The Nation:
A piece today in Bloomberg View headlined the fight between the Israel lobby and the Republican über-hawks as "Aipac vs. Pro-Israel Republicans." But it would more accurately be called "AIPAC vs. the Neocons." And we shouldn't forget for a moment that the bankrupt ideology of neoconservatism is behind these efforts; the line between leading neocons and this obstructionism is too easy to trace—and too laughably reminiscent of their misadventure in Iraq.
[Sen. Tom] Cotton, after all, is a protégé of neoconservative don Bill Kristol. And Kristol has come out firing at the Corker-Cardin compromise. In a Weekly Standard editorial later distributed by his attack-dog letterhead group the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), Kristol labeled the compromise bill "at worst misleading, at best toothless," denouncing Corker and "the leading establishment pro-Israel lobbying group"—AIPAC—for their support of it.
Shaun King had a lot to say on twitter about on Rekia Boyd. Read it
here.
30. The injustice that States Attorney Anita Alvarez did to the family of #RekiaBoyd is unfathomable, tragic, infuriating, and criminal.
— @ShaunKing
Politico:
It’s not hard to get political reporters started on how pols and their flaks deny the press access, feed us talking points and, in some cases, flat-out lie. But every story has two sides (or a few), so in fair journalistic tradition, we asked a handful of outspoken politicians to critique the political press corps and tell us exactly what their beef is with the fourth estate. Does the relationship between politicians and the press need to be so confrontational? And when are reporters in the wrong? Here are four takes, from politicians who know the media’s spotlight well.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Media Matters:
NBC News has conceded that the flimsy anti-Clinton allegations contained in a New York Times report fail to deliver on the hype surrounding them. The Times report was based in part on a chapter from discredited conservative author Peter Schweizer's Clinton Cash, and a series of facts surrounding the story's allegations supports NBC's negative conclusion.
The Times story suggested that donations to the Clinton Foundation may have influenced Hillary Clinton's State Department, when they signed off on the sale of Uranium One, a Canadian company with uranium mining claims in the U.S., to Rosatom, a Russian atomic energy agency. Alleging that individuals who had previously donated to the Clinton Foundation may have benefited from the deal, the Times' reporting has been used as the springboard for commentary hyping the supposed connection, despite the lack of evidence.
But the April 24 First Read column on NBCNews.com admits, "upon reflection, that Times article doesn't hold up that well 24 hours after its publication."
Matt Taibbi:
Reading between the lines, the children of older Republicans no longer agree with their nutbar parents on these key social issues. These young Republicans will probably change the party platform to reflect that split sometime in the near future.
In other words, what Jindal describes as "left-wing radicalism" is actually the future consensus belief system of his own Republican party. As Ambrose Bierce once put it, radicalism is just "the conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today."
Huffington Post:
Presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have the two highest rates of missed votes in the Senate, a Huffington Post analysis shows.
Cruz has the highest percentage of total missed votes with 10.4 percent, while Rubio comes in second with 8.2 percent, according to HuffPost's analysis of data compiled by GovTrack. The numbers encompass the full Senate careers of each currently serving member and are accurate as of Friday morning.
Because why shouldn't narcissistic freshman Senators miss votes? They're important people running on their accomplishments, after all.
Vox:
The most recent poll of Iowa voters that asked about the issue found that 47 percent of the state's Republicans like the Common Core. A poll from Bloomberg and the Des Moines Register, also from February, found that 30 percent of likely caucus-goers say Bush's stances on Common Core and immigration are deal-breakers but didn't break out which issue would cause the most grief. Just 7 percent of people in the same poll described the Common Core as an important issue.
In New Hampshire, where the state legislature just abandoned efforts to get rid of Common Core, it's even less of a deal-breaker: 20 percent, according to a Bloomberg poll. In both states, the implementation of the standards has been relatively drama-free.
This doesn't mean the Common Core won't be an issue for Bush in the early primary states. It just means it will be much more of a problem in states where Common Core has been a major source of political drama.
In New York, a January poll found 60 percent of Republicans want the standards to be stopped. South Carolina has abandoned them entirely. On Common Core, Iowa and New Hampshire aren't bellwethers — they're unusually friendly enclaves.