By Katie Zezima (The Washington Post)

NEW YORK — Republican Presidential candidates are all seeking the endorsement of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and with good reason — he and his wife Miriam poured $92 million into the 2012 presidential race.

Thursday, someone else paid to spend time with Adelson.

A lunch with Adelson was auctioned off at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala here. Auctioneers wanted the bidding to start at $100,000. No one raised their paddle. So they brought it down to $50,000. And someone immediately said yes.

Adelson pledged $1 million to the organization that put on the gala, the World Values Network. It’s run by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, spiritual adviser to the stars, author of books including “Kosher Sex” and sage of reality television. In an interview with northjersey.com Adelson said Boteach is “one of the smartest guys I’ve met.”

Adelson told a packed ballroom here that he doesn’t just pledge money — he gives it. Quickly. If a gift is promised Monday and he’s in the office the check will go out Tuesday. Two people in the room were likely paying close attention: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is running for president, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is expected to run.

But he’s not really the one with all the cash, he said.

“I don’t have the money. My wife’s got all the money,” Adelson said.

Boteach recommended that the organization, which launched a $25 million campaign, should auction off Adelson.

“Who wants to buy Sheldon Adelson? That’s not cheap,” Boteach said

by Paul Krugman (New York Times)

America remains, despite the damage inflicted by the Great Recession and its aftermath, a very rich country. But many Americans are economically insecure, with little protection from life’s risks. They frequently experience financial hardship; many don’t expect to be able to retire, and if they do retire have little to live on besides Social Security.

Many readers will, I hope, find nothing surprising in what I just said. But all too many affluent Americans — and, in particular, members of our political elite — seem to have no sense of how the other half lives. Which is why a new study on the financial well-being of U.S. households conducted by the Federal Reserve, should be required reading inside the Beltway.

Before I get to that study, a few words about the callous obliviousness so prevalent in our political life.

I am not, or not only, talking about right-wing contempt for the poor, although the dominance of compassionless conservatism is a sight to behold. According to the Pew Research Center, more than three-quarters of conservatives believe that the poor “have it easy” thanks to government benefits; only 1 in 7 believe that the poor “have hard lives.” And this attitude translates into policy. What we learn from the refusal of Republican-controlled states to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would foot the bill, is that punishing the poor has become a goal in itself, one worth pursuing even if it hurts rather than helps state budgets.

But leave self-declared conservatives and their contempt for the poor on one side. What’s really striking is the disconnect between centrist conventional wisdom and the reality of life — and death — for much of the nation.

Take, as a prime example, positioning on Social Security. For decades, a declared willingness to cut Social Security benefits, especially by raising the retirement age, has been almost a required position — a badge of seriousness — for politicians and pundits who want to sound wise and responsible. After all, people are living longer, so shouldn’t they work longer, too? And isn’t Social Security an old-fashioned system, out of touch with modern economic realities?

Meanwhile, the reality is that living longer in our ever-more-unequal society is very much a class thing: life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot among the affluent, but hardly at all in the bottom half of the wage distribution, that is, among those who need Social Security most. And while the retirement system F.D.R. introduced may look old-fashioned to affluent professionals, it is quite literally a lifeline for many of our fellow citizens. A majority of Americans over 65 get more than half their income from Social Security, and more than a quarter are almost completely reliant on those monthly checks.

These realities may finally be penetrating political debate, to some extent. We seem to be hearing less these days about cutting Social Security, and we’re even seeing some attention paid to proposals for benefit increases given the erosion of private pensions. But my sense is that Washington still has no clue about the realities of life for those not yet elderly. Which is where that Federal Reserve study comes in.

This is the study’s second year, and the current edition actually portrays a nation in recovery: in 2014, unlike 2013, a substantial plurality of respondents said that they were better off than they had been five years ago. Yet it’s startling how little room for error there is in many American lives.

And something that even startled me: 47 percent said that they would not have the resources to meet an unexpected expense of $400 — $400! They would have to sell something or borrow to meet that need, if they could meet it at all.

Of course, it could be much worse. Social Security is there, and we should be very glad that it is. Meanwhile, unemployment insurance and food stamps did a lot to cushion unlucky families from the worst during the Great Recession. And Obamacare, imperfect as it is, has immensely reduced insecurity, especially in states whose governments haven’t tried to sabotage the program.

But while things could be worse, they could also be better. There is no such thing as perfect security, but American families could easily have much more security than they have. All it would take is for politicians and pundits to stop talking blithely about the need to cut “entitlements” and start looking at the way their less-fortunate fellow citizens actually live.

by Amy Chozick (New York Times)

KEENE, N.H. — One day last month, in the middle of a furniture factory here, Hillary Rodham Clinton finished prepared remarks about her presidential candidacy and opened the floor for discussion.

A middle-aged worker, Pamela Livengood, began to speak, tentatively at first, about the drug addiction that has tormented her daughter and left her granddaughter in her care.

“This little 5-year-old lives with me, and I’m guardian — Grandpa and I have guardianship because of all the growing drug problems in our area,” Ms. Livengood said.

Mrs. Clinton gave her a sympathetic, knowing nod.

“Pam, what you just told me and what I’m hearing from a lot of different people, there is a hidden epidemic” of heroin, methamphetamine and prescription pills that is “striking in small towns and rural areas,” she said, taking out an index card and scribbling notes.

Mrs. Clinton lacks some of the extraordinary gifts for connection and empathy that her husband possesses, and the round-table events that have characterized her early campaign can feel stage-managed. But even these settings are producing revealing moments, as Mrs. Clinton finds herself far from the world of international diplomacy and scrambling to re-educate herself about the nation she hopes to lead.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton at the parade in Chappaqua, N.Y. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York Times

A lot has changed since Mrs. Clinton left domestic politics to become secretary of state: Student debt has ballooned, access to credit has tightened, and the cause of income inequality has taken on a forceful momentum.

Ever an eager student, she has immersed herself in dense briefing papers and academic tomes and consulted more than 200 experts as she thought about her economic policy. But now, as the campaign faces pressure to reveal specific policy proposals, Mrs. Clinton has 35 million more advisers — also known as the Democratic primary electorate.

There is not a lot of I-feel-your-pain hugging at these events, and few uproarious moments. But Mrs. Clinton brings a wonkish intensity, arriving at each round table armed with specific data points. She said, “The average four-year graduate in Iowa graduates with nearly $30,000 in debt,” and, “In New Hampshire, 96 percent of all businesses are considered small businesses.” She nods, jots down notes and interjects conversations with words of encouragement: “That’s interesting,” and, “That’s a very good point.”

And she relays what she is hearing back to her campaign’s policy shop in Brooklyn; the problem of drug addiction, especially in small towns, has now become a prominent theme for her on the campaign trail.

“She came back from both places and said, ‘I want you guys to go beyond standard policies and really take a hard look at some of the more creative or forward-looking policy positions,’ ” said Jake Sullivan, the campaign’s senior policy director. “So we’re in the process of working on those at the moment.”

To be sure, part of Mrs. Clinton’s reassuring voters that she is learning has to do with an acute awareness in her campaign that she must combat the opinion of some voters in 2008 that she seemed aloof and entitled. “The goal,” said Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, is to “take advantage of the long campaign season, start small” and “not just shake hands but get under the hood.”

Mrs. Clinton is clearly most comfortable devising and thinking about policy, and it has given her a way to interact with voters. And the round tables suggest that, in her 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton is embracing her inner geek, rather than trying to mimic President Obama’s cool or Bill Clinton’s common touch. The campaign is betting that approach may have its own appeal. A newly revamped gift shop offers supporters $55 needlepoint-style pillows and $30 scarlet pan suit-theme T-shirts (“Pantsuit Up,” the slogan on the back reads.)

After she stopped at a coffee shop on her first trip to Iowa as a candidate, the people she met bemoaned all the red tape faced by entrepreneurs. From her van on the way to the next stop, Mrs. Clinton called policy advisers to talk through some of the issues she had heard on the ground. Small-business growth is now central to her campaign.

On Friday, she made the second stop of her small-business push, telling voters at a family-owned brewery in Hampton, N.H., how she hopes to be “the president for small business.”

She takes frequent opportunities to remind voters that she is, indeed, listening and, yes, she is learning. “I want to hear from people of New Hampshire,” Mrs. Clinton said at a small gathering of supporters last month.

All these conversations could potentially muddy the policy-making process back in Brooklyn. In the last month, Mrs. Clinton has told her team to zero in on mental health, too, after a mother in Council Bluffs, Iowa, told her that coverage under the Affordable Care Act did not do enough to support her son, who has Asperger’s syndrome.

She told her campaign team to start using a new expression for education, “opportunity system,” after Dr. Mick Starcevich, the president of Kirkwood Community College in Monticello, Iowa, used the term and Mrs. Clinton jotted it down on a notepad.

Bryce Smith, a 23-year-old owner of a bowling alley near Des Moines, told Mrs. Clinton that his biggest challenge in starting a business was his $40,000 in student loans affecting his access to credit. “I went for education in college so I could teach, but I fell in love with bowling,” Mr. Smith said. “So that’s my biggest thing, is the barrier of entry and financing.”

Mrs. Clinton lit up. “We all know about the student loan debt, but I’ve never heard anyone so persuasively link it to the slowdown in business start-ups,” she said. “You’ve given me an insight that nobody else has, and I’m grateful to you,” she told Mr. Smith.

Mrs. Clinton told her campaign team that the separate advisers working on college affordability and small-business policies needed to coordinate more closely, thanks to Mr. Smith, now a minor celebrity who is seeking elected office in Iowa. Mrs. Clinton sent Mr. Smith and other round-table participants handwritten notes thanking them for their insight.

Mr. Sullivan, the senior policy adviser, is not just waiting to hear from Mrs. Clinton, though. In recent weeks, he has traveled to places like Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Minneapolis, where a campaign infrastructure does not yet exist, to talk to people about policies and report back to Mrs. Clinton.

The campaign will hold its official kickoff rally on June 13. After that, it will be hard for Mrs. Clinton to keep listening and learning without talking about specific policy proposals. If those specifics do not come soon, her political opponents will more than likely seize on her vagueness.

“The asset she has at this point is that everything she says gets picked up, and people hear it,” said David Winston, a Republican strategist.

“The problem is, she has gotten to this point, and what is she saying?” he continued. “What are the policy directions? It was a fuzzy, soft reintroduction to the general public who already believes they know who she is.”

 

by Ed O’Keffe (The Washington Post)

Watchdog groups are pushing the Justice Department to step up enforcement of current campaign finance laws by investigating whether Jeb Bush is improperly coordinating political activities with a super PAC he launched.

Two groups that track campaign finance law — Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center – sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch Wednesday asking that the Justice Department investigate whether Bush and his PAC “are engaged in knowing and willful violations of federal campaign finance laws.” The groups are calling on Lynch to appoint an independent Special Counsel to investigate potential violations.

Bush, the former Florida governor, is preparing to formally launch a presidential bid and has established a super PAC, Right to Rise, to begin collecting unlimited funds from supporters. As a private citizen, Bush is allowed to establish and work with the super PAC on political activity. But if he launches a presidential campaign, as expected, he will no longer be allowed to coordinate with the PAC.

Ahead of a formal campaign launch, Bush travels the country repeatedly reminding voters that he’s not yet a candidate — a turn of phrase he uses to avoid specific questions or policy pronouncements. But he has been hiring veteran Republican operatives to staff either the campaign or the PAC — and people expected to work for either organization are known to keep in close touch. Bush and his aides have also told donors that they’re on the verge of raising the largest sum ever amassed by a presidential candidate at this point in a four-year campaign cycle.

“We are fully complying with the law in all activities Governor Bush is engaging in on the political front, and will continue to do so,” Kristy Campbell, a Bush spokeswoman, said in an e-mail on Wednesday.

But Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21 and a fierce critic of the current campaign finance system, said Bush has been “the most blatant” violator of campaign finance law — but that his group and Campaign Legal Center are preparing to raise concerns about other presidential candidates in both parties. Absent enforcement of current campaign laws by the Federal Election Commission, he urged the Justice Department to act.

“Basically the country has been caught in a trap because we have a dysfunctional and paralyzed enforcement agency responsible for civil enforcement and a political community that operates on the assumption that they can do whatever they want and interpret the campaign finance laws however they want,” he said in an interview.

Bush, he added, presents “a clear case” for the Justice Department to investigate.

Coordination among candidates and independent organizations has been illegal for decades, but in recent years, the boundary between campaigns and their big-money allies has blurred. That’s in part because of the surge of spending by outside groups since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts independently on political campaigns.

Groups like Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center say the increased interaction between candidates and their big-money groups has undermined contribution limits. Candidates for federal office can accept individual donations of up to $2,700 per election, while super PACs and advocacy groups can take unlimited money from individuals and corporations.

Matea Gold contributed to this report.

by The LA Times Editorial Board

As we honor the dead on this Memorial Day, it’s worth remembering as well the living veterans of military service who have no homes except sidewalk encampments or the occasional shelter bed, whose lives are so wracked by mental illness, addictions or physical disabilities that they are essentially dying in the streets.

At an event in Los Angeles last year, Michelle Obama challenged mayors across the country to house homeless veterans by the end of 2015, and Mayor Eric Garcetti was one of many who pledged to do so. The problem is that the population of homeless veterans in L.A. has increased since then. Although the number fluctuates daily as some fall into and out of housing and others become newly homeless, Garcetti’s office now says the city needs to house 3,154 homeless veterans by the end of the year.

We could say it was foolish of the mayor to assign himself the goal of housing an unknown number of people by a specific date. But he reasoned that a deadline would create a sense of urgency. In fact, the city did wrangle Veterans Affairs vouchers for supportive housing sooner than usual this year. It also helps that the VA is under its own deadline — not just to fulfill the Obama administration’s goal but to comply with a legal settlement by securing more housing for veterans on its West L.A. campus and in communities across the county.

So what must Garcetti and VA officials do? First, find veterans who are homeless. Some do show up at the VA or on service providers’ doorsteps, but most are on the streets. The city and the VA, to their credit, are increasing the number of outreach workers to coax veterans into the system.

And it is a system. Housing homeless veterans — or anyone who is homeless — is not as simple as handing over a set of keys. (Although some advocates say it should be.) It’s a lengthy process. And it should be shorter.

It can take 100 days, sometimes longer, for a [homeless] veteran to go from first contact with a [service] provider to walking across the threshold of an apartment.-

It can take 100 days, sometimes longer, for a veteran to go from first contact with a provider to walking across the threshold of an apartment. He or she must be confirmed to be a veteran — with an honorable or general discharge — to receive a Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) voucher. That process, which can take weeks, should be streamlined. A veteran waiting through all that is still homeless.

The good news, according to city officials, is that about 1,000 VASH vouchers and another 500 federal housing vouchers are available this year. That should be enough to cover most if not all of the chronically homeless — those who have been homeless at least a year and have a disabling problem. VASH vouchers are accompanied by case management and services provided by the VA or its nonprofit partners. Some landlords, however, are reluctant to accept a homeless person who might turn out to be an unstable tenant. And although the vouchers cover up to 110% of what the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers a fair market rent for the area, the booming rental market and scarcity of affordable housing in Los Angeles make it even harder to find a willing landlord.

City and VA officials can work on allaying landlords’ fears by making sure that they know how to contact tenants’ case managers if there are problems. The city could also help fund more housing “navigators” — specialists who find available rental units for veterans and work with landlords. City officials are also looking into fundraising for security deposits on apartments. Housing vouchers don’t cover them.

Most of the city’s homeless veterans are not chronically homeless, and so are not eligible for vouchers. But these veterans are eligible for the Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program, which helps newly homeless veterans get back on their feet, rent apartments and find jobs. This year, the VA gave $30 million to L.A. nonprofits under this program — twice as much as it last awarded, in 2013.

Of course, it’s unclear whether all of these resources are enough to end veteran homelessness this year — or the next, for that matter. But the mayor has infused this issue with a sense of urgency and put a homelessness expert on his staff who convenes monthly meetings of all the agencies involved. That’s a start. Now, he needs to work on infusing the city with more affordable housing.

BY E.J. Donnie Jr. (Washington Post)

Scott Walker insists that when he changes his positions, he is not engaged in “flips.”

“A flip would be someone who voted on something and did something different,” the Wisconsin governor explained last week on Fox News. His altered views on immigration don’t count because he is not a legislator. “These are not votes,” he helpfully pointed out.

Sheer brilliance! Other than former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Walker’s major rivals at the moment are Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.). They have all cast lots of votes. So Walker can accuse them of flip-flopping while claiming blanket immunity for himself.

Unfortunately for the Republican Party and the country, Walker’s careful parsing of shape-shifting counts as one of the cerebral high points of the debate among the party’s 2016 presidential candidates.

The shortage of philosophical adventure and the eagerness of GOP hopefuls to alter their positions to make them more conservative have the same cause: a Republican primary electorate that has moved so far right that it brooks no deviation. What makes it even harder for the candidates to break new ground is that the imperatives of orthodoxy are constraining even the thinkers who are trying to create a “reform conservatism.”

The fall-in-line-or-fall-in-the-polls rule means that Walker has gone from supporting to opposing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, as has New Jersy Gov. Chris Christine. Rubio got much praise for his work in negotiating a bipartisan bill that would have allowed the undocumented to become citizens — and then, faced with hostility from tea partyers, he turned against it.

Paul, the most daring of the lot because of his libertarian convictions, deserves kudos for being true to his small-state ideology by standing up — literally, for nearly 11 hours on the Senate floor – against the Patriot Act. But even Paul has recast his foreign policy positions to make them sound more hawkish and thus more in keeping with prevailing Republican views.

Accommodating right-wing primary voters poses real risks to the party in next year’s elections. Its candidates’ messages on immigration and gay marriage could hurt the GOP with, respectively, Latinos and the young.

But the greater loss is that none of the leading Republicans is willing to offer a more fundamental challenge to the party’s rightward lurch over the past decade. L. Brent Bozell III, a prominent activist on the right, could thus legitimately claim to The Post:  “The conservative agenda is what is winning the field.”

Where, for example, is the candidate willing to acknowledge that, like it or not, there’s no way that anywhere close to all Americans will be able to get health insurance unless government plays a very large role? Where is the Republican who will admit that if the party had its way on further tax cuts, many programs Americans like would fall by the wayside?

The reform conservatives were supposed to remedy this shortcoming, and they have issued some detailed proposals. But their efforts remain largely reactive. Last week, Yuval Levin, the intellectual leader of the movement, joined a symposium in Reason, the sprightly libertarian magazine, to reassure others on the right that reform conservatives are — honest and true! — no less committed than they are to “limited government,” to rolling back “the liberal welfare state” and to reducing government’s “size and scope.”

It’s not surprising that Levin’s fervently anti-statist Reason interlocutors were not fully persuaded. What’s disappointing to those outside conservatism’s ranks is that the reformicons are so often defensive.

With occasional exceptions, they have been far more interested in proving their faithfulness to today’s hard-line right than in declaring, as conservatives in so many other democracies have been willing to do, that sprawling market economies need a rather large dose of government. Conservatives, Levin says, are “eager to build on the longstanding institutions of our society to improve things.” Good idea. But somehow, the successes of decades-old governmental institutions in areas such as retirement security, health-care provision and environmental protection are rarely acknowledged.

Many Republicans, especially reform conservatives, know that most Americans who criticize government in the abstract still welcome many of its activities. Yet stating this obvious fact is now politically incorrect on the right. Conservatives who condemn political correctness in others need to start calling it out on their own side. Otherwise, Scott Walker’s artful redefinition of flip-flopping could become the 2016 Republican debate’s most creative intellectual contribution.

 

By JASON HOROWITZ (New York Times)

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — Hillary Rodham Clinton was in a forgiving mood. She had been discussing the small-business economy at a round-table gathering at a bike shop here on Tuesday when the Fox News correspondent Ed Henry interrupted. When, he shouted, would she take questions from the news media she had ignored for weeks on end?

“Maybe when I finish talking to the people here,” Mrs. Clinton said as she leaned over a 3-D printed mechanical part that looked like a post-apocalyptic Rubik’s cube. “How’s that?”

“You’ll come over?” Mr. Henry followed up.

“I might,” Mrs. Clinton said teasingly. For the amusement of the 19 local residents invited to attend this latest installment of the movable Clinton court, and to the annoyance of the more than 50 members of the news media roped off around them, she added: “I have to ponder it. But I will put it on my list for due consideration.”

Unlike in 2008, when Mrs. Clinton’s regal bearing was brought low by Barack Obama’s insurgent campaign, there is no one to force her out of her Rose Garden. Neither Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, nor Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, has applied significant pressure on her. That leaves the news media as her only real opponent so far on the way to the Democratic presidential nomination, and while it may not be great for an educated populace or the furtherance of American democracy, it makes all the political sense in the world for Mrs. Clinton to ignore them, too.

There is no shortage of reminders of the downsides of engagement. She need only look at her Republican counterparts, starting with Jeb Bush, who has made a point of opening up more to reporters but damaged himself during a several-day struggle with how to answer a question about the wisdom of the war in Iraq.

Senator Marco Rubio’s difficulties with the same question were condensed to a few highly awkward and viral minutes. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has been working for weeks to overcome his flubbing of initial questions about foreign policy, and Senator Rand Paul’s snappish interactions with female reporters have only fed the impression that he is thin-skinned.

Mrs. Clinton had her own rocky introduction to the 2016 press corps when she gave defensive and not entirely convincing answers at a news conference prompted by the revelation that she had used a private email server as secretary of state. But as reporters have dug deeper into the emails, the financial conduct of her family’s foundation and the character of the company she keeps, Mrs. Clinton has only seemed more comfortable and dominant on the campaign trail.

She has rolled out more liberal positions on immigration reform  and college debt and stayed mum on inconvenient things she does not want to talk about, like a potential trade deal or Israeli policiesloathed by her liberal base. And unlike in 2008 — when the battle between her and Mr. Obama forced Mrs. Clinton to do events late into the night, and she often slipped up or held forth about brain science — she is keeping her campaign schedule to a bare minimum.

This week, as she campaigned in Iowa, Chicago and New Hampshire, where on Friday she again took questions from reporters — a relative flurry of activity — she generally filled each day with one event open to the news media, a smaller one with a pool reporter, and then some unexpected stops where she ordered coffee or bought toys for her grandchild. Always the grandchild.

At the bike shop event on Tuesday, she listened intently to the stories of the round-table participants, nodding 43 times a minute as they talked about their ice cream shops and 3-D printing. As television lights cast the shadows of two rows of “everyday Americans” onto the tablecloth, she looked expertly over the locals’ heads and into the television cameras behind them to give her prepared remarks (“I want to make the words ‘middle class’ mean something again”).

She complimented the participants on their inquiries (“that’s a very fair question” or “that’s a very good question”), and when the moderator unexpectedly pushed her on her position on President Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, she dodged artfully.

When it finally came time to ask their questions, the reporters seemed more agitated than the candidate as they pushed against a rope line for the impromptu news conference and gasped when her traveling press secretary, Nick Merrill, joked, “Wouldn’t it be funny if she walked off?”

“Hey, y’all ready?” Mrs. Clinton asked as she sauntered over.

“Yeah!” said the chorus of reporters.

“Tell me — tell me something I don’t know,” she said, almost musically, as she snapped her head to the left in a Janet Jackson-era dance move. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

The smile on Mrs. Clinton’s face slowly faded as she nodded and replied and obfuscated in response to the half-dozen questions asked of her. She did so with ease, despite the people shouting about her destroying her emails and calling out, “Did you take official actions for the Clinton Foundation donors?” And then she turned away, essentially dusting the whole dodging-the-press story line off her bird’s-eye blazer.

Mrs. Clinton’s relationship with the political press has never been warm. She started the 2008 race straight-arming reporters, and only when the nomination began slipping from her grasp did she seek to embrace them. It was too late. When she boarded the press bus with bagels (“I didn’t want you to feel deprived”), no one partook. Despite that chill, though, there was a sense of professionalism and familiarity on the Clinton bus, because many of the reporters represented New York-based publications and had covered her as a senator. News conferences were not frequent, but they occurred behind curtains after events.

Now, both Mrs. Clinton and the news media have changed. She seems less a presidential candidate than a historical figure, returning to claim what is rightfully hers. And the press corps, both blessed and cursed with live streaming, tweeting and Snapchatting technologies, is armed with questions devised to win the moment. The result is a carnival atmosphere. It is not clear what Mrs. Clinton gains politically from playing the freak.

The solution for her team has been to keep the press at bay as Mrs. Clinton reads the scripts to her daily campaign shows.

“The media was confined between the bar and the stove,” Gary Swenson said, describing an event with Mrs. Clinton at his home in Mason City, Iowa, on Monday. Asked if he had learned anything from her talk, he said, “No, I don’t think I learned anything remarkably new,” but added after a pause: “I think it was more her demeanor. It astonished me. I expected somebody who had space between herself and the people who lived here, and there was none.”

The press did not learn much, either, from Mrs. Clinton’s remarks in Mason City or her answers at the impromptu bike store news conference, except that she is an exceedingly strong candidate. But that did not mean the event was entirely without news.

Outside, by the steps of the bike shop, Mr. Henry did a stand-up in front of his Fox camera. “The reason she had a news conference is because I started shouting questions,” he crowed to his viewers. He called that the day’s “bottom line.”

Small victories.

The BBC’s Shane Harrison looks at how the Republic of Ireland’s vote in favour of legalising same-sex marriage caps an extraordinary week for the country.

The Republic has become the first country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage in a popular vote, just days after the Prince of Wales visited Mullaghmore in County Sligo where his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979.

While in Sligo, Prince Charles also visited the grave of the Irish poet, WB Yeats, under the shadow of Ben Bulben mountain in Drumcliffe cemetery.

The poet was born 150 years ago and many of his verses were quoted during the Royal visit.

Nearly every Irish student learns the lines from the poem September 1913: “Romantic Ireland is dead and gone, it’s with O’Leary in the grave.”

O’Leary was an old Irish revolutionary who wanted to free Ireland from British rule.

The referendum result speaks volumes about a changed Republic of Ireland and it is tempting to write: “Catholic Ireland is dead and gone.”

It was the revelation that Bishop Eamon Casey had fathered a child that first started a process which, for many, undermined the authority of the Catholic Church.

Soon afterwards a tsunami of revelations about child sex abuse involving priests and cover-ups by bishops further and greatly diminished the standing of the church hierarchy in a country that is nominally 85% Catholic, although empty churches and declining Mass attendance tell another story.

It was only in 1993 that homosexual acts were decriminalised; civil partnership was introduced in 2010.

Throughout the campaign, bishops preached against a “Yes” vote for same-sex marriage and indicated their deep unhappiness with the government’s proposal.

They were joined by social conservatives and Catholic lay groups in expressing their view that the proposal undermined the traditional family of a husband, a wife and children.

But only three of the 166 members of the Irish parliament publicly supported that view and urged a “No” vote.

Against the hierarchy stood a coalition of all the main political parties, gay rights activists and their families and supporters.

It is noticeable that the “Yes” vote was strongest in more urban areas and among younger voters who study the African-American struggle for civil rights for their state exams.

And it was also noticeable in conversations how many of them were influenced by that struggle for equality in Saturday’s result.

Thousands returned from abroad to vote, and thousands more delayed their working holidays after finishing university exams to register their support for the government’s proposal.

Social media was abuzz with their stories.

Some “No” campaigners feared the worst from early on; some privately said that even if they won this time they knew they were battling against the tide of history because such was the strength of feeling among young people that there would be another referendum and it would then pass.

Today, though, is not the first recent indication of the diminished standing of the Catholic Church.

Two years ago, the bishops failed to stop the government and politicians from introducing legislation to allow for abortions in cases where there was a credible suicide threat from a woman if she was forced to continue with her pregnancy.

And in many ways the same-sex marriage referendum is just one stage in church-state relations before the main confrontation – the repeal of the eighth amendment to the constitution that gives an equal right to life to the mother and the unborn.

The referendum on this in 1983 was extraordinarily divisive and left a bitter taste in the mouths of many involved.

While another referendum on repealing the amendment is unlikely until after the next election, both sides are already preparing for it.

Those wanting change argue that it currently prevents terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, where the foetus cannot survive outside the womb, and where a pregnancy has resulted from rape or incest.

Those seeking the retention of the amendment – and it’s not just the Catholic Church and other Christian institutions – argue from a human rights point of view that the foetus or unborn child also has a right to life.

But that’s all for another day.

I began with WB Yeats but I’ll finish with, perhaps, the best known Irish gay man, Oscar Wilde.

The phrase “the love that dare not speak its name” comes from a poem by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas and was mentioned at Wilde’s gross indecency trial that would see him jailed.

After the same-sex referendum result, not any longer, Oscar, not any longer.

 

by J.K. Trotter (GAWKER)

Three weeks ago, a Nassau County Supreme Court justice ended a bitter three-year custody dispute between Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and his ex-wife, Maureen McPhilmy, by granting custody of the couple’s two minor children to McPhilmy. Though nearly all documents pertaining to New York family court cases are sealed, Gawker has learned that the justice in the case heard testimony accusing O’Reilly of physically assaulting his wife in the couple’s Manhasset home.

According to a source familiar with the facts of the case, a court-appointed forensic examiner testified at a closed hearing that O’Reilly’s daughter claimed to have witnessed her father dragging McPhilmy down a staircase by her neck, apparently unaware that the daughter was watching. The precise date of the alleged incident is unclear, but appears to have occurred before the couple separated in 2010. The same source indicated that the daughter, who is 16 years old, told the forensic examiner about the incident within the past year.

UPDATE:  O’Reilly has denied that he abused his wife, telling Politico’s Dylan Byers late Thursday: “All allegations against me in these circumstances are 100% false. I am going to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect my children and will not comment any further.”

The apparent domestic violence assault would be the latest in a series of revelations about O’Reilly’s disturbing treatment of his family members, and his ex-wife in particular.

O’Reilly and McPhilmy separated in April 2010, after which McPhilmy began dating a Nassau County Police detective named Jeffrey Gross. Upon learning of their relationship, as Gawker reported in 2011, O’Reilly called up his high-placed connections within the NCPD to have something done about Gross. Since O’Reilly was helping raise money for the department’s associated charity, the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, his calls sparked an internal affairs investigation into Gross and his relationship with McPhilmy—an incredible waste of police resources, and a devious way of getting back at McPhilmy by harassing her new boyfriend.

The O’Reillys formalized their divorce in September 2011, and agreed to share custody of their school-aged children. As part of their agreement, the couple mutually agreed to assign a neutral therapist named Lynne Kulakowski to arbitrate any potential custodial disputes, should they happen to arise in the future. Shortly thereafter, however, McPhilmy learned that O’Reilly had in fact added Kulakowski to his household payroll so she could serve as a full-time nanny—in which capacity, as judge later explained, she was required “to perform virtually all of [O’Reilly’s] parental duties.”

In a unanimous decision  two years ago, a New York appeals court ruled that O’Reilly’s behavior “could undermine the integrity” of their joint-custody agreement and ordered a trial court to consider McPhilmy’s petition for sole custody.

While all of this was going on, as Gawker reported in March 2013, O’Reilly was trying to get McPhilmy excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, in which the couple married in 1996. McPhilmy even received a letter from her local parish, another Long Island institution where O’Reilly enjoys influence, admonishing her for taking communion. (In the Church, divorcing and remarrying is considered a grave offense to God.) At the same time, O’Reilly was seeking a formal annulment—a procedure most commonly sought for marriages that last less than a year—for his and McPhilmy’s 15-year-long matrimony.

We were able corroborate the fact that the justice issued a decision in the case, and that O’Reilly has appealed it, at the Nassau County Clerk’s office in Mineola. Neither O’Reilly nor McPhilmy responded to requests for comment. A representative for Fox News Channel did not return messages.

O’Reilly’s lack of response is especially worth noting. The anchor has spent his highly remunerated career obsessing over patterns of violence among racial minorities, particularly black people, and the apparently unique effect of violence on the integrity of black families. As he fulminated on-air in December 2014: “The astronomical crime rate among young black men—violent crime—drives suspicion and hostility. … No supervision, kids with no fathers—the black neighborhoods are devastated by the drug gangs who prey upon their own. That’s the problem!”

Or, as O’Reilly claimed in August: “The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family.”