The bipartisan organization is attracting some of the most ideological members in Congress. “In this anti-Washington environment members should do anything they can to be able to say in a TV ad that they aren’t part of the problem,” said one GOP strategist.

Members of Congress gather for a Make Government Work rally on Capitol Hill.

Via nolabels.org

WASHINGTON— The bipartisan group No Labels casts itself as a way forward to help fix partisan rancor on Capitol Hill and has a membership list can often read like a "who's who" of politically vulnerable representatives who want to be thought of as reach-across-the-aisle types.

But with record-low approval ratings for Congress and a growing anti-Washington electorate, far right and left members are eagerly lending their names to the No Labels cause and checking the "bipartisan" box on their political resumes.

Conservatives like Reps. Kerry Bentivolio, Mick Mulvaney, and Scott DesJarlais are now members, as is North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows who recently spearheaded a letter to GOP leadership saying the House should attach defunding of Obamacare to a must-pass spending bill. Democrats like Rep. Keith Ellison, and Jim Moran— who usually lend their name to more progressive causes— are also members.

"We're thrilled to have very strong conservatives as well as very progressive liberals. Our intent all along has been to represent the entire ideological spectrum," said No Labels co-founder Mark McKinnon, a former aide to President George W. Bush. "Washington is polarized and so is the country, we're not going to get a lot of traction unless we get the entire spectrum on board. The broader the representation the more likely it is we'll break the gridlock."

In interviews with a dozen Republican and Democratic aides and strategists (none of whom wanted to be named), a distaste for the organization that began in December of 2010 was palpable and viewed widely on the Hill as a way for members to cloak themselves in bipartisanship without having to vote that way.

But supporters and members of the group say that political moderation, winning elections, or even getting really big bipartisan pieces of legislation done in Congress, was never really the point.

Vermont Rep. Peter Welch, a No Labels co-chair and a liberal who regularly teams up with Republicans, said that if the outcome is a more productive and civil discourse between members of Congress, it doesn't really matter what people's motivation is in joining.

"Some members will be there because they are bridge builders, some members will be there because it's somewhat painless way that will allow them to appear as bridge builders," he said. "But on the practical level you start establishing relationships."

He pointed to his work with Mulvaney, the South Carolina conservative, as just one example. The two disagree on practically everything, but have worked together on trying to cut some defense spending.

"The whole point of No Labels for me is to spend as much or more time on where you have common agreement, than where you disagree," he said. "All of us in DC have various motivations for what we do. All of us are aware about how any action we take is going to affect our political prospects…. The bottom line is that if you've got a nucleus of people who say their effort is to reach across party lines: that's a good thing. There's comfort in numbers in politics."

The group describes themselves as an organization working to bring together people of the "left, right and everything in between as long as they are willing to collaborate with one another to seek a shared success for America." Eighty-two members of Congress have become No Labels "problem solvers," and have agreed to meet regularly to "build trust across the aisle."

They've released a dozen principles for getting Congress to work again, (in fact the plan is called Make Congress Work!), that includes ideas like no negative campaigns against incumbent members and requiring members to sit with a member of the opposite party during joint sessions.

"It's imminently lampoonable: what does it mean for members to sit together at the State of the Union really?" said Connecticut Democrat Jim Himes, who hails from a moderate district. "You can take a lot of shots at it, but if all we do is build some friendships that's actually a step in the right direction."

"You're playing small ball with legislation, fair point. The real value is that other than the member's gym, there is no other place where I'm going to get to know Republicans…is the world going to change tomorrow? Absolutely not. But maybe by re-establishing some personal relationships we're setting the stage where there's more of an opportunity for compromise," Himes added.

But political strategists say the group does little more than give members some momentary good press at a time when Congress is seeing rock-bottom approval ratings. Virtually all of the top 2014 Democratic and Republican targets can be found on the No Labels "Problem Solvers" list.

"No Labels just protects the status quo in Washington by giving a good label and a good headline to vulnerable incumbents in their local newspaper," one Democratic strategist said. "It should be called "Nice Labels" cause they just make incumbents look good without getting them to do anything."

A Republican strategist agreed that No Labels gave cover to vulnerable members, but saw the silver lining in it.

"In this anti-Washington environment members should do anything they can to be able to say in a TV ad that they aren't part of the problem in Washington and this gives them just the cover they need to do that effectively," the strategist said. "The 'no labels' ads just write themselves."

McKinnon said that the sheer numbers of the No Labels coalition — and that it's numbers have rapidly increased in it's short existence — was proof that that the organization had steam. As members have met, he said, they've managed to find areas of agreement, no matter how small, and are developing legislation around it.

"They are doing real work, it's not just a coffee club. They've written 17 pieces of legislation, filed it, and getting co-sponsors and that's a whole lot more than the rest of the Congress is doing. We don't have an ideological filter, all we ask them to do at the door is to come and get engaged in meaningful dialogue," he said.

Looking good!

Rand Paul (2009)

Joe Biden (1999)

Scott Brown (2001)

Hillary Clinton (1998)

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Kaitlyn Hunt’s case has drawn national attention because of suggestions by the 19-year-old’s family that their daughter was facing charges only because she is gay.

ircsheriff.org

WASHINGTON — Kaitlyn Hunt, 19, was booked into Indian River County Jail in Florida on Monday night, charged with two felony counts of lewd and lascivious battery for having sex with a 14-year-old girl when she was 18.

The case has made headlines because Hunt's family has suggested that the younger girl's parents only brought the matter to police because Hunt, who went to the same high school as the girl, was gay.

Although Hunt's family and lawyers have maintained that the relationship was consensual, Florida law states that no one younger than 16 can consent to sex.

As recently as last week, a new plea deal was under discussion, according to CNN.

The prosecutor, Bruce Colton, told CNN that, under the plea's terms, Hunt would have pleaded guilty "to two misdemeanor battery counts and one felony count for interference of child custody — a charge that could be expunged later from her record."

But, according to the booking record provided by the Indian River County Sheriff's Office, Hunt was to have been arraigned on the two felony charges Monday morning. Hunt turned herself in at 9 p.m. Monday, with a bond set at $5,000. The news was first reported by Micah Grimes.

In May, University of Florida law professor Darren Hutchinson wrote about the complexity of the issues raised by the case — and the prosecutor's pursuit of the case.

"Colton portrays the matter in very simplistic terms: the defendant violated the statute; actual consent is irrelevant; that they attend the same high school does not matter. But this reductionist position overlooks the important issues of sexuality, sexual orientation and fairness that this case implicates," Hutchinson wrote.

Weiner fatigue. “You might be surprised to hear this, but I actually like it better this way,” the ex-frontrunner says.

Mike Segar / Reuters

In the northeast Bronx, where he greeted voters outside a subway station Monday night, Anthony Weiner had more campaign staffers with him than reporters.

Just three stood by as the onetime frontrunner, whose New York City mayoral campaign has tumbled to fourth place in the polls, shook hands with commuters beneath the elevated tracks of the 2 and 5 trains on Gun Hill Road. Three months ago, at his first campaign event outside a subway entrance in Harlem, the crowd of reporters grew so thick that two police officers were forced to step in.

After weeks of topping the polls, Weiner is now trailing nearly all of his Democratic rivals — Speaker Christine Quinn, former comptroller Bill Thompson, and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio — and he is battling what one New York Times reporter dubbed, "Weiner fatigue."

Since admitting to a new scandal last month — that he continued sending explicit messages to women online for more than a year after resigning from Congress for the same behavior — voters have tired of Weiner, and so have reporters.

But Weiner, who has been known to delight in the attention of the press corps, says he prefers the dearth of reporters to a surfeit.

"You might be surprised to hear this, but I actually like it better this way," he said after talking with voters for about an hour that evening. "You remember early on, I'd have Malaysia TV getting between me and voters."

Fewer reporters, Weiner said, means more time with voters — and more of what he called the "nourishment" he gets from talking with them. "Every campaign ebbs and flows, and every campaign gets its moment. I didn't have that — I had a tsunami," he said. "I think I might be the only campaign in American history that's aspired to 'normal.' Just get me to a place where I can talk about issues, and give citizens an opportunity to come up and say hello."

With the dust still settling from the July scandal, Weiner is casting himself as the underdog in the race.

"You know, a month out in 2005, I was at 11%, and I made the runoff," he said, referring to his first bid for New York, in which he withdrew from a runoff election, when it was still possible the eventual nominee, Fernando Ferrer, could have fallen short of the 40% needed to advance uncontested to the general.

"So, that's kind of where I'm most comfortable," Weiner said.

Although political observers have all but dismissed Weiner's chances in the Democratic primary next month, commuters in the Bronx gave Weiner the same positive reception Monday night that he gets at most campaign stops.

When Weiner first arrived at the Gun Hill station, a hesitant smattering of onlookers formed a near perfect circle around him, as he stood in its center alone, swinging his hands into a series of idle claps. "Come closer!" he finally yelled. An aide approached one woman: "Do you want to meet Anthony Weiner?" With some encouragement, the voters approached, the crowd at the subway entrance thickened, and Weiner's mood lightened.

Jonathan Marin, one 31-year-old voter, stopped for a handshake and a few whispered words into the candidate's ear: "Don't drop out."

Weiner later told the three reporters — his small audience — that he had no intention of doing so, or of losing.

"It's inconceivable to me that this won't be successful," he said.

Impeachment book sales are booming, says Klein. It’s not just overpasses anymore.

A new book making the case for the impeachment of President Barack Obama is flying off the shelves, its author said, as the president's reelection fails to entirely damp down the deep loathing of him on parts of the right.

Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Obama from Office cites everything from the attack on the American consulate and CIA outpost in Benghazi — which it compares to the Iran Contra scandal in the Reagan years — to the way Obamacare was passed, which the authors say constitutes "taxation without representation." The book, by WABC radio host Aaron Klein and Brenda Elliott, an anti-Obama blogger, also includes American military action in Libya and the Transportation Security Administration's passenger screenings as impeachable offenses.

The book, set to be published by WND Books on Aug. 27, has pre-sold nearly 100,000 copies already and just went to its third printing, Klein said, "due to unexpected demand from bookstores." WND is also among the conservative websites that operate a booming online and direct mail book sales business, the backbone of the conservative book market. (The presale figures couldn't be independently verified.)

"We knew this was going to be a popular book. What we didn't realize is that retailers would recognize it in advance and place large orders before the public weighed in," said WND Books CEO Joseph Farah (best known as a leading figure in the "birther" movement) in a statement through Klein.

"Clearly a large segment of the population is concerned Obama has overstepped his executive authority and has used his office to circumvent Congress to change, ignore, or at times perhaps invent de facto law," said Klein.

The rumblings for Obama's impeachment — the other main push appears to be a campaign centered on highway overpasses, and the movement has been encouraged at times by House Republicans — has not reached the heights of the liberal demands for George W. Bush's impeachment, much less the actual impeachment of President Bill Clinton, but continues what appears to be a bipartisan tradition, and Klein tried to cast his book as a nonpartisan effort.

"Every American, whether conservative or liberal, Democrat, Republican or Independent, should be concerned about the nearly limitless seizure of power, the abuses of authority, the cronyism, corruption, lies and cover-ups documented in this news-making book," he said in an email.

Eh?

There are many whispers about Sen. Ted Cruz being a front contender for the GOP's 2016 candidate pool. But one problem has emerged: Since he was born in Canada, Is he eligible?

Lara Solt/Dallas Morning News / MCT / Via obamaballotchallenge.com

So this weekend he released THIS:

Cruz's Canadian birth certificate lists his mother as American born, which makes him an American citizen.

But even though Cruz left Calgary, Alberta, at the age of 4 and has said he would renounce his dual citizenship, questions still remain: How Canadian is Cruz?

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Cruz's first name is REALLY Rafael Edward, which sounds very Canadian to us.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

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“‘Oh no, it’s just Soledad O’Brien.’ Really? Sell me another shill.”

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Last week Democratic Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor said, “I accept evolution,” according to Politico . But in Bill Maher’s 2008 film Religulous , the senator doubted evolution saying, “I don’t know how it all happened,” and, “Clearly the scientific community’s a little divided on some of the specifics.” Pryor has contended Maher took his words out of context.

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The You Can Play Project aims to improve the atmosphere for LGBT athletes. “I am hopeful that my background as an athlete and an LGBT youth advocate will allow me to take You Can Play to the next level,” says Davis.

Twitter: @Wade_Davis28

WASHINGTON — Former NFL player Wade Davis, who came out as gay after retiring from the sport, will be the first executive director of the You Can Play Project, an advocacy group working for equality for LGBT athletes in sports, the organization announced Tuesday.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to join such a ground-breaking organization in You Can Play," Davis said in a statement. "In a short period of time, their work has made significant strides in changing the culture of the sports world. I am hopeful that my background as an athlete and an LGBT youth advocate will allow me to take You Can Play to the next level."

A year ago, before Jason Collins or Robbie Rogers came out and before the questions about LGBT athletes' treatment in Russia were commonplace, Davis was already talking about the fact that sports remained an area where young people still were uncomfortable being gay.

"Most kids who I've talked to who are gay who play sports just don't say anything," Davis told BuzzFeed. "There are kids who stop playing sports because they're out."

In his new role, Davis, will be continuing his work to change that. He previously worked at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which helps lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth between the ages of 12 and 24.

You Can Play co-founders Patrick Burke, Brian Kitts, and Glenn Witman said in a joint statement: "Wade is an absolute home run addition for You Can Play. With a background in both professional sports and in working directly with LGBT youth, he has what can only be described as utterly unique expertise. He has worked with numerous non-profits before, and as the founder of the You Belong Initiative he has experience in fundraising, development, and administration."

In April, You Can Play announced a formal partnership with the National Hockey League to help support efforts to make the league more welcoming to LGBT players and fans. In June, the group announced a similar partnership with Major League Soccer.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest wouldn’t comment on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s evolving views on weed at today’s press briefing.

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The Texas senator was a star debater and a member of student government.

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The Michigan Congressman said he’s discussed impeaching the president with lawyers.

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Michigan Republican Rep. Kerry Bentivolio said Monday it would be a "dream come true" to submit a bill to impeach President Obama. Bentivolio also said he had meetings with lawyers asking them to "tell me how I can impeach" the President of the United States. Bentivolio was speaking at the August 2013 Birmingham Bloomfield Republican Club Meeting.

"If I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream come true," Bentivolio said. "I stood twelve feet away from the guy and listened to him. I couldn't stand being there, but because he is president I have to respect the office. That's my job, as a Congressman, I respect the office."

"I went back to my office and I've had lawyers come in" the Congressman continued. "These are lawyers, Ph.Ds in history, and I said 'tell me how I can impeach the President of the United States.'"

The Michigan Congressman then explained to the audience that someone couldn't impeach the president without evidence.

"Until we have evidence, you're going to become a laughing stock if you've submitted the bill to impeach the president because number one you've got to convince the press," he said. "There are some people out there no matter what Obama does he's still the greatest president they've ever had. That's what you're fighting."

Bentivolio recently held a fundraiser with House Speaker John Boehner.

The full video of Benitvolio's town hall has been embedded below:

youtube.com

Christie enthusiastically endorses the GOP’s Tea Party senate candidate and promises he’ll help him raise money. “My energy is fine,” says the governor.

Mel Evans, File / AP

FLEMINGTON, N.J. — In a short speech at the sweltering, cramped headquarters of the Hunterdon County GOP Tuesday afternoon, Chris Christie endorsed his party's outspoken far-right senate candidate, Steve Lonegan — and tried to assure his conservative base that he hasn't forgotten about them.

"Steve as usual ran the type of spirited, principled campaign that he has been known for his entire career in the primary, and Republican voters responded exactly as you expected they would," Christie said. "I am proud to have him as our candidate for the senate."

Christie, intent on achieving a landslide reelection this year that his advisers hope will launch him into the top tier of 2016 presidential contenders, has done little to maintain conservative enthusiasm in recent months. He has picked public fights with Rand Paul and his libertarian followers, pursued an ostentatious political flirtation with President Obama, and, just this week, signed a bill banning "conversion therapy" for gay minors.

The moderate approach led many observers to assume any endorsement Christie offered Republican senate nominee Steve Lonegan — a Tea Party-backed libertarian with a history of brash rhetoric and virtually no chance of winning — would come in the form of a lukewarm written statement.

But standing next to Lonegan on stage Tuesday, Christie tried to convince the conservative faithful that he wasn't ashamed of the nominee.

"There's been a lot more attention to this than I thought there would be," Christie said. "There was in fact one reporter who showed up to my earlier event… and said, 'What kind of energy are you gonna have for your endorsement of Mayor Lonegan?' I said, 'Well, it's kind of early at noon to ask what my energy's gonna be at 4:15, but my energy is just fine."

Christie long ago learned the benefits of picking on the press, and the anecdote drew a few chuckles from the crowd before eventually evolving into applause. He then promised Lonegan would have his full support.

"Let me say this: This will not be the only time that Steve Lonegan and I are together between now and October 16. We're gonna help him raise money... The apparatus of the Republican Party is gonna be behind Steve Lonegan between now and October 16 to help bring us to victory," he said.

For Christie, who is widely assumed to have his eye on the White House, a firm embrace of his party's nominee makes sense. This endorsement gives him the ability to assert partisan loyalty in the 2016 primaries, making up for any marginal support he loses from New Jersey Democrats in his gubernatorial reelection bid.

But after the event ended and the rally-goers swarmed to the exits of the un-airconditioned venue, some remained unconvinced of Christie's convictions.

One voter, who declined to be named for fear that his critical remarks would result in New Jersey officials confiscating his guns, complained about Christie "wanting to be friends with Obama" and compromising too much with Democratic lawmakers.

"It was a good decision for him [to endorse Lonegan in person], but whether it's truthful or not, who knows?" he said.

“I don’t have anything on that, I’m afraid, but I’ll let you know if anything changes,” a department spokeswoman says. Action is “imperative,” one advocate says, while another says the Labor Department’s continued inaction is “lawless.”

Molly Riley, File / AP

WASHINGTON — Labor Department officials have refused for more than a year to answer questions from BuzzFeed about whether transgender workers for federal contractors are legally protected from discrimination. And, nearly a month into Labor Secretary Tom Perez's tenure, answers are no more forthcoming.

The questions surround Executive Order 11246, which was signed by President Lyndon Johnson and bans federal contractors doing more than $10,000 a year of business with the federal government from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin. The executive order is enforced by the Labor Department, and, under the department's policies, an April 2012 ruling by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should have led the department to expand its definition of sex in the executive order to include anti-transgender discrimination.

The Labor Department, however, has issued no public guidance about the issue, and officials have refused repeated requests for comment on the issue.

One advocate has said the White House is to blame for the department's silence, but, regardless of the cause, it has been more than a year since the department's policies suggest that it should have been enforcing anti-transgender discrimination as a violation of an executive order it is responsible for enforcing.

As recently as Tuesday afternoon, however, Labor Department spokespeople could not immediately provide an answer about whether its enforcement of the executive order includes anti-transgender discrimination and did not respond with an answer, as a spokesman said would be provided.

The change in policy from the EEOC came about on April 20, 2012, when the agency decided, in a complaint brought by Mia Macy, that the definition of "sex discrimination" under Title VII includes anti-transgender discrimination. The Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has a policy of applying the EEOC's interpretation of Title VII to its interpretation of the executive order.

Within weeks of the Macy decision, a trio of scholars at the Williams Institute wrote that "[t]he OFCCP has an explicit policy of interpreting the nondiscrimination requirements of EO 11246 in a manner consistent with Title VII principles, and has followed EEOC regulations and guidance in enforcing EO 11246."

Following up on that and other reporting, former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis never answered the question of whether her department was including anti-transgender discrimination in its enforcement of the executive order. Nor has the director of the OFCCP, Patricia Shiu, whose office has direct responsibility for enforcement of the executive order.

When asked about the issue in July 2012, Solis told BuzzFeed that the office had been "working on this issue for a long time," but when pressed further, said, "I direct you to [Patricia] Shiu, on my staff, my director there, because I'm just coming back from extensive traveling."

Since that time, several department spokespersons have refused repeated attempts by BuzzFeed to get information about whether the order's enforcement now includes anti-transgedner discrimination.

Perez took over the department on July 23, however, which led some advocates to be hopeful that a renewed emphasis on the issue would lead to action. Perez, they noted, brings a record of pro-LGBT enforcement with him from his prior role as the head of the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department. While there, he implemented the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and investigated anti-LGBT police activity by the New Orleans Police Department.

As recently as last week, though, a department spokeswoman, Laura McGinnis, told BuzzFeed, "I don't have anything on that, I'm afraid, but I'll let you know if anything changes."

In contrast, both the EEOC and the Justice Department have made clear that, as to Title VII, it is enforcing the expanded definition of "sex discrimination," as has the Education Department in its enforcement of Title IX.

The Labor Department, however, is silent. A month ago, Tico Almeida with Freedom to Work told BuzzFeed that the White House was holding up enforcement of the executive order to include anti-transgender discrimination.

"I am told that the Labor Department leadership has been severely controlled by the senior White House staff, which I'm told has forbidden Labor officials from formally adopting the Macy decision," Almeida said.

A spokesman for the White House, Shin Inouye, had been contacted and given the quote prior to publication of the report in an attempt to get comment from the White House on the matter, but no comment was provided.

When asked about the BuzzFeed report on July 31, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, "I'm not aware of that report."

More than a month later, neither the White House nor the Labor Department have denied the charge. In addition to inquiries made Tuesday with Labor Department officials, a request Tuesday afternoon to a White House official for a response to Almeida's charge was not returned.

Human Rights Campaign spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz told BuzzFeed that the organization has sought action from the Labor Department on the issue, saying it is "imperative" the department take action.

"It is HRC's position that in light of the EEOC's Macy decision, the current federal contractor executive order should be interpreted to include anti-transgender discrimination and we have made that clear to the Labor Department," he said. "As we have discussed with officials there, it is imperative that they adopt this interpretation to give recourse to those discriminated on the basis of their gender identity."

Almeida continued his push, focusing on the day-to-day impact of the department's silence.

"Enormous corporate contractors like ExxonMobil are signing new federal contracts on a regular basis, and the Labor Department is not inserting Macy workplace protections into those binding agreements along side the provisions giving African-Americans, Latinos, women, veterans and all Americans the freedom to work without discrimination," he said.

"The recalcitrance of the White House staff is going to make Secretary Perez look lawless, if they continue to refuse to issue official guidance adopting the unanimous and bipartisan Macy decision well over one year after it became federal law," he said of the department's new leadership. "I hope Secretary Perez can persuade the senior White House staff to stop dragging their feet on our pathway to LGBT workplace fairness."

While the National Rifle Association publicly fights against a national gun registry, the organization has gone to incredible lengths to compile information on “tens of millions” of gun owners — without their consent.

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association has rallied gun-owners — and raised tens of millions of dollars — campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.

But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country's largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby's secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.

That database has been built through years of acquiring gun permit registration lists from state and county offices, gathering names of new owners from the thousands of gun-safety classes taught by NRA-certified instructors and by buying lists of attendees of gun shows, subscribers to gun magazines and more, BuzzFeed has learned.

The result: a Big Data powerhouse that deploys the same high-tech tactics all year round that the vaunted Obama campaign used to win two presidential elections.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam declined to discuss the group's name-gathering methods or what it does with its vast pool of data about millions of non-member gun owners. Asked what becomes of the class rosters for safety classes when instructors turn them in, he replied: "That's not any of your business."

Others in the business of big political data, however, say the NRA is using similar tools to those employed by the campaigns of its nemesis, President Barack Obama.

"There are certainly some parallels," said Laura Quinn, CEO of Catalist, a data analysis firm used by Obama For America. "The NRA is not only able to understand people who their members are but also people who are not their members. The more data they have, the more it allows them test different strategies and different messages on different people."

"Part of the way they have gotten to a place where they are able to do what they do is through data," Quinn said. "There is some irony."

The vast size of the NRA's database and its sophisticated methods of analyzing the public mood go a long way to explaining the organization's enduring influence. Even in an age when opinion polls show gun-control measures gaining in general popularity and when wealthy benefactors like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are spending millions to counter the NRA's lobbying and advertising budgets, the NRA has built-in advantages.

The NRA won't say how many names and what other personal information is in its database, but former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman estimates they keep tabs on "tens of millions of people."

"There's nothing that prevents them from mailing those people," said Feldman, who split with the NRA in the mid-1990s and is now leads the Independent Firearm Owners Association, which brands itself as a less extreme gun-rights group. "The more you know about people, the more targeted the message you can communicate with them, the more the message will resonate with them."

Some data-collection efforts are commonplace in politics these days, such as buying information from data brokers on magazine subscriptions and the like.

But several observers said the NRA's methods reflect a sophistication and ingenuity that is largely unrivaled outside of major national presidential campaigns. While the organization took great umbrage in December when a newspaper published the names and addresses of gun owners in two New York counties, the group for years as been gathering similar information via the same public records as a matter of course.

In Virginia, for instance, a North Carolina-based firm called Preferred Communications filed an inquiry with the Virginia State Police in July 2009 asking "on behalf of the National Rifle Association" as to whether the names of concealed-carry permit holders could be purchased. The e-mail was obtained by BuzzFeed by Freedom of Information Act request.

"Can you please let me know if you offer 2008 and/or 2009 names?" wrote the representative, Michele Wood, who hung up on BuzzFeed when asked for comment. "Can you please let me know the address to send the check to and also whom to make it payable to?"

Iowa, too, provides another example. In December 2011, NRA lobbyist Christopher Rager, wrote to Iowa Department of Public Safety legislative liaison Ross Loder from an official NRA email address.

"If the NRA wanted to collect data from DPS' permit holder files, is there a specific process or any rules for us to acquire the records?" Rager wrote in an e-mail also obtained via FOIA. "Can we pay to have the files copied or sent to us?"

Similarly, officials in Arkansas and Oregon also told BuzzFeed they had requests for such lists, and Gawker reported in February of NRA-related registry requests in Louisiana and Tennessee.

"We've been doing this since the old days," Feldman said. "You could obtain from most states the listings of hunter licenses from the Department of Wildlife and Conservations. It was sort of amazing what we knew about people from that. There were early doe permit holders, black powder holders, so many different seasons. It was a lot of data."

Complementing this practice is the mining of data on the thousands who take gun safety classes from NRA-certified instructors. Arulanandam said there are 97,000 of them, a figure that impressed Quinn as a larger "army of organizers" than Obama had.

In some states, those ranks are propelled by laws that specify that taking classes from NRA-certified instructors in order to obtain permits or licenses. In 2011, for instance, the Iowa Legislature added such a provision.

"Previously there was no reference to the National Rifle Association in the Iowa code," Loder said. "Before, it would have been a course offered by the local sheriff's office."

The NRA's dominance in the safety-class realm is an obvious public relations boon for the group, but it predates the organization's political activism by nearly a century. The group was founded, in fact, to improve marksmanship and teach safe, effective shooting, said NRA-certified senior trainer Mike Weisser, owner of a gun store in Ware, Mass.

Yet nowadays those classes are also an important way of adding information about gun owners to the database, said Weisser.

"After people take a class, then you as an instructor, can send all their names to Washington and you get credit for that," Weisser said. "If you can show you've taught enough classes, you can move up in the hierarchy as an NRA trainer."

Moving up in the hierarchy can mean being licensed to teach more types of gun safety classes and being able to charge more, he said.

"If I send the class roster in, the NRA starts sending information to these people to either join the NRA or to support NRA positions," he said. "In many of the classes, at some point, somebody will get up to give a pitch to join the NRA. Most trainers will also hand out the member application for NRA."

Most of these activities aim to convert gun owners into dues-paying NRA members or contributors to the NRA's political action committee, but Feldman said a parallel motive is to maintain a network. Political operatives who understand the new science of voter modeling regard gun ownership as a key predictor of someone's politics regardless of whether they are NRA members, and the NRA uses those non-members to extend its influence by finding just the right language and tone to speak to them, Quinn said.

Jon Bond, co-founder of the powerhouse Manhattan ad firm Kirshenbaum Bond and Partners, said it is an important reason why alternative gun-related organizations are at a huge disadvantage. Bond and his wife co-founded a new anti-violence group called Evolve to appeal to people who believe both sides of the debate are too extreme.

Bond views the NRA's grip, derived from its sophisticated data operation, as perhaps the biggest challenge to anyone else effectively influencing the political conversation.

The data "gives the NRA more power," Bond said. "It's valuable politically because what it does is, it extends the reach of its political leverage beyond NRA members. They have gun owners, not just NRA members. There's multiple purposes for it."

While the NRA's influence on Congress is most often the media's focus, the sort of microtargeting the group can do is at least as powerful in state capitals. A case in point was the successful effort to get Washington state Rep. Maureen Walsh, a Republican from Walla Walla, to remove her name from co-sponsorship of a background check bill in March.

Walsh said she was motivated by the Sandy Hook shooting to sign on to the measure, but was then deluged by more than 1,200 letters and calls from angry constituents. While many of them were from declared NRA members, she said, lots of them were from people who specified they weren't with the NRA but had been alerted by the group to the pending bill.

"They know quite a bit on that level about people in my district," said Walsh, who decided the bill had its own loophole problems and wouldn't reduce gun violence. "I don't have any doubt in my mind that they stay ahead of the game and that they put their opinions in front of" non-members who agree with them.

The NRA used the specter of a national gun registry to great effect in the debate over the Manchin-Toomey background checks bill that failed last spring. Even though the bill explicitly prohibited the federal government from creating such a database, it was a talking point that senators who opposed the measure repeatedly cited.

Yet there does not seem to be the same concern among gun owners about the NRA's own efforts to amass the same information.

"It's probably partially true that people don't know the information is being collected," said Feldman, "but but even if they don't know it, they probably won't care because the NRA is not part of the government."

Steve Friess is an Ann Arbor-based freelance journalist. Follow him at @SteveFriess.

“Booker has dedicated his life to the work of building hope,” says Obama.

Mel Evans / AP

President Barack Obama endorsed Cory Booker, the Newark mayor and Democratic nominee in the New Jersey Senate race, in a statement released by the Booker campaign Wednesday morning.

Booker, who served as one of Obama's most prominent surrogates during his 2012 reelection campaign, is expected to win the special election next month, replacing the late Frank Lautenberg in the Senate.

In the statement, Obama praised Booker's work as Newark mayor and what he described as a lifelong career of taking on "tough challenges."

The full statement from the president reads as follows:

"Cory Booker has dedicated his life to the work of building hope and opportunity in communities where too little of either existed. Whether as a college student working in East Palo Alto or as mayor of New Jersey's largest city, Cory has time and again taken on tough challenges, fought for the middle class and those working to join it, and forged coalitions that create progress - and that's the spirit he'll carry with him to Washington.

"His passion for his city has helped create new jobs and attract some of America's top businesses to Newark. Cory will be an important partner in our efforts to reduce gun violence, give every American a fair shot in a global economy, and make our country stronger."

When Booker was considering whether or not to run for Senate or governor late last year, the White House encouraged him to choose the former, according to multiple reports.

"I am humbled by President Obama's endorsement," Booker said in a statement released by his campaign. "If elected this October, I will go to the Senate to advance our shared vision of a nation where opportunity is available to anyone willing to work for it, and to ensure we're investing in the priorities that helped build America's middle class."

"I look forward to continuing to work with him to advance an agenda that spreads prosperity and ensures that our nation realizes the promise of its founding," he said.

Stop trying to make anything happen.

In general, Barack Obama and his team have done a good job with social media

From their Tumblrs

Via whitehouse.tumblr.com

To various Twitters

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White House Deputy Spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious medical issues, was “not the best allocation” of federal law enforcement resources. Earnest also said the president, at this point, is not advocating for a change in marijuana’s drug classification and will continue to prosecute drug traffickers. Colorado officials also said Wednesday they believe they have “tacit approval” from the Justice Department to implement laws legalizing marijuana recently passed in their state according to Talking Points Memo.

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Yes, there were only 5 really interesting things about the Al Jazeera empire’s opening salvo in America’s cable news war.

They called out Fox News and MSNBC in the first five minutes.

"Within the first five minutes of air time, Al Jazeera America played very brief clips of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Al Sharpton engaged in some of their most contentious onscreen moments followed by a voice saying, 'news audiences know what is missing and they know what they want.'" — Matt Wilstein, Mediaite

Unlike their American cable news rivals, AJA unveiled a set that looked like it was imported from the future.

Free of ugly and distracting chyron clutter, AJA's look made watching their debut a visually pleasing experience.

How great would this look on a 42-incher?!

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It refuses to answer questions about a Wall Street Journal report that NSA reach goes further than previously thought.

Via icontherecord.tumblr.com

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has launched a Tumblr blog and is declassifying previously secret documents relating to violations of Section 702 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to target non-U.S. persons "reasonably believed" to be outside U.S. borders.

Intelligence officials announced the Tumblr and the declassification in a phone call with reporters, but refused to answer questions about a Wall Street Journal report that shows that the National Security Agency's system "has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence." Officials also did not address reports that the NSA had scooped up thousands of emails from Americans with no apparent connections to terrorism.

"People shouldn't go into a panic based on what they read in the press," said one intelligence official when asked about the story.

The ODNI announced that it is going to be declassifying three Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, one from October 2011, one from November 2011, and one from September 2012. It is also declassifying the "most current version of the semi-annual compliance assessment," according to an intelligence official on the call, as well as "significant portions" of a white paper provided to Congress' intelligence committees last year. All of the documents were uploaded to the new Tumblr on Wednesday afternoon.

The newly declassified documents constitute the government's admission of overreach by the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. One of the documents — a FISA opinion from October 2011 — has already been published online. The opinion holds that some NSA surveillance activities, such as "upstream" collection of internet transactions involving multiple communications, violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The officials on the call referenced recent reports of intrusive behavior by the NSA, such as the Washington Post story about an audit that showed the agency had broken privacy rules thousands of times every year. Over-collection of data and violations of the rules restricting collection of U.S. persons' data is "not an overreaching by greedy agency seeking to spy on Americans," said an official on the call. It was instead a "technical problem resulting in collection of domestic communications."

"The government is really making an extraordinary effort to try to comply with the rules and protect the privacy of U.S. persons," an intelligence official said.

President Obama had announced the creation of a transparency website last week. An administration official said at the time that the site would be "the hub for further transparency, so this can be a home for citizens who are interested in learning more about our activities and declassifying efforts in responding to queries that people have about these programs."

Update: The rest of the documents have been uploaded to the Tumblr and can be accessed here. (5:14 p.m.)