UP-FRONT PUNDIT NUGGET!!
RINOs Need to Take Back the Republican Party (Kathleen Parker) from the Washington Post
"RINO-hunting, the long-popular political sport that morphed in 2008 into a sort of hysteria-driven obsession, lately has become a suicide mission. ... RINOs need to be defiantly proud, aggressively centrist and unapologetically sane. ... what has become glaringly clear is that RINOs need to stop being so normal and grant their better angels a sabbatical. Forget taking back the country. Start by taking back your party. Do it for your country."
Good luck Kathleen (seriously) -- you'll need it. Karl Rove (with his new super PAC) will meet you in his office. Are there enough people left in the GOP that really feel this way to alter the headlong march the Party is on towards history's ash heap? I'm skeptical. Moreover, I don't think she (or many other moderate Republicans) realize how much the Tea Party base of the GOP views these RINO types with almost as much visceral hatred as they normally reserve for liberals and Democrats. In the eyes of many Tea Party types, it was the complicity of RINOS in recent decades that got the US in the mess (as they see it) the US is in right now. Most have no problem telling Parker and like-minded folks where they can go. I'm certainly curious how divisive this conversation is going to get within the Republican Party in the coming years.
Chinese Army Unit Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S. from the New York Times
"On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors."
GOP States Invite Washington To Run Their Health Care from Talking Points Memo
"The outcome is ironic. When the ACA created this structure, it seemed like a no-brainer that states would be on board. Why would any of them, especially the ones hostile to the law, willingly give up control of their health care systems to Washington? Ironically the answer, by and large, is politics. Conservatives activists detest “Obamacare” and argue that any governor who agrees to build an exchange is abetting the law, even though the consequence of not doing to is to surrender more control to Washington."
The Comic Immigration Dance (Josh Marshall) from Talking Points Memo
"Both sides want a bill. They actually want the same bill — or at least they’ve both signed on to the same bill. But there’s the problem, a political problem. Establishment Republicans feel they must support the immigration bill the President supports. But they need to convince the base of their party that they fought him like crazy to get it passed. ... So we’re now treated to the spectacle of Senators like Marco Rubio and others straining to find some big point of disagreement with the president to pivot off of even though it’s almost impossible to find something to disagree about."
Prison and the Poverty Trap from the New York Times
"One man yelled that only guns would discourage illegal immigration. Another man complained that illegal immigrants should never be able to become citizens or vote. A third man said illegal immigrants were illiterate invaders who wanted free government benefits."
Republicans are Committing Political Malpractice (Taegan Goddard) from The Week
"They could likely win more spending cuts than they would have to concede in new tax revenues if they negotiated. Instead, they dig in. ... Common sense would suggest Republican voters would rise up against their party leaders for failing so dismally to advance their party's stated goals. Their silence is deafening."
The GOP’s Astonishingly Bad Message on Sequester Cuts (Byron York) of the Washington Examiner
"The effect of Boehner’s argument is to make Obama seem reasonable in comparison. After all, the president certainly agrees with Boehner that the sequester cuts threaten national security and jobs. The difference is that Obama wants to avoid them."
McCain Jeered At Town Hall After Opposing Mass Deportation from Talking Points Memo
"One man yelled that only guns would discourage illegal immigration. Another man complained that illegal immigrants should never be able to become citizens or vote. A third man said illegal immigrants were illiterate invaders who wanted free government benefits."
Why is McCain taking all this flack? Where's the GOP savior Rubio? He's the one who should be facing this music from his "base," the same people he'll be asking to vote for him in GOP primaries in 2016!
GOP “Makeover” Hits a Snag: Unwillingness to Change (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"I continue to find it impossible to believe that the smartest GOP strategists really think the party can solve its problems by tweaking its tone, pushing forward Marco Rubio to soft-peddle the same old ideas (even his immigration reform push is hitting a snag), and hoping that Obama’s ability to capitalize on ongoing demographic shifts was a fluke that the next Democratic presidential candidate won’t be able to pull off."
'Friends Of Hamas' Origin Story Exposes Fact That Some People Are Dumb Enough To Fall For Anything (Jason Linkins) from the Huffington Post
"What Friedman failed to understand is that Capitol Hill is filled to the brim with such gullible people. And the person he called was either one such dimwit or, at the very least, plugged in to a whole network of galactic incompetents, because pretty soon, his joke went sideways on him. Borne aloft by the distortions of the classic kindergarten jape "The Telephone Game" -- "Friends of Hamas" had become a thing. Soon after, its ersatz thingness had found its way into the imagination of Breitbart screecher Ben Shapiro, who published a whole story treating the Friedman's original hyperbolic aside as if it were reality, and not a hallucination."
Republican Reformers: Right But Maddeningly Vague (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"These are smart arguments and I devoutly hope for their success. Yet they contain the same flaws that seem to recur in all the efforts to reform the GOP from within: an unwillingness to identify or confront the forces within the party that prevent these reforms from succeeding."
Reaganism After Reagan (Ramesh Ponnuru) from the New York Times
"TODAY’S Republicans are very good at tending the fire of Ronald Reagan’s memory but not nearly as good at learning from his successes. They slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now we have new ones."
Homophobia in GOP Makes It Hard for Party to Compete Nationally (Peter Beinart) from the Daily Beast
"All the efforts to attract more blacks, Latinos, Asians, and women won’t help the party much as long as it continues its anti-gay, anti-lesbian practices, says Peter Beinart. The GOP has to change on sexual issues—and the sooner the better."
MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY NUGGET!!
A Sensational Breakthrough: the First Bionic Hand That Can Feel from the Independent [of the UK]
"The first bionic hand that allows an amputee to feel what they are touching will be transplanted later this year in a pioneering operation that could introduce a new generation of artificial limbs with sensory perception."
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