• Nominations: Following the confirmation of two Texan district court judges and a surprise compromise that still means that sex trafficked women can’t get money from the government for abortions, Loretta Lynch was finally confirmed as the replacement for Eric Holder in April in a 56-43 vote. Obama's nominee for the number-two position in the Justice Department, Sally Yates, also cleared a key hurdle this month when the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared her nomination as well.
  
• Obamacare: Fearing that they might actually win and effectively kill Obamacare, Republicans are considering a contingency fix to make sure they don’t get the blame for the loss of subsidies next April.
  
• Banking and Finance: In a rare show of bipartisanship, both Democrats and Republicans seem to support tweaking Dodd-Frank to avoid regulating insurance companies.
  
• Budget and Appropriations: Bob Corker and other GOP fiscal hawks are not happy about letting social programs work around the sequester. In addition, it is increasingly likely that they will use their one chance at reconciliation to include a token partial Obamacare repeal. Either way, the House and Senate did agree a nominal budget (sorta), allowing them to move on to appropriations bills. In a foreboding move, however, Republicans were forced to pull their first spending bill when it looked like an amendment might actually kill the increase in the defense budget that made it through in March. Elsewhere, NASA's budget authorization bill passed committee yesterday, including a drastically slashed Earth Science program, because god forbid they show more proof that global warming exists.
  
• Trade: Pundits and economists continue to join with Obama in calling for fast-track authorization for TPP.
  
• Cybersecurity and Telecommunications: With the publication of the Net Neutrality rules by the FCC, seven lawsuits have been filed to stop the effort, in addition to a formal in-channel request to stay the implementation. Meanwhile, House Republicans have filed a symbolic resolution meant to veto the rules as an act of Congress. As for CISPA-clones… Well, the House has recently passed their proposal, the Protecting Cyber Networks Act.
  
• Gun Control: The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act is still sitting around in the Senate, but that hasn’t stopped Kansas and possibly South Carolina in allowing permit-less concealed carry.
  
• Environment: The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has pushed the ban on “secret science” in EPA regulations one step closer to Obama’s desk. The ban would effectively prevent the EPA from relying on practically any medical study in establishing its regulations, due to patient privacy concerns. Patients would effectively be required to opt into letting the EPA use their medical data instead of allowing them to use it in an anonymized way. That said, the EPA did recently win a small victory when federal courts upheld their right to regulate truck efficiency and greenhouse gas rules on truckers. Meanwhile, the House budget for NASA has stripped a significant amount from their Earth science budget, because there's no reason to study the Earth if global warming doesn't exist (see above).
  
• Immigration: The Obama administration’s appeal on the stay of executive amnesty was heard this past month. The Fifth Circuit has yet to release their decision on the stay. A similar lawsuit has now been filed to block the granting of work permits to spouses of H-1B holders.
  
• War on Terror: It’s official. Obama's request for the AUMF is dead (in the House at least) because it doesn’t allow a future Republican president to send in ground troops.
  
• The Torture Report and the NSA: As the days tick down, Senator McConnell has introduced a reauthorization of the Patriot Act. This has not pleased libertarians in his own party, including presidential candidate Rand Paul. Rubio and Bush, on the other hand, back its extension, and Tom Cotton (he of the Iran letter) plans to make sure there’s a fight to make sure it really is. Meanwhile, a narrower bill to curtail bulk phone record collection has some bipartisan support in the Senate.
  
• Foreign Policy: The Senate continues to debate the bill designed to give the Senate oversight of the Iran deal. Sen. Bob Corker, who has supported the bill, has been attempting to fend off the over 50 amendments submitted by fellow Republicans in an attempt to derail the bill and make it unacceptable for Obama or Iran. Indeed, on Tuesday, they narrowly rejected a poison-pill amendment which would have converted the agreement to a treaty (and thus require 67 votes to approve). Tom Cotton is unhappy about this though, and has worked with Marco Rubio to force McConnell to hold a vote on requiring Iran to recognize Israel as part of any agreement.
  
• Abortion: Aside from the House moving to block implementation of a DC law prohibiting workplace discrimination based on women who support or have had abortions reproductive health choices, not much has happened in this area. But as we all know, no news is bad news when it comes to abortion. Tennessee, Florida, and Texas have pushed forward (or are planning on pushing forward) additional legislation restricting abortion. For its part, Kansas has effectively banned second-trimester abortion. Indeed, Gov. Brownback is so proud of doing so, he's been traveling the state to reenact the signing of the bill.
  
• Gay Rights: SCOTUS heard Obergefell this week.. As usual, Anthony Kennedy is the swing vote.
  
• Pee-pee doo-doo Obama is a bad president: Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee found some more documents! (but nothing incriminating) And more of Lois Lerner’s e-mails have cropped up (with no reports on them as yet). Oh, and right at the very end of March (and not duly recognized at the time), the Obama administration replied to Boehner’s lawsuit against Obama, United States House of Representatives v. Burwell, with a motion to dismiss the case.
  

• More presidential contenders came out of the woodwork this month, including Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and, of course, D&D favorite, Bernie Sanders. Lincoln Chafee and John Kasich have announced exploratory committees, and Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Mike Huckabee are all expected to announce their plans early next week. While discussions about such news in the USPol thread is inevitable, please remember that we do have a 2016 Presidential Primary thread and a 2016 Senate elections thread, too.
  
• Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted on corruption charges.
  
• Black lives still matter.
  
• MIGF won re-election.
  
• The Florida House ended its session early to avoid expanding Medicaid. The Obama administration has threatened to cut Florida’s Low Income Pool funding because the program has been essentially replaced by expanded Medicaid in other states. The early end of the session also leaves Florida without a budget.
  
• The anti-business Obama administration evidently convinced Comcast to drop its merger with Time Warner Cable.
  
• Missouri may join 27 other states calling for a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution, bringing an Article V convention within 6 states of happening.
  
• At the beginning of last month, California Governor Jerry Brown ordered a strict 25% cut in water usage state-wide, due to the ongoing drought there, kicking off another urban/rural debate in California over water usage.
  
• Chris Christie may be effectively dead when it comes to the Republican 2016 nomination, but he’s been pushing his own agenda, like entitlement reform, to get a wider audience.
  

• Slavery by Another Name
  
• Citizenfour (Laura Poitras's companion pieces My Country, My Country and The Oath are useful for additional context on the impact of the US war on terror in the Middle East)
  

• The Atlantic
  
  • "The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates (systematic mistreatment of African Americans in the economic sphere)
    
  • "The Tragedy of the American Military" by James Fallows (the US: the chickenhawk nation)
    
  • "The Southern Captivity of the GOP" by Christopher Caldwell (still-applicable 1998 article about regionalism in the GOP)
    

• Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western
  
• The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America by Naomi Murakawa
  
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
  
• Matt Taibbi's
  
  • The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap and
    
  • Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
    
• Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow
  
• Rick Perlstein's trilogy on the history of the modern conservative movement:
  
  • Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
    
  • Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
    
  • The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
    
• Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party by Geoffrey Kabaservice
  

• @costareports (Robert Costa, Washington Post, formerly National Review): Conservative-leaning journalist to whom Republican sources often leak backroom stories (Republican retreats, Presidential campaigns, etc.)
  
• @daveweigel (Dave Weigel, Bloomberg Politics, formerly Slate): "Idiosyncratic libertarian" journalist who is second only to Robert Costa in connections/interviews with Republican officials. Contrary to popular belief, not D&D superstar Joementum.
  
• @BruceBartlett (Bruce Bartlett, ex-Reagan/Bush official): "Lifelong conservative who now thinks the GOP panders to fools, whom he calls wankers. My tweets should not always be taken seriously."
  
• The following are semi-random selections from a list offered by Rygar201 and may be good or bad.
  
  • @owillis (Olivier Willis, research fellow, Media Matters)
    
  • @mattyglesias (Matt Yglesias, executive editor, Vox)
    
  • @JuddLegum (Judd Legum, Editor-in-Chief, Think Progress)
    
  • @dick_nixon "37th President of the United States. Messages from the President are unsigned, others from Ronald Ziegler. "
    
  • @EricBoehlert (Eric Boehlert, Media Matters)
    
  • @JamilSmith (Jamil Smith, senior editor, The New Republic)
    
  • @jonathanchait (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine)
    
  • @nielslesniewski (Neils Lesniewski, Senate coverage, Roll Call)
    
  • @abwhite7 (Abraham White, former comms for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY))
    
  • @DSenFloor (Senate D Floor Watch): "Live floor updates from the Senate Democrats"
    
  • @billmon1 (Billmon)
    
  • @ebruenig (Elizabeth Bruenig, The New Republic)
    

ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 20:53 on May 11, 2015