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Clinton Deleted Personal Emails Following Opaque Review Process

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“They have nothing to do with work. I didn’t see any reason to keep them.” For the first time, the former secretary of state answers questions about the process for selecting 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department.

Richard Drew / AP

The discovery of one email address, hdr22@clintonemail.com, will result in a major public disclosure: a cache of 30,490 messages, released by the State Department, sent and received by a cabinet official now poised to run for president.

But another 31,830 emails, selected by Clinton's attorneys as strictly personal, will not only remain private but were deleted following a review of the former secretary of state's correspondence from her four years in the administration.

Clinton confirmed that she had deleted personal emails at a press conference Tuesday, attended by about 200 reporters, at the United Nations in New York.

The comments were her first about the scandal that, for eight days now, has dominated news coverage and disrupted a week meant to celebrate Clinton's achievements ahead of the 20th anniversary of the former first lady's famed speech on women's rights to the UN's 1995 conference in Beijing.

Until Tuesday, Clinton had not answered questions about the process conducted by her attorneys to select which emails to include — and which to omit — in the stacks of pages she turned over to State Department officials.

"There were over 60,000 in total, sent and received," Clinton said of the messages from her personal account, which she used instead of government email as secretary. "About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work."

"They were personal and private about matters I believed were in the scope of my personal privacy," Clinton said, asked why she deleted the personal messages. "They have nothing to do with work. I didn't see any reason to keep them."

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement sent to reporters on Tuesday afternoon that Clinton directed her attorneys "to assist by identifying and preserving all emails that could potentially be federal records." The 31,830 personal emails, Merrill said, were "private, personal" records.

Merrill described the survey of Clinton's emails as a "multi-step process." The attorneys searched specifically for correspondence from key State Department advisers, and for key words such as "Benghazi and Libya."

Clinton said on Tuesday that her attorneys erred on the side of caution, sending more emails than necessary in response to the State Department request last year that former secretaries submit their official correspondence for record-keeping.

"I have absolute confidence that anything that could be in any way connected to work is now in the possession of the State Department," Clinton said.

Clinton said there was no independent third-party involved in the review, but added, "I am very confident of the process."

The server hosting the email account, which was initially set up as part of her husband's personal office, will remain private, Clinton told reporters.

The existence of the "clintonemail.com" account came to light last Monday amid a House select committee's investigation into the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. The revelation precipitated a rush of negative press and prompted Clinton's announcement last Wednesday that State would publish her email.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairing the Benghazi committee, has said that the public has no assurance, beyond Clinton's word, that the 55,000-page collection of emails set for release is complete or was assembled in good faith.

"Without access to Secretary Clinton's personal server, there is no way for the State Department to know it has acquired all documents that should be made public," Gowdy said in a statement on Tuesday. "There is no way to accept State's or Secretary Clinton's certification she has turned over all the documents."

The State Department was not involved in the survey of emails and only has access the 30,000 emails selected by Clinton's attorneys, officials said.

On Tuesday, Gowdy called for Clinton to turn over her server to a "neutral, detached third-party arbiter" to determine which emails should remain private.

At her press conference, Clinton said that every government official decides when to use a personal account and when to use government email.

"You would have to ask that to every single federal employee," she said.

The Benghazi committee also filed a subpoena last Wednesday for all emails pertaining to the strike on the U.S. compound in Benghazi that took place during Clinton's tenure. "Legitimate investigations do not consider partial records," Gowdy's spokesperson said last week. "And that is the point of the subpoena."

Gowdy has also said that Clinton used more than one email account at the State Department. The documents she turned over to the House select committee, he said, show "two separate and distinct email addresses" ascribed to Clinton.

Merrill, the Clinton spokesperson, has said the second address was not registered until March of 2013, one month after her departure from the administration.

Clinton was using the new account last year when she submitted her correspondence records to the State Department. The address "appeared on the copies as the 'sender,' and not the address she used as secretary," Merrill said.

Gowdy's spokesperson has said the concerns about the second email still hold without access to "the relevant electronic information and stored data."

Clinton, Gowdy's spokesperson added, has "left herself in the unique position of being the only one to determine what records the American people are entitled to."


Clinton Keeps Washington Democrats — Her Would-Be Defenders — In The Dark

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Senior Capitol Hill aides say the Clinton camp has not made a coordinated outreach effort to brief Democrats on how to handle questions or defend Clinton.

Yana Paskova / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Democrats are eager to defend Hillary Clinton from criticism of her email — but her would-be defenders say they've been taken by surprise by revelations about her email, and by the lack of ammunition from her aides to would-be allies.

Even as Clinton attempted Tuesday to explain the email controversy at a press conference — the first time she had publicly addressed the issue — top Washington Democrats and her potential allies on the Hill say they have heard little or nothing from the Clinton camp in the week since the story broke.

Only a very small number of senators, television surrogates, and top officials have heard directly from Clinton's staff since the New York Times broke the story last Monday. Few, if any, appear to have known knew the Times story was coming, despite the fact, multiple Democratic sources said, that Clinton's top spokesman had provided talking points on a separate foreign donations story that very morning.

A Clinton spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

While BuzzFeed News was able to confirm that some individual lawmakers have been contacted directly by Clinton staff, five senior Senate Democratic aides said Clinton's camp has made no official coordinated attempt to reach out to lawmakers and provide them with talking points or guidance on how to handle press questions. One leadership aide did say a Democratically aligned organization provided some members with talking points Monday.

Another Democratic aide said that because Clinton does not have a fully functional campaign staff, Clinton's defense has come almost entirely from groups like Correct the Record, so outreach and coordination among allies has been haphazard.

"I hope that changes really quickly," the aide said.

While the closely held approach frustrated Democrats in D.C., it did prevent one hazard in the press: leaks, something the Clintons are usually averse to and something Capitol Hill is known for. Regardless, the relative silence may be coming to an end. Following Clinton's remarks at the press conference, spokesman Nick Merrill released a Q&A document to reporters detailing the email situation in response to various questions that have been raised.

White House officials have privately expressed frustration with the way Clinton and her team had handled the fallout to the email story, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Clinton's press conference, one Obama Administration official remarked Tuesday, "conjures up the worst of the '90s."

The Democratic National Committee, while unable to defend Clinton as if she were the Democratic nominee, is usually quick to respond to negative stories by counter attacking GOP presidential hopefuls. It wasn't until the day after the Times report did they begin to attack Jeb Bush for using personal email to conduct official business as governor. One veteran Democratic strategist argued it appears that even close Clinton ally David Brock wasn't given a heads up on the email story, noting his response operation wasn't up and running "until a full 12 hours after the story came out … which makes me think they didn't get a heads up."

The strategist argued the email story has exposed the central weakness of the Clinton operation: its aversion to leaks and unwillingness to accept them as a cost of doing business.

"I can sympathize," the strategist said. "If you're trying to control the story of how you're going to roll out your announcement" maintaining a small footprint with few actively engaged surrogates makes sense. "But then you open yourself up to this," the strategist warned, arguing, "I don't think they necessarily have that infrastructure or enacted that infrastructure … [which means] you have no way to get things out to your 50 top talkers."

A Senate Democratic aide questioned why Clinton's staff allowed the issue to linger for so long without being forcefully addressed, noting the scandal made headlines even during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial speech to Congress last week.

"When it started to break through Bibi day, they should have known it was a big deal," the aide said.

"That's a lesson they're going to have to learn, it's not so much whether they think it's important or not, it's whether its going to get traction with voters," the strategist said.

A K Street operative argued the bungling of the scandal is a result of the Clinton camp's siege mentality when it comes to the press. "This is a 20-year mentality that has evolved over time. 'The press will always give us shit … [so] screw it, we're going to ignore it,'" the operative said.

LINK: Hillary Clinton Deleted Emails That She Says She “Believed Were In The Scope Of My Personal Privacy”

LINK: Bobby Jindal Knocks Clinton’s 2016 Prospects In Light Of Email Questions


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Quietly, Obama Administration Starts — Then Badly Loses — A Gun Control Fight

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Observers on all sides of the gun rights argument are scratching their heads after the failure of an ATF plan to ban bullets for AR-15s.

sbinder77/sbinder77

WASHINGTON — Hours before D.C. shut down for the President's Day long weekend last month, the Obama administration quietly set out to ban a form of armor-piercing ammunition commonly used in the popular, semi-automatic AR-15. Using rule-making power it's had since Congress banned armor-piercing rounds in the 1980s, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) announced the proposal late on a Friday.

On Tuesday, while D.C. was distracted in the run-up to Hillary Clinton's first public comments on the brewing email scandal, the administration quietly pulled the plan after after the National Rifle Association, gun manufacturers, and their supporters rallied to stop the effort.

All sides of the still-roiling gun debate are confused about what exactly happened and what it means for the gun policy debate in the remaining years of President Obama's term in office.

In the month between the initial ATF proposal on Feb. 13 and the effective withdrawal of it March 10, gun rights groups and administration opponents flooded the ATF with more than 80,000 public comments about the proposed ban (an ATF official said the "vast majority" were negative) and lined up congressional opposition. There was basically no one to oppose them. The White House didn't talk much about the ATF proposal publicly, and gun control groups said they found out about the plan too late to effectively muster a response to the NRA lobbying effort.

"There was limited communication from ATF to gun violence prevention groups," said a top official at a prominent gun safety group in Washington. "This is something we haven't been focused on. This is something we saw on a Friday afternoon."

Meanwhile, gun rights supporters expected more political savvy from an administration they've tangled with for years and have a begrudging respect for — at least when discussing the issue privately.

The groups were "perplexed" by the ATF proposal, which used power given to the agency in 1986 to regulate armor-piercing bullets to ban so-called "M885 green tip" rounds; the rounds were exempted from an existing federal ban on armor-piercing rounds because they were not used in handguns. Federal law allows some types armor-piercing rounds as long as they are only used in long guns. Recently, a few gun manufacturers have begun marketing so-called AR-15 "pistols" — versions of the popular firearm with no stock or a collapsible stock — that the ATF cited as evidence that green-tip bullets had jumped from rifle-only to handgun-capable.

Supporters of the firearms industry reject this read on the situation, saying the AR-15 pistols are at the fringe of the market. The ammo is some of the most popular sold for the AR-15, supporters say. In an predictable pattern, sales skyrocketed over the past few weeks as gun rights supporters sounded the alarm about the looming ban and organized campaigns to push back on it.

A top-level consultant to the industry said the Obama administration got the politics wrong with the Friday news dump announcing the ban. Gun industry supporters, always wary of the administration, say they slapped down an intentional administration effort to slip the new regulations through without anyone paying attention.

"In short, they tried to get too cute with it. They were trying to see what they could get away with in the rule-making process without congressional approval and they got their hands slapped HARD," the consultant wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. "No doubt if they had gotten away with this, it would have started a slippery slope of other rules."

NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre echoed the ominous take on the total defeat of the ATF.

"They've gone away for now," he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "We know they're coming back and we will be ready."

The gun rights community is relishing its victory, but also scratching its head over what one top gun rights advocate said was a rare "fumble" for an administration that has has been a force to be reckoned with on gun control issues if ultimately unable to break the gun rights advocates' grip on the debate.

Gun rights advocates see the administration trying to sneak a new gun control measure past a Republican-controlled Congress unlikely to support it. Gun rights allies have been pressuring ATF to rule on other proposed exemptions to the existing armor-piercing rounds for years, and they said the February proposal was billed as the first step toward making that happen.

"They finally got the rule out on a Friday of a three-day weekend … why else would you do that unless you're trying to bury something?" said Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms manufacturer trade group. "This administration has perfected the art of how to bury the lede, how to bury the story. They know they can't prevail on this issue in Congress, and I think they were shocked by the reaction. They know gun control is not popular. They've been defeated on this issue."

Gun control groups, meanwhile, are generally closely allied with the administration and are used to operating in coordination with it ahead of a fight with the NRA. The groups worked closely with the administration during the 2012 failed White House push for new gun laws and the successful lobbying effort ahead of Senate confirmation of the president's surgeon general nominee, who was put in place over the organized objections of the NRA. But they were blind-sided by the ATF proposal.

"To be honest, the other side out-worked us," said Ladd Everitt, spokesperson for the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence. "The guys who were worried about losing these [bullets] worked harder than those who don't see these things regularly in their normal life."

The focus on banning specific bullets also split the gun control coalition. Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun safety group launched by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, focuses on background checks and not banning specific types of weapons or ammunition. The group has been successful in building a bipartisan background checks network and steers clear of more divisive fights like the one over the AR-15 rounds.

A top official at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, one of the biggest names in gun control, defended the ATF and the timing of the proposal.

"It was a standard procedure for reviewing and revising the rules, which the ATF has carefully exercised over the years under a law signed 30 years ago by President Ronald Reagan," Jonathan Hutson, Brady communications director, wrote in an email. "What happened? The NRA and the corporate gun lobby gathered their blogger pals around the electronic campfire to tell eerie ghost stories about potential gun bans, even though the ATF's proposal was simply for a rule change to protect the lives and safety of law enforcement officers."

The White House declined to comment on the ATF proposal fight Tuesday. In one of the few public statements about it, during the March 2 daily press briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest deferred questions about the proposal to the ATF, but defended the ammo ban as "in the category of common-sense steps that the government can take to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans while also making sure that our law enforcement officers who are walking the beat every day can do their jobs just a little bit more safely."

Corey Ray, deputy chief of public affairs at the ATF, dismissed the gun rights side's suggestion that the proposal — and the withdrawal of it — were purposefully buried under a holiday weekend and email scandal.

"We made the announcement when we felt we had the information on hand," he said in an interview. "We reached the 80,000-plus mark [in public comments] and with the input from the Hill we felt it was time to take action."

The tenacity of the NRA and NSSF-led campaign against the regulation was felt in the ATF. Keane, the top NSSF official, said his group hasn't turned in the thousands of public comments it collected on the ATF proposal. When they're turned in, they'll raise the total number of negative comments by a large number, Keane said. (The public comment period on the ATF proposal officially ends March 16, though Tuesday's announcement effectively made that date irrelevant.)

"We get emails, faxes, and letters," Ray said. "It's all coming in. We're still taking calls, everything."

The sheer volume of negative comments led officials to effectively scrap the proposal, Ray said.

"I think for any public comment process, that would be considered a significant number," he said.

Common Core Wars: Jindal Rips Iowa Ads That Are Seen As Defending Bush

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“If voters want to vote for someone who’s pro-Common Core, they’re going to have an opportunity to do that in this election,” Jindal tells BuzzFeed News.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

In an interview Tuesday, likely Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal sharply criticized a series of ads running across Iowa that many believe are intended to give political cover to Jeb Bush over his support for Common Core.

The ads — which are appearing in print, radio, and TV — feature Ronald Reagan's former education secretary Bill Bennett touting the merits of the federal education standards, and contending that they align with conservative principles. Listeners are urged to "learn why so many conservatives are taking another look at Common Core."

Paid for by a nonprofit group called the Collaborative for Student Success, the ads don't mention Bush by name, but their timing and placement suggest an interest in reshaping the Republican primary debate around the issue — to the benefit of one particular candidate. The same day Bush landed in Iowa last week for his first visit as a likely candidate, the Des Moines Register carried a full-page ad from the group laying out the conservative case for Common Core.

"I've heard the ads," Jindal told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview from Iowa. "They can run all the ads they want telling us why they should have control of education... and that parents aren't smart enough to know what's best for their kids. They can do that. But I wouldn't bet against the parents."

He added, "Clearly, the folks that are for Common Core have a lot of money. Good for them. I still put my money on the moms and dads."

Jindal and Bush hold similarly conservative records on education in their respective states. As governor of Louisiana, Jindal has championed school choice, and is currently battling the U.S. Justice Department over his signature school voucher program. And when Bush was governor of Florida, he made education a central component of his agenda, dramatically expanding access to charter schools in the state. For a time, both men supported Common Core, but Jindal reversed his position in 2013 amid a growing conservative backlash, leading some to accuse him of political opportunism. Jindal has maintained he and other governors were misled about the policy, and he has since become one of his party's sharpest critics of the education standards.

Bush, meanwhile, has stood by his position, and it remains one of his most conspicuous, and potentially damaging, breaks with the Republican base — particularly since he seems eager to trumpet his education record. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Foundation for Excellence in Education paid nearly $3 million through 2013 and 2014 to a PR firm headed by top Bush strategist Mike Murphy to create ads touting the former governor's education overhaul in Florida.

Though neither man have officially announced their candidacies, both are expected to run. And Jindal seems eager to frame the battle for the Iowa caucuses around the issue.

"If voters want to vote for someone who's pro-Common Core, they're going to have an opportunity to do that in this election," Jindal said, implicitly referring to Bush, who is the only one in the GOP field who supports the standards.

Jindal also suggested that his experience serving as governor during the Obama administration has made him better attuned than others to the dangers of big government — an argument he is likely to deploy against Bush more directly once the primaries are in full swing.

"Without talking specifically about Jeb or anybody else, I do think that one common experience for those of us who have been governors for the last six years is we've seen firsthand federal overreach by the Obama administration," he said, adding, "I think that's been a formative experience for many folks. We have more of a sharp distrust of the federal government's unwillingness to let us make our own decisions."

The Collaborative for Student Success did not respond to a voicemail left by BuzzFeed Nes, and a spokesperson for Bush declined to comment.


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Republican Senator's Adviser Formerly Served As Editor Of Neo-Confederate Magazine

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One of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s longtime advisers was the editor-in-chief of a neo-Confederate magazine — a magazine Graham gave an interview to in 1999. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, the adviser disavows his former views.

Southern Partisan/Courtesy of The Bancroft Library/University of California, Berkeley

Richard Quinn has been quoted in the press as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's longtime political adviser and his consultant and pollster. But there's another title that Quinn once held: neo-Confederate magazine editor.

From early 1980s until the early 2000s, Quinn's name stood on the masthead as the editor-in-chief of the Southern Partisan, formerly one of the country's leading neo-Confederate magazines (it still exists in a barebones online version). Quinn has tried to distance himself from the magazine in the past (he says he doesn't like the term neo-Confederate), and after being contacted by BuzzFeed News, repudiated his past views and those of the magazine.

It was in his capacity as editor that Quinn wrote that Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in the Civil Rights movement was "to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul." He called Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" and a "bad egg." He wrote positively of David Duke's election: "What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?" In one column, he called Martin Luther King Day's purpose "vitriolic and profane."

Today, Quinn says he's come to admire King and Mandela. "I wrote some things on the wrong side of history," he told BuzzFeed News.

He had previously spoken of the columns with regret in 2001, when the issue of Quinn's past came up while serving as an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign.

Since 1993, Graham has paid Quinn and the consulting firm he's operated at least hundreds of thousands of dollars. Graham's campaign paid his firm more than $200,000 last cycle alone. Quinn downplayed that money to BuzzFeed News, calling it a "cheap shot" to link it directly to him; he noted that only a fraction went to his firm, and much of the money was spent on work for Graham.

"I've been with (Graham) since he ran for Congress in '93, and whatever Lindsey does this cycle, I'll be in his corner," Quinn said in one interview last year.

In 1999, Graham himself did a lengthy question and answer with the Southern Partisan on his life and the Clinton impeachment. A spokesman for Graham said they were waiting to comment until after this story was published.

Quinn's writings, which garnered press 15 years ago (with occasional rehashes from liberal bloggers sometimes taking quotes out of context) during the McCain campaign, have done little harm to his reputation or that of his well-regarded consulting firm.

He maintained to BuzzFeed News that he didn't do much work for the Southern Partisan. He said he regarded it as a client of his consulting firm and said it was a mistake to appear on the masthead. He said fellow editors did most of the work.

Southern Partisan/Courtesy of The Bancroft Library/University of California, Berkeley

Quinn did write for the magazine, though.

"...[M]assive evidence suggests that slave families were rarely separated," Quinn wrote in a 1983 column for the magazine, discussing a Newsweek article that described the break up of a slave family. "Efforts were made uniformly across the South to keep families together (in part because good morale was good for business). The record also shows that many freed slaves stayed South, kept close ties with their former owners and found for themselves a life altogether more satisfying than their cousins who ended up sleeping with rats in Harlem."

In another column from that year, Quinn said Martin Luther King Day "should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane."

"King's memory represents, more than anything else, the idea that institutional arrangement — laws, ordinances and tradition — should be subordinated to the individual's conscience," wrote Quinn. "The brand of civil disobedience he preached (and for which he is remembered) exhorts his followers to regard social reform as a process to be carried out in the streets."

He concluded: "Ignoring the real heroes in our nation's life, the blacks have chosen a man who represents not their emancipation, not their sacrifices and bravery in service to their country; rather, they have chosen a man whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul."

In the interview with BuzzFeed News, Quinn said today he believes King's strategy of civil disobedience worked, and he's come to admire his philosophy.

"By today's standard he was a moderate... I admire him," Quinn said.

In a column on David Duke's election to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989, Quinn called Duke a complex man, and attacked the "smug media celebrities who had planned to make giblet gravy" out of his appearances on TV.

"David Duke didn't quite comply with their carefully cultivated stereotype of the Southern redneck," he wrote. "He wasn't fat or illiterate. He didn't even chew tobacco. Duke turned out to be smoothly polished and articulate, with a quick smile and a clean-cut almost innocent look. Under tough interrogation by the best in the business, he handled himself pretty well."

He wrote positively of Duke's agenda and said his election was a rejection of politics as usual.

"What a better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke? What better way to tweak the nose of the establishment?"

In 1990, Quinn wrote negatively about Nelson Mandela, whom he called a "terrorist" and a "bad egg" and said his visit to the United States "demonstrated that the opinion industry in America has also made a mockery of the First Amendment."

"How many people out there across the face of America are well aware that Mandela is a bad egg, maybe even say so in the comfort and security of their homes, but are afraid to express their real opinions publicly," wrote Quinn.

"After all, Mr. Mandela was put in jail 27 years ago – not because of his humanitarian philosophy – but because he was a terrorist who openly advocated (and personally committed) violence against the government," he added.

In the interview with BuzzFeed News, Quinn argued many of his views from the 1980s were mainstream at the time. He said his column wasn't "a defense of David Duke" but of "the voters of his district" who elected the former Klan leader to the Louisiana State House. Quinn also said he's come to admire Mandela, saying the details of Mandela's early life "are no longer relevant."

Beyond the magazine, Quinn also entered the fray on some Confederate-related issues.

In 1999, when South Carolina was debating keep the Confederate battle flag over the statehouse, Quinn was one of a number of those quoted in an Associated Press article as flag defenders arguing blacks fought for the confederacy. His son, a state legislator at the time, also took an active role in the debate.

"Tens of thousands of blacks took an active military role for the south," said the elder Quinn according to the AP.

An article he wrote for Partisan slammed the tireless "militant groups" seeking to redefine the Confederate flag.

"Tirelessly militant groups are out there who seek to define the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of hate, no better than the Swastika. Their goal is to rape history and make Southerners ashamed of their past. We must employ all the strategic skill we can muster to prevent them from winning this defining battle. Losing, while persuading ourselves that we are wrapped in the glorious cause is not the answer. We must find a way to win."

The article called Quinn "a founder" of the magazine. Quinn today said that was a mistake. He said he only wrote his column when the magazine needed to fill space.

"I expressed views 15 to 20 years ago I no longer hold," Quinn told BuzzFeed News. "In a fair world you're writing a story that shouldn't be written."

An Associated Press report in 2001 described Quinn as the part owner of the Partisan. Corporation filings with the state of South Carolina filed in 1986 also listed Quinn as the registered agent for the Partisan.

Quinn's past neo-Confederate views and magazine editing have been long-known. In 2000, People for the American Way (which provided BuzzFeed News with original copies of the Southern Partisan on request) asked McCain's presidential campaign to fire Quinn in a letter for his past work with the Southern Partisan. It briefly became an issue during the campaign.

At the time, then-Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer said Quinn's writings were "offensive." McCain stood by Quinn and said he had never read his writing. He cited Quinn's work for Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, and others.

Quinn at the time also tried to distance himself from the magazine's content.

''I am not the working day-to-day editor of Southern Partisan,'' he told the New York Times in 2000. ''My title as editor in chief is purely honorary. Frankly, I do not personally read the articles before they are printed, and I certainly disagree with many of the opinions expressed by others on the pages of the magazine.''

The Southern Partisan wrote an editorial in late 1999 that claimed some quotes from other authors were taken out-of-context (it does seem some of the quotes from 1999 were taken out-of-context), but the editorial didn't contest anything Quinn had written.

By 2001, Quinn's name was off the masthead on the website. The Associated Press reported at the time that it was because the association with the magazine was damaging his clients.

Quinn said he couldn't remember when he stopped editing for the Southern Partisan, although he once wrote of being in the office of the magazine in 1993. Quinn today called that "speaking loosely" saying the "office" at the Partisan was the desk of a Partisan colleague at his consulting firm.

"I kept trying to get someone else to edit because I didn't want to do it," Quinn said.

Years before, however, in 1988, a Washington Post story noted the magazine in an article about Quinn's work as a speechwriter for Pat Robertson's campaign. In that article, Quinn defended the magazine:

"The magazine is about the soul of the South," said Quinn in 1988. "There are traditions for respect for the land, family integrity and honor, a strong belief in God and the power of prayer . . . The South has historically been given the guilt of slavery. People seem to forget that slavery was an economic transaction, shipped in through Northern ports and sold to Southern planters . . . To understand the Old South it's much more important to understand religion."

In 1999, Graham spoke with the Southern Partisan for a lengthy question-and-answer interview on his life and time in Congress. The interview did not touch on any neo-Confederate topics, and Quinn told BuzzFeed News that he was not present for the interview (Quinn said the magazine also interviewed other people such as Willard Scott, Trent Lott, Walter Williams, John Ashcroft, John Shelton Reed, Patrick McSweeeny, and Thad Cochran).

The issue that Graham's interview ran in featured full-page ads for the book Was Jefferson Davis Right?, and an anti-George W. Bush article slamming him for speaking even mildly supportively of gay rights by pledging to hire openly-gay people to his administration. An opinion column on the page following Graham's interview attacked the theory of evolution and another article called for removing children from all public schools.

That issue's "General Store Catalogue" featured a cotton t-shirt labeled "I have a dream" on the front, and featuring an image of a Confederate flag flying over the White House. A shirt labeled "Lincoln's Worst Nightmare" on the front featured southern flags with the words "A States Rights Republican Majority From Dixie" imprinted on the back.

Quinn said the catalogue was a revenue-raising project for the magazine, he said he didn't even know of the store at a time.


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Democratic Senator: Obama Administration Is Failing On Domestic Spying

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Sen. Ron Wyden says the U.S. government is still spying on Americans and administration officials aren’t being held accountable.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat and one of the sharpest critics of the Obama administration's domestic surveillance programs, isn't satisfied with the changes to those programs and he wants to know why President Obama hasn't just stopped the NSA bulk-data collection.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Wyden bluntly warned that even after the NSA scandal that started with Edward Snowden's disclosures, the Obama administration has continued programs to monitor the activities of American citizens in ways that the public is unaware of and that could be giving government officials intimate details of citizens' lives.

Asked if intelligence agencies have domestic surveillance programs of which the public is still unaware, Wyden said simply, "Yeah, there's plenty of stuff."

But the Oregon Democrat would not specify what those programs were. "I can't give you that answer, because there's things that I know that are classified," he said.

Questions from Wyden in the past have signaled other, bigger problems. His 2013 questioning of former NSA Chief James Clapper about his agency's bulk data collection partially inspired Snowden to leak documents outlining the administration's bulk-data collection program.

Even in cases where the public has been informed of government practices, Wyden warned the government still collects far too much information on millions of citizens with virtually no accountability. "You have all of this data and you can tell whether somebody called the psychiatrist three times in 24 hours, once after midnight? You can't tell me that that doesn't tell you a whole lot about somebody," Wyden said.

Wyden also raised concerns with administration efforts to expand its current surveillance system, including a push for tech companies to include so-called "backdoors" into their hardware and software that could be used for surveillance purposes.

"I'm going to fight that with everything I've got … Once the good guys have the keys, the bad guys have the keys and this is going to be incredibly damaging to innovation," Wyden said.

Wyden criticized the few changes announced by the Obama administration, arguing they do nothing to substantively protect American citizens. "There's no there there," he said, arguing "Why can't we stop bulk collection today? The president has the authority to stop all these phone records on millions and millions of law abiding Americans."

"They understand now that people are going to be paying more attention … but there is very little there that is new or is going to assure more accountability."

Wyden made clear he has little faith serious changes will be made so long as the current leaders of the intelligence community, like Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, retain their jobs. "The ways this works is, these are individuals who serve at the pleasure of the president … [and] the president wants them there."

"All of these officials … work for the president of the United States, so you can ask him about it. But I don't have confidence in [CIA Director] Brennan," Wyden added bluntly.

Wyden was particularly harsh in his assessment of how the White House has handled the CIA's spying on Senate staffers working for the Intelligence Committee.

"If a 19-year-old kid who worked at BuzzFeed or a blog or something like that did what the CIA did with respect to the Senate's files, the kid's in jail," Wyden said. "The kid's in jail. There's still substantial questions about whether the computer fraud and abuse act got violated. I've got some very serious questions about that."

Wyden clearly relishes his role as a check on the intelligence community's ever growing push for more authority. Over the years, the Obama administration has ignored dozens of questions from Wyden made either in public hearings, open letters, or private communications.

For instance, asked whether agencies are collection geolocation data on American citizens, Wyden said, "I know the answer to that question, I asked that very question [during an October 2013 hearing], I did not get an answer to it, and you can draw your own conclusions from that. And I'm going to keep asking it" until officials come clean.

"I continue to believe there is a culture of misinformation that is spawned by the leadership at the agencies," Wyden said, arguing pushing Brennan and other leaders both in public and private can force fundamental changes in the various intelligence agencies.

Although opponents of domestic surveillance programs have criticized Wyden for not coming forward and explicitly warning the public when he learned of them, he argued to do so would substantially limit his ability to conduct oversight of the nation's intelligence services.

"You don't get to be on the intelligence committee if you do that, number one," Wyden said.

"But number two, it seems to me that there is an important role to play to have some people in the room that are going to ask some questions that aren't going to get to be asked — which is what I've tried to do," he added.

Justice Department Asks Federal Appeals Court To Lift Block On Obama Immigration Actions

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The Justice Department is seeking to lift a judge’s ruling that blocked President Obama’s actions to defer the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants during legal proceedings about the constitutionality of those actions.

Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

The Justice Department on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to lift the judge's ruling that stopped President Obama's immigration executive actions from going into effect during a lawsuit over the constitutionality of the actions.

If successful, the move would allow the government to continue with its plans to implement the Obama's executive actions while the court makes a determination on the lawsuit.

Last month, a federal district judge in Texas, Andrew Hanen, issued the temporary injunction that stopped the actions from going into place. After the ruling was issued, the White House told reporters that the DOJ would seek an emergency order from an appeals court to allow the federal government to continue with Obama's executive actions.

The Justice Department's filing to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday asking for emergency relief in the case follows a decision by the judge, Hanen, to delay ruling on the Justice Department's stay request filed in his court. He will first rule on another issue related to the immigration actions.

Prior to filing the request at the 5th Circuit, the Justice Department filed a notice with Hanen's court, responding to questions he raised earlier this week about the roughly 100,000 three-year deferrals the Department of Homeland Security has granted under the initial "substantive eligibility guidelines" of the 2012 DACA [spell it out] program and informed Hanen that the department would be asking the 5th Circuit for a stay given the "critical federal interests at issue."

Read the full filing:

State Department: Clinton Used A Personal Blackberry While Secretary

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“Secretary Clinton was also not issued a State Department Blackberry and that wasn’t a requirement — no one is required to be issued a State Department Blackberry,” State spokeswoman says.

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a personal Blackberry during her tenure there, a spokeswoman for the department said Thursday.

"Secretary Clinton was also not issued a State Department Blackberry and that wasn't a requirement — no one is required to be issued a State Department Blackberry," Jennifer Psaki told reporters at a press briefing.

Psaki said that prior to 2014, the State-issued devices did not allow for the use of multiple email accounts, and said that State.gov email cannot be received on devices not issued by the department.

"She had a personal device; I can't speak to what was done on that personal device and what was not," Psaki said, when asked about the department's policy on security for devices used for official business. "That's a question I would pose to her team."


Democratic Senator: Cotton Letter "Dangerous Territory," Unlike Anything In U.S. History

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“It would have been like, you know, some of the folks who opposed the Iraq War, if they would’ve written a letter to Saddam Hussein.”

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Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia called the actions of Republican senators who sent a letter to the Iranian government "dangerous territory," and unlike anything in United States diplomatic history.

The letter, sent on Monday, warned the Iranian government to think twice about entering into a deal regarding its nuclear program with President Obama, who the senators noted has a limited term in office.

"I don't think in American diplomatic history we've ever seen anything like this. It would have been like, you know, some of the folks who opposed the Iraq War, if they would've written a letter to Saddam Hussein. I think we are getting into quite honestly dangerous territory," the Democratic senator said on the John Fredericks Show earlier in the week.

The senator added he didn't think the American people would support a military option unless diplomacy was tried first.

"I thought the prime minister of Israel, Bibi's speech last week was a powerful speech, but in many ways he said 'you can't trust Iran' and I don't disagree with that. You know, 'don't do this deal,' but then he said 'go get a better deal' and sitting on the intel committee, hearing everything, the strength of our sanctions is our ability to maintain all of the international community keeping sanctions on. I think we have to—you know—I don't think the American people are ready to say, alright, we are immediately going to go to military action or potentially war, if we don't at least try diplomacy first. I think we have to take the military option on the table but I think this is a very dangerous precedent. I was disappointed that so many, you know, Republicans find that the senator who led this effort, Senator Cotton, at least he's been forthright because he said his whole goal was to make sure there's no deal."

Warner said it would have been "equally inappropriate" for Democrats to send a letter against President Bush.

"It think it would be equally inappropriate if a group of Democrats sent a letter against President Bush. I mean this—at some point America's strength has been for most our history, you know, that we can argue about foreign policy but particularly when we present ourselves to other governments, we present a united force."

Progressives: We’ve Never Heard Of This “Progressive” Group Backing Obama’s Trade Deal

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The “Progressive Coalition For American Jobs,” run by former Obama campaign staffers, purports to represent the progressive left on the trade deal that the progressive left hates.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, progressives were surprised to learn they were "split" on President Obama's trade agenda.

Few issues have galvanized the American left like trade promotion authority, legislation that would pave the way for the administration to fast-track trade negotiations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — the trade deal the Obama administration is working tirelessly to make a reality and many Democrats oppose. From senators to the activists that make up the organized left (trade unions, environmentalists, human rights advocates), progressives can't stand the trade deal.

Yet there it was in black and white: "RIFT AMONG PROGRESSIVES EMERGES ON TPP," read a headline in Politico's daily labor and employment tipsheet, Morning Shift. The short item detailed the emergence of the "Progressive Coalition for American Jobs " — a group of "progressives and Democrats committed to leveling the playing field for American workers," according to the coalition's barebones website. The website adds that "it's critical that we give the president trade promotion authority and establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

There's something weird about the group, though: No one in the Washington, D.C., progressive community seems to have ever heard of them before.

"Who are they? Are they getting paid? And this group will convince anybody of what?" asked Sen. Sherrod Brown. "There is zero progressive interest in this [trade promotion authority]."

The group's website provides few details about when the coalition was launched or who's working for the group. But the team behind the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs includes some of the most senior members of Obama's campaign team. Lefty site Daily Kos reported Mitch Stewart, the former aide the president tapped to run Organizing For America, and Lynda Tran, the former OFA press secretary are involved. A press release earlier in the week announcing the group came from 270 Strategies, the campaign firm started by Stewart and Obama's former field director, Jeremy Bird.

Tran told BuzzFeed News the purpose of the group was to boost liberal voices who support the Obama trade agenda.

While there is Democratic support for increasing free trade and the White House has made an effort to placate progressives, arguing any deal will include tough language supporting labor rights and environmental protections, that message hasn't landed with the left. The Progressive Caucus in the House has released their own set of trade principles arguing that they believe it's "possible to negotiate a trade agreement that doesn't replicate the mistakes of the past." But as it currently stands, House progressives remain diametrically opposed to Obama's trade agenda.

"If you look at the progressives — labor unions, activists, online organizations — who are lined up against the TPP, there are no credible groups left to build a 'coalition,'" said an aide to a progressive House member, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record. "The creation of a front group like PCAJ is a sign people pushing for a bad trade deal don't have the votes to jam the [trade deal] through Congress."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said publicly she would like to find a way for Democrats to get to a "yes" vote on trade promotion authority in order to support the Obama administration and has privately cautioned her members to keep their powder dry in order to negotiate the most liberal deal possible.

A senior Democratic leadership aide told BuzzFeed News that the emergence of a group like the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs would bring "some modicum of balance" to the public discussion of the trade negotiations.

"I do think it's helpful to have an outside space for this to happen and for progressives to have a more balanced conversation about this," the aide said.

That's not how everyone feels, however. With the emergence of the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs, some progressives got the feeling Obama's allies were trying to flip the script.

"It's insulting," said Candice Johnson, spokesperson for the Communications Workers of America, one of the many unions organized against TPP. "You put progressive in your name and that's going to convince people?"

She called the group "fake," noting that it includes none of the biggest names in progressive politics in its coalition. Johnson wasn't alone in that characterization.

"As far as I know, the only thing 'progressive' about this so called 'Progressive Coalition for American Jobs' is the first word of the group's name," said Becky Bond, president of CREDO, the San Francisco-based progressive activist known to tangle publicly with the White House.

The Progressive Coalition For American Jobs strikes a nerve with organized progressives, who often feel sidelined in prominent debates, even during the Obama administration. The invovlment of 270 Strategies, which supported the candidate progressives opposed in a strange Democrat-vs-Democrat California congressional race last year, was particularly upsetting for some on the left.

"At this point, 270 strategies is well known for its AstroTurf efforts to slap a progressive label on the endeavors of Wall Street Wing Democrats and their corporate masters, but this is an earth-shattering new low," Neil Sroka, spokesperson for Democracy For America, the progressive group formed from the remnants of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid, told BuzzFeed News in an email. "You can be a progressive committed to fighting for working families or you can be for this massive job-killing trade deal written by 500 corporate reps, but you can't be both."

Tran, the former Obama aide, said the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs is about adding more voices to the trade debate, not silencing the progressive coalition already lined up against trade.

"When we looked around for other progressive voices making the case for free and fair trade, we found that there wasn't really a vehicle for engaging the public around the benefits of this trade deal," she wrote in an email. "So we decided to get involved and help launch the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs to bring together progressives across the activist, advocacy, and business communities."

Tran didn't answer questions about who funds the group or who the coalition's members are. But she pushed back on the notion that the group lacks progressive bona fides.

"As you know, Mitch and I are serving as advisors to PCAJ —and we have spent our lives fighting to advance progressive ideals," she wrote. "We believe this effort is not only in line with our values — the same values that led us to fight to help pass the Affordable Care Act, overturn 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' and support President Obama's many other progressive policies — it's an incredible opportunity to make our world more just and more connected. Giving trade promotion authority to the president and enacting the TPP have the potential to do more to advance progressive ideals and values around the world than any other trade agenda in history."

The coalition "won't be hosting rallies or organizing major field activities," Tran wrote, but will instead focus on helping "get the word out" on Obama's trade deals.

There has been some outreach to members on the Hill, especially among members of the New Democrat coalition, a group of moderate House Democrats — many who would appear more open to Obama's trade agenda.

"They are going to be making ad buys and make the case that, with TPP and [trade promotion authority], we are getting some of the most progressive trade deals done that we've ever seen," said an aide to a member in the New Democratic coalition who has been in touch with the PCAJ. "There is a progressive case to be made for this and I think the goal of this group is to say, 'There's more than one kind of progressive out there with a message on trade' and that hasn't been heard."

Asked about the group, a White House spokesman said the administration "welcomed" the group's input.

"The president has made clear that expanding jobs and opportunities through progressive trade deals is a priority. It's not surprising that groups that share this commitment have decided to add their voice to the discussion, and we welcome their input," the spokesperson said.

Whatever the Progressive Coalition For American Jobs does in the coming days, though, it likely won't change any minds among progressive leaders.

"I have been in the trenches working on TPP from the beginning, and as far as I can tell there is no one in favor of it except big corporations," Mike Lux, a top progressive consultant in Washington, wrote in an email. "Every progressive group and sector that works on economic issues — labor, consumer groups, enviros, the online groups, civil rights groups, human rights groups, you name it — is vehemently against TPP, so I don't know what progressives are in this group's coalition."

The Koch Brother-Funded Latino Group That Democrats Fear And Loathe

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The Libre Initiative helps immigrants learn to drive in Nevada, does food banks in Texas and holds free health clinics in Florida. So why are Democrats in key states ringing alarm bells up to the national party about the organization?

Jenny Chang/BuzzFeed

Last August, Pastor Marcus Burgos brought a group to his church, which is located in a rough part of San Antonio. Together, Burgos and a handful of people from the group, called the LIBRE Initiative, distributed boxes of food to parishioners in need, the majority of whom were Hispanic.

In Florida, the organization helps Latinos with tax-preparation services. In Nevada, the group is helping undocumented immigrants get their driver's authorization cards. The LIBRE Initiative, in short, is helping Latinos with the things regular people need help with.

And it's alarming Democrats.

LIBRE is a group backed by billionaires Charles and David Koch. They've been providing services and building meaningful relationships with Hispanics since 2011 in states like Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Texas, and Arizona — and they're doing this all while espousing conservative principles to a key demographic of voters in person, in print, and online.

Democrats from these key states are upset about it, too. They say LIBRE effectively misleads Hispanics on a whole host of issues. And they worry the national Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel, unaware that the group is winning a game most Democrats don't even know is being played.

"I brought the LIBRE Initiative up to party leaders and their response was 'What? Who?'" said one Democratic official who asked for anonymity to speak frankly. "At the national level they didn't know who they were."

Who the Libre Initiative really is depends on who you're talking to.

The group says its nonpartisan, but right-leaning in ideology.

Its executive director, Daniel Garza, is a former George W. Bush administration official, and the group employs other former Republican staffers and operatives. LIBRE has received $10 million since 2011 from Koch-affiliated entities (Freedom Partners and the TC4 Trust), according to public records. Garza told BuzzFeed News the funding is public information but the group doesn't talk about it — he prefers to focus on their principles and work.

That work spans seven states with 50 employees, primarily in the Southwest, with a major presence in Florida and plans to add 20 people and expand into North Carolina and Wisconsin next. Libre, which means 'free' in Spanish, guides the group's central focus on economic freedom.

Garza says community building makes up the majority of Libre's work now ahead of the 2016 election, and that each region gets different services depending on what the community is asking for. That means that in Texas there might be more of an education focus with back to school efforts as well as giving food and helping the children at the border; Florida involves the tax prep and school choice events; and in Nevada — where the group is helping undocumented immigrants get their driver's authorization cards — immigration issues are the priority.

"We don't look at whether someone is documented or not," Garza said. "That's why we're active in supporting immigration reform."

LIBRE's critics (and there are many, with the mere mention of the group leading to impassioned rants), say Nevada is the perfect case study, showcasing the gulf between their words and actions on immigration, in a state where those issues play a key role in the economy.

While LIBRE helps immigrants pass their driver's tests, which helps them get to work, Democrats and Latino advocates say the group is silent when it comes to Republican-led legislation in Nevada that would make it harder for immigrants to live in the state.

One such bill in the assembly, AB 133, introduced by state Assemblyman Ira Hansen, would make it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to work in construction by penalizing their employers. Critics say if LIBRE really has the best interest of Nevada immigrants at heart, they would fight legislation like this. Garza said the group has limited resources but doesn't rule out taking on Republicans. He noted they've already slammed Marco Rubio over sugar subsidies, for example.

LIBRE is also hammered for the way they explain their stance on Obama's immigration actions. Garza said the "train has left the station" on the president's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — the program has been implemented and young people are benefitting from it, he argued. But he feels differently about the recent executive actions that would shield 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

"We're not against the intent of the executive actions but when there is executive overreach we support reigning it in," he said. "I can see why people are confused about our position, it has more to do with President Barack Obama than us and the ineptitude he has shown in getting permanent bipartisan immigration reform."

Garza said it might be tough for undocumented immigrants to accept that argument, but it's fundamental to America. "At the end of the day you came to America because America gives you stability, gives you rule of law, and it has that because it was founded on constitutional principles," he said. "When the president exceeds his authority, it's against the will of the people, Congress in this case. He should be called on it, I know that's tough for people to buy."

Democrats find it tough to buy. Lucy Flores, a Democrat who ran for lieutenant governor in Nevada in 2014, said the organization speaks out of both sides of their mouth.

"You can't talk about why executive action is bad and then turn back around and help them with the immigration process. You can't say you're helping Latinos and then be silent," she said.

Flores tangled recently with LIBRE, when the group was doing exactly the kind of thing that worries Democrats: LIBRE had planned to be a top sponsor of a of the Cesar Chavez Festival in Las Vegas later this month.

That decision sparked a protest from local activists and lawmakers. When the flier with the LIBRE Initiative logo came out, five groups and local councilman Isaac Barron reached out to event organizers. Barron said he either wanted his name off the flier or LIBRE's.

It got so serious that Alejandro Chavez — a grandson of Cesar Chavez's — got involved, telling Rivera, "It would be a disrespect to the family because LIBRE Initiative do not represent what Cesar Chavez fought for, he was a union leader and they do anti-union and anti-collective bargaining messaging."

The festival dropped LIBRE from the event's sponsors.

Unsurprisingly, it's not just the executive actions or labor issues that Democrats take issue with. Democrats don't like the group's opposition to Obamacare or their willingness to advocate against Latino candidates with whom they disagree.

In 2014, LIBRE spent $1.4 million in two separate ad buys taking on Democratic candidates for their support of the Affordable Care Act. One ad buy targeted Pete Gallego in Texas and Joe Garcia in Florida, who both lost.

"It's unacceptable that an organization that claims to support the Latino community is attacking Latino candidates," said Labor Council For Latin American Advancement president Hector Sanchez, who works to increase Latino representation in government. "We are the most underrepresented group when it comes to public office, to have them going after Latino candidates is an attack on the Latino community."

In Garcia's race, LIBRE backed Carlos Curbelo, who is also Latino.

Garza said that all things being equal it would be great to have more Latino elected leaders — but maintained that ideological principles matter. "The problem is ideas have consequences, ideas matter. If it's a non-Latino who has better ideas we're going to support them. What we care about is principles, what is generating poverty and dependency, we want self-reliance," he said.

He said his group doesn't want to keep health care from Latinos, but wants to move away from a system where "government mandates the individual." He said support for Obamacare among Latinos has dropped in a major way.

It's true that in 2014, Pew reported Hispanic support had decreased from 61% to 47% in six months. Last month, though, Pew said that number was back up to 63%.

"You can call it freedom but it's really freedom to exploit," said Cristóbal Alex, the president of the Latino Victory Project, a fundraising effort that supports Democratic candidates. "Latinos benefit more than any demographic, they have the highest number of uninsured."

In 2014, uninsured Latinos dropped from 36% of the population to 23%, though Latino enrollment in the ACA is said to be lagging. Pew told BuzzFeed News updated numbers won't be available until this September.

Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP


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Jeff Flake Just Wants To Talk About Spending Again

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The Arizona Republican wants to live up to Tom Coburn’s legacy and get back to what started his rise to the Senate in the first place. “They’ll come after him with knives,” Coburn says.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — When Tom Coburn retired from the U.S. Senate last year — early — the gruff Oklahoman doctor immediately created an absence in Washington.

An outsider with a scruffy demeanor, occasionally sporting a silver beard or maybe a goatee, he was a vicious critic of waste and insufficiently conservative policy wherever he found it.

He stood on the Senate floor — more than once — and ripped up giant paper credit cards with the national debt printed on them. He upset everyone. He helped pioneer the fiscal conservatism and federalist emphasis of the post-Bush Republican Party, but criticized the plan to defund Obamacare as "dishonest." He put holds on hundreds of bills during his time in the Senate, including a veteran's suicide prevention bill right before he left Congress. He swears that the Senate revoked his ability to practice medicine pro bono while also serving was retribution for blocking bills and calling out other members on earmarks he found egregious. This was the senator who once called Harry Reid an "absolute asshole."

Sen. Jeff Flake is not like this. No one would ever confuse the two men. But the truth is, he might be Coburn's successor on Capitol Hill — at least, he's certainly trying to take on the Oklahoman's legacy.

A tan, tall, blonde man with a blindingly white smile, Flake refuses to curse. The Arizona senator is polite to a fault, easygoing, and according to the senior senator of his state, incredibly handsome.

"If I looked like Jeff Flake, I'd be president of the United States," John McCain said.

The cleancut image belies a Republican unorthodoxy on a number of key issues that's separated him from many of his colleagues. He is for large immigration bills that would eventually allow illegal immigrants to earn citizenship. His work with the Senate's "Gang of Eight" on immigration earned him the scorn of conservative right. He's supportive of approving the president's nominees, including Loretta Lynch for Attorney General. He supports open relations with Cuba and lifting the travel ban there (more than once he's been termed "Obama's ally" on the issue).

But now that Republicans have the majority in Congress, Flake is hoping that he'll be able to go back to being known for the thing that got him to Congress in the first place: federal spending. While he served in the House, the Club For Growth championed Flake, who was something of an earmark hipster — against them before it was cool. He rankled Republicans and Democrats alike during every appropriations season, spending hours on the floor trying to defund other lawmaker's projects funneling money home.

Because of the emphasis, Flake got yelled at, a lot. There was the time Republican Curt Weldon proclaimed he wasn't going to let Flake stand on the floor in" total and complete ignorance and spout off a bunch of gobbledygook" when Flake challenged an earmark in Weldon's Pennsylvania district.

Then there was the time Jose Serrano, a Democrat from the Bronx, was livid that Flake tried to cut $300,000 from the Bronx council of the arts.

"The more you get up on me sir, the more I realize you don't know what you are talking about," he said on the floor.

Despite his hundreds of attempts, Flake was successful in his anti-earmark crusading only once: targeting a North Carolina Republican for a Christmas tree project in his district.

"It was Patrick McHenry's perfect Christmas tree project. And he had angered the Democrats so many times, they wanted to punish them more than they wanted to protect earmarks," he told BuzzFeed News. "You've got to go after both parties, if you want credibility."

While Flake continued to push his House agenda on spending and took up many of Coburn's causes — including doing things like offering Coburn's amendment to the Keystone XL pipeline "to identify and eliminate duplicative green building programs across the federal government", those efforts went largely unnoticed due to the oxygen taken up by looming fiscal deadlines and partisan fights Flake tends to shy away from.

Meanwhile, a bigger platform should be opening — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised the Senate's return to regular order when it comes to the budget and appropriations. And that's where Flake vows to return to being the kind of pain in the ass he was in the House.

Asked why he hasn't gotten more attention for his work on fiscal issues in the Senate thus far, Flake said there just hasn't been enough of a focus on spending in the Senate.

"It's just difficult when we haven't done appropriations," he said. "When we've had no appropriation bills on the floor and there's really been no focus on discretionary spending so that's the tough part."

Flake's begun a press effort around the topic, issuing a "weekly roasting of egregious federal spending" that's straight out of Coburn's playbook. Coburn's yearly "Wastebook" highlighted similar offenses: money for a 3-D pizza printer, a $297 million "mega-blimp," and money for a "superheroes documentary."

His 2012 Senate race earned him the endorsements of a wide swath of conservative groups and figures like Sarah Palin. But his time in the Senate and goodwill with conservatives has hit a bit of a rough spot as he worked on passing a large immigration bill in the Senate with a bipartisan group (conservative radio host Laura Ingraham said she'd move to Arizona to primary Flake if she had to). And he's had to learn to take some heat back home just by virtue of representing an entire state rather than one very conservative district.

Part of that, too, is that Flake just isn't as flashy or attention grabbing as some of his fellow freshman senators, like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. He hasn't tried to block legislation, and doesn't believe Republicans can seriously defund Obamacare through appropriations. And it's difficult to get Flake to say a bad word about President Obama.

"I do disagree with him a lot but when I do agree with him I'm not afraid to say it," Flake said.

"You can get some good headlines by being partisan but you'll be a flash in the pan," he added.

But those that have known him longest say Flake's the real deal on spending — and don't think the issues Flake has chosen to take on should shock anyone.

"I don't think he's changed. He talks more about Cuba and immigration reform now but it's been years he's been advocating for those things," said Rep. Matt Salmon, a conservative hardliner in the House who noted that Flake's higher profile in the Senate just draws more attention to some of the positions he's long held.

And there's still this idea that this approach — the occasional breaks with the party's momentum — are the basis for other successes. Before Flake was elected to the House in 2001, he and Salmon visited Capitol Hill. Coburn was the first and most obvious person Flake said he wanted to meet.

"I went in and Matt said, 'This is Jeff Flake,' and Dr. Coburn said, 'Are going to be as big of a 'blankety-blank' as you need to be?'" Flake recalled. (A devout Mormon, Flake says swearing is not one of his vices.)

"You've got to do that, if you want credibility on an issue and that's why Tom Coburn was so effective. You couldn't tell if he had a partisan bone in his body sometimes he was going after who ever did it," Flake added. "People knew and respected him because of that, it wasn't a personal thing."

Coburn, meanwhile, is back in Oklahoma and receiving treatment for prostate cancer. His view on Congress these days is pretty grim: He left Congress in part because of his illness but mostly because he didn't feel like he could really be effective anymore. Frustrated with the process, Coburn said he told McConnell he'd be retiring about a year and a half before he actually announced he would be. He's more focused these days on beating cancer ("I think I'm meaner than cancer," he says) and working with state legislatures "to help them regain their role in fighting the federal government."

But he has some faith that Flake will be able to cause a ruckus. Much like Flake, Coburn said his holds and attempts to defund earmarks and or programs through amendments never really went in anywhere: but that was never the point. And he warned that if Flake is successful at drawing attention to spending in the way he was, he should expect to not have too many friends left in the Senate.

"He's smarter, younger, and better looking than me and he can make a big impact if he wants," Coburn said. "But if Jeff does the most effective job at this he's not going to be very well liked even though he has the most beautiful smile."

"They were to inform the American public about the stupidity about what we were doing," he said. "When you embarrass people for their stupidity, you're going to take a lot of heat for that."

Flake has already begun some of the work Coburn left behind: his staff has already begun pouring through programs in the EPA and the USDA they want to bring attention to. Earmarks may be a thing of the past, but there are plenty of government programs that home-state senators inevitably want to protect.

"They'll come after him with knives," Coburn said.

Congressman Peter King Slams Iran Letter: "It Undermines The Office Of The Presidency"

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He said it makes requiring Congressional approval of a deal “a partisan issue.”

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Rep. Peter King of New York said a letter sent by Republican senators to the Iranian government regarding a deal on its nuclear program was a bad idea that undermined the office of the presidency.

"This sounds patronizing, I don't know if they fully thought through what they were doing," King told the John Gambling Show last week.

"Yeah, I wouldn't have done it," the Long Island Republican said. "Now, I agree with everything that's in the letter I just don't believe that members of Congress either House or Senate should be negotiating or contacting directly a foreign government which is negotiating with the president. I think it undermines the office of the presidency."

The comments go further than public comments King made at an event early last week where he said, "I don't know if I would have signed the letter."

King said he understands the frustration of those who sent the letter but members of Congress shouldn't be trying contact a foreign government and he thought it hurt chances of bipartisan support for legislation that would require Congress to review any deal.

"Now I can understand their frustration. I think that President Obama's headed toward a bad deal. I get the clear impression he wants an agreement no matter what, and so I understand their frustration, but I think that it's a bad precedent to set to be reaching out and contacting, ya know, negotiating, trying to influence directly an enemy government. No matter how I would feel about the Obama administration I wouldn't have done the letter and I think what it's done also is there was really the chance of a solid partisan coalition to enact legislation requiring that Congress have to approve this agreement. This is going to make it harder to get that bipartisan support. Whether it should or not the reality is that it does because it makes it more of a partisan issue."

He called the letter's author, Sen. Tom Cotton, a "wonderful guy" and a "rising star" but said "calmer heads would have sat back and said 'just send this letter to the president. Make it an open letter to President Obama, not to the Iranian government.'"

Santorum: "Tragic" Obama Is Making America Less Safe To "Justify His Nobel Peace Prize"

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“…Barack Obama is sacrificing the security of our country in order to justify his Nobel Peace Prize that he got before he did anything. That to me is a real tragedy.”

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Former Sen. Rick Santorum says President Obama is potentially entering into an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program only to "justify his Nobel Peace Prize."

Santorum was discussing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress when he made the comments.

"For a long time what the Obama administration was doing in this negotiation was being hidden from the American public," the likely presidential candidate said on the Piscopo In The Morning show on AM970 last week. "[Netanyahu's speech] put a spotlight on the fact that Barack Obama is sacrificing the security of our country in order to justify his Nobel Peace Prize that he got before he did anything. That to me is a real tragedy."

"That you have the president of United States who is gonna put Iran on path to a nuclear weapon either in the short term -- which I believe is the case because any kind of paper agreement by a regime that has never kept a promise on any international agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on," he added. "But if they'll live up to the agreement they'll be in a position where they can be a nuclear power and that to me is completely unacceptable and I'm so glad that the prime minister came and laid that out to the American people."

The former Pennsylvania senator likewise said if he were still in the Senate he would have signed the letter Republican senators sent to the Iranian government warning them to think twice about entering into a deal regarding its nuclear program with the United States.

Furniture Company: Aaron Schock Likely Spent $5,000 On A Replica Of President Obama's Podium

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The Illinois Republican has a podium that appears to be “The Presidential.”

Schock standing behind his custom podium back in his home district of Peoria, Illinois in 2013.

Aaron Schock Instagram feed / Via instagram.com

WASHINGTON — Rep. Aaron Schock owns what appears to be a fairly accurate replica of "The Falcon" — the internal White House nickname for one of President Obama's official podiums — and based on photos, uses it at times when speaking in his Peoria, Illinois, district.

USA Today reported last month that Schock spent $79,061 in federal money on furniture in 2009, and $5,123 of that went to Mulnix Industries, a firm that makes custom furniture for public speaking in a town 40 miles outside of Jefferson City, Missouri. Page 2563 of the 2010 Statement of Disbursements of the House of Representatives shows the outlay to Mulnix, but it doesn't say exactly what the money purchased.

Schock's office did not respond to USA Today about the expenditures. But multiple photos of Schock back home in his district — including this one taken March 6 by an AP photographer — show him standing behind The Presidential, a discontinued Mulnix model still listed in the company's online catalog of "Standing Podiums."

In an interview, Mulnix General Manager Phil Crane said it was "very likely" he sold a Presidential to Schock, though he said he'd have to laboriously go through old records to be sure. The model was pretty popular when Mulnix made it — the company sent four to the U.S. Consulate in Pretoria, South Africa — and Crane said it sold for "somewhere around" $5,000 a piece.

Mulnix is a specialty firm that makes everything custom for each order, Crane said, and it was the profit margin from The Presidential that led to it being discontinued, not a drop-off in demand.

"They're a time-consuming product," he said. "The reason we discontinued them is that we just weren't making any money on them. It's a lot of handwork."

Asked about the podium and whether the congressman's office purchased it, a representative for Schock pointed to images of other members standing by podiums similar in design to the "The Falcon." The podium used regularly by speakers in the U.S. Senate's Ohio Clock Corridor has a similar design to "The Falcon" but also significant differences. The Mulnix Presidential physically resembles "The Falcon" almost exactly.

"This style podium is similar to that used by many Members of Congress at events so that members of the media have a place to attach their microphones and recorders," the Schock representative said.

"The Falcon" is the middle child of the three official podiums most commonly used by Obama. The larger is known as The Blue Goose. The smallest is called "The Toast," and is basically a very small platform atop a metal pole. As Politico reported in 2009, "The Falcon" was invented by George W. Bush's team "so more of the background is visible on television" versus The Blue Goose.

Members of Congress purchasing their own podiums for use in their districts is not rare, according to House veterans reached by BuzzFeed News, though it's also not very common. Many members carry a portable House seal to put on the front of whatever podium they're speaking behind on the road.


This One Weird Trick Will Not Help You Get Elected President: Mike Huckabee's "Free" DVDs

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Terms and conditions may apply.

Jim Young / Reuters

A New York Times report Monday raised concerns about former Gov. Mike Huckabee's business practices. Some of the examples listed in the report were a medically-questionable "diabetes cure" he peddled and ads on his email list telling people to hoard food.

These methods aren't the only way Huckabee has made money since leaving office. Huckabee promotes "FREE" DVD programs that have recurring charges hidden away in the fine print. Huckabee promoted the programs on his popular Fox News show and on his Facebook page. The programs are made by the company Learn Our History, which Huckabee co-founded. The company is part of EverBright Media

BuzzFeed News previously reported that Huckabee repeatedly pushed an ad to his email list for a secret biblical cancer cure, sent out with the subject line: "Why is THIS Bible verse changing atheists' minds?" (Huckabee has not responded to voicemails left on his phone or emails to an email address associated with him).

Other emails have subject lines like "Revealed! The one thing that could take down Obama… Finally," and "Obama's FDA cover-up could cost you your life." The ads carry a disclaimer that it might not reflect Huckabee's views but the ads are sent out by him.

Mike Huckabee will often promote "free" DVDs on his Facebook page.

Mike Huckabee will often promote "free" DVDs on his Facebook page.

Via Facebook: mikehuckabee

Following the link will bring you to the page to pay the shipping for the FREE* DVD. This one was for the "Rules of the Road," one of EverBright's products.

Following the link will bring you to the page to pay the shipping for the FREE* DVD. This one was for the "Rules of the Road," one of EverBright's products.

Via rulesoftheroadorders.com


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Obama: Legalizing Marijuana Should Be "Way At The Bottom" Of Young Voters' Priority Lists

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“There is a legitimate, I think, concern about the overall effects this has on society, particularly vulnerable parts of our society.”

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WASHINGTON — Young voters hell-bent on legalizing pot have their priorities out of whack, according to President Obama.

"First of all it shouldn't be young people's biggest priority," Obama told Vice in an interview that posted Monday. "Let's put it in perspective. Young people, I understand this is important to you. But you should be thinking about climate change, the economy, jobs. War and peace. Maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana."

Obama pushed back on the notion that legalizing pot would solve more problems than it would create.

"I always say to folks, legalization or decriminalization is not a panacea," Obama said. "Do you feel the same way about meth? Do we feel the same way about coke? How about crack? How about heroin? There is a legitimate, I think, concern about the overall effects this has on society, particularly vulnerable parts of our society."

In some of his most extensive comments about legalization, Obama said advocates should draw a distinction between legalization and decriminalization. The growing bipartisan cry for criminal justice advocacy is building momentum for decriminalization across the country.

"Substance abuse generally, legal and illegal substances, is a problem," Obama said. "Locking somebody up for 20 years is probably not the best strategy."

Missouri LT. Governor: "More Racism In The Justice Department" Than Entire St. Louis Area

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“It is the left. It is the Eric Holder and Obama-left and their minions who are obsessed with race. The rest of us are moving on beyond it.”

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The lieutenant governor of Missouri says "there is more racism in the Justice Department" than in the St. Louis area, pointing the finger at President Obama and the Justice Department who, he says, often incited "the mob" in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown back in August of 2014.

"The whole blow up of this protest movement was based on the lie that never happened of 'hands up don't shoot,'" Peter Kinder, the Lt. governor told NewsMaxTV's Steve Malzberg Show Monday. "But it's bad enough the protestors were behaving that way but we have a right to expect more from the attorney general, the head of the Justice Department of the United States, and the president of the United States. And instead what we got too often from them was incitement of the mob, and, uh, encouraging disorder in Ferguson and distributing the peaceable going-about of our lives in the greater St. Louis region."

Kinder added President Obama and Eric Holder "took one side" following the death of Michael Brown. Asked why, he said the Justice Department was "staffed with radical, hard-left radical, leftists lawyers."

He called the Justice Department under Holder, "not like any Justice Department in American history" and "Eric Holder is unlike any previous attorney general."

"Many of them have spent most of their careers defending Black Panthers and other violent radicals," he added. "

Kinder said "where reforms are needed they're being made," citing resignations of police officers and the Ferguson city manger.

Responding to a question he said, "there is more racism in the Justice Department than there is any, uh, yes, anywhere that I see in the St. Louis area."

"We are making progress. We've come an enormous way in 50 years," he said, adding, "we still have more to do."

"It is the left. It is the Eric Holder and Obama-left and their minions who are obsessed with race. The rest of us are moving on beyond it," he concluded.

The Mystery Factor In Maryland’s Senate Race

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Will a Baltimore candidate enter the fray? The city’s mayor is cooling on a bid to replace Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a source says, but people are still courting her and Rep. Elijah Cummings.

Win McNamee / Getty

Cliff Owen / AP

WASHINGTON — The Maryland Senate race is waiting on a key component: a candidate with close ties to Baltimore, the home to two figures with national name recognition or the potential for it: Rep. Elijah Cummings and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards have both announced bids to replace the retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski, but neither candidate has close ties to the the state's largest city, a bastion of Democratic voters in the state key to winning a statewide election, especially in a presidential election year. And a lot of Democratic interests have noticed, leaving the focus on Cummings and Rawlings-Blake's intentions.

In recent days, Rawlings-Blake's interest in a campaign for the seat of retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski has cooled, according to a former aide who spoke with her late last week said, but she isn't ruling out a run completely. If Rawlings-Blake cannot secure big enough financial commitments or a major endorsement — like that of Mikulski herself — she is unlikely to run, two people familiar with the mayor's thinking said. Neither was authorized to speak on the record about the mayor's plans.

Many people believed Rawlings-Blake was going to make a run at the governor's mansion when Maryland elects a new executive in 2018. For now, she's gearing up for re-election as mayor, the aide said. The source said Rawlings-Blake gave no timeline for her decision on whether or not she'd run for Mikulski's seat.

"Making the transition from being a big city mayor to a U.S. senator … that transition can carry a real strain as far as it concerns her family, travel, and obligations," the source said. "These are all the things she's thinking about."

Rawlings-Blake hasn't said much about the race publicly, and her spokesperson did not return requests for comment. A senior Democratic operative familiar with the mid-Atlantic political landscape suggested that the lack of a Baltimore presence is more determinative factor than any any other dynamic in the primary. It's why Rep. Elijah Cummings has flirted with the idea.

And if Cummings should decide to run, another source suggested Rawlings-Blake was likely to support him in the primary.

Cummings' office did not immediately respond to a question about a timeline for his decision. But on Thursday, Politico reported Reps. Donna Edwards and Van Hollen spoke with Cummings at length after Mikulski announced she was stepping down — and Cummings began mulling a run himself.

Unlike the still unfolding situation further up I-95, the decision by Edwards to run for the seat came with little to no concern regarding whether another woman entered the race, an aide told BuzzFeed News. And as the only woman to officially make her intentions clear in the Democratic primary, Edwards is making the case she has broad enough appeal to win.

"Donna Edwards can absolutely win statewide," said a well-placed source in a grassroots progressive women's group said. "Primary voters are Baltimore County and African-American voters. We want to see a woman win the primary. So we are waiting out to see who gets in and will go from there."

That does not, however, mean she's completely locked down support across the board. A spokesperson from EMILY's List said the organization, which supports pro-choice women candidates, has held recruiting discussions with both Rawlings-Blake and Edwards. EMILY's List and other groups like Planned Parenthood will likely exert pressure to replace Mikulski — seen as a Democratic pioneer for female politicians — with another woman.

A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said EMILY's List is still actively recruiting Rawlings-Blake despite echoes she may be leaning toward not running. It was not immediately clear why, for instance, EMILY's List did not immediately get behind Edwards, as they did for California Attorney General Kamala Harris almost right after she announced her Senate candidacy in California. (EMILY's List sent an email to supporters announcing Harris' candidacy and soliciting donations, but the communication was not an official endorsement.)

Edwards has drummed up significant interest in her campaign, but Maryland Democrats point to some concerns, as well: her two campaigns in 2006 and 2008 were both hard fought affairs (both a positive and negative) and concerns that she would lose her seat representing one of the wealthiest majority black populations in the country. But people are still waiting on Rawlings-Blake to make a decision, one that would tilt the scale in her favor over Edwards.

"[Rawlings-Blake's] a major force," said an influential Democratic strategist with deep ties in the state. "It will dramatically impact the dynamics of the race just in terms of the gender equation. One woman in the race with several men one is one dynamic gives Donna an advantage. If you divide the gender-oriented voters, I think it makes the race much more competitive. And Stephanie has a lot of political skill, financial resources and a Baltimore base. There's a lot of talk about a shift in the realm of politics away from Baltimore City to the Washington suburbs, and I think that's true. However, if you broaden it to the Baltimore metropolitan area, as people found out in the gubernatorial race, Baltimore still has significant sway."

Edwards boasts a number of positives as well in a statewide race: in addition to the hard-fought campaigning, Edwards she can claim a number of progressive allies, which could help boost her against, for instance, Van Hollen in a crowded primary. Aides close to Edwards say she and Mikulski have a great working relationship; as the ranking member on Appropriations, Edwards has worked closely with her in the past. Whether that could mean an endorsement is something aides aren't hedging their bets on. A top Edwards aide touted the relationship between their candidate and Mikulski, a connection brought to bear by virtue of Maryland's almost exclusively male Congressional delegation.

In a potential Senate candidacy, Rawlings-Blake is said to want the endorsement of former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, the predecessor to Sheila Dixon as Baltimore mayor, a veteran Democratic consultant familiar with Democratic politics said. A spokesperson for O'Malley said his office wouldn't comment on private conversations he's had with prospective candidates.

The entrance of Van Hollen, and Reid's early endorsement, has already spiked tensions inside Maryland. At least one donor has openly and publicly criticized Reid over the decision.

"For Harry Reid to come out and endorse Van Hollen is insulting period," Steve Phillips, the founder of the progressive group PowerPAC+ told BuzzFeed News earlier this month. "But to do it on the anniversary of the Selma 50th anniversary — to make an endorsement that would make the Senate less diverse — is outrageous and insulting."

Others have questioned how much Reid's backing will really matter in Maryland.

"His endorsement doesn't equal a ton of money," a former Democratic congressional aide said. "It gives Van Hollen access but not the full backing of the Senate like [Mikulski's] endorsement would, which will carry more weight than Sen. Reid's."


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Alabama Probate Judge Faces Conflicting Commands In Same-Sex Marriage Cases

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A federal judge refuses to put an order striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriages on hold. Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis now faces a federal declaration that the ban is unconstitutional — and an Alabama Supreme Court order that his office not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo, foreground left, marries Olanda Smith, center, and Dinah McCaryer, Monday, Feb. 9, 2015, at the Jefferson county courthouse in Birmingham, Ala.

Hal Yeager / AP

The sparring over the validity of Alabama's ban on same-sex couples' marriages took another turn on Monday, putting Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis squarely in the middle of the dispute between state and federal judges.

U.S. District Court Judge Callie Granade on Monday refused to put her injunction against Davis on hold in the federal case challenging the ban — a decision that means her Feb. 12 order declaring the ban unconstitutional remains in effect and that he remains is bound by it.

"Although the court would agree that the developments in these same-sex marriage cases has at times seemed dizzying, the court finds that Judge Davis has not shown that a stay is warranted," Granade wrote in Monday's order.

Just last week, however, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered Davis not to issue any more marriage licenses to same-sex couples in a decision that interpreted Granade's Feb. 12 order as only applying to the specific same-sex couples who filed the lawsuit.

If the marriage license division in Mobile County is open Tuesday — which is by no means certain — and if a same-sex couple seeks a marriage license, Davis will need to decide what controls his response: the Alabama Supreme Court's order, or Granade's declaration that the marriage ban is unconstitutional.

Monday's move by Granade is the latest in the tug-of-war between the Alabama Supreme Court and Granade over the application of her January rulings that the state's bans on same-sex marriages, and on recognizing those that have been performed elsewhere, are unconstitutional.

It is, however, the first move that results in directly contrasting commands to a specific official.

After Granade struck down the bans — initially in a marriage recognition ruling on Jan. 23 and in the marriage case now involving Davis on Jan. 26 — state officials asked the federal appeals court and then the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the rulings on hold during their appeal. As that process was playing out, though, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore told probate judges across the state that they were not bound by Granade's order since they were not named as a party to those lawsuits and that, accordingly, they were still bound by the amendment.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the state's stay request on Feb. 9, when Granade's injunctions went into effect. Some counties began allowing same-sex couples to marry, but many, including Mobile County, did not.

A few days later, following a request from the plaintiffs in the marriage case, Granade expanded her initial order, applying the injunction specifically to Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis, who was not initially named as a defendant in that case. Following Granade's Feb. 12 order regarding Davis, Mobile County began issuing licenses to same-sex couples, as did several other counties in the days that followed.

Less than a month later, however, the Alabama Supreme Court — with Moore not participating — issued a lengthy decision on March 3 ordering the probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses.

Davis, initially, was excluded from the ruling because of his concerns regarding the "potentially conflicting federal court order" from Granade, but the Alabama Supreme Court — with Moore again not participating — ended that exclusion on March 10, ruling that "we find Judge Davis's concern to be without merit."

Specifically, the Alabama justices found that Davis could be ordered to stop granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples because, the justices reasoned, Granade's injunction only applied to the named plaintiffs in the case before Granade's court and did not require Davis to issue marriage licenses to other same-sex couples.

The inclusion of Davis in the order to stop issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples "is necessary and appropriate to the end of achieving order and uniformity in the application of Alabama's marriage laws," the justices also ruled.

On Monday, Granade moved forward on her end, refusing to put her preliminary injunction order on hold, writing:

"This court has found that Alabama's marriage sanctity laws violate the Plaintiffs' rights under the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This court's conclusion agrees with the overwhelming consensus of courts across the country that have addressed the constitutionality of similar state laws since the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor.

Judge Davis has offered no reason why this court should now conclude that judgment in this case is likely to be in favor of Judge Davis.

While Granade did not state specifically that Davis was barred from denying licenses to same-sex couples who apply for them going forward, she did state that the preliminary injunction order — which includes a declaration that the marriage ban and any related laws are unconstitutional — remains in effect and that he is bound by that order.

Additionally, Granade noted that she was continuing to consider whether to allow the complaint in the case to be amended, as requested recently by several legal groups, to turn the case into a class-action lawsuit that would cover all same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses in Alabama, as well as all probate judges responsible for accepting or denying the licenses.

After the March 3 order from the Alabama Supreme Court, the Mobile County Probate Office's marriage license division was closed the next day to all couples. A lawyer familiar with the case said it has yet to reopen. It was not immediately clear whether the office would be open on Tuesday.

LINK: Alabama Supreme Court Orders Temporary Stop To New Same-Sex Marriage Licenses


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