How black “do you need to be” to qualify for minority business grants?

I can think of a couple of people right off the top of my head who are prominent activists in the black community but if I hadn't been told what their occupation was I'd have sworn on a Bible that they were white. … I was majority northwestern European, but there was a big swath of Native American, combined with some lines from the region which now includes Turkey and, like Taylor, a tiny hit of sub-Saharan African. … In three months, Ralph Taylor of Washington State will be going before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding a lawsuit he's been working on for the past four years…

Video: Supreme Court to consider key provision in Voting Rights Act this week

They can't uphold the DoJ's interpretation without relying on Section 5, but overruling the DoJ on this would all but eviscerate that section — and return the states under its aegis to the same voting-rights standards as every other state in the union, even if the Supreme Court doesn't explicitly end Section 5, which the 2009 case showed they seriously considered doing at the time. … Four southern states covered by the Voting Rights Act - Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas -- and one northern one, New Hampshire -- were among 10 states to adopt strict photo voter ID laws in the past two years. … For the past 48 years, the Justice Department has routinely monitored elections and reviewed changes to any voting rules, ranging from poll locations and hours, to registration and identification requirements and the redrawing of legislative district lines…

No winners in Texas transgender wrestler situation

(b) If the child is subject to the continuing jurisdiction of a court under Chapter 155, the court shall send a copy of the order to the central record file as provided in Chapter 108. … (B) the person petitioning on behalf of the child provides the court with proof that the child has notified the appropriate local law enforcement authority of the proposed name change. … One thing which is interesting, and I don't know if Beggs' family has answered this question, is the fact Texas families can petition a court to have a birth certificate changed…

Good news: Eight percent of New Jersey residents think Obama’s the Antichrist

He clearly was the root of all evil in the left's cosmology, but even so, would secularists go so far as to anoint him the Biblical Master of Lies? … Overall numbers on the question of whether Bush had "advance knowledge" of 9/11 -- which, alas, is ambiguously worded, since it could be understood as asking merely whether the U.S. had any intel about a plot in the works … If the Antichrist nuttiness is yet another twisted manifestation of white racism towards Obama -- which is surely how it'll be spun -- what are we to make of the breakdown by race?…

NYT poll: 47% of Republicans think Obama was born in another country

"If they're going to the trouble of asking me where Obama was born, the answer probably can't be as simple as 'the U.S.'") I don't know what the relative percentages are for all these subgroups -- it may well be that hardcore Birthers are a heavy majority and low-information idiots a tiny sliver -- but it'd be worth finding out before drawing grand lessons about what the base believes. … Mr. Trump has been getting considerable attention as a possibly strong contender, but just about as many Republicans view him favorably as view him unfavorably — 35 percent favorably and 32 percent unfavorably— and nearly 60 percent of Republicans interviewed said they did not believe he was a serious candidate. … A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States…

Jeremy Lin has lunch with ESPN editor fired for “chink in the armor” headline

Note that it was the Lins who made the first contact even though at the time the family was in the midst of coping with full-blown Linsanity. … After several attempts to get Lin and Federico to meet were scuttled because of the Knicks point guard's busy schedule, the meeting finally took place at a Manhattan restaurant and left Federico thankful for Lin's graciousness. … You know I like to be ahead of the curve, so let me put this out there now: The only thing standing between a Tebow/Lin ticket is about 12 years and that pesky "natural born" clause…

Birthers and the paranoid center

Based on the principles just mentioned, media outlets and bloggers fretting over birthers and exaggerating their numbers are either ignorant of the heuristics problem and (ironically) fill in their negative attitudes about the Right, or (per Nyhan) they know about the heuristics problem and are simply doubling down on their anti-Right bias. … (This is not dissimilar to the way many of us on the left readily argued that George W. Bush was both a coked-out fratboy moron and a nefarious scheming dictator-in-waiting, simultaneously.) Of course this group of snarling partisans is concentrated overwhelmingly in the Republican Party and in the areas where extreme to-the-bone conservatism is most socially acceptible, i.e. … Now most people, regardless of their opinions of Obama politically, will probably grant at least that he's a carbon-based lifeform with a verifiable lifestory, intellect, and conscience; but there's a small hard core of conservatives who mistrust the President implicitly, and will either respond reflexively in the negative to anything whatsoever that involves him, or will consciously and forcefully express doubt about any available element of his humanity and honesty…

Trump: I know things about this supposed Russian hacking that others don’t, and you’ll find out Tuesday or Wednesay

His fans would decide that they trust Trump more than they trust "the swamp" in Washington and that, at a minimum, with experts on both sides disagreeing over whodunnit, there's no way to form a conclusion sturdy enough to justify punishing Russia. … His critics would suspect that the secret "experts" he's citing are either figments of his imagination, conjured up out of thin air to gaslight the country, or actual people with links to Russian intelligence, feeding him propaganda to create plausible deniability for Moscow. … It occurs to me that one thing Trump could do, a la his alleged birth-certificate investigation, is claim that he has his own private hacking experts who have looked into the DNC and Podesta matters and concluded that it was some other state actor who was behind it, not Russia…

Christie: Let’s face it, Romney probably wishes he didn’t make that birth-certificate joke

You've got Christie on night one talking about public employee unions and pension reform; you've got Ryan on night two talking about the fiscal crisis and entitlement reform; and then you've got Romney as the Mr. Wizard managerial problem-solver on night three who's going to make it all better. … Top Romney aide and convention director Russ Schriefer served as a consultant to Christie's successful gubernatorial campaign and while [he] reviewed the speech - which was written by Christie with input from his communications director Maria Comella and advisor Bill Palatucci - he made no substantive changes. … But contrary to expectations that he will play the traditional role of attack dog, the former U.S. Attorney will instead lay out a positive Republican vision of change for the nation – rooted in policy, biography and his surprisingly bipartisan accomplishments in the Garden State…

Rand Paul on whether Ted Cruz is a natural-born citizen: I’m no Birther

Defining "natural born" as "born on U.S. soil" means that Cruz somehow would be perfectly okay if his mother had crossed back into the U.S. the day before he was born, gave birth here, and then took off back to Canada the day after. … if they're working for a foreign government -- but if you relocated for, say, business reasons and you choose to accept all of the obligations that come with remaining a U.S. citizen, why should that status be withdrawn from you or your kid? … I believe him, but if Cruz jumps into the presidential race and starts gobbling up Paul's support among tea partiers in Iowa, I wonder how many Paul fans -- and Hillary fans -- will be willing to take a "closer look" at the issue…

California effort to expose Trump’s tax returns is defeated by…

Jerry Brown blocked fellow state Democrats from forcing President Donald Trump and other presidential candidates to disclose their personal income tax returns, arguing that such a requirement goes too far and could lead to increased demands for other personal records. … Assuming that the President plans on running for a second term, that would have (or more correctly, might have) forced his hand and gotten the long-sought documents out into the hands of California's Democrats. … In an effort to see what other damage they might be able to inflict upon Donald Trump, legislators put together a bill which would require presidential candidates to release their last five years of tax returns in order to appear on the ballot…

Quotes of the day

Marco Rubio said businessman and potential 2012 GOP primary candidate Donald Trump deserves to be taken seriously as a legitimate candidate, noting that 'Donald Trump comes to the race with some notoriety — people know who he is.' … The first time was in late October 2008, during the closing days of the presidential campaign, when the communications director for the state's then Republican governor, Linda Lingle (who appointed Fukino) asked if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya. … "[Fukino said] that the original so-called 'long form' birth certificate — described by Hawaiian officials as a 'record of live birth' — absolutely exists, located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health…

Reporter to Trump: How come you don’t talk about Obama’s birth certificate anymore?

Maybe the truth about his reluctance to discuss it is simpler: Having already built his political brand around Birtherism, he knew he didn't need to delve into it again in order to get the political benefits of it from Republicans. … A YouGov poll taken earlier this year found 53 percent of Republicans don't think Obama was born in the U.S. Left-leaning pollster PPP has polled Trump supporters more than once about whether they believe Obama was born here and, relatedly, whether they think he's a Christian or a Muslim. … Via Mediaite, it's a strange but true fact that despite Birtherism having put Trump on the right-wing map in 2011 and despite his sporadic attacks on Ted Cruz's citizenship in the primary due to his Canadian origins, he really has stayed far away from Birtherism over the past 14 months…

Super-accountable president receives “transparency” award — at event closed to press

"He was so on point, so on target in the conversation with us, it is baffling why he would not want that message to be more broadly heard by reporters and the public interest community and the public generally." … This time, Obama met quietly in the Oval Office with Gary Bass of OMB Watch, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment. … What better way to celebrate (a) DHS being forced to explain why it stalled on FOIA requests, (b) the White House telling Congress to get bent on the War Powers Act, and (c) a media cycle dominated by Encyclopedia Trump and the case of the missing birth certificate than with an award for transparency and accountability -- presented secretly?…

Romney on today’s joke: Lighten up, I’m not a Birther

He's better off avoiding this topic entirely and letting their antipathy to Obama push them into his column rather than engage the subject and put himself in a position where he's forced to repudiate their big theory. … How that makes sense, I'm not quite sure: The inevitable result of telling that joke was that he'll be asked in his next dozen interviews to affirm his belief that Obama was born in Hawaii, which he'll dutifully do, which in turn will be a thorn in the side of birth-certificate true believers. … In their calmer moments, when they're not busy trying to psych up their base by insisting that Romney's to the far right of Barry Goldwater, even partisan left-wing media types will acknowledge that he's essentially a centrist technocrat who's pandered to conservatives on select issues to win the nomination…

Holder bets Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act on opposition to photo-ID voting requirements

They can't uphold the DoJ's interpretation without relying on Section 5, but overruling the DoJ on this would all but eviscerate that section -- and return the states under its aegis to the same voting-rights standards as every other state in the union, even if the Supreme Court doesn't explicitly end Section 5, which the 2009 case showed they seriously considered doing at the time. … South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley tells us she "will absolutely sue" Justice over its denial of her state's law and that challenge will go directly to federal district court in Washington, D.C. From there it may be appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which would have to consider whether South Carolina can be blocked from implementing a law identical to the one the High Court approved for Indiana, simply because South Carolina is a "covered" jurisdiction under the Voting Rights Act. … For a man who supposedly doesn't have the faintest clue what his own ATF is doing while bodies pile up in the hundreds in Mexico, thanks to Operation Fast and Furious, Eric Holder is rather busy sticking his nose into the business of states -- and perhaps spelling the end of disparate treatment by the Department of Justice of southern states entirely…

Jeff Flake on Roy Moore: We need to speak out against his religious test for Keith Ellison

He keeps insisting that the future of the GOP is small government and diversity contrary to all available evidence; he did it in the excerpt above ("that's not our party") and he did it in another interview about Moore yesterday, claiming "I'm obviously not enamored with his politics because that's not the future of the Republican Party, that's for sure. … One of the many entertaining things about having him in the Senate will be watching the media bait him sporadically with birth-certificate questions and Moore trying to choose between standing firm, as a populist fighter must, or following Trump's lead by shifting to a "don't bother me with that" stance now that he's a fancy politician. … (Democrats are going to use that against Moore when they inevitably demand that McConnell refuse to seat him.) But it's more than that: Moore's a Birther too and was skeptical of Obama's natural-born status as recently as last December, after Trump had already backed away for electoral reasons…

Day 45: Mika Brzezinski already on the brink of a nervous breakdown over Trump

Question for her and Joe: What did they think they'd be getting in the White House if Trump won, back when they were doing their "he's really shaking up the system" tapdance routine in 2015? … We may be only days away from Brzezinski inevitably walking off the set while on the air, too emotional to continue, because Trump tweeted something new about Obama's birth certificate or whatever. … In hindsight, barring Kellyanne Conway from the show over credibility problems instead of inviting her on and challenging her, as virtually any other "news" program would have done, was probably the first sign…

Palin: No, I don’t question Obama’s faith or his citizenship

Two clips for you, one of her and the other (via GOP12) of Rove scoffing at the PPP poll but desperately trying to warn Republicans away from this issue lest it continue to provide a distraction into the campaign. … The peril for Palin in that poll is that her favorables were unusually high among Birthers at 83 percent (almost 20 points more than Huckabee), which stands to reason under Weigel's theory since she's perceived as the most conservative candidate in the race. … The reason you're seeing so many prominent Republicans pressed on Birtherism the past few days is because of this PPP poll from Tuesday claiming that a clear majority of the party's primary voters (51 percent) don't think Obama was born in the U.S. Weigel's read on that is correct, I think: To some extent the issue's become a proxy for ideology, with more conservative voters who are already deeply suspicious of The One's intentions more likely to believe that he was born abroad…

Would-be burglars shot by Houston man were in the US illegally

A much wider probe has been launched into an organized syndicate of Colombians who are engaged in illegal weapons sales and home break-ins – just like the one Ortiz and Dejesus were involved in last month in Pasadena. … According to a DPS memo obtained by 11 News, the department was investigating the use of Puerto Rican birth certificates by Colombians seeking to obtain Texas driver's licenses. … And they were already being watched by the Texas Department of Public Safety during their most recent illegal stay in the US for allegedly using fraudulent documents to obtain valid Texas drivers licenses…

Federal judge to illegal alien: No worries, just deport yourself

Parse this for me: How does it bring "finality" to the case when refusing to grant a deportation order only makes it more likely that Cobian will try to return and the feds will have to deal with him again in some capacity? … The judge made it clear that Cobian's crimes -- especially his use of a false identity to obtain legal residency status for his wife -- were serious. … In 1996, he used the name to apply for a Social Security card and later used the false identity to obtain a U.S. passport as well as legal residency status for his wife, also a Mexican immigrant…

Mark Block: Did you know that the son of Cain’s accuser works for Politico?

Update (Ed): After last week's aborted accusation against Rick Perry as being the leaker of this story and now this "epic facepalm," as one of my Twitter followers called this, Mark Block has to go. … Could a man who accused Rick Perry on national television of a "despicable" smear only to back off from it the next day really be so careless with the facts? … Josh Kraushaar tweeted earlier in the day, apparently after getting questions, that he's in fact not related to Karen Kraushaar, and simply has the same last name…

Romney: “It’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments”

Given Romney's track record of political opportunism, what would happen if you could prove to him statistically that calling Obama a socialist would attract independents in the general election instead of driving them away? … And tied up in all of this, of course, is the conventional wisdom that using "incendiary" rhetoric to win primary votes will make the eventual nominee less viable in the general by dragging him further away from the center. … The reason we've cycled through Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum as top-tier challengers to Mitt isn't because they've sequentially one-upped each other in how much tasty rhetorical red meat they're willing to plate…

Report: Trump has told people the “Access Hollywood” tape isn’t real

Seem contrite, seem statesmanlike, emphasize that he's not perfect -- which everyone can relate to -- and the white suburban voters he was desperate to hold onto might conclude that it was only talk after all, more than a decade old, and everyone's entitled to a mistake. … I'd love to hear Steve Bannon talk candidly about the strategy behind Trump expressing "regret" last fall rather than spinning the tape as a Clinton dirty trick or some other form of overdubbed Democratic chicanery. … He sees the calls for Mr. Moore to step aside as a version of the response to the now-famous "Access Hollywood" tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women's genitalia, and the flood of groping accusations against him that followed soon after…

Hmmmm: Peter Strzok seen being escorted from FBI building on Friday

Absent any financial incentive to remain on the payroll, the only reason to keep going is because he thinks quitting under pressure would amount to admitting that he'd behaved improperly in his investigations. … "Pete has steadfastly played by the rules and respected the process, and yet he continues to be the target of unfounded personal attacks, political games and inappropriate information leaks," Goelman said in a statement. … FBI agent Peter Strzok was escorted from the FBI building Friday as part of the ongoing internal proceedings at the bureau on his conduct, according to a source familiar with the matter…

Attrition through enforcement: Illegals heading home from Arizona?

As for Kavanagh, it could be years before a guest-worker program passes; if this exodus is as mass as the article suggests and the economic damage is grave, it could actually be a boon to illegals in proving their claim that America can't function without them. … In what are considered bellwethers of permanent moves back to Mexico, the Mexican consulate in Phoenix has seen a dramatic increase in applications for Mexican birth certificates, passports and other documents that immigrants living in Arizona will need to return home... … Dozens of immigrants are leaving the U.S. daily, and even more are expected to leave once the sanctions law takes effect in January, provided the law survives a last-minute legal challenge, said Rosendo Hernandez, president of the advocacy group Immigrants Without Borders…

Glenn Beck on Trump: Thank goodness there’s finally a candidate who knows how to curse at our enemies

He has no future in the primary, but as a high-profile independent running an inexpensive bare-bones populist campaign with attention-getting speeches like last night's, he could probably grab enough votes from the GOP to swing the election. … Well, Trump's been in favor of all of them at one time or another, but since he's willing to pound the table about Obama's birth certificate and tell the Chinese to go f*** themselves, I guess we'll let it slide. … In fact, that's one of my secret pleasures in watching his candidacy -- observing how some "true conservatives" (not all or most, but some) who've spent years ripping on RINOs will instantly start cooing over a tough-talking populist even though he's betrayed every core right-wing principle in the book…

Perry: Okay, enough with the Birther crap now

Speaking of candidates not living up to their hype, I want to link this item about Huntsman but can't justify devoting an entire post to a guy who's polling an asterisk. … He's spent 10 years perfecting his retail political skills as governor, yet he face-planted with that "heartless" crack about in-state tuition last month and he upstaged his own jobs plan today. … No hedging this time with agnosticism about whether O's birth certificate is real or how it's "a good issue to keep alive," just scorn for the question on a day that's supposed to be devoted to economics…

2013 “Lie of the Year” winner blasts politicians who “just make stuff up”

A good statement and not that surprising despite the Democrats' leftward drift, particularly when you remember that he was addressing an audience of South Africans that had to confront the same problem of racial reconciliation in an unusually stark way. … Obama would probably say that it's about wanting to preserve the norms of presidential succession, in which the last chief executive declines to attack the new guy as a show of comity and a tribute to the peaceful transfer of power in democracies. … " (Which isn't unique to America, of course.) I don't understand why he still insists on not criticizing POTUS by name when (a) everyone knows who he's talking about and (b) Trump criticizes him by name practically every day on Twitter…

Gov. Newsom signs law requiring candidates to release tax returns to qualify for state primary

This is another feel-good moment for the resistance but it's not likely to withstand a court challenge and, even if it does, Trump could probably sidestep it if he wanted to do so. … Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, previously told The Bee that "the Constitution is clear on the qualifications for someone to serve as president and states cannot add additional requirements on their own." … Of the 12 highest-polling candidates, four would not currently qualify for a spot on California's ballot, including former Vice President Joe Biden – who has only released three years of tax returns…

Palin battles Anchorage Daily News over Trig Trutherism

I finally decided, after watching this go on unabated for months, to let a reporter try to do a story about the "conspiracy theory that would not die" and, possibly, report the facts of Trig's birth thoroughly enough to kill the nonsense once and for all. … You may have been too busy with the campaign to notice, but the Daily News has, from the beginning, dismissed the conspiracy theories about Trig's birth as nonsense. … Is it true you have a reporter still bothering my state office, my very busy doctor (who's already set the record straight for you), and the school district, in pursuit of your ridiculous conspiracy?…

Joe the Plumber: McCain was just the lesser of two evils

Yeah, he's a squish, and yeah, he cynically milked JTP's working-class credentials for everything they were worth, but the guy can't even catch a break from people he's made famous. … Neither campaign put out a -- no, I'm not going to speak for the Democrats but I mean, the Republicans didn't put out a candidate for us to really vote for. … JOE THE PLUMBER: Well, something you don't know, actually it's probably stuff that you've already guessed and has already been painted in the different media spotlights…

Judge orders baby’s name changed from “Messiah” — over parents’ objections

If dad wants to name his son "Douche" and a judge orders it changed to "Douglas," how long will "Douglas" stick once dad stands up in front of his classmates on the first day of kindergarten and says, "I'd like you to meet my son Douche"? … As Eugene Volokh noted at the last link, you can understand that logic in a case where, say, the parent wanted to name the child something profane, but to trump a parent's rights, the example would need to be extreme. … If the community would be offended by your kid's name, then the community -- via the judge, acting supposedly in the best interest of the child -- gets to veto mom's and dad's choice…

Federal judge: Yes, Arizona and Kansas can require voters to prove their citizenship

A federal judge has ruled that Kansas and Arizona should be allowed to require voters to provide evidence of U.S. citizenship, in a case closely watched by both sides dealing with the question of voter eligibility. … Both states have new voter-ID measures measures that require new voters to provide a birth certificate, passport, or other documentation to prove their citizenship, while the federal registration form only requires that new voters sign a statement declaring that they are citizens. … In this latest iteration of that ongoing battle, the Federal Election Assistance Commission has so far refused to help state officials in Kansas and Arizona change federal election registration forms to include proof of citizenship…

Frank Luntz: I’ll bet $10,000 that Trump doesn’t run

Which raises a question: What if his polling remains semi-respectable into the fall -- 20 percent in NH, say, good enough for a distant second to Romney -- and he emerges as the best chance to upset Mitt in that state? … He's tied for the lead with Huckabee in West Virginia (he leads among Birthers with 30 percent), and other candidates in the race or at the margins are either handling him with kid gloves or kissing up in hopes of attracting his supporters if Trump ends up not running after all. … John McLaughlin told CBS News that not only was Trump was "very serious" about making a presidential bid, but that he's putting in the work to get ready and is "doing more of his homework and preparation than people might expect."…

Alert the Media: John Gibson

When Pennsylvania lawyer Philip J. Berg filed the first birth-related injunction against Obama this August, asking that Obama be ruled "ineligible to run for United States Office of the President," he alleged that the certificate had been proved a forgery by the "extensive Forensic testing" of anonymous experts and claimed that Obama's campaign had simply inserted his name over that of his half-sister, Maya. … Anonymous digital image experts with handles like Techdude and Polarik sprung from the woodwork to prove (shades of Rathergate!) that pixels, spacing, and indentation on the form indicated that the Obama campaign had created the certificate with Adobe Photoshop. … After Obama locked up the nomination in early June, low-level talk radio and blog chatter peddled rumors that Obama's real middle name was Muhammad, that his father was not really Barack Obama, and that he was not really born in Hawaii…

Trump: I might call off the debate

On top of that, Trump is still spouting off about birth certificates, an association that won't do anything to convince independents in the general election that the Republican nominee is a serious candidate. … Right now, Bachmann's emphasizing her social conservative credentials in Iowa in an attempt to run to the right of both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and it's a little difficult to see how that works into considering Trump as the running mate. … If Michele Bachmann thought that The Donald would take her refusal to attend his Newmax debate on December 27th quietly, Trump made it clear this morning on Fox Business's Don Imus show that he's going to hold a grudge…

Ted Cruz ally: Some Rand Paul supporters raising questions in Iowa about his eligibility

As for grassroots anti-Cruz Birtherism, the fuel for that in Obama's case was antipathy to his liberalism; get O disqualified from office, the logic went, and you stop America's leftward drift (or slow it, since Uncle Joe Biden was waiting in the wings). … "There probably are some Senator Paul supporters that feel threatened by Senator Cruz, and they may be saying some things, but I think that's just kind of petty nonsense — I don't think it'll amount to much," Shipley said, noting that he hadn't heard any Campaign for Liberty people making the argument. … (Surprise.) The closest we get to a smoking gun is the legislative director from Paul's Campaign for Liberty being a tiny bit cute in saying he expects a smart lawyer like Cruz will have no problem "getting around" the natural-born requirement…

Video: Obama explains timing of birth-cert release

Truly, the only reason I can think that the White House acted now rather than next year when the announcement would have had more impact is what Obama says here -- he doesn't think his position on the budget has been adequately covered and he's losing ground because of it. … Obama starts off by saying that he finally got some live network coverage the only way he knew how, and proceeds to scold everyone for the monumental waste of time and distraction this has always represented … In one fell swoop, Obama gets to paint his opponents as nutcases, tweak the press for their sudden obsession over the circumstances of his birth while we move from one government-shutdown deadline to the next, and act like the grown-up in the room…

An 8-hour work week: How’s that sound?

Authors of the study, published Thursday in Science Daily, noted that the near future will see artificial intelligence, robotics and big data replacing much of the work currently done by humans, much the way, for instance, copiers replaced clerks once paid to hand-complete copies of official documents like birth certificates. … "We know unemployment is often detrimental to people's well-being," said Dr Brendan Burchell, a sociologist at Cambridge University, "negatively affecting identity, status, time use and sense of collective purpose. … Researchers probed workers' life satisfactions, their mental health, how workdays and work patterns changed and what sort of work patterns were most beneficial to their mental well-being…

James Clyburn: Obama’s political problems are due “in large measure” to racism

All he's doing here is following his usual playbook, and of course unwittingly offering a sneak preview of the DNC's strategy next October if the Mediscare game plan doesn't work out and The One trails in the polls with only a few weeks to go. … He's been demagoging Obama's opponents as racist since The One's first month in office, when he hint-hinted that Mark Sanford's and Bobby Jindal's opposition to the stimulus was driven by some sort of animus towards blacks. … A fitting story on a day when Loughner's back in the news, in case you were ever tempted to believe that the Democrats' demand for a "new tone" post-Tucson was anything more than a cheap political bludgeon…