Politics: All the Latest from Real Clear Politics

A New Way to Pay For College

Iran’s ‘Moderates’ and the Holocaust

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Door No. 3?

Albright Deserves To Be Heard on Campus

Liberal Lies Feed Facebook’s Censorship of Conservatives
Kyle Smith, NY Post
“Reality has a left-wing bias,” our progressive friends love to tell conservatives. Then why are progressives so ruthless about distorting and covering up the truth?As we learned from a bombshell Gizmodo report, liberal elites conspire to hide dissenting viewpoints from the public. Stories that appear in Facebook’s hugely influential “trending” box, one of the most important news sources in the world, are subjected to an ideological-correctness test.

The Media Must Challenge Trump’s False Claims
Rem Rieder, USA Today
It may be political journalism’s No. 1 challenge over the next six months.There are many remarkable things about presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. High among them is his complete disregard for the truth.Of course, politicians bending the truth, stretching the truth, embellishing, making things up, prevaricating and lying is hardly unheard of.

Hillary’s Digital Shock Troops
Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times
When the Internet’s legions of Hillary hecklers steal away to chat rooms and Facebook pages to vent grievances about Clinton, express revulsion toward Clinton and launch attacks on Clinton, they now may find themselves in a surprising place – confronted by a multimillion dollar super PAC working with Clinton.Hillary Clinton’s well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet’s worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton’s campaign, is spending some $1 million to find…

Obama Provoked a Legal War Against N. Carolina
David French, National Review
The state of North Carolina and the federal government are now in a state of declared legal war. On Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration sent a letter to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory demanding that the state “not comply with or enforce H.B. 2,” its so-called transgender bathroom law. According to the letter, a state requirement that people use the bathrooms reserved for their biological sex violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Department of Justice gave the state until today, May 9, to assure the federal government that men can use women’s…

‘We Need a Restroom Revolution’
John Sutter, CNN
Before I launch into the argument for making all restrooms in the United States gender neutral — that is, removing “men’s” and “women’s” labels — I want to show you a photo.This is James Parker Sheffield.Now a truly ridiculous question: Which restroom do you think he should use?Men’s or women’s?In the United States at the moment, the legal answer depends on location. If Sheffield is in North Carolina, it’s illegal for him to use a public men’s restroom. Since he’s a transgender man — his birth certificate has an “F” on it — he has to use the women’s.

Elon Musk, Crony Capitalist King
Eric Peters, Detroit News
If Elon Musk’s various projects are so fabulous, why do they all need government “help”?Musk will tell you all about the virtues of his Tesla cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also very expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35K, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350).The real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them. Well, not directly

The Theranos Scandal Is Just The Beginning
Christina Farr, Fast Company
When Theranos first launched in 2014, it quickly became a media sensation. The headlines practically wrote themselves: Elizabeth Holmes Is America’s Youngest Female Billionaire—And A Dropout! Who wouldn’t love a story about a Stanford dropout who disrupted the staid world of lab testing before her thirtieth birthday?But a well-documented series of investigations from the Wall Street Journal found some alarming problems with the accuracy of the company’s blood-testing technology and the state of its labs. And now Theranos is facing investigations from both federal agencies and the U.S….

Sanctuary City: Democrats Welcome Criminals
Debra Saunders, SF Chronicle
Last June, when he said he was running as a Republican for president, billionaire Donald Trump famously called out Mexico for sending “people that have lots of problems” across the border. Quoth the Donald: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Many were offended to hear Trump equate undocumented immigrants with dangerous criminals.

Is This the End of the Religious Right?
Sarah Posner, New York Times
For more than three decades, conservative white evangelicals have been a dominant force within the Republican Party, shaping presidential primary contests and turning out to vote for the eventual nominee. This year, though, the relationship is coming undone, as the party — with the votes of a not insignificant number of conservative white evangelicals — is poised to nominate Donald J. Trump.

Trump Needs Ryan More Than He Knows
Fred Barnes, Wall Street Journal
To say that Donald Trump and his crew have been heavy-handed in dealing with House Speaker Paul Ryan is putting it mildly. They’re threatening to defrock him over his hesitation in endorsing Mr. Trump for president. The mogul may retaliate by calling for Mr. Ryan to step down as chairman of the Republican convention. (Mr. Ryan said Monday that he would, if asked.) Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, has declared Mr. Ryan unfit to be speaker. Sarah Palin wants to end Mr. Ryan’s political career entirely and is backing his primary opponent.

Who Promoted Private Ryan?
Pat Buchanan, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Forty-eight hours after Donald Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination with a smashing victory in the Indiana primary, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he could not yet support Trump.In millennial teen-talk, Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now.””[T]he bulk of the burden of unifying the party” falls on Trump, added Ryan. Trump must unify “all wings of the Republican Party, and the conservative movement.” Trump must run a campaign that we can “be proud to support and proud to be a part of.”

How Hillary Clinton Plans to Win Through Boredom
Alter & Elliott, Time
Everyone expected a clash over croissants. Fresh off Donald Trump’s weekend victory lap as thepresumptive Republican nominee, likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton settled into a chair at a Virginia bakery to talk aboutchallenges facing working women mid-afternoon Monday.Surely, Clinton was ready to respond to Trump’s attacks—many dating from the 1990s—and begin her own fight against a man who has, over his career in real business and show business, repeatedly given women reasons to do double-takes. After all, Republican women for months had warned that Clinton would…

A Clinton Presidency Is Unacceptable
Scott Brown, Boston Herald
I know from personal experience that politics is a blood sport. This is especially true during primary season. Campaigns fall short, egos get bruised, and feelings get hurt.However, now that most of the votes have been cast and a presumed nominee has emerged, the Republican Party faces a very clear choice: put aside any bad blood and unite for the greater good, or put another Clinton in the White House.

Hillary a ‘Nasty, Mean Enabler’? Ludicrous
Jill Abramson, The Guardian
Now Donald Trump is playing the woman card.With sustained force, he is using Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct with women to attack Hillary Clinton as his “enabler”. At a rally in Oregon on Friday night, Trump accused Hillary Clinton of trying to “destroy the lives” of her husband’s accusers. “She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful,” he thundered, offering no evidence. He repeated the same charges the next day in Washington state.

The Kamikaze Conservatives
Damon Linker, The Week
I can’t help feeling a little bad for the intellectuals of the conservative movement.Sure, they helped set the stage for the rise of Donald Trump by encouraging Republican politicians and media personalities to continually flatter the party’s base, denigrate establishments of all kinds, and use a rhetoric of populism to sell policies that primarily benefit the rich. But it worked so well for so long! How could they have possibly known that the base would finally, after roughly 36 years of playing along with the game, decide to call their bluff?

Saudia Arabia & Iran: The Cold War of Islam
KoelblShafy & Zand, Der Spiegel
No previous US president had been made to suffer such an indignity when visiting America’s supposedly closest ally in the Arab world: When Barack Obama touched down at the airport in Riyadh in mid-April, King Salman opted to remain in his palace. The most powerful man in the world was received by the governor of Riyadh instead. There was no pomp or ceremonial reception and state-controlled television declined to broadcast the arrival. Obama seemed slightly at a loss on the tarmac before trying to cover up the affront with a broad smile.

In the White House, a Dangerous Pride
Richard Cohen, New York Daily News
I’ve read a fair number of books on foreign policy in recent years, yet the one that’s always made the greatest impression on me was assigned to our class in the sixth grade. It was Esther Forbes’ novel “Johnny Tremain,” and the lesson I took from it was the very one Johnny himself had to learn the hard way: “Pride goeth before a fall.” Maybe too late, I recommend the book to President Obama and his foreign policy team. Their pride has already turned to smugness.

The Day We Discovered Our Parents Were Russian Spies
Shaun Walker, The Guardian
For years Donald Heathfield, Tracey Foley and their two children lived the American dream. Then an FBI raid revealed the truth: they were agents of Putinâ??s Russia. Their sons tell their story

Racism by Any Other Name
Vann Newkirk, The Atlantic
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Barack Obama’s election as the first black president was supposed to usher in a golden “post-racial” age but instead was met with racial conflict, a battle Obama failed, in his role as conciliator-in-chief, to either predict or control. The conflict has blossomed into a war, producing Donald Trump’s racial-angst-fueled campaign and the anger of Black Lives Matter protesters. At the heart of this racial conflict is Obama’s divisive presidency.

Obama Provoked the War Against North Carolina
David French, National Review
The state of North Carolina and the federal government are now in a state of declared legal war. On Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration sent a letter to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory demanding that the state “not comply with or enforce H.B. 2,” its so-called transgender bathroom law. According to the letter, a state requirement that people use the bathrooms reserved for their biological sex violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Department of Justice gave the state until today, May 9, to assure the federal government that men can use women’s…

Bernie Sanders’s Next Revolution
Brian Beutler, The New Republic

Trump vs. Clinton–and Bush
Laura Ingraham, LifeZette
There is work to be done in this election for all those who care about the future of America. Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee for president. If she is elected, she will continue the same disastrous policies that have already done so much harm to the U.S. economy. She will appoint radical leftists to the Supreme Court who will cripple the Bill of Rights, take away the powers of state governments, and strip Congress of even more power. She will continue the pay-for-play system whereby the U.S. government is more responsive to heavy campaign donors than it is to the people….

Donald Trump Doesn’t Make It Easy for Paul Ryan
Amy Davidson, The New Yorker
Ryan and other G.O.P. leaders might be willing to support Trumpâ??if only he would be a little nicer.

Sorry, Paul Ryan, It’s Trump’s Party Now
Daniel McCarthy, The National Interest
Paul Ryan last week spoiled Donald Trump’s brief honeymoon as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. As former rivals like Rick Perry, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio offered their support for the man who beat them—they all had pledged to back the nominee, whoever it might be—Ryan issued what amounted to an informal ukase directed at Trump: when it came to accepting his candidacy, Ryan declared that he was not there yet.” Trump may have millions of voters behind him. No matter. So now Trump is threatening to do to Ryan what he did to Jeb Bush earlier this…

Trump Refutes Trump
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post

Former Workers: Facebook Suppressed Conservative News
Michael Nunez, Gizmodo
Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social networkâ??s influential â??trendingâ?? news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the siteâ??s users.

Lying About Climate Change Isn’t Free Speech, It’s Fraud
Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation
When in trouble, change the subject—or at least try to. So it is that the world’s oldest, richest, and most powerful oil company, under investigation for apparently lying to investors and the public for decades about the deadliness of its products, has launched a high-stakes counterattack under the unlikely flag of the First Amendment. On April 13, ExxonMobil filed suit to block a subpoena issued by the attorney general of the US Virgin Islands. Following revelations from the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News, the subpoena charged that the company may have violated the…

Meet the Democratic Liars Club
Michael Goodwin, New York Post
The old warning to beware of lies, damned lies and statistics deserves an update. Nowadays, we must also beware of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio. The unholy trinity comprises the leaders of the Democratic Liars Club. Whether born or convicted, the president of the United States, his would-be successor and the mayor of New York are, to borrow a phrase, “people of the lie.”

Ben Rhodes and the “Retailing” of the Iran Deal
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
Several days ago, I received an email from Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of a Washington think tank called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Dubowitz is an expert on sanctions, and has been one of the most ardent and effective opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement (though not quite effective enough to stop it, as he himself would note). The subject line of Dubowitz’s e-mail was, “Rhodes,” and his message to me was simple: What Ben Rhodes just did to you is terrible. “You’re a great reporter,” Dubowitz wrote. “Keep up your…

Is President Obama’s War on ISIS Illegal?
Bruce Ackerman, New York Times
IN May 2010, Nathan Michael Smith joined the Army, swearing an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He took up this mission on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and is now serving as a captain in Kuwait at the command headquarters of Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign against the Islamic State that President Obama initiated in 2014.

The “Never Trump” Pouters
David Horowitz, Breitbart
The conservatives who have declared war on the primary victor are displaying a myopia that could be deadly in November when Donald Trump will lead Republicans against a party that has divided the country, destroyed its borders, empowered its enemies, and put 93 million Americans into dependency on the state.

Donald Trump Is Unfit to Serve
John McCormack, Weekly Standard
Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But that doesnâ??t change the fact that he is manifestly unfit to be president.His unfitness has little to do with ideology. Trump doesn’t have anything consistent or coherent enough to be called an ideology. Trump has no business being commander in chief, but not because of any particular policy positionâ??Trump’s foreign policy agenda, like his domestic agenda, blows with the wind. He was for the Iraq war before he was against it. He backed U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011 before he opposed it. He said the United States…

Why Bernie Sanders Didn’t Get My Vote
Katha Pollitt, The Nation
I almost voted for Bernie Sanders. After all, in important ways his politics are closer to mine than Hillary Clinton’s are, and his campaign for the White House is inspiring. So why not put my tiny grain of sand on his side of the scale in the primary? Unfortunately for electoral democracy, I neglected to read the instructions on my absentee ballot, which clearly stated that it had to be postmarked the day before the actual primary, and thus missed my chance to vote. In the end, I marked my ballot for Hillary and mailed it anyway, figuring New York City’s Board of Elections is so…

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