Religious institutions have been lobbying for a fix, and that's where the problem comes in for Republicans: answer to a key constituency and fix the law that they hate, or continue hating the law and fighting for full repeal. So far, they seem to be lining up behind the latter.

N.Y.U. has already attracted attention for the multimillion-dollar loans it extends to some top executives and professors buying homes in New York City, a practice it has defended as necessary to ...

That wasn't the only question Gomez refused to answer, however.

Gomez attempted to pivot, saying the election is about “who the people are going to trust to actually put the people before party and politics.”

But Sahl said he would come back to the question “because frankly you didn’t answer it.” And Markey piled on, attacking Gomez for refusing to release ...

"You know, maybe part of the problem is we need to go back into the schools at a very early age, maybe at the grade school level, and have a class for the young girls and have a class for the young boys and say, you know, this is what’s important," Gingrey said in a speech supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. "This is what a father does that is maybe a little different, maybe a little bit better than the talents that a mom has in a certain area. And the same thing for the young ...

While various aspects of the administration's foreign policy leave much to be desired, President Obama's continuing push to cut nukes is a bright spot.

The reduction would leave the United States with the highest of three reduced levels of nuclear armament the Pentagon has been reviewing as part of the 2010 Defense Authorization Act. The lowest level considered would have reduced the U.S. arsenal to 300-400 strategic nukes ...

-- "Hoffa went missing in Detroit, a city that, then as now, was filled with great places to hide a body."

-- "Editor's Note: The original story incorrectly heralded the worldwide demise of the telegram."

-- "To a visitor from North America, where bird hunting is well regulated and only naughty farm boys shoot songbirds, the situation in the Mediterranean is appalling: Every year, from one end of it to the other, hundreds of millions of songbirds and larger migrants are killed for food, profit, sport, and general amusement."

-- ""Everyone knows I'm an asshole," he said. "The point is that they're assholes.""

-- "With a big enough budget it would, says Dr Wood, now be possible to build a mile-high (1,600-metre) skyscraper."

-- "The nation's teacher-training programs do not adequately prepare would-be educators for the classroom, even as they produce almost triple the number of graduates needed,according to a ...

Welcome to Health Reform Watch, Sarah Kliff's regular look at how the Affordable Care Act i s changing the American health-care system — and being changed by it. Sandhya Somashekhar is filling in while Sarah's away, and you can reach her with questions, comments and suggestions here. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon for the latest edition, and read previous columns here.

It's no secret that the term "Obamacare" gets a reaction from people. But some new numbers from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggest it's true not just for critics of the health law.

According to the nonpartisan group's June tracking poll, support for the health law among Democrats jumps dramatically when labeled "Obamacare," vs. the plain old "health reform law" language some of us old school media types prefer. (Fun fact: The Washington Post stylebook discourages the use of the word "reform" because ...

Four years ago, President Obama was sworn in as a financial crisis was still engulfing the markets and the economy. Now he can point to a Wall Street overhaul that he helped push through Congress, intended to prevent such a meltdown from happening again. But to a large extent, the real impact of those financial reforms will depend on what happens over the next four years.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed in the summer of 2010, but more than half of the new rules have yet to take effect. The law created a blueprint for the most sweeping rules, which the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and individual agencies still have to write.

The complexity of the law and the huge pushback from financial industry lobbyists has slowed the process: As of Jan. 2, only 136 of the 398 rules that are required have been written, and many pending ...

On Wednesday the Fed issued its latest policy statement and accompanied it, as always, with economic projections. They project the economy will grow by 2.3 to 2.6 percent, in real terms, in the fourth quarter of 2013 relative to the fourth quarter of 2012. That speeds up to 3.0 to 3.5 percent in 2014 and 2.9 to 3.6 percent in 2015. Unemployment also is projected to fall, hitting 5.8 to 6.2 percent in 2015, all while inflation stays below 2 percent. Hooray!

Or, rather, hooray? It's hard to get too enthused about these projections, and not just because 5.8 percent unemployment — well above the rate we'd have if we had full employment — eight years after the recession started in December 2007 is really embarrassing. But the bigger reason not to get too excited is that the Fed is wrong ...

The Federal Reserve's policy committee met Tuesday and Wednesday, and at 2 p.m., the Federal Open Market Committee released both a statement announcing its policy stance and the its economic projections, revealing how its members expect growth, employment and inflation to evolve in the years ahead. Chairman Ben Bernanke then began a scheduled news conference, first giving a prepared statement describing the Fed's goals and policy stance, then taking questions from reporters. We liveblogged it here.

Neil Irwin

And that'll do it for today.

Clearly the big headline from this news conference was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's announcement that the Fed expects to continue its bond purchase program until the unemployment rate falls to 7 percent from its current 7.6 percent, which Fed officials think will be in the ...

That CBO report showing that the Senate bill will boost the economy? It's not good enough for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). Even if it does help the economy, he says, "the benefit will go to the business owners." He worries that "the 21 million Americans who can't find full-time work will have an ever harder time getting a job and supporting their families." Immigration, he warns, could be "the biggest setback for poor and middle-class Americans of any legislation Congress has considered in decades."

That's why Jeff Sessions opposes immigration reform, or at least why he says he opposes immigration reform. Because even if it's good for the economy and good for the rich, he doesn't think it's good for the poor.

But that's not why he opposes anything else. Sessions doesn't typically vote against bills because the benefits accrue to business ...

In the 24 hours since the tragic death of journalist and author Michael Hastings was first reported on Tuesday, those who knew him, worked with him, and covered his work have offered numerous remembrances of the man best known for his Polk Award-winning Rolling Stone piece, “The Runaway General.”

That article, which presented a dim view of the U.S. strategy in the Afghanistan war and exposed a military command structure working to actively undermine its civilian leadership, also contained several accounts of less-than-professional behavior and comments by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the International Security Assistance Force commander, the disclosure of which led to McChrystal tendering his resignation in June 2010.

By Karen Brooks
June 19 (Reuters) - Louisiana's governor signed legislation on Wednesday making it a crime to publish the personal information of concealed handgun permit holders following a wave of outrage by gun owners after a New York newspaper listed such data last year.
Louisiana joins a growing number of states that are cutting off access to that information as a national debate rages over gun control after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school last year.
After the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the Journal News in West Nyack, New York, published a map of gun permit holders in two counties based on public records.
The map prompted a wave of outrage by gun-rights supporters that led at least five states to shut off public access to those records, according to Stateline, a news service run by the nonprofit public policy organization Pew ...

Are alimony and child support laws fair?

That's the topic tackled in a recent HuffPost Live segment. Craig Daliessio, the author of "Sometimes Daddies Cry: What a Dad Really Feels About Divorce," shared his experience with the family court system in Nashville after divorce.

"I was paying $1,000 a month because I was a mortgage banker, very successful, and the company I worked for went under in 2008. It takes 11 months to get a modification. During the 11 months, you're rolling up the charge like a taxi meter. I ended up going to jail for 15 weekends because I couldn't pay it," he said. "It is so slanted. I paid $1,000 a month for five years, and I got to see my daughter for six days out of that month. I was basically an ATM machine as far as my ex wife was concerned ...

The Drug Enforcement Administration has kicked its lobbying against legalizing industrial hemp into high gear, hoping to block an amendment in the House that would decriminalize the crop for research purposes.

The amendment to the farm bill, proposed by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), is far more modest than a Senate effort by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to fully legalize the crop for industrial purposes. That measure never found its way into the Senate version of the bill. The House may vote on Polis' amendment as soon as Tuesday evening.

The Huffington Post has obtained a copy of talking points the DEA is circulating among members of Congress to press them to oppose the amendment -- raising the seemingly incongruous specter of the government using its resources to lobby itself.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina has repealed a landmark law that had allowed convicted murderers to have their sentences reduced to life in prison if they could prove racial bias influenced the outcome of their cases.

Gov Pat McCrory affixed his signature Wednesday.

WASHINGTON -- Michael Froman, a senior White House economic adviser and classmate of President Barack Obama at Harvard Law School, on Wednesday won Senate confirmation to be the next U.S. trade representative.

The confirmation vote was 93-4, elevating the 50-year-old Froman to the head of an agency now involved in two of the most significant trade deals in recent history.

Wall Street Journal editorial board member James Taranto defended his recent column that dismissed the epidemic of sexual assault in the military as a "war on men." Taranto has a long history of making sexist remarks.

Taranto: Effort To Address Rising Sexual Assault In Military A Sign Of "Effort To Criminalize Male Sexuality." In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Taranto wrote that an effort by Sen. Claire McCaskill to address the growing problem of sexual abuse in the military was evidence of "a war on men -- a political campaign against sexual assault in the military that shows signs of becoming an effort to criminalize male sexuality." [The Wall Street Journal, 6/17/13]

Taranto: "War On Men" A Result Of "Female Sexual Freedom." On the June 18 edition of the Opinion Journal Live, a Wall Street Journal ...

CNN distorted the goal of a proposed law to strengthen the ban on illegal racial profiling in New York, erroneously claiming it would not allow police to refer to race, religion, or disability at all when describing a suspect.

CNN ran a segment highlighting a New York Post article on an advertisement from the New York Police Department (NYPD) Captains Endowment Association depicting a blindfolded police officer and asking, "How effective is a police officer with a blindfold on?" The NYPD Captains Endowment Association is fighting the measure claiming that the bill would "ban cops from identifying a suspect's age, gender, color or disability." Even though CNN's law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks, a former police officer, acknowledges that the claims made in the ad may not be true, he goes on to parrot its claims and say that if such a proposal is enacted, "cops aren't going ...

Serial health care misinformer and right-wing media figure Betsy McCaughey pushed the conspiracy theory that health care outreach efforts are a secret plan to register voters as Democrats.

In an Investor's Business Daily column, McCaughey attacked grants that fund outreach and education about President Obama's health care law. McCaughey claimed, "The lion's share of the money is going for what the exchange budget terms 'outreach.' In truth, the money is going to build Democratic Party enrollment." She continued:

Assisters will also guide the uninsured to sign up for whatever non-health social services they may be eligible for, including welfare, food stamps and housing assistance, according to the manual prepared by the Community Health Councils for California's implementation.

Anyone who remembers the days of James Curley, Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall gets the picture. If you were poor or a newcomer to this country, you went to ...

Fox News hosts falsely claimed that a federal program that helps low-income Americans obtain phone access is paid for by individual taxpayers, when in fact the program is funded by fees levied on telecommunications companies. Fox fabricated this falsehood in support of a new smear campaign against low-income phone programs from conservative activist James O'Keefe.

New O'Keefe Video Attacks Program To Provide Low-Income Americans With Access To Phones. Conservative activist James O'Keefe released a new highly edited video that purports to show people inappropriately receiving free cell phones after announcing an intention to sell them to purchase drugs and to pay bills. The phones were being distributed as part of a federal program to provide low-income Americans with access to phones. The raw footage of the video, however, shows that none of O'Keefe's ...

Fox News has fired paid contributor and market analyst Tobin Smith for receiving compensation to promote the stock of Petrosonic Energy, a violation of network policy. According to a Media Matters review, Smith's company, NBT Equities Research, also received compensation for promoting numerous other companies through his website and conservative newsletters, and used his Fox News credentials to hawk volatile stocks to conservatives.

MarketWatch's Chuck Jaffe reported that Smith issued "sponsored investment research" to tout Petrosonic's stock in a 20-page mailer, for which NBT received $50,000. The paid endorsement is against Fox's policy that "no contributor to FBN [Fox Business Network], nor his/her firm, and/or family members are allowed to accept financial consideration of any kind whatsoever to issue research, advertisements, or to otherwise promote individual stocks or securities." In a post today on his website, Smith acknowledged that he is "no longer ...

A Fox Business correspondent claimed that it was better to forgo nearly $3 million in additional prize money than to pay the roughly $400,000 in taxes due on it, representing a continuation of the baseless Fox News narrative that the rich have unduly high tax burdens.

Professional golfer Phil Mickelson placed second at June's U.S. Open golf tournament. Fox Business correspondent Lauren Simonetti argued on June 19's edition of Fox & Friends First that it may have been better for Mickelson to have lost the tournament and place second, for he would avoid paying nearly $400,000 in additional taxes.

She explained that had Mickelson won the tournament -- and won the $1.44 million first prize -- he would have had to pay an additional $76,000 more in taxes than he paid by placing second and receiving $700,000. Mickelson would have also had to pay an ...

Several people have suggested that President Obama will make climate change a key initiative of his second term. I've never really believed that, but today the New York Times reports that it might be for real:

President Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, as well as expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment, senior officials said Wednesday

Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change [...] suggested in her remarks that a central part of the administration’s approach to dealing with climate change would be to use the authority given to the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate-altering pollutants from power plants under the Clean Air Act. She said none of the initiatives being considered ...

Chutzpah awards are really getting hard to hand out these days. I just gave Darrell Issa one, but now I see that Sen. Jeff Sessions provided this explanation yesterday of why he opposes immigration reform even though the CBO says it would be good for the economy:

This increased GDP will be at the expense of poor and working-class Americans. The benefit will go to the business owners while the wages of U.S. workers—which should be growing—will instead decline

Um....since when has Jeff Sessions had a problem with benefits flowing to business owners? And since when has he demonstrated even the slightest concern with the fortunes of the poor? Since never. But I guess people can evolve on these things, so maybe we're now seeing a new, more compassionate Jeff Sessions. Maybe.

Ezra Klein has more details if you can stomach them.

Rep. Darrell Issa says he is "deeply disappointed" that Rep. Elijah Cummings went ahead and released the full transcript of a House Oversight Committee interview with an IRS screening manager that Issa wanted to keep under wraps. Then this:

His own previous release of excerpts from this very same transcript undermines his claims that the Committee is somehow trying to keep some specific revelation from public view.

I'm not even sure what to call this. Chutzpah? Something else? Basically, Issa released a few highly misleading excerpts from the interview and repeatedly refused to release the whole thing. So Cummings released some excerpts on his own, and somehow this is supposed to be evidence that Issa wasn't trying to hide anything? Say what? I'll bet Nixon was sorry he didn't think of that defense.

While we're on the subject, though, I pulled a muscle last night ...

Here's the latest polling on the NSA surveillance program:

Most Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll support telephone and internet surveillance by the National Security Administration, but two-thirds also favor congressional hearings on the subject — indicating broad interest in more information about these activities.

The public by 58-39 percent supports the NSA collecting “extensive records of phone calls, as well as internet data related to specific investigations, to try to identify possible terrorist threats.” Support for the program is far higher among Democrats and liberals than among Republicans and strong conservatives, reversing Bush-era political divisions on issues of privacy vs. security.

It's now been two weeks since the original Guardian story, and several recent polls have produced similar results. For now, then, I think we can say that we have a pretty good idea of what the public thinks. They favor surveillance by about a ...

Today, disclosures about NSA surveillance programs leapfrogged the Atlantic to Germany:

“We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information, not just in the United States but in some cases here in Germany,” Mr. Obama said during the news conference. “So lives have been saved.”

He did not provide any details. But Mrs. Merkel, who acknowledged that Germany has received “very important information” from the United States, cited the so-called “Sauerland cell” as an example of such anti-terrorism intelligence cooperation.

Hmmm. So I guess the Sauerland cell is example #5 of terrorist plots broken up via NSA surveillance. This dates back to 2006, though. Of the 50 plots that Obama mentioned today (following Gen. Alexander's testimony on Tuesday), I wonder how many of them have been broken up recently?

Brad Plumer reports that the incarceration rate for youths has plummeted 32 percent over the past decade:

Some of the drop has been driven by the general decline in crime and arrests across the country. But not all. Importantly, another chunk of the drop is due to the fact that nine states — including California, New York and Texas — have been experimenting with new policies to keep kids who commit minor offenses out of jail.

....Take California. Since 2007, the state began to close some of its detention facilities to save money. At the same time, the legislature outlawed confinement for kids who had only committed minor, non-violent offenses. And the state poured some of the savings into alternative programs (which can include drug treatment, home monitoring, or mental-health services).

This is good news. And loyal readers know one of the reasons, right? Our old friend lead. If lead is partially ...

By Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica

It took numerous courtroom battles, a contempt of court threat and the withholding of millions in federal dollars, but Westchester County finally has a law banning discrimination against those who pay their rent with federal assistance.

The Board of Legislators for the suburban New York county voted 15-2 Monday night to pass the legislation required by a 2009 settlement with the federal government over Westchester's failures to comply with fair housing laws.

The Board's vote ends one critical scuffle in an escalating conflict chronicled last fall by ProPublica that began three years ago this month when Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino vetoed legislation that would have banned housing discrimination based on income.

The federal government, which negotiated the 2009 settlement with the county, contended that Astorino's veto violated the terms of the deal. When the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ...

I'm sure Lawrence O'Donnell will be crowing over this, since he led the charge to shine light on how the word "exclusively" was transformed into the now-famous "51 percent" test. Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Tuesday that he and two campaign finance watchdog groups would sue the IRS, challenging regulations that allow nonprofit groups to be involved in politics if they're "primarily" devoted to a social welfare purpose.

Van Hollen said he and watchdog groups Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 would sue to clarify an IRS regulation that he said was at odds with the law, which requires certain groups to "exclusively" engage in social welfare to earn nonprofit status. The IRS regulation permitting groups “primarily” engaged in social welfare allows the organizations to participate in an undefined amount of political activity, said the congressman, a leading advocate of campaign finance reform ...

Remember back in December when Dick Armey blamed the GOP's 2012 losses on a few candidates saying "stupid things"?

ARMEY: We had a least two candidates that should've won, that frankly lost because they said some stupid things on a subject that their party's leaders should've schooled them to stay away from in the first place.

Uh-huh. Just a couple of candidates, eh Dick?

...the trend of self-destructive, largely marginal Republicans seizing the spotlight has only continued in 2013.

In January, it was Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey trying to explain how Akin was “partly right” about rape and pregnancy, after all. In March, it was Alaska Rep. Don Young referring to immigrant farm laborers as “wetbacks” on a radio show. The first week in June saw Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant blaming the decline in American education on the advent of “both parents … working.”

Then there was ...

A natural gas line explosion early Tuesday morning in Louisiana evacuated about 55 people from their homes and closed off roads leading to the area near Enon, outside New Orleans.

WWL TV reports:

The amount of scorched earth near the explosion made it appear as if a bomb was detonated, Seal said.

An approximate 80-foot segment of the pipeline was blown away, causing a nearly 300-foot heavily-wooded radius to be completely leveled, according to Louisiana State Police Trooper Nick Manale.

Florida Gas, who owns the line, shut down the gas line around 6:45 a.m.
Seal said the company released more gas in an attempt to get the remaining "residual gas out of the pipeline. So you may be hearing a few more explosions, but nothing serious is going to happen."

"Crews have isolated and contained the west end of that pipeline, basically the ignition source is now gone ...

Many of the cost-saving measures of the Affordable Care Act were modeled after the Swedish health care system, which has proven itself to be efficient and cost-effective. Robert H. Frank wrote a great NYT column outlining how these provisions could streamline and ultimately reign in our out-of-control health spending here, if it scales properly. That's a big "if", and one that won't be answered for years to come. Here are the highlights:

But when illness strikes, the Swedish health care system responds efficiently. Managers have exploited economies of scale by consolidating services into fewer but larger hospitals. The American system has also gone through consolidation, but, by contrast, boutique hospitals are also more common here — partly in response to demands from patients with very high-cost health plans. In large hospitals, CT scanners and other expensive diagnostic and treatment machines are in nearly constant use, versus only a few ...

The Daily Show hosted by John Oliver -- himself an immigrant -- on Tuesday night mocked the Republicans Party's resistance to comprehensive immigration reform.

He begins by pointing out that some Republicans are in favor of immigration reform because, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explained, "We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community in my view is pass comprehensive immigration reform."

Or, as Oliver put it, “We choose to help you not because we want to, but because mathematically we feel we have to.”

Mapping out various obstacles the legislation will have to overcome to make it out of the Senate, Oliver laments that the final obstacle to reaching President Obama's desk might prove too high: The House GOP's "1,000-foot high border fence built out of ignorance and spite."

It is apparent that Bill O'Reilly is not a fan of the Melissa Harris-Perry show. Perhaps it's because she is a well educated, pro-choice minority woman professor or that she deals with the kind of base bigotry that O'Reilly traffics in; but O'Reilly has her in his sights such as when he selectively edited her comments to make her look unpatriotic. Last night, he went even further when he attacked one of the show's guests to make Professor Salamishah Tillet (another *educated pro-choice minority woman professor) look like a racist by lying about what she said - even after playing her quote. I don't know if O'Reilly feels the need to set up a bogus straw man with which to bash those who don't agree with him, or if he really believes that Prof. Tillet said what she clearly did not say.  What ...

You may recall that last fall, after following a car chase live, without delay, Studio B aired the live suicide of the fleer. The dead man’s family is now suing Fox for their traumatization.

President Obama gave a speech this morning (U.S. time) at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. But Fox, in a show of preference if ever there was one, cut away in the middle. Why? To discuss a Tea Party protest.

James O’Keefe is back with a new suspiciously-edited video designed to do for Lifeline phone recipients what he did for ACORN: i.e. tarnish the entire program with a few questionable smears. By the time ACORN was absolved of wrongdoing, it was too late. In the interim, O’Keefe has wracked up quite a record of ill-repute, including a $100,000 payment to a former ACORN worker smeared in one of O’Keefe’s “sting” videos, an arrest record and a planned sexual “prank” against a female CNN reporter. Oh, yeah, and a Power Player of the Week recognition by Fox News.  But most of that was not mentioned on The O’Reilly Factor last night as O’Keefe was welcomed as a credible documentarian with a credible exposé of the Lifeline program.

Bill O'Reilly obviously feels that he is entitled to his own opinions which frequently take the form of offensive race baiting. Such was the case two weeks ago when he blamed minorities for violence in schools and elsewhere. But he takes umbrage when others express opinions with which he disagrees. On this week-end's Melissa Harris-Perry show, there was a panel discussion about the onslaught of anti-choice legislation being pushed by the GOP, including the House ban on late term abortion. An African-American female professor expressed her opinion of why this is happening and O'Reilly isn't happy about what she said. So rather than actually discussing her thought provoking views, he did what he always does - he attacked her by totally twisting her statement, out of context, in order to show that she is a racist and interject his latest favorite topic, late term abortion which wasn ...

News Hounds' Brian has written many times about Bulls & Bears' Tobin Smith - a reliable conservative mouthpiece if ever there was one. It turns out that mouth was for hire. He was fired from Fox today as a result. UPDATED

By Alfredo Lopez

If Edward Snowden's goal in blowing his whistle was to spark a public debate about privacy and surveillance, he has marvelously succeeded.

read more

Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fight rebels in Damascus suburb housing major Shiite shrine - The Washington Post

Syrian rebels get first heavy weapons supplied Saudi Arabia on the front line of Aleppo - Telegraph

Regime Erodes Hopes for Rebel Enclave in Syria's North - WSJ.com

Special Report: Syria's Islamists seize control as moderates dither - Reuters

Analyst: Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria now best-equipped of the opposition groups - CNN

VIDEO: 60% of Free Syria Army fighting for Islamic State: Channel 4 News - Informed Comment

Al-Nusra kills several Free Syrian Army officers - alalam.ir

Syrian rebels claim attack on Shias in Lebanon, say they were members of Hizbullah - Irish Times

VIDEO: Syrian rebels claim responsibility for killings in Lebanon - euronews

VIDEO: Kuwaiti Sheikh beheaded Hezbollah fighters and captured village in Syria - YouTube

Hezbollah says spared lives of wounded Syrian rebels - THE DAILY STAR

Syrians turn to dollar as local currency tumbles ...

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-u-s-peace

This summer three national gatherings of activists will converge on Madison, Wisconsin, allowing for cross-fertilization and creative planning of future actions for peace and justice in the United States.  YOU are invited.

The Student Power Convergence, Aug. 1-5
The Democracy Convention, Aug. 7-11
The Veterans For Peace Convention, Aug. 7-11

Talk Nation Radio speaks with Roshan Bliss of the Student Power Convergence, Ben Manski of Democracy Convention, and Doug Rawlings of Veterans For Peace.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from Archive or  AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio

read more

Americans alternate in their pretended opposition to mass-murder, depending on the brand name attached to their president.  When Bush was in the White House, Democrats filled the streets against an attack on Iraq.  With Obama in the White House, the usual anti-war folks are nearly comatose, but Republican columnists like Cal Thomas and idiots like Sarah Palin are against arming and bombing in Syria.  And we're starting to see local Republicans rise up in pretended opposition to warmaking:

Anti-war rally to be held at Oklahoma State Capitol

OKLAHOMA CITY – A state lawmaker will lead an anti-war rally on the south steps of the Oklahoma State Capitol at 7 p.m. Friday, July 12. The public is invited.

The rally’s theme is “Not Our War!” and will be held to reflect the views of those who oppose U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war, state Rep. Paul Wesselhöft ...

World Exclusive: US urges UK and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing conflict

By Robert Fisk, the Independent

Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

read more

By Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica

It took numerous courtroom battles, a contempt of court threat and the withholding of millions in federal dollars, but Westchester County finally has a law banning discrimination against those who pay their rent with federal assistance.

The Board of Legislators for the suburban New York county voted 15-2 Monday night to pass the legislation required by a 2009 settlement with the federal government over Westchester's failures to comply with fair housing laws.

The Board's vote ends one critical scuffle in an escalating conflict chronicled last fall by ProPublica that began three years ago this month when Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino vetoed legislation that would have banned housing discrimination based on income.

The federal government, which negotiated the 2009 settlement with the county, contended that Astorino's veto violated the terms of the deal. When the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ...

I'm sure Lawrence O'Donnell will be crowing over this, since he led the charge to shine light on how the word "exclusively" was transformed into the now-famous "51 percent" test. Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Tuesday that he and two campaign finance watchdog groups would sue the IRS, challenging regulations that allow nonprofit groups to be involved in politics if they're "primarily" devoted to a social welfare purpose.

Van Hollen said he and watchdog groups Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 would sue to clarify an IRS regulation that he said was at odds with the law, which requires certain groups to "exclusively" engage in social welfare to earn nonprofit status. The IRS regulation permitting groups “primarily” engaged in social welfare allows the organizations to participate in an undefined amount of political activity, said the congressman, a leading advocate of campaign finance reform ...

Remember back in December when Dick Armey blamed the GOP's 2012 losses on a few candidates saying "stupid things"?

ARMEY: We had a least two candidates that should've won, that frankly lost because they said some stupid things on a subject that their party's leaders should've schooled them to stay away from in the first place.

Uh-huh. Just a couple of candidates, eh Dick?

...the trend of self-destructive, largely marginal Republicans seizing the spotlight has only continued in 2013.

In January, it was Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey trying to explain how Akin was “partly right” about rape and pregnancy, after all. In March, it was Alaska Rep. Don Young referring to immigrant farm laborers as “wetbacks” on a radio show. The first week in June saw Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant blaming the decline in American education on the advent of “both parents … working.”

Then there was ...

A natural gas line explosion early Tuesday morning in Louisiana evacuated about 55 people from their homes and closed off roads leading to the area near Enon, outside New Orleans.

WWL TV reports:

The amount of scorched earth near the explosion made it appear as if a bomb was detonated, Seal said.

An approximate 80-foot segment of the pipeline was blown away, causing a nearly 300-foot heavily-wooded radius to be completely leveled, according to Louisiana State Police Trooper Nick Manale.

Florida Gas, who owns the line, shut down the gas line around 6:45 a.m.
Seal said the company released more gas in an attempt to get the remaining "residual gas out of the pipeline. So you may be hearing a few more explosions, but nothing serious is going to happen."

"Crews have isolated and contained the west end of that pipeline, basically the ignition source is now gone ...

Many of the cost-saving measures of the Affordable Care Act were modeled after the Swedish health care system, which has proven itself to be efficient and cost-effective. Robert H. Frank wrote a great NYT column outlining how these provisions could streamline and ultimately reign in our out-of-control health spending here, if it scales properly. That's a big "if", and one that won't be answered for years to come. Here are the highlights:

But when illness strikes, the Swedish health care system responds efficiently. Managers have exploited economies of scale by consolidating services into fewer but larger hospitals. The American system has also gone through consolidation, but, by contrast, boutique hospitals are also more common here — partly in response to demands from patients with very high-cost health plans. In large hospitals, CT scanners and other expensive diagnostic and treatment machines are in nearly constant use, versus only a few ...

The Daily Show hosted by John Oliver -- himself an immigrant -- on Tuesday night mocked the Republicans Party's resistance to comprehensive immigration reform.

He begins by pointing out that some Republicans are in favor of immigration reform because, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explained, "We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community in my view is pass comprehensive immigration reform."

Or, as Oliver put it, “We choose to help you not because we want to, but because mathematically we feel we have to.”

Mapping out various obstacles the legislation will have to overcome to make it out of the Senate, Oliver laments that the final obstacle to reaching President Obama's desk might prove too high: The House GOP's "1,000-foot high border fence built out of ignorance and spite."