How will congressional Republicans react to a proposed rule set to come today from the labor department stating that any employee can take leave from work to care for a same-sex spouse no matter whether or not they “live in a state that recognizes their marital status,” as Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post? House Republicans are leading the strategy of losing and more losing in the United States on gay rights, still blocking the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in Congress even as President Obama prepares to sign an executive order making it in effect the law of the land.
Pugilistic, Koch brothers-loving Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will have to endure more probing on allegations he was at the heart of efforts to coordinate campaign finance law violations. As Brad Friedman put it: Maybe not the White House but the Big House. WashPo. NYT.
For “big short” Goldman Sachs trader Deeb Salem, no, sorry, an $8 million pay bonus for his work in 2010 is just not enough. He told his mom he was going to get a $13 million bonus and so he’s suing, because he got a $15 million bonus the year before and he wants the $13 million bonus and it’s just not right! Bonus bonus bonus! Via Bloomberg News.
The ballyhooed Terry Gross interview with Hillary Clinton: Gross was determined. Clinton was defensive. It’s high entertainment but there’s no Benghazi here.
Has Cory Gardner seen this Glenn Kessler dissection of the new ad from Karl Rove’s Crossroads super PAC slamming North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan? Gardner should read it, because his campaign for Senate so far has seemed like just a longer version of the ad. As the Huffington Post puts it: For Republican candidates talking about Obamacare, “it’s always October 2013.” And: “The Crossroads ad says that because of Obamacare, ‘thousands of North Carolinians were told their policies were canceled.’ But the Obama administration deferred those cancellations and nearly twice as many North Carolinians signed up for Obamacare: ‘It’s especially absurd to bring this up now that the law has met its enrollment targets.'”
Also from HuffPo: “Between 2001 and 2012, more women were shot to death in the U.S. by an intimate partner than the total number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. But while U.S. federal law prohibits persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from purchasing a gun, the law has so many gaps and loopholes that tens of thousands of known domestic abusers can still either legally buy a gun or are never properly reported into the background check system. Convicted stalkers and non-married, non-cohabiting dating partners who commit domestic abuse, for instance, are not included in U.S. gun restrictions relating to domestic violence. But these categories of abusers can be just as dangerous with a gun as a spouse convicted of misdemeanor abuse. The CAP report cites a study of female murder victims in 10 cities that found that three-quarters of women murdered, and 85 percent of women who survived a murder attempt by a current or former intimate partner, had been stalked in the previous year. And nearly half of all intimate partner homicides are committed by a dating partner who is not covered by federal gun restrictions.”
[ Photo by April Moore-Harris. ]
