Eight years ago in Nevada, on the first race he managed for Hillary Clinton, Robby Mook provided everyone on the team with a copy of his 175-page training manual. Some staffers‚ the field organizers, received a second item: one standard-issue composition notebook, bound in black-and-white marble, the kind kids use in school.

These were “organizing books.” They were considered vital to the field operation, or as Mook called it, “the program.” And like everything pertaining to the program, the organizing books came with a system, and the system with instructions. In this particular case, they could be found in the manual. (Page 110, “Getting Organized.”)

Your notebook should be divided into three sections per day: calendar, notes, and action items...

Every morning began with a new calendar entry — a simple table, two columns. Down the left-hand margin, organizers wrote out 24 timestamps, one for every half-hour interval in the day. (Twelve hours, minimum.)

To the right, they scheduled and recorded their activity.

You will track progress to goal using the tools provided by the campaign including maintaining your organizing notebook...

For eight months, it went like this. They started in desert summer, 100-degree days. For eight months, they logged every half-hour of every hour of every long and hot day. For eight months, time passed in 30-minute intervals — from the statewide call (which got earlier as the caucuses got closer), to the single break in the daily schedule (lunch, 12:30 to 1 p.m.), to the long slog of the afternoon (the one-on-one meetings with volunteers, the call-time, the house meetings in the evening), to the final, most important task of the day.

At 9 p.m., it was time to report.

All Hillary Clinton for President-Nevada staff are expected to report nightly by 9:15 p.m.... These reports are vital to ensuring that our strategy is succeeding and an important recognition of the tremendous contribution staff are making…

Organizers went first, entering the results of their day into a finicky computer system called the Donkey. Next, the regional directors. Then the field director. It was his job to take their aggregate data and combine it all into one last report. And that went to Mook.

Then the day was over.

All of this — the ledgers, the reports — was in service of the goals. Mook laid them out in the training manual, his initial plan. To beat Barack Obama in Nevada, the Clinton campaign would need to enlist exactly 2,475 volunteers, train 1,744 precinct captains, and generate 24,751 caucus-goers. And to meet those goals, the team would have to meet their smaller daily goals.

The benchmarks underwent constant examination and adjustment. They were continually evaluated, tweaked, and reset, all based on data from the field team’s nightly progress reports. It was a three-part process, played out ceaselessly, day after day — as if the heartbeat of the campaign.

On Jan. 19, 2008, that’s how Clinton won. There was some initial confusion about the national delegate count. Because of his victory in a more heavily weighted district, Obama walked away that night with an extra delegate. But Clinton carried the vote. Mook, at 28 years old, delivered the campaign’s first caucus win — and at a time when they needed it badly. He then took his playbook to Ohio, Indiana, Puerto Rico. Most of his team came with him — and they beat Obama there, too. The operative, clean-cut and unassuming, was Clinton’s most winning state director. He came out of 2008 a star.

But working for Mook was hard. The days were long and unrelenting. The structure was rigid.

Failure to report nightly will have serious consequences and may be grounds for dismissal.

They were exhausted all the time. And yet, the next morning, they woke up and did it all over again… They wanted to.

Some members of the Nevada field team struggled to explain why in interviews — though most pointed to Mook. It’s not that he wasn’t regimented, they said. He was. All the time. But there was something else that kept them going. And it was essential.

In 2010, Mook helped write another manual — this one for Democrats hoping to run a race like Nevada. They called it the “Engagement Campaign.” There, a manager’s job is plainly described as winning: “setting clear, measurable, WINNING campaign goals and creating a culture of excellence and commitment to meet those goals.”

But the other required component, the manual says, is “motivation.”

Since one of your major resources is people — and since people are the resource that generate your other key resource, money — an Engagement Campaign is all about motivating people…

Brian DiMarzio, the deputy field director in Nevada, described it another way. There was one night on the campaign, he said, that didn’t end the way it always did. Clinton happened to be in town, and it was thunderstorming badly. After her event, the staff dragged everything back to headquarters in the pouring rain. The power was out, and they sat there in the darkness, dripping wet.

Then, from the silence, they heard clapping.

It was Mook. He was going into his routine.

It started slow at first. Then other people joined in and the pace picked up and the clapping got louder. It was still dark in the office — and they were still wet. But soon everybody was clapping. They clapped faster and faster, and then they were cheering too, and the sound in the room got so loud and fast it was almost frenzied.

Finally they went still… and Mook started to speak.

“Everyone was back in that place he gets you in,” said DiMarzio. “He’d talk about the event you just did, and about how it’s neck-and-neck, and it’s so close, and” — he slipped into a Mook impression — “‘do you want to look back at the end of this campaign, if we lose by 1,000 votes and think, I could have maybe pulled in a couple hundred votes myself if I’d just done 15 minutes harder each day?’”

It was contagious, DiMarzio said. Former colleagues described similar moments. Sometimes on a staff call — other times in the office. (One referred to it as “the preach.”)

It’s about motivating staff, volunteers, and voters... To do that, you must do more than merely talk about the candidate’s biography and policy positions...

“He could get you to give everything that you had, you would give it, and then thank him for it later,” said DiMarzio. “When you’re working more than 12 hours every day and it’s 10:30 p.m., you finish and think, I’m gonna strangle Robby. But at the end of the day, you’d be clapping with everyone else — and you believed it.”

… To engage people, you must inspire them.

“By the end of it, you’re on Team Robby, and you’re not getting off.”

A lot of people are on Team Robby.

It is a big team, full of committed teammates. By the time Clinton lost 2008, it had a name: the “Mook Mafia.” Its members share one thing. They have witnessed or experienced firsthand a campaign with the 35-year-old operative.

In the Mafia group, Mook is equal parts friend, mentor, and figurehead. But for many of the affiliated, Team Robby is as much about its leader as the political philosophy he champions: namely, the power of “organizing.”

Mook is now at the helm of Clinton’s second presidential campaign — and that model will be tested like never before, on the biggest stage there is. In each of the early states, he’ll construct what he did eight years ago in Nevada: a true organizing program.

It will be the biggest challenge of his young career. Mook has managed plenty of races since 2008. Most recently, he helped Terry McAuliffe, the longtime Democratic fundraiser and Clinton family friend, become governor of Virginia. But now Mook is running a campaign larger than his background in field. And to accomplish what he does best, he’ll have to foster the environment his campaigns require.

At the center of the intractable, messy thing known as “Clintonworld,” Mook needs another Nevada: that rare mix of discipline and accountability with enthusiasm and encouragement that makes his field programs possible.

It will be a momentous first — for Mook, for his followers, and for a generation of operatives who see themselves as organizers. Never before has a manager constructed a national campaign operation like this, so deliberately or so squarely, under the banner of organizing or in the mold of the so-called “Engagement Campaign.”

Hillary Clinton delivers a speech at a high school in Las Vegas in 2007.

Isaac Brekken / AP

About 10 years ago, Clinton was pitched on an early version of this strategy. It was, she was told, a “new kind of organizing” — and it was going to change politics.

This was the summer after the 2004 election, when a collection of campaign aides from that cycle got the chance to attend a private gathering of Democratic senators. It was an audience with some of the party’s top legislators — and a rare opportunity to speak directly with the senator many in the room viewed as the party’s next nominee.

So when the moment came, they talked to Clinton about organizing. Howard Dean’s presidential campaign had done something special in New Hampshire, they said. And there were technological advances rapidly changing the face of elections. Imagine the gains Democrats could make, the operatives told Clinton, if they could weave it all together.

Dean, of course, didn’t make it past February in the primaries. But for many of the operatives and activists who came up in politics around the time of his brief rise, the former Vermont governor helped redefine the very concept of “field.”

Most campaigns focused almost exclusively on building supporter lists, often from scratch. The effort requires identifying voters — supporters, undecideds, backers of the opponent, and various shades in between. The process, called “voter contact” in field-speak, is simple, time-consuming, and necessary. And it happens only one way: door by door, call by call, for hours and hours, every day. Campaigns can use staff and volunteers — but often, they pay a team of canvassers to do the work.

In New Hampshire, Dean aides flipped the traditional field operation on its head.

They pulled people off voter contact — away from the doors and the phones — and instead trained them as organizers in the tradition of the ’60s and ’70s. Using techniques from the protest and labor movements of that era — one-on-one meetings, house meetings — the Dean campaign set out to build a volunteer army.

The idea went was this: Organizers sought to cultivate relationships with voters, enlist them as volunteers, and then develop those volunteers into “volunteer leaders” — who would invest even more time, take on even more responsibility, and recruit even more volunteers. The objective was an organization of devoted supporters, not cogs in the machine or paid labor. And the result, ultimately, was far greater capacity for voter contact.

The volunteers, together, could do more at the phones and the doors and on Election Day than the campaign ever could have otherwise. Or at least, that was the bet. Each half-hour spent on organizing — finding, meeting with, or training volunteers — was a half-hour that could be spent simply identifying voters.

But the risk was worth pursuing, the Democratic aides told Clinton in 2005.

Zack Exley, an adviser on the Dean race who attended the meeting with the senators, said that he and the other operatives urged Clinton to embrace the organizing practices of 2004 — and to push officials at the Democratic National Committee to do the same.

“We were saying to her, ‘Senator, you need to take care of that,’” Exley recalled of the exchange. “‘This is a new kind of field organizing that’s possible. If you connect it with the right online stuff, it’ll change everything. You gotta get on this.’”

Clinton was a receptive listener — but remained unconvinced.

“The organizing takes care of itself,” the senator told the operatives, according to Exley. “Once you have that clear message, then organizing just takes care of itself.”

She believed organizing would “rise up around a good message automatically,” Exley said. “Kind of like if setting up a field campaign was like placing a media buy.”

Three years later, Clinton lost on message and on organizing.

Barack Obama captured Democrats’ eagerness for something different. And in both Iowa and South Carolina, despite pressure from headquarters to keep up with voter-contact metrics, aides were given the room they needed. Many were among the upstarts of the 2004 races, an ascendant new class of operatives-as-organizers.

Clinton had some of them, too. Mook won in Nevada — and his mentor, Karen Hicks, the engineer of Dean’s New Hampshire program, oversaw the early states. But aides at headquarters hardly made a full-scale commitment to organizing. Even as Mook went to work building his field program, his operation remained badly under-resourced.

“Robby ran a very organized campaign on a shoestring in Nevada,” as Hicks put it.

One summer day, as temperatures climbed into triple digits out West, a Clinton aide back in Virginia sent a staff-wide email to say: There’s ice cream cake in the freezer.

“We never got any of the resources we needed,” said one former Nevada staffer. “We have 75-year-old ladies we’re sending out to canvass in the 110-degree heat… and somebody in Arlington is saying there’s ice cream cake in the freezer?”

This time, Clinton has made organizing the priority.

Campaign officials have said that the state directors in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada will not only have the resources they need — but they’ll also get the candidate often, and in settings tailored to benefit their organizing efforts. Internally, they have even replaced the word “field” with “organizing” in staffers’ titles.

As Exley put it, with Mook in charge, “she’s not making the same mistake this time.”

But there will be challenges. One question is whether the organizing model can actually scale effectively across the board in a presidential campaign. Obama came close in 2008. But before that, there were only isolated cases: John Kerry did it in Iowa in 2004. And Dean, whose campaign helped introduce organizing conceptually to a national electoral audience, really only did it in one state — New Hampshire.

Hicks, the operative who pulled it off, said the approach “lends itself to a primary” — and to a presidential candidate capable of exciting volunteer support. But there are two things organizing requires, and they stay the same, she said, “no matter what the campaign.” First is a commitment to disciplined goals. Second is a commitment to the “shared values” — the methods and the principles that guide the campaign.

Mook has excelled at both. But it doesn’t happen on its own. His campaigns come with requirements — a particular kind of leadership and a particular kind of anatomy.

If there is a prototype of the Mook campaign, it is Nevada in 2008.

For the evangelical belief in data — look to the sign that hung on his office wall, a reminder to himself and the staff of the three steps in their ongoing, data-driven process. “Set Goals, Experiment and Learn, Celebrate and Appreciate,” it read.

For the sense of “accountability,” fostered by the subculture of field and all its peculiarities — look to his idiosyncratic shorthand. One favorite: “No silos!” (Always said as if with an exclamation point.) The meaning: Keep communication open between departments. Another Mook term was the “plus delta.” (A twist on the “action item.”) This one, derived from the Greek letter denoting change, was a word for something specific that a staffer could improve or incorporate into his or her goals.

For the self-discipline — look to his fascination with “personal mastery,” which he preached to some of his staffers. It’s a concept from The Fifth Discipline, a 1990 book by MIT’s Peter Senge. Personal mastery is defined as a lifelong practice, divided into three parts: redefining and deepening your personal vision, focusing your energy, and “seeing reality objectively” as it pertains to others and, most important, to yourself. (The book touches on other Mook tropes: Senge writes that organizations are best built around a “shared vision,” not a leader’s goals or personality. And teams, he says, develop “extraordinary capacities” beyond the sum total abilities of individual members.)

And for his precise focus on the thing this was all for, the final goal — look to Dec. 12, 2007, when just one month before the caucuses, Mook got his regionals together to deliver big news. The numbers they’d all been working toward, the ones in the manual, wouldn’t be enough. They needed to double their goal — from 24,751 caucus-goers to 60,000.

Most of the team was alarmed. There’s a photo of two field staffers, Stuart Rosenberg and Dan DeBauche, as they listen to Mook in the meeting. (It still makes the rounds every few months.) Rosenberg is dismayed, bent over in his seat, head in hand. “Stu looks like he’s about to have a coronary,” said DeBauche, the regional field director for South Las Vegas, Henderson, and Boulder City.

DeBauche is shown leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. He looks fine. “Everyone was freaking out, but internally we already had a plan,” he said. A couple nights before the meeting, Mook and Marlon Marshall, the field director, had pulled DeBauche in to help game out the new numbers. The expression, he said of the photo, reflected the calm of the boss. Mook knew it was possible, so long as they could answer the one question that mattered: “How do we get to 52% with this new reality?”

DeBauche, left, with Rosenberg, right, in the meeting with Mook and Marshall in December 2007.

Courtesy of Zack Exley

“Neither gender dysphoria nor self-identification as transgender is an automatic circumstance that generates involuntary separation,” the Air Force public affairs office announced Thursday.

Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, right, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on March 17, 2015 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Air Force went further Thursday than any other service branch has gone toward ending the ban on out transgender service in its ranks — although many questions remain about what will happen to trans people who are serving in the Air Force.

In addition to raising the level of commander who can sign off on the discharge of transgender service members, the Air Force announced that discharges based on gender dysphoria — the medical diagnosis that corresponds with seeking treatment for being transgender — would only proceed if a commander also determines that the person's gender dysphoria "interferes with duty requirements."

The news, which caught advocates off guard, was announced in a Thursday evening news release issued by the Air Force days before an event celebrating LGBT pride month is scheduled to be held at the Pentagon. The news also came hours after confusion in the White House press briefing Thursday led White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz to clarify to the Washington Blade that, regarding the issue of trans service, "Generally speaking, the President certainly agrees with the sentiment that all who are qualified to serve should be able to serve."

The quoted text in the statement from the public affairs office of Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James was a statement very similar to one made in March by the Army — but further instructions in the statement break significant new ground.

"Though the Air Force policy regarding involuntary separation of gender dysphoric Airmen has not changed, the elevation of decision authority to the director, Air Force Review Boards Agency, ensures the ability to consistently apply the existing policy," Daniel Sitterly, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, was quoted as saying.

In March, the Army similarly raised the authority to discharge trans service members from commanders in the field to the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs.

The Air Force statement on Thursday, however, went further — stating, "Neither gender dysphoria nor self-identification as transgender is an automatic circumstance that generates involuntary separation."

It went on to lay out the procedure under which an out trans service member could continue to serve in the Air Force, stating, "A recommendation for discharge because of gender dysphoria must be supported by a report of evaluation by a psychiatrist or Ph.D.-level clinical psychologist. In addition, after consultation with medical professionals, there must be a commander determination that the condition interferes with duty requirements -- including potential deployment -- or duty performance."

Specifically, the requirement that "there must be a commander determination that the condition interferes with duty requirements" is a step that has never before been required for discharges of trans service members in any branches.

The Air Force statement concluded, "Identification as transgender, absent a record of poor duty performance, misconduct, or a medically disqualifying condition, is not a basis for involuntary separation." It was not immediately clear how and whether the "medically disqualifying condition" exception might apply to some trans service members in the Air Force.

Also unclear was whether and to what extent the Air Force would provide trans-specific health care services for trans service members. Air Force Secretary James was, however, the first service branch chief to make a statement — in December 2014 — supportive of reviewing the military regulations banning transgender service.

Advocates of trans service celebrated the news. "This is a significant step forward for a portion of roughly 15,000 current transgender service members across all branches," Allyson Robinson, SPARTA director of policy, said.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a carefully constructed plan to deconstruct the ban on trans service," Human Rights Campaign vice president Fred Sainz said Thursday night. "Things like this do not happen by coincidence in the Pentagon. While this may be a trial balloon, it is an important one in that it will herald even more important decisions in the future."

Robinson added, though, "However, we need a consistent solution across all the services."

SPARTA has called for a moratorium on transgender discharges until the military policy is updated to reflect current medical practice.

The Pentagon's LGBT pride month event is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, June 9.

The former Republican senator from Oklahoma says that Rand Paul scares him to death, Ted Cruz and Scott Walker are not ready for primetime, Rick Perry is not capable enough, and America will not elect another Bush to be president. Of all the candidates, he said Marco Rubio is his favorite.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn spoke candidly about the current crop of Republicans running for president on Sirius XM radio Thursday, sharing some critical thoughts about Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Governors Scott Walker and Rick Perry, while heaping praise on Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee.

Of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Coburn said "I don't think that America will elect another Bush president."

Coburn said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul "scares me to death" on foreign policy. He added Paul didn't "speak truthfully" about the NSA and he "would not vote for him for president."

Of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Coburn called him "of all that are out there right now probably my favorite."

Coburn said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is "not ready for primetime in my opinion." He said Walker didn't win the recall election in 2012 but "Republicans around the country did it for him."

Coburn said he had "a personal bone to pick with him on integrity that I witnessed" with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. The former senator said Carson was asked not to attack President Obama in his National Prayer Breakfast speech but said "his speech was nothing but an attack on the president."

He added former New York Gov. George Pataki was "probably smart enough" to be president but didn't have the conservative fiscal credentials.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a "good guy" but "I don't think's capable at that level," Coburn said.

He said Lindsey Graham effort is solely to talk about foreign policy and "that's what he ought to stick to."

Coburn had perhaps the nicest thing to say about former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who he called "smart, savvy, and experienced."

He said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was "not ready for primetime."

Coburn called former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee capable of "attracting votes from both sides."

He said the presidency was not "within his reach" when talking about former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Coburn said he didn't know about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, but he "likes the fact that he answers questions directly."

Listen to the audio here:

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“I don’t really know, it’s just not happening. And it might happen. He could turn this whole thing around and do great.”

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Friday that, though he thinks Jeb Bush is a "really good guy, a smart guy," the presumption that Bush would secure the Republican presidential nomination is "just not happening."

Kasich, who is likely to run for the nomination, was asked on the Concord News Radio program "NH Now" about comments he made Thursday, when he said that he thought "Jeb was going to just suck all the air out of the room and it just hasn't happened."

He said that Bush's failure to emerge as the dominant candidate in the field was a reason he was considering a run himself.

On Friday, Kasich was asked about the remarks and clarified that, "No, I wasn't taking a shot. I was making an observation, you know?"

When asked whether he thought Bush hadn't "been able to lock up the nomination" "due to his last name as opposed to his skillset," Kasich praised Bush as a "really good guy, a smart guy," before reiterating that him securing the nomination was "just not happening."

"Oh, I think Jeb is a really good guy, a smart guy," Kasich said. "I don't really know, it's just not happening. And it might happen. He could turn this whole thing around and do great."

Kasich then said he wouldn't be considering leaving his job as Governor of Ohio if he believed "the race was not winnable."

"I'm just saying if I thought was not winnable why would I do it?" he asked. "I mean I don't want to do it just to do it. You know, it's fun to be out here and meet a lot of people but I'm also governor of a great state when of the best jobs you can have in the country, Governor of Ohio. So, if this was not something I assessed I could win, then I wouldn't do it."

Here's the audio of the exchange:

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The results of the experiment don’t help the state’s case that its execution drug became “cloudy” because of the cold temperature it was stored in.

Georgia's "cloudy" drug on the day it was supposed to be used in an execution.

Georgia Department of Corrections

Georgia officials finally released on Friday the results of an experiment to see what caused their execution drug to go bad, after initially withholding those results for two months.

The state called off executions after officials discovered particles floating in the drug they were about to use to kill inmate Kelly Gissendaner in March.

Georgia has contended that the likeliest cause for the floating particles was that the drugs were stored at too cold a temperature. The state's expert has said that is one possibility — another is that a pharmacist mixed the drug incorrectly.

State officials conducted an experiment: The pharmacist mixed up another batch of drugs, and then stored one in a cold environment and one at room temperature. If the cold one "precipitated" (particles appear), but the latter remained usable, then the experiment would suggest storage temperature was the cause.

But that didn't happen.

The results show that the state stored the "cold" version of the drug at a colder temperature than it had for the drug that originally precipitated, yet the drug was still clear in the end.

Georgia Department of Corrections

The room temperature version of the drug in the experiment was also clear.

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“I’m fearful that we’ve gotten far enough away now after 14 years, far enough away from 9/11, that too many people have forgotten what has happened and what it’s like when it does happen,” the former vice president said.

Cliff Owen / AP

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday Sen. Rand Paul was wrong to force provisions of the Patriot Act to expire last week and that another 9/11-style attack could happen and be deadlier than before. Cheney added he believed now was not the time to be " weakening the tools intelligence people have to effectively combat terrorists."

"I disagree with Rand Paul on that," former vice president Dick Cheney said when asked on the John Catsimatidis Roundtable if Paul was acting irresponsibly by forcing some provisions of the Patriot Act to expire last week

Paul opposed any extension of the Patriot Act and made particular emphasis on the National Security Agency's bulk collection of data. The Senate agreed to a modified reauthorization of the Patriot Act that has small changes to intelligence agencies' control over the bulk collection of data.

"It's an important program, it's a good program," said Cheney, noting former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden said he believes that had the NSA meta data collection program been in place before 9/11 it might have prevented the attacks.

"I think a lot of what's been going on there is frankly all politics," Cheney added, saying he believed it was now harder to intercept terrorist calls.

"The possibility of further mass casualties attacks like that is very real," Cheney said of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The former vice president said he believed that the "threat is growing," making the possibility of another attack very much real. "I can't say where or when," he added.

"It strikes me we need to be doing everything we can to stop that attack and to capture the terrorists instead of weakening the tools intelligence people have to effectively combat terrorists. It's a big deal."

Cheney said he was "fearful" people have forgotten about 9/11 and a deadlier attack could happen next.

"I'm fearful that we've gotten far enough away now after 14 years, far enough away from 9/11, that too many people out there have forgotten what happened and what it's like when it does happen. This is the danger that next time they'll have something deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters when they launch an attack."

A Paul spokesman responded to Cheney in an email to BuzzFeed News.

"Sen. Rand Paul agrees with former Vice President Cheney that we must always remain vigilant to the real threat of radical Islamic jihadism, but Sen. Paul, like most Americans, does not believe we should continue the NSA's illegal and expensive bulk collection program which has not led to a single terror conviction or foiled any plots."

“Patrick Henry said this…”

Speaking in Greenville, South Carolina last week, Rand Paul said, "Patrick Henry said this, Patrick Henry said the Constitution is about restraining the government not the people."

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buzzfeed-video1.s3.amazonaws.com

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

Another widely cited "Henry" quotation is: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." This is a more complex misquotation, because it sounds like something Henry might have said -- maybe during the 1790s, after he opposed the Constitution's adoption, when he was hoping to restrict the new government's powers? The problem is that this quotation seems to have been entirely fabricated, and quite recently at that. The earliest reference I have found to this quotation is in two books published in 2003. But why create a bogus quotation when Henry actually said similar things about the need to restrain government? In any case, this is also frequently cited on social media sites and in political books. On Facebook the quotation has its own "common interest" page.

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He said the second thing he’ll do is start planning a pig roast on the South Lawn of the White House.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz poked fun at reporters at a town hall event last week, saying he'd send a condolence note to reporters and editors that would have to check themselves into therapy if he were elected president.

"Let me start by saying if I'm elected, January 2017, I suppose the first thing I should do is send flowers and a note of condolences to all of the reporters and editors who've check themselves into therapy," said Cruz to radio host Jeff Kuhner at a WRKO town hall event.

Cruz also said he would start planning for a Cuban pig roast on the South Lawn of the White House on December 24, 2017.

Here's the video:

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This is part of a BuzzFeed News investigation into Ted Cruz’s impressions.

Richard Ellis / Getty Images

Here's Cruz in 2014 impersonating the Gipper at the Travis County Republican Party's Reagan Gala:

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Here's another video of his Reagan impression from 2012:

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“I’m kinda glad it’s posted because people — if they watch the whole clip — what they’ll see is that I’m giving a commonsense answer to the insanity going on out there.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told an Iowa radio host Friday that he takes nothing back from a speech he delivered earlier this year in which he joked about pretending to be transgender in high school "when it came time to take showers in PE."

Huckabee, responding to a question from Iowa radio host Steve Deace, agreed that the amount of publicity his comments received was "absolutely an example" of misplaced priorities.

"And by the way," added Huckabee, "I take nothing back from that speech. I'm kinda glad it's posted because people -- if they watch the whole clip -- what they'll see is that I'm giving a commonsense answer to the insanity going on out there."

"Everyone wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left, loved by the elitists. But I know I'm not gonna be, so let me just get it over with. I'd rather be a commonsense candidate for people who did take their brains to work today," Huckabee added Friday.

Huckabee said at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee when discussing transgender laws that he wished he could have pretended to be transgender in high school when it came time to shower after gym class.

"Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE," said Huckabee. "I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.' You're laughing because it sounds so ridiculous, doesn't it?"

Huckabee previously said last week about his transgender comments that, "nobody ever asks me about it except the media, they're the only ones who seem to be stirred up about it."

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Danny Diaz, who was named Jeb Bush’s campaign manager Monday, called driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants “dangerous” last year. Bush has supported driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants since 2004.

Jeb Bush named Danny Diaz his campaign manager Monday.

J Pat Carter / AP

Jeb Bush's new campaign manager Danny Diaz spoke out against driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants last year, a policy the former Florida governor has supported for more than a decade.

Bush, who is expected to announce his campaign on June 15, has been an ardent supporter of an immigration overhaul for years and the naming of Diaz — most recently a veteran of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez's re-election campaign — is yet another sign he will make Hispanic outreach a priority.

But the two have advocated different policies in the past. In 2014, as a Martinez campaign official, he said giving driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants was "dangerous."

"This fall, voters will have a choice," Diaz told the Santa Fe New Mexican. "Do they support a candidate who believes giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, creating a well-established public safety threat, is a good idea, or do they support the candidate who has fought against it?"

Bush has long supported the policy. In 2004, when he endorsed legislation to give licenses to undocumented immigrants, he said policies that ignore them are basically a policy of denial.

"In some cases, these people may be taking their children to school and they may be doing it without a driver's license," he said at the time. "They may be going to a doctor or a drug store or supermarket. The state . . . is basically telling these folks to drive illegally."

Emily Benavides, a spokesperson for Bush, emphasized to BuzzFeed News that Diaz will be advocating for the candidate's positions.

"Danny will forcefully advocate for Gov. Bush's views across the board and helm a campaign focused on giving all Americans the chance to rise up and achieve their dreams," she said.

In addition to working for Martinez and now Bush, Diaz has a long history working on presidential campaigns. He was a senior adviser to Mitt Romney in 2012, deputy communications director for John McCain in 2008, and a regional press secretary for George W. Bush in 2004.

Diaz is known as a top rapid response operative and opposition researcher, something those who have worked with him say is encoded in his DNA, and will help Bush run a modern campaign.

"With Diaz it was always nonstop," said Wadi Gaitan, who worked with him on the Romney campaign. "It doesn't matter if it's day or night, he's working."

On his stances that have been criticized by fellow Republicans like Common Core education standards and on immigration, Bush has said he believes Americans appreciate when you have "a backbone."

"You don't abandon your core beliefs," he said earlier this year.

The FDA says it will seize Nebraska’s drugs when they arrive from India. But the seller says he’s sold to “a few” other states as well.

Neb. Gov. Pete Ricketts voices his opposition to abolishing the death penalty.

Nati Harnik / AP

The seller behind Nebraska's illegal execution drug shipment says Nebraska isn't the only state to have bought drugs from him.

Nebraska announced in May that it had purchased drugs from HarrisPharma, a small distributor in India run by a man named Chris Harris, although Nebraska admitted that the drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Harris has sold execution drugs in the past, but each time the drugs have gone unused after questions were raised over the legality of the drug deal.

This time, an FDA spokesperson indicated in a statement to BuzzFeed News that the agency will seize Nebraska's shipment.

But as part of his sales pitch to Nebraska, Harris tells employees several times that other states are also buying from him, according to 140 pages of emails and invoices obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Nebraska Department of Correctional Services

A day later, Harris approached another Corrections employee.

View Entire List ›

“Listen, if the New York Times wants to write about an issue that is problematic for this country they could start with the Clinton Foundation.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry called a New York Times story on the number of traffic infractions occurred by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and his wife "irresponsible" and a "total cheap shot."

"Total cheap shot," Perry said on the Michael Medved Show on Monday when asked about the Times story. "Listen, if the New York Times wants to write about an issue that is problematic for this country they could start with the Clinton Foundation."

Perry added when asked if he had ever had a speeding ticket answered, "Yes sir, I have, I have and I'm sure they'll find it somewhere."

The Times reported that the Rubios had been cited on traffic violations a combined 17 times since 1997. Rubio had four tickets and his wife had 13. The Times noted four different occasions the couple had to go driving school following a violation.

Perry said he found the story "irresponsible," given the Clinton Foundations woes. The Times has, however, published some critical stories on the Clinton Foundation.

"The fact is we all live within the laws," said Perry. "I get that, but to go write a story about Marco Rubio and him having four tickets in the last decade plus is absolutely irresponsible when you have Bill and Hillary Clinton taking the amount of money, not reporting it at their foundation and to somehow or another paper over that and go write a story about Marco Rubio..."

"Pathetic is the only word," said Medved cutting Perry off and noting the program was out of time.

w.soundcloud.com

Richard Shiro / AP

WASHINGTON — A charity administered by the New York Times received a $100,000 check from the Clinton Family Foundation on July 24, 2008, months after the paper endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, according to a New York Times spokesperson.

However, the check was a "replacement check" for one that had been sent in 2007 that the Times never received, the spokesperson said.

"The Neediest Cases Fund received a $100,000 check from the Clinton Family Foundation on July 24, 2008," Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said in an email to BuzzFeed News on Monday. "It was a replacement check for one dated June 22, 2007, that was apparently sent to an incorrect address and never received."

"As you may know, The Times administers the Neediest Cases Fund, which provides direct assistance to New Yorkers in need through seven beneficiary social service agencies," Murphy said. "This donation and our editorial board's endorsement of a candidate in the 2008 Democratic primary have absolutely no connection to one another."

The Washington Free Beacon reported on Sunday that the Clinton Family Foundation had donated $100,000 to the Neediest Cases Fund in 2008, the same year the newspaper endorsed Clinton. The Times editorial board endorsed Clinton on January 25, 2008. Clinton dropped out of the race on June 7, 2008.

The New York Times had declined to tell the Free Beacon the exact date of the donation, raising questions about whether the donation had preceded the endorsement.

Asked if she could explain more about the 2007 check that was never received, Murphy said, "Unfortunately, I can't - I can only tell you that our records show a note attached to the July, 2008 check that says it should serve as a replacement for a check (with check #) dated June 22, 2007 and the address to which that check had been sent."

"We can only surmise that at some point it was noticed that the check hadn't been cashed and some contact was made and a new check was issued, but the person to whom the check was sent is no longer with the company and there is no one else with this direct knowledge," Murphy said.

Dennis Huynh/BuzzFeed (Photo courtesy of Jamie Lee Henry)

WASHINGTON — Jamie Lee Henry is a doctor and major in the Army’s Medical Corps. She also is a transgender woman.

In holding an interview with BuzzFeed News, Henry is the first known active-duty Army officer to come out as transgender. She also is, to her knowledge and to the knowledge of LGBT advocates, the first and only active duty service member who has changed her name and gender within the United States military.

It’s not a secret within the military. When Henry requested that her name and gender be officially changed in mid-March, the Army “actually used female pronouns in the document” that granted the request for the change in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS), she said. After receiving that in May, she then used the Army’s response to change her permanent military records in the interactive Personnel Electronic Records Management System (iPERMS), as well as in her medical records. The changes came, she said, “I think to the surprise of many, that it was even possible. But it’s been confirmed, it has been changed.”

These steps may sound small and technical, but they are completely new to the military.

The official, long-standing Army policy remains that being transgender or being diagnosed with gender dysphoria — the medical diagnosis that corresponds with seeking treatment for being transgender — is incompatible with military service and grounds for dismissal.

There have been some signs that policy may change. Earlier this year, the Army raised the level of who must authorize the discharge of trans service members from a commander in the field to the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs — action that echoed a step taken as the ban on gay service members was nearing its end.

Henry says her story — and the story of many other trans people currently serving — proves that being out and trans is compatible with military service. What’s more, Henry says that being trans has made her a better service member and better doctor.

The 32-year-old Henry joined ROTC almost 15 years ago — at age 17. She has been “treating wounded, ill, and injured” service members for 10 years, ever since she did her first rotation in the psych ward at Walter Reed.

Three years ago, however, her life was in upheaval. It was a very difficult time — she even became homeless briefly — as she came out as transgender to the people in her life, and dealt with complications to her family, religious, and military life.

One of the key people who helped her through the period was her commanding officer. He provided Henry with housing, helped her continue her military career, and advocated for her family interests — all while knowing she was transgender. “My company commander restored my faith in what it means to be a soldier,” she said.

Although Henry began socially transitioning then — while engaged in a messy divorce and custody dispute — she did not begin any medical or physical steps until this past fall. At Whitman Walker Health, a Washington-based provider that specializes in LGBT-related health care, she began taking the additional steps. If the social transition was a risk, this posed a bigger one for a military officer. “The frank moment came with my command in an emergency department room, because I was afraid, as I was transitioning physically and medically, that I would lose everything.”

This wasn’t the case, as it turned out — despite having a new commander who she feared might harbor less positive views of transgender people. “My commander said, ‘I don’t care who you love, I don’t care how you identify, I want you to be healthy and I want you to be able to do your job,’” Henry said. “I was blown away … because of the stereotypes that I held, growing up in the South, growing up in a fundamentalist Christian family, that he would automatically think I was a freak, he would automatically think, ‘You need to be discharged just like the regs recommend.’”

But instead, he posed the question to her, asking what she wanted. “I said, ‘If I gave that up over that issue, knowing I can do my job and do it perfectly well, I feel that I’d be sacrificing my values and the Army’s values.’”

Her commander agreed, and she stayed. She did, however, have to maintain male grooming standards — the Army requirements for presentation and appearance. He also gave her a warning at the time. According to Henry, the commanding officer advised her not to speak to media, because if a higher-level commander ordered him to discharge her, he would have to do so.

Even less than a year later, though, the landscape regarding transgender issues has changed significantly.

A few days before Henry spoke with BuzzFeed News, on June 4, the New York Times published a documentary by Fiona Dawson, “Transgender, at War and in Love,” featuring Senior Airman Logan Ireland, an out transgender service member currently serving in Afghanistan, and his fiancé, Laila Villanueva, also a transgender service member. Later that day, the Air Force, similar to the Army, raised the level of Air Force official responsible for separations based on gender dysphoria and also announced, “Neither gender dysphoria nor self-identification as transgender is an automatic circumstance that generates involuntary separation.”

In the midst of all this, the Pentagon is set to hold an LGBT pride event hosted by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Tuesday. Henry was invited and, despite nearly a month of back and forth with superiors, she said on Sunday that she plans to wear the male dress uniform on Tuesday “unless they say otherwise.” She noted that she would be doing so “mainly because [her] personal timeline for this gender transition is not the same as the DOD’s timeline, as we speak. That’s the bottom line.”

Nonetheless, she will be there, watching for signs of what that timeline is.

“On Tuesday, I’m looking forward to what the secretary of defense has to say,” she said, noting Carter’s comments in February that nothing “but their suitability for service should preclude” transgender people from serving in the military.

Henry is blunt — yet pleasant — about the difficulties she has faced and continues to face.

“Yes, it’s awkward. I’ve had to embrace awkwardness with gusto these last nine months,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not easy. It’s not easy for the people that are my family, it’s not easy for the people that are my friends prior to my transition.”

Explaining the process she has undertaken, she said, “Transitioning is very complex. It’s not just, like, surgery: one day you’re a boy, the next day you’re a girl, or vice versa, because you have some operation.”

She continued, giving an example: “You could talk about returning soldiers, or sailors, or airmen from the war over the last decade that have had mutilation to their genitalia from an IED. Their gender has not changed because they have an injury to their genitalia. OK? They’re the same gender they’ve always been.

“Just like with me: I’m the same gender I’ve always been in my mind, but all this other stuff, on the outside, is really just conforming to how I already feel and have felt my entire life.”

She quickly noted that, along with the difficulties, the process already has changed her life for the better. “People say, ‘Is this a choice?’ The choice is being healthy or sick. I can continue living a sick life, or I can live a healthy life,” she said simply, declaring that she has chosen health.

It’s also improving her work as a doctor, she said. “I find my trans experience has allowed me to relate to people, because all of us suffer, and I could relate to people’s suffering. I’m able to comfort people that feel isolated and lost and alone and broken. I can sit down with them and look them in the eyes, and say, ‘I can walk with you through this. I care about you, and I mean it.’”

Talking about her work with SPARTA — an LGBT service member and veterans group — Henry said that there are hundreds of people in the group in a similar situation to hers with whom she interacts.

“Once you see something, it’s hard to look away because my story is not unique,” she said. “And as an officer — as a field-grade officer, a major — and as a physician, hearing things — the despair, the feelings of disrespect or humiliation or whatever in not having someone’s medical and legal gender recognized — to hear that day in and day out [has] somewhat emboldened me to lead.”

To that end, Henry submitted a statement to the American Medical Association this weekend, asking the association to take a stand in support of trans troops. The resolution that was under consideration asked the AMA to affirm that there is no medically valid reason that transgender individuals cannot serve.

“Delaying adoption of this policy,” she said in her statement, “will only serve to further harm those of us who actively serve our country in silence every day. We simply cannot wait.”

On Monday afternoon, the organization took her advice and the advice of many others, passing the resolution in question.

Talking with BuzzFeed News, Henry broadened — and simplified — the argument she made to the AMA.

“It’s not just a trans issue, right? It’s a human issue. Can we recognize someone as an individual? Can we recognize the good in them? Can we recognize that they just want to do their job and do it well? Can we give them the circumstances, the environment, the tools to be able to do their job and do it well without the shame and the guilt and the fear and the pain that comes along with being different? Can we do that? Can we do that in a place like America?” she asked. “I believe we can.”

To win the GOP nomination these days, strong opposition to the Russian president is practically a prerequisite. Bush will visit three countries most agitated by Russian power — and use the trip to speak out sharply against Putin.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

BERLIN — If all goes according to plan, Jeb Bush will end this week with a superlative worthy of a campaign bumper sticker: Vladimir Putin's least favorite Republican.

Beginning with a saber-rattling speech here Tuesday, the presidential contender is set to kick off a carefully choreographed five-day tour of European capitals — from Berlin, to Warsaw, to Tallinn, Estonia — designed to place him in meetings and photo ops with some of the continent's leading critics of Putin's Russia. Aides say the itinerary will help Bush lay out his vision for a more aggressive American stance against Russia, and illustrate what he considers to be the failures of President Obama's weak-kneed response to Putin's recent aggression in Eastern Europe.

It will also allow Bush to score political points with Republican primary voters back home. The day after he returns from Europe, Bush is expected to officially announce his bid for the presidential nomination in a party where few geopolitical figures are more reviled than Russia's president.

"Putin looms large in the American imagination in a way that no other Bond villain out there does," said Hugh Hewitt, an influential conservative talk radio host. He said the Republican voters he talks to "cannot name the president of China… but everybody knows the bare-chested, horseback-riding, Olympics-giving, country-invading Putin."

It's true that Putin has achieved a pop culture–fueled notoriety rarely bestowed upon world leaders. He shows up in best-selling spy novels, and inspires mocking memes that litter the internet. His barely fictionalized clone in the most recent season of House of Cards was notable, perhaps, for being the only character in the show who seemed less cartoonish than his real-life counterpart.

But Russia's growing potency as a political issue in 2016 is also emblematic of long-held frustrations on the right with Obama's foreign policy. When Russia annexed Crimea last year, many American conservatives called for immediate action from the United States, beginning by providing arms to Ukraine. The Obama administration has resisted those calls so far, in favor of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

Hewitt has made it his mission to get Republican candidates on the record with regard to their Russia agenda, frequently quizzing them on air about the intricacies of NATO treaties and U.S. Naval policy. It was on Hewitt's show in March that Bush said the United States should be willing to use military force to prevent Russia from further infringing on the sovereignty of its allies in Eastern Europe — some of his more elaborative remarks on the topic. Bush also called for more NATO troops to be deployed in the region, and said the United States should start providing Ukraine with weapons.

But Bush has not yet distinguished himself as a true Russia hawk when compared to a field of GOP rivals like Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who regularly turn up on cable news and talk radio to rail against Russian aggression. At times, Bush's rhetoric has seemed a little vague and unsteady. In a question-and-answer session following a speech earlier this year on his foreign policy agenda, Bush emphasized engaging countries like Germany and stronger support for Ukraine. He also praised Obama for his so-called "forward lean" in the Baltics — but seemed unsure of whether the approach had been successful. "I don't know what the effect has been because it's really kind of hard to be on the road, and I'm just a gladiator these days, so I don't follow every little detail," he said.

Here in Berlin, Bush will use his appearance at a major economic conference to sharpen his rhetoric, calling for unified, aggressive NATO action against Putin's recent provocations.

"Russia must respect the sovereignty of all of its neighbors," he is expected to say. "And who can doubt that Russia will do what it pleases if its aggression goes unanswered? Our alliance, our solidarity, and our actions are essential if we want to preserve the fundamental principles of our international order."

From Berlin, Bush will head to Poland, an ex-communist state where anti-Russia sentiment permeates the political establishment. Last month, for example, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski used a high-profile speech to warn that a recent parade in Moscow's city center commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany was, in fact, a "demonstration of force." He predicted, ominously, "Once again, Red Square will turn into Tank Square, and the very same tank divisions which recently invaded Ukraine will be there. This is not about history; it's about the future."

While in Warsaw, Bush will meet with Andrzej Duda, the president-elect who recently defeated Komorowski in part by attacking his foreign policy for being too weak. According to Michal Kolanko, co-founder of the insider news website 300Polityka — a Polish Politico clone — the country's business and government leaders will welcome the sort of Putin-bashing that plays so well back home. But they may also seek to extract some campaign promises of their own from Bush.

"The U.S. is seen as the only country which could help Poland if the situation goes from bad to worse," said Kolanko. "If there's some sort of commitment from Bush in regards to U.S. military deployment in Poland, setting permanent bases in Poland, or strengthening U.S. presence in the region, that'd be seen as proof that he 'gets it' — that Putin's Russia is a Cold War–type enemy… There is hope that a GOP administration is going to be more 'realistic' and less dithering on Putin than Obama."

To drive his message home, Bush will conclude his trip across Europe at Russia's doorstep, touring a NATO cyberdefense facility in Estonia that was formed after the country endured a serious cyberattack that many suspected the Russian government of orchestrating.

Estonia's president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has worked urgently to bring attention to what he describes as a dire situation in the region, warning that his country — and other Baltic states — are obvious annexation targets for Putin. Asked last year to account for the international community's lackluster response to Russia's aggression, Ilves said, "The West has been in a state of shock."

When Bush meets with Ilves and his political allies later this week, he will likely present himself as a clear-eyed leader prepared to pry the West from its stupor, and finally confront Putin. Chances are, he'll be making the same pitch on the campaign trail next week.

Although there was much talk about “inclusivity,” Defense Sec. Ashton Carter made no direct mention of transgender service members.

Via defense.gov

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced on Tuesday that the Pentagon was adding sexual orientation to the Defense Department's equal opportunity policy — a step long sought by advocates for gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members.

While detailing the "critical" need for the military to "start from a position of inclusivity, not exclusivity," however, the defense secretary made no direct mention of the other big issue pending for attendees of the LGBT pride month event at the Pentagon: out transgender military service.

"We need to be a meritocracy," Carter said at the event. "We need to focus relentlessly on our mission, which means the thing that matters most about a person is what they can contribute to national defense. This is a commitment we must continually renew."

To that end, he said, the Defense Department has "completed the process for updating its military equal opportunity policy to include sexual orientation, ensuring that the department, like the rest of the federal government, treats sexual orientation-based discrimination the same way it treats discrimination based on race, religion, color, sex, age, and national origin."

In addition to announcing the equal opportunity policy change, Carter also was aggressive in his discussion of the actions taken by the Pentagon to provide benefits for and recognition to same-sex spouses of service members.

"Here at the Pentagon, we have been and remain strongly committed to making sure that all military families and spouses can fully and equally receive the benefits their loved ones have earned, from TRICARE coverage to housing allowance to side-by-side burial at Arlington," he said. "Even in times of resistance, like when some states wouldn't issue DOD ID cards to same-sex spouses at National Guard facilities, we pushed back — not just because our service members and families deserved it but because everyone's rights had to be protected."

After detailing those steps, Carter began an extended and emphatic defense of the importance of stopping discrimination within the military and the importance to the military of ensuring diversity in its ranks, saying, "Discrimination, of any kind, has no place in [the] Armed Forces."

He continued:

"Recognizing that our openness to diversity is one of the things that have allowed us to be the best in the world, we must ensure that everyone who is able and willing to serve has the full and equal opportunity to do so. We must start from a position of inclusivity, not exclusivity. Anything less is not just plain wrong, it's bad defense policy.

"Embracing diversity and inclusion is critical to recruiting and retaining the force of the future. Young Americans today are more diverse, open, and tolerant than past generations. If we're going to attract the best and brightest among them to contribute to our mission of national defense, we have to ourselves be more diverse, open, and tolerant, too. It's the only way to compete in the 21st century."

He did not, however, say anything specific about the future for transgender people who are currently serving — such as Major Jamie Lee Henry, who spoke with BuzzFeed News prior to and was planning to attend Tuesday's event — or who wish to serve.

Via defense.gov

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Why not speculate?

Earlier this week, someone posted a photo of President Obama and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi standing outside on a balcony.

instagram.com

Obama has said he's struggled to quit — but he did quit years ago.

“To date, Walton County has never experienced a shooting at any of its schools.”

Chris O'meara / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush linked corporal punishment in schools to a lack of school shootings in his 1995 book, Profiles in Character.

Bush's anecdote comes in a chapter titled "The Restoration of Shame."

"We have also lost shame in our schools, too. Specifically, there is little shame in poor academic performance or classroom misconduct," wrote Bush. "We now see many students who do not care if the teacher yells at them or if their test results are less than stellar. In many of Florida's largest school districts, there is little that the teacher can do to make students feel some sense of shame."

Bush wrote that in Walton County, Florida, corporal punishment was still in use and was "very effective." He noted at the conclusion of the anecdote that the county had never experienced a shooting at any of its schools.

"In some school districts, such as Walton County, one of the oldest forms of shame, corporal punishment, is alive and well, and despite protests by some parents and Florida's PTAs, the students in Walton have actually found that this doling out of shame is very effective," Bush wrote. "The students of these schools will tell you, as will anybody who experienced corporal punishment in school, that it is not the brief spanking that hurts but the accompanying shame."

"A senior valedictorian of one high school in Walton County told a reporter, 'We feel ashamed when it happens to us, but when you're in the classroom and you want to learn and somebody else won't let you learn, well, they are dealt with.'

"To date, Walton County has never experienced a shooting at any of its schools."

A Bush spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News inquiry on whether Bush still supported the use of corporal punishment.

Bush wrote the book after losing his 1994 run for Florida governor. BuzzFeed News purchased a company of the book on Amazon last week.

The Huffington Post earlier reported that Bush wrote about the loss of stigmatization surrounding out-of-wedlock births and the need to restore what he called "public shame."

Here's the full page:

Andrew Kaczynski iPhone Camera Roll

“Friends painted a picture in which having a baby as a single woman is easy, something that changes nothing. Of course, as any parent can tell you, having a baby changes everything. Where was that truth on Friends?”

TNT/Crude Kaczynski Photoshop

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, in his 2005 book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, blamed the hit sitcom Friends for exposing young people to unrealistic expectations about parenting and sex.

"On the most popular show on television for years, Friends, one character, Rachel, had a baby out of wedlock," wrote Santorum. "The Parents Television Council notes that 'Baby Emma was conceived as a ratings gimmick … the product of a one-night stand with ex-boyfriend Ross. Over the next few months we watched as Rachel battled baby blues because her pregnancy and growing belly got in the way of her social life.'"

Santorum said Friends inaccurately portrayed single motherhood as easy.

"After the birth, what happened to baby Emma? Rachel was still enjoying a great social life, dating, and hanging out at the coffee shop," Santorum wrote.

"Friends painted a picture in which having a baby as a single woman is easy, something that changes nothing. Of course, as any parent can tell you, having a baby changes everything. Where was that truth on Friends? What happened to the baby? Where were the hours and hours of Rachel's interaction with little Emma, the minute-by-minute loving care, the absolute dependence and the absolute responsibility? That's the reality, but it is not what we see on TV."

The passage on Friends was part of a larger condemnation of television programming.

"Rarely do characters end up pregnant or get a sexually transmitted disease," Santorum wrote.

"There are 15 million new sexually transmitted infections every year in this country, but television characters rarely, if ever, get one. America's teenagers and young adults don't live inside a television sitcom. That's the point, of course: young people hardly ever see the real-life results of extramarital sexual activity."

Santorum wrote that "bad culture lies" and sex on TV "needs to reflect the truth."

"Bad culture lies," Santorum added. "I'm not saying sex has no place on television—though it could certainly use less in the programming, not to mention ads. I'm saying it needs to be honest. It needs to reflect the truth. Kids conclude from what they see on TV that true love is validated through sexual engagement, that sex is the natural and normal result when two people like each other. And what follows from sex is, of course, true happiness. With all this sex going on outside of marriage, you'd think we should be a pretty sexually satisfied society. Of course, we are not."