The Commentariat -- June 2, 2013

Peter Baker, et al., of the New York Times: "While the White House publicly backed [U.S. Attorney General Eric] Holder as he tried to smooth over the latest uproar amid new speculation about his future, some in the West Wing privately tell associates they wish he would step down, viewing him as politically maladroit. But the latest attacks may stiffen the administration's resistance in the near term to a change for fear of emboldening critics." ...

     ... CW: while the thrust of this long piece is a sort of post-modern "story about nothing," I'm struck by the assertions from friends or associates of Holder's that he is staying in the job for personal reasons. Cabinet members are supposed to serve the president. Instead, Holder wants to stay on to burnish his record, doesn't like private practice (which made him a multi-millionaire), wants to be AG when he attends an important commemoration, etc.

Cashing In. Juliet Eilperin & Tom Hamburger: "Keystone XL is just one of several upcoming administration decisions providing lucrative work for former Obama advisers on issues ranging from gun control to mining to legalized gambling. Just this week, three of Obama's top former political advisers -- Robert Gibbs, Jim Messina and David Plouffe -- were given five-figure checks to deliver remarks at a forum in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which is in the midst of a campaign to burnish its image in Washington."

Immigrants, Keep Out! (My Friends Excepted.) Josh Israel of Think Progress: "Some members of Congress are taking advantage of a loophole that allows them to keep a select few in the US, even as they oppose broader efforts to reform immigration.... Any U.S. Senator or Representative may file a 'private bill,' proposing relief for a person who has been denied asylum, but still wants to live in the United States.... [For instance,] Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA), [who] has proposed eliminating the constitutional guarantee that all humans born in the United States will be citizens and vocally opposed deferred action for DREAM Act-eligible young people whose parents brought them to the U.S. illegally," has filed a private bill for a Colombian family that was denied asylum.

Nice to see local papers putting Republican scandalmania in context. Paul Barton of the Tennessean: "Although they denounced the Obama Administration's recent seizure of reporters' records, some Tennessee members of Congress have supported even more powerful tools for snooping on the news media and other Americans, privacy advocates contend.... Among current members of the Tennessee congressional delegation, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander joined Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, and Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, in voting for the 2006 reauthorization of the Patriot Act, including its NSL provisions, ['National Security Letters,' [which] ... allow the FBI to order third parties to release information on their customers]." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

** Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times: "While the United States medical system is famous for drugs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and heroic care at the end of life, it turns out that a more significant factor in the nation's $2.7 trillion annual health care bill may not be the use of extraordinary services, but the high price tag of ordinary ones."

Richard Thaler, in the New York Times: "... an interesting new paper by Marianne Bertrand, Emir Kamenica and Jessica Pan, three economists who are colleagues of mine at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business..., found that traditional views of gender identity, particularly the view that the right and proper role of the husband is to make more money than the wife, are affecting choices of whom to marry, how much to work, and even whether to stay married." ...

... Stephanie Coontz, in the New York Times: "At all income levels, stay-at-home mothers report more sadness, anger, and episodes of diagnosed depression than their employed counterparts.... Back in the 1960s and '70s, a wife taking a job raised the risk of divorce. Today, however, a wife's employment lowers the couple's risk of divorce.... The United States... [has] fallen to last place among developed nations in supports for working families.... Shouldn't we stop debating whether we want mothers to work and start implementing the social policies and working conditions that will allow families to take full advantage of the benefits of women's employment and to minimize its stresses?"

A Catered Affair. CW: I missed Gail Collins yesterday, but she does a pretty nice job on Virginia's Gov. Bob McDonnell & its recidivist attorney general Ken Cuccinelli.

Patricia Mazzei of the Miami Herald: "Congressman Joe Garcia's chief of staff abruptly resigned Friday after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year's primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. Friday afternoon, Garcia said he had asked Jeffrey Garcia, no relation, for his resignation after the chief of staff -- also the congressman's top political strategist -- took responsibility for the plot." The Congressman is a Democrat.

Congressional Race

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog has a good post on why prognosticator Charlie Cook was indulging in wishful thinking when he moved the Massachusetts Senatorial race from "leans Democratic" to "toss-up."

Nuns on the Bus. Rebecca Leber of Think Progress: "The same group of Catholic nuns that traveled across the country to protest Republican budget cuts has now turned their attention to immigration reform. Led by Sister Simone Campbell, Nuns on the Bus kicks off their 15-state tour this week at Ellis Island. 'Immigration is at the heart of our Catholic faith,' Campbell said. 'It's about community. We need to welcome the stranger, and treat the stranger as yourself.'"

Huffington Post: "Rev. Dr. Guy Erwin was elected Bishop of the Southwest California Synod of the Evangelical Church in America (ELCA), [Lutheran] on May 31st, 2013 during the synod's assembly in Woodland Hills, California. He is the first openly gay clergy person elected to serve as one of the 65 synodical bishops in the denomination." Via Steve Benen.

James P. Marsh, Jr., a minister, explains in a Washington Post op-ed why he sits out the singing of "God Bless America" at ball games.

... This, also via Benen, is pretty good. Jane Lynch & Jordan Peele perform:

Is religion the kind of right can only be exercised by a natural person? Well, the question nearly answers itself. ... It's not a purely personal right. -- Kyle Duncan, attorney for Hobby Lobby, which is suing "for an exemption from part of the federal health care law that requires it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill ...

... If "corporations are people, my friend," then surely corporations can have religious preferences, too! Kristen Wyatt of the AP reports.

Calvin Trillin has been trying -- unsuccessfully -- for years to popularize the phrase "Sabbath gasbags" to describe Sunday morning talking heads. I see two problems with his ambition: (1) as he mentions, it is judgmental, so no self-respecting gasbag will so describe himself, & (2) the Sabbath is, um, Saturday (e.g., Italian sabato = sabbath = Saturday). Thanks to James S. for the link.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Three men who made careers on television as 'storm chasers,' videotaping the path of severe tornadoes, were among the nine people killed in Friday's storms and flash floods in Oklahoma. Tim Samaras, 55, who had founded the organization Twistex to track severe storms and record their effects, along with his partner Carl Young, 45, and Mr. Samaras's son Paul, 24, were all reported as victims of the tornado that struck El Reno, Okla., on Friday."

AP: "Firefighting teams in California and New Mexico are battling early season wildfires that have blackened thousands of acres and threatened homes and building, spurring numerous evacuations. Residents of more than 1,000 homes were ordered to leave as erratic winds pushed a wildfire closer to two foothill communities, where officials said five structures, possibly homes, were destroyed Saturday."

AP: "A violent weather system that claimed 12 lives in Oklahoma and Arkansas amid tornadoes and flash floods gave way to clearing skies as the storms trekked toward the East Coast on Sunday. A tornado killed nine people as it charged down Interstate 40 in Oklahoma City's western suburbs on Friday night, twisting billboards and scattering cars and tractor-trailers along a roadway clogged with rush-hour motorists leaving work or fleeing the storm's path. Flash floods in Arkansas killed three early Friday, including a sheriff attempting a water rescue."

AP: "Egypt's highest court ruled on Sunday that the nation's Islamist-dominated legislature and constitutional panel were illegally elected, dealing a serious blow to the legal basis of the Islamists' hold on power."

Reuters: "Shopkeepers and municipal workers began cleaning the streets of Istanbul and Ankara on Sunday after the fiercest anti-government demonstrations in years. Pockets of die-hard demonstrators lit bonfires and scuffled with police overnight but the streets were much quieter after two days of clashes in which almost a thousand people were arrested and hundreds were injured."

The Commentariat -- June 1, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The financial outlook for Medicare has improved because of a stronger economy and slower growth in health spending, and the financial condition of Social Security has not worsened, but is still unsustainable, the Obama administration said Friday."

** Sorry, Wingers. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman was not making weekly visits to the President's residence to powwow with Obama on which of you to audit. Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic digs into the White House records & discovers that Shulman made about ELEVEN, not 157, visits to the White House, & most of those meetings were with HUD deputies re: the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. If the records are correct, Shulman & Obama attended only THREE events together, one for a daily briefing, one for a bill signing (both of these were group events), & one for a departure photo op. Shuman was cleared to attend 157 meetings or so, but in most cases, his deputies went instead. CW: If you want to know the difference between journalism & the Daily Caller, here it is. ...

... OR, as Kevin Drum puts it, in which he describes as a "technically correct sense," "That Story You Knew Was Bullshit? Yeah, It Was Bullshit." ...

... Kim Dixon of Reuters: "The Treasury Department's inspector general will issue a new report in the coming weeks that could heap more bad news on the Internal Revenue Service, showing results of an audit of the IRS use of taxpayer-funded conferences, a Republican critic of the agency said on Friday.... [A] congressional aide said the hearing would be about 'an upcoming audit uncovering information about excessive spending at IRS conferences.'"

Dana Milbank: "Eric Holder is in a mess of his own making."

Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama called on Congress to pass legislation to prevent an increase in student loan rates, picking a fight with Republicans on what has previously been a winning issue for the White House. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Obama warned that higher student loan interest rates will restrict access to higher education and argued legislation passed by the Republican House could leave students paying more." Here's the video:

... Greg Sargent on Congressional Republicans will use the "scandals" to avoid actual policy discussions -- by claiming, for instance, that Obama had only one reason to highlight what they call "insignificant" differences between his & the House's proposals to extend low student-loan rates: to create a "distraction" from the scandals.

Pemy Levy, in the International Business Times, on why Sen. Chuck Grassley's (RDopey-Iowa) bill to reduce the number of judges in the D.C. Circuit Court is bullshit (in a technically correct sense). Via Jonathan Bernstein. ...

... New York Times Editors: "Senator Grassley insists that the District of Columbia court 'is the least busy circuit in the country.' But that is simply not true,* if measured by the number of pending appeals divided by the number of active judges. By that count, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, encompassing seven states in the Midwest, including Iowa, has the lowest workload of any circuit. That was apparently of no concern to the senator when he recently helped speed through the confirmation of Jane Kelly to the court. Arguing about the caseload, however, misses the point. As Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. explained in a 2005 lecture -- 'What Makes the D.C. Circuit Different?' -- the court has a 'special responsibility to review legal challenges to the conduct of the national government.'"

* Another phrase for "bullshit."

... Paul Waldman of the American Prospect on President Obama's judicial appointments.

Matthew Duss in the American Prospect: "The 'war on terror' was pretty good for conservatives. They won't give it up without a fight.... It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the sharp reaction to Obama's shift away from a 'global war' framing has more to do with fear of the loss of advantageous rhetorical ground than it does with any genuine, substantive difference in threat analysis."

** Joe Nocera on the force-feeding of Guantanamo prisoners. Not an easy read.

Peter Finn & Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post have the latest version of the shooting death of Ibragim Todashev. CW: The weapon Todashev reputedly used to attack the FBI agent has gone from being a knife to a metal pole to a broomstick to "part of a broomstick." My guess it that it will whittle down to the pencil the agent gave Todashev to write his confession.

Dan Morse & Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Naval Academy is investigating allegations that three of the school's football players sexually assaulted a female midshipman at a party last year -- an explosive allegation that surfaced Friday as the military faces increased scrutiny over whether it pursues such cases aggressively enough."

Working mom & Fox "News" anchor Megyn Kelly calls out Erick Erickson & Lou Dobbs for their misogynistic worldview. (See yesterday's Commentariat for context.) Really worth watching:

     ... James Poniewozik, Time's media critic, writes a related -- & fairly funny -- piece.

Right Wing World

Guess I'll Buy Me a Family-Sized Box o' Cheerios. Cord Jefferson of Gawker: "A nice Cheerios advertisement whose only discernible difference from other Cheerios commercials is that it depicts an interracial family was forced to disable its YouTube comments section [Thursday] after it became inundated with virulent racism."

For those of you already missing Michele Bachmann, never fear. There are more where she comes from....

... David Roberts of Raw Story: "In a video posted by the Far North Dallas Tea Party on Thursday, Texas Eagle Forum President and former Chairman of the Texas Republican Party Cathie Adams presented evidence that [anti-tax lobbyist Grover] Norquist was part of a 'stealth jihad' in the United States. Adams said that Norquist, who is married to a Muslim woman, was 'trouble with a capital "T" because 'he's showing signs of converting to Islam himself. As you see, he has a beard,' she pointed out.... Adams went on to suggest that CIA Director John Brennan could also be a secret Muslim. 'Where is the outcry?' she asked. 'Thank God that Ted Cruz is now in the United States Senate!'" CW: I guess Tailgunner Ted has in his hand a list of 205 names of Muslims who have infiltrated the government. ... AND, of course ...

The Louis Gohmert Weekly Reader

McCain Complicit in Benghazi Attack

... if it had not been for Sen. McCain and President Obama being for what we knew at the time included al-Qaeda in the rebel forces then we would still have a U.S. ambassador and three others alive today because Benghazi would not have happened. -- Louis Gohmert

Congressional Races

A Fundraising Letter that Might Be a Mistake. Emily Schultheis of Politico: Mitch McConnell sent out a fundraising letter for Gabriel Gomez, the GOP candidate for Senate in a Massachusetts special election, reminding potential contributors that a Gomez win was crucial to, well, making McConnell the majority leader. "The solicitation from a top Washington Republican -- and symbol, at least among the left, of congressional dysfunction -- is somewhat surprising given Gomez's mandate to win in a predominantly Democratic state."

Eric Black of MinnPost: Democrat Jim Graves, who came close to beating Michele Bachmann in 2012 & was planning to run her again (where polls showed him ahead), has dropped his candidacy now that Bachmann has said she won't run again. CW: this is a heavily-Republican district, so more than likely Republicans will retain the seat.

When Politico does a better analysis than the New York Times. (No, hell has not frozen over.):

     ... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: Republicans are weighing whether to attack President Obama in 2014, a decision made more difficult by the fact that he has a 79% likeability rating. ...

     ... Oh, & there's this, Jeremy. Ben White of Politico: "The 2014 midterm election is shaping up as something the United States has not seen in nearly a decade: a campaign run in a strengthening economy with deficits on the decline.... The altered terrain, if it holds, could benefit Democrats and challenge Republicans...."

Local News

Peter Applebome & Elizabeth Maker of the New York Times on the police shooting last week in Ridgefield, Connecticut, of businessman & philanthropist John Valluzzo.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The United States and China have agreed to hold regular, high-level talks on how to set standards of behavior for cybersecurity and commercial espionage, the first diplomatic effort to defuse the tensions over what the United States says is a daily barrage of computer break-ins and theft of corporate and government secrets."

New York Times: "Jean Stapleton, the character actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive -- up to a point -- housewife on the groundbreaking series 'All in the Family' made her, along with Mary Tyler Moore and Bea Arthur, not only one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s but a symbol of emergent feminism in American popular culture, died on Friday at her home in New York City. She was 90."

AP: "Emergency officials were preparing to survey tornado damage Saturday morning following the second major fatal storm to strike the Oklahoma City metropolitan area in several days.... Five people were reported killed, including a mother and baby found in a vehicle."

AP: Speaking at a security conference in Singapore, "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered a two-pronged message to Beijing -- holding out hope for a slowly improving military relationship with the Asian giant while issuing a stern warning on cyberattacks coming from that country. But he was met with immediate skepticism from the Chinese delegation in the audience, who questioned America's role in the Pacific." Washington Post story here.

AP: "Turkey's government on Saturday appeared to be trying to placate demonstrators on the second day of anti-government demonstrations, even as police let off more tear gas and pressurized water against protesters trying to reach a main square in Istanbul or the Parliament building in the capital, Ankara."

AP: "The United Nations mission to Iraq says more than 1,000 people were killed in violence in the country last month -- the highest monthly death toll in years. The figures released Saturday showed 1,045 civilians and security personnel killed in May. That surpassed the 712 killed in April, the deadliest month recorded since June 2008. More than half of those killed were in the capital district of Baghdad."

The Commentariat -- May 31, 2013

AP: "College students are joining President Barack Obama at the White House as he calls on Congress to keep federally subsidized student loan rates from doubling on July 1. Friday's White House event marks the beginning of a public campaign by Obama to temporarily extend current rates or to find a long-term compromise that avoids the scheduled rate increase."

Dan Donahue, et al., of CNN: "Officials intercepted Thursday a letter addressed to President Barack Obama that was similar to threatening letters sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a gun-control group he founded. (See also Thursday's News Ledes.) 'The law enforcement people I've spoken to say that the letters are virtually identical," said Congressman Peter King, R-New York.... Initial testing on the two letters sent to Bloomberg and his group came back positive for ricin, which has become the deadly poison of choice lately for mail attackers. A source tells CNN that those letters contained the message:

You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die.

... CW: You can thank the NRA & its Congressional (& Supreme Court) enablers for inciting this kind of dangerous crackpot. This was definitely not what the Founders had in mind.

... Update. Aaron Katersky, et al., of ABC News: "FBI agents are questioning a man they consider a person of interest in the mailing of letters possibly laced with the poison ricin to public officials, according to a source familiar with the case. The agents are questioning a man from New Boston, Texas, whose wife called authorities after she noticed strange material in her refrigerator, and noticed computer searches for ricin, the source said."

Michael Schmidt & Ellen Berry of the New York Times: "A man who was killed in Orlando, Fla., last week while being questioned by an F.B.I. agent about his relationship with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, had knocked the agent to the ground with a table and ran at him with a metal pole [or maybe a broomstick!] before being shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the matter." ...

... Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic: "Law enforcement officials are still trying to explain how a supposedly peaceful interview with an important witness in the Boston bombing case turned into a deadly shooting, but as usual, every new attempt to explain the death of Ibragim Todashev only raises more troubling questions. After originally accusing the suspect and potential murderous accomplice of Boston bomber Tamleran Tsarnaev of attacking an FBI agent with a knife, and then walking back that claim entirely, an new anonymous source says Todashev, may have injured the agent with a table and a metal pole. Or maybe not.... The new version of event also doesn't answer the question of why the FBI agent immediately began firing his weapon or why the other police officers in the room failed to intervene. Which leaves us right back where we started: A confusing scene, an apparently unnecessary death, and a lot of unanswered questions. And on top of all that, the FBI lost what could have been one of their most valuable sources of information on what the Tsarnaev brothers were really up to before the carried their attack."

Also from Bennett: "A new report by the Congressional Budget Office finds that just ten popular tax breaks eat up more of the federal budget than Medicare, Social Security, or defense spending. And -- prepare to be shocked -- the benefits skew overwhelmingly to the rich." ...

... Paul Krugman extols the many virtues of food stamps. "So what do Republicans want to do with this paragon of programs? First, shrink it; then, effectively kill it.... Why must food stamps be cut? We can't afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations -- and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years, [a nice irony since the Ag department administers both farm subsidies & food stamps].... The supposed rationale: We're becoming a nation of takers, and doing stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care are just creating a culture of dependency -- and that culture of dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis.... This is a time to get really, really angry."

Tim Egan: "Today, many Republicans, cornered into rethinking their absolutist position by the nation's inevitable demographics, still oppose a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people who have been in the United States for years. They want storybook immigrants, nothing less -- a blanket fantasy. Of course, there are those who waited in line, and had the money or connections or smarts to come into the country clean. But so many others, who are productive, proud Americans in every way but their citizenship papers, started their new lives in the shadows."

Linda Greenhouse has a good overview of how all three branches of government have thwarted the closing of the prison at Guantanamo.

Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post: "Media executives and editors are divided over whether to attend an off-the-record meeting this week with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss guidelines for dealing with journalists in leak investigations, an issue that's gotten a lot of attention amid controversies involving the AP and Fox News. Here's how it looks so far if any meeting with Holder remains off-the-record:

"Not going: New York Times, AP, Huffington Post, McClatchy, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, Reuters, and NBC News.

"Going: The Washington Post, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times/ Chicago Tribune, ABC News, Bloomberg, USA Today." ...

... Jonathan Easley & Jordy Yager of the Hill: "The boycotting news outlets said that the Department of Justice's insistence that the media groups not report on the content of the discussions violated their journalistic guidelines or was a conflict of interest." ...

... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "A Justice Department official confirmed to the Erik Wemple Blog that two meetings of Washington bureau chiefs on Thursday and Friday would be off the record. Another round of discussions will pull in media executives and counsel under the same off-the-record ground rules. What it all means is that the folks in attendance can't emerge from the meeting and write accounts of the meeting's ins and outs." ...

... CW: when the Justice Department keeps doing stuff wrong, one is inclined to invoke the adage, "A fish rots from the head down." ...

... CW: Most of the U.S. attorneys general whose names I can remember were horrible or fairly horrible: John Mitchell, Ed Meese, Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales. Nick Gillespie of the Daily Beast explains why. ...

... Dylan Byers of Politico on Walter Pincus's column on the press's overheated reactions to the AP & James Rosen cases. Pincus's controversial column (also linked May 29) is here.

E. J. Dionne: "In fact, Bachmannism is far from finished. The Minnesota right-winger deserves to be memorialized with an 'ism' because she perfected a tactic well-suited to the current media environment: continually toss out outlandish, baseless charges, and, eventually, some of them will enter the mainstream media.... Her video provided choice examples of the Bachmann method and the extent to which it is now being emulated by others." ...

... The smart person's Michele Bachmann is of course Ted Cruz. Greg Sargent demonstrates how deftly and effectively Cruz manages to use unfounded suppositions & unrelated events to deftly "explain" his outlandish positions. See also my response in today's Comments to OldStone50. Cruz's twisting of facts is of the same ilk as OldStone50's. Cruz, of course, knows what he's doing.

... Henry Decker of the National Memo: "According to a new study from the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, Republicans are significantly more likely to lie than Democrats -- and the gap is widening as President Barack Obama spends more time in office.... Notably, the credibility gap seems to be growing with time. In May, as Republicans have obsessively tried to tie the president to a series of scandals, their percentage of false claims has risen to 60 percent." CW: the good news for Republicans? Since the study is slightly sciencey, they can just pretend it's a hoax. OR THIS ...

... Billy Hallowell of Glenn Beck's the Blaze says the results may reflect PolitiFact's bias against Republicans. ...

... Tim Graham at NewsBusters agrees with Hallowell. ...

... CW: Oh, I'm being so unfair. It turns out Red State's Erick Erickson is totally into science:

I'm so used to liberals telling conservatives that they're anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it's not antithesis, or it's not competing, it's a complimentary role. -- Erick Erickson ...

... Amanda Marcotte, in Slate: "Erickson must have this nifty scientific 'fact' by studying the animals in the well-known academic text, The Berenstain Bears, which clearly shows Papa Bear going out and earning the money while Mama Bear stays at home and cooks the food for the cubs. Of course, in the actual natural world, bears don't make money -- plus there's a lot of diversity in how animals raise their young." Please read the whole piece, in which Marcotte takes on the all-male panel Fox "News" chose to discuss the news that in 40% of families with children, the female is the primary breadwinner. ...

... Steve Benen: "... the key takeaway from the all-male Fox panel Erickson participated in: men, they said, should be economically dominant in American society. To disagree is in Fox's Doug Schoen's words to invite 'catastrophic' consequences that 'could undermine our social order.'"

Local News

Steve Eder of the New York Times: "New details about the vetting process [of Rutgers' new athletic director Julie Hermann], which included a 28-member search committee that even its own members found unwieldy, raise serious questions about the thoroughness of the search, and how much university officials, including Dr. [Robert] Barchi, [the university president,] knew about their high-profile hire. Interviews with people close to the search process, as well as internal e-mails, show that it felt rushed and secretive, leaving some elected officials, major donors and search committee members deeply uneasy with how Rutgers responded to one of the biggest scandals in its history." ...

... AND Ted Sherman & Jenna Portnoy of the Star-Ledger: "Rutgers University, beset by the ongoing scandal in its athletics program, got more bad news yesterday from Wall Street, which raised questions about the school's complex merger with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Moody's Investor Service downgraded Rutgers' bond rating, saying it had concerns about the impact of the merger on the university's finances."

News Ledes

Houston Chronicle: "Four firefighters died in a five-alarm blaze that broke out at a restaurant Friday afternoon along U.S. 59 in southwest Houston, according to the mayor's office. An arson explosive task force is now involved in the investigation at the scene of the fire, said Franceska Perot, spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives."

New York Times: "Japan and South Korea suspended some imports of American wheat, and the European Union urged its 27 nations to increase testing, after the United States government disclosed this week that a strain of genetically engineered wheat that was never approved for sale was found growing in an Oregon field. Although none of the wheat, developed by Monsanto Company, was found in any grain shipments -- and the Department of Agriculture said there would be no health risk if any was shipped -- governments in Asia and Europe acted quickly to limit their risk."

Reuters: "Turkish police fired tear gas and water cannon on Friday at demonstrators in central Istanbul, wounding scores of people and prompting rallies in other cities in the fiercest anti-government protests in years."

AP: " After years of heartbreakingly close calls, Arvind Mahankali conquered his nemesis, German, to become the champion speller in the English language. The 13-year-old from Bayside Hills, N.Y., correctly spelled 'knaidel,' a word for a small mass of leavened dough, to win the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee< on Thursday night. The bee tested brain power, composure and, for the first time, knowledge of vocabulary."

AP: "Russia's MiG aircraft maker said Friday it plans to sign a new agreement to ship at least 10 fighter jets to Syria, a move that comes amid international criticism of earlier Russian weapons deals with Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime."

Bloomberg: "Consumer spending in the U.S. unexpectedly declined in April as incomes stagnated, putting the biggest part of the U.S. economy on shaky ground at the start of the second quarter."

Reuters: "Unemployment has reached a new high in the euro zone and inflation remains well below the European Central Bank's target, stepping up pressure on EU leaders and the ECB for action to revive the bloc's sickly economy. Joblessness in the 17-nation currency area rose to 12.2 percent in April, EU statistics office Eurostat said on Friday, marking a new record since the data series began in 1995."

Missed this: Reuters: "A Colorado judge on Wednesday rejected challenges to the state's insanity defense statute and death penalty law by accused movie theater gunman