Supreme Court hands down a mixed decision in a long-awaited ruling on presidential power.

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a challenged set of President Obama's recess appointments were invalid.

The ruling states, however, that the president has the authority to fill any existing vacancy during any recess — whether it be during a session of Congress or in between sessions — so long as the recess is "of sufficient length."

In this case, though, the court concluded that the recess appointments at issue are invalid because the recess was not "of sufficient length" because the Senate was conducting "pro forma" sessions during the time when Obama made the appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

The opinion for the court was written by Justice Stephen Breyer, and he was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Although all nine justices agreed these appointments were invalid, Justice Antonin Scalia read an impassioned opinion for himself, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito that took issue with the majority's view on the president's recess appointment powers.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier held that Obama did not have the authority to make so-called "recess appointments" of people to the NLRB during "pro forma" sessions of the Senate in which no business was to be conducted in January 2012.

In a broad ruling that Scalia and the other three more conservative justices sided with, the D.C. Circuit judges had said that the Constitution's "recess appointment" clause — which allows presidents to fill vacancies temporarily during Senate recesses that otherwise would need Senate approval — only applies to the "intersession" recess between sessions of Congress and not "intrasession recesses" taken during a session of Congress. The Supreme Court's majority, however, adopted the more limited reasoning that the Senate was not actually recessed during the time, since it held "pro forma" sessions every few days.

The justices heard arguments in the case in January. Notably, the appointments in question — and even the arguments in the case itself — happened before Senate Democrats exercised the so-called "nuclear option," reducing the number of votes needed to defeat a filibuster from 60 to a simple majority.

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Evolve Together INC, an organization promoting safe practices around guns, released this ad Thursday using dildos to make the point to lock up guns to prevent young kids from playing with them.

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Justices unanimously ruled a Massachusetts law banning protests 35 feet from clinic entrances violates the First Amendment.

Protesters pray in front of the Planned Parenthood in Concord, Calif.

Dan Rosenstrauch/Bay Area News Group / MCT

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Massachusetts law establishing a 35-foot protest-free zone outside abortion clinics, saying that it violates the First Amendment rights of protesters.

State officials had argued that the law was a response to a history of harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Massachusetts, including a shooting rampage at two facilities in 1994.

Chief Justice John Roberts said authorities have other ways to deal with problems outside the clinics and noted that most of the problems reported by police and the clinics occurred outside the Planned Parenthood facility in Boston, and only on Saturdays, when the largest crowds typically gather.

''The government cannot reserve its public sidewalks for Planned Parenthood, as if their message is the only one women should be allowed to hear," Mark Rienzi, who represented the protesters at the Supreme Court, said. "Today's decision confirms that the First Amendment is for everyone, and that the government cannot silence peaceful speakers."

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the court's decision "shows a troubling level of disregard for American women, who should be able to make carefully considered, private medical decisions without running a gauntlet of harassing and threatening protesters."

"We are taking a close look at this ruling, as well as patient protection laws around the country, to ensure that women can continue to make their own health care decisions without fear of harassment or intimidation," Richards said.

Read the full opinion:

Uh-huh.

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Matt Lauer asked General Motors CEO Mary Barra if she could be both a good mom and a CEO at the same time on the Today show Thursday morning.

"You're a mom, I mentioned — two kids," Lauer said. "You said in an interview not long ago that your kids said they're going to hold you accountable for one job. That is being a mom. Given the pressure of this job, at General Motors, can you do both well?"

"You know, I think I can," Barra responded. "I have a great team, we're on the right path, we're doing the right things, we're taking accountability, and also I have a wonderful family, a supportive husband, and I'm pretty proud of my kids the way they're supporting me in this."

Barra made multiple appearances on Capitol Hill in recents week related to the recall of 2.6 million cars with defective ignition switches.

#Gohmert2016

Here's the full clip.

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Uber is valued at $18 billion, and hailed by some as a triumph of disruptive capitalism over antiquated regulation. But in some cities, the drivers have started to organize.

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — More than 1,000 D.C. cabbies on Wednesday drove through the streets and refused to pick up passengers in protest of popular ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft — companies they say are unfairly breaking the law and taking away their business.

Their protest is just the latest in cities in the United States and worldwide, as Uber in particular continues its massive expansion from boutique service to a major company, valued at just over $18 billion this year.

The protests aren't entirely exclusive to cab drivers under pressure, though. In some cities, Uber drivers themselves have started to organize.

In Seattle, hundreds of Uber drivers have successfully formed an association with the help of the local Teamsters union, for instance. According to Daniel Ajema, a representative for the association, it took a year before they could even wrangle enough drivers together to talk about an association.

Working outside the strict regulation on taxi drivers in many cities, Uber has succeeded on its ease of use, convenience, technological innovation, and competitive pricing.

It's nearly as easy to become a driver as it is to call a car. Unlike traditional taxi drivers who need a special license, permits, and go through background checks nearly anyone with a car can start picking up passengers for Uber.

But the accessibility of working for Uber has also left drivers, they say, vulnerable to swift and often seemingly random suspensions and removals from the program.

Ajema and the others formed their association because as independent contractors, they "aren't protected by labor law."

"[Uber] was not interested in giving us a list of drivers and their contact information," Ajema said. So he "gathered about five people and those people went out and got 40 people and eventually those 40 people became the core community." Those 40 people went out and got hundreds more, many of whom stayed on to create the association.

Uber does not share ratings data with drivers, which Ajema argued can lead to surprise suspensions. "They just take customer feedback at face value and they don't give drivers an appeal system," he said.

Since the formation of their nearly one-month old association, Ajema said Uber has refused to bargain with the drivers as a group. Ajema, his team, and some Teamsters lawyers are working on a plan to try and force Uber to the bargaining table. Because the drivers are independent contractors rather than employees of the company, Uber has a lower legal burden to do so.

When asked about Uber's willingness to work with an organized group of drivers, spokesman Lane Kasselman wrote in an e-mail: "Our driver partners are independent contractors and are free to exercise their rights under federal and local law."

Where the Seattle drivers have somewhat succeeded, others have completely failed. One former Uber driver in New York City tried to engage the New York Taxi Workers Alliance for help, but they said he'd need "a couple hundred" people to form an association. His main issue with the company was its vague tip policy; Uber does not separate out tips for drivers. After trying various grassroots efforts — including Craigslist ads — to no avail, the driver concluded it wasn't worth his time.

The NYTWA still has its hopes up to be able to add the city's Uber drivers to its ranks.

"For us it's just a matter of time before some of that organizing starts taking place," said Bhairavi Desai, spokesperson for the NYTWA.

The company's drivers — and their unusual relationship to existing cab drivers — put the unions in an interesting position. Even the AFL-CIO is still unsure what to do about Uber. The labor federation wants to add the drivers into its ranks, but it's unclear the best way to go about organizing them and then, how to deal with drivers facing very different conditions from city to city.

"If we are having a knock down drag out fight with Uber in one place, it'd be hard to play nice somewhere else," said Christian Sweeney, a top organizer for the AFL-CIO.

Sweeney sympathized with both traditional taxi drivers, many of whom are already organized under the AFL-CIO's umbrella, as well as Uber drivers. He said the AFL-CIO would like all of them to be able to organize, but again it's a tricky situation.

As Uber continues to expand across the globe, taxi drivers are feeling the heat. They can't keep up with the well-funded startup in technology or in numbers, and drivers are seeing the impact on their wallets.

One concern is that Uber does not consider itself a transportation company. That distinction allows Uber to operate on its own set of rules, skirting the typical regulations that hinder other taxi services.

On the page where people can apply to become an Uber driver, it says "Uber is a request tool, not a transportation carrier."

"What they did with their app was they enabled towncars — which a lot of them were operating illegally already — what they did was say this was OK because you're using your phone," said Barry Korengold of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association.

In some cities, companies like Uber are specifically forbidden, but it operates anyway. Recently Virginia sought to protect its taxi drivers by ordering Uber to stop operating, but the company shrugged the request aside.

"You may have heard that Uber received a cease and desist letter from the Virginia DMV yesterday," the company wrote on its website. "We wanted to write to let you know that Uber will operate as usual, and we plan to continue full-speed ahead with our commitment to providing Virginians access to safe, affordable and reliable rides."

Though it's often seen as a two front war, taxis vs. Uber the company and taxis vs. Uber drivers, there is some common ground among those who earn a living behind the wheel.

Ajema, from the Seattle Uber association, said one thing his Uber drivers and taxis agree on is that there should be a limit to how many cars Uber can put out there. Uber wants as many cars driving around at a time, he said, to maximize profit. But as more drivers hit the streets, the more flooded the market becomes for everyone.

"I'm really against this cult of disruption by Uber," Ajema said. "Where it comes into town and wants to take over. Where they take away thousands of people's livelihoods. I don't believe Uber is a socially responsible company by any measure at all."

The year since the Supreme Court’s decisions in the cases challenging part of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 has been a whirlwind.

Edie Windsor speaks onstage as Roberta Kaplan listens during Logo TV's 'Trailblazers' on June 23, 2014 in New York City.

Bryan Bedder / Getty Images for Logo TV

WASHINGTON — One year ago Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the Defense of Marriage Act's ban on recognizing same-sex couples' marriages. It also dismissed the appeal by supporters of California's Proposition 8 marriage amendment, allowing a trial court ruling striking down that marriage ban to stand.

The year since the Supreme Court's decisions in those cases has been one of near-constant and unbroken advancements for supporters of marriage equality — up to and including two federal court rulings on Wednesday.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's decision striking down section 3 of DOMA in United States v. Windsor has been used by federal appeals judges in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals — as well as by federal district court judges in Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin — to strike down marriage bans and/or bans on recognizing same-sex couples' marriages entered into elsewhere. The decision also played into similar state court decisions in Arkansas, New Jersey, and New Mexico.

Windsor also formed a large part of the basis for a broad decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to examine any sexual orientation-based government classifications with heightened scrutiny.

Although it's been a whirlwind year, four moments in the first month after those decisions showed quite clearly the path that the country would be traveling.

June 28, 2013: Office of Personnel Management announces it is providing federal benefits to married same-sex couples using a "place of celebration" rule, allowing more couples to be covered.

LGBT advocates hoped the administration would use a "place of celebration" rule for recognizing same-sex couples' marriages under federal law — meaning if a marriage was legal in the place it happened, it would be recognized by the federal government anywhere. The other option for the rule, called "place of domicile," would have limited federal recognition to couples in those states with marriage equality.

The quick OPM decision, however, set the stage for a broad government policy of using the "place of celebration" rule to guide federal policy wherever possible. This past week, the Justice Department finished its post-Windsor review, announcing that most agencies are fully implementing marriage recognition policies and determining that only two agencies — the Veterans Affairs Department and Social Security Administration — would require legislative changes in order to allow for "place of celebration" recognition.

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“There’s a great deal of dispute in many quarters on how this should be addressed and of course, and whether it should be addressed,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte of a bill to resolve provisions struck down by the Supreme Court last year.

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WASHINGTON — One year after the Supreme Court struck down section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, Congress is nowhere near close to moving forward with restoring a federal approval requirement for certain voting process changes.

While Democratic leaders rallied this week to urge Congress to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act — a law to rewrite the section 4 formula — a top House Republican said Thursday the bill wasn't going to move quickly, if at all.

The VRAA, written by Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner and Michigan Democrat John Conyers, is viewed in Congress and by outside advocates as the best chance to reinstate some of the provisions. Section 4 was the formula used to determine which states needs pre-clearance from the federal government for changes to their voting laws. The Supreme Court ruled that the formula was outdated and Congress could come up with a new one.

Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, whose committee would be in charge of moving the bill, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor that there was no real urgency to address the changes made by the court and he would "examine carefully" any bill on the Voting Rights Act.

"His bill is one of many different ideas and suggestions on addressing this issue. And there's a great deal of dispute in many quarters on how this should be addressed and of course, and whether it should be addressed," Goodlatte said. "We're going to continue to examine the problem but that's as far as we've got."

Goodlatte also argued that the Voting Rights Act "largely is standing" and noted that his committee held a hearing on the topic shortly after the Supreme Court decision.

That will likely not be much of a relief to members pushing for a fix, including Sensenbrenner who expressed some frustration earlier this month calling progress on the bill "a work in progress." Members working on the bill had hoped earlier in the year that the support of Majority Leader Eric Cantor would help get the bill to the floor. However, Cantor's surprising loss has left them looking for a path forward.

Several members of the Democratic leadership rallied for the bill in front of the Capitol on Wednesday with dozens of activists, to try and keep the pressure on Republicans to bring the bill to the floor.

"We need to be militants today, non-violent militants. Peaceful militants, but impatient militants. Demanding militants," said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. "That America is what it is because Americans have the right, inherent right — 'we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men and women are created equal' — and have the right in our democracy to vote, to express their opinion, to speak out, and to be heard."

#buzzfeedbible

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A private $10 million cash ransom deal was in the works before the five Gitmo prisoners were handed over.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl sits in a vehicle guarded by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan on May 31, 2014. The image is taken from video obtained from Voice Of Jihad Website.

AP Photo/Voice Of Jihad Website via AP video

While the U.S. government was negotiating with Taliban representatives on the controversial prisoner swap that set Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl free, Bergdahl's family opened up a separate channel to the Taliban to try to buy his freedom with cash, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.

This channel of negotiations has not been previously reported. It was focused on winning Bergdahl's freedom with a $10 million ransom to be paid by private sources, not U.S. government money, the sources say. These talks started in 2012 and continued until May 2014.

The revelation of this second set of negotiations underscores two points: Bergdahl might have been freed without the release of the five Taliban from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and the Taliban are still driven heavily by the need for cash.

BuzzFeed's account is based primarily on two individuals, one of whom is familiar with the Taliban's thinking. Both spoke on condition of anonymity. They said that Robert Bergdahl, the father, pursued this channel with vigor. "The father managed everything," said one of the sources. "He held it close to the vest," said the other.

Robert Bergdahl, the soldier's father, did not return calls for comment. However, David Rohde, an American journalist who was himself held hostage by the Taliban in 2008, communicates with the family regularly and asked the father about the second channel of negotiations described by the two sources. The father, he said, acknowledges setting up "multiple channels" to the Taliban, because he was willing to try anything to free his son. But the father, a retired UPS worker, insisted that he did not take this effort seriously, that there was never an actual ransom price discussed, and that he never raised money for a ransom.

Bob Bergdahl, in Idaho, in June 22, 2013, speaking at a rally in support of his son's freedom.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

In the early days of Bergdahl's disappearance in 2009, it became clear that he was in the custody of the Haqqani family network, one of the most fierce and powerful groups in the Taliban. "The Haqqanis are in the kidnapping business, they sell people," said Michael Semple of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queens University in Belfast. Though not involved in the Bergdahl negotiations he is an expert on the Taliban and knows many of the players on both sides. "They are involved in kidnapping for ransom."

An initial demand for ransom from the Haqqanis was ridiculous, the source familiar with the Taliban's thinking said: To free Bergdahl, the group wanted 50 prisoners released and $25 million in cash on top of that.

But soon there was a shift in the negotiation process, and the main Taliban leadership, known as the Quetta Shura, took control. The Quetta Shura, according to experts on the group, has a "prisoners commission" that deals with hostages, prisoners of war, ransoms, and exchanges.

Diplomats in Germany initially helped to broker talks with the United States. The government of Qatar became a key intermediary.

The list of Taliban demands was scaled back solely to prisoners, rather than money, and the focus was on the Gitmo prisoners, the same five who were eventually released. The most serious of these was Muhammed Fazl, who had been the Taliban army's chief of staff before the United States invaded Afghanistan.

The formal talks between the United States and the Taliban were plagued with fits and starts. In 2012, for example, the two sides communicated sporadically and only through Qatari intermediaries, not directly. At that time, the United States was in the midst of a heated presidential election.

One major glitch from the beginning: The United States wanted to paint a prisoner trade not as simple quid pro quo, but as a part of peace talks to end the Afghan war and reconcile the Taliban with the Afghan government. A former U.S. official told BuzzFeed that to the Americans a prisoner exchange was seen as "leverage to start a peace process."

But that complicated things. "If the objective three years ago was solely to get Bergdahl home, the last thing you would have done is tie it to lots of issues," Semple said. "It was a glitch in terms of getting Bergdahl home, but that doesn't mean it was a stupid idea."

All along, another major obstacle, sources say, was the timetable for freeing the prisoners. The United States wanted to stagger out the release of the men from Gitmo, letting one Taliban leader go and then, months later, the next, and so forth. But this proved unacceptable to the Taliban.

The source familiar with the Taliban's thinking said some members of the group came to believe that the U.S. government would never release prisoners in exchange for Bergdahl.

In 2012, the Taliban prisoner commission indicated to a private intermediary that it would accept a financial ransom rather then the prisoners it wanted so badly. The intermediary was a man based in the Middle East who has extensive ties to Afghanistan and to the West. At first the price was $15 million for the release of Bergdahl, one of the two sources said. But gradually, the price declined.

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Distributors and publishers impose an “effective ban” on Hard Choices , which is critical of the Chinese government. “It’s outrageous and unfortunate.”

Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, talks with with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi during a joint Beijing press conference in 2012.

Jim Watson / Associated Press

Hillary Clinton's new book will not be sold in mainland China, despite efforts by her publisher, Simon & Schuster, to sell the memoir there.

Chinese publishers have declined to purchase translation rights to Hard Choices, an account of Clinton's four years as secretary of state, her publisher told BuzzFeed.

The book will not be sold in English either: One of China's largest import agencies will not allow distribution of an English-language edition. The day after Clinton's book hit stores in the U.S., executives at Simon & Schuster were told by Shanghai Book Traders, which supplies foreign books to Amazon China, that the title would not be approved for sale in China. The decision came only after the agency was able to screen the book, the publisher said. As a result, Hard Choices was removed from the country's Amazon site.

Hard Choices has been received well in nearly every major international market, except for China, Simon & Schuster said. In total, 16 other countries have purchased foreign rights to the book, which was released in the U.S. on June 10.

Simon & Schuster president Jonathan Karp said in an interview that China's response to Clinton's book amounts to an "effective ban" by the country.

"It's outrageous and unfortunate," Karp said. "And it's a pretty clear indication of the low level of intellectual freedom in China right now."

Clinton's book, a 656-page retelling of her tenure at as secretary of state, is critical of the Chinese government. She details its censorship practices and characterizes the country as "full of contradictions" and the "epicenter of the antidemocratic movement in Asia."

The book also includes several passages about her dealings with Chinese senior officials. In one section, Clinton references a discussion with Dai Bingguo, China's state councilor, about the U.S. "pivot strategy" in Asia. "Why don't you 'pivot' out of here?" Dai is quoted as saying.

Clinton dedicates a full chapter to her efforts on behalf of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident and civil rights activist who sought asylum in the U.S. Another chapter focuses on democratization in Myanmar, where China has political and economic interests, and on Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's opposition leader.

Clinton also revisits her 1995 address to the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing, where, she writes, she "felt the heavy hand of Chinese censorship when the government blocked the broadcast of my speech."

Simon & Schuster believes that Chinese publishers and the import agency, Shanghai Book Traders, consider the book unprintable. "It really is about a Chinese business fearing the wrath of the Chinese government," Karp said.

Before the book was published, a total of 13 countries, including China's neighbor Taiwan, bought the book "blind," without even reading an advance copy.

"No one in China was willing to buy the book blind because the political sensitivities involved in publishing any author who might be critical of China," Karp said.

But even after the book came out, Chinese publishers held off. "There has been silence," Karp said. "We have received offers all over the world for this book. We've just sold the Mongolian rights. We've had an offer from Russia. We either have sold the book or are in the process of selling the work to all the major territories."

"China is the one big exception. The phone isn't ringing for China."

Karp said Simon & Schuster made a concerted effort to find a Chinese publisher, but there was no interest. Executives didn't even reach the point of negotiating with a Chinese publishing house. "It's been deafening silence," said Karp.

"We approached all the likely candidates," he added. (Clinton's last Chinese publishing house, Yilin Press, which ultimately lost the Living History contract because of censorship, did not make an offer to Simon & Schuster, Karp said.)

The day after Clinton's book was released, executives at Simon & Schuster were told that Shanghai Book Traders, the import agency that would have supplied an English-language copy of Hard Choices to Chinese readers, had also refused to approve the book for sale. Amazon China, which Shanghai Book Traders supplies for Simon & Schuster titles, removed the Hard Choices listing.

"There's no formal written explanation for why, except for the obvious reason that, in the past, we've been told that the import agencies don't want to risk the wrath of the Chinese government," Karp said. "They could be shut down."

Clinton's publisher initially hoped the agency might reconsider the block upon seeing sales and coverage in the United States and other countries. Although sales dropped by nearly half here in its second week, the book remains at the top of the New York Times best-sellers list. It is also a best-seller in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and Canada, according to the publisher. But so far, Shanghai Book Traders has not indicated an interest in distributing the title.

The block on Clinton's book came as a surprise even to her publisher's rivals.

"I know that individual publishing houses in China were prepared to make offers late last year," said Jo Lusby, the managing director of Penguin China, a branch of Penguin Random House, who said she had expected Hard Choices to be a Chinese-language best-seller.

"Non-fiction books by major U.S. public figures carry serious price tags in China, and this should have been no different," Lusby said.

Chinese publishers often ask to remove passages from foreign books before agreeing to purchase the rights. The Chinese edition of Clinton's first memoir, Living History, was significantly altered in 2003 without approval, causing Simon & Schuster to pull the book from circulation after a first printing of 200,000 copies.

The book, titled Qinli Lishi, or "Personal History," was advertised by the government-backed Chinese publisher, Yilin Press, as the "most unabridged foreign political memoir" in the country's history, keeping "99.9% of the original's content," Yilin Press told reporters at the time. But in September of 2003, Simon & Schuster discovered that the translated edition had altered passages about the human rights activist Harry Wu and removed references to the Tiananmen Square protests.

An additional printing of the book had been planned in China — it had become a best-seller there immediately — but Simon & Schuster withdrew the rights.

Former president Bill Clinton also had problems with his 2004 memoir, My Life. Bootleg translations, widely circulated throughout bookstores in China, included fabricated passages about the degree to which Chinese innovations had "left us in the dust." In one pirated edition, Clinton tells his wife to call him by his nickname, "Big Watermelon." In another, the book's first sentence is re-written to read, "The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui."

Import agencies are said to screen content before agreeing to distribute a title. The companies could face fines, sanctions, and loss of their licenses if they release material which the government deems disadvantageous, executives said.

Not all political writers have had problems in the Chinese market.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor had an easy time finding a publisher there, and was not asked to make changes to her manuscript, according to her agent, Peter Bernstein.

This spring, Evan Osnos, a writer for the New Yorker, published a book on China called Age of Ambition, and wrote about his experience with censorship in a recent New York Times op-ed. After a Shanghai publishing company asked him to remove certain political figures from the book, Osnos decided to forfeit a Chinese-language edition altogether.

"If you want to publish a book in Chinese that touches on politics, it's almost guaranteed that there will be things they're going to want to change," Osnos said.

"On the one hand, we want outside information coming into China. That's good for Chinese readers and for Western authors," he added. "On the other hand, you don't want to make compromises that undermine the integrity of the work."

Simon & Schuster plans to push sales in Taiwan, where a publishing house called Business Weekly purchased rights, and in Hong Kong, the former British colony where books blocked by the Chinese government are available for sale.

Representatives from Amazon, Amazon China, and Shanghai Book Traders did not respond to questions on Thursday regarding the sale of Clinton's memoir.

Since the start of this year, many people with HIV have seen the out-of-pocket costs of their medications skyrocket. And advocates argue it’s not just price-gouging, but a blatant attempt by insurance companies to discriminate against patients who need expensive treatments.

In January, David Pable received some unsettling news from the pharmacy that handles his mail-order prescriptions: The out-of-pocket cost for a month's supply of Prezista, one of his HIV medications, was now $395.

Previously, he had been charged a flat monthly co-pay of $24.

And that wasn't the only worrying news for Pable, 44, a former restaurant manager from South Carolina, who is on long-term disability and receives his medications through a plan from UnitedHealthcare, obtained under Medicare Part D. He also faced a sharp price spike for another of the drugs he takes, Viread, from $42 to $295, as well as smaller increases for two other drugs.

"I was shocked," he said. "That's a significant amount of money for anyone to come up with."

Pable was able to get his medications covered by the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, a federally funded but state-administered program that had already been covering his smaller co-pays. When his pharmacy benefits changed in January, he was able to arrange expanded assistance for the increased expenses.

But others less integrated into the HIV community might have more difficulty accessing such resources and be forced instead to pay for other necessities, Pable said.

"Say somebody had $56 co-pays and then all of a sudden it went up to $1,256," he said. "What are you going to choose, paying for medicine or your place to live? My concern is that someone wouldn't know to ask for help, wouldn't know that there are assistance programs out there."

According to a UnitedHealthcare spokeswoman, Pable was sent a letter in September informing him of changes to his Medicare Part D drug benefits plan. Pable said he does not recall receiving or reading such a letter.

Since the start of this year, many people with HIV have experienced steep increases in the costs of their antiretroviral medications. This isn't just price-gouging, some public health advocates say — arguing it's also a blatant attempt to discriminate against patients who need expensive treatments. The goal, according to these advocates, is to force people with HIV to choose other health plans or force their doctors to prescribe less expensive, and perhaps less effective, medications.

Until this year and the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act — which required the creation of online health insurance exchanges in every state — insurance companies could reject anyone with HIV, or other pre-existing medical conditions, who was applying for an individual plan. That's no longer legal, but public health advocates say that hasn't stopped companies from trying to weed out applicants who might consume more health care resources.

"It's naïve to think that the insurance industry, having spent tens of billions of dollars to keep unhealthy people off their plans, is going to stop trying to figure out ways to maximize the number of healthy people," said Robert Greenwald, a professor at Harvard Law School and a member of the HIV Health Care Access Working Group, a coalition of organizations involved in HIV policy issues.

Soaring pharmaceutical costs are not limited to HIV medications — many people with cancer, hepatitis C, and other complex and expensive illnesses have been facing similar increases. But the problem can be acute for people with HIV, who must take daily antiretrovirals to prevent the virus from replicating. If patients can't pay for medications and therefore miss even a few doses, the potential consequences are dire: increased drug resistance, a greater risk of transmitting the virus to others, and other serious and sometimes fatal medical complications.

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Patient groups and government regulators are beginning to challenge the price increases. A complaint filed with the Department of Health and Human Services last month accuses four companies selling plans on Florida's health insurance exchange of discriminating against people with HIV by requiring them to pay 40 to 50 percent of the full retail price for their antiretroviral medications. "We believe it's definitely an effort to keep people with HIV off their plans," said Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, a Florida-based advocacy group that co-filed the complaint.

Also last month, the Illinois Department of Insurance warned insurers that it plans to scrutinize proposed 2015 health exchange plans for evidence of HIV discrimination. Failure to cover medications on the federal government's list of "preferred" and "alternative" HIV drug regimens could be considered discriminatory, noted the statement from director of insurance Andrew Boron.

A spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade organization, said that the prices of drugs for many different conditions, not just HIV/AIDS, have risen tremendously, and that consumers have the option of choosing plans with larger premiums but lower cost-sharing for medications. Moreover, he noted, the maximum deductible on health exchange plans is $6,350 for an individual, with subsequent expenses — including medications — covered in full.

In recent years, insurance companies have deployed a variety of techniques to shift more of the burden of medication costs onto their customers, but the trend appears to have accelerated with the advent of the Affordable Care Act, through which more than eight million Americans have obtained individual health insurance plans.

In particular, health insurance plans that pay for drugs compile lists of the medications they will cover, known as formularies. These formularies generally divide drugs into a range of tiers; newer and more expensive drugs are placed in higher tiers that require patients to pay a greater share of the cost and older drugs and generics are placed in the least expensive tiers. For higher tiers, many insurance plans now require patients to pay a percentage of the drug's retail cost, called "co-insurance," rather than a flat co-pay of $20 or $50. Since many antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV cost well over $1,000 a month, patients often can't afford the co-insurance payments.

When choosing among competing insurance plans, it's relatively easy to compare the monthly premium costs, plus deductibles and co-pays for doctors and other services. But patients are often not aware that drug formularies have multiple tiers and pricing levels; even if they are, information about them is not always readily available. Moreover, health insurers generally can adjust their formularies even while a policy is in effect.

Even before the Affordable Care Act and the health exchanges, insurers were requiring patients to pay more for medicine. Some insurers have excluded some costly medications from coverage altogether. Others have increased use of medication-management techniques that can have the effect of discouraging doctors from prescribing certain drugs, such as requiring doctors to seek pre-approval from the insurance company over and over again for the same patient — a process that can add hours to a clinician's week.

Dr. Howard Grossman, a primary care physician with a large HIV practice in New York and New Jersey, said that insurance companies have been trying for several years to maneuver patients onto cheaper, older drugs through such strategies. But the trend has accelerated this year, he said.

"They have priced some of the drugs so out of range that patients are forced, because of the price, to use one with a lot more side effects," he said. "This has been going on before the ACA, but it's picked up steam."

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“As I’ve said from day one: I have not supported gay marriage, and I have not advocated for it. And I don’t advocate for or against it.” [ Update: Rauner spokesman says, “Bruce is comfortable with current law and doesn’t seek to change it.”]

Bruce Rauner speaking on May 7, 2014 in Springfield, Ill.

AP Photo/Seth Perlman

During a speech at a tea party event last November, Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner responded to an audience member's question, saying that if governor, he would have vetoed the recently passed marriage equality bill, according to video obtained by BuzzFeed.

At a meeting of the Northern Illinois Patriots on Nov. 12, 2013, an audience member asked Rauner, who is now the Republican nominee for governor, "Bruce, would you have vetoed the gay marriage bill?"

Rauner replied, "I would have. As I've said, as I've said from day one: I have not supported gay marriage, and I have not advocated for it. And I don't advocate for or against it."

The candidate continued, saying the matter should be left up to voters, and not the legislature — where it received final approval by the Illinois House Nov. 5. Rauner's opponent, incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn, pushed for the bill's passage and later signed it into law Nov. 20.

"I've said that voters should decide it directly in a referendum, and I've said that if it hasn't gone to a referendum — if it came to my desk — I would have to veto it because it hasn't been in a referendum yet," Rauner said. "The voters should decide. I don't think that politicians should force it on voters if they don't want it and I don't think that politicians should block it from voters if they do want it. I'm a limited government, let people decide what they want to do with their lives. That's my view of things."

Rauner opponents and LGBT advocates in recent weeks have criticized the candidate for what they say is his refusal to take a stance on the issue.

On Thursday — just days before the annual Pride Parade — marriage equality supporters gathered near a giant banner posted on a building in Chicago's LGBT community enclave, or Boystown, reading, "Bruce Rauner on equal marriage: 'If I were governor, I would veto it,'" according to a Chicago Sun-Times report.

On June 2, a day after the new marriage equality law took effect, a Rauner campaign spokesman declined to comment on the candidate's stance on marriage equality when asked by the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Bruce does not have an agenda on social issues," spokesman Mike Schrimpf said, and noted that Rauner wouldn't overturn the law unless a majority of voters called for it via referendum, according to the paper.

And after a speech to the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce on the same day, Rauner told reporters, "Now it's passed, it's the law, I don't have any agenda to change it and the only way I'd change it is if it were done in a referendum — the voters said that they'd want to change it," according to the Chicago Tribune.

Earlier this year, Ruaner and his primary opponents were grilled on the issue by the Chicago Tribune editorial board, but Rauner reportedly would not take a position on the matter, saying, "I've said from day one that that's an issue that should be decided by the voters directly in a referendum."

When pressed on why it matters to the editorial board, Rauner said, "I'm going to do what the voters want done. That's what I'll do. And I won't take any action unless I see what the voters want."

A message was left with Rauner's campaign office seeking comment.

Video of Rauner's remarks:

View Video ›

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Say wwwwhat?

Fox32 Chicago / Via myfoxchicago.com

A website targeted toward married people having affairs is using a pun on Hillary Clinton's book Hard Choices in attempt to get women to sign up for their site. The infidelity website AshleyMadison.com is running the billboard on Interstate 55 in Illinois.

"Harder choices lead to AshleyMadison.com," the sign reads.

AshleyMadison.com is marketed toward people already in a relationship, usually married men, encouraging them to have affairs.

The site has in the past targeted politicians such as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich...

Ad Week / Via adweek.com

...and former South Carolina governor and current Rep. Mark Sanford.

Ad Week / Via adweek.com

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Trolling.

President Obama would like Republicans to stop calling him names. Speaking in Minnesota on what the president said was Republican obstructionism in Congress, Obama offered a trolling critique of his counterparts in the House.

"They don't do anything," Obama said. "Except block me...and call me names. It can't be that much fun. It would be so much more fun if they said, 'Let's do something together.'"

Here's the video of those remarks:

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Later Obama delivered the message to "not get cynical" in the face of opposition.

View Video ›

The critics and the cynics in Washington, they have written me off more times than I can count. I'm here to tell you don't get cynical. Despite all of the frustration, America's making progress. Despite the unyielding opposition, there are families who have health insurance now that did not have it before and there are students in college who couldn't afford it before. There are workers on the job who didn't have jobs before. There are troops home with their family after serving tour after tour. Don't think that we are not making progress. It is easy to be cynical, in fact these days it's kind of trendy. Cynicism passes off for wisdom...but cynicism doesn't liberate a continent. Cynicism doesn't build a transcontinental railroad. It doesn't send a man to the moon. Cynicism doesn't invent the Internet. Cynicism doesn't give women the right to vote. Cynicism doesn't make sure that people are treated equally regardless was of race. Cynicism is a choice and hope is a better choice.

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“A good man is gone today bc of a campaign to destroy lives. To all ‘so called’ Republican leaders who joined lockstep: I WILL NOT REST!”

Jonathan Bachman / Reuters

The strange and ugly Mississippi Republican Senate primary turned tragic when Mark Mayfield was found dead Friday. Mayfield was a lawyer and board member of the Central Mississippi tea party and one of the alleged conspirators in the case surrounding the break-in and photographing of incumbent Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran's bedridden wife in her nursing home.

Mayfield's death was an apparent suicide, according to reports.

On Twitter, one high-level McDaniel staffer, policy director Keith Plunkett wrote:

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A move by the New York and New York City comptrollers to impact international LGBT rights. Letters ask for information from Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and others.

Letter

WASHINGTON — On the eve of New York City's LGBT pride weekend, state and city officials are making a move to use their pension funds' investments to advance LGBT rights internationally.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer are sending letters Friday to 20 major U.S. companies — including Coca-Cola and McDonald's — asking about "the international application of your equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies as they relate to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community."

DiNapoli and Stringer manage combined investments of $13 billion in the 20 companies and are asking them to explain "how [they] apply and enforce [their] anti-discrimination policies to LGBT employees in [their] international operations, especially in those countries where discriminatory legislation is in place or being considered." Specifically, in the letter, they note recent anti-LGBT laws passed in Russia and some African counties.

In addition to Coca-Cola and McDonald's, the letter also was sent to Accenture, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Corning, Dow Chemical, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Marriott, Morgan Stanley, Pepsico, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, 3M, and Yum! Brands.

A second letter was sent to the Russian internet firm, Mail.RU. According to the letter, "Mail.RU currently holds a 52% interest in the Russian company, VKontakte (VK.com), a social network service provider in Europe." The letter goes on to detail the "growing controversy surrounding VK.com's hosting of sites advocating and depicting violence against members of the Russian gay community."

Noting that the funds managed by DiNapoli and Stringer hold more than $9.2 million in Mail.RU, they ask the company to "inform us of the efforts [their] company has undertaken, or will undertake, to investigate public reports of the conduct described above and, if such reports are accurate, to mitigate risks arising from [their] association with and majority ownership of VK.com.

Read a sample of the letter sent to the 20 companies:

Read the letter sent to Mail RU:

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Attorney General Gregory Zoeller tells the 7th Circuit that “time is of the essence” in asking that a stay be entered to stop more same-sex couples from marrying in the state during the state’s appeal. [ Update: The 7th Circuit granted the stay.]

AP Photo/Michael Conroy

WASHINGTON — Indiana Attorney General Gregory Zoeller has asked a federal appeals court to immediately stop same-sex couples from marrying there, pending the outcome of the state's appeal of a ruling that the ban on such marriages is unconstitutional.

The request to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals follows a Wednesday request to the trial court to issue a stay of the court's decision from earlier in the day striking down the ban. The trial court judge hearing the case, U.S. District Court Judge Richard L. Young, has not yet responded to the request.

Because Young issued no stay with his order striking down the ban and issued a final judgement in the case that day as well, same-sex couples in some Indiana counties began marrying shortly thereafter — weddings that continued into Thursday and Friday.

"[W]ith no ruling issued yet by the district court either granting or denying the stay motion, confusion has ensued, with marriage licenses being granted at some county courthouses but not others," Zoeller's spokesman, Bryan Corbin, said in a statement. "To get a decision rapidly on whether or not clerks must continue to issue same-sex marriage licenses pending appeal of the underlying lawsuit, the Attorney General's Office has asked for a stay from the 7th Circuit."

When a stay pending appeal has been sought by a state defendant in the marriage lawsuits brought over the past year, a court eventually has granted it, starting with the Supreme Court's stay granted in January in Utah's marriage case. Following that, most trial court judges have granted the stay requests, with appeals courts granting stays where trial court judges have not done so.

From the Indiana Attorney General's filing:

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Four traffickers were arrested and dozens of migrants taken into custody as both countries struggle to contain flood of child migrants.

The Arizona-Mexico border fence near Naco, Arizona, March 29, 2013.

Samantha Sais / Reuters / Reuters

Mexican and American law enforcement officials Friday raided a ranch in Altar, Sonora used to traffic drugs and as many as 400 migrants a day into the United States, arresting four men and taking dozens of migrants from Mexico and Central America into custody.

The "La Sierrita" ranch outside of Altar has been used by coyotes to bring drugs and migrants from Mexico, Central America, and other areas into the United States illegally since 2006, according to the Mexican government.

Altar has become one of the principle areas used by migrants to cross into the United States as drug cartels have centralized control over human trafficking during the last decade.

According to a release from the Criminal Investigation Agency of the Mexican Attorney General, 27 Mexican migrants and 13 others were "freed" during the operation, while the ranch's manager, Ramón Ernesto "El Güero" Moreno Miranda, and other personnel were arrested. Additionally, during an "air operation" the government "disabled" a radio antenna used by traffickers.

An unknown quantity of drugs and weapons were also seized during the raid.

The raid, which was conducted in coordination with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, comes as Mexico and the United States struggle to address a flood of tens of thousands of migrant children from Central America migrating into the United States.

“The groups that are more and more picked on in society are evangelical Christians,” Louisiana’s governor tells BuzzFeed. Is the future of social conservatism in Baton Rouge?

John Gara

BATON ROUGE, La. — Walking the perimeter of the sitting room in the Louisiana Governor's Mansion, it is easy to forget that the palatial plantation-style house is home to a family of actual human beings. Paintings rest on carefully positioned easels, and well-fluffed couch cushions are placed just so on ornate, unsittable furniture. The sole sign of life: a pile of lesson books spread untidily across the top of a piano in the far corner of the room.

"We make them all play," explained Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's popsicle stick-shaped governor, attributing the debris to his three young children. "They're not that happy about it, but they will play as long as we make them play. It's one of those things I think they'll appreciate later in life." Perched at a circular table in the sunlit office adjacent to the sitting room earlier this month, Jindal seemed to take some pride in the modest mess, noting that he is the first governor in decades to have little kids in the mansion. "You don't want them to feel like they're living in a museum."

Jindal has an encyclopedic knowledge of Louisiana's storied political history, and an acute sense of his own unique place in it. On this particular morning, he was caught up in a story about Jimmie Davis, the state's 47th governor, best known for writing the old country song, "You Are My Sunshine," and spending a lot of money to build the Governor's Mansion.

"It was about a million dollars, which was very controversial in '63, and he barely lived in it because he built it and then moved out," Jindal said. "But he built his personal home back there" — he gestured in the general direction of the backyard — "and he had a gate built into the fence so he could walk over and go swimming, because there was a swimming pool here at the mansion. The story is that the current governors would go back there and find him skinny-dipping in the pool."

"I don't know if that was true or not," he hastened to add. "That was before I got here. But he built the house so he felt entitled, I guess."

Entitlement was a common trait in the parade of good ol' boys that dominated Bayou State politics for more than a century. But Jindal, an Indian-American raised by demanding immigrant parents in a middle-class Baton Rouge suburb, stormed into office in 2008 on the strength of something different — a hard-earned résumé, and a talent for convincing suspicious, tight-knit pockets of voters that he was one of them. Now, the most underrated prospect in the 2016 presidential field is plotting the charm offensive that could carry him to the White House. His target: the religious right.

While much of the Republican Party has written off the conservative Christian movement as a shrinking niche to be appeased but not feared, Jindal is working deliberately to consolidate their support and position himself as the election-year champion of values voters — building relationships with evangelical power brokers, surrounding himself with veterans of Rick Perry's 2012 campaign, and lacing his rhetoric with culture-war calls for religious freedom.

The strategy has begun to catch the attention of key figures on the Christian right.

Michael Farris, the founder of the evangelical Patrick Henry College and a champion of Christian home-schoolers — a key element of Iowa's conservative base — said Jindal's name is buzzing in activist circles.

"I think he's a top-tier candidate and he'll resonate a lot with that community," Farris said, comparing him to Mike Huckabee, the minister-cum-candidate who remains one of the brightest stars on the religious right.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a longtime Jindal ally, praised him as one of the few prospective 2016 candidates with an unimpeachable record on social issues, and a personal life that exemplifies conservative religious values. As an example, Perkins noted that Jindal and his wife, Supriya, were the first couple in the country to enter into a "covenant marriage," a special sort of legal union designed by Perkins in Louisiana when he was a state lawmaker that makes divorce more difficult.

"His foundation [is] really centered on his Christian faith," Perkins said. "Talk is cheap, but the walk is where you find the worth of an individual. And he is walking."

Perkins told BuzzFeed he is now informally advising Jindal on how to build grassroots support among the GOP's religious voters, and he envisions a groundswell of support among activists if he decides to run. (The governor has said he will make a decision about 2016 after the midterms.)

On paper, Jindal seems like an improbable candidate to marshall the religious right in the culture wars. He is an ethnic minority in a movement that is almost entirely white. He is a Rhodes scholar who spent his early career managing federal bureaucrats and making a name for himself as a sharp-minded conservative policy wonk. And while he can be funny and warm in person — demonstrating a higher social IQ than many realize — his general demeanor is less pulpit-pounding preacher, and more well-prepped college debater, speaking rapidly and often bullet-pointing his thoughts out loud.

Perhaps most problematically, Jindal was raised Hindu, and became a Catholic in his late teens only after a complicated, and sometimes messy, conversion that he later detailed in a series of articles for an obscure religious journal. The most famous of these — at least in political circles — is a lengthy first-person essay about reluctantly taking part in a ritual during college that aimed to cast a dark spirit out of a love interest. The articles are nuanced, fascinating, and deeply human, revealing a level of self-awareness and sophistication about faith that is uncommon among aspiring politicians. But they don't add up to the sort of tidy, easy-to-sell narrative to which many conservative Christian voters have grown accustomed. For that, Jindal relies on the experts.

Two of his closest political advisers are Timmy Teepell, a Baton Rouge native and longtime aide to the governor who is deeply immersed in evangelical politics, and Curt Anderson, a veteran of presidential campaigns, including, most recently, Rick Perry's.

Anderson said if Jindal runs he won't pigeonhole himself as a social conservative, and pointed to the governor's expansive policy agenda, including a controversial education overhaul in Louisiana, and a detailed health care proposal. "Do I think he'll appeal to the evangelicals? Yes… But he doesn't fit in a tidy way into everybody's different groupings," Anderson said. "I would say he's really a kind of full-spectrum conservative, from economic issues to more social moral issues. He's a pretty robust, doctrinaire guy."

But privately, people in Jindal's inner circle view religious conservatives as a crucial piece of his 2016 coalition, and Anderson and Teepell have helped him refine his pitch to that community over the past year.

Speaking with BuzzFeed, Jindal firmly rejected the notion, floated by many in his party, that the GOP must jettison its social agenda in order to win national elections. But like other savvy, high-profile Republicans, he believes conservatives should actively recast the culture wars as a fight for the freedom to live according to one's faith — not as a crusade to force a strict moral code on America.

"I gave a talk at Liberty University, where I told the graduates that they were entering a world more secular than the one their parents went into," said Jindal. "That, as believers, that was their opportunity to be a light in the world. I told them I don't think you should go out there and be victims and complain about it… But it just seems to me that increasingly the groups that are more and more picked on in society are evangelical Christians."

As examples, Jindal cited the backlash against Phil Robertson, the bearded patriarch on A&E's hit reality show Duck Dynasty, after he made crude comments about homosexuality in an interview with GQ last year. At the time, Jindal seized on the culture war flashpoint, and vigorously defended the Robertson family (who live in Louisiana) when the cable channel considered suspending the star. Since then, Jindal has repeatedly pointed to the episode as proof of growing intolerance toward conservative Christians.

"There's a lot of stuff on TV I find offensive, and I change the channel," Jindal said. "Now, I'm not saying as governor I want to tell A&E what they can and can't do. They're a private business, they've got a right to put whatever content they want on the air... I'm just saying as a culture, I think it's a very dangerous place if we go from being a society that was founded because of religious liberty, to a place where we become so intolerant of those who disagree with us that we try to either silence their views, or we try limit their views to where you can only have them for an hour on Sunday."

Some of this may sound like standard red meat for the right — particularly when he punctuates it with a made-for-CPAC joke: "Britney Spears is still on TV but Phil Robertson's not! How does this make sense in our society?" But it actually represents a key shift in the terms of the GOP's social agenda: Jindal is, ostensibly, arguing not for a Christian nation, but a diverse and open-minded one. He is framing his defense of conservative evangelicals as a call for pluralism — not exactly a rhetorical trademark of the old religious right.

While critics will argue that this stance is disingenuous and cynical, Jindal believes it could resonate well beyond the Republican primaries. "My hope is that there may even be folks who disagree with me on the definition of marriage, or may disagree with me on some of the more traditional social issues, but will say it's important in America that we stand for religious liberty."

Jindal's vision of modern social conservatism contains other updates as well. Rather than moralizing about the pernicious evils of drug culture and the need to crack down on addicts, he has followed some of his Republican colleagues in adopting a softer — and, perhaps, more Christian — stance. He said he doesn't favor legalization, but, "I'm absolutely in favor of making sure that, especially [for] nonviolent offenders, we're providing drug treatment, rehabilitation, instead of just continuing to lock them up." He added, "The reality is that I think it's better for those individuals to get back as productive members of society."

Skeptics of Jindal's 2016 prospects question whether he could raise the money required to wage a credible primary campaign. But Anderson dismissed the naysayers, noting that Jindal was a successful fundraiser as the head of the Republican Governors Association. "Do I think he'll set the Mitt Romney, Barack Obama record? No. But the guy is not afraid to ask for the order," said Anderson. "He'll ask for money. I think he'll be ready for that."

The other commonly cited strike against Jindal's presidential ambitions is the lingering effect of his painfully awkward response to the president's State of the Union address in 2009. His stunted delivery and kindergarten-teacher intonation prompted an immediate pile-on by the pundit class and a flurry of memes comparing him to various cartoonish buffoons, like Kenneth, the wide-eyed, mouth-breathing page on NBC's sitcom 30 Rock. More than five years later, Farris said he still hears activists talk about Jindal's bungled primetime debut.

"That's a fair assessment," Farris said. "But for the people who are listening to him in the last couple years, they're saying, 'Wow he's gotten really good. I would rate him as a first-rate speaker now.'"

On a Friday night in early June, Jindal stepped onto a stage in Columbia, S.C., as the headliner for the state party's annual Silver Elephant Dinner. Looking out over a sea of seersuckers, he delivered a rat-a-tat litany of attacks on the Obama administration, accusing the president of adopting a "catch-and-release policy toward terrorists" — a reference to the Taliban prisoner swap that has riled conservatives — and excoriating the White House's approach to foreign policy.

His delivery was polished, but it wasn't until about halfway through the speech — the part when he accused Obama of trampling on Americans' First Amendment rights — that the audience really started to respond.

"It didn't stop with Hobby Lobby," Jindal declared. "This is an administration that has taken on religious liberties throughout our society … You may remember that this is a president who, when he was campaigning in California, accused the country of clinging to our guns and religion."

He paused, and then smirked as he delivered the punchline: "Now, I know that was supposed to be an insult, but as the governor of Louisiana, I'm proud to report to you that we've got plenty of guns and religion."

The crowd went wild.