an outsider, but if she was going to be an insider she needed to understand one unbreakable rule about insiders: They don't criticize other insiders.'

... CW: That, people, is how the Very Serious People operate. It is among the reasons our government is so dysfunctional.

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "... three Republicans who are considering a run for the White House -- Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor -- pitched their views on Saturday for how conservatives can retake power in Washington.... The event was the Freedom Summit, a gathering of several hundred put together by two of t.he most influential groups on the right, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Citizens United. And what unfolded on stage in a conference center next to the regional airport [in Manchester, New Hampshire,] was a display of today's Republican Party in all its dynamism, division and sometimes strange spectacle." ...

I'm beginning to think there's more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States. When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position, people put hands all over me, and I have to provide photo ID and a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane -- but if I want to go vote I don't need a thing. -- Mike Huckabee

Mike, we will all be happy when you move to North Korea to soak up all that great freeeedom. -- Constant Weader

... Margaret Hartmann of New York: Rand Paul's advice for Jeb (Not His Real Name) Bush: "Voters might get the wrong idea if you don't immediately explain how you'd crack down on that 'act of love.'" (That's Hartmann's interpretation. Close enough.)

News Ledes

New York Times: "In a new sign of desperation, Ukraine’s acting president asked the United Nations on Monday to send peacekeeping troops to the east of the country, where pro-Russia militias have seized government buildings and blocked major highways with seeming impunity. A deadline set by the Ukrainian government for the militants to vacate occupied buildings passed earlier Monday without any signs of an effort to enforce it, while militants, in an apparently coordinated strategy, used the day to seize another police station in an eastern town, then hoist a Russian flag over the building." ...

... Reuters: "U.S. President Barack Obama told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that Russia's actions in Ukraine were not conducive to a diplomatic solution of the crisis in that country, and the White House warned that Moscow would suffer further costs for its behavior. Obama spoke to Putin at the Russians' request, a senior administration official said, describing the call as 'frank and direct,' a diplomatic construction that usually means tense."

AP: "Megan Huntsman ... told police she either strangled or suffocated [six of her babies] immediately after they were born. She wrapped their bodies in a towel or a shirt, put them in plastic bags and then packed them inside boxes in the garage of her home south of Salt Lake City. What's not clear is why."

The Commentariat -- April 13, 2014

Internal links, obsolete videos removed.

** David Sanger of the New York Times: "... President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should -- in most circumstances -- reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday. But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for 'a clear national security or law enforcement need,' the officials said.... The White House has never publicly detailed Mr. Obama's decision, which he made in January.... There is no evidence that the N.S.A. had any role in creating Heartbleed, or even that it made use of it.... But documents released by Edward J. Snowden ... make it clear that two years before Heartbleed became known, the N.S.A. was looking at ways to accomplish exactly what the flaw did by accident."

Oops. Missed This. Jennie Matthew of AFP: "US reporter Glenn Greenwald returned to his homeland Friday for the first time since he helped expose Washington's vast electronic spying network, warning that more revelations are yet to come. Greenwald, who maintains regular contact with fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, flew into New York with filmmaker Laura Poitras to receive a journalism award for their coverage. Greenwald and Poitras had feared they could be detained upon arrival but told reporters at a Manhattan hotel that, while US officials 'deliberately created' a sense of risk, they faced no problem."

Tom Hamburger & Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "... Google -- once a lobbying weakling -- has come to master a new method of operating in modern-day Washington, where spending on traditional lobbying is rivaled by other, less visible forms of influence. That system includes financing sympathetic research at universities and think tanks, investing in nonprofit advocacy groups across the political spectrum and funding pro-business coalitions cast as public-interest projects.... Nine years ago, the company opened a one-man lobbying shop, disdainful of the capital's pay-to-play culture. Since then, Google has soared to near the top of the city's lobbying ranks, placing second only to General Electric in corporate lobbying expenditures in 2012 and fifth place in 2013."

Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "The countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical, experts appointed by the United Nations reported Sunday, and only an intensive worldwide push over the next 15 years can stave off potentially disastrous climatic changes later in the century. It remains technically possible to keep planetary warming to a tolerable level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found, according to a report unveiled here. But even in parts of the world like Europe that have tried hardest, governments are still a long way from taking the steps that are sufficient to do the job, the experts found."

Breaking! Maureen Dowd has found someone to love: Stephen Colbert. It's uncanny -- not a dollop of snark for Colbert (but plenty for other late-nite comics). ...

... Here's Dowd on the "Colbert Report," ca. 2005:

... Okay, so Ben Collins of Esquire loves Colbert too.

Mary Walsh of the New York Times: "Multiemployer pensions are not only backed by federal insurance, but they also were thought to be even more secure than single-company pensions because when one company in a multiemployer pool failed, the others were required to pick up its 'orphaned' retirees. Today, however, the aging of the work force, the decline of unions, deregulation and two big stock crashes have taken a grievous toll on multiemployer pensions, which cover 10 million Americans. Dozens of multiemployer plans have already failed, and some giant ones are teetering -- including, notably, the Teamsters' Central States pension plan, with more than 400,000 members. In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal multiemployer insurer would run out of money in seven years, which would leave retirees in failed plans with nothing."

Harold Meyerson: "... if reciprocal credit is due for the landmark legislation of LBJ's presidency, so reciprocal blame should be placed for the tragedy of Vietnam. It's clear from the tape recordings that Johnson made of his private phone calls 50 years ago this spring that the new president viewed the prospect of going to war in Vietnam with trepidation.... And yet, many of the key players who had been with him on civil rights -- the Republicans, the AFL-CIO and his own advisers -- were urging him to plunge in.... In the end, of course, Johnson took just enough of their counsel to wreak havoc on Vietnam, the United States, his political party and his presidency. The blame is his but, as with the credit, there's plenty left over to go around."

Valerie Miller, et al., of the New York Daily News: The woman who threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton is extremely crazy. CW: But of course the Secret Service let her into a supposedly closed event.

As James Singer the Science Winger pointed out yesterday, the Earth is the center of the universe! Or so say some actual wingnuts who have produced a slick Bible-consistent "documentary" film -- with real scientists! (who are mortified they got suckered into the project). Steve Benen reports.

Sex & the GOP

Scott Keyes, in the Washington Post: "In cooperation with the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, socially conservative politicians have been quietly trying to make it harder for couples to get divorced. In recent years, lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills imposing longer waiting periods before a divorce is granted, mandating counseling courses or limiting the reasons a couple can formally split. States such as Arizona, Louisiana and Utah have already passed such laws, while others such as Oklahoma and Alabama are moving to do so.... Making divorce less accessible harms women most.... Women today are twice as likely as men to ask for a divorce...." ...

... CW: The SOBs cannot stay out of your bedroom, even if that bedroom is occupied by two people in a miserable marriage. I think the high-minded moral principles behind this latest intrusive movement are (1) to hell with what the wife wants, & (2) married women vote Republican. Also maybe: if a couple is unhappy, they are less likely to have sex with each other, and sex is a dirty, dirty thing.

Elsewhere Beyond the Beltway

Freeeeedom! Liz Fields of ABC News: "A Nevada cattle rancher appears to have won his week-long battle with the federal government over a controversial cattle roundup that had led to the arrest of several protesters. Cliven Bundy went head to head with the Bureau of Land Management over the removal of hundreds of his cattle from federal land, where the government said they were grazing illegally." ...

... Here's some background from CBS Las Vegas/AP: "A group of Republican Arizona lawmakers are upset with a brewing showdown in Nevada between the federal government and a rancher who claims rights to graze his cattle in a remote area about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.... Federal officials say Bundy has racked up more than $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees over the years while disregarding several court orders to remove his animals. [Rep. Bob] Thorpe says lawmakers aren't arguing over whether Bundy has broken laws or violated grazing agreements. They're more concerned with what they perceive as government heavy-handedness and how officials are restricting protesters to 'free speech zones' near the closed off federal land."

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Bundy, for his part, claims that 'our Constitution didn't provide for anything like the federal government owning this land.' He's wrong. The Constitution provides that '[t]he Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.'" ...

... Digby weighs in. ...

... CW: As for me, I'm tired of subsidizing the methane-gas producers. Can't the government garnish Bundy's cattle sales?

Katie Fretland of the Guardian: "Oklahoma officials on Friday said the state had obtained manufactured pharmaceuticals from a secret supplier for use in the executions of two men later this month, avoiding concerns over the use of compounded drugs but leaving unanswered questions about how it obtained them."

Re: the discussion in today's & yesterday's Comments:

News Ledes

AP: "A man in his 70s opened fire Sunday outside of a Jewish community center [in Overland Park, Kansas,] and nearby retirement community, killing three people, authorities said."

Extremely Creepy News. ABC News: "A woman has been arrested on six counts of murder after authorities found the bodies of seven infants packed into separate cardboard boxes at a home in Utah, police said. Police arrested Megan Huntsman, 39, of Pleasant Grove, on Saturday following a gruesome discovery at a residence formerly occupied by the woman who they say moved out in 2011."

Washington Post: "Ukrainian authorities launched an 'anti-terrorist' campaign Sunday morning against pro-Russian gunmen who had occupied a police headquarters in a small city in the tense eastern part of the country. Simultaneous assaults on government buildings in several towns in the restive region on Saturday had led officials in Kiev to believe that a coordinated operation directed by Russia was underway." ...

It's professional, it's co-ordinated, there is nothing grass-roots-seeming about it. The forces are doing, in each of the six or seven cities they've been active in, exactly the same thing. Certainly it bears the tell-tale signs of Moscow's involvement. -- Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations

     ... AP Update: "Ukrainian special forces exchanged gunfire with a pro-Russia militia in an eastern city Sunday, according to the interior minister, who said one Ukrainian security officer was killed and five others were wounded." ...

... Reuters: "U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Kiev on April 22, to demonstrate high-level U.S. support for Ukraine, the White House said on Saturday after expressing concern about escalating tensions in the eastern part of the country. The White House warned Russia against further military action in Ukraine...."

Guardian: "The war crimes trial of two sons of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi begins amid tight security in Tripoli on Monday, in a case causing sensation at home and controversy among rights groups. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and his younger brother Saadi are accused of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture and bombardment of civilians during Libya's eight-month civil war in 2011."

AFP: "Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are to convene on Sunday in the latest attempt to save teetering peace talks, a Palestinian official told AFP."

The Commentariat -- April 12, 2014

Internal links removed.

** Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in an excerpt from his new book Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, reprinted in the Washington Post, recommends a revision to the Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed." Read the whole excerpt.

In his weekly address, President Obama stresses the importance of equal pay:

Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico: "President Barack Obama struck hard at restrictive voting rights laws Friday, calling them a Republican political tactic conceived to address a made-up problem. Pretending that there's widespread impropriety, he said, is just about keeping Democrats from winning. 'The real voter fraud is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud,' Obama said, in a speech to Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network in New York...":

... An Especially Stupid Idea. Juliet Eilperin & Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "As Republicans push for new voting restrictions around the country, a handful of Democrats have coalesced around an impromptu idea: placing a photo on Social Security cards."

Michael Shear & David Joaquim of the New York Times: "President Obama said Friday that he was nominating his budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, as the administration tries to move beyond its early stumbles in carrying out Mr. Obama's health law":

... Michael Shear, et al., of the Times: "The White House frustration with Ms. Sebelius crystallized by Thanksgiving, as it became clear in Washington that she would eventually have to go.... But three things put off Ms. Sebelius's departure: Mr. Obama's fear that letting people go in the middle of a crisis would delay fixing the website; his belief that ceremonial firings are public concessions to his enemies; and the admiration and personal loyalty that Mr. Obama still felt for Ms. Sebelius.... Over the next four months, Ms. Sebelius engaged in a kind of slow-motion resignation, largely staying out of the national limelight.... As the website improved and enrollment numbers neared the administration's goal of seven million people, she began plotting her exit."

Jada Smith of the New York Times: "President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, released their 2013 tax returns on Friday, showing a sharp decrease in their personal income since filing their 2012 returns. Mr. Obama became a multimillionaire shortly after his first inauguration from royalties related to his books, 'Dreams From My Father' and 'The Audacity of Hope,' which earned $5.5 million. Last year, however, most of the income generated by the Obamas came from the president's $400,000 salary." You can review the Obamas' & Bidens' returns via links on this White House page.

** Ali Watkins, et al., of McClatchy News: " A still-secret Senate Intelligence Committee report calls into question the legal foundation of the CIA's use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, a finding that challenges the key defense on which the agency and the Bush administration relied in arguing that the methods didn't constitute torture. The report also found that the spy agency failed to keep an accurate account of the number of individuals it held, and that it issued erroneous claims about how many it detained and subjected to the controversial interrogation methods." The committee's "Complete List of Findings" is here.

Michael Riley of Bloomberg News: "The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said." The NSA denies it." ...

... Charles Pierce: "... it appears that the NSA was willing to, you know, break the entire Internet in service of the messianic vision that infests the various cubicles." ...

... Digby: "If this story is true it should be the last straw." ...

... CW: Here's a question nobody seems to be asking: Since it is the NSA's charter to find & exploit communications vulnerabilities, why didn't they know about Heartbleed? Either they're incompetent or they're lying about this bug.

Sins of the Fathers.... Marc Fisher of the Washington Post: "Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) asked the Social Security Administration to halt its three-year-old practice of intercepting taxpayers' federal and state refunds to cover overpayments that the agency says it made to families more than 10 years ago. The practice, which affects about 400,000 families that once received Social Security benefits, was detailed in The Washington Post on Friday.... Dozens of new cases ... surfaced Friday, many involving survivors' benefits paid to families after a parent's death. The payments often went to a surviving parent, but the government argues that since the money was intended to help the children, they are responsible for decades-old overpayments." ...

... Hamilton Nolan of Gawker: "We are talking about the government itself mistakenly overpaying benefits to your parents decades ago, and now, all these years later, coming to you and taking that money out of your pocket, because, you know, your mom probably used it to buy you baby food."

Danny Vinik of the New Republic: The Ryan budget -- which the House passed Thursday with no Democratic support -- doesn't just abandon the poor; it ignores math, too.

Steve Benen: How to get an unemployment benefits extension through the House: "the Speaker ... told reporters yesterday that the unemployed might get relief when the White House correctly guesses what might make Boehner happy." The Senate already passed a bill that seemed to make some GOP Senators happy. CW: Boehner evidently thinks any legislation which actually benefits the public must begin in the executive branch. An interesting reading of the Constitution.

Darrell Issa Is No Joe McCarthy. Dana Milbank: Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) "... during his lamentable tenure running the [House Oversight C]ommittee, has been reckless, dishonest, vain and prone to making unsubstantiated accusations. But Issa's McCarthyism is a faint echo of the real thing, for one very important reason. McCarthy was feared; Issa isn't taken seriously. This is a rare bit of good news about modern politics: It's a bad time to be a demagogue."

Charles Pierce discovers there really was an ObamaPhone scandal. Like the original Drudge-induced ObamaPhone "scandal," it has absolutely nothing to do with Obama.

It's the weekend, so a nice time to enjoy college sports. You might think that a story on a comedy show about sports should be in the Infotainment section. You would be wrong:

Congressional Races

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "Sen. Mitch McConnell is sticking to his repeal stance, crowing at the news of Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's resignation: 'Secretary Sebelius may be gone, but the problems with this law and the impact it's having on our constituents aren't. Obamacare has to go too.' As of today, 402,000 people in Kentucky have health insurance because of Obamacare. The state extended the deadline for enrollments until midnight tonight, and 30,000 people signed up in the last week alone.... That's 402,000 people in his home state McConnell wants thrown out of the health care market; 402,000 of his own constituents he would sacrifice in order to win his primary and try to hold onto his seat. And he says it's Obamacare that has to go." ...

     ... CW: Democratic candidate Alison Grimes' reaction to this should be hard-hitting ads that repeat & repeat "Mitch McConnell vows to take about your health care." Will she do it? I doubt it. ...

... As an excellent example of one tack Grimes could take, contributor Victoria D. points to this extremely subtle pro-ObamaCare ad by a PAC supporting ConservaDem Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska:

Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "GOP Rep. Tom Petri of Wisconsin will not seek reelection this year, a Republican source confirmed to POLITICO. Petri has represented an east-central Wisconsin seat since 1979. Last week, state Sen. Glenn Grothman announced he would challenge Petri in the August Republican primary, charging that the congressman has failed to slow the growth of the federal deficit and entitlement programs."

Sex & the GOP

Katie McDonough of Salon: "A state Senate panel in South Carolina advanced legislation Thursday that states a pregnant person has a right to use deadly force to protect the 'unborn ... from conception until birth.' The measure is called the 'Pregnant Women's Protection Act,' and it is model legislation written and disseminated by Americans United for Life.... The bill does serve a serious purpose for anti-choice policymakers and activists working to endow fertilized eggs with personhood status and legal rights, a move that would suppress the rights of pregnant people and likely ban abortion and most forms of contraception. The measure tries to accomplish this -- or at least open the door to these possibilities -- by defining life as beginning at conception." Thanks to James S. for the link.

Katie McDonough: Delegate Bob Marshall, "a Virginia Republican currently running for the U.S. House of Representatives, believes that incest exceptions in abortion bans are unnecessary because sometimes incest is 'voluntary,' accord[ing] to a report from the Washington Times. Marshall also believes that children born with developmental disabilities are God's 'vengeance' on people who have had abortions." CW: Remember, people, lots of Virginians voted for this guy.

News Lede

AP: "Several dozen armed men seized a police station in a small town in eastern Ukraine on Saturday morning and hoisted the Russian flag above the building as tensions in the country's Russian-speaking regions intensify. The town of Slovyansk is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of the regional center, Donetsk, where pro-Russian protesters have occupied a government building for nearly a week."