The Washington Post:
Officials in Virginia’s largest jurisdiction want to close public schools during the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, saying they fear that supporters of Republican front-runner Donald Trump could cause mayhem at the polls.
At issue is a primary day obligation to "affirm" your Republican Party membership before casting a ballot in that party's primary. Republican advocates frame the rule as an attempt to keep voters from the opposing party from meddling in Republican affairs, but Trump opposes it in the belief that voters who are fed up with the Republican Party, i.e. the sort of voters who might be attracted to Donald Trump, would balk at having to declare their loyalty to a party they have come to despise.
[Fairfax County Electoral Board Secretary Katherine K. Hanley] said she believes the risk of arguments or fights over the pledge is significant enough to justify canceling classes for the county’s more than 180,000 students. [...]
In neighboring Loudoun County, General Registrar Judy Brown said well-publicized incidents of scuffling and name calling at Trump rallies across the country have sparked fear among some primary-day volunteers.
“We have had people saying they would prefer not to work the election,” Brown said.
Fairfax County supervisors voted 9 to 1 to ask the county’s schools to cancel classes for the day.
Welcome to 2016, everybody.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—The Real Maverick in the Presidential Race:
By now, John McCain’s identity as a "maverick" has been pretty well demolished among thinking people, though it retains a tenacious grip on certain sectors of the media. In light of McCain’s support for overturning Roe v. Wade, his cave on torture, his hiring of significant numbers of Bush-Cheney staffers, his turn to Bush’s big donors, and, of course, the McCain doctrine of Iraq war escalation, you’d think that it would be the joke among journalists it is among bloggers, but what can I say? I guess they’re slow.
Those journalists so desperate for a maverick presidential candidate, though, should take a look at former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (pronounced Gra-VEL), a long-shot Democratic candidate for president. Like McCain, if elected, Gravel would be the oldest president. Like McCain, Gravel’s major political experience is in the US Senate (1969-1981). Gravel also is a veteran, having served in the Army in the Counter Intelligence Corps in the early 1950s. And just as McCain's initial reputation was made on an act of Vietnam-era courage – refusing to be released from POW status early – in his past, so was Gravel's – entering the Pentagon Papers into the public record via his Senate subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, and filibustering the renewal of the draft. But unlike McCain, Gravel is genuinely a maverick, with the good and the bad that comes with that status.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin & Joan McCarter join to wrap up last night’s SOTU & response. Sailorghazi, we hardly knew ye! Everybody hates Ted Cruz, and with good reason. VA Gop lawmakers now want in to your kids’ underpants. Net neutrality threatened, again.
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