How can Kristol even think to say that? What really happened at Gettysburg? An explanatory from
the Atlantic (great read):
Hundreds of black veterans made the journey to Gettysburg to mark the 50th anniversary. They greeted the reenacted rebel yells with cold silence. And, like many of their white comrades in the Grand Army of the Republic, they distinguished between forgiving and forgetting. A wave of recent scholarship has rediscovered the lingering idealism harbored by many Union veterans, both black and white. They regarded secession as treason, and emancipation as a noble cause. The Age reported that the "mock lovefest at the Gettysburg celebration did not conceal the skeleton in the national closet. Negro Grand Army men who attended the celebration have told us that there were constant disputes and rows among the Union and Confederate veterans."
NY Times:
Federal and local authorities have found that the man charged in the shooting deaths of nine black people in a South Carolina church last month had been in contact with white supremacists online, although it does not appear they encouraged him to carry out the massacre, according to law enforcement officials.
Investigators uncovered that information as they have pieced together where the gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, received his inspiration, and whether anyone else should face charges in connection with the murders.
“To understand what happened, you have to understand who he talked to and who may have known what,” said one law enforcement official briefed on the case. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
So far, the authorities have determined that people around Mr. Roof were aware that he held some racist beliefs.
More politics and policy below the fold.
WaPo:
James Jeffrey Bradstreet’s life was full of controversy. To thousands of supporters, he was a savior: a physician who claimed vaccines caused autism and promoted radical procedures to treat those afflicted, including his own son.
To many others, however, he was a crackpot: a man who, despite his medical license, ignored science and championed dangerous, discredited and occasionally deadly treatments.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that Bradstreet’s death is proving equally divisive.
On the afternoon of June 19, a fisherman spotted Bradstreet’s lifeless body lying in the Broad River in the tiny town of Chimney Rock, N.C. He had a gunshot wound to his chest, authorities said. A gun was found in the water nearby.
That’s about all that everyone can agree on.
Like his research, Bradstreet’s death has become a Rorschach test in which his supporters see a conspiracy, while most everyone else — including law enforcement — sees a slow downward slide towards suicide.
Politico:
Bernie Sanders is winning a third of the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to the latest polls. Nearly 10,000 people showed up at his Wisconsin rally this week. Roughly 250,000 small donors have contributed to his campaign.
At Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn HQ, it’s as if they’ve never heard of him.
The Clinton campaign is reading straight from the front-runner’s playbook when dealing with the socialist Vermont senator. Her staff insists it’s taking Sanders’ polling bump seriously while showing no signs of changing its long-charted course. There are no new plans to attack Sanders, no alterations of the forthcoming policy roll-outs that will dot the summer calendar, and no expected leftward sprints to match him policy-for-policy. She doesn’t even mention his name on the campaign trail.
Paul Waldman:
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are making the race a lot more interesting
Two developments today force us to consider the place of the more unusual candidates in the presidential race, the ones who probably won’t end up being their party’s nominee but whose support tells us something meaningful about where the Democratic and Republican parties are and where they might be going. The first is that, according to the Huffington Post Pollster poll average, Donald Trump now sits atop the GOP field with an average of 13.6 percent support, nosing out Jeb Bush at 13.3. Yes, that difference is essentially meaningless, and yes, those are very small numbers to begin with. But it’s still alarming to see Trump’s name at the top of the list, to say the least.
The second development is the undeniable and growing support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Yesterday Sanders held a rally in Madison, Wis., that drew approximately 10,000 supporters, the biggest crowd any candidate has had for any event in the campaign so far. This follows on other rallies that have drawn thousands to hear Sanders, at a time when Republican candidates are speaking before audiences that often number in the dozens (not to mention that time Rick Santorum held an event that drew exactly one attendee).
Speaking of Trump, it's hard to top this
New Yorker Trump piece from 1997:
A securities analyst who has studied Trump’s peregrinations for many years believes, “Deep down, he wants to be Madonna.” In other words, to ask how the gods could have permitted Trump’s resurrection is to mistake profound superficiality for profundity, performance art for serious drama. A prime example of superficiality at its most rewarding: the Trump International Hotel & Tower, a fifty-two-story hotel-condominium conversion of the former Gulf & Western Building, on Columbus Circle, which opened last January. The Trump name on the skyscraper belies the fact that his ownership is limited to his penthouse apartment and a stake in the hotel’s restaurant and garage, which he received as part of his development fee. During the grand-opening ceremonies, however, such details seemed not to matter as he gave this assessment: “One of the great buildings anywhere in New York, anywhere in the world.”
Jill Lawrence with a story about Bernie you might not know:
Just before Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders excoriated Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s record to a cheering crowd of 10,000 at a Madison arena on Wednesday night, Walker’s staff tweeted: “Thousands of veterans suffered in VA scandal yet @BernieSanders downplayed it & attacked those who exposed it.”
The tweet, to say the least, was misleading. The Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, has long supported our veterans—even if he doesn’t support all our wars. And in 2014 he accomplished the last thing you might expect from a candidate whose campaign brand is firebrand: He negotiated a major bipartisan agreement with two conservatives to deal with the veterans health care crisis.
Canada doesn't want any part of Jim Carrey either:
The void behind Jim Carrey’s rant: Arguments against California vaccine law have nothing to do with science