The Commentariat -- January 3, 2015

Internal links removed.

Brian Faler of Politico: "The question of who will be Congress' next chief number-cruncher has suddenly gotten a lot more important. Republicans, who are considering replacing the head of the Congressional Budget Office, are leaving it up to the agency to decide how to implement their long-sought plans to [apply so-called 'dynamic scoring' to] taxes and other legislation.... A draft of House rules for the upcoming Congress would require scorekeepers to begin using the methodology. But, to the surprise of some Democrats, Republicans are stopping well short of telling them how to do it.... The wide latitude given to the CBO could help insulate Republicans from charges they are threatening the credibility of Congress' independent budget analysts in their drive to reduce taxes. But it also raises the stakes in the question of who will run the office, because economists have widely varying opinions of how tax cuts affect the economy." ...

... CW: In other words, Republicans know dynamic scoring is phony, so they plan to shift responsibility for it to the CBO & begin every sentence with, "According to the CBO's own methodology..., blah-blah. Cute. Fortunately for the GOP, this is way too arcane for the public to follow, so Republicans will get away with it.

Michael Schmidt & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Obama administration doubled down on Friday on its allegation that North Korea's leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures as it announced new sanctions on 10 senior North Korean officials and several organizations. Administration officials said the action was part of what President Obama promised would be a 'proportional response' against the country. But White House officials said there was no evidence that the 10 officials took part in ordering or planning the Sony attack, although they described them as central to a number of provocative actions against the United States."

Rocco Parascandola & Larry McShane of the New York Daily News: "NYPD Commissioner William Bratton wants his officers to show respect, rather than their backs, at the Sunday funeral for assassinated colleague Officer Wenjian Liu. Bratton, in an internal message distributed Friday to citywide commands, urged the rank and file not to repeat last week's show of disdain for Mayor de Blasio during the service for slain cop Rafael Ramos."

Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post: "City officials in Cleveland announced on Friday that they are handing over the investigation into the Nov. 22 police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice to the county sheriff's office."

Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "Key organizers of the wave of recent protests over police treatment of African Americans lashed out at Oprah Winfrey Friday over comments she made to People magazine criticizing their movement as 'leaderless.'" ...

... CW: I'm with Oprah on this. The failure of Occupy, for instance, was not a failure of motivation nor of goals. It was a failure of leadership & design. The idea that organization, strategy & planning denigrate the ideal of equality may be true, but it is also self-defeating. Thousands of people were extremely active in the civil, women's & gay rights movements, but leaders made things happen, & not just through protests. They fought the law, and they won. As long as every protest is an individual protest, the entrenched system will win. And, yes, there were differences within each of these movements, but those who took the long view & fought with steady, goal-oriented determination were the ones who effected changes.

The New York Times Editors write a lovely eulogy to Mario Cuomo.

Melissa Eddy of the New York Times: "... the relentless stream of migrants to Europe -- propelled by the war in Syria and turmoil across the Middle East and the Horn of Africa -- has combined with economic troubles and rising fear of Islamic radicalism to fuel a backlash against immigrants, directed most viciously at Muslims. The simmering resentments and suspicions have driven debates across Europe about tighter controls on immigration. Worries about immigration have helped buoy right-wing parties in Britain, Denmark, France and Hungary. German officials recorded more than 70 attacks against mosques from 2012 to 2014.... There are few places where the turn against immigrants is more surprising than Sweden, where a solid core of citizens still supports the 65-year-old open door policy toward immigrants facing hardship that has long earned international respect for the country."

Presidential Election

A History Lesson for Hillary. Gail Collins: "The only president elected to follow a member of his own party without creating some sort of cosmic disaster was George H.W. Bush." Read the whole column. It's interesting & funny.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Edward W. Brooke, who in 1966 became the first African American popularly elected to the U.S. Senate and who influenced major anti-poverty laws before his bright political career unraveled over allegations of financial impropriety, died Jan. 3 at his home in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 95." The AP story is here. ...

     ... Update: The Boston Globe's obituary is here.

New York Times: "A British health worker who is being treated for Ebola in a London hospital is now in critical condition, her doctors said on Saturday. The patient, Pauline Cafferkey, a nurse from Scotland who had volunteered with the charity Save the Children to care for Ebola victims in Sierra Leone, returned to Glasgow, Scotland, last Sunday."

AP: "Indonesian officials said Saturday that they were confident wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501 had been located after sonar equipment detected four massive objects on the ocean floor." ...

... Washington Post: "AirAsia was not authorized to fly from Surabaya to Singapore the day that one of its passenger jets attempted the route and crashed into the Java Sea amid poor weather conditions, according to Indonesian officials. Transportation Ministry Spokesman J.A. Barata told the Wall Street Journal that the air carrier was only allowed to make the flight four days of the week, but not on Sunday."

Guardian: "A woman who claims that an American investment banker loaned her to rich and powerful friends as an underage 'sex slave' has alleged in a US court document that she was repeatedly forced to have sexual relations with [Britain's] Prince Andrew.... Another close associate of [financier Jeffrey] Epstein who is also accused in the lawsuit, Alan Dershowitz, told the Guardian that the woman’s accusations against himself were 'totally false and made up'." ...

... Guardian: "Lawyers have asked the US government to hand over any letters or other documents it might have relating to the claims of two women that Prince Andrew was among those who lobbied its justice department on behalf of the billionaire financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein."

Yahoo! News: "A 7-year-old girl walked three-quarters of a mile through rugged terrain Friday night -- after surviving a plane crash that killed her father, mother, sister, and cousin. The child had been aboard her family's Piper PA-34 heading from Key West, Fla., to their home state of Illinois, but the plane crashed in western Kentucky."

Washington Post: "A suspected al-Qaeda terrorist died Friday night just days before he was slated to go on trial in New York on charges of helping plan the 1998 bombings outside U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people, his lawyer said. Among the dead were 12 Americans, including two CIA employees. Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer after U.S. commandos and FBI agents captured him in a 2013 raid outside his house in a suburb of Tripoli, Libya."

White House: "In this week's address, the Vice President wished Americans a Happy New Year, and asked that as we make resolutions to get healthier in 2015, we take the time to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act":

The Commentariat -- January 2, 2015

Internal links, photo & graph removed.

** New York Times: "Mario M. Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who commanded the attention of the country with a compelling public presence, a forceful defense of liberalism and his exhaustive ruminations about whether to run for president, died at home in Manhattan on Thursday, according to a family friend. He was 82."

... "A Tale of Two Cities." Here's a portion of Gov. Cuomo's 1984 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention:

     ... Video of the full speech is here. ...

... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker, who covered Gov. Cuomo for the New York Times, reflects on his career. ...

... Ken Auletta of the New Yorker: "Mario Cuomo had a combination of skills rarely seen in public life. Unlike most pols, he had an active interior life.... He had the rare ability to listen, and he could see four sides of an issue.... In the four decades I knew him, I tried to keep him at arm's length. Journalists are not supposed to say this, but I loved the guy." ...

... Stephen Schlesinger, Gov. Cuomo's speechwriter, remembers him in a New York Observer essay. ...

... Todd Purdum in Politico: "He was, in his day, the poet laureate of American liberalism, the Democratic Party's most passionate defender of the underdog and its most articulate critic of the trickle-down gospel of Reaganomics." ...

... Josh Lederman of the AP: "President Barack Obama is praising former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo as an unflinching voice for tolerance, fairness and opportunity." ...

... Cassie Carothers of Yahoo! News: Other political figures pay tribute to Cuomo. ...

... Chris Smith of New York rounds up some of the magazine's old stories about Mario Cuomo & his family.

We're missing one family member. My father is not with us today. We had hoped that he was going to be able to come; he is at home and he is not well enough to come. We spent last night with him, changed the tradition a little bit. We weren't in Albany last night; we stayed at my father's house to ring in the New Year with him. I went through the speech with him. He said it was good, especially for a second-termer. See, my father is a third-termer. But he sends his regards to all of you. He couldn't be here physically today, my father. But my father is in this room. He is in the heart and mind of every person who is here. He is here and he is here, and his inspiration and his legacy and his experience is what has brought this state to this point. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in his 2nd inaugural speech, Jan. 1

... Jesse McKinley of the New York Times: "Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was inaugurated for a second term on Thursday and vowed to confront a raft of complex, often intractable problems afflicting New York and the nation alike in the areas of criminal justice, economic mobility and public education. Speaking in front of throngs of well-wishers and from the symbolic heights of 1 World Trade Center, Mr. Cuomo laid out an aspirational vision for New York in broad and occasionally soaring terms."

Dionne Searcey of the New York Times: "For the first time since 2011, local, state and federal governments are providing a small but significant increase to prosperity.... Across the nation, state and local governments, Democratic and Republican alike, are spending on projects that were stalled. Teachers, who were laid off in droves in recent years, are being hired again. Even federal spending in some sectors is on the rise." CW: Lovely to see the New York Times implicitly endorsing Krug-o-nomics. At last. ...

... Paul Krugman: "The problem with these conventional [left-of-center] leaders [including President Obama], I'd argue, is that they're afraid to challenge elite priorities, in particular the obsession with budget deficits, for fear of being considered irresponsible. And that leaves the field open for unconventional leaders -- some of them seriously scary -- who are willing to address the anger and despair of ordinary citizens.... Political and opinion leaders need to face up to the reality that our current global setup isn't working for everyone." ...

... Jordan Weismann: "We're all speaking [Thomas] Piketty's language now." ...

... Aurelia End & Julie Chabanas of AFP: "France's influential economist Thomas Piketty, author of the bestseller 'Capital in the 21st Century', on Thursday refused to accept the country's highest award, the Legion d'honneur, to criticise the Socialist government in power."

Today in Responsible Gun Ownership. NBC Channel 11 Atlanta: "The wife of Peachtree City Police Chief William E. McCollom [of Peachtree City, Georgia,] is in critical condition after being shot by her husband Thursday morning.... The GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] will handle the shooting investigation. GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang originally said Chief McCollom called 911 to say he accidentally shot his wife twice with his service weapon. After further investigation, Lang said it was determined that only one bullet had been discharged."

Gene Robinson: "The GOP has a bad habit of appealing to avowed racists.... The addiction goes back to 1968, when Richard Nixon's 'Southern strategy' leveraged white racial resentment over federally mandated integration into an electoral majority." ...

... Ha Ha. Matt Bai of Yahoo! News offers five tips to help Steve Scalise figure out when he's speaking to white supremacists: "1. The group was founded by David Duke.... 2. Banners that say things like 'White Power' hang from the ceiling.... 3. The name of the group is the European-American Unity and Rights Organization.... 4. The hotel hosting the event is ashamed.... 5. No one actually cares about your tax stand.... One last bit of guidance: If you do end up accidentally speaking to a roomful of white supremacists, try to make a note of it somewhere, because eventually someone who doesn't like you is going to figure it out, and the last thing you want is to be caught unaware and have to say you really have no idea." ...

... Rebecca Catalanello of the Times-Picayune: Steve Scalise defender "Kenny Knight told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune on Wednesday that he was not a member of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, but documents filed with the Louisiana secretary of state's office list him as treasurer of its predecessor, the National Organization for European American Rights, in 2000. Further, a May 16, 2002, news release on an an archived version of EURO's former website, www.whitecivilrights.com, lists Knight as 'EURO Louisiana State Representative Kenny Knight.' The release says Knight was expected to address the group's May 17-18, 2002, conference.... When asked by telephone Thursday about the records listing him as EURO's treasurer, Knight twice hung up on a reporter." CW: This certainly calls into question Knight's claims that Scalise addressed a neighborhood civic group & not the David Duke-sponsored conference. Shocking, isn't it, that your friendly neighborhood racist is also a liar. ...

... Jonathan Kaminsky of Reuters: "The campaign manager [and son] of a Democrat who challenged U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana tipped off a blogger that the Republican lawmaker had spoken to a white supremacist group in 2002.However, Democrat Gilda Reed did not expose the meeting during the 2008 special election for the House seat because she believed it would not sway the district's conservative electorate. 'I felt strongly that it would not have walked,' Reed told Reuters on Wednesday. 'I was running in a district with a lot of bigots.' She lost to Scalise by more than 50 points."

Dan Sweeney of the Orlando Sun Sentinel: "On Thursday, federal judge Robert Hinkle, who earlier had overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriages, ordered all county clerks to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses beginning Tuesday. Prior to his order, there was confusion over which clerks were allowed to issue the licenses. But on Thursday, Hinkle clarified the broad scope of his ruling." ...

... Tia Mitchell of the Florida Times-Union: "Couples who wanted to ... get married at the Duval, Clay or Baker county courthouses will no longer have that option in the new year. These counties' decision to end the long-standing tradition of courthouse wedding ceremonies is due, at least in part, to the continued debate over same-sex marriage in Florida against the backdrop of conservative Christianity." (Mitchell wrote this report before Hinkle ordered all county clerks to issue same-sex marriage licenses.) CW: Ah, finally some hard evidence that same-sex marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriage. (Seriously, I won't be surprised if some anti-gay-marriage lawyers make this argument in court. With any luck, they'll make it before judges like Richard Posner who will laugh them out of court.)

Cartography for Bigots. Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: "Since January [CW: of 2014, I presume], publishing giant HarperCollins has been selling an atlas it says was 'developed specifically for schools in the Middle East.'... Israel is missing.... On Wednesday, HarperCollins was backtracking fast."

Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "Nearly a year ago, tea party agitators in Arizona managed to get John McCain censured by his own state party. Now, he's getting his revenge. As the longtime Republican senator lays the groundwork for a likely 2016 reelection bid, his political team is engaging in an aggressive and systematic campaign to reshape the state GOP apparatus by ridding it of conservative firebrands and replacing them with steadfast allies." CW: Naturally, one Tea party McCain foe called the party purge "the equivalent of 'ethnic cleansing.'" Because losing your little party job is just like the Holocaust. Or, as a normal person might say, politics as usual.

Pete Donohue, et al., of the New York Daily News: "An NYPD cop has surrendered in an attack on an MTA worker, officials said Thursday. Police Officer Mirjan Lolja, 37, was suspended after the assault in which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker -- who was on-duty and in her uniform -- was allegedly put into a bear hug, thrown to the floor and choked, cops said." CW: The photos accompanying the report show Lolja in street clothes. The article doesn't indicate whether or not he was on duty at the time of the alleged attack. I guess roughing up New Yorkers is a 24/7 job.

Presidential Election

Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Likely 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush has declined an invitation to speak at a conservative summit in Iowa hosted by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa.).... The summit ... will feature a host of other potential GOP presidential contenders, including Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.), Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), Gov. Rick Perry (Texas), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Dr. Ben Carson." ...

... Counting Chickens Before They Hatch. Steve M.: "Jeb is apparently counting on big donors and the folks running the GOP nominating process to undermine all of his competitors so he can win the nomination without kissing up to the wingnuts -- either that or he thinks that all the candidates trying to out-wingnut one another with divide up the purist vote, leaving him to scoop the rest, and thus the nomination.... To me he looks as if he's writing his convention acceptance speech way too early. And he looks as if he thinks he can erase the public record of his life if he wins the nomination. I think he's going to be disappointed."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors said they will not charge John W. Hinckley Jr. with murder in the shooting of President Ronald Reagan's press secretary in a 1981 assassination attempt, even though a medical examiner concluded his August death was caused by the old wounds. The decision, announced Friday by the U.S. Attorney for the District, comes four months after the coroner decided that James S. Brady’s death at the age of 73 was caused by bullets fired 34 years ago outside the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue Northwest."

Los Angeles Times: "Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against the man charged in the 2013 attack that killed a TSA officer at Los Angeles International Airport, according to a document filed in federal court Friday. Paul Anthony Ciancia, 24, was charged with 11 federal counts in connection with the Nov. 1, 2013, attack, in which authorities allege he opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle in the airport's busy Terminal 3. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges."

New York Daily News: "Funeral services for former Gov. Mario Cuomo are being planned for Tuesday at the Saint Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a church official told the Daily News."

New York Times: "Senator Harry Reid had a painful New Year's Day, breaking ribs and bones in his face after falling while exercising at his home in Nevada. The injury was sustained when Mr. Reid, 75, was using a rubber exercise band that snapped, hitting him hard and causing him to fall, a spokesman said. Mr. Reid was taken to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, according to a statement from his office." ...

     ... Politico UPDATE: "Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid was released from a Nevada hospital on Friday afternoon after he broke a number of ribs as well as bones in his face during a Thursday workout accident, his office said. The Nevada Democrat is expected to be back at the office on Tuesday, when the 114th Congress begins."

AP: "After nearly a week of searching for the victims of AirAsia Flight 8501, rescue teams battling monsoon rains had their most successful day yet on Friday, more than tripling the number of bodies pulled from the Java Sea, some still strapped to their seats. Of the 30 corpses recovered so far, 21 were found on Friday, many of them by a U.S. Navy ship, according to officials."

The Commentariat -- January 1, 2015

Internal links removed.

Dave Barry's Year in Review 2014, in the Washington Post. ...

... Here's Gail Collins' year-end quiz. Thanks to Unwashed for the link. CW: I decided not to take the quiz when I figured the answer to the first question must be "all of the above," & all of the above" was not among the possible answers. ...

     ... CW Update: Okay, I relented & took the quiz & got 'em all right (I usually miss at least one.) I still bet the best answer to No. 1 is "all of the above."

Rachel Abrams of the New York Times: "By Thursday, minimum wage increases will go into effect in 20 states ... as well as in the District of Columbia. A few other states will enact a pay bump later in the year.... The federal minimum wage has not been increased since 2007. President Obama has proposed raising it to $10.10 an hour, but that effort has stalled in Congress. Despite the popularity of minimum wage increases in many states, including those dominated by Republicans, and favorable attitudes toward higher minimum pay expressed in many public opinion polls, the federal proposals are unlikely to gain much traction in 2015, especially now that Republicans control the House and the Senate." ...

     ... CW: Thanks to Abrams for placing the blame where it belongs -- on Congressional Republicans.

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) announced Wednesday that he would commute the sentences of Maryland's four remaining death-row inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The decision comes nearly two years after the legislature repealed capital punishment in Maryland at O'Malley's urging, and three weeks before O'Malley will complete his second and final term in office. He is considering running for president in 2016." Gov. O'Malley's statement is here.

Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana political reporter and columnist for the past 20 years, first with The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and now The Advocate of Baton Rouge, recalled her first meeting with Mr. Scalise.

He [Steve Scalise] was explaining his politics and we were in this getting-to-know-each-other stage. He told me he was like David Duke without the baggage. -- Stephanie Grace, a Louisiana political reporter and columnist for the past 20 years..., recalling her first meeting with Scalise ...

... Jeremy Alford of the New York Times: "Two decades [after white supremacist* David Duke almost won Louisiana's gubernatorial election], much of his campaign has merged with the political mainstream here, and rather than a bad memory from the past, Mr. Duke remains a window into some of the murkier currents in the state's politics where Republicans have sought and eventually won Mr Duke's voters, while turning their back on him." CW: In reading the article, one is left with the impression -- I don't think it a misimpression -- that Louisiana Republicans have dropped racist rhetoric as a political strategy but not as an ideology.

     *Now the former KKK leader claims he's not a racist, just an anti-Semite, or rather a fierce opponent of "the ultimate racists, the Jewish, Zionist tribalists." Okay, then.

Jana Winter of the Intercept: "The hackers who infiltrated Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer servers have threatened to attack an American news media organization, according to an FBI bulletin obtained by The Intercept. The threat against the unnamed news organization by the Guardians of Peace, the hacker group that has claimed credit for the Sony attack, 'may extend to other such organizations in the near future,' according to a Joint Intelligence Bulletin of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security obtained by The Intercept." CW: No nude pictures of Chuck Todd, please. ...

     ... Matthew Keys of the Desk surmises the targeted news organization is CNN, "based on copies of messages posted to Pastebin on December 20. The messages have since been removed from Pastebin." Okay, nude pix of Wolf Blitzer. But don't publish any of his dippy random thoughts shared in e-mails. That would be too much.

Andy Greenberg of Wired: "The mysterious corner of the Internet known as the Dark Web is designed to defy all attempts to identify its inhabitants. But one group of researchers has attempted to shed new light on what those users are doing under the cover of anonymity. Their findings indicate that an overwhelming majority of their traffic is driven by the Dark Web's darkest activity: the sexual abuse of children.... The researchers' disturbing statistics could raise doubts among even the staunchest defenders of the Dark Web as a haven for privacy. 'Before we did this study, it was certainly my view that the dark net is a good thing,' says [Gareth] Owen[, who conducted the study]. 'But it's hampering the rights of children and creating a place where pedophiles can act with impunity.'"

Thomas Fuller & Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "Although in recent years there were glimmers of hope that aviation safety might be improving, the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501 into the Java Sea on Sunday has renewed concerns that Indonesia cannot keep up with the ever-growing popularity of air travel as incomes rise and low-cost carriers multiply."

Idaho, State of Denial. Terrence McCoy of the Washington Post: Veronica Rutledge, the woman whose two-year-old son shot her dead in an Idaho WalMart, had the gun zipped in a purse designed to carry a concealed weapon, a Christmas gift from her husband. The boy's paternal grandfather Terry Rudledge is "angry at the observers already using the accident as an excuse to grandstand on gun rights." ...

... Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: Rutledge was a nuclear research scientist.

New Realities/Old Biases. Benjamin Wallace-Wells of New York: "In the debates over policing that followed the tragedies of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and officers Ramos and Liu, race has assumed the central role, displacing crime. This has brought about a more direct confrontation with our remaining national sickness around race, but it has also surfaced an atavistic, tribal strain in our politics, reminiscent of the racialized fights of an earlier era.... Instead of a reasonable, technocratic decision to adjust policies of policing and punishment to a place where there is much less crime, [the usual suspects] saw the debate as a declaration of allegiances -- of whose side you were on." ...

... Al Baker & David Goodman of the New York Times: "A top [New York City police] union official flatly denied that there was a job action and pointed to the orders to double up and the need to police demonstrations as the main reasons [for a drastic reduction in arrests & ticketing since the murders of officers Rafael Ramos & Wenjian Liu].... Still, one senior police official who reviewed precinct-level data across the city said the decline had the signs of an organized effort and was continuing this week.... 'Ironically, this is the kind of thing we're calling for,' said Robert Gangi, the director of the Police Reform Organizing Project. 'It's officers deciding on their own to, in effect, scale back on the application of broken-windows policing.'"

Evan Ratliff of the New Yorker writes a devastating post mortem of Michael Grimm's "pugnacious career in government service." ...

... CW: Something I completely missed: Tim Mak of the National Post (September 2010): "Grimm told the interviewer on NY1's Inside City Hall that [his Democratic Congressional opponent Michael] Allegretti 'sleep[s] under a blanket of freedom that I helped provide.... You should just say thank you.' The original line, said by Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessep to Tom Cruise's Lieutenant Kaffee in the film, was that Kaffee 'sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I'd prefer you just said "thank you" and went on your way.' As if for comical effect, Grimm later told the interviewer that 'what you see in my life, you've seen in the movies.'"

Jennifer Schuessler of the New York Times: "The criticism of the film ['Selma''s] depiction of the president [Lyndon Johnson] has come not just from Johnson loyalists, but from some historians who said they admired other aspects of the film.... Diane McWhorter, the author of 'Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution,' said in an interview. '... with the portrayal of L.B.J., I kept thinking, "Not only is this not true, it's the opposite of the truth.'... 'They [the filmmakers] obviously wanted to create a villain, and really miss who Lyndon Johnson was," [Prof. Julian Zelizer] said." ...

... NEW. Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: In the film, Martin Luther King, Jr. says to President Johnson, "'Mr. President, in the South, there have been thousands of racially motivated murders. We need your help!' To which he gets a pat on the shoulder. 'Dr. King, this thing's just going to have to wait,' Johnson says. In real life, that December 1964 meeting happened -- but not that way, according to one who was there. 'It was not very tense at all. We were very much welcomed by President Johnson,' recalled former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, who attended the session as a young lieutenant to King. 'He and Martin never had that kind of confrontation.'... Young recalled the real-life meeting in an interview with The Post in a three-way phone conversation in which [film director Ava] DuVernay was also on the line. She declined to be interviewed on the record for this article.... Johnson's daughters, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, are furious about how their father is portrayed in the film, according to several sources." ...

... CW: The year Martin Luther King, Jr., was born -- 1929 -- LBJ was teaching Mexican-American children in a segregated school in Texas. He later said of that experience, "I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American." Johnson had an affinity for the civil rights movement even before MLK was in short pants. When he was veep, Johnson pushed a reluctant President Kennedy on civil rights issues, & he used Kennedy's assassination as a vehicle to get Congress to pass "Kennedy"'s Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson's own remarkable "Gettysburg Address" -- May 1963 -- went considerably further than Kennedy ever did on the issue of civil rights:

Presidential Election

The New Jeb! Tom Hamburger & Lindsey Layton of the Washington Post: "Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, moving closer to a possible presidential run, has resigned all of his corporate and nonprofit board memberships, including with his own education foundation, his office said late Wednesday night. He also resigned as a paid adviser to a for-profit education company that sells online courses to public university students in exchange for a share of their tuition payments.... The effort underscores the lengths to which Bush ... appears willing to go to avoid pitfalls that hurt the party in 2012." CW: Because everybody will be convinced that Divested 2015 Jeb is totally different from Money-Grubbing 2014 Jeb.

News Ledes

New York Post: "Two top executives at the New York State Thruway Authority submitted their resignations Wednesday -- ahead of a scathing investigative report on the agency's operations, sources said. Executive Director Tom Madison and his chief of staff, John Bryan, have been forced out, sources told The Post."

New York Times: "Egypt's highest appeals court on Thursday ordered a retrial for three imprisoned journalists from Al Jazeera's English-language network, in what appeared to be a belated acknowledgment of deep flaws in a case that focused international criticism on the country's government. But the decision, after a brief hearing Thursday morning, offered no guarantees that the journalists would be freed. Lawyers for the journalists said that the judge had declined requests to suspend their clients' sentences as they awaited a new trial, as a result extending their imprisonment, which has lasted for more than a year."

New York Times: "Edward Herrmann, a stalwart American actor of patrician bearing and earnest elocutionary style who became familiar across a spectrum of popular entertainment, from movies and television shows to plays, audiobooks and advertisements, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 71."