By Eliot Nelson, Arthur Delaney & Ryan Grim
Between the IRS targeting conservative organizations and the administration's editing of CIA talking points, conservatives enjoyed the best news cycle since Mitt Romney was about to become president. Jason Richwine resigned from the Heritage Foundation, but noted a brown colleague would have undoubtedly written a less articulate resignation letter. And Bloomberg journalists are accused of spying on Bloomberg customers' chats. Hopefully no one will notice us collecting data on how many visitors from who.eop.gov addresses click on our sideboob slideshows. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Friday, May 10th, 2013:
HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S SENIOR EUGENICIST FELLOW RESIGNS BECAUSE EUGENICS - The immigration who may or not be breathtakingly racist resigned from the Heritage Foundation today. Luke Johnson: "Jason Richwine, the co-author of a Heritage Foundation report on immigration who came under fire this week for arguing in his Harvard dissertation that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. have substantially lower IQs than whites, resigned Friday. 'Jason Richwine let us know he's decided to resign from his position. He's no longer employed by Heritage,' spokesman Daniel Woltornist said in an email to HuffPost. 'It is our long-standing policy not to discuss internal personnel matters.'" [HuffPost]
DEMS RELEASE FARM BILL DRAFT - Sounds like it cuts food stamps the same way the previous draft did. Erik Wasson: "Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) on Thursday released her draft 2013 farm bill. The bill saves $23 billion, by the committee's unofficial estimate, over the next 10 years by replacing the existing farm safety net with new crop insurance and price-based supports and by restricting some eligibility for food stamps. Next Tuesday, the committee will mark up the measure, which governs farm subsidies and food stamps as well as rural energy, trade, conservation and development programs for five years. The full Senate is expected to take up the bill this month." [The Hill]
LAZY PERSON JOHN CORNYN BLASTS WHITE HOUSE FOR NOT DOING HIS JOB - Apparently Texas' senior senator forgot to check the Washington chore wheel, because it's totally his job to put forward judicial nominees (Jack Reed is on bathroom duty...Jack Reed is always on bathroom duty). Jen Bendery: "Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) ranted Thursday that President Barack Obama hasn't put forward judicial nominees for vacancies in Texas, some open and without a nominee for more than 1,000 days. But he got schooled by his Democratic colleagues, who reminded him he's responsible for recommending nominees to the White House in the first place -- something he hasn't done for years. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Cornyn was arguing for more immigration judge slots in Texas when he got called out by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) for gumming up the district court nomination process. Immigration judges are different from district court judges, but Whitehouse questioned why the Senate should add more immigration judgeships in Texas if Cornyn isn't trying to fill empty district court slots there." [HuffPost]
My name is Fix The Debt and I'm here to say, reducing our obligations is A-OK! Amanda Terkel: "[T]his summer, their well-funded group Campaign to Fix the Debt will be trying to make the issue as fun and hip as can be. The effort kicked off on Friday in downtown Washington, D.C. Hungry office workers flooding Farragut Square to get lunch were greeted by about 75 people singing and dancing to a song to the tune of Aretha Franklin's 'Freedom.' Some of the lyrics were 'Take responsibility!' and 'Income!' and 'Everyone let's come together now and fix it!' Participants were wearing red and blue shirts -- representing Republicans and Democrats -- all coming together to dance reduce the deficit...Most of the flash mob participants who spoke with The Huffington Post on Friday seemed to be there more for the stipend than the cause..." [HuffPost]
DAILY DELANEY DOWNER - Another sequester story from the hinterland: "State officials plan to begin notifying 80,000 unemployed in Illinois of a 16.8 percent cut in federal emergency benefits, effective May 27. The cuts, amounting to about $50 from the average $320-a-week benefit, are the result of federal budget sequestration, Illinois Department of Employment Security spokesman Greg Rivara said Thursday. 'They'll start to see it the first full week in June,' he said." [SJ-R.com]
Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill
BENGHAZI TALKING POINTS EDITED BY WHITE HOUSE AND STATE: REPORT - ABC News: "When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story. ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack. White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack. That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November..Summaries of White House and State Department emails -- some of which were first published by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard -- show that the State Department had extensive input into the editing of the talking points." [ABC News]
Ruh roh: "The White House held a [deep background briefing] with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO. The meeting began around 12:45 p.m. and postponed the daily, on-the-record White House press briefing to 1:45 p.m." The White House also held a deep background call, in which they said pretty much exactly what Carney later said in his television briefing. [Politico]
IRS CONFIRMS EVERY CONSERVATIVE'S WORST FEAR - This provides enough paranoia to fuel Tea Party groups until it's time to plant survival seeds. AP: "The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday. Organizations were singled out because they included the words 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. "That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association. "The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added. Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice." [AP]
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S NEFARIOUS PLAN TO IMPREGNATE OUR COUNTRY'S TEENAGERS THWARTED BY JUDGE - Laura Bassett: "A federal judge on Friday denied the Obama administration's request to delay his order that the Plan B morning-after pill be made available over the counter without age limits. The judge sharply rebuked the administration for appealing his decision, calling the move politically motivated, 'frivolous,' and 'something out of an alternate reality.' The court battle over the morning-after pill began in December 2011, when Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration's recommendation that the pill be made available over-the-counter to all ages. Sebelius said that girls under the age of 17 should continue to only have access to the pill with a doctor's prescription. U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman decided in April that Sebelius' decision was based on politics, rather than medical evidence. He ordered the Food and Drug Administration to lift all age limits on Plan B emergency contraception and sell it on pharmacy shelves next to the condoms." This judge is pretty awesome. [HuffPost]
Illinois might get a Republican Party chairman commensurate with its proud paleoconservative tradition: "Someone who did make the list [to be the next state party chairman] was Tea Party ex-Congressman Joe Walsh, which is sure to ignite some kind of feud as well as Illinois state Rep. Ron Sandack - a suburban Republican who supports gay marriage -- the issue that the conservative bloc of the party used as a way to oust [former Chairman Pat] Brady in the first place." [Sun Times]
GAY CONGRESSMAN'S SPOUSE CAN NOW EAT IN THE CAPITOL MARKET WHENEVER HE DAMN WELL PLEASES - The House of Representatives now recognizes a gay marriage, which might be why Virginia Foxx has been using the hand sanitizer dispensers at an alarming rate. Nick Wing: "Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), an openly gay representative, made history on Capitol Hill Thursday when he announced that he'd been able to secure a congressional ID for his spouse. The Wisconsin Gazette reported that Philip Frank, whom Pocan married in Canada in 2006, had gotten a new ID officially labeling him a congressional spouse. The title gives him access to certain areas of the Capitol and allows him to attend congressional delegations with his spouse, among other privileges. It's largely a symbolic victory, as the spouses of gay federal employees -- including lawmakers -- still aren't afforded equal benefits thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act. But Pocan hailed it as key progress for gay lawmakers in Washington." [HuffPost]
BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Golden retriever is incredibly stoned.
[PR][DISASTER][GO] - Quartz: "Bloomberg LP is in damage-control mode. Some of its largest customers have publicly accused the firm's journalists of snooping on their usage of Bloomberg terminals, the firm's wildly profitable information service for investors. Until recently, all Bloomberg employees could access information about when and how terminals were used by any customer. But after complaints by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Bloomberg says its 2,000 or so journalists no longer have access to that information, though other staff still do. Bloomberg has more than 15,000 employees...Several former Bloomberg employees say colleagues would look up chat transcripts of famous customers, like Alan Greenspan, for amusement on slow workdays. The transcripts were typically mundane and hardly incriminating, but who wouldn't enjoy watching a former US Federal Reserve chairman struggle to use a computer? And, in theory, the substance of someone's query to customer service could reveal specific information that he's interested in, tipping off a reporter to a story. It's common for companies to keep logs of their interactions with customers. What makes Bloomberg different is that any employee, including journalists, could access those logs through the function on their terminals." [Quartz]
COMFORT FOOD
- The Coney Island Mermaid Parade might not happen this year. It's raising funds. [http://bit.ly/17QWif7]
- A pitch-perfect parody of Mad Men's "previously on," recaps. [http://bit.ly/13KsSNX]
- "Parks and Recration"'s Nick Offerman reads tweets from female celebrities. [http://bit.ly/16lX8Cx]
- Straight people are asked when they chose to be straight, react with confusion. [http://bit.ly/18wpl94]
- Duckling falls asleep during accounting class. That duckling will never land a job at Ernst and Young. [http://bit.ly/16mprke]
- Nobody puts baby panda in a corner. [http://huff.to/13mLX9I]
- Behold history's greatest stock photo model. [http://bit.ly/11or7sH]
TWITTERAMA
@igorbobic: Great day to have "talking points memo" in your urls #SEO
@daveweigel: Secret first draft of Benghazi talking points is just "BOB WOODWARD SUCKS" written 100 times in red ink
@nycsouthpaw: There's a group of men at large who murdered a U.S. ambassador. Also, talking points were defensively edited. The latter is the scandal.
ON TAP
TONIGHT
6:00 pm: The Republican event of the season, Rand Paul headlines the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Dinner. Also on hand will be Steve King and Chuck Grassley. [Cedar Rapids, IA]
6:00 pm: Washington's best-named PAC, Dean Heller's Heller Highwater, solicits contributions at a fundraising dinner. [Capital Grille, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue NW]
Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com), Ryan Grim (ryan@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill). Sign up here: http://huff.to/an2k2e
HERITAGE FOUNDATION'S SENIOR EUGENICIST FELLOW RESIGNS BECAUSE EUGENICS - The immigration who may or not be breathtakingly racist resigned from the Heritage Foundation today. Luke Johnson: "Jason Richwine, the co-author of a Heritage Foundation report on immigration who came under fire this week for arguing in his Harvard dissertation that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. have substantially lower IQs than whites, resigned Friday. 'Jason Richwine let us know he's decided to resign from his position. He's no longer employed by Heritage,' spokesman Daniel Woltornist said in an email to HuffPost. 'It is our long-standing policy not to discuss internal personnel matters.'" [HuffPost]
DEMS RELEASE FARM BILL DRAFT - Sounds like it cuts food stamps the same way the previous draft did. Erik Wasson: "Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) on Thursday released her draft 2013 farm bill. The bill saves $23 billion, by the committee's unofficial estimate, over the next 10 years by replacing the existing farm safety net with new crop insurance and price-based supports and by restricting some eligibility for food stamps. Next Tuesday, the committee will mark up the measure, which governs farm subsidies and food stamps as well as rural energy, trade, conservation and development programs for five years. The full Senate is expected to take up the bill this month." [The Hill]
LAZY PERSON JOHN CORNYN BLASTS WHITE HOUSE FOR NOT DOING HIS JOB - Apparently Texas' senior senator forgot to check the Washington chore wheel, because it's totally his job to put forward judicial nominees (Jack Reed is on bathroom duty...Jack Reed is always on bathroom duty). Jen Bendery: "Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) ranted Thursday that President Barack Obama hasn't put forward judicial nominees for vacancies in Texas, some open and without a nominee for more than 1,000 days. But he got schooled by his Democratic colleagues, who reminded him he's responsible for recommending nominees to the White House in the first place -- something he hasn't done for years. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Cornyn was arguing for more immigration judge slots in Texas when he got called out by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) for gumming up the district court nomination process. Immigration judges are different from district court judges, but Whitehouse questioned why the Senate should add more immigration judgeships in Texas if Cornyn isn't trying to fill empty district court slots there." [HuffPost]
My name is Fix The Debt and I'm here to say, reducing our obligations is A-OK! Amanda Terkel: "[T]his summer, their well-funded group Campaign to Fix the Debt will be trying to make the issue as fun and hip as can be. The effort kicked off on Friday in downtown Washington, D.C. Hungry office workers flooding Farragut Square to get lunch were greeted by about 75 people singing and dancing to a song to the tune of Aretha Franklin's 'Freedom.' Some of the lyrics were 'Take responsibility!' and 'Income!' and 'Everyone let's come together now and fix it!' Participants were wearing red and blue shirts -- representing Republicans and Democrats -- all coming together to dance reduce the deficit...Most of the flash mob participants who spoke with The Huffington Post on Friday seemed to be there more for the stipend than the cause..." [HuffPost]
DAILY DELANEY DOWNER - Another sequester story from the hinterland: "State officials plan to begin notifying 80,000 unemployed in Illinois of a 16.8 percent cut in federal emergency benefits, effective May 27. The cuts, amounting to about $50 from the average $320-a-week benefit, are the result of federal budget sequestration, Illinois Department of Employment Security spokesman Greg Rivara said Thursday. 'They'll start to see it the first full week in June,' he said." [SJ-R.com]
Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill
BENGHAZI TALKING POINTS EDITED BY WHITE HOUSE AND STATE: REPORT - ABC News: "When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story. ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack. White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack. That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November..Summaries of White House and State Department emails -- some of which were first published by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard -- show that the State Department had extensive input into the editing of the talking points." [ABC News]
Ruh roh: "The White House held a [deep background briefing] with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO. The meeting began around 12:45 p.m. and postponed the daily, on-the-record White House press briefing to 1:45 p.m." The White House also held a deep background call, in which they said pretty much exactly what Carney later said in his television briefing. [Politico]
IRS CONFIRMS EVERY CONSERVATIVE'S WORST FEAR - This provides enough paranoia to fuel Tea Party groups until it's time to plant survival seeds. AP: "The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday. Organizations were singled out because they included the words 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. "That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association. "The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added. Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice." [AP]
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S NEFARIOUS PLAN TO IMPREGNATE OUR COUNTRY'S TEENAGERS THWARTED BY JUDGE - Laura Bassett: "A federal judge on Friday denied the Obama administration's request to delay his order that the Plan B morning-after pill be made available over the counter without age limits. The judge sharply rebuked the administration for appealing his decision, calling the move politically motivated, 'frivolous,' and 'something out of an alternate reality.' The court battle over the morning-after pill began in December 2011, when Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration's recommendation that the pill be made available over-the-counter to all ages. Sebelius said that girls under the age of 17 should continue to only have access to the pill with a doctor's prescription. U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman decided in April that Sebelius' decision was based on politics, rather than medical evidence. He ordered the Food and Drug Administration to lift all age limits on Plan B emergency contraception and sell it on pharmacy shelves next to the condoms." This judge is pretty awesome. [HuffPost]
Illinois might get a Republican Party chairman commensurate with its proud paleoconservative tradition: "Someone who did make the list [to be the next state party chairman] was Tea Party ex-Congressman Joe Walsh, which is sure to ignite some kind of feud as well as Illinois state Rep. Ron Sandack - a suburban Republican who supports gay marriage -- the issue that the conservative bloc of the party used as a way to oust [former Chairman Pat] Brady in the first place." [Sun Times]
GAY CONGRESSMAN'S SPOUSE CAN NOW EAT IN THE CAPITOL MARKET WHENEVER HE DAMN WELL PLEASES - The House of Representatives now recognizes a gay marriage, which might be why Virginia Foxx has been using the hand sanitizer dispensers at an alarming rate. Nick Wing: "Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), an openly gay representative, made history on Capitol Hill Thursday when he announced that he'd been able to secure a congressional ID for his spouse. The Wisconsin Gazette reported that Philip Frank, whom Pocan married in Canada in 2006, had gotten a new ID officially labeling him a congressional spouse. The title gives him access to certain areas of the Capitol and allows him to attend congressional delegations with his spouse, among other privileges. It's largely a symbolic victory, as the spouses of gay federal employees -- including lawmakers -- still aren't afforded equal benefits thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act. But Pocan hailed it as key progress for gay lawmakers in Washington." [HuffPost]
BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Golden retriever is incredibly stoned.
[PR][DISASTER][GO] - Quartz: "Bloomberg LP is in damage-control mode. Some of its largest customers have publicly accused the firm's journalists of snooping on their usage of Bloomberg terminals, the firm's wildly profitable information service for investors. Until recently, all Bloomberg employees could access information about when and how terminals were used by any customer. But after complaints by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Bloomberg says its 2,000 or so journalists no longer have access to that information, though other staff still do. Bloomberg has more than 15,000 employees...Several former Bloomberg employees say colleagues would look up
COMFORT FOOD
- The Coney Island Mermaid Parade might not happen this year. It's raising funds. [http://bit.ly/17QWif7]
- A pitch-perfect parody of Mad Men's "previously on," recaps. [http://bit.ly/13KsSNX]
- "Parks and Recration"'s Nick Offerman reads tweets from female celebrities. [http://bit.ly/16lX8Cx]
- Straight people are asked when they chose to be straight, react with confusion. [http://bit.ly/18wpl94]
- Duckling falls asleep during accounting class. That duckling will never land a job at Ernst and Young. [http://bit.ly/16mprke]
- Nobody puts baby panda in a corner. [http://huff.to/13mLX9I]
- Behold history's greatest stock photo model. [http://bit.ly/11or7sH]
TWITTERAMA
@igorbobic: Great day to have "talking points memo" in your urls #SEO
@daveweigel: Secret first draft of Benghazi talking points is just "BOB WOODWARD SUCKS" written 100 times in red ink
@nycsouthpaw: There's a group of men at large who murdered a U.S. ambassador. Also, talking points were defensively edited. The latter is the scandal.
ON TAP
TONIGHT
6:00 pm: The Republican event of the season, Rand Paul headlines the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Dinner. Also on hand will be Steve King and Chuck Grassley. [Cedar Rapids, IA]
6:00 pm: Washington's best-named PAC, Dean Heller's Heller Highwater, solicits contributions at a fundraising dinner. [Capital Grille, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue NW]
Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com), Ryan Grim (ryan@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill). Sign up here: http://huff.to/an2k2e
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