Health Insurance Companies Are Still Pretty Scummy

Jonathan Cohn reminds us that one of the major reasons the ACA was passed was because health insurance companies are basically awful, awful people who do awful, awful things in order to keep from paying out on insurance.

Perhaps the most alarming I’ve seen comes from Florida, where the AIDS Institute and National Health Law Program accuse four insurers of discriminating against customers and potential customers who are HIV-positive. According to an official complaint, filed with the Department of Health and Human Services, the insurers have structured their drug formularies in ways that make key HIV drugs much more expensive. 

It could be coincidence, naturally, but the groups think it’s a deliberate effort to scare away customers that would run up high medical bills. It’s precisely the sort of trick that insurers have played for generations. And while the Affordable Care Act’s regulations are supposed to stop such practices, some insurers have undoubtedly found ways to circumvent and undermine the new rules. 

Does this mean Obamacare is a bad deal for people with HIV? Of course not. Before the law, people with pre-existing conditions frequently had even worse coverage—or no insurance at all. But given the anecdotes and history of private insurance in America, it’s clear that state and federal officials need to be regulating the plans aggressively. In some places, I’m not sure they are.

So we're pretty much all in agreement on three things: 1) The ACA still has problems and loopholes that are being exploited.  2) They need to be fixed.  3) It will never happen as long as Republicans are in charge of either or both halves of Congress.

The root cause of the issue is of course, part 3 there.  That's what we have to do something about in November.  Remember, Republicans want to take us back to an era where insurance companies can discriminate against HIV-positive people and MS sufferers and breast cancer survivors and say "we won't cover you."  And they have zero solutions to that problem, literally, nothing.

So why would we send them back to Congress?

StupidiNews!

• Egypt's brokered cease fire between Israel and Hamas has crumbled, with Hamas rejecting the offer and Israel resuming airstrikes on Gaza.
• Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas has been released by Border Patrol officials after reporting on the border refugee crisis in Texas.
• IBM will team up with Apple to offer phones and tablets pre-loaded with IBM software designed for the corporate enterprise client.
• Boeing says its new design for the 737 will include slimmer seats, redesigned galleys and lavatories, and less padding to get 11 more passengers on board per flight.
• Google is teaming up with pharmaceutical giant Novartis to create "smart contact lenses" that could monitor glucose levels in tears for diabetic patients.

Last Call For The Nameless Bunch

Team Cheney's Rehabilitation Breakfast and War Criminal Fete, courtesy of Politico, was simply too much for Chuck Pierce to take as he righteously savages everyone involved in this festering mountain of stupid.

Its puerilty has finally crossed over into indecency. Its triviality has finally crossed over into obscenity. The comical political starfcking that is its primary raison d'erp has finally crossed over into $10 meth-whoring on the Singapore docks. Once a mere surface irritation, Tiger Beat On The Potomac has finally crossed over into being a thickly pustulating chancre on the craft of journalism. It has demonstrated its essential worthlessness. It has demonstrated that it has the moral character of a sea-slug and the professional conscience of the Treponema pallidum spirochete. Trust me. Stephen Glass never sunk this low. Mike (Payola) Allen has accomplished the impossible. He's made Jayson Blair look like Ernie Pyle. 

It's not just that TBOTP invited the Manson Family of American geopolitics to come together for an exercise in ensemble prevarication. It's not just that the account of said exercise is written in the kind of cacophonous cutesy-poo necessary to drown out the screams of the innocent dead, and to distract the assembled crowd from the blood that has dripped from the wallet of the celebrity war-criminal leading the public display. And it's not as though this was a mere interview—a "get" that could help you "win the morning (!)." In that, it might have been marginally excusable. No, this was one of Mike Allen's little grift-o-rama special events—a "Playbook lunch," sponsored by that noted mortgage fraud concern Bank Of America. There's an upcoming TBOTP "event" in L.A. that is sponsored by J.P. Morgan. I know what Mike Allen is, but I am so goddamn tired of haggling about the price.

And it gloriously goes on from there.  As Pierce reminds us, Dick Cheney happily botched 9/11, then used it to personally enrich himself and his friends at the cost of thousands of US troops, millions of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and trillions of bucks.  The guy should be in a hole.  Instead, he gets meet and greets.

Dick Cheney is everything wrong with American politics, and Politico is everything wrong with political journalism.  Of course they deserve each other.

Kansas's Tax Cut Failure Is Complete

The New York Times editorial board takes Kansas Republicans and Gov. Sam Brownback to task for destroying the state's economy by literally creating a recession through draconian cuts to government services.

There was a windstorm of hasty excuses in recent weeks after Kansas reported that it took in $338 million less than expected in the 2014 fiscal year and would have to dip heavily into a reserve fund. Spending wasn’t cut enough, said conservatives. Too many rich people sold off stock in the previous year, state officials said. It’s the price of creating jobs, said Gov. Sam Brownback. 

None of those reasons were correct. There was only one reason for the state’s plummeting revenues, and that was the spectacularly ill-advised income tax cuts that Mr. Brownback and his fellow Republicans engineered in 2012 and 2013. The cuts, which largely benefited the wealthy, cost the state 8 percent of the revenue it needs for schools and other government services. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, that’s about the same as the effect of a midsize recession. Moody’s cut the state’s debt rating in April for the first time in at least 13 years, citing the cuts and a lack of confidence in the state’s fiscal management. 

The 2012 cuts were among the largest ever enacted by a state, reducing the top tax bracket by 25 percent and eliminating all taxes on business profits that are reported on individual income returns. (No other state has ever eliminated all taxes on these pass-through businesses.) The cuts were arrogantly promoted by Mr. Brownback with the same disproven theory that Republicans have employed for decades: There will be no loss of revenue because of all the economic growth!

And of course, because the voodoo economics of Laffer Curve nonsense never work, the Kansas tax cuts failed spectacularly.

But the growth didn’t show up. Kansas, in fact, was one of only five states to lose employment over the last six months, while the rest of the country was improving. It has been below the national average in job gains for the three and half years Mr. Brownback has been in office. Average earnings in the state are down since 2012, and so is net growth in the number of registered businesses.

And of course the big reason why is that when you cut thousands of state government employees and put them on unemployment, they don't exactly contribute to the economy as much as they would if they were working.  America's super rich aren't exactly flocking to Kansas to enjoy lower taxes, nor are businesses flocking to the state when they know they're going to have a rough time convincing people to move there to take jobs when schools and teachers are being slashed to ribbons.

By the way, Brownback is having troubles in the polls due to this mess and he's sinking fast.  No surprise there as he's up for reelection in November, and Democrat Paul Davis looks like he's going to make Brownback pay.

A Turtle Selling Beachfront Property In Kentucky

Sen. Mitch McConnell tries to con Kentuckians and the rest of the country into thinking Republicans care about working-class families in a USA Today op-ed piece.

One bill I recently introduced with Sen. Ayotte, the Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act, would help Americans better balance the demands of work and family by allowing workers to take time off as a form of overtime compensation. It's an idea that's tailored to the needs of the modern workforce, it's something a lot of working men and women say they want, and there's no reason not to provide a little more flexibility to working families. Another bill I introduced, the Working Parents Home Office Act, would reduce the hassle and cost of child care for working parents already stretched thin enough. My legislation would do that by changing the law to allow parents to write off a home office even if they happen to have a crib in the room. Currently, the law treats working moms and dads unfairly by disqualifying them from this deduction if they care for their child while working in a home office. So making that change is just common sense.

I've talked about this particular piece of nonsense before: the Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act really needs to be called Your Employer Doesn't Have To Pay You A Dime For Overtime Anymore Act.  Here's how the scam works:  your employer can choose to give you comp time instead of overtime pay.  Your employer then decides when you're allowed to take that comp time, and then decides when that comp time expires.

So you work 44 hours one week, you get 4 hours of comp time.  Only your employer never has to actually let you take it, that's up to your employer. You could cash out the comp time, but only at standard hourly rate, and not overtime.  In other words, it suddenly becomes very, very easy for employers to pressure all workers into taking comp time instead of overtime, and then pressuring them into not taking that comp time ever.  Boom, unlimited overtime without pay.

How many employers do you think would love to have that option?  "Work overtime and take this comp time that you'll never be able to use or else" seems like a pretty great deal for the bosses and not so much for employees.

Of course the GOP House passed this bill last year.

Oh, and that other part, the Working Parents Home Office Act?  How many working-class parents do you know have a home office?  Because the tax burden of a home office is really the issue with being able to pay for childcare, right?

And finally, let's remember that Mitch the Turtle here voted against the Family Medical Leave Act, guaranteed sick pay legislation, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, things that actually would help families struggling here in Kentucky (and did when Clinton signed the FMLA into law).

This con game is what Mitch McConnell is selling, and the only thing between you and your boss getting you to work like indentured servants is the Democratic party.

Might want to keep that in mind.

StupidiNews!

• Hamas's military wing has rejected an Egyptian-brokered cease fire even as Israel's Security Cabinet has voted to accept it and has halted air strikes for now.
• California venture capitalist Tim Draper's plan to split the state into six smaller ones appears to have enough signatures to head to the ballot box in 2016.
• At least 12 are dead and ten times that injured in Moscow as a rush hour subway derailment caused havoc, trapping dozens between two stations.
• House Republicans want answers in a hearing from Department of Justice officials over a crackdown against payday lenders that the GOP says are legitimate businesses.
• US officials are warning business travelers to be careful using PCs in hotel business centers, as they are a prime target for software designed to steal account information.

Last Call For Zee Germans

Nate Silver crunches the numbers and argues that this year's German World Cup winning squad may in fact be the most powerful and dominant national soccer team ever assembled.

One simple way to compare World Cup winners is by their goal differential throughout the tournament. Germany, with 18 goals scored and four allowed, comes out at a plus-14. This is tied for the best goal differential ever for a World Cup champion; Brazil also scored 18 goals and allowed four in winning the 2002 tournament.

Plus 14 through 7 matches is insane, although if you toss that 7-1 thrashing of Brazil and turn that into 2-1, that would put the Germans at a much more average plus 9.  So what else is in the 2014 German team's favor?

The World Football Elo Ratings provide one way to account for all these factors: a team’s strength going into the tournament, its dominance during the tournament itself, the quality of its competition, and whether it was aided by playing at home. 

Germany’s Elo rating was high to begin with at 2046, which is stronger than a number of World Cup winners. But it gained 150 more points throughout the World Cup (about half of them by beating Brazil 7-1), finishing with a rating of 2196.

That's 40 points better than any other World Cup winning team ever.  I don't think we'll ever see a team this good again.  These guys are the best of the best.

Other teams — notably Spain from 2008 to 2012, and Brazil under Pele — had longer sustained stretches at the apex of world football. But Germany is young and deep. Mario Götze, who scored the winning goal in the final Sunday, is 22. Thomas Müller and Toni Kroos are 24, and Mesut Özil is 25. The Germans have a good chance to go in as the favorites in the 2018 World Cup in Russia. 

Still, the competition is going to be tough. At the start of the next tournament, Brazil’s Neymar and Colombia’s James Rodríguez will be just 26, and Lionel Messi — despite playing in his fourth World Cup — only 30. France is perhaps a player away from competing with the world’s best teams, and after having won FIFA’s Under-20 World Cuplast year, it could make that transition soon. This is a great era for the international game, and that makes what Germany accomplished all the more impressive.

From an American sports perspective, Germany didn't have a Michael Jordan or LeBron James, but they are instead the San Antonio Spurs, a collection of very good, All-Star players all on the same team and who perform well together.  It's a franchise that has quietly won 5 NBA championships in 16 seasons.  Center Tim Duncan may not be the best player in the NBA, just like Germany's Thomas Muller isn't the best soccer player out there compared to Brazil's Neymar or Argentina's Messi, but Tim Duncan now has five rings and nobody can tell him boo.

I'd call the Spurs the best NBA squad in the last 15 years, easy.  Germany is all that and more in the soccer world right now, and yeah, 2018 you would have to consider them the favorites too.

Judd Gregg Has Amnesia

Remember Judd Gregg, former GOP senator and governor from New Hampshire?  He has a new column at The Hill predicting how a Republican Senate in 2014 would go, and it's hysterically funny fan fiction.

The election of a Republican Senate will not be a signal from the hinterlands that people want more of the same. It will be a directive to stop acting like peevish politicians and start governing for the good of the nation. 

If this instruction is ignored, it will almost certainly mean that the next time around — the 2016 elections — the Republican Congress will face stiff punishment from voters. 

Thus, there will be a considerable motivation for a Republican Congress next year to make things happen.

If voters were interested in making things happen why would they elect more Republicans, when Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell swore they top priority of Senate Republicans was making Obama a one-term President by doing nothing?   Go home Judd, you're drunk.

But since this will still be a divided government and the GOP may hold only the barest of majorities in the Senate, this new Congress is not going to be able to address Main Street issues unless it does so in concert with the president. 

So the next question is this: What incentive is there for the president to come into the room? He has not done this in a meaningful way in the first six years of his term, and indeed doing so seems to be anathema to his personal views of governance.

Yes, at every step of the way, President Obama has "refused" to work with Republican senators, including the fact he nominated Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary as one of his first acts, only to have Gregg tell the President to go screw himself a week later.

Every time President Obama has offered to work with Republicans, they have told him to screw off.  Now they are suing him.  You're right, Mr Gregg, why should President Obama come to the table?  Look in the mirror and you'll have the answer as to why not.

Saying What The President Cannot

Attorney General Eric Holder is a good man in general, but his ability to say what President Obama cannot say about race and the brutally racist attacks this administration has suffered through in the last six years is one of his most powerful traits.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” by some of the administration’s political opponents.

“There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there's a racial animus."

Holder said the nation is in “a fundamentally better place than we were 50 years ago.” 

“We've made lots of progress,” he said. “I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American president of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. 

“But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals,” he said.

He also is one of the few people willing to call Republican voter suppression of black and Latino voters what it is.

The attorney general also pointed to Republican efforts to enact stricter voter ID laws in southern States as evidence that more needed to be done to protect minority rights. Republicans have maintained the efforts are designed to prevent voter fraud, while Democrats say instances of fraud are exceedingly rare, and far outpaced by the minority population that does not have identification that would be unable to vote. 

Holder called the laws “political efforts” designed to make it “more difficult” for “groups that are not supportive of those in power” to “have access to the ballot.” 

“Who is disproportionately impacted by them? Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, older people, people who, for whatever reason, aren't necessarily supportive of the Republican Party,” Holder said, adding that “this notion that there is widespread in-person voter fraud is simply belied by the facts.”

I am grateful for President Obama, but Eric Holder's contribution to civil rights and fighting for them cannot and will not be overlooked by history either.

StupidiNews!

• An attack on an apartment complex in east Baghdad that was being used as a brothel has killed 34 as militants raided the building.
• Authorities say a marijuana farmer in Northern California is responsible for setting a wildfire that is currently burning 3,700 acres near the town of Igo.
• Germany's Mario Goetze scored in the 113th minute to give Germany its 4th FIFA World Cup championship, defeating Lionel Messi and Argentina 1-0.
• Apple is denying Chinese accusations that the iPhone is a security risk that is being used to track the movements of citizens.
• DARPA is looking into "human memory-saving devices", investing $37.5 million into new research involving brain patterns.

Last Call For What Domestic Terrorism Problem, Part A Lot

Enjoy your visit from the US Secret Service, folks.

Sharing a photo on her Facebook page of President Obama’s recent visit to Texas, the founder of the Moms With Guns website commented on the photo, stating: “Where is an assasin (sic) when you need one?”

The post has since been taken down and the Moms With Guns Facebook account has been closed by founder Kathy Perkins, but not before Liberaland was able to save a screen capture, seen below.

One commenter, Todd Thozeski of Seven Hills, Ohio, commented on her Facebook share, “Duh,’ while Liberaland noted another wrote, “I know…I’m amazed it hasn’t happened yet.”

There's no conceivable, possible reason to believe that any of the people advocating for open carry firearms rights are in any way a threat or danger to anyone, because why do you hate MURICA and FREEDOM and EAGLE, stupid libtard?

Added below, she asserts, “We Will NO LONGER Tolerate Your Tyrannical Abuse!” possibly in reference with to Thomas Jefferson’s advice that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

No reason at all to ever confuse this with a call to armed revolution, nope nope nope.

GOP Minority Outreach, Con't

Today's contestant on "Why Latinos should vote Republican" is Texas GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, head of the House Homeland Security committee:

"It’s very heart-wrenching as a father to see that — mothers with their babies," McCaul said on "Fox News Sunday." "I also saw some 17-year-olds that I thought looked more like a threat to coming into the United States."

The congressman showed little sympathy for young migrants crossing the border. While he said that some may qualify to stay in the U.S., that most needed to be sent away as a "message of deterrence."

What about them made them a threat, Congressman?

The fact they were Latino teenagers?  That's all it takes when you're a white Republican from Texas, I guess.  It's not like non-white men in the US are used to being perceived as a "threat" simply because they're not white.

I mean, it's not like Republicans consider immigrants to be a threat just because they are immigrants.

The leader of an effort to rally a Bundy Ranch-style militia at the Texas border said this week that his troops were fighting for "national sovereignty."

"We have patriots all across this country who are willing to sacrifice their time, their monies, even quit their jobs to come down and fight for freedom, liberty and national sovereignty," Chris Davis said, as quoted by Rio Grande Valley TV station KRGV.

Davis would not tell KRGV how many members make up his group, Operation Secure Our Border, nor offer an outline of when and where the group planned the deploy along the Texas-Mexico border.

Davis, who has been identified as a member of the Second Amendment activist group Open Carry Texas, also reportedly released a YouTube video recently in which he issued a warning to those migrants crossing the border illegally: "Get back across the border or you will be shot."

Keep up that minority outreach, guys.

The New Bar For Scandal

Washington Post scold and GOP operative Ed Rogers demands a special prosecutor in the "massive" IRS scandal involving Lois Lerner, and he has taken it upon himself to make this happen using the power of the adversarial press.

Anyone paying attention to the Internal Revenue Service scandal has been waiting for the next smidgen to drop. Well, two more hit pretty hard this week. At the president’s next encounter with the media, I will scream collusion if no one asks him for his exact definition of a “smidgen,” and if he thinks he has seen a smidgen of corruption yet. At this point, only the most gullible or culpable can continue to claim there is no compelling evidence in this case. Given the delays, lies and stonewalling, there is no viable argument against a special prosecutor.

It's not the first time he's called for this, either.

The corrosive effect of this diminishes America’s legal authority and makes for bad politics for the Democrats in November. How can the Democrats defend these “lost” e-mails? Who in a competitive 2014 race can keep a straight face and say they believe this president’s claims? If I were a Democrat, I would take Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp’s (R-Mich.) good advice and support a special prosecutor. It is the only way for Democrats to put distance between themselves and this grotesque violation of the public trust.

Because Ed Rogers clearly has the best interests of the Democratic party in mind. It is, after all, Obama's fault that Iraq blew up, Obama's fault that our foreign policy is a mess, that the good jobs news in 2014 is in fact 100% meaningless, and that nobody believes in climate change.

In other words, if you want to know what idiocy the GOP is cooking up in their bubble of stupidity, Ed Rogers will gladly tell you.  Interestingly enough, he thinks impeachment is a terrible idea.

Go figure.

Last Call For A Winner Among Losers

The argument that the Hobby Lobby decision is somehow a "liberal" decision never fails to amuse me, but that's what Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Brett McDonnell posits in his article this week, chiding the left for being "close-minded" to the "freedoms" that the decision brings.

Is RFRA a conservative power grab giving religious lawbreakers a “get out of jail free” card?

History suggests otherwise. RFRA reversed Justice Antonin Scalia’s 1990 opinion that denied protection to Native Americans who used peyote in religious ceremonies. The dissenters in that case were Justices Harry Blackmun, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall — three of the leading liberals in the court’s history. Those liberals lost in court, but Congress vindicated them three years later by passing RFRA.

Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House at the time, and RFRA passed by a 97-3 vote in the Senate and unanimously in the House. That is not a typo.

Bill Clinton signed RFRA into law.

Thus, liberal titans on the court, in Congress and in the White House vigorously supported RFRA’s strong protection of religious liberty.

Why? . Because RFRA reflects the core liberal values of toleration and respect for diverse viewpoints. In a world with a litter of laws and a rainbow of religions, even well-intentioned laws sometimes seriously burden some believers. If we can ease that burden by modifying the law while doing little damage to the law’s legitimate purpose, we make it easier for diverse groups to coexist.

The court plausibly found that a modest extension of an already-existing accommodation for some religious organizations to corporations like Hobby Lobby would avoid burdening religious beliefs without hurting the company’s employees.

What we have in Hobby Lobby is an opinion grounded in corporate social responsibility and respect for diverse points of view. The Supreme Court’s five conservatives have delivered a profoundly liberal opinion. Too bad so many liberals don’t seem to realize it.

Here's the problem that Prof. McDonnell clearly does not understand:  Hobby Lobby's religious freedom comes directly at the financial expense of female employees of the company.  They will now have to pay full price for contraception, something the the company itself gladly chose to cover while RFRA was in effect.  In fact, Hobby Lobby didn't change its tune until another law, the Affordable Care Act, was passed.  Only then did it become a "religious burden" to the company.

There is nothing "liberal" about the Hobby Lobby decision.  It penalizes financially only one class of employees -- women -- and does so in a way that allows multiple corporations to penalize employees at their direct expense, for a variety of reasons.

The decision has already been expanded to include all forms of female contraception, and leaves the door open for these "closely held" family owned companies to continue to push their beliefs upon employee at their monetary expense.

That's clearly unconstitutional, but what does an individual's right to freedom from religion?  It apparently no longer matters.

A Mess Of Your Own Making

Jewish Republicans are suddenly alarmed that with Eric Cantor gone, there won't be any Jewish Republicans in Congress anymore.  Keep in mind there are plenty on the Democratic party side, including DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and NY Sen. Chuck Schumer, but Cantor was it.  And that's got Jewish Republicans kind of upset.

The stinging defeat last month of Eric Cantor, the House majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish politician in American history, has created the possibility of Republicans having no Jewish representation in the House or Senate for the first time in more than a half-century.

“Sometimes, a Jewish person just wants to be able to go to Congress and speak with a Jewish person,” Beverly Goldstein, a Republican donor from Beachwood, Ohio, explained in the hotel lobby after a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

“And Chuck Schumer is not it for us,” she added, referring to the Democratic senator from New York.

Excluding the soon-to-be-retired Mr. Cantor, there are now 31 Jewish members of Congress — 30 of them Democrats and an independent senator from Vermont, Bernard Sanders, who generally votes with Democrats.

And of course, the party of right-wing Christian Dominionist theology is having trouble figuring out why there's no room for non-Christians in it.

Decades after a Reagan era that was relatively rich in Jewish representation on the Republican side of both the House and the Senate, Republican Jews are grappling with what it means for a party that casts itself as the protector of Israel to potentially not have a single one of its children in Congress. Some Democrats, of course, depict Mr. Cantor’s loss as the removal of a final fig leaf from what has become a homogeneously Christian party with little room for religious and ethnic minorities. Others said the loss of Mr. Cantor, a conservative standard-bearer deemed insufficiently conservative by voters who preferred a Tea Party challenger, revealed the Republicans’ exclusion of moderates of any stripe.

There are Jewish candidates running for Congress on the GOP side this year.  Meet Adam Kwasman, proud Tea Party Republican.

Mr. Kwasman, a product of Jewish day school in the Tucson suburbs who says he tries to make Shabbat dinners with his parents whenever possible, is the Jewish candidate most affiliated with the Tea Party, opposing gun control and any form of amnesty on immigration and talking about bringing “Kosher Tea” to Congress. He was endorsed by Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who has been the subject of a Justice Department investigation because of his crackdowns on undocumented workers. House analysts consider Mr. Kwasman the underdog against a more moderate Republican in the August primary.

No room for moderates here, regardless of your religious creed.  Maybe that's the message.