The Caucus: Paul Ends Active Campaigning For Presidency

Republican Massachusetts Senate nominee Gabriel Gomez is lashing out at his opponent, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), for being “pond scum” after the Democratic candidate released an ad attacking him for criticizing President Barack Obama’s handling of the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death. “You know I’ve got four young kids, and they’ve got to sit there and they’ve got to see an ad with their dad, who’s a SEAL, who served honorably,” Gomez told a local reporter after recently speaking to the Newtown Needham Chamber of Commerce. “And for him to be as dirty and low, pond scum, to like put me up there next to bin Laden, he’s just gotta be called what he is. That simple.” “Congressman Markey’s been around for 40 years, he knows exactly what he’s doing,” he added. Earlier this month, Markey had sought to highlight that Gomez had worked with a conservative super PAC that accused the president of releasing information about bin Laden’s death for political purposes. In a recently released ad of his own, Gomez also said that Markey “blames Gomez for the Newtown shooting.” In a statement obtained by Talking Points Memo on Friday, a spokesperson for Markey argued that Gomez’s “desperate attack” was an attempt to avoid the real issues. “After spending the past week leveling completely baseless attacks against Ed Markey that were thoroughly debunked by Massachusetts newspapers and nonpartisan fact checkers, Gabriel Gomez has reached a new low,” Markey spokesperson Andrew Zucker insisted. “Unfortunately for Gomez, his desperate attack will do nothing to distract from his opposition to an assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines, or his refusal to release his 2005 tax return that would reveal how much he pocketed from taking a questionable $280,000 tax break on his Cohasset home.” Watch this video, uploaded to YouTube on May 23, 2013.

The 104-year-old Anna Louise Inn in Cincinnati, Ohio, has long provided a refuge for women struggling to overcome drug addictions or prostitution, escape abusive husbands, or simply get back on their feet. When Western & Southern Insurance Group initially approached them with plans to purchase the safe house several years ago and turn it into a hotel, the Anna Louise declined. Western & Southern sued over a zoning issue, and, after a costly 2-year legal battle, the Fortune 500 company finally bought the house last week for $4 million. The insurance company initially sued to keep the Anna Louise from using a windfall of tax credits to renovate the home. The federal low-income housing credits required the Anna Louise to use the funds over 30 years, finally giving the struggling house security in the neighborhood. As Cincinnati City Beat reported at the time, Western & Southern’s PAC and the CEO’s family donated heavily to one city council member who changed his vote last minute in an attempt to sabotage the Anna Louise’s development agreement. When it cleared anyway, Western & Southern sued as a stalling mechanism — as long as there was legal action, the Anna Louise would be banned from claiming the much-needed funds. With the credits set to expire at the end of the year, Cincinnati Union Bethel, the nonprofit that runs the Anna Louise, faced the choice of either giving up the house or the funds that could help them set up elsewhere. Cincinnati Union Bethel told the Associated Press they gave in to the sale because they couldn’t afford to sustain a legal fight with the insurance giant. One woman who took shelter at the house for two years after leaving an abusive relationship explained, “Western & Southern had the money to fight and the Anna Louise Inn didn’t. When you have that much money and you want something, eventually you’re going to get it.” The two-year legal fight devolved rapidly into nasty attacks on the women at the house. John Barrett, The CEO of Western & Southern, accused the Anna Louise of taking “a bailout” from taxpayers in order to prop up “a homeless shelter and prostitution recovery center.” A key tactic in the company’s crusade against the safe house was to vilify its residents as degenerates who did not belong in the fast-developing neighborhood. Western & Southern has already bought up a sizable portion of Cincinnati’s historic Lytle Park neighborhood, where the house is located. The company developed Cincinnati’s tallest building in 2011 and plans to turn the Anna Louise into a boutique hotel as it has done with other historic properties in the area. When asked about the public relations cost to his company over the past two years, Barrett told the Cincinnati Enquirer, “If you believe in something, you believe in it. That’s what this company’s always done: stood up for its rights.”     

In the wake of the I-5 bridge collapse, the authorities want you to know that "structurally deficient" and "functionally obsolete" don't necessarily mean "about to fall into the river." It's true! They don't. Necessarily. The Skagit River Bridge combined two problem categories: It was functionally obsolete, meaning built to outdated specifications, and it was fracture-critical, meaning that if one key part fails, the whole thing fails. It's believed that that failure of one part was triggered when an oversized truck hit the bridge at the wrong place. So what are the lessons we should be learning about American bridge infrastructure? There's no doubt it's hurting, with tens of thousands of structurally deficient bridges needing tens of billions of dollars in repairs. Public construction spending as a share of GDP is not a pretty picture right now: There's a strategy question paired with the funding one. The story of the Skagit River Bridge makes you wonder if we shouldn't be focusing on replacing rather than repairing many bridges. This bridge has been repaired repeatedly in recent years. So, uh, why is the government spending a bunch of money repairing a bridge that doesn't meet modern traffic needs, will fall apart when hit by a truck that apparently did not sustain all that much damage, and was at one point structurally deficient? Repair is cheaper in the short term, but aside from the long-term costs that can be racked up, it leaves us with bridges that are too narrow or don't have enough clearance. Lots of such bridges, along with lots of actively unsafe bridges. It's completely of a piece with the narrow thinking and refusal to invest in the future that has plagued our government in recent decades. But at moments like this, that lack of vision for the future should be part of the discussion.

In 2012, more people subject to the New York Police Department’s controversial stop-and-frisks were arrested for marijuana than for anything else, according to a new analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union. While NYPD’s stated purpose for its aggressive and racially disproportionate stop-and-frisk program is to target guns, the number of people arrested for marijuana was more than six times the number of guns recovered. While 729 guns were recovered, 5,000 people were arrested for marijuana. Overall, more than 26,000 people were stopped for marijuana possession. The marijuana arrest rate is particularly alarming because only “public view” possession of marijuana is a crime in New York City. It is reportedly a common practice to ask suspects to take everything out of their pockets after a police stop, and then arrest those who reveal marijuana on the theory that it is now in “public view.” The NYCLU’s study also found that, “[t]hough frisks can be legally conducted only when an officer reasonably suspects the person has a weapon that might endanger officer safety, 55.8 percent of those stopped in 2012 were frisked. Of those frisked, a weapon was found only 2 percent of the time.” The NYCLU report is one of several analyses to emerge from recently released NYPD data, as a months-long trial concludes on the constitutional challenge to NYPD’s rampant stops of New Yorkers. While the number of stop-and-frisks has dropped somewhat since the program drew heightened controversy, the dramatic disproportionate application of the tactic to minorities has continued. Eighty-seven percent of those stopped in 2012 were black and Latino. Another analysis out this week from New York City’s Public Advocate found that these disproportionate stops do not reflect the ratios of minority-to-white crime: whites stopped by police were two to three times more likely to be found with weapons than blacks and Latinos. And a recent comparison of stop-and-frisk and crime data showed that as the stop-and-frisk rate dropped, so, too, did the crime rate.     

After more than three-fifths of delegates to the Boy Scouts of America’s National Council voted Thursday to lift the organization’s ban on openly gay youth — a move that preserved the ban on LGBT adult leaders and volunteers — groups ranging from GLAAD to the LDS Church embraced the change. But several of the most anti-LGBT extremists expressed outrage, hate, and vitriol at even this half-measure: Politicians Saddened the BSA bends to the whims of political correctness. governor.state.tx.us/news/press-rel… — Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) May 23, 2013 If the Left were truly tolerant, they would tolerate the Boy Scouts being who they have always been. #pjnet patriotjournalist.com/youtube.php?Se… — Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 23, 2013 Anti-LGBT Activists I honestly have no problem with the Scouts deciding that way, but I honestly cannot see me now enrolling my son in the scouts as a result. — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 23, 2013 BSA now stands for Boy Sodomizers of America, because that’s what will happen. Mark my words. — Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) May 24, 2013 Boy Scouts’ Decision Another Casualty of Moral Compromise ow.ly/llppP — Tony Perkins (@tperkins) May 24, 2013 Boy Scouts of America: Born February 8, 1910. Died, May 23, 2013 #RIP — Matt Barber (@jmattbarber) May 24, 2013 I’d rather start my own group rather than bitch and moan about what a private group does and launch a suit to force them to comply. — Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) May 23, 2013 Today’s vote teaches our kids that you should not stand up for what is right instead – stand up for what is popular onmyhonor.net/whats-next/ — OnMyHonor.Net (@OnMyHonorBSA) May 23, 2013 “Which other of our these values is not actually ‘timeless’?” -question 8-yr-old me would ask my Scout leader. — Eric Teetsel (@EricTeetsel) May 24, 2013 Sad day for the Boy Scouts. Sad day for America: formerly “morally straight” organization votes to allow openly homosexual members #tcot #p2 — Peter LaBarbera (@PeterLaBarbera) May 23, 2013 The Scout law embraces the values of being “helpful, friendly, courteous, and kind.” It is a shame that those who claim Scouting has abandoned its moral code so blatantly violate its most important provisions.