Last Call For A Bunch Of GOP Ash Holes

Republicans are pretty dumb, but Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell is such a purveyor of The Stupid that it's actually giving me a migraine.

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell is trying to get a restraining order to block the ashes of an Ebola victim's possessions from being buried in Louisiana. 

Caldwell began the process after news broke that the ashes of the possessions of Thomas Eric Duncan, the only man to die of Ebola in the United States were to be buried at a Louisiana landfill. “We certainly share sadness and compassion for those who have lost their lives and loved ones to this terrible virus,” Caldwell says, “but the health and safety of our Louisiana citizens is our top priority.” 

Reportedly, six truckloads of potentially contaminated possessions were incinerated in Port Arthur, Texas. Those ashes were supposed to be making their way to a landfill in Carlyss, Louisiana. 

The Attorney General's office expects the application to be filed on Monday, and they are also sending a letter to Texas state and federal officials, along with various private contractors, demanding additional information about the handling of the Ebola infected ashes.

Dear moron: the incinerated ashes of inanimate objects are not a viable source of Ebola infection. You cannot get Ebola from a truckload of burnt, cremated, incinerated non-human remains.  That's "You can get AIDS from a toilet seat!" level of stupidity, only if the toilet seat was also on fire and buried in a landfill.

Do you know what diseases you can get from a truckload of incinerated personal objects? Nothing, because it has been incinerated, you gigantic bloviating bowl of Kellogg's Idiot  Flakes. What exactly do you think is going to happen, that the ashes are going to rise up out of the goddamn bayou as an Ash Golem and then give everyone Ebola in their shrimp etouffee while infecting an army of undead Ebolagators that bite people in half and then give them Ebola because being bitten in half by an undead alligator is not bad enough so ha ha ha screw you now you have Ebola too?  Does this qualify me as the next Attorney General down there now?

Please stop being Louisiana's Attorney General immediately.  They deserve to be represented by someone who isn't a mouth-breathing pinecone-brained paint-chip eating lummox named "Buddy".

GOP Minority Outreach, Con't

If you're losing as a North Carolina Senate candidate going into the final stretch, just be like Thom Tillis and bring up slavery and how Democrats want to take more money from awesome white people and give it to them.

House Speaker Thom Tillis, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, once released a statement that said federal and state governments had "redistributed" "trillions of dollars over the years" — amounting to "de facto reparations."

That argument by Tillis, who is running to replace Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), came during anexplanation he offered on his website for why he supported a joint resolution expressing the North Carolina general assembly's regret for slavery. In his explanation for voting for it he tried to rebuff the idea that supporting that resolution would be a "slippery slope to reparations." 

"This resolution acknowledges past mistakes and frees us to move on," Tillis wrote. "The following summarizes my perspective on concerns raised by some citizens who criticized the decision to support the resolution." 

Tillis then went on to accuse a "subset of the democrat majority" that's kept pushing reparations. He warned that that subset would continue to do so as long as they are in the majority. Republicans took control of the General Assembly, for the first time in a century, in 2010. 

"This measure does not obligate legislative members to provide reparations. A subset of the democrat [sic] majority has never ceased to propose legislation that is de facto reparations and they will continue to do so as long as they are in the majority," Tillis said. "Federal and State [sic] governments have redistributed trillions of dollars of wealth over the years by funding programs that are at least in part driven by their belief that we should provide additional reparations."

Which is why Tillis is so eager to end those programs.  Trillions, you know.  Democrats have "redistributed trillions" as "reparations" so we paid for your troubles and it's high time we stopped doing so, dagburnit.

But please tell me again how Democrats are running the "nastiest campaign ever" and how only Democrats need to be "disqualified" for not answering real questions.

More People Voting Is "Voting Fraud" To Republicans

Never forget that the Republican party is fully committed to make sure as few people are allowed to vote as possible, because low turnout from mostly older, wealthier voters keeps Republicans in office.  Whenever anything comes along that makes things easier for the Great Unwashed Masses to vote, it's of course inviting "voter fraud", as National Review's John Fund whinges about.

Perhaps the most hard-fought Senate race this year will be Colorado’s showdown between Democratic senator Mark Udall and Republican congressman Cory Gardner. The RealClearPolitics average of polls in the race shows Gardner holding a lead of 1.3 percentage points. The outcome may determine control of the U.S. Senate, and the margin of victory could be less than the 11,000-vote margin by which Democratic senator Michael Bennet was reelected in Colorado in 2010.

But there is a significant difference in this year’s Senate race. In 2013, a new Democratic state legislature rammed through a sweeping and highly controversial election law and convinced Democratic governor John Hickenlooper to sign it. The law, known as House Bill 1303, makes Colorado the only state in the country to combine two radical changes in election law: 1) abolishing the traditional polling place and having every voter mailed a ballot and 2) establishing same-day registration, which allows someone to appear at a government office and register and vote on the same day without showing photo ID or any other verifiable evidence that establishes identity. If they register online a few days before, no human being ever has to show up to register or vote. A few keystrokes can create a voter and a “valid” ballot. ​Once a ballot cast under same-day registration is mixed in with others, there is no way to separate it out if the person who voted is later found ineligible. Other jurisdictions that have same-day registration, such as Washington, D.C., treat the vote as a provisional ballot pending verification. Colorado immediately counts the vote.

There's only one problem with Fund's tirade:  he's factually incorrect on many of the details as The Moderate Voice's Kathy Gill points out.

First, polling places have not been abolished! 

Voters can choose to mail their ballots back to the county clerks, drop ballots off at early voting centers, or complete them at the polls on Election Day. 

Like Washington state, Colorado runs a limited number of polling locations. So I was wrong, initially: this system should save counties money and the election day headaches related to running many polling centers. That doesn’t stop some people from grumbling about how they preferred the old days … but preferring an old system doesn’t mean that the new one is less secure.

Second, in order to register online in Colorado, you must have a Colorado driver’s license. 

So what that “no human being ever has to show up”? One hopes that signatures are checked against the one on the driver’s license for confirmation of identity. They are in Washington. If not, then shame on Colorado for administrative incompetence. Since Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler (failed candidate for governor) opposed the new law, if he didn’t push for regulatory implementation that allowed for identity confirmation, then he’s incompetent. 

Besides, in the 2012 presidential general election, 74 percent of Coloradans voted by mail ballot. Safeguards in place then should work just fine two years later.

Third, same-day voter registration must be done in person, so please, where is the risk of their being found ineligible?

Gill goes on to point out a number of fallacies in Fund's dumpster fire full of outright lies.  The information on Colorado's vote by mail is readily available, but Fund actively chooses to tell bald-faced lies about it, to delegitimize Mark Udall's re-election.  This is how Republicans work: there's no possible way a Democrat could ever win an election fairly, so the problem is always "massive voter fraud" that never seems to materialize.  But of course, "everyone knows" Democrats must have to cheat, bribe, and steal in order to win because "real Americans" vote GOP.  So voter ID laws that are really all about disenfranchising those people are common practice in keeping red states red.

Fund doesn't even try to hide his lies here.  And this passes for intellectual honesty among conservatives.

If you have to keep people from voting in order to win, your policies may not be so hot, yes?

StupidiNews!

• UK lawmakers in the House of Commons have voted to recognize Palestine as a state in a non-binding resolution, joining Sweden's government who did the same two weeks ago.
• A Pentagon report finds global climate change is a "threat multiplier", affecting naval bases, troop deployment, and budgeting now rather than in the future.
• The International Energy Agency sees growth in demand for oil sharply lower in 2015, which could push oil prices below the point where US fracking is profitable.
• President Obama is urging world health leaders to take the threat of Ebola seriously as cases are now showing up outside of West Africa.
• Online data storage service Dropbox is the latest company to be hit by hackers who may have made off with as many as 7 million usernames and passwords.

Last Call For The Absolutism Of Dudebro Defector

If you want to know why I have a problem with Glenn Greenwald, you have to go no further than his recent TED talk last week.  There is no room in Greenwald's universe for any criticism of Edward Snowden.  He is not interested in debate, only his fanatical, binary absolutism. All those who support Snowden are the good guys.  Everyone else is evil.  Period.

"I consider [questions about Snowden's motivations] absurd and idiotic," Greenwald after a TED talk. "That accusation comes from people in the U.S. government, from people in the media who are loyalists to these governments, and ... they are saying a lot more about themselves then they are about the target of their accusations because those people ... never act for any reason other then corrupt reasons. 

"So they assume that everyone else is plagued by the same disease of soullessness that they are," Greenwald added.

You get that?  Here's a recap of what Greenwald believes of critics of Edward Snowden:

They are absurd and idiotic, and by extension there is no such thing as valid criticism of Edward Snowden's motivations. Greenwald simply dismisses all criticism, period.  There is no room for debate.

They must be either a US government employee or a media government loyalist.  You cannot be an ordinary American outside the government or media and still have criticism of Snowden. You cannot have objective criticism of Snowden because it cannot exist, ergo you have to be a biased individual who blindly supports the US government.

They never act for any reason other than corrupt ones.  Everything you therefore do is suspect because you are corrupt, and everything you do is only because you are corrupt.  You have no valid argument because you are corrupt, so I can dismiss you out of hand.

They are soulless and assume everyone else is as well.  Once again, you are a corrupt, evil person who cannot possibly have a shred of credibility because there is no possible valid criticism of Edward Snowden.

This is not Greenwald being taken out of context, these are his words, that he says, to a crowd at a TED talk.  This is not a man who was ever interested in furthering the debate over what oversight the NSA has to have in order to do its job and to protect civil liberties.  This is not a man who is interested in answering his critics.  This is a man who admits in his own words that he is 100% right, and everyone else is absurd, idiotic, corrupt, and soulless.

The notion that valid criticism of both the NSA and of Edward Snowden exists in a non-binary world cannot be allowed in his head.

This is my problem with Glenn Greenwald.

Welcome To GenPop, Kids

More and more our public schools, particularly serving people of color, seem to have the goal of preparing black and Latino students for a lifelong relationship with the prison system.  There's no better example of this than Los Angeles Unified School District, and their surplus Program 1033 military weaponry.

"In terms of a clear national picture of what kind of military equipment is going to K-12 schools through the 1033 program, we don't have a 100 percent transparent picture," says Janel George, education policy counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. That lack of transparency is one reason the Legal Defense Fund and Texas Appleseed are asking the DLA to end the 1033 program's relationship with school districts and school police departments. George also emphasizes that excessive force against students by school police is already far too common, with many school officers armed with weapons like tasers and pepper-spray. "The concern is not only the potential harm when you add in military-grade weaponry – we're talking about M16s, AR 15s and grenade launchers. It's also, how does this exacerbate existing school climates that are already tense? And how does that contribute to the criminalization of youth of color in particular?"

The disproportionate punishment of Black and Latino students for the same behavior as their white peers is so well-documented that, earlier this year, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education expressed concern that such disparities may constitute a widespread civil rights violation. The fact that students of color, as well as students with disabilities, are so much more likely to be referred to law enforcement leads advocates to wonder: On whom are such military weapons likely to be used?

"In LA, if you depend on public schools – and given that the vast majority of students are students of color – at the moment you walk into school, your interaction with police automatically grows," says Manuel Criollo, director of organizing at the Strategy Center. "You depend on a public service, and that public service is attached to the criminal legal system. Are the police there for [the students'] safety, or are they there because they perceive them as a threat?"

Exactly why does a school district need MRAPs and grenade launchers?  But hey, let's blame teacher's unions and make kids pull their pants up.

In all seriousness, schools today are largely segregated and designed to prepare well-off suburban white kids for life in middle management, and to prepare poor urban kids for life in GenPop.  Even 20 years ago when I was in high school this stuff was unthinkable.

Now it's normal. Somewhere along the way we've decided that brown kids are just smaller, more dangerous adults, and should be treated as criminals from birth.

Cutting With An Axe, Not A Scalpel

So the reason why we have a Dallas health care worker with Ebola is probably the hospital's fault, or Obama's fault, but it's certainly not Congress's fault for cutting the budget for public health emergency preparedness in half since 2006, right?

A writer for Scientific American recently pointed out that funding for the Center for Disease Control's funding for public health preparedness has taken serious hits over the course of the past decade.

According to funding data analyzed by Judy Stone, annual funding for preparedness efforts have fallen by $1 billion between 2002 and 2013.




Stone, an infectious disease specialist, said that this reduction in funding hampered the U.S. in its response to the first Ebola patient in Dallas.

She lamented that politicians who are poorly informed about infectious disease prevention are in charge of resources for such efforts. She said that funding cuts have led to job losses at the local level, impacting local health officials ability to prepare for an outbreak.

Oh.  Well, that might be a problem then., especially the fact the sharpest cuts came in Bush's second term, and then House Republicans since taking over the House in 2010 have cut more from the programs.

Starve a program designed to educate and prevent a deadly outbreak among public health professionals and then blame the government when something goes wrong, of course the solution being more cuts to health funding.

Seems about right to me.  Good job, GOP.  But let's order a few more F-22 Joint Strike Fighters at tens of billion each to blow up all those ISIS jets that don't exist, and we'll just cut more public health and emergency preparedness funding.

StupidiNews

• Late Sunday a federal judge declared Alaska's 16-year old same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, clearing the way for marriage equality and same-sex marriages to begin immediately there.
• More than 1,000 protesters marched Sunday night to remember two black teenagers slain by police in St. Louis, capping four days of planned marches, protests, and demonstrations.
• A third week of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong is being met by pro-Chinese marchers in surgical masks demanding that the protesters break up and go home.
• A new government report finds one in seven Australians are living below the poverty line, despite decades of economic growth and billions in investment in the nation's natural resources.
• The United States is getting closer to energy independence as the oil boom and renewable resources have cut energy imports by two-thirds in just eight years.

Last Call For Job Train-ing

It's one thing to swipe the company car or van and go on a joyride and get into a fender bender.  It's another thing entirely when your company handles much larger vehicles, and you decide to go tool around in one of your company's trains.

A jaunt on a stolen train Thursday ended in a crash and possible federal felony charges for the 22-year-old driver.

Derek Skyler Brux was charged Friday with reckless endangering, felony destruction of property and felony destruction, obstruction or removal of railroad track or fixtures after allegedly stealing a train from North Antelope Rochelle mine and driving it south 13 miles before plowing it into another train.

Deputies were called out to the mine at about 8:55 a.m. Thursday.

The incident started when Brux, a utility coal operation for Rail Link, allegedly became upset about his supervisor's response to working conditions, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in Circuit Court.

The disgruntled employee then unhooked some cars and drove the locomotive around what is described as a “loop” at the site and “pretty much squashed the 'expletive' outta their scales,” Brux said, according to the affidavit.

Brux then called his supervisor and asked her if she wanted to play chicken, the affidavit says. He hung up the phone and then called the rail dispatch, advising personnel there he was going onto the main rail line.

Brux said he estimated he was going 60 mph for about 15 minutes before plowing through switch 1. He told deputies he did not know where he was headed and that he wanted to make Rail Link pay, the affidavit says.

Brux said he headed south on the main line. When asked how fast he was going, the affidavit says he responded that he didn't know if he “quite got up to 70 mph,” but estimated he was going 50 mph for a good part of the trip.

Really glad nobody got hurt here, but seriously, you're going to swipe a train and then call your boss and ask her if she wants to play chicken? 

Good luck in prison, son.

Another Case For The Wall

One of the health care workers who treated Ebola patient Thomas Duncan has now tested positive for for the disease.

The hospital employee, a woman whom officials did not identify, worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, died last Wednesday. The health care worker reported a low-grade fever Friday night, went to the hospital at some point after that and was immediately admitted and put in isolation, officials said.

The case, following the failure to recognize the Liberian man as a potential Ebola patient when he first sought treatment at the hospital, raises further questions about whether hospitals in the United States are prepared to deal with the disease.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a news conference on Sunday that his agency was considering the idea that Ebola patients should be transferred to hospitals with special containment units and experience in treating the disease.

The infection is being considered a breach in treatment precautions: the woman was wearing full CDC-recommended protective gear, but may have touched Duncan's face without gloves when he was covered in blood and his own bodily fluids, and as a result she has become ill.  The other health care workers at the hospital are being kept isolated as a result.

If it was a protocol mistake, then it shows just how ruthless this disease can be.  If it wasn't, and somehow the disease infected the woman anyway, then that is a whole separate virology problem.  The nightmare scenario has long been a strain of Ebola that mutates, evolves, and can be transmitted as an airborne virus.  That would mean massive risk in dealing with it, treating it, and caring for those who contract it.

It's much, much, much more likely that this was a lapse in judgment by the woman who exposed herself to the bodily fluids that were infected.  The latter scenario would be unthinkable.

EDIT: As Rob Wolfe points out in the comments, there's zero chance Ebola goes airborne. That's important because there's a whole lot of fearmongering that says otherwise (especially from the right), and it's irresponsible and wrong.

Last Call For Kansas Torna-derps

Looks like Kansas Republicans are going to fight until the end over stopping same-sex marriage, which they can't legally stop for much longer.

On Wednesday, a judge in Johnson County, which borders Kansas City and is the state’s most populous county, ordered court clerks to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Kansas bans same-sex marriage by state law and its state constitution, a position expected to be overturned following a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Monday.

The high court decided not to review a U.S. appeals court decision striking down bans in Oklahoma and Utah, which are in the same U.S. appeals court circuit as Kansas, meaning the state is bound by that court’s rulings.

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said the attorney general’s petition would ensure an orderly process and avoid confusion created by inconsistent judicial rulings.

“An overwhelming majority of Kansas voters amended the constitution to include a definition of marriage as one man and one woman,” Brownback said in a statement. “Activist judges should not overrule the people of Kansas.”
Johnson County has announced that it would issue marriage licenses and Shawnee County is accepting applications for license while awaiting court action before issuing licenses.

The ACLU of Kansas plans to file a federal lawsuit early next week challenging the ban on same-sex marriage, Doug Bonney, its chief counsel and legal director, said on Friday.

And I expect in short order that the ACLU's lawsuit will swiftly result in Kansas having same-sex marriage recognized the way North Carolina did on Friday when a judge overturned the ban in that state.

A federal judge in North Carolina struck down the state's same sex marriage ban Friday, opening the way for the first same-sex weddings in the state to begin immediately.

U.S. District Court Judge Max O. Cogburn, Jr., in Asheville issued a ruling shortly after 5 p.m. declaring the ban approved by state voters in 2012 unconstitutional.

Cogburn's ruling follows Monday's announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it would not hear any appeal of a July ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond striking down Virginia's ban. That court has jurisdiction over North Carolina.

"North Carolina's laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are unconstitutional as a matter of law," wrote Cogburn, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama. "The issue before this court is neither a political issue nor a moral issue. It is a legal issue."

 But it's okay.  Sam Brownback most likely won't be governor of Kansas for much longer.

Rand On Race, Regretfully

Not even Washington Post columnist Nia-Malika Henderson buys Rand Paul coming to Ferguson as the Kentucky senator being "helpful".

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made one of the boldest and most memorable statements on the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., going a place members of his party wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. 

Now, he's literally gone to the place -- as in, Ferguson -- where he's meeting with the NAACP, the Urban League and other church and business leaders about criminal justice. 

A cynic would say that Paul, a likely 2016 presidential contender, is simply trying to expand his appeal. 

That cynic wouldn't be entirely wrong.

Look, Rand Paul seems genuinely baffled as to why black voters vote Democratic, in the same way that Rep. Paul Ryan seems genuinely baffled as to why poor people vote Democratic.  There are some problems that Paul admits still exist, namely the black cradle to prison pipeline, but like Paul Ryan, Rand Paul's solutions actually would make things even worse.

“I am a politician, and I do recognize that [Republicans] haven’t done very well with people who live in cities -- primarily African Americans -- and I do think we need to do better,” he said in a phone interview from Ferguson. “The thing I found is that you might interview 20 people, and you find that they are not ready to vote for a Republican yet, but they are interested in Republicans competing for their vote and showing up in their communities.” 

Paul has been on something of an urban America tour, meeting with leaders all over the country. He is the closest thing the GOP has to a race man, unafraid to put himself in the shoes of African Americans and to talk about disparities 

But at the same time, this is a relatively new effort for him. And for a guy who in his first campaign struggled with questions about the Civil Rights Act, the discovery does coincide with his increasing national political ambitions. 

"I think I’ve discovered more of urban America from being elected than not being elected. I grew up in a small rural town, so from a firsthand experience, I wasn't as aware," he said. "But as a senator ... I’ve tried to learn about problems that I frankly didn’t know as much about. And as I met with community leaders, I’ve discovered that there were things like … many people didn’t have the right to vote, and I wasn’t aware of that. And since that time, I’ve become more active in those issues."

The thing is that the standard in the GOP, that is that belief that the 90% plus of black America that votes Democratic are nothing but stupid, savage animals who live on government largess, is so unrelentingly awful and incredibly racist that Rand Paul's slightly less insulting approach of relatively cynical pandering comes across as making him look like a "civil rights leader" by comparison.  It's like trying to tend poison ivy as the only living thing in a field of blackened, scorched, and salted earth and telling your friends how awesome your garden is.  Here's where Henderson really makes a complete fool out of herself.

But in steadily talking about race, about hopelessness and a sense of powerlessness -- as well as what the federal government can do to help -- Paul is up to something entirely different. He is becoming the closest thing the Republicans have to an Al Sharpton or a Jesse Jackson, a comparison that prompted laughter from the man himself. 

"I will leave that to others I don’t know," he said. "I am trying very hard to show that Republicans do have policies and plans and do care about trying to fix problems in our nation's cities."

Look, just because Rand Paul admits that black Democratic voters are actual human beings, putting him several steps ahead of your average Republican, people are fawning all over the guy.  It's great that Rand Paul admits black Democratic voters may in fact be actual human beings.  If that's your bar for why we should vote Republican, please kindly go screw yourself.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

"Hey Zandar, you're in IT and stuff. Is there really a lack of qualified software engineers and computer programmers out there that necessitates us importing qualified tech workers from Asia? If so, and the Obama administration doesn't increase these H-1B visas, will US tech firms will continue to threaten expand overseas instead?"

Well I'm glad you asked.

What engineer shortage are you talking about?  It doesn't exist.

A compelling body of research is now available, from many leading academic researchers and from respected research organizations such as theNational Bureau of Economic Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute. No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher, although some are forecasting high growth in occupations that require post-high school training but not a bachelors degree. All have concluded that U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings—the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more. Were there to be a genuine shortage at present, there would be evidence of employers raising wage offers to attract the scientists and engineers they want. But the evidence points in the other direction: Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations.

"Wait a minute.  Unemployment is higher among engineers and college-level tech workers? But why are we insisting on importing foreign engineers when we produce more engineers now than we need?  What could possibly be the reason, Zandar?"

Hispanics, Asians and blacks are not getting equal pay for equal work in the high-tech industry. 

That's the finding of new research that shows Hispanics earn $16,353 a year less on average than their colleagues who are not Hispanic. 

In the same high-skilled positions such as computer programmers and software developers, Asians make $8,146 less than whites and blacks $3,656 less than whites, according to the report from the American Institute for Economic Research. 

"What this tells us is that race and ethnicity matter, and they matter a lot," said Nicole Kreisberg, the senior research analyst who conducted the research. "Simply increasing diversity is not enough. We also have to talk about money."

Gosh, you mean Asian and Hispanic tech workers make $8-16k less per year than white ones?  I can't imagine why huge Silicon Valley tech firms would be so keen on hiring foreign employees then.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Leaders in Iraq's Anbar Province are asking for US ground forces to help halt the advance of as many as 10,000 Islamic State fighters nearing Baghdad.
• Kmart is the latest major retailer to be hit by a data breach that may have compromised millions of credit card numbers and bank accounts.
• Weekend protests in the St. Louis area are starting off peacefully after a recent incident where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by police in St. Louis County.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hasn't been seen publicly in more than a month, fueling speculation that he may be gravely ill, dead, or even that he was deposed by his sister.
• President Obama says that he is still "unequivocally committed to net neutrality" and that he wants the FCC to ban pay-for-play "fast lane" internet access.

Last Call For No Mo Gitmo

"Well," I imagine President Obama saying.  "They're going to hate me anyway, so I might as well go for it and close Guantanamo."

The White House is drafting options that would allow President Barack Obama to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by overriding a congressional ban on bringing detainees to the U.S., senior administration officials said. 

Such a move would be the latest and potentially most dramatic use of executive power by the president in his second term. It would likely provoke a sharp reaction from lawmakers, who have repeatedly barred the transfer of detainees to the U.S.

Officials, who declined to say where detainees might be housed if taken to the mainland, said the U.S. has ample space in its prisons for several dozen high-security prisoners. The administration has reviewed several facilities that could house the remaining detainees, with the military brig at Charleston, S.C., considered the most likely.

I honestly think Huckleberry Graham will pass out/come close to an aneurysm from this.  I really do. On national TV, no less.  Meet John McCain With Your Host Chuck Todd is really, really going to hate this too.

Of course, if President Obama actually tries this, as Steve M. points out, it'll set up a shutdown fight that President Obama will almost assuredly lose.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) on Friday vowed to block all legislation in the Senate with a prolonged filibuster if President Obama tries to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States.... 

Roberts made a similar threat back in 2009, when Obama originally signaled he wanted to relocate detainees to the United States. At the time, the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, as well as a maximum-security prison in Obama's home state of Illinois were being considered to house the prisoners.... 

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is traveling through the state this week on Roberts's campaign bus, said he would join the filibuster. Roberts predicted he would have broad support from his colleagues. 

"I will have help on this. I can see John McCain there and I can see Lindsey Graham there and I can see Kelly Ayotte there and I can see a whole bunch of other people there," Roberts said.

And why will Obama lose on this?  Because Democrats in the Senate will line up around the block to stab him in the back over this.

Wonder how soon this is going to start showing in campaign ads for Roberts -- and for Mitch McConnell, Joni Ernst, Scott Brown, etc., etc.

I'm sorry to say that this effort will not succeed. On this, America is provincial and irrational, and not even remotely liberal.

Can you imagine what Senate Democrats will do when this happens?  Let me put it to you this way: the only think preventing impeachment hearings and a Senate trial is the fact that it takes 67 Senators to convict.  If this Gitmo thing goes down, well...

It's a nice thought.  But as Steve M. says, Obama will never be able to close Gitmo.  In the future some President may be able to.  That President will not be Obama.