Pat Bagley via politicalcartoons.com (from
this)
The Hill:
DEMS: GOP CHAIR HIDING FULL PLANNED PARENTHOOD FOOTAGE: Top House Democrats are accusing the chairman of the House Oversight Committee of refusing to share the unedited footage from the recent undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood.
"Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz has in his possession right now, a computer hard drive that contains videos produced by David Daleiden, the head of the group that tried to entrap Planned Parenthood," Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) declared from the House floor on Wednesday, interrupting the chamber's debate on legislation expanding the investigation into Planned Parenthood.
Chaffetz, who is running for House Speaker, received a copy of the videos on Sept. 25, and has since declined to share a copy with the Democrats, according to a Democratic committee aide.
Instead, Chaffetz has said he will set up a "viewing room" for Democratic members and staff to view the videos. Republicans have not yet hosted a screening, the aide said, calling the move a "direct violation" of the Democrats' recent subpoena of Daleiden's unedited footage.
Francis Wilkinson:
According to the Associated Press, the mother of the 26-year-old Oregon gunman who killed nine and injured nine "told investigators he was struggling with some mental health issues."
Yes, he was.
Neighbors have described Christopher Harper-Mercer as an anxious, alienated young man. His mother, Laurel Harper, appears to have written in online forums about his mental and social struggles.
It's a profile so familiar it's cliché. Dylann Roof, the "quiet" 21-year-old white supremacist accused of murdering nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in June, was similarly disturbed. And, of course, Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who in 2012 sprayed gunfire through the classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, had all the markings of the agonized loner who seeks catharsis by making others suffer horribly in turn.
The three have something else in common, as well. Each was encouraged by a parent to relish guns.
PPP:
One thing Congressional Republicans haven't helped themselves with recently is their war on Planned Parenthood. By a 12 point margin, 49/37, voters say they have a higher opinion of Planned Parenthood than the Republicans in Congress. That includes a 45/35 edge with independents.
Congress on the whole has its requisite atrocious approval rating at 11/82. Despite the Republican control though that doesn't have the electorate positioned to vote for massive change- the generic Congressional ballot splits evenly with each party getting 43%...
Evidence continues to mount that the Affordable Care Act is just not a liability for Democrats anymore.
More politics and policy below the fold.
NY Times:
Responding to the mass murder by a gunman at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, Democrats on Thursday will begin a new push for gun control legislation in the Senate and plan to block other bills until their measures get a vote, Senate Democrats said.
The push will be led by my two Senators, but there's plenty of D backing. Not likely to pass, but the right thing to do.
WaPo:
The lack of accurate information about police-involved shootings is roiling the nation’s law enforcement community, leaving officials unable to say whether high-profile killings are isolated events or part of an alarming trend, FBI Director James B. Comey said Wednesday.
Speaking to a private gathering of more than 100 politicians and top law enforcement officials, Comey expressed frustration that the federal government has no better data on police shootings than databases assembled this year by The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper.
Noam Levey:
With the first primaries of the 2016 presidential campaign just months away, the national healthcare debate is poised to enter a new phase, more focused on consumers’ pocketbooks than on re-litigating the 5-year-old Affordable Care Act.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is campaigning on a detailed program to crack down on rising drug prices and runaway medical bills, is making a play for the hearts of voters increasingly irritated about what they have to pay for healthcare.
In the process, Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has issued an implicit challenge to her Republican rivals, who continue to campaign with broadsides against Obamacare but few details about how they would address consumers’ basic healthcare worries.
“She is talking to people’s wallets … at a time when healthcare prices are a huge concern,” said Frank Luntz, an influential Republican strategist who helped develop the GOP’s highly successful campaign to tarnish Obamacare even before the law was enacted. “It’s smart.”
Roger Simon:
Running for president is a lousy form of therapy. And if Joe Biden thinks a presidential campaign will heal either him or his family, he is kidding himself.
Campaigns are meat grinders. They crush; they do not mend.
Huffington Post:
Regardless of who called who first, the Politico "exclusive" was just the latest course in a feeding frenzy of Biden news that -- even considered collectively -- hasn't added up to all that much. The vice president remains, much like in June, on the edge of running. And being in that political limbo has given him the type of intense political coverage that basically has eluded his office for years.
David W. Lesch:
Russia Is Repeating Cold War Mistakes in Syria
In 1957, the Soviet Union’s ally Egypt intervened in Syria’s messy politics. It didn’t go well. Why does Putin think this time will be different?
After the 1957 debacle in Syria, the United States could do little but watch events unfold, acquiescing to the realities of the situation and the limits of U.S. power. Indeed, following the Iraqi revolution in July 1958 that swept aside the pro-Western monarchy, the three most important Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, and Iraq) appeared to be aligned with Moscow. But in Washington, one could almost sense a sigh of relief. The Eisenhower administration had waded into the minefield of Middle East politics and got burned. Even as they faced criticism at home for appearing to allow Soviet influence in the Middle East to expand, Eisenhower administration officials seemed only too happy to let the Soviets try to dig out of the hole they had created for themselves. It’s almost as if they dared the Kremlin to maintain productive relations with three Arab countries increasingly in competition with one another in the so-called Arab Cold War.
Perhaps Putin’s intervention in Syria will result in something akin to Egypt’s Pyrrhic victory in 1957 or to the Soviet Union’s sudden expansion of influence in the late 1950s that was accompanied by an exponential increase in foreign-policy headaches. Fifty years from now, historians may identify Russia’s 2015 push in Syria as the beginning of the end of Putinism, just as the 1957 landing was the beginning of the end of Nasserism.
Jennifer Senior:
As the historic administration nears its final year, African-American leaders debate: Did Barack Obama do enough for his own community?
Pete Souza, via Wikimedia Commons
There is a photo by Pete Souza, the White House’s canny and peripatetic photographer, that surfaces from time to time online. The setting is Marine One, and it features a modest cast of five. Valerie Jarrett, dressed in a suit of blazing pink, is staring at her cell phone. Barack Obama, twisted around in his seat, is listening to a conversation between his then–body guy, Reggie Love, and Patrick Gaspard, one of his then–top advisers. Obama’s former deputy press secretary, Bill Burton, is looking on too, with just the mildest hint of a grin on his face.
In many ways, it’s a banal shot — just another photo for the White House Instagram feed, showing the president and his aides busily attending to matters of state. Stare at it a second longer, though, and a subtle distinction comes into focus: Everyone onboard is black. “We joked that it was Soul Plane,” says Burton. “And we’ve often joked about it since — that it was the first time in history only black people were on that helicopter.”