podesta_email_01282.txt

podesta-emails 46,247 words email
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					*H4A Press Clips*

*May 16-17, 2015*

SUMMARY OF THIS WEEKEND’S NEWS

Hillary Clinton announced she will spend next week in Iowa and New
Hampshire to share her ideas about her plans to make pro-small business
policies a focus of her presidential bid.

George Stephanopoulos, is under scrutiny for his previously undisclosed
$75,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation. NBC Universal, News
Corporation, Turner Broadcasting and Thomson Reuters are among more than a
dozen media organizations that have made charitable contributions to the
Clinton Foundation in recent years, the foundation's records show. The
 donations, which range from the low-thousands to the millions, provide a
clear picture of the media industry's ties to the Clinton Foundation.

Political reactions to George Stephanopoulos's admission of donations to
the Clinton Foundation continued on Friday, with questions centering on
whether the former Clinton strategist was fit to moderate presidential
debates. Most 2016 Democratic presidential hopefuls shrugged off questions
about a possible conflict of interest after Stephanopoulos revealed he
donated $75,000 to the foundation from 2012 to 2014.

SUMMARY OF THIS WEEKEND’S
NEWS.................................................. 1

THIS WEEKEND’S KEY
STORIES............................................................. 3

*Hillary Clinton to Pitch Herself as Candidate for Small Businesses* //
Bloomberg // Jennifer Epstein - May 15, 2015 3

*Clinton Foundation donors include dozens of media organizations,
individuals* // Politico // Josh Gerstein, Tarini Parti, Hadas Gold, and
Dylan Byers - May 15,
2015.................................................................................................................
5

*Most Dems shrug off Stephanopoulos's disclosure of Clinton donations* //
CNN // Dan Merica - May 15, 2015 7

*The Right Baits the Left to Turn Against Hillary Clinton* // NYT // Ashley
Parker and Nicholas Corasanti – May 16, 2015 9

*House Votes to Block Undocumented Youth From Serving in the Military* //
Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur - May 15, 2015 12

SOCIAL
MEDIA........................................................................................
13

*Zeke Miller (5/15/15, 10:48 AM)* From @Reince's prepared remarks to @GOP
spring meeting: hits Clinton speeches: "It's not about paying the bills,
it's about paying
Bill"..................................................................................................................
13

*Zeke Miller (5/15/15, 10:54 AM)* @Reince to say: "At the [Clinton]
Foundation, the Clinton family is both the benefactor and the
beneficiary" 13

*Jennifer Epstein (5/15/15, 4:00 PM)* Bill and Hillary Clinton earned at
least $30 million in 2014-15: $25 million in paid speeches, $5 million+
from Hard
Choices...........................................................................................................................
13

*Maggie Haberman (5/15/15, 4:08 PM)* Clintons made more than $25 mill on
over 100 speeches in 16 months *http://nyti.ms/1PoL7Dq
<http://nyti.ms/1PoL7Dq>* 13

*Adam Weinstein (5/16/15, 10:59 AM)* buried lede: rubio's top donor gave
rubio's wife a $54K part-time job to run a charity that gave away only
$250.................................................................................................................................................
13

--..............................................................................................................................................
13

*Snapchat is going to be huge in 2016 — and regulators have no idea how to
handle it* // Fusion // Brett Logiurato – May 6, 2015 13

HRC NATIONAL
COVERAGE...................................................................
15

*SNL’s Hillary Clinton Looks Forward to Relaxing Summer Full of Ruthless
Campaigning* // Mediate // Tina Nyguen – May 17, 2015 15

*Reid: O’Malley Who? Leader Dismisses All but Clinton* // Roll Call //
Steven Dennis - May 15, 2015 16

*Why Hillary Needs Obama* // Cook Political // Amy Walter - May 13,
2015.......................... 16

*Hillary touts Beyonce's support* // The Hill // Jesse Byrnes - May 15,
2015........................... 17

*Republicans criticize Clinton for not talking to press* // Salon //
Associated Press - May 16, 2015 17

*The Right Aims at Democrats on Social Media to Hit Hillary Clinton* // NYT
// Ashley Parker and Nick Corasaniti - May 16, 2015 18

*Meet the guy who was protected Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia page for almost
a decade* // Business Insider // Maxwell Tani - May 15, 2015 20

*Hillary Clinton’s hypocritical bid to settle a grudge and smash free
speech* // NY Post // Post Editorial Board - May 15, 2015 22

*Hillary Clinton's brothers could cause major problems for her presidential
campaign* // Business Insider // Colin Campbell and Hunter Walker - May 16,
2015...........................................................................................................................
23

*Michael Morell: Foreign governments have Hillary's email* // Politico //
Adam B. Lerner - May 15, 2015 27

*Allies Remember a Driven Hillary Rodham During '72 Texas Visit* // Texas
Tribune // Abby Livingston - May 16, 2015 27

*Clintons Earned $30 Million in 16 Months, Report Shows* // NYT // Maggie
Haberman and Steve Eder - May 15, 2015 32

*Bill and Hillary Clinton Earned Over $25 Million In Speaking Fees Since
January 2014* // Vanity Fair // Melissa Locker - May 16, 2015 33

*Hillary Clinton personally took money from companies that sought to
influence her* // Vox // Jonathan Allen - May 16, 2015 34

*George Stephanopoulos Makes a Passive-Aggressive Non-Apology for Clinton
Donation* // The Daily Beast // Lloyd Grove - May 15, 2015 36

*Wolff: Stephanopoulos donation furor overdone* // USA Today // Michael
Wolff - May 15 2015 37

*ABC News Disputes RNC Chair's Implication The Party Can Pick Its Own
Debate Moderators* // Huffington Post // Michael Calderone - May 15,
2015................................................................................................................................................
39

*Trump: Clintons 'kiss my a--' for donations* // The Hill // Mark Hensch -
May 15, 2015....... 41

*Sharon Native Tapped As Clinton’s Top Aide* // The Vermont Standard //
Katy Savage - May 15, 2015 42

*What a Presidential Candidate's Financial Disclosures Do, and Do Not,
Reveal* // Bloomberg // Richard Rubin - May 15, 2015 44

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE....................................... 47

*Martin O'Malley Tells Supporters He's Inclined to Run For President* //
Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur - May 15, 2015 47

*Martin O'Malley schedules presidential fundraiser for eve of his big
announcement* // Business Insider // Colin Campbell - May 15,
2015 48

*As he prepares to launch, O’Malley faces a steep path to nomination* //
WaPo // John Wagner – May 16,2015 49

*Presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley makes crucial Iowa hire* // The
Guardian // Ben Jacobs - May 15, 2015 52

*After Boston bombings verdict, O’Malley reaffirms opposition to death
penalty* // WaPo // John Wagner - May 15, 2015 53

*As he prepares to launch, O’Malley faces a steep path to nomination* //
WaPo // John Wagner - May 16, 2015 53

*How Bernie Sanders won the talk radio primary* // MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald
– May 16, 2015 56

GOP.........................................................................................................
59

*When is a campaign not a campaign? When it's a Super Pac* // The Guardian
// Ben Jacobs – May 17, 2015 59

*At Iowa dinner, Rand Paul hits Jeb Bush on Iraq as Lindsey Graham returns
the favor* // Politico // Eli Stokols - May 16, 2015 61

*Rick Perry to announce presidential run June 4 in Dallas* // Trail Blazers
Blog // Christy Hoppe - May 15, 2015 62

*Amtrak’s biggest challenge: The Hudson River Tunnels, and Chris Christie*
// Yahoo // Jon Ward - May 15, 2015 63

*Inside Marco Rubio’s stumble on immigration and what it says about his
ability to lead* // Yahoo News // Jon Ward and Andrew Romano - May 15,
2015........................................................................................................................................
67

*With Another Bush Eyeing White House, Family Money Machine Springs to Life*
// WSJ // Beth Reinhard and Christopher S. Stewart - May 15,
2015................................................................................................................................................
78

*Bush compares Clinton's avoidance of questions to 'The Simpsons'* // Des
Moines Register // Jennifer Jacobs - May 16, 2015 80

*Like Hillary Clinton in ’08, Jeb Bush Is Haunted by Specter of Iraq War*
// NYT // Jonathan Martin - May 15, 2015 82

*Five Ways That Jeb Bush Makes it Hard for Himself* // New Yorker // Amy
Davidson - May 16, 2015 85

TOP
NEWS...............................................................................................
87

DOMESTIC............................................................................................
87

*Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Given Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing* // NYT
// Katharine Q. Seelye - May 15, 2015 87

*Republican Party to Vote in Support of Religious-Freedom Laws* // TIME //
Zeke J. Miller - May 15, 2015 90

*FBI Investigating Possible Links Between Amtrak Crash, Other Trains Hit by
Objects* // ABC News // Dean Schabner and Meghan Keneally - May 16,
2015.........................................................................................................................................
91

*Tornadoes touch down in parts of Texas, Oklahoma* // Reuters // Sharon
Bernstein - May 16, 2015 92

INTERNATIONAL.................................................................................
93

*Abu Sayyaf, key ISIS figure in Syria, killed in U.S. raid* // CNN // Laura
Smith-Spark and Ray Sanchez - May 16, 2015 93

*Officials: Islamic State tightens grip on capital of Iraq’s Anbar province*
// WaPo // Mustafa Salim and Hugh Naylor - May 16, 2015 97

*Bodies of Marines, Nepalese Recovered From Crashed Chopper* // NYT // The
Associated Press - May 16, 2015 99

*Afghan forces straining to keep the expanding Taliban at bay* // WaPo //
Tim Craig - May 16, 2015 100

*Pope Francis Calls Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas An 'Angel Of Peace'*
// Huffington Post // Associated Press - May 16, 2015 103

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS...........................................................
104

*This Hillary-Clinton-in-Brooklyn video brings the Beastie Boys to Sesame
Street* // WaPo // Philip Bump - May 15, 2015 104

*Why Barack Obama’s popularity matters to Hillary Clinton* // WaPo //
Philip Bump – May 17 105

MISCELLANEOUS..................................................................................
106

*Iowa Democratic Party Leaders Add Their Names to Letter Urging Elizabeth
Warren to Run for President in 2016* // Move On // Brian Stewart - May 14,
2015.................................................................................................................................
106

THIS WEEKEND’S KEY STORIES

Hillary Clinton to Pitch Herself as Candidate for Small Businesses
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-15/hillary-clinton-to-pitch-herself-as-candidate-for-small-businesses>
// Bloomberg // Jennifer Epstein - May 15, 2015

Hillary Clinton plans to make pro-small business policies a focus of her
presidential bid and will spend next week in Iowa and New Hampshire to
begin sharing those ideas, a senior campaign official said Friday.

Clinton sees small businesses as being at a critical post-recession moment
in which, with the right policies, they can thrive, the official said, and
will outline her suggestions for ways to encourage risk-taking on Main
Street over what the official described as irresponsible speculation on
Wall Street.

Among her ideas: finding ways to cut red tape for small businesses and
entrepreneurs; expanding access to capital; simplifying taxes and offering
relief for business owners; and boosting their ability to export.

On Tuesday, she'll discuss her proposals at a roundtable with small
business owners, in Cedar Falls, after spending Monday at smaller events in
North Central Iowa. On Friday, she'll meet with business owners in New
Hampshire. In between, on Wednesday, she'll make a pit-stop in Chicago for
three $2,700 per person fundraisers.

Next week will mark the first time since she declared herself a candidate
that Clinton will devote to visiting small businesses and meeting with
entrepreneurs, but she's already discussed some of her ideas of those ideas
at least briefly, most notably during a roundtable last month at Capital
City Fruit, a fruit distributor just outside Des Moines. There, she heard
from entrepreneurs who struggled to get loans for their businesses and had
concerns about the rising cost of health care. She mentioned wanting to cut
red tape, though she didn't say how she would do so, nor did the official
who offered a preview of next week's plans.

She also foreshadowed her plans to emphasize policies for small businesses
when she interjected last week at a Las Vegas roundtable on immigration: "I
want to be the president for small business.”

Clinton hasn't yet discussed her ideas for helping small businesses export
their products. And on trade, she's laid out only broad principles.
Spokesman Nick Merrill said in a last month that her standards for
supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal under
consideration by Congress, included determining whether it would "open new
opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas" while protecting
American workers and companies. Though she supported the trade deal while
serving as secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term,
Clinton has yet to take a definitive stance on TPP, in what's widely seen
as effort to avoid undermining her former boss or upsetting liberals.

Clinton's attention to small business, which the official said will be a
constant throughout the campaign, is also a way for Clinton to remind
voters of her humble beginnings, long before she was paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars to deliver a single speech or started having
around-the-clock Secret Service protection. Her father, Hugh Rodham, owned
a small drapery business in their hometown of Park Ridge, Ill., just
outside Chicago, that Clinton has often mentioned in public appearances
since launching her campaign last month.

To gear up for her trip, Clinton spent Thursday visiting small businesses
near her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn Heights—Area Kids, a children's
toy and clothing store; Brooklyn Women's Exchange, nonprofit craft shop;
and Monty Q's, a pizza place.

As she toured Montague Street in the well-to-do neighborhood, a camera crew
filmed her visiting those businesses.

Clinton Foundation donors include dozens of media organizations, individuals
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundation-donors-include-dozens-of-media-207228.html>
// Politico // Josh Gerstein, Tarini Parti, Hadas Gold, and Dylan Byers -
May 15, 2015

NBC Universal, News Corporation, Turner Broadcasting and Thomson Reuters
are among more than a dozen media organizations that have made charitable
contributions to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, the foundation's
records show.

The donations, which range from the low-thousands to the millions, provide
a picture of the media industry's ties to the Clinton Foundation at a time
when one of its most notable personalities, George Stephanopoulos, is under
scrutiny for his previously undisclosed $75,000 contribution.

The list also includes mass media groups like Comcast, Time Warner and
Viacom, as well a few notable individuals, including Carlos Slim, the
Mexican telecom magnate and largest shareholder of The New York Times
Company, and James Murdoch, the chief operating officer of 21st Century
Fox. Both Slim and Murdoch have given between $1 million to $5 million,
respectively.

Judy Woodruff, the co-anchor and managing editor of PBS NewsHour, gave $250
to the foundation's “Clinton Haiti Relief Fund" in 2010.

The following list includes news media organizations that have donated to
the foundation, as well as other media networks, companies, foundations or
individuals that have donated. It is organized by the size of the
contribution:

$1,000,000-$5,000,000

Carlos Slim

Chairman & CEO of Telmex, largest New York Times shareholder

James Murdoch

Chief Operating Officer of 21st Century Fox

Newsmax Media

Florida-based conservative media network

Thomson Reuters

Owner of the Reuters news service

$500,000-$1,000,000

Google

News Corporation Foundation

Philanthropic arm of former Fox News parent company

$250,000-$500,000

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publisher

Richard Mellon Scaife

Owner of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

$100,000-$250,000

Abigail Disney

Documentary filmmaker

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Howard Stringer

Former CBS, CBS News and Sony executive

Intermountain West Communications Company

Local television affiliate owner (formerly Sunbelt Communications)

$50,000-$100,000

Bloomberg L.P.

Discovery Communications Inc.

George Stephanopoulos

ABC News chief anchor and chief political correspondent

Mort Zuckerman

Owner of New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report

Time Warner Inc.

Owner of CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting

$25,000-$50,000

AOL

HBO

Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Presenters of the Golden Globe Awards

Viacom

$10,000-$25,000

Knight Foundation

Non-profit foundation dedicated to supporting journalism

Public Radio International

Turner Broadcasting

Parent company of CNN

Twitter

$5,000-$10,000

Comcast

Parent company of NBCUniversal

NBC Universal

Parent company of NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC

Public Broadcasting Service

$1,000-$5,000

Robert Allbritton

Owner of POLITICO parent company Capitol News Group

$250-$1,000

AOL Huffington Post Media Group

Hearst Corporation

Judy Woodruff

PBS Newshour co-anchor and managing editor

The Washington Post Company

Most Dems shrug off Stephanopoulos's disclosure of Clinton donations
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/15/politics/george-stephanopoulos-debate-moderator-democrats/index.html>
// CNN // Dan Merica - May 15, 2015

Political reactions to ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos's
admission of donations to the Clinton Foundation continued on Friday, with
questions centering on whether the former Clinton strategist was fit to
moderate presidential debates.

Most 2016 Democratic presidential hopefuls shrugged off questions about a
possible conflict of interest after Stephanopoulos revealed he donated
$75,000 to the foundation from 2012 to 2014, which he did not disclose
during a recent interview with the author of an anti-Clinton book.

But former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee's spokeswoman said
Stephanopoulos breached journalistic ethics.

"Governor Chafee believes it is a clear violation of the Society of
Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics," said Debbie Rich. "When asked
about whether journalists should engage in political activity, the SPJ
Ethics Committee says the simplest answer is 'No.' Don't do it. Don't get
involved. Don't contribute money, don't work in a campaign, don't lobby,
and especially, don't run for office yourself."

Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the only declared Democratic
candidate besides Hillary Clinton, told Brianna Keilar on CNN's "State of
the Union" in an interview scheduled to air Sunday that Stephanopoulos
should have made the donations public earlier.

But, Sanders added, "I don't -- between you and me -- I don't think it's
the biggest deal in the world."

Lis Smith, former Gov. Martin O'Malley's top aide, said that
Stephanopoulos' Clinton ties don't worry their operation. "We have immense
respect for him, and he has always been fair," she said.

And Craig Crawford, former Sen. Jim Webb's spokesman, said in an emailed
statement that he can't see Stephanopoulos' ties "making any difference to
Jim."

Chafee, O'Malley and Webb have not announced whether they will run or not.
O'Malley is expected to run and will announce his decision on May 30 in May.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus called the donations
issue "obviously troubling" on Fox News's "Hannity" on Thursday night.

Most of the Republican candidates for President have stayed quiet about the
controversy so far, but Rand Paul said on "Hannity" Thursday night that
"he's too close to the Clintons to really give an objective interview."

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, also speaking on CNN's "State of the
Union," added that he thought Stephanopoulos has shown a liberal bias in
his previous moderations of Republican debates.

"Look, I got no issues with George," Ryan said. "He's a nice guy. But you
know, he has -- everybody has political views."

Stephanopoulos told CNN that he would not moderate ABC's planned Republican
presidential primary debate, but that he would continue covering the 2016
race. In a conversation with CNN's Brian Stelter on Thursday, the anchor
said his only remaining relationship to the Clintons is a journalistic one.

Stephanopoulos was one of former President Bill Clinton's top aides during
his 1992 presidential campaign and remained a close adviser in the White
House. He left the Clinton administration after the first term and became a
political analyst for ABC shortly thereafter.

The Right Baits the Left to Turn Against Hillary Clinton
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/politics/the-right-aims-at-democrats-on-social-media-to-hit-clinton.html?_r=0>
// NYT // Ashley Parker and Nicholas Corasanti – May 16, 2015

WASHINGTON — A Twitter post recently caught the eye of Bill McKibben, the
environmental advocate and godfather of the Keystone XL pipeline protests.
It included an image from “The Simpsons” showing Homer and his family
basking in mountains of cash in their living room, followed by a report on
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearing at a fund-raiser with a lobbyist from
the Keystone fight.

Mr. McKibben’s environmental organization, 350.org, has been trying to
raise awareness about the ties it sees between lobbyists for the oil
pipeline and former aides to Mrs. Clinton. He promptly shared the post with
his 150,000 Twitter followers, and the reaction was immediate.

“You expect different from a Clinton?” one person responded on Twitter. And
from another: “Did you need another reason not to vote for Hillary
Clinton?” Lost in the response was the source of the offending tweet. It
was not another environmental organization or even a liberal challenger to
Mrs. Clinton. Instead, it was a conservative group called America Rising
PAC, which is trying, with laserlike focus, to weaken the woman who almost
everyone believes will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in
2016.

Continue reading the main story

For months now, America Rising has sent out a steady stream of posts on
social media attacking Mrs. Clinton, some of them specifically designed to
be spotted, and shared, by liberals. The posts highlight critiques of her
connections to Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation and feature images of
Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Bill de
Blasio of New York, interspersed with cartoon characters and pictures of
Kevin Spacey, who plays the villain in “House of Cards.” And as they are
read and shared, an anti-Clinton narrative is reinforced.

America Rising is not the only conservative group attacking Mrs. Clinton
from the left. Another is American Crossroads, the group started by Karl
Rove, which has been sending out its own digital content, including one ad
using a speech Ms. Warren gave at the New Populism Conference in Washington
last May.

“Powerful interests have tried to capture Washington and rig the system in
their favor,” intones Ms. Warren, as images of Mrs. Clinton with foreign
leaders flash by.

The new-style digital campaign captures some basic facts about 21st-century
communication: Information travels at warp speed on social media, it is
sometimes difficult to know where that information comes from, and most
people like to read things with which they agree. The result, said Ken
Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco who
specializes in political advertising, is something more sophisticated.

“Politics is usually basic math,” he said, “and this is a little bit of
calculus, thinking a couple steps ahead.”

The tactic is making for some awkward moments online. The A.F.L.-C.I.O.
sent to its more than 60,000 followers an America Rising tweet praising its
president, Richard L. Trumka, for a speech that was seen as challenging
Mrs. Clinton on economic issues, only to take it down a few hours later,
saying it was a mistake.

Laura Hart Cole of Verbank, N.Y., whose father, Philip A. Hart, was a
senator from Michigan and a liberal icon, was shocked to learn that she
had, like Mr. McKibben, shared the meme from America Rising on Twitter.
Republican groups, she said, “have a history of sleazy tactics.” But she
added: “I guess it’s fair. If what they’re saying is factual, then I guess
it’s fair play. It’s a dirty game.”

Conservative strategists and operatives say they are simply filling a
vacuum on the far left, as well as applying the lesson they learned in
2012, when they watched in frustration as Mitt Romney was forced to expend
time and resources in a protracted primary fight. By the time he secured
his party’s nomination, President Obama hardly had to make the case that
his opponent was a coldhearted plutocrat; Republicans like Newt Gingrich
had already made the argument for him in the primaries.

Few Republicans are more familiar with that nightmare than Matt Rhoades,
who was Mr. Romney’s campaign manager. He founded America Rising in
response to a recommendation contained in an autopsy of Romney’s failed
presidential run that was ordered by the Republican National Committee. The
group’s original goal was to compete with American Bridge, the Democratic
opposition research group, but its focus under Mr. Rhoades has been to
subject Mrs. Clinton to an ordeal similar to Mr. Romney’s.

“The idea is to make her life difficult in the primary and challenge her
from the left,” said Colin Reed, America Rising’s executive director. “We
don’t want her to enter the general election not having been pushed from
the left, so if we have opportunities — creative ways, especially online —
to push her from the left, we’ll do it just to show those folks who she
needs to turn out that she’s not in line with them.”

Colin Reed of America Rising PAC, which created Twitter posts disparaging
Hillary Rodham Clinton, and designed to be shared by liberals. Credit
Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

No one thinks attacking Mrs. Clinton from the left is likely to turn the
most liberal Democrats into Republican voters. But Steven Law, president of
American Crossroads, said the goal was simply to erode what should be her
natural core of support.

“It can diminish enthusiasm for Hillary among the base over time,” he said.
“And if you diminish enthusiasm, lukewarm support can translate into
lackluster fund-raising and perhaps diminished turnout down the road.”

This year, Zac Moffatt, a co-founder of Targeted Victory, a right-leaning
political technology firm, who handled Mr. Romney’s digital operation and
has worked with groups like America Rising and American Crossroads, laid
out the strategy in a memo to several clients. “There was a hole to fill in
the market,” he said, and if Democrats were not willing to challenge Mrs.
Clinton, Republicans could do it themselves.

“We were seeing people on the left who were interested in content about
Hillary Clinton, and that there would be opportunities for groups to share
this information with Democrats on the left,” Mr. Moffatt said.

To reach these groups, Mr. Moffatt had a plan: using micro-targeted
advertising units on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube.

For example, as Mrs. Clinton was traveling through Las Vegas this month on
a campaign swing, “liberal Democrats” (as identified by Targeted Victory’s
voter file) in the Las Vegas area saw a video pop into their Facebook news
feeds, highlighting recent news reports about foreign government donations
to the Clinton Foundation. The video was shared by America Rising and
received over 6,300 views, most from people who would never follow a group
like America Rising on social media.

Other groups are also using micro-targeted advertising to inject their
content into the Facebook and Twitter news feeds of “liberal Democrats,”
environmentalists and declared supporters of Ms. Warren, among others.

“You might start looking at union households. You might start looking at
Bernie Sanders’s core of support,” Mr. Moffatt said, referring to Senator
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a candidate for the Democratic presidential
nomination.

Mr. Law said members of his staff at American Crossroads had easily been
able to inhabit the liberal role, despite being fervent Republicans. “We
wear these little bracelets — W.W.E.W.D.,” Mr. Law joked, referring to
“What would Elizabeth Warren do?”

In the face of Republican activity aimed at undermining its liberal
support, the Clinton campaign has been publicly circumspect. Asked for a
comment, it would only note that in a Quinnipiac University poll last
month, Mrs. Clinton led her closest opponent, Mr. Sanders, by 46 points
among voters who consider themselves “very liberal.”

And even some of those unhappy with Mrs. Clinton, like Joel Gombiner of
Brooklyn — who posted the “Did you need another reason?” response to the
Twitter message shared by Mr. McKibben — think the conservative groups may
be outsmarting themselves.

“They view this as a means of weakening the Democratic Party and weakening
the chance in a presidential election,” said Mr. Gombiner, 26. But “that’s
the whole point of a democracy, that the arguments make you stronger.”

House Votes to Block Undocumented Youth From Serving in the Military
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-15/house-votes-to-block-undocumented-youth-from-serving-in-the-military>
// Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur - May 15, 2015

A vote Thursday evening in the House of Representatives provided a jarring
reminder of how far the national immigration debate has shifted in the last
two years.

By a margin of 221 to 202, the chamber voted to strip language from the
National Defense Authorization Act that would have encouraged the Pentagon
to allow young undocumented immigrants to serve in the military if they're
protected under President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals program (commonly called DACA).

All 221 votes came from Republicans; 20 Republicans joined a unanimous
Democratic caucus to oppose the amendment, offered by Representative Mo
Brooks, Republican of Alabama.

The political implications were immediately on display as Democrat Hillary
Clinton's presidential campaign released a statement criticizing the House.

"If these courageous young men and women want to serve, they should be
honored and celebrated, not discriminated against," said Amanda Renteria,
Clinton's national political director, adding that "[w]hile we keep up the
pressure for comprehensive action, allowing DREAMers to serve in the
military is the right step forward."

None of the top Republican presidential contenders weighed in. A
spokesperson for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, an outspoken critic of illegal
immigration, declined to comment. The issue captures a schism between many
base voters who oppose leniency for people in the country illegally and
Hispanic voters in swing states who support pro-immigration policies.

For Republicans in Congress, the base appears to be winning, marking a sea
change since the Senate voted 68-32 in June 2013 to grant a path to
citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Brooks hailed the Thursday vote as a defeat for those "who seek to help
illegal aliens" and "deprive American citizens and lawful immigrants of
military service opportunities." The initial language favoring DREAMers in
the military was offered by Representative Ruben Gallego, Democrat of
Arizona.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Zeke Miller (5/15/15, 10:48 AM)
<https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/599270047140454401> From @Reince's
prepared remarks to @GOP spring meeting: hits Clinton speeches: "It's not
about paying the bills, it's about paying Bill"

Zeke Miller (5/15/15, 10:54 AM)
<https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/599271740062232577> @Reince to say:
"At the [Clinton] Foundation, the Clinton family is both the benefactor and
the beneficiary"

Jennifer Epstein (5/15/15, 4:00 PM)
<https://twitter.com/jeneps/status/599348741003436032> Bill and Hillary
Clinton earned at least $30 million in 2014-15: $25 million in paid
speeches, $5 million+ from Hard Choices

Maggie Haberman (5/15/15, 4:08 PM)
<https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/599350607993053184> Clintons made
more than $25 mill on over 100 speeches in 16 months http://nyti.ms/1PoL7Dq

Adam Weinstein (5/16/15, 10:59 AM)
<https://twitter.com/AdamWeinstein/status/599635370020610048> buried lede:
rubio's top donor gave rubio's wife a $54K part-time job to run a charity
that gave away only $250.

 --

Snapchat is going to be huge in 2016 — and regulators have no idea how to
handle it <http://fusion.net/story/135572/snapchat-election-2016-apps/> //
Fusion // Brett Logiurato – May 6, 2015

As he gears up for a presidential run, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley
held a conference call with donors and supporters Thursday night, informing
them that he would make some kind of announcement on May 30.

He also had a message — and an exclusive photo — for his followers on
Snapchat.

“Stay tuned for May 30th…” he said, referring to the date when he’ll
announce whether or not he’ll challenge former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

O’Malley, who is widely expected to run, is one of a handful of politicians
experimenting with Snapchat, a messaging app that has exploded in
popularity over the past year.

O’Malley’s team has found it useful — along with the streaming app
Periscope — to engage a broad audience. They’ll post candid photos and
videos of O’Malley’s impromptu guitar-playing on the stump, for example.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who declared his candidacy for the Republican
nomination last month, has been using the service for almost a year and a
half in an attempt to garner support from young people — and young
followers. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisconsin), of “Real World” fame, is
spearheading Snapchat’s use in the House of Representatives. Other
campaigns said tentative plans with Snapchat are in the works, or that
they’re looking to the potential of experimenting with the service.

Combine that with the news that Snapchat has hired Peter Hamby, a
well-respected CNN political reporter, to head its new news division. It’s
a good bet that Snapchat stands to be the breakout app of the 2016
campaign, much in the same way other services like Twitter and YouTube have
blossomed in the recent past.

“In every election cycle, campaigns will have new technology to employ,”
said Paul S. Ryan, the senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. “In
that sense, it’s nothing new. We’ve gone through this before.”

What is new, however, is the potential conundrum that an app like Snapchat
uniquely presents. One of the key features that has made it popular with
young people is the fact that its messages disappear within seconds —
unless the user receiving the Snapchat takes a screenshot.

For its part, the Federal Election Commission sounds quite unsure how and
if it would attempt to regulate not just Snapchat, but any app. Julia
Queen, a spokeswoman for the FEC, told Fusion that the commission has
“internet regulations but they don’t specifically cover apps.”

The commission has also issued advisory opinions — which Queen said is “its
official response to a question about how federal campaign finance law
applies to a specific factual situation” — on issues arising from text
messages and campaigns.

The potential challenge here for the FEC, Ryan said, would come in
enforcement. If someone wants to break the rules via Snapchat, how would
anyone know?

“That Snapchats do disappear could present an interesting enforcement
challenge for the FEC,” Ryan said. “You can subpoena email. Tweets are
public. You can examine archived records. That seemingly would not be the
case with Snapchat.”

Fusion also reached out to the House Ethics Committee as part of a story on
Duffy, who frequently uses Snapchat to communicate with his staff and
constituents. They did not have comment.

FEC Chair Ann Ravel responded to a tweet last year asking what she thought
about a story that detailed potential violations involving the use of
Twitter.

That story detailed how some Republican groups and allied “super PACs”
shared polling data through anonymous, sometimes West Wing-themed Twitter
accounts. Super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money to support
candidates, cannot directly coordinate with candidates or official party
committees.

The question in the story is whether or not those messages violated
election law. It wasn’t enough that the information was posted publicly —
anyone can see those messages. But Ryan said it would be a violation if
there was a private “decoder ring” that groups shared with one another to
decipher the poll numbers.

Could there be a similar issue arising with an app like Snapchat — where
groups could send each other sensitive information that could disappear
without a trace?

“The potential problem would be that there could be no record of violations
with the law,” Ryan said.

The proverbial ‘smoking gun,’” he added, “disappears. It’s a unique mode of
communication that evaporates.”

But for now, most candidates are looking past the potential regulatory
issues and see the app as a potential goldmine for attracting younger
eyeballs. Paul’s team has used the app to provide a behind-the-scenes look
into the candidate’s stump appearances, as well as glimpses into television
interviews and more.

Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul, told Fusion that the campaign doesn’t
think about any of the prospective regulatory snafus. But he said Paul
views the app as an essential tool toward growing the Republican Party’s
reach with an expanded base of voters.

Paul “believes that we must take our message far and wide,” Gor said. “As
the first member of congress to have joined Snapchat in January 2014, our
team has discovered that we are able to reach a young and highly energized
audience. Senator Paul has made it a mission to make the Republican party
bigger and bolder and engaging new audiences such as Snapchat is vital if
we want to grow the party.”

HRC NATIONAL COVERAGE

SNL’s Hillary Clinton Looks Forward to Relaxing Summer Full of Ruthless
Campaigning
<http://www.mediaite.com/tv/snls-hillary-clinton-looks-forward-to-relaxing-summer-full-of-ruthless-campaigning/>
// Mediate // Tina Nyguen – May 17, 2015

Saturday Night Live is about to let out for the summer — season finale,
yall — but while everyone is at the beach, soaking up the sun and jumping
in the waves, Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton will do everything humanly
possible to win the presidential election that’s over a year and a half
from now.

Does it mean walking through a beach in a wool pantsuit? Running alongside
a tandem bicycle? Making children cry about their sandcastles not being as
nice as your scale model of the White House? Pffft,

(And Darrell Hammond‘s Bill Clinton, well — yeah, he likes summer too.)

Reid: O’Malley Who? Leader Dismisses All but Clinton
<http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/harry-reid-martin-omalley-bernie-sanders/?dcz>
// Roll Call // Steven Dennis - May 15, 2015

Harry Reid, in classic Harry Reid style, utterly dismissed the presidential
aspirations of his Senate colleague Bernard E. Sanders, former Sen. Jim
Webb and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley in one biting sentence in an
interview airing Friday.

For the Senate minority leader, the independent from Vermont and the
Democrats from Virginia and Maryland governor, respectively, don’t even
merit a mention.

“Right now we have Hillary Clinton. And that’s it,” the Nevada Democrat
told MSNBC’s and Telemundo’s Jose Diaz-Balart. “There’s not another Barack
Obama out there. There are no all stars out there. She has a clear field
and I’m glad she does.”

Why Hillary Needs Obama <http://cookpolitical.com/story/8431> // Cook
Political // Amy Walter - May 13, 2015

Every presidential election is a response to the current president, even
when the current president isn’t seeking re-election. If people don't like
the guy in the White House, it’s almost impossible for a member of his
party to be elected to succeed him. Even when voters are happy with their
incumbent president, it’s not always a guarantee of success for the party’s
nominee. Voters are often looking for a change in style as much as
substance (see: Bush v. Gore, 2000). This is why we should spend as much
time checking in on President Obama’s job approval ratings as we do the
polling data of the potential presidential candidates.

For Hillary Clinton to win, she needs Obama to succeed. Picking fights with
the president – a la Elizabeth Warren – does her no good if it makes him
look weak.

The magic number for Obama – and ultimately Hillary’s chances – is
somewhere around 47 percent. If Obama’s job approval rating is above that,
a Democrat has a decent to a good chance of winning in 2016. Below that
number, especially if Obama is in the 45 percent range or below, it will be
hard for a Democrat to gain entry to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

How Obama is perceived by voters in the presidential battleground states is
more important than his overall national approval rating. Given that the
fight for the Electoral College will come down to the results of seven to
nine states, a national poll does us little good. The good folks at the
Quinnipiac University Poll have been surveying many of these key swing
states and I’ve incorporated their data into the accompanying chart.

In looking at data from five swing states (all of which Obama carried in
2012), Obama’s approval ratings are not only significantly below his
pre-election showing in 2012, but they also fall below the political
“Mendoza line”, with no state giving him better than a 45 percent job
approval rating. One of the most surprising is Obama’s weak 40 percent
approve to 56 percent disapprove in Pennsylvania, an important brick in the
Democrats so-called “Blue Wall.”

Helpful disclaimer alert: we are working with a very small universe of data
from April (one pollster and one poll) and there’s certainly a possibility
that these numbers may be more outlier than reality. However, there are
warning signs out here for Democrats and we should all watch these numbers
very closely over the next year and a half. While a popular president can’t
always ensure his party’s success in the next election, a weak one almost
always ensures failure.

Hillary touts Beyonce's support
<http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/242223-hillary-touts-beyonces-support>
// The Hill // Jesse Byrnes - May 15, 2015

Hillary Clinton has the support of Beyoncé, and her camp is showing it off.

Playing off of fans' nickname for the singer, Clinton's campaign tweeted
Friday: "Say you'll Bey on Team #Hillary2016, too: http://hrc.io/1KaIjGw"

Beyoncé and others, such as Sharon Osbourne and Meghan Trainor, attended a
fundraiser co-hosted in Manhattan by L.A. Reid, the chairman and CEO of
Sony Music Entertainment's Epic Records this week.

It was one of a trio of $2,700-per-attendee fundraisers in which Clinton
was expected to rake in more than $1 million, according to Bloomberg, and
amid her push for money among celebrities.

Beyoncé and husband Jay Z hosted fundraisers for President Obama's
reelection campaign in 2012, and the female pop star powerhouse appeared at
events for both of Obama's inaugurations.

At least one Beyoncé fan has urged the mega singer to team up with Clinton
in 2016.

Republicans criticize Clinton for not talking to press
<http://www.salon.com/2015/05/17/republicans_criticize_clinton_for_not_talking_to_press/>
// Salon // Associated Press - May 16, 2015

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential hopefuls gathered in Iowa
are taking jabs at Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton for not
fielding more questions from the press.

Former business executive Carly Fiorina says that if Clinton is going to
run for president, “she is going to have to answer some questions.”

Fiorina spoke at a dinner hosted by the Iowa Republican Party that drew
about 1,300 people Saturday. Also chiming in was Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul,
who joked about whether Clinton “ever takes any questions.”

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush took a similar approach earlier in the day,
saying he has answered hundreds of questions compared to Clinton, who has
taken just a handful.

The former secretary of state is making a second campaign visit to Iowa on
Monday.

The Right Aims at Democrats on Social Media to Hit Hillary Clinton
<http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/politics/the-right-aims-at-democrats-on-social-media-to-hit-clinton.html>
// NYT // Ashley Parker and Nick Corasaniti - May 16, 2015

WASHINGTON — A Twitter post recently caught the eye of Bill McKibben, the
environmental advocate and godfather of the Keystone XL pipeline protests.
It included an image from “The Simpsons” showing Homer and his family
basking in mountains of cash in their living room, followed by a report on
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearing at a fund-raiser with a lobbyist from
the Keystone fight.

Mr. McKibben’s environmental organization, 350.org, has been trying to
raise awareness about the ties it sees between lobbyists for the oil
pipeline and former aides to Mrs. Clinton. He promptly shared the post with
his 150,000 Twitter followers, and the reaction was immediate.

“You expect different from a Clinton?” one person responded on Twitter. And
from another: “Did you need another reason not to vote for Hillary
Clinton?” Lost in the response was the source of the offending tweet. It
was not another environmental organization or even a liberal challenger to
Mrs. Clinton. Instead, it was a conservative group called America Rising
PAC, which is trying, with laserlike focus, to weaken the woman who almost
everyone believes will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in
2016.

For months now, America Rising has sent out a steady stream of posts on
social media attacking Mrs. Clinton, some of them specifically designed to
be spotted, and shared, by liberals. The posts highlight critiques of her
connections to Wall Street and the Clinton Foundation and feature images of
Democrats like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mayor Bill de
Blasio of New York, interspersed with cartoon characters and pictures of
Kevin Spacey, who plays the villain in “House of Cards.” And as they are
read and shared, an anti-Clinton narrative is reinforced.

America Rising is not the only conservative group attacking Mrs. Clinton
from the left. Another is American Crossroads, the group started by Karl
Rove, which has been sending out its own digital content, including one ad
using a speech Ms. Warren gave at the New Populism Conference in Washington
last May.

“Powerful interests have tried to capture Washington and rig the system in
their favor,” intones Ms. Warren, as images of Mrs. Clinton with foreign
leaders flash by.

The new-style digital campaign captures some basic facts about 21st-century
communication: Information travels at warp speed on social media, it is
sometimes difficult to know where that information comes from, and most
people like to read things with which they agree. The result, said Ken
Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco who
specializes in political advertising, is something more sophisticated.

“Politics is usually basic math,” he said, “and this is a little bit of
calculus, thinking a couple steps ahead.”

The tactic is making for some awkward moments online. The A.F.L.-C.I.O.
sent to its more than 60,000 followers an America Rising tweet praising its
president, Richard L. Trumka, for a speech that was seen as challenging
Mrs. Clinton on economic issues, only to take it down a few hours later,
saying it was a mistake.

Laura Hart Cole of Verbank, N.Y., whose father, Philip A. Hart, was a
senator from Michigan and a liberal icon, was shocked to learn that she
had, like Mr. McKibben, shared the meme from America Rising on Twitter.
Republican groups, she said, “have a history of sleazy tactics.” But she
added: “I guess it’s fair. If what they’re saying is factual, then I guess
it’s fair play. It’s a dirty game.”

Conservative strategists and operatives say they are simply filling a
vacuum on the far left, as well as applying the lesson they learned in
2012, when they watched in frustration as Mitt Romney was forced to expend
time and resources in a protracted primary fight. By the time he secured
his party’s nomination, President Obama hardly had to make the case that
his opponent was a coldhearted plutocrat; Republicans like Newt Gingrich
had already made the argument for him in the primaries.

Few Republicans are more familiar with that nightmare than Matt Rhoades,
who was Mr. Romney’s campaign manager. He founded America Rising in
response to a recommendation contained in an autopsy of Romney’s failed
presidential run that was ordered by the Republican National Committee. The
group’s original goal was to compete with American Bridge, the Democratic
opposition research group, but its focus under Mr. Rhoades has been to
subject Mrs. Clinton to an ordeal similar to Mr. Romney’s.

“The idea is to make her life difficult in the primary and challenge her
from the left,” said Colin Reed, America Rising’s executive director. “We
don’t want her to enter the general election not having been pushed from
the left, so if we have opportunities — creative ways, especially online —
to push her from the left, we’ll do it just to show those folks who she
needs to turn out that she’s not in line with them.”

No one thinks attacking Mrs. Clinton from the left is likely to turn the
most liberal Democrats into Republican voters. But Steven Law, president of
American Crossroads, said the goal was simply to erode what should be her
natural core of support.

“It can diminish enthusiasm for Hillary among the base over time,” he said.
“And if you diminish enthusiasm, lukewarm support can translate into
lackluster fund-raising and perhaps diminished turnout down the road.”

This year, Zac Moffatt, a co-founder of Targeted Victory, a right-leaning
political technology firm, who handled Mr. Romney’s digital operation and
has worked with groups like America Rising and American Crossroads, laid
out the strategy in a memo to several clients. “There was a hole to fill in
the market,” he said, and if Democrats were not willing to challenge Mrs.
Clinton, Republicans could do it themselves.

“We were seeing people on the left who were interested in content about
Hillary Clinton, and that there would be opportunities for groups to share
this information with Democrats on the left,” Mr. Moffatt said.

To reach these groups, Mr. Moffatt had a plan: using micro-targeted
advertising units on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube.

For example, as Mrs. Clinton was traveling through Las Vegas this month on
a campaign swing, “liberal Democrats” (as identified by Targeted Victory’s
voter file) in the Las Vegas area saw a video pop into their Facebook news
feeds, highlighting recent news reports about foreign government donations
to the Clinton Foundation. The video was shared by America Rising and
received over 6,300 views, most from people who would never follow a group
like America Rising on social media.

Other groups are also using micro-targeted advertising to inject their
content into the Facebook and Twitter news feeds of “liberal Democrats,”
environmentalists and declared supporters of Ms. Warren, among others.

“You might start looking at union households. You might start looking at
Bernie Sanders’s core of support,” Mr. Moffatt said, referring to Senator
Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a candidate for the Democratic presidential
nomination.

Mr. Law said members of his staff at American Crossroads had easily been
able to inhabit the liberal role, despite being fervent Republicans. “We
wear these little bracelets — W.W.E.W.D.,” Mr. Law joked, referring to
“What would Elizabeth Warren do?”

In the face of Republican activity aimed at undermining its liberal
support, the Clinton campaign has been publicly circumspect. Asked for a
comment, it would only note that in a Quinnipiac University poll last
month, Mrs. Clinton led her closest opponent, Mr. Sanders, by 46 points
among voters who consider themselves “very liberal.”

And even some of those unhappy with Mrs. Clinton, like Joel Gombiner of
Brooklyn — who posted the “Did you need another reason?” response to the
Twitter message shared by Mr. McKibben — think the conservative groups may
be outsmarting themselves.

“They view this as a means of weakening the Democratic Party and weakening
the chance in a presidential election,” said Mr. Gombiner, 26. But “that’s
the whole point of a democracy, that the arguments make you stronger.”

Meet the guy who was protected Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia page for almost
a decade
<http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-hillary-clintons-wikipedia-editor-2015-5#ixzz3aDeliPpv>
// Business Insider // Maxwell Tani - May 15, 2015

Since 2006, Hillary Clinton has carefully adjusted her positions on major
issues like same-sex marriage and the war in Iraq. Through every step of
that evolution, one man was there to note each change.

Jonathan Schilling, a New Jersey software engineer, has been a
highly-active editor of Clinton's Wikipedia page since 2006. During that
time Schilling logged at least 2,269 edits over 10 years to the former
Secretary of State's popular page.

Clinton's page gets an enormous amount of traffic, which Schilling
estimates was close to 150,000 monthly views before Clinton announced her
2016 presidential campaign last month.

Since 2006, Schilling has kept a watchful eye over Clinton's Wikipedia
entry, eliminating unsubstantiated claims, and clipping out bias and
inaccuracy. His edits are usually small: a tense changed, a credible source
added, facts tweaked to reflect new reporting.

Wikipedia is a crowdsourced platform, and many users make edits to
Clinton's page. But few have logged the hours that Schilling has. According
to Wikipedia's stats, he has been the top editor of the page for years.

Schilling sees keeping political biases out of entries as a major part of
his volunteer job. He told Business Insider a trick to keep out
ideologically-motivated editors is to address controversies thoroughly and
include the details.

"I intentionally make these things long because then you can include
everything: the good, the bad the ugly, the neutral," Schilling said. "So,
everybody who reads it should be able to get some idea, something about it
here or there."

Schilling said he also relies heavily on facts attributed to concrete
sources, avoiding trend pieces from news outlets like Politico that he
perceives as important, but occasionally suspect.

"You actually have to be careful with using Politico articles as a source
on Wikipedia because they're under so much pressure to churn out stuff,"
Schilling explained. "They find trends one day, they find the opposite
trend the next day."

Once a contentious page plagued by trolls and opinionated users making
unfounded claims, Clinton's Wikipedia entry has calmed down significantly.

"Back in 2007, there were more vandals, more troublemakers, more people
trying to tilt the article one way or the other," Schilling said.

Now, Schilling claims, a slightly higher barrier of entry and automatic
robots that flag suspect edits make the page a little easier to manage.

According to Schilling, Wikipedia pages generally become less contentious
over time. So, while Clinton's page is "mature," other presidential
candidate's pages are becoming virtual battlegrounds. Schilling said Carly
Fiorina's page has seen a flurry of activity since her launch, primarily
over how her tenure at CEO of Hewlett-Packard should be defined.

In fact, the biggest fight on Clinton's page isn't necessarily over the
former Secretary of State's legacy. According to Schilling, the most
significant spat on the page is over Clinton's name itself.

"There has been a huge argument over if the article title should get
changed," Schilling said, from the current Hillary Rodham Clinton to just
Hillary Clinton. "During last year's go-round, Jimmy Wales, the founder of
Wikipedia, actually contacted her office to see what she prefers. ... She
said Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Editing can be particularly difficult for pages with a political slant,
with opinionated editors and political staffers attempting to change the
page. In the wake of recent revelations that lawmakers and Capitol Hill
staffers edited Wikipedia pages of high-level members of Congress,
Schilling claims that many political operatives have been more careful
about what kind of revisions they make.

Though he rarely sees staff edits on the pages he contributes to, Schilling
said that it has happened. Schilling noted that when Vice President Joe
Biden was a Senator, his office was a repeat offender.

"When I was working on the Joe Biden article, there was a case where it
became known that some of his foreign policy supposed achievements had been
put in by someone in his office," Schilling said.

Asked about why he does it, Schilling said that part of his motivation was
readership.

"You get incredible visibility," Schilling said. "The words I've written,
from this article and others, have been read by tens of millions of people."

"Where else can you write where you get 2,000,000 readers?" Schilling said.

Schilling vowed he will keep editing through the election and into the
foreseeable future, partially because he feels that he's already put in a
lot of work. Last year, the software engineer achieved his goal of getting
the page to "featured article" status, a level which denotes the highest
level of quality a Wikipedia page can rise to.

"Even if I cut out other Wikipedia stuff, it'll be hard to walk away from
this one," Schilling said. "I've got over 2,000 edits on the page over 10
years. That's a heavy personal investment."

Hillary Clinton’s hypocritical bid to settle a grudge and smash free speech
<http://nypost.com/2015/05/15/hillary-clintons-hypocritical-bid-to-settle-a-grudge-and-smash-free-speech/>
// NY Post // Post Editorial Board - May 15, 2015

Her fans may see it as a principled stand, but we suspect it’s just Hillary
Clinton holding another grudge against her critics.

According to The Washington Post, Clinton told a roomful of supporters
(behind closed doors) that as president she would require her Supreme Court
nominees to pledge in advance to overturn the 2010 Citizens United decision.

That’s the case where the high court upheld the right of a conservative
group to air its anti-Clinton documentary, “Hillary: The Movie,” and run
ads for it during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

The anti-free-speech McCain-Feingold law had banned such “independent
expenditures”; the ruling essentially gutted that law. And the court made
it plain that politicians can’t limit independent political spending by any
organization — not by Citizens United and other advocacy groups, not by
labor unions, not by corporations.

It was a fervent defense of First Amendment free-speech rights, but
Democrats have always denounced it as a supposed cave-in to Wall Street —
which explains why announcing her litmus test reportedly won Clinton a huge
ovation.

Of course, Hillary was already on record favoring a constitutional
amendment to overturn Citizens United — even while aiming to raise an
unprecedented $2 billion for her latest White House bid.

In other words, corporate special-interest money is evil — unless it’s
backing her ambitions or her family’s pocket foundation.

As for Supreme Court litmus tests, they’re a curious thing. The idea that a
Republican might name only pro-life judges moves liberals to scream,
“Fanatic!”

But progressives see their own litmus tests, whether for pro-choice judges
or to overturn an unpopular Supreme Court decision, as clarion calls for
justice.

Time was when liberals like Hillary Clinton were the fiercest defenders of
the First Amendment. When it comes to Hillary and Citizens United, though,
it’s not free speech — it’s personal.

Hillary Clinton's brothers could cause major problems for her presidential
campaign
<http://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clintons-brothers-tony-and-hugh-rodham-2015-5>
// Business Insider // Colin Campbell and Hunter Walker - May 16, 2015

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's two brothers, Tony and Hugh
Rodham, could be a problem for her presidential campaign. Over the years,
the pair has been at the center of multiple controversies for their
business dealings and Republicans are already using them to attack Clinton.

One aide for a rival 2016 campaign told Business Insider that Clinton's
brothers will definitely cause issues for her White House bid.

"Will they be a problem? Yes. They underscore everything that people fear
and hate about the Clintons," the aide said. "They're essentially the id of
Bill and Hillary Clinton. A bunch of money-grubbing and opportunistic
hillbillies with no sense of ethics, decency, or even legality."

Indeed, while Hugh Rodham has yet to make headlines this cycle, last
weekend, the New York Times published a story delving into Clinton's
youngest brother, Tony Rodham. The paper reported he had repeatedly tried
to profit from his connection to the former first family.

The newspaper pointed to a wide range of Tony Rodham's business activities
including a Haitian gold mining venture and speeches he gave before Chinese
investor conferences and a California cosmetics company.

"The connections to the Clintons have given Mr. Rodham, a self-described
'facilitator,' a unique appeal and a range of opportunities," The Times'
Steve Eder wrote. "But his business dealings have often invited public
scrutiny and uncomfortable questions for the Clintons."

Earlier this year, Tony Rodham was linked to alleged political favors in a
report published by the Department of Homeland Security's investigator
general. The report criticized a top DHS employee for appearing to go out
of his way in 2010 and 2011 to assist "a politically connected regional
center," where Tony was listed as the CEO.

The Times cited several other instances where Tony Rodham had tried to use
his influence. After the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, former
President Bill Clinton helped lead the recovery commission. According to
the paper, Tony pressured his brother-in-law for funds. Tony himself
reportedly discussed the arrangement in court proceedings that "were the
result of a lawsuit over unpaid legal bills filed by his lawyer in a child
support case."

"I deal through the Clinton Foundation. That gets me in touch with the
Haitian officials," Tony said. "I hound my brother-in-law, because it's his
fund that we're going to get our money from. ... And he keeps telling me,
'Oh, it's going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.' Well,
tomorrow hasn’t come yet."

Both Bill Clinton's office and the Clinton Foundation told The Times that
they never helped Tony Rodham with the project, which ultimately never
moved forward. However, it does appear Bill Clinton has been willing to
help Rodham out with his finances. In the same court proceeding, Rodham
reportedly discussed getting help landing a $72,000-a-year job at a company
owned by now Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a longtime Clinton ally.

"I was complaining to my brother-in-law I didn’t have any money. And he
asked McAuliffe to give me a job," Rodham was quoted saying, adding that
the job wasn't enough to pay his bills. "It's kind of like the job he got
me a long time ago when I worked in the prison."

In a phone conversation on Wednesday, Business Insider asked Tony Rodham
whether he was concerned controversies about his various ventures could
become an issue in his sister's campaign.

"I'm not going to talk about that," he said before hanging up.

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill sent a statement to Business
Insider saying Clinton "loves" her brothers. While Merrill acknowledged
Hugh and Tony Rodham have had their "ups and downs," he said it would be up
to them to decide whether they want to address questions about their lives
that could come up in the context of her White House bid.

"She loves her family more than anything. Her brothers have always been
there for her, and she will always be there for them. Each though have
their own lives, their own jobs, their own ups and downs. It is for them to
decide how much of their private lives to share publicly in the context of
their sister's campaign," Merrill said.

Still, Clinton's rivals are clearly willing to use her brothers against
her. Republicans quickly pounced on The Times' story on Tony Rodham. The
national GOP forwarded the article to reporters on Monday morning along
with a statement attempting to link Tony to questions about Clinton's
personal finances.

"The New York Times delves into Tony Rodham’s practice using the family
name to secure controversial business deals as a 'facilitator,'" wrote Raj
Shah, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "This comes amid
scrutiny of Bill Clinton’s six-figure speaking fees, controversial foreign
donations to the Clinton Foundation and other eyebrow raising money making
endeavors to 'pay our bills.'"

And Tony Rodham isn't the only one of Clinton's siblings who could invite
unwanted scrutiny during her White House bid.

Hugh Rodham, the middle sibling, was once described as the "the Billy
Carter of the Clinton administration" for a pair of controversies caused by
his business ventures.

In one instance, Hugh, who is often called "Hughie," accepted $400,000 in
fees from two felons who were issued pardons by President Bill Clinton. The
second issue involved a business venture Hugh and Tony were both reportedly
involved in along with a Russian-backed political boss who was a rival to
the US-allied government in Georgia. According to the New York Times,
President Clinton's national security adviser asked the brothers to back
out of this venture, which the paper described as having "caused trouble
for US foreign policy."

Apart from his business dealings, Hugh's conduct during visits to the White
House was allegedly unbecoming. According to "For Love of Politics," an
account of the Clinton presidency written by author Sally Bedell Smith,
Hugh Rodham treated the White House "like a dorm." Smith quoted Ann McCoy,
a longtime friend of the Clinton's, describing Hugh's behavior.

"Hughie would show up in the worst outfits. … He would be wearing shorts
with golf balls on them and a T-shirt. He would sit in the Solarium, and
Hillary wouldn't bat an eyelash. People would come all dressed up for
dinner, and Hughie would waddle up in his shorts and fall asleep," McCoy
was quoted saying.

Hugh Rodham has also tried his hand in the media. During the Clinton
administration, he hosted a radio show. More recently, Hugh seems to have
tried to revive his media career and some of what he had to say would be
decidedly off message for the Clinton campaign. A promotion for an
unspecified "radio program" that was posted on YouTube in 2012 features
Hugh blasting President Barack Obama, who had Hillary Clinton in his
Cabinet at the time. In the clip, Hugh discusses the 2012 election.

"The new radio program that you’re about to listen to, which is on the
internet streaming live will tell you, the voters, the unvarnished truth.
Let me tell you what’s the importance of this election. If you’re unhappy
with the no jobs policy the weak economy and all the rest of the things
that the current administration provided you in the last four years and are
unhappy with what the challengers have to say then we will try to get down
to the nitty gritty of what’s important and what’s important is how you
perceive your role as an American," he says.

During Bill Clinton's presidency, Hugh also attempted to launch his own
political career by challenging former Republican Senator Connie Mack in
Florida. Hugh lost that race and along the way he was reportedly accused of
campaign finance violations and forced to admit he had a spotty voting
record. The Orlando Sentinel quoted one anonymous "leading state Democrat"
describing Hugh simply as "an embarrassment" for the party in Florida.

"We in the Florida party had nothing to do with him, wanted nothing to do
with him," they said.

Hugh Rodham did not respond to a message Business Insider left at his
Florida law office this week seeking comment on this story.

While the Rodham brothers would not speak to us, lawyer and political
consultant Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton family friend, sent us a comment
on their behalf. Davis suggested there were inaccuracies in the various
allegations leveled against the Rodhams over the years, but they don't want
to defend themselves due to a desire to protect "their families privacy."
Davis also expressed the brothers' wish that Clinton's rivals and members
of the media will refrain from targeting her family.

"Tony and Hugh live their own lives, and while there are plenty of facts to
dispute, they are not going to do so as part of a political charade," Davis
said. "They hope this desire for privacy is understood by both the
Republicans and the media, but either way they plan on vigorously guarding
their family's privacy by not responding to purely political attacks on
relatives who are neither public officials nor running for any office."

Michael Morell: Foreign governments have Hillary's email
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/michael-morrell-foreign-governments-have-hillarys-email-118007.html>
// Politico // Adam B. Lerner - May 15, 2015

Former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell said that he believes some
foreign intelligence agencies possess the contents of Hillary Clinton’s
private email server.

“I think that foreign intelligence services, the good ones, have everything
on any unclassified network that the government uses,” Morell said Friday
in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

“I don’t think that was a very good judgment,” he added of Clinton’s
decision to use the private server for official State Department business.
“I don’t know who gave her that advice, but it was not good advice.”

“She’s paying a price for it now,” Morell said of the server. “It was not
good.”

Morell appeared on the program to promote his new book, “The Great War of
Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism — From al Qa’ida to ISIS,”
which contains a passage on what happened in Benghazi before and after the
attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

A version of the passage was published this week by POLITICO Magazine.

Allies Remember a Driven Hillary Rodham During '72 Texas Visit
<http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/16/clintons-take-texas-1972/> // Texas
Tribune // Abby Livingston - May 16, 2015

WASHINGTON — As Garry Mauro drove up to Democratic presidential candidate
George McGovern’s Texas headquarters in October 1972, a young couple burst
out of the office, begging for a ride to the Austin airport.

Mauro, who would serve as state land commissioner from 1983 to 1999,
obliged, racing the tall, bushy-haired Democratic operative and the
24-year-old law student from West Sixth Street east to the Robert Mueller
Airport.

“We gotta get to New Haven because we gotta register late for law school,”
Mauro, now 67, recalled Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham saying.

It was a frantic moment that followed an impetuous decision by the Yale Law
School students to come to Texas for a doomed political endeavor in the
middle of their studies.

Thanks to several books — including the Clintons' own memoirs — their short
few months in Texas have become a part of Austin lore. The couple worked on
the failed Texas campaign for McGovern, a liberal U.S. senator from South
Dakota. During their few months in Austin, San Antonio and elsewhere,
Clinton and Rodham befriended several allies who would help Bill Clinton’s
political ascent in Arkansas and on to the White House. And as Hillary
Clinton makes a second run for the White House, some of those bonds forged
in Texas are poised to help again.

Bill Clinton arrived to Austin first as McGovern's Texas political point
man, but Hillary Rodham was not far behind.

“Bill asked if I wanted to go too,” she wrote in her memoir, Living
History. “I did, but only if I had a specific job.”

That job was registering black and Hispanic South Texas voters for the
Democratic National Committee.

The campaign's challenge was insurmountable. McGovern’s liberal policies
repelled old Lyndon B. Johnson allies like John Connally, who led the
“Democrats for Nixon” effort. Stricken by a state party at war with itself,
McGovern ended up losing Texas in November by a two-to-one margin.

But ever since, the Clintons have had a personal connection to the state.

“Although Bill was the only person I knew when I got to Austin, Texas in
August, I quickly made some of the best friends I’ve ever had," Hillary
Clinton wrote in her memoir.

Clinton declined to be interviewed for this story. And many of the people
who worked with her on the 1972 campaign have passed away. But there are
still several who worked with her in Texas who remember the serious and
driven law student.

“We Want a Real Lawyer”

Sara Ehrman first laid eyes on Rodham in McGovern’s San Antonio
headquarters, a former nursing home.

A longtime Washington-based Democratic political operative, Ehrman led the
campaign for South Texas. She and her team put up out an S.O.S. to
Washington that they were in dire need of legal counsel.

What they got was a law student who looked more like an undergraduate,
dressed in all brown: pants, shirt and glasses.

“This young woman looked 19 years old, and she came in and said she was a
lawyer, and everybody started howling and saying we want a real lawyer,"
Ehrman said.

Even so, Ehrman, who was in her 50s, instantly formed a maternal bond with
Rodham.

“We were not Texans,” Ehrman, now 96, said of the connection. “We did not
know all the intricacies of Texas politics, which were very complicated at
the time."

Ehrman describes Rodham's brief stint at the San Antonio headquarters as
"prepared, mature for her age, focused and in charge."

“We bonded,” she added. “We just knew each other.”

Rodham split her time between San Antonio and Austin, where Bill Clinton
was based with writer Taylor Branch. Branch and Clinton ran the state
campaign together and the three shared an apartment.

Eddie Bernice Johnson, who is now in her 12th term in Congress, worked
closely with Bill Clinton on the 1972 campaign. But she recalled
encountering the couple together just once during that time.

“I only saw them together one time, and then he treated her very gently,
but I didn’t really realize” they were dating, she said in an interview.

Besides Ehrman, one of Rodham’s closest friends from the Texas experience
was a University of Texas at Austin graduate named Betsey Wright.

Wright would often visit Barton Springs with Rodham, according to David
Maraniss' book on Bill Clinton, First in His Class.

But she would have an exhilarating and rocky political future. She would
later move to Arkansas and become a pivotal Clinton operative during his
rise in state politics, serving as Bill Clinton's gubernatorial chief of
staff and campaign manager in the 1980s. Many have said she was the
inspiration for Kathy Bates’ political enforcer character in the novel and
movie Primary Colors, a roman à clef on the Clintons.

Bill Clinton called Wright "the Texan who had, by far, the greatest impact
on my career."

“Without Betsey Wright, I could not have become president," Bill Clinton
later wrote in his memoir.

The Clintons, however, "cut her loose before they moved into the White
House" according to The New York Times. She pleaded no contest in 2010 to
charges that she attempted to smuggle contraband inside of a Doritos bag
while on a 2009 visit to death row. Wright now lives in Arkansas, and in
recent years she was a fellow for a state library system.

Wright did not respond to emailed questions for this story. But in 1992,
she said in a New York Magazine interview that, like Mauro, she was
impressed that the couple worked full time on a presidential campaign while
simultaneously attending law school.

“I’d never been exposed to people like that before. I mean, they spent the
whole semester in Texas, never attended a class —then went back to Yale and
aced their finals,” she said.

Did Mauro ever see either one of them study?

“Christ, no,” he said.

A Lost Cause

Neither Rodham nor any of her colleagues were under the impression that
they could deliver a Texas victory to the McGovern campaign.

“We all knew McGovern wasn’t going to win,” Mauro said in a recent
interview with The Texas Tribune. “But historically, you just didn’t get
less than 40 percent of the vote [in Texas] if you were a major party
nominee.”

This was the first time 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential election,
adding to Rodham’s challenge in registering South Texas voters. She also
concentrated on Hispanic voters. Franklin Garcia, who died in 1984, was her
guide in the region.

"Hispanics in South Texas were, understandably, wary of a blond girl from
Chicago who didn’t speak a word of Spanish," Clinton wrote in Living
History. "[Garcia] took me to places I never could have gone along and
vouched for me to Mexican Americans who worried I might be from the
immigration service or some other government agency."

Bill Clinton was often on the road, organizing events and hanging flyers in
county courthouses.

But it was a lost cause.

“When the vote count came in, I’ll never forget walking out to the car,”
Mauro said. “I ripped the McGovern bumper sticker off.”

The Nixon landslide did not surprise either Clinton, they would later
write. Their circle of friends soon disbanded and scattered across the
country. The couple made a trip to Mexico for vacation and then went back
to New Haven for finals.

That Godforsaken Place

A year later, Rodham decamped in Erhman’s Washington apartment in 1973
while working as a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment
inquiry into the Watergate scandal. Bill Clinton headed to Arkansas to
begin his political career.

Branch occasionally saw Rodham during that year.

"I could tell she loved him, but she did not want to move to Arkansas," he
said, noting her awareness of her legal work's place in history.

"I did notice some strain over that," he added. "Even at the time, I was
pretty sure she would do it because her attachment to him was pretty
evident."

But Rodham did go to Arkansas.

“When Hillary decided to go to Arkansas to marry Bill Clinton, I drove her
down,” Ehrman said. “And all the way down, for hundreds of miles, I kept
saying, ‘Are you crazy? Why are you going to that Godforsaken place where
you can’t even get French bread?’”

Ehrman said the conversation went in circles, and each time Hillary Rodham
had the same answer: “But I love him … and I’m going to be with him.”

Over the next decades, the Clintons would return to Texas, both for
delegates, campaign dollars and out of a sense of political loyalty.

Bill Clinton counts Mauro and Austin ad executives Roy Spence and Judy
Trabulsi as the closest Texas friends who helped him through his
presidential runs.

Mauro managed Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for Texas, and Spence was a
close media adviser to Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign
and is expected to hold similar influence this time around. Mauro does not
have an official title with the campaign at this point, but he told the
Tribune recently that he's working the phones on behalf of the couple.

Eddie Bernice Johnson, too, became a reliable Congressional and political
ally, until she supported then-Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign. She
immediately sided with Hillary Clinton in this presidential campaign.

Also while in Texas, the couple befriended donors like the late Bernard
Rapoport of Waco, who would financially back both of their campaigns.

Texas helped deliver the Democratic nomination to Bill Clinton in 1992, and
gave Hillary Clinton life support to continue her own campaign into the
spring of 2008.

But also, they frequently returned to the state over the years to boost
their old friends' own campaigns.

"All these people went in different directions and made a real difference,"
Mauro mused.

"We only got 32 percent of the vote," he added. "But...you look at all the
people involved in that and what they went on to accomplish in their
careers, it was probably an incubation, a seminal moment in Texas politics,
if not national politics."

Clintons Earned $30 Million in 16 Months, Report Shows
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/politics/clintons-reportedly-earned-30-million-in-the-last-16-months.html>
// NYT // Maggie Haberman and Steve Eder - May 15, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband made at least $30 million over the
last 16 months, mainly from giving paid speeches to corporations, banks and
other organizations, according to financial disclosure forms filed with
federal elections officials on Friday.

The sum, which makes Mrs. Clinton among the wealthiest of the 2016
presidential candidates, could create challenges for the former secretary
of state as she tries to cast herself as a champion of everyday Americans
in an era of income inequality.

The $25 million in speaking fees since the beginning of last year continue
a lucrative trend for the Clintons: They have now earned more than $125
million on the circuit since leaving the White House in 2001.

In addition, the report shows, Mrs. Clinton reported income exceeding $5
million from her memoir of her time as secretary of state, “Hard Choices.

The Clintons’ riches have already become a subject of political attacks,
and her campaign has been eager to showcase Mrs. Clinton as a more
down-to-earth figure. Her only declared Democratic opponent at this point,
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is an avowed socialist, while
Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Scott Walker of
Wisconsin have considerably more modest means.

A major dimension of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy is expected to be policy
proposals to narrow the gap between the rich and poor and to address
stagnant wages. Yet she is far from those problems; while she said she and
President Clinton were “dead broke” when they left the White House in early
2001, they are now part of the American elite.

The report makes clear that Mrs. Clinton, since leaving the State
Department, has joined the family speechmaking business with gusto. But the
former president can still command higher fees than his wife, collecting
about an average of about $250,000 per speech to $235,000 for Mrs. Clinton.

And while Mr. Clinton’s largest honorarium was the $500,000 he collected
from the EAT Stockholm Food Forum in Sweden, his wife’s engagements topped
out at $350,000.

Of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches, 10 were delivered to audiences outside the
United States, but they were not nearly as far-flung as those by her
husband over the years. Nine were to Canadian groups: the Canadian Imperial
Bank of Commerce in Whistler, British Columbia; trade organizations in
Montreal and Vancouver; the think tank Canada 2020, which generates
socially progressive policy; and five organized by the events firm
tinePublic Inc. The 10th speech was to a health care company audience in
Mexico City.

Mrs. Clinton also spoke to a mix of corporations (GE, Cisco, Deutsche
Bank), medical and pharmaceutical groups (the California Medical
Association and the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association), and
women’s organizations like the Commercial Real Estate Women Network.

Mr. Clinton’s speeches included a number of talks for financial firms,
including Bank of America and UBS, as well as technology companies like
Microsoft and Oracle.

The disclosure forms cover Jan. 1, 2014 to May 14 of this year. They show
that even as his wife has begun her pursuit of the presidency, Mr. Clinton
has shown no signs of slowing down: He gave three speeches in recent days,
including one Thursday for the American Institute of Architects in Atlanta,
and two on Tuesday in New York — one for Univision Management and one for
Apollo Management Holdings.

The disclosure forms do not reveal what taxes the couple paid on their
income, but a campaign official who requested anonymity said they had paid
an effective tax rate of about 30 percent.

Mrs. Clinton’s last filing, which covered her final years as secretary of
state, disclosed more than $16 million in income. Most of the money, mainly
covering 2012, stemmed from about 70 honorariums for President Clinton.

The Clintons have come under increasing scrutiny for their financial
activities since she announced her run for president last month. Much of
the attention has been focused on the Clinton Foundation and the donations
it received from foreign entities during the time that she was secretary of
state.

But the couple has also faced criticism for giving highly paid speeches to
certain groups, particularly the financial industry.

The speaking circuit has enriched many well-known Washington figures and
former presidents, but the exorbitant pay for light work can distance them
from the realities most Americans experience at their jobs. In one case,
the report shows, Mrs. Clinton received $100,000 for a speech to the
California Medical Association — by satellite.

Bill and Hillary Clinton Earned Over $25 Million In Speaking Fees Since
January 2014
<http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/bill-hillary-clinton-income-filing>
// Vanity Fair // Melissa Locker - May 16, 2015

Hillary Rodham Clinton and former president Bill Clinton earned in excess
of $25 million for delivering 104 speeches since the beginning of 2014, new
financial filings revealed. A few calculations on a Scrooge MacDuck
calculator reveal that is a lot of money to backstroke through, or, you
know, use in a campaign for the presidency.

The financial revelations came when the Clintons filed required income
statements from January 2014 onward with the Federal Election Commission on
Friday, and reported by The Washington Post. The disclosure reveals that
both Clintons have been working very, very hard on the speech circuit
giving 104 paid speeches between them since January 2014. For those without
a calculator handy, $25 million for 104 speeches breaks down to an average
of over $240,000 per speech. Not all of the Clintons’ speaking fees were
reflected in the F.E.C. filing, though. Any lecture fees donated to the
Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation were not reported as they did
not provide Clinton with personal income and, thus, were not required to be
disclosed.

While Hillary Clinton has retired from the paid lecture circuit now that
she is running for president, Bill Clinton is still putting in the miles,
telling NBC News, “I gotta pay our bills.” His hefty fees and busy work
schedule can translate into substantial earnings—he took in $500,000 in one
day by collecting $250,000 each for lectures at Univision and Apollo
Management Holdings.

The filing also revealed that as the Clintons’ political capital and
experience grows, so do their speaking fees. During Clinton’s 11 years as a
U.S. senator and then as President Obama’s secretary of state, according to
The Washington Post, Bill Clinton made $105 million for 540 speeches, for
an average of just (or rather “just”) $194,444 per speech. In 2012, Hillary
Clinton reported that her husband earned more than $16.3 million for 72
speeches, or an average of over $226,000 per speech. Still, good work if
you can get it.

Of course Clinton was not the only presidential hopeful who filed with the
F.E.C. on Friday. Republican candidate Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida filed
his income statements and revealed much smaller holdings, including the
fact that he cashed-out two of his retirement accounts worth between
$60,000 and $195,000. Rubio and his wife also hold at least $450,000 in
home mortgage debt. Republican candidates Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen.
Rand Paul of Kentucky sought 45-day extensions.

Hillary Clinton personally took money from companies that sought to
influence her
<http://www.vox.com/2015/5/16/8614881/Hillary-Clinton-took-money> // Vox //
Jonathan Allen - May 16, 2015

Almost a decade ago, as Hillary Clinton ran for re-election to the Senate
on her way to seeking the presidency for the first time, the New York Times
reported on her unusually close relationship with Corning, Inc., an upstate
glass titan. Clinton advanced the company's interests, racking up a big
assist by getting China to ease a trade barrier. And the firm's mostly
Republican executives opened up their wallets for her campaign.

During Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, Corning lobbied the
department on a variety of trade issues, including the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. The company has donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to her
family's foundation. And, last July, when it was clear that Clinton would
again seek the presidency in 2016, Corning coughed up a $225,500 honorarium
for Clinton to speak.

In the laundry-whirl of stories about Clinton buck-raking, it might be easy
for that last part to get lost in the wash. But it's the part that matters
most. The $225,500 speaking fee didn't go to help disease-stricken kids in
an impoverished village on some long-forgotten patch of the planet. Nor did
it go to a campaign account. It went to Hillary Clinton. Personally.

The latest episode in the Clinton money saga is different than the others
because it involves the clear, direct personal enrichment of Hillary
Clinton, presidential candidate, by people who have a lot of money at stake
in the outcome of government decisions. Her federally required financial
disclosure was released to media late Friday, a time government officials
and political candidates have long reserved for dumping news they hope will
have a short shelf life.

Together, Hillary and Bill Clinton cleared $25 million on the lecture
circuit over the last 16 months, according to a Hillary Clinton's personal
financial disclosure required of presidential candidates. A lot of the
focus will naturally go toward the political argument that Clinton's wealth
makes her out of touch. The US has had plenty of good rich presidents and
bad rich presidents. What's more important is whether they are able to
listen to all of the various interests without being unduly influenced by
any of them.

There's a reason government officials can't accept gifts: They tend to have
a corrupting effect. True, Hillary Clinton wasn't a government official at
the time the money was given. But it is very, very, very hard to see
six-figure speaking fees paid by longtime political boosters with interests
before the government — to a woman who has been running for president since
the last time she lost — as anything but a gift.

Who gave and gave and gave and lobbied?

Corning's in good company in padding the Clinton family bank account after
lobbying the State Department and donating to the foundation. Qualcomm and
salesforce.com did that, too. Irwin Jacobs, a founder of Qualcomm, and Marc
Benioff, a founder of salesforce.com, also cut $25,000 checks to the
now-defunct Ready for Hillary SuperPAC. Hillary Clinton spoke to their
companies on the same day, October 14, 2014. She collected more than half a
million dollars from them that day, adding to the $225,500 salesforce.com
had paid her to speak eight months earlier.

And Microsoft, the American Institute of Architects, AT&T, SAP America,
Oracle and Telefonica all paid Bill Clinton six-figure sums to speak as
Hillary Clinton laid the groundwork for her presidential campaign.

And that list, which includes Clinton Foundation donors, is hardly the end
of it. There's a solid set of companies and associations that had nothing
to do with the foundation but lobbied State while Clinton was there and
then paid for her to speak to them. Xerox, the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, in addition
to Corning, all lobbied Clinton's department on trade matters and then
invited her to earn an easy check.

By this point, most Clinton allies wish they had a button so they didn't
have to go to the trouble of rolling their eyes at each new Clinton money
story. The knee-jerk eye-roll response to the latest disclosure will be
that there's nothing new to see here. But there's something very important
to see that is different than the past stories. This time, it's about
Hillary Clinton having her pockets lined by the very people who seek to
influence her. Not in some metaphorical sense. She's literally being paid
by them.

That storyline should be no less shocking for the fact that it is no longer
surprising. The skimpy fig leaf of timing, that the speeches were paid for
when she was between government gigs, would leave Adam blushing. And while
most Democrats will shrug it off — or at least pretend to — it's the kind
of behavior voters should take into account when considering whether they
want to give a candidate the unparalleled power of the presidency. It goes
to the most important, hardest-to-predict characteristic in a president:
judgment.

George Stephanopoulos Makes a Passive-Aggressive Non-Apology for Clinton
Donation
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/15/a-weak-apology-won-t-end-george-stephanopoulos-clinton-problem.html>
// The Daily Beast // Lloyd Grove - May 15, 2015

You see, Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos was just too
darned generous to poor kids and AIDS victims.

In a non-apology apology that is unlikely to appease the referees of press
ethics, let alone his Republican detractors—and may just baffle morning
television viewers who haven’t paid attention to the blossoming scandal
within the media-political complex—the former top aide to Bill and Hillary
Clinton put the very best face possible on his lapse in judgment in not
disclosing $75,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation when he conducted
a contentious April 26 interview with foundation critic Peter Schweizer on
This Week With George Stephanopoulos, ABC News’s Sunday show.

Although Stephanopoulos’s case is very different from—and nowhere near as
serious as—the embellishments of suspended NBC Nightly News anchor Brian
Williams, his explanation of his mistake on Friday morning was much in the
same vein as Williams’s claim last February that he made up a story about a
helicopter ride in Iraq simply in an innocent, good-hearted attempt to
honor America’s fighting men and women.

Willams wrapped himself in the flag; Stephanopoulos cloaked himself in
charity.

His 48-second statement, which he read near the end of GMA’s first block,
went as follows: “Now I want to address an issue you may have seen about
me. Over the last several years, I’ve made substantial donations to dozens
of charities, including the Clinton Global Foundation. Those donations were
a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on
air when I covered the foundation, and I now believe that directing
personal donations to that foundation was a mistake. Even though I made
them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help
children, and protect the environment in poor countries, I should have gone
the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. I apologize to
all of you for failing to do that.”

It is hard to argue that asking tough questions of a charity’s critic on
the air—as Stephanopoulos did last month with Schweizer, whose
much-publicized book Clinton Cash has been the target of war room-level
pushback from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—without bothering to
mention that you’ve donated to that charity, is anything other than a
serious breach of accepted journalistic standards. Or that letting viewers
know about such a potential conflict of interest is “going the extra mile.”

Apparently Stephanopoulos still fails to grasp that there is nothing
“extra” about what should have been a common-sense disclosure. What’s more,
on GMA Friday morning, he didn’t see fit to mention the sheer size of his
donations; no doubt many of his viewers would consider $75,000 real money,
even for a television personality reportedly making double-digit millions.

Even Stephanopoulos unwittingly acknowledged the bad appearance of things
during an April 28 appearance on The Daily Show, two days after his
Schweizer confrontation. He told Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart: “I read the
book that this is based on, Clinton Cash, and I actually interviewed the
author on Sunday. This is a tough one, because when you actually look, look
closely at it, he even says there is no evidence of any direct action taken
on behalf of the donors. But everybody also knows when those donors give
that money—and President Clinton or someone, they get a picture with
him—there’s a hope that it’s going to lead to something. And that’s what
you have to be careful of.”

When Stewart pointed out that “the entire system appears to be shrouded in
that type of quid pro quo, or the appearance of it,” Stephanopoulos agreed,
saying: “Even if you don’t get an action, what you get is access and you
get the influence that comes with access and that’s gotta shape the
thinking of politicians. That’s what’s so pernicious about it.”

Could Stephanopoulos, who is also ABC News’s chief anchor and political
correspondent, be hoping for access to and exclusives from Bill and
Hillary, giving him a competitive edge during the 2016 presidential
campaign?

It’s a fair question. Even if Stephanopoulos never discussed his
contributions to their foundation with the Clintons, as appears to be the
case, the Clintons are undoubtedly aware of them. Like all successful
politicians, they have a keen eye for, and a long memory of, people who
give and don’t give them money.

So if Stephanopoulos really wants to put this issue to rest—and I think he
can—he’s going to have to do better than the once-over-lightly treatment he
accorded it Friday morning. A “modified limited hangout”—to use Nixon aide
John Ehrlichman’s phrase during the Watergate adventure—just won’t do in
this case.

Wolff: Stephanopoulos donation furor overdone
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2015/05/15/wolff-column-stephanopoulos-abc-clinton/27365917/>
// USA Today // Michael Wolff - May 15 2015

NEW YORK — Network news anchors used to be a powerful symbol of the modern
age, of great events, of important men and women, of America itself. Now
they are just the symbol of the media — an unpopular, suspect and intrusive
presence in everybody's life.

NBC's Brian Williams fell victim to an anti-media backlash for having
exaggerated his war reporting and other exploits. Now ABC's George
Stephanopoulos is on the hot seat for having contributed to the Clinton
Foundation.

In both instances — unintended breaches of professional decorum — the furor
vastly outweighs the crime. Human error becomes high scandal. Personal
lapses become an overarching and apparently devastating indictment of the
fundamental corruption of modern media.

Stephanopoulos contributed, wisely or not, $75,000 to a charity focused on
international health issues — one that is led by a former Democratic
president whose wife is a presidential candidate herself.

Within 24 hours, the social media opprobrium and sturm und drang about
Stephanopoulos — not so much a personal lapse as a technical infraction —
pushed the story onto the front page of The New York Times.

Stephanopoulos is, of course, being held accountable for the Clintons, with
whom, almost two decades ago, he had a high-profile White House position.
Since then, he has not only publicly fallen out with the Clintons, but over
the course of more than a decade, he has risen to the top of another
profession.

Then again, that's part of the present argument. The media is not separate
from politics, it is its insidious arm. And it is not just Stephanopoulos
being held to account for the Clintons, but all the media, or at least, the
liberal media. Indeed, this close-to-conspiracy-minded view about the
liberal, or mainstream, media — a theoretical entity that can be defined as
broadly as needed to make the argument — is the narrative of the
conservative media.

With the greatest irony, and, one might guess, mirth, the conservative
media has become much more politically influential than the liberal-ish
media, in part by its constant and canny positioning as an outsider David
to the big-media Goliath.

That's been the extraordinarily effective niche marketing tactic of the
conservative media: ever-wounded virtue against the arrogance and
superciliousness of the other side.

That prompts the most basic question: Why is non-conservative media (only
defined as not being right-wing) so bad about defending and marketing
itself? How come it lets itself be conservative media's patsy and fall guys?

Arguably, this is the result of its own marketing strategy. Almost
everything about network news has become smaller — the money, the
influence, the audience. And yet its pretense — a still profitable pretense
— remains very much that it is the voice of the nation.

That's laughable and an easy sort of pomposity to puncture. Stephanopoulos
is probably more knowledgeable about American political life than any
television anchor has ever been, and yet he is made to play a remote
television anchor instead of a sharp insider, a role that fools nobody.

Likewise, Williams, a talented television performer, is forced to imitate
the mien and experience of Edward R. Murrow — here, too, fooling nobody.

In marketing terms, you can manage an aging brand for the profits it still
produces or risk changing it up and losing those profits for an uncertain
new future. Big media chose the former way for network news.

That emperor's-new-clothes position, pretending that it yet represents a
great consensus, has not only made network news vulnerable to right-wing
media, but has made it a prime target of the resentments of the broader
liberal media, as well.

Liberal media — again, the definitions here is as broad as you like — is
arguably now bifurcated into two classes. There is a bottom-heavy class of
younger people more and more routed into digital media with significantly
less earning power and with existentially uncertain futures, together with
a remaining established set forced into ever-greater cost-cutting and the
management of steady decline. And then there is a very small circle of
people who, by some legerdemain, are able to pretend that nothing at all is
different. Life is great. The future rich.

It would be impossible to ignore in both the Stephanopoulos and Williams
cases the undertone of bitterness and something close to malevolence that
has attached to them in the wide coverage of their particular contretemps.
There is a deep hatred out there.

Stephanopoulos' contribution to the Clinton Foundation might create a
perception issue for a journalist covering the race — although, reasonably,
this puts the charity in his debt rather than the other way around. Perhaps
something to weigh. But all of a sudden, it is the stuff of potentially
career-ruining demonization. Indeed, the splitting of such ethical hairs is
one of the leading stories of the day in the view of not merely the
Internet but The New York Times, which also is constantly pilloried for the
least deviation from some undefined standard of correctness.

The Times, like most other media outlets in high dudgeon over the
Stephanopoulos contribution, does not seem to understand that this is not
really a story about Stephanopoulos, but about the larger war against the
media, mostly being fought by the media itself.

ABC News Disputes RNC Chair's Implication The Party Can Pick Its Own Debate
Moderators
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/15/reince-priebus-debate-george-stephanopoulos_n_7292246.html>
// Huffington Post // Michael Calderone - May 15, 2015

NEW YORK -- ABC News pushed back Friday against Republican National
Committee Chairman Reince Priebus' claim that ABC News chief anchor George
Stephanopoulos "was never going to moderate a Republican debate anyway," a
suggestion that the party could prevent a television network from assigning
the journalist of its choice.

"ABC News decides who moderates ABC News debates," a network spokeswoman
said. "The GOP primary debate is nine months away. Before George recused
himself, we hadn't made any decisions about our debate coverage team."

Stephanopoulos preemptively pulled himself out of ABC News' Republican
primary debate in February following revelations that he donated $75,000 to
the Clinton Foundation. Prior to the disclosure, the network's star anchor
had notably conducted a grilling of Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer
regarding his accusations against the Clintons of corruption related to
foreign donations, former President Bill Clinton's paid speaking
appearances and Hillary Clinton's decisions as secretary of State.

Though Stephanopoulos donated to the Clinton Foundation to support
charitable programs tackling AIDS and deforestation, the failure to
disclose those donations while covering the recent Clinton controversy
could tarnish a journalistic reputation he's been building since he left
politics for ABC News in 1997.

In an interview Thursday on Fox News' "Hannity," Priebus said his concerns
about Stephanopoulos moderating stemmed not from the donations, but rather
the anchor's previous role as Bill Clinton's communications director during
the 1992 election and his first term in the White House. "How can I, as
chairman of the national party, have the former employee of the Clintons,
who's running on the other side, be the person on the stage deposing our
candidate?" Preibus said.

Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Priebus if he'd told ABC that
Stephanopoulos shouldn't moderate the debate. "I've said it to everybody,"
Priebus replied.

Sean Spicer, the RNC's chief strategist and communications director, would
not confirm that Priebus had previously expressed concerns about
Stephanopoulos directly to ABC News. "We don't publicly discuss the private
conversations that we have had with any of our debate partners," Spicer
said in an email to The Huffington Post.

Spicer did not respond to questions about whether the RNC has the power to
prevent a network debate sponsor from selecting the journalist of its
choice.

Priebus has taken firmer control of the 2016 Republican debate process in
hopes of avoiding the 20-debate circus of four years ago. In January, the
RNC announced that it had sanctioned nine debates and threatened to
discipline candidates who buck the party's rules. The RNC is insisting that
TV networks partner with conservative media outlets at its debates, but
Priebus' suggestion that the political party could overrule its network
sponsor's choice of moderator implied a surprising degree of editorial
control.

Stephanopoulos came under fire in 2012 for asking Republican candidate Mitt
Romney about his views on banning birth control at a New Hampshire primary
debate, a question some conservatives argued was out of bounds. Rand Paul,
a Kentucky senator and 2016 candidate, once accused Stephanopoulos with
colluding with Democrats in posing the question. A Paul spokesman told
HuffPost on Thursday that Stephanopoulos should recuse himself from all
political coverage with Clinton in the race.

Hannity brought up the contraceptives question during Thursday's interview
with Priebus, asking the RNC chairman if he's going to "draw a line in the
sand" to ensure that any "known liberals" won't be moderating Republican
contests.

Preibus told Hannity that those who "could give a rip about our party ought
not be the people moderating our debates."

Trump: Clintons 'kiss my a--' for donations
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/242239-trump-clintons-kiss-my-a-for-donations>
// The Hill // Mark Hensch - May 15, 2015

The billionaire mogul Donald Trump says Bill and Hillary Clinton personally
approached him about making donations to the Clinton Foundation.

“Both of them,” Trump said on Thursday evening when The Daily Mail asked if
the Clintons had directly asked for contributions. He added that he wasn’t
promised any favors.

“But they do kiss my ass,” he quipped.

Trump, who is considering a run for the White House in 2016, reportedly
gave at least $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Gifts to the foundation were thrust into the spotlight this week after ABC
anchor George Stephanopoulos acknowledged giving $75,000 to the
organization. Stephanopoulos did not disclose those contributions during a
tense on-air interview with Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash,
which questions whether donors who gave to the foundation tried to curry
favor with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of State.

Trump said he was not satisfied with some of the foundation’s recent
activities.

“I wish they would spend the money more wisely. And certainly I wish they
would not spend it on themselves,” he said, citing former President Clinton
and his daughter Chelsea Clinton’s recent visit to Africa.

“It’s supposed to be for good causes, not for luxury airplane flights,” he
added.

Trump additionally argued his donations did not disqualify him from
criticizing Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination
in 2016.

“Nobody has been tougher on her than I have,” he said.

“I haven’t given her money,” he added. “I’ve given her foundation money to
be used properly.”

Trump said he plans on making a final decision on a White House run “in
June.”

Sharon Native Tapped As Clinton’s Top Aide
<http://www.thevermontstandard.com/2015/05/sharon-native-tapped-as-clintons-top-aide/>
// The Vermont Standard // Katy Savage - May 15, 2015

Robby Mook is making an effort to stay out of the spotlight but that hasn’t
been easy.

As Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager — and the first openly gay campaign
manager of a major presidential candidate — the 35-year-old from Sharon has
made national headlines. But Mook is quiet when it comes to talking about
his success. His focus is on the candidate.

That’s just “typical Robby” said Matt Dunne, a Hartland resident who knew
Mook as a high school student. “He doesn’t want to be the story. He’s all
about the candidate and getting the job done and his profile is irrelevant
to him, which is why I think people trust him in the political world.”

Some say his low profile is what makes him successful. Clinton’s campaign
is not about him, and it’s also not about Clinton. The focus is on everyday
Americans.

Clinton’s campaign is being built on the grassroots level through the newly
developed program. Staff from the campaign will soon go to all 50 states
and work with Clinton supporters to organize meetings and engage volunteers.

Mook is humbled by his position, he said.

“Hillary has picked some of the best pros in the business to work around me
on this campaign, and it’s going to be a fun, rewarding campaign,” said
Mook in an email.

Mook joined former Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign for president after
graduating from Columbia University. He worked in the Wisconsin office and
in the New Hampshire office as a deputy field director under Karen Hicks.

“He’s like a dog with a bone,” Hicks said. “He doesn’t let anything drop
off his plate and he’s a very, very good organizer. He’s just the right
person to lead this campaign.”

His humility is perhaps what sets him apart from other campaign
organization. It’s earned his name prestige in the political sphere.

“He’s not in it for himself,” said Dean. “Washington campaign staff is in
it for themselves, especially at that level. That’s what happened in
Hillary’s campaign the last time.”

Dean had lunch with Mook just the other week. He declined to reveal what
they talked about, saying political advice is meant to be private.

Mook was already making a name for himself in politics as a teenager. As a
freshman in high school, he worked on the campaign for Dunne, who was
seeking re-election to a House seat in Vermont.

“He was intrigued by the political stuff I was doing and he asked to help,”
Dunne said.

Dunne was so impressed by Mook’s skills and charm that the summer after his
freshman year at Columbia University, he recommended Mook as the first paid
staffer for the Democratic House Campaign — an organization that works to
elect Democrats to the state House of Representatives.

Mook admitted to Dunne that he had no idea what he was doing, but Dunne saw
a confidence in Mook that was rare to see for someone of his age. Mook laid
out the architecture of the group that still exists today.

Mook was patient with older candidates who were new to fundraising, like
John Murphy, a state representative from 1969-99.

“By the end of that John was successful and delighted with Robby,” Dunne
said. “That’s a rare quality of someone of that age.”

It wasn’t long before superiors took notice.

Mook first worked with Clinton as a campaign director in Nevada, Indiana
and Ohio in her 2008 bid for president. Clinton won all three of those
states.

He managed Jeanne Shaheen’s successful campaign for a United States Senate
seat representing New Hampshire.

“Robby is what everyone looks for in a campaign manager: He’s smart,
energetic and focused and knows how to bring out the best in staff. Hillary
Clinton made a great decision in bringing Robby on board for her 2016
campaign. His knowledge of New Hampshire will be invaluable as she
campaigns in the first-in-the-nation primary,” Shaheen said in an email.

Mook became the political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee in 2009. In the 2012 elections, he steered the Democrat’s
eight-seat gain.

He impressed others with his advanced team-building skills. People trusted
him for his modesty. And he became known as a clever strategist.

“He had a way of motivating people to do what they didn’t think they had
the energy to do,” said New York Rep. Steve Israel to Politco when talking
about the gain in 2012. “That’s largely the result of the dual talents that
he had. Some people think strategically. Some people think operationally.
Robby’s strength was that he was able to think on both levels.”

In 2013 Politico named him one of the “50 Politicos to Watch.” That same
year he was the campaign manager for Terry McAuliffe’s successful campaign
for governor of Virginia.

Those in his home state aren’t surprised by his success.

“In some ways when he started off I was his mentor,” Dunne said. “I would
say that it’s slipped a little bit. I look to him for political advice.”

Friends say he’s goofy and a little nerdy, but also extremely funny. People
gravitate toward him because of his humor. It’s motivated candidates when
they felt like giving up and has kept the moods in difficult situations
positive.

“I’ve always tried to not take myself too seriously, which enables me to
work better with my team,” Mook said.

The humor was first noticed at Hanover High School. He was an “imaginative”
actor where he participated in several plays.

Bill Hammond, the then-drama director at Hanover High School, compared
Mook’s acting style to Jim Carrey and Dick Van Dyke. He had a malleable
face and body.

Hammond didn’t expect him to take up politics.

“Politics is a really important job in society but a lot of people use it
for their personal gain. I have great confidence that Robby is in it
because he really wants to make things better,” Hammond said.

Dunne, a graduate of Hanover High School, cast him in that play.

“He continues to have that wonderful sense of humor which I think is
necessary when you’re involved in politics at the level he is,” Dunne said.
“That’s probably what sets Robby apart as a strategist, is that he is not
someone who seeks the limelight.”

His success started here.

“Vermont will always be a special place for me, it’s where I grew up and
learned the ropes,” Mook said. “I think what I learned when I was working
on the races in Vermont, was really how to build them from scratch.”

What a Presidential Candidate's Financial Disclosures Do, and Do Not, Reveal
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-15/what-a-presidential-candidate-s-financial-disclosures-do-and-do-not-reveal>
// Bloomberg // Richard Rubin - May 15, 2015

Presidential candidates are supposed to start disclosing their personal
finances as soon as Friday. That doesn’t mean the public will be getting a
complete picture of their relative wealth.

Candidates report assets’ value in ranges so broad that they can be
virtually meaningless. Their homes, cars and federal retirement plans are
generally off limits from public view. Nor are presidential contenders
subject to rules that make members of Congress disclose stock transactions
within 45 days and reveal who holds their mortgages. The deadline is
flexible, too.

At least two 2016 presidential hopefuls—Rand Paul and Ted Cruz—who would
otherwise have to file on Friday have already sought legally allowed
extensions. Hillary Clinton plans to file by the end of Friday, but her
campaign has not yet said whether it will make the document public before
the government does. The Federal Election Commission has up until 30 days
to process and release the paperwork.

“It offers a window into a candidate’s financial holdings, but the window
is not crystal clear,” said Rob Kelner, a Republican attorney who
specializes in election law at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington and
who is advising potential presidential candidates.

The reporters, opposition researchers and transparency advocates who comb
through the reports find them maddening. The rules are set by Congress,
which of course has an interest in maintaining vagueness.

“The top-level thing we always try to glean is their net worth and there
are definitely some problems with that,” said Daniel Auble, a senior
researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics. “They report everything
in ranges, and the higher the value of the assets, the bigger that range
is. So accuracy is a problem.”

Others dismiss those complaints. Focusing on the difficulty of calculating
net worth misses the point of requiring candidates to disclose information
about their personal finances, says Gregory Walden, an attorney at Akin
Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP in Washington. He has assisted candidates,
including Mitt Romney, with filing financial disclosure reports.

“It’s not intended to be a net worth statement,” he said. “It’s intended to
guard against conflicts and potential conflicts.”

See you in September

Federal law requires presidential candidates to file disclosures within 30
days of announcing their candidacy, or on May 15, whichever is later. They
can get two extensions of up to 45 days each, and the Federal Election
Commission can take up to 30 days to release the filings. So it could be
September before the candidates who declared first have to say anything
publicly.

The rules require candidates to list their sources of income, transactions,
liabilities and assets, all within broad ranges. They also must release
information about their spouses and dependent children.

For people with many different assets, adding up all of those ranges can
yield unhelpful results. For example, someone with holdings of $2 million
in 10 stocks would report them all as $1 million to $5 million, meaning
that the public would know only that the holdings were worth a total of $10
million to $50 million.

For example, Romney’s individual retirement account—which was so big that
it later prompted tax proposals from President Barack Obama—was worth $20.7
million to $101.6 million during the campaign. Jay Rockefeller, the former
Democratic senator from West Virginia and descendant of what was once one
of the country’s wealthiest families, reported two trusts that each had
more than $50 million in them, the highest possible category.

"You just have no idea."

Often, candidates and lawmakers don’t provide much detailed information
about obscure-looking holdings such as hedge fund or private-equity
investments that aren’t major-company stocks.

“It may be an accounting firm or a law firm,” said Bill Allison, a senior
fellow at the Sunlight Foundation. “It may be a car dealership. You have no
idea.”

Candidates don’t always see it the same way, particularly those who haven’t
sought or held federal office before, Walden said.

“They’re surprised at the granularity, the specificity of the request,”
Walden said. “Many of them can’t see the public interest in disclosing
certain things that they can’t see being a potential conflict.”

Even with the limitations, the forms can reveal financial relationships and
maneuvers that can cause political difficulty for candidates and lawmakers.

For example, Hillary Clinton’s forms as secretary of state showed that she
had moved her New York home into a trust for estate planning purposes.

"Politically challenging"

“Many candidates find these forms to be politically challenging because the
media and their opponents mine them for little toxic nuggets that can be
used against the candidates,” Kelner said. “Candidates’ level of
satisfaction with filling out a financial disclosure form is inversely
related to their wealth.”

Candidates of any wealth level aren’t required to reveal any information
about their personal property—boats, cars, jewelry, artwork, furniture—and
they don’t have to disclose their personal residences unless they generate
income.

That’s why Romney’s financial disclosure forms didn’t list any of the
multiple homes that became an issue for him during his presidential
campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Also, unlike members of Congress and the
incumbent president, candidates don’t have to disclose any detail about
their mortgages.

“If someone has a beach bungalow in the Bahamas,” Allison said, “the
taxpayers won’t know about that if they can claim it as a residence.”

Income tax forms

More detailed glimpses into candidates' financial status come from income
tax forms, which they may provide voluntarily. If past history is any
guide, that will come much later in the course of the 2016 campaign.

There's no requirement for candidates or elected officeholders to make
their tax filings public. However, it has been a long-standing annual
tradition for presidents and vice presidents to release theirs. As a
result, most serious candidates for the White House follow suit. Usually,
however, this comes as late in the campaign as possible and only after a
flurry of queries from reporters and challenges from opponents.

In 2008, Barack Obama released his tax returns in March and challenged the
much wealthier Clinton to do the same, which she did. That pattern repeated
itself on the Republican side in January 2012, when Newt Gingrich released
his tax returns, helping prompt Romney to do the same.

Those tax documents don’t necessarily present a full picture of someone’s
wealth, but they do provide more detailed information on decisions about
charitable contributions, investment strategies and foreign holdings.

For now, the public is getting zero information about all of the people who
are doing everything candidates do without actually saying they’re running
for president (unless you count those who already have to file financial
disclosure forms as sitting members of Congress).

Until they say the magic words, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum,
Donald Trump and Chris Christie won’t have to disclose a thing, though some
of them have released information in their current or previous jobs.

“The longer the wait, the more they can do kind of under the radar,”
Allison said. “And that includes not disclosing their net worth and their
assets.”

OTHER DEMOCRATS NATIONAL COVERAGE

Martin O'Malley Tells Supporters He's Inclined to Run For President
<http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-15/martin-o-malley-tells-supporters-he-s-inclined-to-run-for-president>
// Bloomberg // Sahil Kapur - May 15, 2015

Martin O'Malley inched one step closer to mounting a long-shot presidential
bid on Thursday night, telling supporters, friends, and former staff by
phone that he's leaning toward running for the Democratic nomination.

"He said that he is inclined to run for president, and that if he does,
needs the support of all his longtime friends and supporters," said a
source who was on the call, but is not authorized to speak for O'Malley's
potential campaign.

As Bloomberg and others have reported, O'Malley told his backers that he
intends to make an announcement on May 30 in Baltimore, the city where he
served as mayor for seven years.

If he does decide to make the race, O'Malley, a former two-term governor of
Maryland, would be the second candidate running to the left of Hillary
Clinton, who is dominating in Democratic polls. The other is Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, who launched his campaign last month.

O'Malley spoke of the "economic challenges" facing the country and touted
his intent to "bring new leadership, progressive values, and record of
getting results to attack these challenges," said the person on the
Thursday call.

Martin O'Malley schedules presidential fundraiser for eve of his big
announcement
<http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-omalley-schedules-presidential-fundraiser-2015-5>
// Business Insider // Colin Campbell - May 15, 2015

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), an expected 2016 presidential
candidate, has an upcoming fundraiser signed "O'Malley for President."

Though the notice for the May 29 fundraiser, obtained by Business Insider
on Friday, appears to reveal his plans. O'Malley spokeswoman Haley Morris
denied that is the case.

"No," Morris said when asked if the fundraiser confirms O'Malley's
intentions. "This is just what is required by FEC law as he makes a
decision by May 30 announcement."

O'Malley aides have previously told The Washington Post that he intends to
announce his decision whether or not to run on May 30 in Baltimore,
Maryland. According to Politico, FEC rules require a candidate to
officially file their 2016 paperwork within 15 days of conducting campaign
activities.

The May 29 fundraiser is hosted by Martin Knott, a Baltimore-area
businessman who has raised money for the former governor in the past. MSNBC
reported that Knott is expected to become the O'Malley campaign's finance
chair.

"This will be his first major event leading up to his announcement, and we
need every single one of his friends there," Knott writes in the notice to
potential donors. "I contributed the maximum of $2,700 today. I hope that
you will join me in contributing what you can, regardless of if you are
able to make it to my home."

The online invitation for O'Malley's announcement event also says it was
"Paid for by O'Malley for President."

View the invitation below:

On May 29th, I will have the privilege of hosting Governor O'Malley's
Presidential kick-off fundraiser in his hometown of Baltimore. We would be
honored if you would join us.

When I met Martin back in 1999, I was immediately impressed by his passion
and commitment to service -- and his ability to get things done. His 15
years of executive experience and record of success in our City and great
State give me every reason to believe that he will do great things for our
country. I am incredibly humbled, and excited, to be a part of the O'Malley
for President team.

This will be his first major event leading up to his announcement, and we
need every single one of his friends there. All of the details are below,
and here is a link to contribute and secure your spot at our inaugural
event: https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/withomalley.

I contributed the maximum of $2,700 today. I hope that you will join me in
contributing what you can, regardless of if you are able to make it to my
home.

....

Look forward to seeing you on the 29th.

Let's start this off right.

Best,

Martin Knott

O'Malley for President

As he prepares to launch, O’Malley faces a steep path to nomination
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-he-prepares-to-launch-omalley-faces-a-steep-path-to-nomination/2015/05/16/a04b846e-fb76-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html>
// WaPo // John Wagner – May 16,2015

MANCHESTER, N.H. — As he moved through a diner here this past week, former
Maryland governor Martin O’Malley was followed by a crush of reporters. But
many breakfast patrons at Chez Vachon seemed to have little idea who he was.

One woman asked if O’Malley had been governor of South Carolina. Buck
Mercier, of nearby Hooksett, struck up a conversation with the Democrat
about hunting and gun regulations, nodding as O’Malley told him, “I’m for
common sense, man.”

“Nobody knows him,” Mercier, a retired construction worker, told a group of
reporters after O’Malley had moved on. But that’s not all downside, he
noted: “I don’t think anybody can say anything bad about him.”

O’Malley, who plans to formally launch his presidential bid May 30 in
Baltimore, will start the race still largely unknown among voters, despite
repeated visits to Iowa, New Hampshire and other early nominating states.
He barely registers in polls that show Hillary Rodham Clinton as the
overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and she is expected
to vastly outspend him.

And yet, some analysts and activists see a path for O’Malley — albeit
narrow — to become a real factor in the race, especially if he performs
well in Iowa, the first caucus state, and gains momentum going forward.

“Can he make it happen? I don’t know,” said Joe Trippi, a veteran
Democratic strategist. “It’s a long, tough mountain to climb, but he’s in a
position to make it happen.”

[In bid to get noticed, O’Malley hits Clinton from the left]

O’Malley is offering himself as a progressive, forward-looking alternative
to Clinton, staking out liberal positions on issues including trade and
immigration.

His party credentials could be considered stronger than those of Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described socialist who launched his
candidacy for the Democratic nomination last month, and of onetime
Republican Lincoln D. Chafee, a former senator and governor from Rhode
Island who is considering getting into the race. Former senator Jim Webb of
Virginia is also looking at the contest.

“There are so few Democrats in the field that O’Malley might be able to
emerge as Clinton’s chief challenger,” said Tom Henderson, the longtime
chairman of the Polk County Democrats in Iowa.

“People want to look at the different candidates and then pick somebody,”
Henderson said of Iowa, where Clinton finished third in 2008, disrupting an
early sense of inevitability and opening the door for a young senator named
Barack Obama.

Some powerful Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid
(Nev.), say it is farfetched to expect a similar scenario this cycle, after
Clinton served as secretary of state and has been the focus of “draft
Hillary” efforts.

“Right now, we have Hillary Clinton. And that’s it,” Reid told MSNBC on
Friday. “There’s not another Barack Obama out there. There are no all-stars
out there. She has a clear field, and I’m glad she does.”

Clinton’s recent embrace of some more liberal positions — including on
immigration policy — could make it more difficult for O’Malley to run to
her left. And the presence of Sanders in the race also could complicate
O’Malley’s bid to get a foothold among progressives.

O’Malley “has got to be able to squeeze himself in there somewhere,” said
Kathleen Sullivan, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party
who is supporting Clinton. “He must think he has a path if he’s going to
run.”

O’Malley has appeared undaunted in recent days, securing office space in
Baltimore for a campaign headquarters, launching fundraising efforts, and
lining up his treasurer and finance chair.

Stung by criticism that his “zero-­tolerance” policies years ago as mayor
of Baltimore contributed to the unrest after the death of Freddie Gray in
police custody, O’Malley has started to talk more in his public appearances
about the challenges faced by cities.

On Wednesday, he told reporters that Obama and the Democrats in Congress
did not do enough to help urban areas emerge from the 2008 recession,
leaving “whole swaths of Americans, particularly in American cities . . .
worse off than they were eight years ago.”

When O’Malley tries to plot a path to the nomination, he said he thinks
about the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart, where he was introduced
to politics as a 20-year-old campaign worker.

Hart started out as a huge underdog against former vice president Walter
Mondale. He exceeded expectations in Iowa, then won New Hampshire and gave
Mondale a scare for the nomination as the race unfolded.

“Front-runners are inevitable right up until they’re not inevitable,”
O’Malley said in a recent interview. “The unknown candidate today can
become very, very well-known tomorrow.”

A Bloomberg-Saint Anselm poll this month showed that Clinton was the first
choice of 62 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire. She was
followed by Sanders with 18 percent, Vice President Biden — who hasn’t said
he’s running — with 5 percent, O’Malley with 3 percent, and Chafee and Webb
with 1 percent apiece.

Dan O’Neil, a Manchester alderman who led O’Malley around the diner here,
said the coming months will be pivotal for O’Malley. His trips to New
Hampshire over the past two years have focused on campaigning for local and
state candidates, rather than selling himself.

“The political people know who he is,” said O’Neil, who considers himself
an O’Malley supporter. “Now he’s got to get out and meet the voters. I
think once people get a chance to meet him, they’ll give him a strong look.”

At a house party in Durham later that day, O’Malley gave a short talk in
which he decried stagnant wages and the country’s growing wealth gap. He
called the Baltimore riots and subsequent state of emergency “one of the
most heartbreaking weeks we’ve had in a long time.”

When O’Malley started taking questions, a woman asked why she should
consider him instead of Clinton.

“The ‘distinct-from-Hillary’ question,” O’Malley quipped, to some laughter.
He cited his executive experience as a mayor and governor and said he has
“a track record of getting things done and being ahead of the curve.”

“I see things in a way that are much more in tune with where our country is
going,” said O’Malley, who is 15 years younger than Clinton, “rather than
with where our country has come from.”

Wendy Alley, a former chairwoman of the Dover Democratic Committee, said
she has become a fan of O’Malley after seeing him a few times but is having
a hard time spreading the word.

“I keep talking him up, and some people are like, ‘Who?’ ” Alley said.
“There are almost two challenges for him: getting people to know him, and
then getting people to realize he’s the better choice.”

Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina,
another early nominating state, said he thinks that a strong challenger
could make headway against Clinton, but he doesn’t know whether O’Malley is
that candidate.

“Hillary is running a humdrum campaign,” said Harpootlian, adding that he’d
like to see Biden run. “If O’Malley can step up the game on an emotional
level and excite people, there’s a path — but a very narrow path.”

Presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley makes crucial Iowa hire
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/15/martin-omalley-hires-top-operative-iowa>
// The Guardian // Ben Jacobs - May 15, 2015

Martin O’Malley is getting serious about challenging Hillary Clinton in
Iowa.

While Clinton has already had more than 40 staffers on the ground since
April in the state, which holds the first nominating contest in the
Democratic primary, O’Malley has locked down one of Iowa’s top Democratic
operatives.

According to multiple Democratic sources, Joe O’Hern, a veteran field
operative in the state, is slated to be the caucus director for the former
Maryland governor in Iowa, a position which oversees voter contact. The Des
Moines Register credited O’Hern with putting together “the largest field
effort ever in a midterm election” for the Iowa Democratic party in 2014
and he also oversaw campaign efforts in the midwest for the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee in 2012.

The operative joins Jake Oeth, a Des Moines-based consultant who served as
the political director on Bruce Braley’s unsuccessful 2014 Senate campaign
in Iowa. Oeth has been a consultant for O’Malley’s political action
committee since the beginning of the year and is slated to be state
director should O’Malley run for the White House.

O’Malley has long been active in Iowa, sending 11 staffers to the state
during the 2014 midterm elections and making repeated trips to campaign for
Democratic candidates. As the Maryland Democrat gears up for an expected
launch of his presidential campaign at the end of May, the hire of O’Hern
represents his most decisive step towards building a robust campaign
operation that could potentially pose a threat to Clinton.

Spokespeople for O’Malley’s political action committee did not respond to
multiple requests for comment.

After Boston bombings verdict, O’Malley reaffirms opposition to death
penalty
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/15/after-boston-bombings-verdict-omalley-reaffirms-opposition-to-death-penalty/>
// WaPo // John Wagner - May 15, 2015

Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who is poised to launch a White
House bid this month, reaffirmed his strong opposition to capital
punishment Friday following a federal jury’s decision to sentence to death
one of those convicted for the Boston Marathon bombings.

The Democrat said in a statement that while he respects the verdict, he
remains opposed to the death penalty as “a matter of principle and as a
matter of policy.”

“The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and the appeals process
is expensive and cruel to the surviving family members,” O’Malley said.
“Furthermore, the nations responsible for the vast majority of public
executions include North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, China and the United
States of America. Our country does not belong in that company.”

Maryland abolished its death penalty in 2013 at O’Malley’s urging. As
governor, O’Malley, a practicing Catholic, spent several years lobbying
state lawmakers on the issue before becoming successful.

A federal jury on Friday sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his role
in the Boston Marathon bombings two years ago after after deliberating for
more than 14 hours.

O’Malley, who has been ramping up for a presidential bid, plans an
announcement about his political future May 30 in Baltimore.

As he prepares to launch, O’Malley faces a steep path to nomination
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-he-prepares-to-launch-omalley-faces-a-steep-path-to-nomination/2015/05/16/a04b846e-fb76-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html>
// WaPo // John Wagner - May 16, 2015

MANCHESTER, N.H. — As he moved through a diner here this past week, former
Maryland governor Martin O’Malley was followed by a crush of reporters. But
many breakfast patrons at Chez Vachon seemed to have little idea who he was.

One woman asked if O’Malley had been governor of South Carolina. Buck
Mercier, of nearby Hooksett, struck up a conversation with the Democrat
about hunting and gun regulations, nodding as O’Malley told him, “I’m for
common sense, man.”

“Nobody knows him,” Mercier, a retired construction worker, told a group of
reporters after O’Malley had moved on. But that’s not all downside, he
noted: “I don’t think anybody can say anything bad about him.”

O’Malley, who plans to formally launch his presidential bid May 30 in
Baltimore, will start the race still largely unknown among voters, despite
repeated visits to Iowa, New Hampshire and other early nominating states.
He barely registers in polls that show Hillary Rodham Clinton as the
overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and she is expected
to vastly outspend him.

And yet, some analysts and activists see a path for O’Malley — albeit
narrow — to become a real factor in the race, especially if he performs
well in Iowa, the first caucus state, and gains momentum going forward.

“Can he make it happen? I don’t know,” said Joe Trippi, a veteran
Democratic strategist. “It’s a long, tough mountain to climb, but he’s in a
position to make it happen.”

[In bid to get noticed, O’Malley hits Clinton from the left]

O’Malley is offering himself as a progressive, forward-looking alternative
to Clinton, staking out liberal positions on issues including trade and
immigration.

His party credentials could be considered stronger than those of Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described socialist who launched his
candidacy for the Democratic nomination last month, and of onetime
Republican Lincoln D. Chafee, a former senator and governor from Rhode
Island who is considering getting into the race. Former senator Jim Webb of
Virginia is also looking at the contest.

“There are so few Democrats in the field that O’Malley might be able to
emerge as Clinton’s chief challenger,” said Tom Henderson, the longtime
chairman of the Polk County Democrats in Iowa.

“People want to look at the different candidates and then pick somebody,”
Henderson said of Iowa, where Clinton finished third in 2008, disrupting an
early sense of inevitability and opening the door for a young senator named
Barack Obama.

Some powerful Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid
(Nev.), say it is farfetched to expect a similar scenario this cycle, after
Clinton served as secretary of state and has been the focus of “draft
Hillary” efforts.

“Right now, we have Hillary Clinton. And that’s it,” Reid told MSNBC on
Friday. “There’s not another Barack Obama out there. There are no all-stars
out there. She has a clear field, and I’m glad she does.”

Clinton’s recent embrace of some more liberal positions — including on
immigration policy — could make it more difficult for O’Malley to run to
her left. And the presence of Sanders in the race also could complicate
O’Malley’s bid to get a foothold among progressives.

O’Malley “has got to be able to squeeze himself in there somewhere,” said
Kathleen Sullivan, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party
who is supporting Clinton. “He must think he has a path if he’s going to
run.”

O’Malley has appeared undaunted in recent days, securing office space in
Baltimore for a campaign headquarters, launching fundraising efforts, and
lining up his treasurer and finance chair.

Stung by criticism that his “zero-­tolerance” policies years ago as mayor
of Baltimore contributed to the unrest after the death of Freddie Gray in
police custody, O’Malley has started to talk more in his public appearances
about the challenges faced by cities.

On Wednesday, he told reporters that Obama and the Democrats in Congress
did not do enough to help urban areas emerge from the 2008 recession,
leaving “whole swaths of Americans, particularly in American cities . . .
worse off than they were eight years ago.”

When O’Malley tries to plot a path to the nomination, he said he thinks
about the 1984 presidential campaign of Gary Hart, where he was introduced
to politics as a 20-year-old campaign worker.

Hart started out as a huge underdog against former vice president Walter
Mondale. He exceeded expectations in Iowa, then won New Hampshire and gave
Mondale a scare for the nomination as the race unfolded.

“Front-runners are inevitable right up until they’re not inevitable,”
O’Malley said in a recent interview. “The unknown candidate today can
become very, very well-known tomorrow.”

A Bloomberg-Saint Anselm poll this month showed that Clinton was the first
choice of 62 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire. She was
followed by Sanders with 18 percent, Vice President Biden — who hasn’t said
he’s running — with 5 percent, O’Malley with 3 percent, and Chafee and Webb
with 1 percent apiece.

Dan O’Neil, a Manchester alderman who led O’Malley around the diner here,
said the coming months will be pivotal for O’Malley. His trips to New
Hampshire over the past two years have focused on campaigning for local and
state candidates, rather than selling himself.

“The political people know who he is,” said O’Neil, who considers himself
an O’Malley supporter. “Now he’s got to get out and meet the voters. I
think once people get a chance to meet him, they’ll give him a strong look.”

At a house party in Durham later that day, O’Malley gave a short talk in
which he decried stagnant wages and the country’s growing wealth gap. He
called the Baltimore riots and subsequent state of emergency “one of the
most heartbreaking weeks we’ve had in a long time.”

When O’Malley started taking questions, a woman asked why she should
consider him instead of Clinton.

“The ‘distinct-from-Hillary’ question,” O’Malley quipped, to some laughter.
He cited his executive experience as a mayor and governor and said he has
“a track record of getting things done and being ahead of the curve.”

“I see things in a way that are much more in tune with where our country is
going,” said O’Malley, who is 15 years younger than Clinton, “rather than
with where our country has come from.”

Wendy Alley, a former chairwoman of the Dover Democratic Committee, said
she has become a fan of O’Malley after seeing him a few times but is having
a hard time spreading the word.

“I keep talking him up, and some people are like, ‘Who?’ ” Alley said.
“There are almost two challenges for him: getting people to know him, and
then getting people to realize he’s the better choice.”

Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina,
another early nominating state, said he thinks that a strong challenger
could make headway against Clinton, but he doesn’t know whether O’Malley is
that candidate.

“Hillary is running a humdrum campaign,” said Harpootlian, adding that he’d
like to see Biden run. “If O’Malley can step up the game on an emotional
level and excite people, there’s a path — but a very narrow path.”

How Bernie Sanders won the talk radio primary
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-bernie-sanders-won-the-talk-radio-primary>
// MSNBC // Alex Seitz-Wald – May 16, 2015

Bernie Sanders may be a long shot for the presidency, but on liberal talk
radio, he’s already king.

The Vermont Independent senator has for years been a fixture on the
airwaves and internet streams of left-wing political talk shows, building a
national audience eager to enlist in his populist crusade against the 1%.
So when Sanders declared his dark-horse presidential bid last month, the
response from talk radio listeners was overwhelming — and nearly unanimous.

“For my audience, the core of the Democratic Party, it’s Bernie Sanders.
There’s no question,” said Atlanta-based talker Mike Malloy. “It is very
consistent. It is unwavering for Bernie Sanders. It’s consistent responses
no matter where the calls are coming from.”

From local personalities to nationally syndicated and satellite radio
heavy-hitters, interviews with nearly a dozen liberal talk radio hosts show
Sanders is so far crushing the primary — at least when it comes to their
medium.

“For my audience, the core of the Democratic Party, it’s Bernie Sanders.
There’s no question.”

Talk radio host Mike Malloy

Few people understand the pulse of the hardcore activist base better than
the radio hosts taking calls and emails from listeners every day. They say
their audience views Hillary Clinton skeptically (but would vote for her in
a general election), and that listeners know next to nothing about Martin
O’Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee, who are also considering Democratic
presidential bids.

For Sanders, meanwhile, conditions are perfect.

While perpetually overshadowed by its far more popular conservative
counterpart, progressive talk nonetheless reaches at least 20 million
devoted listeners on radio and the Internet, according to Michael Harrison,
the editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine, an industry publication.

Political talk radio listeners of all stripes tend to be more politically
engaged and ideologically extreme than average voters, and thus more likely
to vote in primaries. And the nature of the medium, which costs little to
produce and is free to consume, lends itself to anti-establishment voices
like Sanders.

“The default environment of radio is populist, is grassroots, is close to
the ground,” Harrison said. Lately, commercial radio has gone through its
most corporate phase in history, but it’s trending back towards
“independent and populist talk,” Harrison added.

Like other left-wing audiences, talk radio listeners are looking for an
alternative to Clinton. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is also very
popular here. “My audience is pretty much in the ‘anybody but Hillary’
camp,” said Iowa-based Ed Fallon, who has fielded many pro-Sanders calls.

But unlike some other corners of the progressive movement, Sanders has put
down deep roots in talk radio. “My audience has known Bernie for a long
time. He’s been very accessible on radio for years,” said New York-based
syndicated host Sam Seder.

And as listeners have become increasingly convinced that Warren is not
running for president, they’ve coalesced around Sanders.

“It has been 99% a love affair between Bernie Sanders and my audience,”
said Boston-based radio host Jeff Santos, whose show can be heard in the
presidential state of New Hampshire. “Since he’s announced, it’s been
unanimous and incredibly impressive.”

Sanders’ most important relationship in liberal talk started in a living
room in Montpelier, Vermont, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Thom Hartmann
had just started broadcasting his show from there and booked Sanders, then
the state’s congressman.

The lawmaker was such a hit with listeners that it was quickly decided he
should have a regular guest slot. Dubbed “Brunch with Bernie,” Sanders
essentially took over an hour of Hartmann’s show every Friday, expounding
on the week’s news and taking calls.

“They’re over the moon for Bernie Sanders, they’re over the moon for
Elizabeth Warren, but when you tell them they’re a narrow slice of America,
they get really mad.”

Hartmann now hosts the top-rated progressive talk radio show in the
country, and Sanders still does an hour of “Brunch with Bernie” every week,
more than a decade later.

Some on Sanders’ staff have questioned this use of the senator’s time, but
Sanders enjoys it too much stop, an aide said.

When the senator announced his presidential bid, Hartmann quickly offered
his endorsement and his listeners were eager to enlist. “I haven’t had a
dissenting or skeptical or cynical voice about Bernie’s candidacy since he
announced,” Hartman said from his studio, now in Washington, D.C., near the
Capitol.

Sanders is also close with host Bill Press, another top liberal talker
based in Washington. Press, a former chairman of the California Democratic
Party, hosted some early Sanders presidential brain trust meetings at his
Capitol Hill home.

“As a talk radio host reaching the progressive base every day, I have never
seen the level of all-out excitement that I’ve heard from viewers and
listeners in the last couple days,” Press said shortly after Sanders
announced his run.

For the activists who consume liberal talk radio, the fact that Sanders has
probably joined more picket lines than any other of Congress is a major
selling point.

“The progressive radio audience is really excited to have Bernie Sanders in
the race and feels he’s one of them,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, who hosts a
morning show on Sirius/XM’s liberal talk channel. “You hear it in nearly
every call on the presidential race since his announcement.”

That’s not true for other challengers to Clinton. “Martin O’Malley isn’t a
known quantity to this audience at all. Jim Webb is not a known quantity,”
said Rabin-Havt, echoing other hosts. “This audience knows and likes
Bernie.”

This audience could be a valuable in a partisan primary, but even Sanders’
biggest fans acknowledge he has little chance of winning the Democratic
nomination — let alone the White House.

Still, they appreciate his ability to influence the debate. “I think the
whole [disappointment with the] Obama presidency has sort of reoriented
people to not be as focused on the intent or will of a specific candidate,
but rather the different mechanisms to push them in a certain direction,”
Seder explained.

But Sanders’ near-universal appeal among liberal talk listeners has made
things awkward for hosts who approach 2016 more pragmatically.

Los Angeles-based syndicated host Norman Goldman, who thinks Sanders’
appeal is too thin, has engaged in daily battles with callers since the
senator announced.

“They react like a betrayed lover. They act like I’ve been cheating on
them,” he said. “They’re over the moon for Bernie Sanders, they’re over the
moon for Elizabeth Warren, but when you tell them they’re a narrow slice of
America, they get really mad.”

Fellow Los Angeles-based host Stephanie Miller, who supported Barack Obama
over Clinton in 2008, is now with the former secretary of State. “I love
Bernie Sanders, and I love all his ideas, I’ve had him on many times,” she
said, but Miller doesn’t think he can win.

That alleged marginalization of Sanders has prompted some callers to
threaten to stop listening to her to show. “Last time, I got called the
Obama-loving Hillary-hater,” Miller said. “Now I’m the Bernie
Sanders-hating Hillary apologist.”

GOP

When is a campaign not a campaign? When it's a Super Pac
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/17/when-is-a-campaign-not-a-campaign-when-its-a-super-pac>
// The Guardian // Ben Jacobs – May 17, 2015

Jeb Bush, RNC Spring meeting

These days, presidential candidates are not just raising money for their
own campaigns. They are also raising money for outside groups with generic
sounding names like Priorities USA, Right to Rise and Our American Renewal.

These are Super Pacs (political action committees), affiliated with each
outside campaign but nominally independent. In 2012, they were helpful
appendages. This year, heading into 2016, they are becoming fully fledged
substitutes for campaigns, taking over functions including opposition
research, polling and even knocking on doors.

Super Pacs are just five years old. Like most developments in modern
campaign finance law, they were created by accident through judicial
decisions, not by legislation.

First, in 2010 the Citizens United supreme court decision struck down
restrictions on independent expenditures in campaigns by nonprofits.
Citizens United was followed the same year by a decision by the DC circuit
court of appeals in a case called SpeechNOW, which said political groups
that sought to make only independent expenditures could not be subject to
federal campaign contribution limits.

These two decisions combined to create “super” versions of previously
existing political action committees, that would make expenditures
independently of the candidates they supported and thus could raise as much
money as they wanted. In other words, one donor can fund an entire Super
Pac.

In the 2012 Republican primary, Super Pacs were credited with keeping the
campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum alive for months, extending
the race into the spring.

In that race and the general election that followed, Super Pacs were
primarily used to run television ads. American campaigns have long focused
on saturating the airwaves with advertisements; Super Pacs provided a new
vehicle to air even more commercials. Campaigns, however, still have major
advantages over Super Pacs when it comes to buying television time.

Within 60 days of a general election or 45 days of a primary, political
campaigns are entitled to something called “lowest unit rate”. It means
that a political campaign gets the lowest rate a television station offers
to any advertiser, and it is coupled with the requirement that stations
give political campaigns “reasonable access” to run ads. Lowest unit rate
also means TV stations cannot censor or restrict ads that federal campaigns
seek to run.

None of these rules apply to Super Pacs. This means that they have to pay a
much higher rate per ad and may find it more difficult to get their
advertisements on television.

However, all such advantages for campaigns pale next to the fact that Super
Pacs can raised unlimited money from an individual donor. Federal campaigns
can only take $5,400 from any individual ($2,700 for a primary election and
another $2,700 for a general election). So while campaigns can get more
value for their money when spending on advertising, Super Pacs don’t have
to worry too much about value.

And this year, they are not worrying too much about just running television
ads.

A bipartisan matter

Ready for Hillary

An intern works at the Ready for Hillary offices in Arlington, Virginia.
The Super Pac wound down after Hillary Clinton declared her candidacy for
president. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

The nascent campaign of Jeb Bush has been entirely headquartered out of an
organization called Right to Rise. The group is on pace to raise more than
$100m in May alone and is expected to be significantly better-funded than
Bush’s inevitable presidential campaign.

Bush has also set up a connected nonprofit, Right to Rise Policy Solutions,
which is serving as a parking place for campaign policy advisers until the
former Florida governor announces his candidacy.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Right to Rise is that it is expected
to be led by Bush’s top political adviser, Mike Murphy. Because Super Pacs
cannot coordinate with campaigns, this means that Bush will probably be
unable to communicate with Murphy for the duration of the campaign.

While Bush has yet to declare his candidacy, Ted Cruz, who has announced
his bid for the White House, has also bragged about the success of the four
interrelated Super Pacs that are backing his campaign.

In a speech at the April meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las
Vegas, the Texas senator boasted that a Super Pac supporting him had
“raised $31m” in the first week of his campaign. “That’s more money than
any other Super Pac has raised … in the history of politics” in a
comparable period, he said.

Each of the four Super Pacs supporting Cruz is funded entirely by one major
donor and devoted to one specific campaign task.

Nor are Republicans alone in such activity. Hillary Clinton, the clear
Democratic frontrunner for 2016, is holding a number of fundraisers for one
of her affiliated Super Pacs, Priorities USA. A separate group, Correct the
Record, has spun off from the Democratic research Super Pac American
Bridge, solely to do rapid response for Clinton.

Correct the Record insists it will be able to coordinate with the Clinton
campaign, despite taking unlimited contributions, because it will not run
any ads on her behalf.

Not all of this may end up being legal. But as Rick Hasen, an election law
expert who teaches at University of California, Irvine, points out, even
“if some of these things don’t pass muster with the courts”, such matters
probably won’t be resolved until after the 2016 election.

Furthermore, campaign finance may have changed dramatically by the time
such legal issues are resolved.

“Nothing is permanent when it comes to campaign finance,” said Hasen.

For now, though, the landscape is dominated by Super Pacs.

At Iowa dinner, Rand Paul hits Jeb Bush on Iraq as Lindsey Graham returns
the favor
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/at-iowa-dinner-rand-paul-hits-jeb-bush-on-iraq-as-lindsey-graham-returns-the-favor-118024.html>
// Politico // Eli Stokols - May 16, 2015

DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Rand Paul was alone among the 11 Republicans who
spoke here at the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday night
in taking a shot at Jeb Bush over his comments last week about the Iraq War.

“We had a question this week that was asked to a certain candidate who used
to be the governor of Florida who’s running in the Republican primary,”
Paul said. “And the question was: Knowing what you know now do you think it
was a good idea to topple Hussein, to begin the war in Iraq?”

Bush, of course, has spent the week backpeddling after initially telling
Megyn Kelly in a Fox News interview that he would have authorized military
force in Iraq even “knowing what we know now”; four days after the
interview aired, Bush acknowledged that he would not, in hindsight, have
made the same call as his brother did.

“He fumbled around, and I think he had four or five different questions on
four or five different days. But one of his responses was a very defensive
response: ‘Well, that’s hypothetical. What would that have to do with this
election?’ I think the question has everything to do with this election.”

Paul then pivoted and turned his attacks on Hillary Clinton, the likely
Democratic nominee, who he said needs to answer difficult questions herself.

“I’ve got a question for Hillary Clinton: Was it a good idea going to
Libya? Was it a good idea to topple Gaddafi?” Paul said, referring to
Libya’s former dictator. “It’s the same answer: No.”

Paul argued that the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi
“should forever preclude” Hillary Clinton from holding higher office,
before implicating Bush and the rest of his more hawkish rivals for a more
bellicose approach to foreign policy.

“We ought to think before we act,” he said.

Taking the stage 10 minutes after Paul, Lindsey Graham went out of his way
to defend Bush, blaming the unraveling of stability in Iraq on President
Barack Obama, not George W. Bush.

Graham, who has made a habit of trolling the Kentucky senator, also mocked
Paul’s focus on civil liberties, picking up on his statement that the
federal government should still “call a lawyer” to get a warrant before
arresting terrorists instead of illegally spying.

“I’m not going to call a judge,” said Graham. “I’m going to call a drone
and kill you.”

Rick Perry to announce presidential run June 4 in Dallas
<http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2015/05/rick-perry-to-announce-presidential-run-june-4-in-dallas.html/>
// Trail Blazers Blog // Christy Hoppe - May 15, 2015

Former Gov. Rick Perry has chosen Dallas to officially declare his second
run for the Republican presidential nomination in three weeks.

For months Perry has said that he would announce his decision in May or
June. But his constant travel to the early contest states of Iowa, New
Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida has left little doubt of his
intentions.

Perry joins a burgeoning field of contenders, including fellow Texan Sen.
Ted Cruz.

The announcement was made via the Twitter account of his wife, Anita.

Unlike four years ago, when he rushed into the contest after seeing he
could raise quick money and was leading in polls, Perry enters this contest
as an underdog.

He is polling in single digits, but again unlike his last run, he has spent
more than a year in preparation. He has consulted weekly with conservative
experts on foreign relations and economic policy. He has assembled advisers
and campaign teams in the early states and has even taken tutoring in
public speaking.

He has frequently acknowledged mistakes in his last run – entering while
still ailing from recent back surgery and being under-prepared for the
rigors and questions on the campaign trail.

In the 2016 contest, he will begin from behind, not only trying to push his
message through the similar-sounding policies advanced by a large pack of
candidates, but he also must erase memories of his previous debate flops
and campaign stumbles.

Perry has been stressing that he is the only GOP candidate – save for
potential rival South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham – who has served in the
military.

He also has touted his executive experience as Texas governor for 14 years.
But he has competition with that credential from top-tier contenders
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

He will also mostly certainly stress his economic record in Texas, which
has led the nation in job creation. He underscores lawsuit limits, minimum
regulations on businesses and low taxes for firing the state’s economic
engine, which has sputtered in recent months with the plunge in oil prices.

Sources predict that after his announcement, he will immediately resume
campaigning in Iowa, where he will be this weekend and into next week.

He is joining most other GOP candidates at a forum on Saturday and then
spending the next several days on a nine-day tour of small towns throughout
the state.

Amtrak’s biggest challenge: The Hudson River Tunnels, and Chris Christie
<https://www.yahoo.com/politics/amtraks-biggest-challenge-the-hudson-river-118998064456.html>
// Yahoo // Jon Ward - May 15, 2015

The crash of Amtrak Train 188 on Tuesday, which killed at least eight
passengers, jolted the East Coast and the nation and refocused attention on
the state of the nation’s infrastructure, which is crumbling.

While speed rather than infrastructure may have been the problem in
Tuesday’s crash, Amtrak does face a long-term infrastructure crisis 100
miles north of Philadelphia: what to do with the North River Tunnels, which
house two century-old two-way tracks under the Hudson River in New York.

The tunnels — which serve around 20 New Jersey Transit and three to four
Amtrak trains per hour during peak service times — are a key chokepoint for
the entire Northeast Corridor. They are the entry point for Amtrak trains
going into New York, and the exit for those leaving the city.

Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman described the tunnels in February as “one of the
most critical pieces of infrastructure in the New York Metro area — if not
the nation.”

The tunnels are inspected daily, and engineers would shut them down if a
leak or structural compromise were discovered. No one is talking about a
threat like imminent collapse. But they are aging and have come under
increasing strain in recent years.

The flooding of the tunnels in late October 2012 due to Hurricane Sandy put
the integrity of the ancient tunnels up against a clock. Chlorides and
sulfides from the seawater remain in the concrete, the embedded steel, the
track and the electrical systems — all of which need to be replaced at some
point in the next decade or two.

“The damage to the tunnel following Super Storm Sandy has changed the
situation entirely. Instead of work being a long term goal, it is now an
urgent necessity,” Amtrak said in a recent document.

No one knows exactly how long the North River Tunnels will remain
operative, but Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman said in 2014 that 20 years is the
maximum amount of time the pair of two-way tunnels could continue running
without one of them being shut down for major repair.

To shut down one of the tunnels would mean running all New Jersey Transit
and Amtrak trains to the city through a single tunnel, which would cause a
75 percent reduction in service. Only six trains an hour would go through
the tunnels then.

Amtrak and NJ Transit service would grind to a crawl, causing a massive
displacement of commuters, who would overload subway, bus and ferry
alternatives.

It would be an “economic catastrophe,” said Tom Wright, executive director
of the Regional Plan Association.

“The economic impact of a single day of the Northeast Corridor being out is
almost $100 million dollars on the economy,” said New York Mayor Bill
DeBlasio this week.

The only way to avoid such a scenario is to build a new tunnel under the
Hudson, divert much of the traffic to a pair of new two-way tracks that
would go through the new tunnel, and then shut down one of the aging tracks
to do a full renovation.

The biggest challenge to doing this is that politicians in New York, New
Jersey and Washington have so far been unable to come together on a funding
scheme to pay for what Amtrak is calling the Gateway Project, which they
have estimated will cost $15 billion and take 10 to 15 years to complete.

“What’s shocking,” said Wright, “is it almost feels like they’re waiting
for [a crisis] to happen.”

There is a twist to the story that involves a possible 2016 presidential
contender: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Because in fact, construction
was underway on a new tunnel under the Hudson that was scheduled to be
finished in 2018.

But Christie canceled the project.

In the fall of 2010, exactly a century after the North River Tunnels were
opened, Christie, who had been elected in a heavily Democratic state the
year prior, was in the midst of a budget fight, seeking to make up an $11
billion shortfall in a $29 billion budget.

Christie argued that New Jersey taxpayers could not — by themselves without
any help from New York City or New York state — shoulder the cost overruns
on the tunnel project, which he said would be $2 billion to $5 billion
beyond the $8.7 billion price tag.

Christie diverted state money — along with funds from the Port Authority of
New York and New Jersey — from the tunnel project to more immediate state
transportation projects. That move helped Christie avoid raising the
state’s gas tax — which according to the Tax Foundation is the lowest in
the nation at 14.5 cents a gallon — to replenish the transportation trust
fund, and also averted toll hikes.

Democratic lawmakers who had fought to get funding for the tunnel project,
known as Access to the Region’s Core, or the ARC Tunnel, were furious.

“The governor has put politics before performance, and it is the people of
New Jersey who will pay the high price,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.,
said at the time.

Lautenberg blasted Christie’s decision as “the biggest public policy
blunder in New Jersey’s history.”

The issue has continued to dog Christie. Last August, while he was on
vacation in California, Christie was sucked into a lengthy back and forth
with New Jersey residents on Twitter angry over his cancellation of the ARC
project.

“@GovChristie please ride to NYC and back to NJ on @NJTRANSIT for one week
and then say this was a good idea,” wrote a user named Evan using the
handle @Martinoe71.

Christie defended his decision, referring to the ARC as “an ill-advised
project” and said that he was working “on 2 alternatives: Amtrak Gateway
tunnel and/or extension of the 7 train.”

When one New Jersey resident said that Christie “knows the 7 extension is
dead,” the governor shot back, “The 7 extension is not dead.”

Even Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a sometime ally of Christie’s, jumped into
the thread to argue for more investment in rail.

The issue is still coming up during Christie’s regular town hall meetings.
At a town hall in Kenilworth, N.J., on March 31, a man asked the governor
why he had canceled the ARC project.

Christie replied that it was being funded only by money from New Jersey,
the federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Christie said that New York state and New York City refused to agree to
share the burden of cost overruns.

“It was like a game of chicken, you know. They didn’t think I’d cancel it.
They didn’t know me,” Christie said.

Unlike in his Twitter spat last summer, however, Christie told the crowd
that a tunnel under the Hudson was “a good idea.”

“We need it,” he said.

A week ago, a group of transportation experts convened a daylong meeting at
the newly constructed One World Trade Center in Manhattan to discuss the
future of transportation under the Hudson River, calling it the
Trans-Hudson Summit.

Peter Rogoff, the federal Department of Transportation’s under secretary
for policy, called on the political players in Albany, New York City and
Trenton — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio and
Christie — to take action.

“We need to figure out if we’re just going to wring our hands and watch the
patient expire — going to that six trains an hour scenario — or whether
we’re all going to take the more difficult political steps necessary to
actually address the challenge, rectify the problem,” Rogoff said.

Rogoff made a pointed critique of Christie’s decision to cancel the ARC
project.

“We are determined to look forward, not backward. But in understanding the
urgency we face today, we also have to recognize that we did lose a whole
decade,” he said.

“We need to take a look at who benefits, and who as a region should
contribute,” he said. “But we need to recognize that we need to get on with
it. We don’t have another decade to spend thinking about it and talking
about it.”

Inside Marco Rubio’s stumble on immigration and what it says about his
ability to lead
<https://www.yahoo.com/politics/inside-marco-rubios-stumble-on-immigration-and-118962657286.html?soc_src=unv-sh&soc_trk=tw>
// Yahoo News // Jon Ward and Andrew Romano - May 15, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C., and MIAMI — On the afternoon of July 30, 2013, Marco
Rubio walked onto the floor of the Senate to give another stem-winder — the
latest in a season of feisty speeches.

“Is there an issue on which we are willing to do everything we can and lay
it all on the line?” Rubio asked his fellow senators. “If it is not this
one, which one is it?”

For months, the freshman from Florida had been one of the central figures
in American politics. The previous November, Republican Mitt Romney had
received only 27 percent of Latino support on his way to losing the
election, and that same night the GOP pinned its hopes on Rubio, a
41-year-old Cuban-American who had served in Washington for less than two
years.

Rubio accepted the challenge, and in early 2013 he took up the cause of
immigration reform. In reality, he had little choice: It was the issue of
the day and everybody was taking sides. Still, Rubio did more than just
weigh in: He adopted a leadership role, and a position at odds with many in
the base of his party, and by the end of June he had helped push a
comprehensive reform bill through the Senate. Immigration reform became
Rubio’s signature issue; month after month he championed it, wooing both
conservative talk radio and Spanish-language media and exhausting himself
in the process.

As Rubio entered the Senate chamber, the deal was halfway home. The bill
had shifted to the deeply conservative House, where the debate continued to
rage.

But Rubio was not on the Senate floor to argue for immigration reform. Not
today. In fact, now that tea party conservatives who had propelled him to
office in 2010 had turned on him — radio personality Glenn Beck went so far
as to call Rubio “a piece of garbage” — the senator had stopped talking
about immigration almost completely. Instead, he had come to play second
fiddle to another senator even newer to the chamber than he.

Rubio had come to support Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s quixotic quest
to defund Obamacare.

After immigration reform passed the Senate, Rubio could have continued his
crusade and worked to ensure that the House passed something as well.
Instead, he decided to change the subject. In July, he sponsored
legislation to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy; a few weeks
later, he withdrew support for a gay judge whom he had previously supported.

Now, while Rubio criticized Obama from the lectern, Cruz — the tea party’s
latest darling — sat a couple of feet to his right, nodding and grinning.
At one point, Rubio likened the Affordable Care Act to New Coke — a product
that Coca-Cola was forced to recall in 1985 after only a few short months
on the shelves.

“It was a disaster,” Rubio said. “Everybody hated it. What did Coca-Cola do
when New Coke began to flounder? They did not say, ‘Well, we are just going
to continue to make more of it.’ They backed away from it.”

Rubio wasn’t referencing his decision to back away from immigration reform
— but he might as well have been.

“[Coca-Cola] learned from their mistake, and they did not double down,” he
continued. “That is the way it is in the real world. That is the way it is
in our lives.”

*****

Rubio had a point that day. Everybody backtracks. Repositioning is a fact
of life, especially in politics.

But what Rubio did in 2013 seemed different. The problem wasn’t that he
shifted his focus or emphasis. The problem was that he ditched his own
immigration-reform bill while it was winding its way through Congress — and
started desperately trying to convince conservatives that he was still one
of them instead.

In short, Rubio appeared to panic. “He just decided to run from it like a
scalded dog,” says one influential Republican consultant.

“It was not his finest hour,” adds Alex Castellanos, a Cuban-born
Republican consultant who is not supporting any one candidate in 2016.

The episode raised important questions about Rubio’s leadership skills —
questions that still linger nearly two years later, as the senator embarks
on his first campaign for the Oval Office.

The presidency is a singular job; no prior experience can really prepare
someone to lead the free world. But how a candidate operates under pressure
has long been a key indicator of how he or she will respond to crisis as
president.

When Wall Street collapsed in September 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,
and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., were essentially tied in the polls. But then
McCain announced that he wanted to “suspend” his campaign and delay the
coming debate. He appeared to be flummoxed and indecisive. “It’s going to
be part of the president’s job to be able to deal with more than one thing
at once,” Obama said at the time — and voters eventually agreed.

On Aug. 5, 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air-traffic
controllers, setting the tone for the rest of his presidency and
strengthening his hand in later talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, who was
reportedly impressed. In 1960, John F. Kennedy helped get Martin Luther
King Jr. released from jail; Richard Nixon refused to get involved. As the
Democratic Party seemed to disintegrate in 1948, Harry Truman took risk
after risk, supporting civil rights and railing against Congress on a
21,928-mile whistle-stop tour; his rival, Thomas Dewey, spoke in platitudes
and rarely mentioned Truman’s name. The list goes on.

Immigration reform is as close as Rubio has come, so far, to a similar
crisis.

No one doubts Rubio’s raw talent: his speaking ability, his intellect, his
sense of humor, his telegenic and charismatic personality. But there are
doubts about his readiness for the presidency.

Earlier this spring, McCain and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
R-Ky., had a conversation with Rubio about his future.

A McCain aide said the conversation was about “keeping open the possibility
of running for reelection while he runs for president.” Rubio, 43, has
plenty of time to seek the presidency; by giving up his seat he will
trigger an expensive battle that the GOP might very well lose.

But two sources, one who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of McCain and
McConnell’s intentions, said the meeting was to discourage a presidential
run.

Aides to McCain and McConnell both vehemently denied that was the case.
“After having lots of people tell him not to run for president over the
years, Sen. McCain would be the last person to tell somebody else not to
run,” the McCain aide said.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said that “while [McConnell] has
conversations with Sen. Rubio all the time, he did not tell him not to run
for president.”

Because Rubio is such a political phenom, many political insiders who spoke
with Yahoo News wondered how he got himself into such an uncomfortable
position over immigration. The answer, according to multiple sources, is
that there was a divide between Rubio’s advisers over whether he should
wade into the comprehensive-reform debate, with his political team
counseling against it and at least three of his policy advisers pushing him
to participate. Rubio’s public reversals likely reflected that internal tug
of war — a misstep that a steadier leader may have avoided.

“I think Marco had genuine good intentions,” says Ana Navarro, a
Miami-based Republican strategist who is friends with Rubio but is
supporting Jeb Bush in 2016. “There’s no doubt he put in a lot of time and
risked political capital in his attempt. But it all went to hell and turned
into a perfect political storm. He managed to antagonize everybody on both
sides of the issue. It was a mess — and ultimately all for nothing.”

Rubio declined to be interviewed for this article. Asked by Yahoo News in
the halls of the Capitol whether he had “panicked” in 2013 when he backed
away from the immigration bill, he did not break stride and ignored the
question. Today, Rubio says he couldn’t have saved immigration reform; in
fact, he insists that his continued advocacy would only have hurt the
bill’s chances in the House. He also argues that future attempts will have
to begin with border security and proceed, piecemeal, from there.

Rubio could still have the last laugh. If elected, he may one day usher his
own brand of immigration reform through Congress — and look, in retrospect,
like a canny operator who knew when to fold and wait for a better
opportunity.

But that’s not how he looked, or acted, in the summer of 2013. Two Marco
Rubios emerged over the course of that year. One was the bold leader who
stuck his neck out on reform and tried to steer his party in a new
direction. The other was the cowed follower who retreated into comfortable
conservative talking points the minute things went south.

And so the central question of Rubio’s candidacy is simple: If the senator
from Florida wins the White House in 2016, which Rubio is America going to
get?

For Marco Antonio Rubio, vacillating over immigration is nothing new.

As the son of working-class Cuban émigrés, Rubio has long been caught
between two worlds on the issue. On the one hand, Cuban-Americans —
especially older Cuban-Americans — tend to distinguish between Cuban exiles
(who cannot return home) and other Latino immigrants (who technically can).
Rubio was raised to believe in that distinction.

“Nothing against immigrants, but my parents are exiles,” he said during his
2010 Senate campaign. “The exile experience is different from the immigrant
experience. … Folks that are exiles are people that have lost their country
… and would still be living there if not for some political reason.”

And yet, at the same time, the Cuban-Americans Rubio grew up with in the
tight-knit urban enclave of West Miami were a lot like the rest of
America’s Latino immigrants. As a boy, he experienced bigotry firsthand.
“You’re a bunch of Cubans,” someone shouted at his family during the 1980
Mariel boatlift. “Why don’t you go back home?” His parents both struggled
to make ends meet in the service industry. For decades his dad toiled away
tending bar in South Beach hotels; his mother slaved away as a maid until
she retired in her 70s. They were surrounded by people who faced similar
challenges — and Rubio continues to be today, because he still lives in
West Miami.

“Virtually everyone is Hispanic and virtually all of my neighbors came from
somewhere else not that long ago,” Rubio said in 2012. “You know them not
as a statistic, you know them as a human being — a walking, talking person
who is in pain and who came here because they were hungry and their kids
were starving and their family was, you know, hurting. … They did what they
had to do to provide for them.”

Rubio’s mixed feelings about immigration — his deep-seated faith in the
special status of Cuban-Americans offset by his visceral empathy for the
broader immigrant experience — have shaped his politics since the start of
his career. Immigration reform is treacherous terrain, especially for a
rising Latino American star — and every time the ground has shifted, Rubio,
sensing both the promise and the peril ahead, has adjusted his positioning
in response.

By some estimates, more than three-quarters of the 200,000 men and women
who work Florida’s farms and fields are undocumented immigrants. For years,
the Sunshine State’s heavily Republican legislature has blocked any
proposal to help these workers. But when Rubio arrived in the House in
2000, he surprised farmworker activists by siding against his fellow
Republicans — and their backers in agribusiness.

“Rubio got it right away,” says Greg Schell, the managing attorney for the
Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, who at the time was pushing for a
“radical” piece of legislation that would guarantee workers a minimum
number of hours per week regardless of weather or crop conditions. “We met
with him and explained it to him and he said, ‘Gee, that sounds totally
fair.’ He wasn’t put off by the fact that it hadn’t been done anywhere
else. So our initial response was, ‘Gosh, this guy might be a champion of
workers — even though he’s a Republican.’”

For a time, Rubio was that champion. With Frank Peterman, a liberal
African-American Democrat from St. Petersburg, the young legislator went on
to co-sponsor a bill that would have banned labor contractors from
withholding the cost of tools and transportation from workers’ salaries,
and another that would have granted workers the right to sue contractors
who didn’t pay the minimum wage. (Neither passed.) Rubio was also in favor
of providing resident tuition discounts to the children of undocumented
immigrants who had lived in Florida for at least three consecutive years
before graduating from high school. Many of his constituents back in West
Miami would have benefited from these proposals.

By the time he became House speaker in 2007, Rubio was no longer actively
campaigning for in-state tuition breaks or farmworkers’ rights. But he
still found a way to help the immigrant cause. As the Washington Post’s
Manuel Roig-Franzia reported in “The Rise of Marco Rubio,” GOP lawmakers in
Tallahassee were pressuring the new speaker to make immigration enforcement
part of his agenda — but “Marco did not want anything to do with it,”
according to one of his advisers. Instead, he decided to bury six
immigration measures in what Roig-Franzia describes as “the legislative
equivalent of the basement.” By preventing them from coming up for debate,
Rubio kept Florida from adopting the kind of draconian laws that would
later cause controversy in Arizona and Alabama.

That kind of ferocious debate wasn’t good for the state, Rubio reasoned —
and it wouldn’t have been good for its most promising Latino Republican,
either. “We didn’t do anything on immigration at all during those two
years,” says J.C. Planas, a fellow Cuban-American Republican from Miami who
was one of Rubio’s early allies in the House but later broke with him
during an internal leadership battle. “The speaker didn’t let those
immigration bills come to the floor because it wouldn’t have helped him.”
In this case, Rubio’s political interests aligned with the interests of
Florida’s undocumented immigrants.

That calculus changed, however, when he decided to challenge incumbent
Republican Gov. Charlie Crist for the party’s 2010 U.S. Senate nomination.
Initially a long shot — a February 2009 Quinnipiac poll measured Crist’s
support at 53 percent to the speaker’s measly 3 percent — Rubio began to
gain momentum later that year by running to the governor’s right and
captivating the nascent tea party movement.

His rhetoric on immigration shifted accordingly. On the campaign trail,
Rubio began to use the loaded phrase “illegal aliens.” He initially said
that SB 1070, a bill that would allow authorities to stop people and demand
their immigration papers, would transform Arizona into a “police state” —
then he changed his mind and told a conservative magazine that he would
have voted for it. He championed a controversial electronic verification
system designed to help employers determine the legal status of potential
hires. He curried favor with tea partyers by arguing that the DREAM Act,
which would have provided a path to citizenship for immigrants who were
illegally brought to the U.S. as children, would have contributed to a
“broader effort to grant blanket amnesty.” He also described “an earned
path to citizenship” as “code for amnesty.” And he went on to abandon his
earlier support for tuition breaks for the children of undocumented
immigrants. “We’re a nation of laws,” Rubio declared at the time. “If
you’re here in violation of the laws, you shouldn’t benefit from these
programs.”

By the time Rubio defeated Crist, those who had worked with him in Florida
were beginning to wonder what — if anything — he stood for.

“His tone has changed on the subject,” said state Rep. Juan Zapata, another
Miami Republican. “And to me it’s very obvious that it’s for political
reasons.”

“You can’t be a leader if you can’t tell your friends they’re wrong,” adds
Planas today. “Sure, there’s always a certain amount you have to bend.
That’s politics. But, ultimately, I’ve never really seen Marco take on his
friends publicly before, and that is troubling. I think he’s still finding
his way.”

*****

Rubio would continue to find his way once he arrived in Washington. As the
tea party passions of 2010 began to die down, and as the 2012 presidential
contest began to heat up, the landscape shifted yet again. If Mitt Romney
wanted to displace President Obama, the thinking went, he would have to
improve the GOP’s dismal performance among Latino voters. And if Romney
couldn’t do it, perhaps the party’s next nominee could. Rubio was mentioned
as both a possible running mate and a possible successor.

And so Rubio began to drift back toward the center. In January 2012, when
two young men held up a sign reading “Latino or Tea-Partino?” during one of
the senator’s speeches, he told the crowd, “I’m not who they think I am. I
don’t stand for what they claim I stand for.” A few months later, Rubio
revealed that he was developing his own version of the DREAM Act. “If you
were 4 years old when you were brought here … and have much to contribute
to our future, I think most Americans, the vast majority of Americans, find
that compelling and want to accommodate that,” he said at the time.

In April, Rubio met with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., the House’s top
immigration-reform advocate, to discuss the details of his plan. Gutierrez
was pleasantly surprised. “Here he was, a guy who had ridden the tea party
wave into Washington and described the DREAM Act as amnesty,” Gutierrez
told Yahoo News. “And now he wanted to take on the nativist voices in his
own party. Whenever a Republican raises his hand and says, ‘Hey, I want to
do something for immigrants,’ I jump for joy. ‘Let’s get it done.’”

The biggest shift, however, came at the end of 2012, when Sen. Dick Durbin,
D-Ill., approached Rubio in the Senate gym to ask if he was interested in
collaborating on comprehensive immigration reform — and Rubio, who had
previously insisted that “the best way to address immigration issues is
sequentially,” didn’t say no. “[I want to] tie a pathway to citizenship to
border security and enforcement,” Rubio told Durbin and his colleagues,
according to a report by the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza. “If you think that
the Gang [of Eight] can put something together that’s consistent with these
principles, then I’ll work with you. Otherwise, I’m not going to waste your
time.” Initially, Democrats viewed the pathway and border security as
separate issues. But they quickly agreed to connect them — and for the
first time, Rubio agreed to consider a pathway to citizenship.

Thus began Rubio’s alliance with the so-called Gang of Eight.

“The politics of this have been turned upside down,” said New York Sen.
Chuck Schumer at the Gang’s initial press conference on Jan. 28, 2013. “For
the first time ever there is more political risk in opposing immigration
reform than supporting it.”

“There are 11 million human beings that are undocumented,” Rubio added. “We
have an obligation and a need to address the situation.”

For the next six months, Rubio was, as one Senate aide told Lizza, “the
cool jock and the captain of the football team” — the guy with whom
“everyone wanted to hang out” but who still managed to remain a little
aloof. In order to preserve his conservative credibility and prevent
right-wing Republicans from torpedoing the deal, Rubio repeatedly distanced
himself from the Gang over hot-button issues, opposing union demands and
supporting biometric tracking for visa holders. But he also served as the
group’s official ambassador to the right — “the linchpin on the Republican
side,” as Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, one of Rubio’s fellow GOP Gang members,
put it.

Despite Rubio’s cautious maneuvering, the Democrats couldn’t have been more
grateful. “He has been invaluable,” Durbin told Lizza in mid-2013. “He’s
willing to go on the most conservative talk shows, television and radio,
Rush Limbaugh and the rest. They respect him, they like him, they think he
may have a future in the party.”

“He’s the real deal,” added Schumer. “He is smart, he is substantive. He
knows when to compromise and when to hold. And he’s personable.”

Even McCain, who initially grumbled about having to share the GOP spotlight
with the junior Floridian, offered some qualified praise for Rubio’s
communication skills. “Look, I’m very proud of myself, OK?” McCain said.
“But he articulates [the need for reform] better than anybody I know.”

McCain was right. In April, Rubio insisted that “leaving things the way
they are” would be “the real amnesty.” A month and a half later, he told
conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the “secure the borders” crowd had
it wrong. “They want to see the enforcement first and then the legalization
afterward,” Rubio said. “And that was initially how I thought about the
issue as well. The problem with that is, what do we do in the meantime?”

But then, on June 27, 2013, the bill passed the Senate — and Rubio began to
run away. Two polls showed double-digit drops in his net favorability
rating among Republicans. Conservative pundits were pouncing. Spurred on by
the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, tea
party activists booed Rubio lustily at a rally outside the Capitol.

“I remember the hostility — my God, it was there,” says Brent Bozell,
founder of the Media Research Center and president of For America, a
conservative political advocacy group. “I traveled around the country on
the defund battle and I would talk to people, and they were not happy with
him.”

And that’s when Rubio seemed to lose his nerve. When he went home to
Florida for August recess, he mentioned immigration only when asked about
it by constituents or reporters. Otherwise he avoided the topic.
“Politically, it has not been a pleasant experience, to say the least,” he
told one audience.

By the fall, Rubio had gone from ignoring his own bill to repudiating it.
“The House is just not going to jump on board for whatever the Senate
passes,” he told the Tampa Bay Times in October. On CNN he was even more
dismissive, referring to the Senate proposal as a purely partisan bill —
calling it something “the Democrats in the Senate are demanding” — as if he
and his fellow Republicans had never supported it.

The shift was startling. “In 2013, Rubio came on board,” says Gutierrez.
“He was enthusiastic. He hired wonderful staff. He added experts. I met
with him for over an hour — just he and I and his staff. He was extremely
generous with his time and very devoted to putting together the kind of
team that would lead us to a bill. But then, after it passed, he suddenly
said, ‘I’m not for that.’”

*****

Rubio’s official position is that once immigration passed the Senate, the
matter was out of his hands; any attempt to influence the House would have
been counterproductive.

“After the Senate passed the bill, the Senate was done with its work,” says
Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and
Religious Liberty Commission, who worked closely with Rubio’s office on
immigration reform. “Rubio knows that doing what [South Carolina Republican
Sen.] Lindsey Graham did and lecturing the House is not going to get it
passed. He did his job and then moved on.”

Others, including some who have worked for Rubio in the past, say that
Democrats like Schumer negotiated an agreement in the Senate that they knew
would anger conservatives in the House, because they — and the White House
— ultimately didn’t want a bill to pass.

“They didn’t want to give him that win,” one former Rubio aide insists.
“They saw the writing on the wall in terms of what it would do in 2016.”

Looking back, it’s easy to think immigration reform was always doomed.
Conservative distrust ran deep; many Republicans believed that even if the
House passed a palatable bill, it would be changed and corrupted when
combined with the Senate version.

Yet, even as Rubio fled the scene, comprehensive reform appeared to have a
shot. Conservative groups tied to Karl Rove ran television ads thanking
Rubio for his work. The Koch brothers’ political organization, Americans
for Prosperity, decided to hold its annual conference in Florida, and even
awarded Rubio a prime speaking slot, a clear attempt by the pro-reform
group to bolster him.

For months, a bipartisan group in the House had been locked in
negotiations; a deal was close. The House Judiciary Committee had passed
four separate pieces of immigration legislation. There was ongoing
discussion about giving undocumented immigrants a path to legal status
rather than citizenship — a discussion that remains a central part of the
debate among Republicans to this day.

“I think we’re going to get to conference and I think we’re going to pass
something ultimately,” Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a lead Republican
negotiator in the House, said at the time. “I’m frankly still very
optimistic. I’ve never thought that this was going to be an easy process.”

Advocates say that Rubio could have kept a respectful distance from the
House negotiations while continuing to tout the virtues of immigration
reform in the press.

“He allowed a wonderful opportunity pass to illustrate that he’s got the
chops to bring people together,” argues Javier Palomarez, president of the
U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “That, to me, is not a very smart move
at all: After you’ve put your name on it, you’ve put all this work, to just
let it sit out there and walk away.”

According to a source inside the House negotiations, Rubio’s actions hurt
their momentum. So why did he change course, effectively making his own
bill’s uphill battle even more difficult than it already was?

Of all the 2016 candidates, Rubio has the most devoted and tight-knit
kitchen cabinet. So far, they have managed to prevent any leaks about what
took place within their ranks during the summer of 2013.

But Yahoo News has uncovered some clues about the internal struggles that
led to the biggest stumble of Rubio’s career.

None of the three paid staffers most intimately involved with Rubio’s
immigration reform efforts — including his then chief of staff — still work
for him today.

Close observers of Rubio World say the senator’s team was sharply divided
for much of 2013 about the wisdom of pursuing immigration reform. On one
side of the debate were his political advisers, who ranged from uneasy to
unhappy: veteran operative Terry Sullivan (who moved that year to work full
time on Rubio’s PAC and is now his campaign manager), plus his outside
consultants Todd Harris, Heath Thompson and Malorie Thompson.

Communications director Alex Conant and longtime aide Alberto Martinez, who
is now Rubio’s chief of staff, were generally neutral.

At the same time, three of Rubio’s policy-minded staffers were heavily
invested in working toward a deal: then chief of staff Cesar Conda,
legislative director Sally Canfield and an aide named John Baselice.

Rubio’s pullback from immigration after it passed the Senate is attributed
to his political advisers, who many think never wanted him out front on the
issue to begin with, and who declined to speak about their private
consultations with him.

The sharp divide among Rubio’s advisers — and the subsequent departure of
those pushing for immigration reform — helps to explain why he seemed to be
flailing in the summer of 2013. That kind of snapback — the senator’s
sudden abandonment of his own signature legislation — is what happens when
there are two competing groups in a politician’s camp, each pulling equally
hard in opposite directions, and one of the groups loses its grip.

Over the next year, Conda drifted away from Rubio’s orbit; Sullivan took
his place as the senator’s point person. In April 2014, Conda resigned from
Rubio’s Senate staff to work for the senator’s political action committee,
Reclaim America — a normal step for an adviser who is gearing up for a
presidential campaign. But then, in November, Conda quit the PAC to go into
private practice. He is said to still be in touch with Rubio, but his
influence is nothing like it once was.

When asked over email if he could describe the debate inside Rubio World in
2013, Conda responded tersely, “You’ll have to chat with Conant.”

Conant said he would not discuss “personnel matters,” but said any linkage
between immigration reform’s demise and the departures of Rubio’s key
policy staffers was “silly.” They “left the government after years of great
service for awesome private-sector jobs.”

Canfield and Baselice both departed in 2014 as well. Canfield, who was with
Rubio until the end of the year, now serves in a senior position at a
pharmaceutical company called AbbVie. Baselice left in July 2014 and now
works at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Like Conda, neither would agree to talk about what happened in 2013.

*****

It’s not hard to see how a more seasoned leader than Rubio could have
managed the immigration fallout better. He might not have been so swayed by
his advisers’ conflicting opinions; he might have stood firm on principle,
even after his poll numbers began to crater; he might have avoided the kind
of transparent pandering that alienates friend and foe alike.

But as Rubio kicks off his presidential campaign, there are signs that he
has learned the lessons of 2013 and emerged as a stronger candidate because
of them. According to a veteran Republican consultant who has worked with
Rubio’s team, the senator was upset, in retrospect, that his political
advisers had yanked him back from immigration reform — and he decided to
empower his policy people as a result. He went on to spend all of 2014
delving into the minutiae of taxes and foreign affairs. Even here,
political considerations seemed to be in the mix — Rubio’s pivot from
foreign policy moderate to uber-hawk, though plausible, has been jarring.
Nonetheless, Rubio gave a series of serious-minded speeches that rebuilt
his reputation as a man of substance, and penned a book that the New
Republic called “chock full of policy ideas” when it was released in
January.

“He’s better today than he was a few years ago,” argues Castellanos. “You
can just feel it. These guys go to the Super Bowl, and the first time they
get into the bright lights, they choke. Rubio was marked by the searing
fire of defeat. I think he has grown up and gotten better for it.

“If he’s still the same guy,” Castellanos adds, “he’s in trouble.”

Rubio’s position on immigration reform hasn’t changed since the end of
2013; whenever he’s asked, he insists that the only realistic way to reform
the system is to start with border security. His standing on the issue
seems to have stabilized as a result.

“Even [Republicans] who disagree with Rubio on immigration reform — many of
whom I’m hearing from now — are warming to him now because they see in him
somebody who is able to get something accomplished,” says Moore of the
Southern Baptist Convention, noting that Rubio did help get a bill through
the Senate.

“He was able to do that as a freshman senator,” Moore said. “He was pushing
for strong border security measures, and he got a good deal of that in the
negotiations.”

When Rubio announced his presidential bid on April 14, he chose to speak in
Miami’s historic Freedom Tower — the Ellis Island of the Cuban exodus. He
didn’t harp on immigration reform, but he did reach out, in his way, to
America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants: “the single mother who works
long hours for little pay so her children don’t have to struggle the way
she has”; “the student who takes two buses before dawn to attend a better
school halfway across town”; “the workers in our hotel kitchens, the
landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff
that clean our offices.” The sense Rubio gave in remarks was of a man who
knows these people need his help — and who is committed to helping them in
the long run, even if he stumbles along the way.

After the speech, Carlos Avila, a 31-year-old lawyer from New Jersey, stood
outside Freedom Tower waiting for Rubio to exit. In 2008, Avila and his
wife had voted for Obama, but now they were dissatisfied with the lack of
economic progress “for people like us” and leaning Republican. Asked what
he liked about Rubio, Avila, whose parents brought him to the U.S. from
Ecuador when he was 4 years old, immediately mentioned immigration. “Rubio
is not a perfect candidate,” Avila said. “But his immigration stance, I
think it’s a political calculation. Obama was the same on gay marriage. I
think if Rubio were to get into the White House, he would be supportive of
immigration reform.”

Rubio’s staff believe their man has been battle-tested by his immigration
experience. They may even believe that he — as the most prominent Latino in
the field and the only Republican candidate who has actually shepherded
immigration reform through the Senate — could do more, if elected, to fix
America’s broken immigration system than anyone else.

The road ahead will prove whether they are right. A presidential election
is an unforgiving affair; eventually, the person behind the politician is
exposed. At some point before Nov. 8, 2016, Rubio will confront a crisis
that will strip him bare and reveal him for either the fearless and
inspirational leader that his foot soldiers believe him to be — or as a
politician with his finger eternally to the wind.

With Another Bush Eyeing White House, Family Money Machine Springs to Life
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/with-another-bush-eyeing-white-house-family-money-machine-springs-to-life-1431709319>
// WSJ // Beth Reinhard and Christopher S. Stewart - May 15, 2015

Democrat Hillary Clinton is the one presidential candidate expected to
match or surpass Mr. Bush’s fundraising. She can turn to donors from her
husband’s two presidential campaigns and her own 2008 bid. In addition, she
stands to inherit much of PresidentBarack Obama’s fundraising network.

Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, recently told donors in Miami
Beach that he raised more money in his first 100 days as a potential
candidate than any previous Republican contender. (His brother set the
previous record by collecting $37 million in the first few months of 1999.)
The tally is widely expected to exceed $100 million, though details won’t
be disclosed until Mr. Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, files a report by
July 31 with the Federal Election Commission.

In Iowa, Will Jeb Bush’s Opponents Hit Him on Iraq?

The Wall Street Journal identified 326 donors who hosted fundraisers this
year for Mr. Bush’s super PAC, based on invitations and news reports
compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government watchdog.

One in five were either members of the “Team 100,” those who raised at
least $100,000 for the Republican National Committee during George H.W.
Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign—or “Pioneers” or “Rangers,” who collected
at least $100,000 or $200,000 for George W. Bush’s national campaigns.

Nearly a quarter worked in at least one of the Bush White Houses or
received a presidential appointment; 24 were tapped by Mr. Bush’s father or
brother to serve as ambassadors; 46 worked in Mr. Bush’s administration in
Florida or were appointed to advisory boards. A number of donors belong to
more than one of these categories.

Mr. Bush’s top allies include 11 billionaires, six former and current
owners of professional sports teams and former Vice President Dan Quayle.
There is an internationally competitive sailor, a former chairman of the
U.S. Export-Import Bank, as well as the author of “Nice Guys Finish Rich:
The Secrets of a Super Salesman.”

Mr. Bush’s Republican rivals are seeking support from a similar pool of
well-heeled donors. But no one can match the deep-pocketed,
multigenerational network boasted by the Bushes, many of whom have been
close family friends for decades. Some paid visits to the family compound
in Kennebunkport, Me., and watched the Bush children grow up.

“When you hitch your wagon to the Bushes, you become part of an extended
family,” saidDirk Van Dongen, a Washington lobbyist and former Pioneer and
Ranger who helped organize two fundraisers for Jeb Bush. “They remember
their friends and they are good to their friends.”

William Draper, the former Export-Import Bank chairman who recently
co-hosted a fundraiser for Mr. Bush in California, went to Yale with his
father. Along with the annual Christmas cards from Barbara Bush, he said,
“my wife gets a letter from her every few weeks.”

Some relationships mix personal, political and financial ties. Craig
Stapleton, a host of the first fundraiser for Mr. Bush’s super PAC in
Greenwich, Conn., for instance, received a presidential appointment from
George H.W. Bush to the Peace Corps Board of Directors and co-owned the
Texas Rangers baseball team with George W. Bush.

Mr. Stapleton, now a senior adviser at private-equity firm Stone Point
Capital, went on to be a top fundraiser for George W. Bush’s national
campaigns. After Mr. Bush was elected president, he appointed Mr. Stapleton
to two ambassadorships, first to the Czech Republic, then to France. Mr.
Stapleton, who is married to the cousin of the first President Bush, didn’t
respond to a request for comment.

Bruce S. Gelb, former vice chairman of Bristol-Meyers Co. recently attended
a Jeb Bush fundraiser in New York City. Mr. Gelb was appointed by the
administration of George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Information Agency and then
was offered an ambassadorship to Belgium after raising about $3 million for
Mr. Bush’s campaign.

Both Democrats and Republicans have over the years embraced the tradition
of rewarding donors with such coveted posts. “I didn’t realize it at the
time there was some cachet of being ambassador,” said Mr. Gelb, a
boarding-school classmate of Mr. Bush. “When you say you’ve been
ambassador, people go a little bonkers.”

Mr. Gelb also was a Pioneer for George W. Bush and raised money for Jeb
Bush’s, son,George P. Bush, in his 2014 campaign for Texas Land
Commissioner.

Former President George W. Bush is credited with breaking ground on
campaign fundraising by pushing supporters to bundle donations from their
friends, family and business associates. Jeb Bush is continuing that
strategy with more ambitious goals, even before an official campaign
launch. Donors to his super PAC are divided among those who raise at least
$500,000, $250,000, $100,000 and $50,000.

“Fundraising is to some extent a competitive sport that attracts type-A
types who like to win,” Mr. Van Dongen said. “When you bring donors
together, it’s like a company bringing together its top sales people—you
get time with the boss, recognition in front of your peers.”

The Bush network has its limits. “All you can do is help someone get in the
door,” saidLawrence E. Bathgate II, a longtime Bush family supporter. “But
once the door is open, they have to sell themselves. That’s what’s
confronting Jeb Bush.”

Bush compares Clinton's avoidance of questions to 'The Simpsons'
<http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/05/16/bush-compares-clintons-avoidance-questions-simpsons/27443429/>
// Des Moines Register // Jennifer Jacobs - May 16, 2015

DUBUQUE, Ia. – Jeb Bush invited Iowans to "ask whatever you want."

And they did — about how he feels about his brother's mistakes in Iraq and
why he backs controversial education standards and other hot topics.

"We're probably around 800 to 900 questions asked and hopefully answered,"
Bush, a Republican who will make up his mind "pretty soon" about whether to
run for president, said at the start of his town hall meeting at Loras
College in Dubuque Saturday morning.

Bush said Democrat Hillary Clinton has been a candidate for a month and has
answered only 13 questions from the press.

"She's had 33,000 ... minutes where she hasn't answered a question. For
those that really follow TV, 33,000 minutes is two times the number of
'Simpson's' shows that existed in the 25 years," he said to laughs from an
audience of a little more than 100.

The Dubuque event kicked off Bush's second trip to Iowa of the 2016
election cycle. Clinton makes her second trip here next week.

Bush is making hops around Iowa in a private plane – to two fundraisers in
Iowa City for Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, to private meetings in
the Des Moines area, and then the Iowa GOP's Lincoln Dinner Saturday night.
His wife, Columba, and son Jeb Jr. are traveling with him.

Bush, who is struggling to gain favor with likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa,
told the Dubuque audience he hadn't been there since he campaigned for his
father, George H.W. Bush, in 1979 and 1980.

"I'll just remind everybody that's interested in political history. He
started here in Iowa as an asterisk, literally an asterisk, and he won the
Iowa caucuses," he said.

Bush took questions for nearly an hour, from 11 people in the crowd.

The first questioner asked about education, but made brief mention of
Bush's interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Monday. Bush has taken heat
all week for telling Kelly he would've authorized the Iraq War "knowing
what we know now." Bush later said he misinterpreted the question. His
answers varied until Thursday, when he said: "I would not have gone into
Iraq."

In Dubuque Saturday, Bush said: "I misstepped for sure. I answered a
question that wasn't asked."

Another Iowan, 30-year-old Jeff Lenhart, a Dubuque Democrat who works at a
homeless shelter, asked Bush how he feels about his brother being
responsible for the deaths of 6,000 Americans in Iraq.

"Look, I'm proud of my brother," Bush answered to loud applause.

Bush continued: "The facts that were there for the president and in a
bipartisan way approved – bipartisan in every way – was grounded on faulty
intelligence. And they made mistakes along the way that related to not
focusing on security first. My brother acknowledges that. I acknowledge
that. Those were mistakes. ... My brother did something that I thought was
pretty heroic and courageous. Against all odds politically, he rectified
this by a that surge created a significantly more stable Iraq than he left."

Another questioner, Les Feldmann of Rickardsville, grilled Bush on common
core education standards. Bush said he favors state-driven standards, and
that the federal government should be expressly prohibited from getting
involved.

When Feldmann persisted in questioning him, Bush said, to applause: "I'm
just for higher standards, man. ... What we shouldn't have is low standards
or no standards. That's the problem."

Later, Feldmann told the Des Moines Register he thinks what Bush did with
education standards in Florida was "excellent." But Bush has been promoting
the Common Core Education Standards, which are "copyrighted and patented,"
and involve the federal government hanging money over state officials'
heads, Feldmann said.

Bush wrapped up his speech by saying that converting from the Episcopalian
faith to Catholicism was "one of the smarted things I've ever done in my
life." Dubuque has a disproportionately heavy Catholic population, and
Loras is one of three Catholic colleges in the Dubuque diocese.

Elsewhere Saturday morning, GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul attracted
about 160 in Burlington and Donald Trump, who is weighing a bid, drew
nearly 200 in Sioux City.

Like Hillary Clinton in ’08, Jeb Bush Is Haunted by Specter of Iraq War
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/politics/iraq-war-haunts-potential-bush-candidacy-as-it-did-clinton-in-2008.html>
// NYT // Jonathan Martin - May 15, 2015

WASHINGTON — Eight years after Hillary Rodham Clinton was haunted by her
Senate vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, another leading White
House hopeful is struggling with questions about the war.

And just as Mrs. Clinton seemed torn then between mollifying Democratic
primary voters who were against the war and positioning herself to run in
the general election, Jeb Bush, a Republican, appears deeply conflicted. He
is grappling with how to remain loyal to his older brother, George W. Bush,
while acknowledging what has become a mainstream view in both parties: that
there would not have been an invasion if policy makers had known in 2003
that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

In Arizona on Thursday, with his fourth different answer of the week, Mr.
Bush, the former Florida governor, finally conceded that, if he had had
such knowledge, he “would not have gone into Iraq.”

For Mrs. Clinton in 2008, mishandling what her opponent Barack Obama called
“the biggest foreign policy disaster of a generation” created an opening
for him and ultimately helped undermine her campaign.

There is no strong antiwar current in today’s Republican electorate as
there was during the 2008 Democratic contest, but Iraq could prove just as
thorny for Mr. Bush now because of what it represents.

The if-you-knew-then questions and gibes from his rivals about the 2003
invasion of Iraq are a stand-in for a larger challenge confronting Mr.
Bush: demonstrating that he is not merely another would-be heir to a
political dynasty.

“That’s the issue here: Are you actually a unique, different person or are
you a third Bush?” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “To the degree
that he’s defined as a third Bush, he has a bigger mountain to climb,
though I think he certainly has the potential to carve out a path because
he has an extraordinary record as governor.”

In his opening months as an all-but-declared candidate, Mr. Bush has seemed
unsurprised, if irritated, by questions about how he is different from the
previous presidents named Bush. He has explained that he loves his father
and brother, but recognizes that he will have to make his own case to win
the nomination. (Unmentioned is that much of his strength as a candidate
owes to the fund-raising network he largely inherited from his family.)

Yet while he has been willing to address the issue of his family ties
generally, the past week shows he is either unprepared or deeply reluctant
to discuss specific policy issues stemming from his brother’s presidency.

Mr. Bush’s resistance to engage on Iraq also underlines the degree to which
he is determined to run his campaign on his terms. But he may be too sure
of himself and his approach.

His dayslong bobble became the talk of Republican politics, from the
campaign trail in Nevada to Washington. A group of Republican senators
meeting this week on Capitol Hill were nearly incredulous that Mr. Bush did
not have a better answer and joked about how many press aides he needed to
respond to such a basic matter, according to a party strategist who heard
the conversation.

“Jeb’s curb appeal was supposed to be experience, pedigree and smarts, and
therefore ready to lead,” said one Republican senator, who insisted on
anonymity to speak candidly about a presidential hopeful. “These kinds of
statements plant him squarely in the middle of the primary pack — with
G.O.P. voters unsure of exactly what political lessons he truly has
learned.”

Sensing vulnerability, and eyeing an opportunity to bring the closest thing
there is to a Republican front-runner down a peg, Mr. Bush’s primary
opponents have pounced. Nearly all of them immediately and succinctly
answered the question he dodged for days.

“I don’t know how that was a hard question,” Rick Santorum, the former
senator from Pennsylvania, said Thursday at the Republican National
Committee spring meeting in Arizona.

Some took advantage of the opening to attack Mr. Bush for what they say is
the baggage he would bear as the party’s nominee.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said that the country should be
wary of “having a nominee who is stuck in relitigating the Iraq war.”

“We need to know what we’re getting ourselves in for,” Mr. Paul said in an
interview on Thursday. “The difficulty that Jeb is going to have is on two
fronts. One, he’s got conservative mistrust in the primary. That’s going to
be difficult to overcome. But should he become the nominee, he’s going to
have difficulty with independents who were opposed to the Iraq war. I see
it as a very difficult place for him to be in.”

Mr. Paul has his own difficulties: The Republican primary voters he must
court, on the whole, are considerably more hawkish on national security
than he is. But his remarks bluntly raised what has loomed over Mr. Bush’s
likely candidacy just as much as his positions on immigration or the Common
Core education standards: the perception that he embodies the restoration
of a dynasty many do not want to see restored.

Mr. Paul may overstate the extent of Mr. Bush’s legacy problems with
Republicans — a New York Times-CBS poll this month showed 7 in 10
Republicans viewed George W. Bush favorably. And there is little doubt that
the party members are far more animated about what they see as President
Obama’s foreign policy blunders than about the mistakes of the last Bush
administration.

But Mr. Bush’s difficulties discussing his brother and Iraq hand his
opponents the same cudgel that Mr. Obama so effectively used against Mrs.
Clinton in 2008. “It is about the past versus the future,” Mr. Obama said
then. “And when I am the nominee, the Republicans won’t be able to make
this election about the past.”

Or, as the conservative writer David Frum, a former speechwriter for George
W. Bush, put it on Twitter this week: “Jeb Bush has just converted an
election that should be about the past eight years into an election about
the eight years before that.”

Mr. Bush’s aides say he is anxious to move past his schedule focused on
fund-raising to a more intensive campaign that will allow him to discuss
his own vision.

But it is unclear he will ever be able to shed himself of forced exercises
in retrospection.

Danielle Pletka, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, noted that when Senator Marco Rubio of Florida began his
presidential campaign last month he “chose to do so with this explicit
break with the past, which of course means the Bushes and the Clintons.”

“That’s going to be more resonant for Republicans than ‘He’s going to get
us into another Iraq war,’ ” Ms. Pletka said.

Mr. Bush’s overarching problem “is this eternal relitigation of every
decision of George W. Bush,” she added.

“As much as he’s saying ‘I’m my own man,’ every time he says that, we’re
reminded he’s not.”

Five Ways That Jeb Bush Makes it Hard for Himself
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/five-ways-that-jeb-bush-makes-it-hard-for-himself>
// New Yorker // Amy Davidson - May 16, 2015

Running for President is hard. And there are factors that can make it
harder still, a variety of which Jeb Bush modelled this week, in florid
fashion. It started with this exchange, with Megyn Kelly:

Kelly: On the subject of Iraq.

Bush: Yuuup.

Kelly: Obviously very controversial. Knowing what we know now, would you
have authorized the invasion?

Bush: I would have. And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind
everybody, and so would have almost everybody who was confronted with the
intelligence they got.

This wasn’t a good answer, even though, as Rick Santorum, of all people,
correctly pointed out, “I don’t know how that was a hard question.” And,
having made a mistake with the invasion, Jeb Bush proceeded to bungle the
occupation, taking four days and many grumpy contortions to get from his
first answer to the testy statement, on Thursday, that “Knowing what we now
know, what would you have done? I would not have engaged. I would not have
gone into Iraq.” Why was that so difficult? Here are five ways that Jeb
Bush made, and may continue to make, running for President hard.

1. He didn’t listen. “I interpreted the question wrong, I guess,” Bush told
Sean Hannity on Tuesday. He said something similar on Wednesday: “Whatever
I heard, it was translated, knowing what you knew then what would you do?”
But there was no ambiguity in Kelly’s question. Perhaps it was “translated”
from the language of what was actually said to that of whatever Jeb Bush
wanted to hear. He might have thought, in the lacuna of that “Yup,” I’m a
smart guy and I know what Megyn Kelly is going to say, even before she gets
the words out. Both of those explanations are, to an extent, credible,
based on the Hillary Clinton reference in his answer. (She voted to
authorize the war, but has said that her decision might have been different
if the intelligence had been better.) But neither is admirable and both are
harbingers of disastrous debates—not to mention Oval Office meetings
(“Whatever the Prime Minister said, it was translated…”). Obama has his
anger translator; maybe Jeb Bush has a complacency translator.

2. He didn’t have an answer ready. There are a lot of predictable questions
when you’re running for President, and, after being sure that you know
which is being asked, you should be ready to answer them. This would be
true of questions far more obscure than a central decision of your party’s
last President—a President who happened to be your brother. (It’s worth
noting that some people were opposed to the war, knowing what they knew
then.) After he and Hannity had dealt with the supposed mysteriousness of
Kelly’s question, and Bush had delivered a swirl of phrases related to
Iraq, in what appeared to be no particular order (“there were mistakes”;
“the surge was quite effective”; “we need to make sure that our friends
know that we have their back”), Hannity tried to get him to focus:

Hannity: In other words, in 20/20 hindsight, you would make a different
decision.

Bush: Yeah, I don’t know what that decision would have been, that’s a
hypothetical. The simple fact is that mistakes were made. As they always
are in life and foreign policy.

And in campaigns. How could Jeb Bush have come to an interview that was set
up as a do-over without any answer at all? Perhaps it is because of his
next mistake:

3. He assumed that people agree that “hypothetical” is a dirty,
out-of-bounds word. “That’s a hypothetical”—well, yes, because you aren’t
President yet, and we want to know what you would do if you were. That’s a
hypothetical. Perhaps what Bush meant was “past-counterfactual”—but there’s
nothing wrong with that sort of question, either. Bush is not alone in this
trait, unfortunately; in the primary debates, we can expect to see many
candidates using “hypothetical” as a synonym for “trick question” or
“weird”—”gotcha” with five syllables, each an accusation of media
fanciness. As a dodge, though, it falls apart with the sort of questions to
which people expect a simple answer. Voters in the voting booth must make
the best guess they can. Hypotheticals help. When Bush, on Thursday,
prefaced his belated definitive answer with a sighing, snappish “If we’re
all supposed to answer hypotheticals,” the effect was unpleasant. He
sounded like…

4. He might live in a bubble. This is what confused Santorum: “I’ve been
asked that question a hundred times.” Where and with whom does Bush spend
his time talking, if he’s been avoiding it? His foreign-policy team might
be too wrapped up in its own rationalizing, or, worse, an enduring belief
that there was a lot of good in that war. But, as with the other bad habits
listed here, this goes beyond Iraq, to the question of whether Jeb Bush is
too cosseted by parental and establishment blessings—raising money has been
easy for him—to realize what hard work becoming, and being, President might
be. Yes, his brother did it, but he did it badly. As Santorum also said, of
the campaign, “If you are not prepared for it, I think we’ve seen in the
past you are not going to do very, very well. This is a long process.”

5. He suggested that his impulse to uphold familial honor was an answer,
not its own question. Bush acted as if it were pure bad manners to ask him
to comment on other Bushes. “I’m not going to go out of my way to say that
my brother did this wrong or my dad did this wrong,” he said on Thursday,
according to the A.P. “It’s just not going to happen. I have a hard time
with that. I love my family a lot.” What are voters to make of “it’s just
not going to happen”? Should they assume that, as President, he will say
that his father and his brother were right, and act the same way? Or will
he say that they were right, but then act in the way that he thinks is
right, without ever reconciling those positions or explaining his own
rationale? Maybe it’s indelicate to put one brother in the position of
having to say what he thinks of another. But then the brother shouldn’t run
for President. Delicacy in this case is the enemy of democracy.

But the family question does suggest a way that the pressure on Jeb Bush
might ease, if he does manage to get the nomination: many of the weaknesses
on his list are Hillary Clinton’s, too.

TOP NEWS

DOMESTIC

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Given Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-death-sentence.html&_r=0>
// NYT // Katharine Q. Seelye - May 15, 2015

BOSTON — Two years after bombs in two backpacks transformed the Boston
Marathon from a sunny rite of spring to a smoky battlefield with bodies
dismembered, a federal jury on Friday condemned Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death
for his role in the 2013 attack.

In a sweeping rejection of the defense case, the jury found that death was
the appropriate punishment for six of 17 capital counts — all six related
to Mr. Tsarnaev’s planting of a pressure-cooker bomb on Boylston Street,
which his lawyers never disputed. Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, stood stone-faced in
court, his hands folded in front of him, as the verdict was read, his
lawyers standing grimly at his side.

Immediate reaction was mostly subdued.

“Happy is not the word I would use,” said Karen Brassard, who suffered
grievous leg injuries in the bombing. “There’s nothing happy about having
to take somebody’s life. I’m satisfied, I’m grateful that they came to that
conclusion, because for me I think it was the just conclusion.”

She said she understood that all-but-certain appeals meant the case could
drag out over years if not decades. “But right now,” she said, “it feels
like we can take a breath and kind of actually breathe again.”

The bombings two years ago turned one of this city’s most cherished
athletic events into a grim tragedy — the worst terrorist attack on
American soil since Sept. 11, 2001. Three people were killed, and 17 people
lost at least one leg. More than 240 others sustained serious injuries.

Last month, after deliberating for 11 hours, the jury found Mr. Tsarnaev
guilty of all 30 charges against him in connection with the bombings and
the death a few days later of a fourth person, an M.I.T. police officer.
The same jury spent 14 hours over three days deliberating the sentence.

With its decision, the jury rejected virtually every argument that the
defense put forth, including the centerpiece of its case — that Mr.
Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, had held a malevolent sway over him and
led him into committing the crimes.

According to verdict forms that the jurors completed, only three of the 12
jurors believed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had acted under his brother’s
influence.

Beyond that, the jury put little stock in any part of the defense. Only two
jurors believed that Mr. Tsarnaev had expressed sorrow and remorse for his
actions, a stinging rebuke to the assertion by Sister Helen Prejean, a
Roman Catholic nun and renowned death penalty opponent, that he was
“genuinely sorry” for what he had done.

When the jury entered the courtroom at 3:10 p.m. Friday, the forewoman
passed an envelope to Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of United States District
Court, who had presided over the case. Jurors remained standing while the
clerk read aloud the 24-page verdict form, which took 20 minutes. It was
not clear until the end that the sentence was death, though all signs along
the way pointed in that direction.

Not a sound was heard in the packed courtroom throughout the proceedings.
Those in attendance — survivors, victims’ families, the public, the news
media — had been sternly warned that any outburst would amount to contempt
of court.

The Tsarnaev verdict goes against the grain in Massachusetts, which has no
death penalty for state crimes. Throughout the trial, polls also showed
that residents overwhelmingly favored life in prison for Mr. Tsarnaev.

Many respondents said that life in prison for one so young would be a fate
worse than death, and some worried that execution would make him a martyr.

But all the jurors in his case had to be “death qualified” — willing to
impose the death penalty to serve. In that sense, the jury was not
representative of the state.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a statement that the sentencing brought “a
small amount of closure to the survivors, families and all impacted by the
violent and tragic events.” His statement avoided explicit praise of the
verdict.

Some legal experts said that the jury’s 14 hours of deliberations seemed
relatively quick in a case this complex. Eric M. Freedman, a death penalty
specialist at Hofstra University Law School, said that the relative speed
of the verdict could provide the defense with two possible grounds for
appeal: “the failure to grant a change of venue, despite the overwhelming
evidence the defense presented about community attitudes in Boston,” he
said, and “the failure to instruct the jury that if a single juror refused
to vote for death, the result would be a life sentence.”

“Unfortunately for all concerned,” Mr. Freedman said, “this is only the
first step on a long road.”

But other lawyers said that 14 hours was not all that fast and doubted that
it provided grounds for appeal.

“I’ve seen juries return verdicts in 25 minutes if the evidence is strong,”
said Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor in Boston. “But rarely do
you have a case like this — a crime of such enormity to start with, plus a
mountain of evidence and a defendant who is so unsympathetic.”

He said he thought the jury had been struck by Mr. Tsarnaev’s callousness.
“After he blows up this child on purpose,” he said of 8-year-old Martin
Richard, the youngest of the victims, “he’s out at the convenience store
buying milk, then he smokes a little dope and plans on blowing up New York.”

Among those in the courtroom were Bill and Denise Richard, the parents of
Martin and of a daughter, Jane, who was 7 when she lost a leg in the
attack. Despite their losses, the Richard family had called for Mr.
Tsarnaev to receive life in prison. They said they feared that appeals
would drag out a death sentence for years, making it hard for them to move
forward with their lives.

The jury, which was not sequestered, had been told to shield itself from
news accounts of the trial, and it is not known whether word of the Richard
family’s decision had filtered through to any of the jurors.

Many of the jurors looked emotionally depleted after the sentence was read,
with some near tears. They had been involved in the case since January,
when jury selection began, and had heard testimony over 10 weeks, much of
it gruesome and horrific as survivors described losing their limbs and
their loved ones.

Judge O’Toole did not set a date for formally sentencing Mr. Tsarnaev. But
at that point, some of the survivors will have a chance to tell the court —
and Mr. Tsarnaev — how the bombings had affected their lives.

It was the first time a federal jury had sentenced a terrorist to death in
the post-Sept. 11 era, according to Kevin McNally, director of the Federal
Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which coordinates the defense in
capital punishment cases.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch called the death sentence a “fitting
punishment.”

In Russia, when informed of the verdict by a reporter, Mr. Tsarnaev’s
father, Anzor, simply exhaled and hung up. He then turned off his cellphone.

Prosecutors had portrayed Mr. Tsarnaev, who immigrated to Cambridge, Mass.,
from the Russian Caucasus with his family in 2002, as a coldblooded,
unrepentant jihadist who sought to kill innocent Americans in retaliation
for the deaths of innocent Muslims in American-led wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

“After all of the carnage and fear and terror that he has caused, the right
decision is clear,” a federal prosecutor, Steven Mellin, said in his
closing argument. “The only sentence that will do justice in this case is a
sentence of death.”

With death sentences, an appeal is all but inevitable, and the process
generally takes years if not decades to play out. Of the 80 federal
defendants sentenced to death since 1988, only three, including Timothy J.
McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, have been executed. Some of the
sentences were vacated or the defendants died or committed suicide.

Most cases are still tied up in appeal.

Republican Party to Vote in Support of Religious-Freedom Laws
<http://time.com/3859773/republican-party-religious-freedom-law/?xid=tcoshare>
// TIME // Zeke J. Miller - May 15, 2015

The Republican National Committee is expected to approve a resolution
Thursday reaffirming support for so-called Religious Freedom Restoration
Acts, undeterred by controversy in Indiana and Arkansas over whether such
measures sanction discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The Resolution Affirming Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) passed
through the RNC’s resolutions committee Wednesday during the RNC’s spring
meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., and will be voted on by the full 168-member
governing body Friday. The party traditionally votes on all resolutions as
a package, and the RFRA resolution is expected to pass with little or no
opposition.

“The Republican National Committee stands firm in upholding natural, human,
constitutional, and, under the RFRA, statutory rights of religious
freedom,” the resolution states.

A nationwide firestorm erupted after Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a
RFRA resolution into law that critics contended would allow business owners
with religious objections to opt out of servicing same-sex weddings.
Indiana’s resolution went further than the federal statute, which has been
on the books since the Clinton administration. A similar controversy in
Arkansas led to Governor Asa Hutchinson demanding changes to the law to
bring it in line with the federal statute before signing it.

The cautiously worded RNC resolution encourages states to mirror the
federal law, rather than the controversial Indiana version.

“The Republican National Committee supports and encourages States’ actions
to enact laws that mirror the federal RFRA to protect citizens’ rights to
lead all aspects of their lives according to their deeply held religious
beliefs,” it states.

The resolution comes as the issue of religious freedom has become a
significant conversation piece on the presidential campaign trail.

“The Republican Party will always stand for and defend religious freedom,”
RNC press secretary Allison Moore tells TIME.

Separate RNC resolutions expected to pass Friday include one supporting
Republican lawmakers in their criticism of the emerging nuclear agreement
between the Obama Administration and Iran, and another calling for the
replacement of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that sets how
executive agencies propose and enact regulations.

Yet another resolution reaffirms the party’s neutrality in the presidential
nominating procedure, even as the RNC has seized control of the debate
process. The party and television networks hosting the early debates this
summer are struggling with how to include a field of more than a dozen
candidates on stage.

FBI Investigating Possible Links Between Amtrak Crash, Other Trains Hit by
Objects
<http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-investigating-links-amtrak-crash-trains-hit-objects/story?id=31095130>
// ABC News // Dean Schabner and Meghan Keneally - May 16, 2015

The FBI is looking into whether there is any link between three different
trains that were all apparently hit by objects just a few miles apart,
within a few minutes, the night of the deadly Amtrak derailment.

One of those was the Amtrak train that derailed Tuesday night north of
Philadelphia, killing eight people and injuring more than 200. Another was
another Amtrak train, a southbound Acela train that was apparently hit in a
passenger window.

The third was a SEPTA commuter train that had its windshield shattered, and
train personnel believed someone had shot at them.

Philadelphia transit police dispatchers can be heard on scanner audio from
Tuesday night, warning that a commuter train may have been shot at.

The train was held at the North Philadelphia Train Station that night,
after one of its winshields was struck by an object and shattered.

"Transit 1, let those personnel know, the rock put out a text, that that
train was shot at, so use caution," a SEPTA Transit Police dispatcher can
be heard saying on the scanner audio posted by Broadcastify.com. "All units
copy."

A conductor on the Amtrak train that crashed Tuesday night also told
investigators that she remembers hearing the train's engineer "say
something about his train being struck by something" to a different train's
engineer. The windshield of the Amtrak train was also found to be damaged.

On another recording of scanner calls from Tuesday night posted by
Broadcastify.com, dispatchers can be heard discussing that SEPTA train.

"The train that's standing is the one that's standing by North Philadelphia
regional rail," a dispatcher can be heard saying. "An unknown object made
contact with that train shattering the windshield. We do not have an update
on any injuries because they are prohibited from making any communication
with the engineer while he's still on the rail. But it is a train that has
had a foreign or unknown object make contact, shattering the windshield the
train is going to be standing on the hill."

According to SEPTA, an unknown projectile struck the engineer's window of
SEPTA Trenton Line train #769 at around 9:10 p.m. Tuesday. The engineer did
not report any injuries. The train was initially held near the North
Philadelphia Station based on damage to the train window and later based on
the suspension of the line due to the Amtrak derailment.

The 80 passengers were walked off the train and transferred to buses, SEPTA
said.

The Amtrak engineer, identified earlier this week as Brandon Bastion, met
with National Transportation Safety Board investigators today and he was
"extremely cooperative," NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said Friday
evening.

Bastion told investigators that the last thing he remembered happening
before the crash was ringing the train bell as he passed through the North
Philadelphia train stop. He did not mention anything about his alleged
radio conversation with a local Philadelphia train engineer.

Sumwalt said that the conversation was brought to light during an interview
with one of the Amtrak train's three conductors who was on board at the
time of the crash. That conductor told investigators that she overheard the
conversation between the two engineers on her portable radio just moments
before the train derailed.

"Right after she recalled hearing this conversation between her engineer
and the SEPTA engineer, she felt rumbling and her car went over on its
side," Sumwalt said.

Tornadoes touch down in parts of Texas, Oklahoma
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/17/us-usa-weather-tornadoes-idUSKBN0O200H20150517>
// Reuters // Sharon Bernstein - May 16, 2015

Several tornadoes touched down in northwest Texas and western Oklahoma
Saturday evening, part of an night of severe weather predicted for a swath
of the U.S. ranging from Oklahoma to Nebraska, the National Weather Service
said.

The twisters that swept down to the ground in the Texas panhandle and in
Oklahoma in the early part of the evening landed in areas that were not
highly populated, said Keli Pirtle, a spokeswoman for the Storm Prediction
Center of the National Weather Service.

Throughout the central and southern Great Plains of the U.S. forecasters
predicted thunderstorms, high winds, hail and more tornadoes for Saturday
night.

A tornado that hit the city of Van, Texas, southeast of Dallas, May 10
killed two people and caused $40 million in damage, authorities said.

About 90 houses were destroyed in the town, which has a population of 2,500.

INTERNATIONAL

Abu Sayyaf, key ISIS figure in Syria, killed in U.S. raid
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/16/middleeast/syria-isis-us-raid/> // CNN //
Laura Smith-Spark and Ray Sanchez - May 16, 2015

(CNN)U.S. Special Operations forces killed a key ISIS commander during a
daring raid in eastern Syria overnight Friday to Saturday -- securing
intelligence on how the terror organization operates, communicates and
earns money, U.S. government officials said.

The ISIS commander, Abu Sayyaf, was killed in a heavy firefight after he
resisted capture in the raid at al-Omar, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash
Carter said in a statement.

Sayyaf's wife, an Iraqi named Umm Sayyaf, was caught and is being held in
Iraq.

The ground operation was led by the Army's Delta Force, sources familiar
with the mission told CNN. There were about two dozen members of Delta
Force involved, sources said. They were part of a multi-branch force of
about 100, the sources told CNN's Barbara Starr.

Carter said he had ordered the raid at the direction of President Barack
Obama. All the U.S. troops involved returned safely.

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said Obama had
authorized the raid "upon the unanimous recommendation of his national
security team" and as soon as the United States was confident all the
pieces were in place for the operation to succeed.

"Abu Sayyaf was a senior ISIL leader who, among other things, had a senior
role in overseeing ISIL's illicit oil and gas operations -- a key source of
revenue that enables the terrorist organization to carry out their brutal
tactics and oppress thousands of innocent civilians," she said in a
statement.

"He was also involved with the group's military operations."

Abu Sayyaf was a Tunisian citizen, a senior administration official said.

A U.S. official with direct knowledge of the intelligence and the ground
operation described Sayyaf as "CFO of all of ISIS with expertise in oil and
gas" who played a increasing role in operations, planning and
communications.

"We now have reams of data on how ISIS operates, communicates and earns its
money," the official told CNN, referring to some of the communications
elements, such as computers, seized in the raid.

Umm Sayyaf, his wife, is currently in military detention in Iraq. A young
woman from the Yazidi religious minority was rescued.

"We suspect that Umm Sayyaf is a member of ISIL, played an important role
in ISIL's terrorist activities, and may have been complicit in the
enslavement of the young woman rescued last night," said Meehan. ISIL is an
alternative acronym for ISIS.

Meehan said Umm Sayyaf was being debriefed about ISIL operations, including
any information she may have on hostages held by the terror group.

Abu Sayyaf and his wife are suspected to be involved in or have deep
knowledge of ISIS hostage operations, a U.S. official with knowledge of the
operation told CNN. A team from the FBI-led High Value Interrogation Group
is expected to interrogate the wife, the source said. They will seek to
figure out what she may know about the capture, movement and treatment of
hostages.

But Michael Weiss, author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," said Abu
Sayyaf was largely unknown to close observers of the organization.

Weiss said he's skeptical the United States would risk lives to capture the
head of ISIS's oil operations. ISIS hasn't made significant money from
captured oil fields since U.S. bombers began striking its infrastructure,
he said.

A Pentagon spokesman confirmed in February that oil is no longer a main
source of revenue for ISIS.

"It may be the case that he wasn't the primary target in this operation,"
Weiss said. "The U.S. might have been trying to kill or capture a
higher-value ISIS leader who was thought to be at the same location. But
it'd make sense to play up Abu Sayyaf's prominence after the fact since
U.S. soldiers' lives were at risk here."

But risking American lives to capture Abu Sayyaf makes sense to Derek
Harvey, a former U.S. Army colonel, intelligence officer and the director
of the Global Initiative for Civil Society and Conflict at the University
of South Florida.

"The most important thing about the raid is not getting Abu Sayyaf; it's
getting his records," Harvey said.

Harvey asserted that Sayyaf was one of ISIS's top financiers, with likely
access to the group's contacts with banks, donors, Turkish and Lebanese
business interests as well as links to criminal and smuggling networks.

Sayyaf might not have been the intended target, Harvey acknowledged. But he
had undeniable value as a target because ISIS is also a business.

"They're meticulous record-keepers," he said.

Meehan's statement added that Obama is "grateful to the brave U.S.
personnel who carried out this complex mission as well as the Iraqi
authorities for their support of the operation and for the use of their
facilities, which contributed to its success."

Meehan said the U.S. did not coordinate with nor advise Syria in advance of
the operation.

"We have warned the Assad regime not to interfere with our ongoing efforts
against ISIL inside of Syria," she said, adding that the "brutal actions of
the regime have aided and abetted the rise of ISIL and other extremists in
Syria."

Airdrop, firefight

There is reason to believe that Abu Sayyaf may have been in contact with
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, sources familiar with the operation told
CNN.

Although he was not taken alive, U.S. forces did capture some of his
communications equipment, the sources said.

More details are starting to emerge of how the overnight raid deep in
ISIS-controlled territory was carried out.

There was hand-to-hand combat during the operation, which was
helicopter-borne, the sources told CNN.

About a dozen ISIS fighters were killed in the firefight at a residential
building in Deir Ezzor, the sources said.

A senior administration official told CNN the purpose of the mission was to
capture the target, but he engaged U.S. forces so was killed. While the
purpose was to capture the forces had the option to kill if they deemed it
necessary, the official said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based
monitoring group, said at least 19 ISIS militants had been killed by
coalition bombing targeting ISIS' location in al-Omar oil field in eastern
Deir Ezzor in the early hours of Saturday.

Preliminary information indicates that the U.S.-led coalition airdropped
forces following the bombardment, it said.

There are six oil and gas fields in Deir Ezzor, all of which fell into ISIS
hands in July last year. They include al-Omar oil field, Syria's largest
oil facility.

Computer records

Abu Sayyaf is not a name familiar to many ISIS watchers and may well be a
pseudonym. Sources familiar with the operation said he also was known by
the names Abu Muhammad al Iraqi and Abd al Ghani.

But the fact that the United States clearly had him under close watch and
was ready to put its forces at risk to carry out a ground raid, rather than
ordering a drone strike, suggests the target was seen as very valuable.

CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen said the decision to send in
U.S. Special Operations forces into Syria was unusual but not unprecedented.

"Taking out the guy who runs effectively the most important financing
stream is obviously significant, but what's really significant is the
computer records and all the materials that he would have with him as the
head of this financing arm, if indeed that is the case that he is really
that important," said Bergen.

The potential to seize valuable intelligence material and documents may
have been what led the U.S. government to opt for a high-risk ground
operation rather than a bombing mission, he said.

Such targeted operations push ISIS to be more careful about how they
organize themselves and run their operations, he said. "They are going to
be looking over their shoulder."

Interrogation of Umm Sayyaf may also yield valuable information.

For weeks, unconfirmed reports have been circulating that al Baghdadi was
seriously injured in an airstrike back in March in northern Iraq. That has
led to speculation over who might emerge as his successor if he is
incapacitated.

Iraqi authorities have said Abu Alaa al-Afari, his top deputy, and a senior
ISIS security figure named Akram Qirbash were recently killed in an
airstrike.

ISIS advance in Ramadi

The U.S. operation comes at the same time as a months-long fight for the
key central Iraqi city of Ramadi appears to be going ISIS' way.

The Islamist extremist group captured the police headquarters, the Ramadi
Great Mosque and even raised its trademark black flag over the provincial
government building, sources said Friday.

The ISIS push began Thursday, with armored bulldozers and at least 10
suicide bombings used to burst through gates and blast through walls in
Ramadi, according to a security source who has since left the city. Dozens
of militants followed them into the city center.

Iraqi and allied forces have fought back, with a number of coalition
airstrikes targeting ISIS assets around Ramadi, in Anbar province.

ISIS controls a huge swath of territory across Iraq and Syria, where it is
chief among the opposition groups fighting to unseat long embattled Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.

Officials: Islamic State tightens grip on capital of Iraq’s Anbar province
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/officials-islamic-state-tightens-grip-on-key-iraqi-city-a-day-after-assault/2015/05/16/6f944498-fb33-11e4-a47c-e56f4db884ed_story.html>
// WaPo // Mustafa Salim and Hugh Naylor - May 16, 2015

BAGHDAD — Islamic State militants tightened their grip on Ramadi on
Saturday as officials, police and residents accused the Sunni extremists of
executing dozens of civilians and blowing up homes in the capital of Iraq’s
largest province.

On Thursday, the insurgent group launched a brutal offensive involving car
bombings and heavy shelling to seize Ramadi, which is about 80 miles west
of Baghdad. The militants controlled most of the city by Friday afternoon,
hoisting the group’s black flag over government buildings as pro-government
forces retreated.

“They blew up the houses of the officers and [tribal] sheiks who fought
them,” said Hamid Shandoukh, a Ramadi police colonel, speaking by telephone
from the city’s Malaab area.

The attack is a significant setback to Iraq’s U.S.-backed government, which
is waging a military campaign to retake territory that the Islamic State
seized in sweeping advances last summer. The United States has assumed a
prominent role in that effort, leading an international coalition that is
conducting airstrikes against the extremist group in Iraq as well as in
Syria.

Dozens of residents across Ramadi have been executed by Islamic State
fighters, including women and children, according to residents and
pro-government forces. “We don’t have precise figures, but we can say that
dozens of them were shot by Daesh,” Shandoukh said, using the Arabic term
for the group.

The attack is a significant setback to Iraq’s U.S.-backed government, which
is waging a military campaign to retake territory that the Islamic State
seized in sweeping advances last summer. The United States has assumed a
prominent role in that effort, leading an international coalition that is
conducting airstrikes against the extremist group in Iraq as well as in
Syria.

Dozens of residents across Ramadi have been executed by Islamic State
fighters, including women and children, according to residents and
pro-government forces. “We don’t have precise figures, but we can say that
dozens of them were shot by Daesh,” Shandoukh said, using the Arabic term
for the group.

Police, counterterrorism forces and tribal fighters have retreated to
Malaab and a nearby military command hub, where hundreds of them are
surrounded by Islamic State fighters. Police and local officials say that
supply lines to the facility have been cut and that those on the inside are
in desperate need of food as well as military reinforcements to defend
against shelling and car bombings.

“We are calling on the government to provide food as well as military
reinforcements to these areas that are besieged by Daesh,” said Suleiman
Kubaysi, head of media relations for ­Anbar’s provincial council. He spoke
by telephone from ­Baghdad.

Anbar capital is a key prize

Ramadi, capital of the largely Sunni province of Anbar, has been a
stronghold of opposition to the Islamic State and its al-Qaeda precursor. A
little less than a decade ago, the city’s residents were at the forefront
of a U.S.-backed revolt by Sunni tribesmen against al-Qaeda.

Ramadi’s apparent fall is a major blow to U.S.-supported efforts by the
government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to form another Sunni
force against the Islamic State, said Hassan Hassan, an Abu Dhabi-based
Middle East analyst and co-author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.”
ISIS and ISIL are acronyms for the Islamic State.

“This is a heavy blow to the idea of getting Iraq’s Sunnis to rise up to
fight ISIS,” he said, adding that Ramadi is “vital” to such an effort.
Despite capturing most of Anbar last summer, the Islamic State had been
unable to conquer Ramadi in repeated attempts that included an attack last
month. In that assault, militants gained control of northern areas of the
city.

Now, with its capture of most of the city, the Islamic State has received a
major morale boost after losing significant territory recently to Iraqi
forces, including the city of Tikrit, Hassan said. “This is important for
ISIS in terms of bouncing back and reclaiming momentum,” he said.

During a telephone call Friday that highlights concern in Washington about
the Ramadi attacks, Vice President Biden promised Abadi deliveries of heavy
weapons, the White House said.

During a television interview Saturday morning, an Iraqi military
spokesman, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, said that troop reinforcements had been
sent to the city. “Painful” airstrikes from the U.S.-managed coalition also
inflicted damage on the Islamic State, he said, without giving details of
the military support.

Kubaysi, the provincial councilman, said a convoy of several dozen military
vehicles carrying soldiers and counterterrorism forces arrived at the
Malaab area from Baghdad on Saturday afternoon. But the additional troops
have not engaged in fighting, he said.

“They are waiting for more reinforcements to arrive from Baghdad before
they fight,” he said.

Falih al-Essawi, deputy head of Anbar’s provincial council, said that
several members of Iraq’s SWAT team arrived Friday night but that the city
is still waiting for special forces units to join the fight.

Coalition airstrikes were targeting militants in the city, Essawi said. He
added that officials put the preliminary death toll from recent fighting in
Ramadi at more than 500 people, including police, soldiers and civilians.

Unconfirmed video posted on social media by the Islamic State shows the
group’s fighters capturing the main hospital in downtown Ramadi. In
photographs posted online, the group also claims to have seized
rocket-propelled grenades, boxes of ammunition and vehicles from police and
military installations in the city. The group also posted pictures of what
it says are executions in the city.

Informants in ‘sleeper cells’

Col. Eissa al-Alwani of the Ramadi police said the pro-

government forces besieged in the city’s military operations compound were
quickly running out of ammunition. The Islamic State is targeting the
compound, where three of Alwani’s brothers are trapped, with heavy shelling
and car bombs, he said.

In other parts of the city, he said, Islamic State “sleeper cells” have
begun informing the group’s fighters about residents who joined the police
and military. Those who were identified as government collaborators,
including families, are being executed and their homes are being blown up,
Alwani said.

“Yesterday, they killed 20 of my cousins, and they blew up my house in Albu
Alwan,” he said by telephone from the Malaab area.

He added: “There will be a massacre if there is no help.”

In the battle for Tikrit, about 120 miles north of Baghdad, pro-Iran Shiite
militias proved decisive in overwhelming Islamic State forces.

But those militias have not participated in the fight in Anbar, in part
over fear of stoking sectarian tensions with the area’s largely Sunni
residents. The Islamic State took control of most of Anbar by capitalizing
on Sunni grievances with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Bodies of Marines, Nepalese Recovered From Crashed Chopper
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/05/16/world/asia/ap-as-nepal-earthquake.html>
// NYT // The Associated Press - May 16, 2015

KATHMANDU, Nepal — The bodies of six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers who
were aboard a U.S. Marine helicopter that crashed during a relief mission
in earthquake-hit Nepal have been recovered, Nepal's army said.

The wreckage of the UH-1 "Huey" was found Friday following days of intense
searching in the mountains northeast of capital Kathmandu. The first three
charred bodies were retrieved the same day by Nepalese and U.S. military
teams, and the rest on Saturday, the Nepalese army said in a statement .

The aircraft went missing while delivering aid on Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. John Wissler, commander of the Marine-led joint task force, said
in Kathmandu on Friday that his team could not immediately determine the
cause of the crash or identify the bodies found.

He described the crash as "severe," and said the recovery team at the site
encountered extreme weather and difficult terrain.

The wreckage was located about 24 kilometers (15 miles) from the town of
Charikot, near where the aircraft went missing while delivering
humanitarian aid to villages hit by two deadly earthquakes.

The area is near Gothali village in the district of Dolakha, about 80
kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Kathmandu.

The U.S. relief mission was deployed soon after a magnitude-7.8 quake hit
April 25, killing more than 8,200 people. It was followed by a
magnitude-7.3 quake on Tuesday that killed at least 117 people and injured
around 2,800.

The helicopter had been delivering rice and tarps in Charikot, the area
worst hit by Tuesday's quake. It had dropped off supplies in one location
and was en route to a second site when contact was lost.

U.S. military officials said earlier in the week that an Indian helicopter
in the air nearby had heard radio chatter from the Huey aircraft about a
possible fuel problem.

In Wichita, Kansas, Marine officials on Saturday notified the parents of
the helicopter's 31-year-old-pilot, Capt. Chris Norgren, that he was among
those killed in the crash, a local high school president, Leticia Nielsen,
told The Wichita Eagle newspaper.

A total of 300 U.S. military personnel have been supporting the aid mission
in Nepal.

On Saturday, Elhadj As Sy, secretary-general of the International
Federation of Red Cross, said an appeal had been made for $93 million to
help some 700,000 earthquake survivors over the next two years.

The U.N. General Assembly also called for urgent assistance to help Nepal's
earthquake survivors and to rebuild the impoverished Himalayan nation,
urging the international community to support the U.N.'s appeal for $415
million for essential needs over the next three months.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the assembly that it is urgent to get
aid to all those in need before the monsoon season starts in June.

Afghan forces straining to keep the expanding Taliban at bay
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/afghan-forces-straining-to-keep-the-taliban-at-bay/2015/05/16/5bf9b14e-f970-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html>
// WaPo // Tim Craig - May 16, 2015

KABUL — Taliban militants are expanding their reach into new areas of
Afghanistan, straining security forces who are locked in some of the
bloodiest battles of the 13-year-old insurgency, provincial and local
law-enforcement officials said.

In the first spring fighting season since the U.S.-led coalition ended
combat operations in Afghanistan, heavy clashes are being reported in at
least 10 Afghan provinces. The provinces are in every corner of the
country, creating widespread unease about whether the Afghan government and
army can repel the threat.

“This is the worst fighting season in a decade,” said Attiqullah Amerkhil,
a Kabul-based political and military analyst. “There is now fighting in
every part of the country.”

Such dire assessments have become something of an annual tradition here,
where it’s difficult for analysts and journalists to safely obtain
information from rural areas of the country. But coalition statistics and
interviews with nearly two dozen provincial officials suggest that security
is indeed worsening in many areas of the country.

Since January, Afghan soldiers have experienced 70 percent more casualties
than in the same period last year, according to Col. Brian Tribus, director
of public affairs for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. Civilian
casualties have increased 10 percent over that same period.

The violence can be partially attributed to an expanding battlefield that
is testing the 174,000-man army’s ability to respond. The ongoing Pakistani
military operation has driven scores of militants across the border in
search of new safe havens.

That has created a tightening geographic ring of chaos around the Afghan
capital, presenting a major challenge for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and
the country’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah.

“The Taliban is taking advantage of a weak government, and there is a lack
of coordination between Afghan forces, so they just keep attacking more
districts,” said Mohammad Asif Afghan, a local police commander in Helmand
province in southwestern Afghanistan.

In Ghowr province in central Afghanistan, most residents of two major
districts fled their homes this week because of the fighting, according to
Raqeeba Naeel, who represents the province in parliament.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the Taliban abducted 30 motorists, including women
and children, from highways in Paktika province near the eastern border
with Pakistan, according to local police. In a statement, the Taliban
confirmed the abductions, saying it was looking for government officials.

Some of the worst violence is happening in Kunduz province in northern
Afghanistan, where the army rushed reinforcements to keep control of the
provincial capital. But local officials say the situation remains tense.

“Residents are terrified, and everyone is concerned that the Taliban may
attack this city again,” said Mohammad Yousuf Ayubi, the head of the
provincial council, who added militants still control many surrounding
districts.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported
it has received 204 “war-wounded” at its trauma center in Kunduz since
mid-April. That is more than double the number of patients it treated
because of fighting last year.

“The surgeons are dealing with severe abdominal and chest injuries, with
many patients requiring a series of complex surgical interventions, said
Laurent Gabriel, the MSF coordinator at the trauma center, who noted that
one-fourth of the “war-wounded” patients have been women or children.

Hekmatullah Azamy, a researcher at the Kabul-based Center for Conflict and
Peace Studies, also blamed the Ghani government for the worsening violence.
Instead of preparing his government and army for a tough spring season,
Azamy said Ghani was too focused this spring on trying to launch peace
talks with the Taliban.

“The Taliban is intensifying its attacks, and this is the greatest threat
that Afghanistan faces, and that is largely because the Afghan government
was not prepared for this,” Azamy said. “It was just way too optimistic
about a peace process.”

Azamy noted that Ghani and Abdullah still haven’t named a defense minister
and attorney general. Thirty of 34 Afghan provinces still lack a permanent
district governor or police chief.

“In all these provinces, except a few, you have acting people who are not
seriously committed to the job,” Azamy said.

During a meeting with Western journalists one week ago, Ghani acknowledged
that Afghanistan will “face a difficult year.”

“But at the end of it, I think we are going to come out much stronger,” the
president said.

Ghani appears to be succeeding in getting Pakistani leaders to play a more
active role in trying to control the flow of fighters and ammunition across
the border.

After a visit to Kabul on Tuesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
said Pakistan now considers the Afghan Taliban to be the “enemy,” a
surprisingly strong statement, given Pakistan’s past alliance with the
group.

Generals from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States met Wednesday in
Kabul to discuss how they can better coordinate operations.

The Afghan army continues to expand its capabilities, U.S. military
officials said.

In late April, as part of a broader effort to go on the offensive in
traditional Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan army’s
203rd Corps mounted a 22-day slog through the mountains in the Nawa
district of Ghazni province.

Afghan troops killed or wounded 250 Taliban fighters, dismantled 700 bombs
and seized 35,000 tons of explosives. When the operation ended earlier this
month, Afghan forces controlled the district for the first time in at least
a decade, said overseeing Gen. Mohammad Sharif Yaftali.

But Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the deputy governor of Ghazni province, said the
Afghan army would have to permanently station 1,000 soldiers in Nawa to
keep the Taliban from returning. Some provincial officials doubt the
148,000-member Afghan police force can stand up to the militants.

Yaftali, however, isn’t sure his troops will remain in large numbers.

“Ideally, when it comes to the security of the district . . . the Afghan
government should get involved,” Yaftali said when asked about Ghazni’s
request. “So, no comment.”

Pope Francis Calls Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas An 'Angel Of Peace'
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/16/pope-abbas-angel-of-peace_n_7297134.html>
// Huffington Post // Associated Press - May 16, 2015

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis praised Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas as an "angel of peace" during a meeting Saturday at the Vatican that
underscored the Holy See's warm relations with the Palestinians.

Francis made the compliment during the traditional exchange of gifts at the
end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas
with a medallion and explained that it represented the "angel of peace
destroying the bad spirit of war."

Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since "you are an angel of
peace." During his 2014 visit to Israel and the West Bank, Francis called
both Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres men of peace.

Abbas is in Rome for the canonization Sunday of two 19th-century nuns from
what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. The new saints, Mariam Bawardy and
Marie Alphonsine Ghattas, are the first from the region to be canonized
since the early days of Christianity.

Abbas on Saturday offered Francis relics of the two new saints.

Church officials are holding up the new saints as a sign of hope and
encouragement for Christians in the Middle East at a time when violent
persecution from Islamic extremists has driven many Christians from the
region of Christ's birth.

Abbas' visit also comes days after the Vatican finalized a bilateral treaty
with the "state of Palestine" that made explicit its recognition of
Palestinian statehood.

The Vatican said it had expressed "great satisfaction" over the new treaty
during the talks with the Palestinian delegation. It said the pope, and
later the Vatican secretary of state, also expressed hopes that direct
peace talks with Israel would resume.

"To this end, the wish was reiterated that with the support of the
international community, Israelis and Palestinians may take with
determination courageous decisions to promote peace," a Vatican statement
said.

It added that interreligious dialogue was needed to combat terrorism.

OPINIONS/EDITORIALS/BLOGS

This Hillary-Clinton-in-Brooklyn video brings the Beastie Boys to Sesame
Street
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/15/this-hillary-clinton-video-brings-the-beastie-boys-to-sesame-street/>
// WaPo // Philip Bump - May 15, 2015

I have to assume that whoever posted the video from Hillary Clinton's day
in New York City on Thursday knew what they were doing when they titled it
"Hello Brooklyn." As in, "Hello Brooklyn," the C-side sub-track from the
Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" that achieved cult status for its driving
bass line and intense intro.

The Clinton video is a bit less energetic.

You'd be forgiven if you were watching it and assumed it was a
behind-the-scenes from some time when Clinton appeared on Sesame Street.
About halfway through, though, you'd probably think, Where are the puppets?

The video, in the already-familiar, heavily
edited-Clinton-being-a-beloved-regular-person genre, manages to pack
several New York City tropes into its 57 seconds.

· A stoop in front of a brownstone

· A diverse (though heavily female) group of regular people

· A plumbers' truck

· A cab driver talking in an accent although the accent is not exactly
the traditional New York accent and the cab is one of the apple-green
"boro" cabs, not a traditional yellow one. (Bad casting, Team Hillary!)

It could certainly have used:

· A bodega

· A game of pick-up basketball

· Some cops or firefighters

· A car driving by, blaring music

· A rat

· A tourist buying a hot dog and biting into it with enthusiasm before
experiencing the onset of nausea

· Clinton and her entourage struggling to make their way around a
group of people that decided the best place to have their conversation was
immediately outside the doorway of the brunch place

· A mustache

· But the real problem here is that the intro promises to answer the
question, "How do Brooklyn residents feel about their new neighbor?" By our
count, there were about 60 people in the video who were not Clinton staff
(look for the Huma Abedin cameo right at the beginning!) or Secret Service.
The population of Brooklyn is 2.6 million, meaning that Clinton spoke to
0.002 percent of the borough. This is not an entirely representative sample.

Of course, Brooklyn will vote for Clinton anyway. That's the other thing
here: If Clinton can't find 60 people that love her in one of the bluest
zones in the United States, there's a bigger problem at play. Try this on
the streets of Oklahoma City or Laramie and see how it goes.

And a tip to Clinton's communications team: Clinton should absolutely have
walked out of whatever building that was, thrown her head back, and yelled,
"Helllllllllllo Brooklyn!" The Beastie Boys were very popular, and there
was a reason why.

Why Barack Obama’s popularity matters to Hillary Clinton
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/17/why-barack-obamas-popularity-matters-to-hillary-clinton/>
// WaPo // Philip Bump – May 17

When George H.W. Bush ran for the presidency in 1988, he was running as the
second-in-command to a still-popular Ronald Reagan. He beat Democrat
Michael Dukakis handily. When his son ran in 2000, he was running against
the second-in-command to a still-popular (more popular than Reagan, even)
Bill Clinton. But he won.

Which raises the question: Next year, when a third Bush (or some other
Republican) looks to succeed a two-term Barack Obama, how much does Obama's
popularity matter?

The short answer, as the University of Virginia Center for Politics' Alan
Ambramowitz wrote earlier this year, is that, historically, higher approval
ratings for the outgoing president have correlated with a higher percentage
of the popular vote for the member of his party looking to replace him.
We'll note only now that George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000, but not
the popular vote.

Ambramowitz figures that each 10 percentage points of approval for a
president is worth about 1.8 percent of the popular vote for the candidate
from his party. If Obama's at 50 percent approval, the eventual Democratic
nominee, whoever she might be, might be expected to earn just more than
half of the popular vote. If Obama's at 45 percent, Ambramowitz figures
that Democrat is looking at just more than 49 percent of the vote.

What's particularly interesting is how much more strongly the president's
approval rating in presidential years correlates to his party's success in
those years than his approval in non-presidential years links to results in
the House. There are a lot of reasons for this, including that we included
the president's reelections in the data below, which naturally has a robust
correlation. The difference is still dramatic, though.

Right at the center, where the two 50 percent lines overlap, is the
election of 1976.

In other words, just because Obama was at 44 percent approval right before
last year's midterms isn't necessarily why his party got clobbered. (It
certainly didn't help.) In 1990, George H. W. Bush was much more popular,
but Republicans got a lower percentage of the vote than Democratic House
candidates did in 2014. (There are a lot of reasons for this, too,
including that there were far more Democratic incumbents in 1990.)

A number of other large factors (like the strength of the economy) will
weigh for which ever Democrat wins the party's hotly contested nomination.
And some small ones will, too, but ... to a smaller extent. How Obama is
viewed by this time next year is not a dealbreaker. But if he's at, say, 25
percent approval, the Post's post-Election-Day front page can probably be
prepared in advance.

MISCELLANEOUS

Iowa Democratic Party Leaders Add Their Names to Letter Urging Elizabeth
Warren to Run for President in 2016
<http://front.moveon.org/iowa-democratic-party-leaders-add-their-names-to-letter-urging-elizabeth-warren-to-run-for-president-in-2016/#.VVeb4VVViko>
// Move On // Brian Stewart - May 14, 2015

From: Lily Adams-

IOWA — Eighteen additional Democratic Party leaders from across Iowa have
joined with Run Warren Run supporters from around the country in urging
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to run for President in 2016.

In a letter, re-released on Thursday, 18 Democratic Party leaders join 16
previous signers in counties and cities across the state in a letter citing
Sen. Warren’s record as a tireless advocate for working families and
calling on the issue’s biggest champion to join the 2016 presidential
contest.

The full letter is below:

Our country is at a crossroads. The rich get richer, but middle-class
families and those struggling to make it into the middle class work harder
while falling further behind. Income inequality is at its highest since
1928 and wages remain too low. The game is rigged.

If you work hard, if you play by the rules, it doesn’t matter where your
parents were born, what color your skin is, whether you’re a woman or man,
or who you love—you should be respected in our society, you should be
valued, and you should be able to make ends meet. You should be able to
walk down the street without fear. You should be able to live on a
sustainable planet. And your voice should count in our democracy.
Washington can no longer be run by lobbyists, the powerful, and corporate
interests for their own advantage.

As the 2016 presidential campaign begins, it is time for Democrats to be
bold, to stand for something, to propose innovative, inspiring solutions to
our nation’s toughest challenges, and to stand strong for core American
values.

We need leaders who aren’t afraid to tell the truth, and fight back—no
matter what powerful interests say—and we need all the candidates in the
caucus to offer a bold vision for an economy that works for all Americans.

Contested caucuses test and strengthen candidates and ensure progressives
have a chance to make our voices heard. Having a real debate is what
democracy is all about.

That’s why Americans from all walks of life have risen up to encourage
Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for President. Sen. Warren is a fighter for
middle-class and working families who has stood up to the corporate
interests and Wall Street banks. I urge Elizabeth Warren to run for
President in 2016.

One thing Iowans value is the first-in-the-nation caucus, and a chance for
candidates to come into our homes and libraries and community centers to
talk to real voters. We look forward to all the candidates coming to Iowa
to share their views about the critical issues that matter to us.

The latest signers of the letter include:

· Heather Chamberlin-Ryan, East Des Moines Democratic Party Vice-Chair

· John Colombo, Franklin County Democratic Party Chair

· Maria Dickmann, Davenport School Board Member

· Dan Friedrichs, Boone County Democratic Party Chair

· Marcia Fulton, Union County Democratic Party Chair

· Laura Hubka, Howard County Democratic Party Chair

· Maggie Rawland, Move to Amend Des Moines Vice-Chair

· Rosemary Schwartz, Benton County Democratic Party Chair

· Stephanie Schwinn, Bremer County Democratic Party Chair

· Justin Scott, Delaware County Democratic Party Vice-Chair

· Bryce Smith, Candidate for Iowa State House

· Carol Smith, Union County Democratic Party Vice-Chair

· Julie Stewart, Dallas County Democratic Party Chair

· Joe Stutler, Iowa Democratic Veterans Caucus Vice-Chair

· Jim Throgmorton, Iowa City Council Member

· Carolyn Walker, Move to Amend Des Moines Chair

· Beth Winterhof, Cherokee County Democratic Party Vice-Chair

· Kerry Waughtal, East Des Moines Democratic Party Secretary

Here’s what some of the latest signers had to say about Sen. Elizabeth
Warren and why they want her to run for President in 2016:

“Senator Warren is a progressive voice and isn’t afraid to push the
democratic party to where it should be. She’s fearless and one of the few
politicians who stand up for the American people and does the right thing.”
– John Colombo, Franklin County Democratic Party Chair.

“She’s unapologetic and unafraid to go after Wall Street, big banks, and
the status quo in Washington. She’s a breath of fresh air for American
politics.” – Justin Scott, Delaware County Democratic Party Vice-Chair.

“I support Elizabeth Warren because she believes in returning to the values
and principles that made our country successful. Economic and social
fairness, equal opportunities, courage, and strengthening the working and
middle classes.” – Stephanie Schwinn, Bremer County Democratic Party Chair.

“I’m very passionate about saving our democracy from the power of corporate
personhood. Particularly, my parents were immigrants and our democracy is
about opportunity for all. I am very pleased we have a woman named
Elizabeth Warren who is feisty and strong and will not back off when
presented with opposition” – Maggie Rawland, Move to Amend Des Moines
Vice-Chair.

“I support Elizabeth Warren because I have watched her fight against the
tide, against all who said that she couldn’t and shouldn’t; she has fought
diligently for the middle class and poor. She is knowledgeable and is
working to stand up against corporations, banks and Wall Street and even
the President (in reference to the Trans Pacific Partnership) to remove
the barriers that are increasingly making the wealthy wealthier, and the
poor, poorer.” – Beth Winterhoff, Cherokee County Democratic Party
Vice-Chair.

The original signers of the letter include:

· Robert Bell, Madison County Democratic Party Chair

· Kimberley Boggus, Des Moines Activist

· Tim Bottaro, Former Democratic Party State Central Committee Member

· Mike Carberry, Johnson County Supervisor

· Gerene Denning, Johnson County Central Committee Member

· George Ensley, Boone County Democratic Party Co-Chair

· Ed Fallon, Former State Representative & Former Gubernatorial
Candidate

· Neil Morgan, Ringgold County Democratic Party Chair

· Don Paulson, Muscatine County Democratic Party Chair

· Kevin Perkins, Small Business Owner, Davenport

· Heather Ryan, East Des Moines Democratic Party ChairDave Somsky,
Former Woodbury County Democratic Party Chair

· Dave Somsky, Former Woodbury County Democratic Party Chair

· Veronica Tessler, Small Business Owner, Iowa City

· Jerry Tormey, Urbandale Area Democratic Party Co-Chair

· Phyllis Ann Weeks, Former Marion County Democratic Party Chair

· Lorraine Williams, Washington County Democratic Party Chair

Since launching in December, the Run Warren Run campaign has hired field
and campus organizers on the ground in Iowa, opened offices in Des Moines
and Cedar Rapids, identified supporters in all 99 Iowa counties including
prominent political and business leaders, and held more than 90 events in
Iowa. Nationwide, more than 321,000 Americans have signed up to support the
effort, and supporters have organized more than 400 events across the
country.

-- 
*Alexandria Phillips*
*Communications | Press Assistant*
*Hillary for America *
https://www.hillaryclinton.com

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