Gov. Christie, I guess it's a busy time of year for you. With your proclamation that the Jersey Shore is "open for business," you've been making the rounds all across our beautiful Garden State, helping bring more money into a state that desperately needs it. I imagine your work schedule is the reason that you haven't returned my calls or emails. Or maybe -- oh, gosh -- are you just not that into me? Well listen, I know this is going to sound crazy. I know you're married, and I'm married, but -- oh, jeez -- why am I so nervous? OK, Anthony. Take a deep breath. Steel yourself for possible rejection. Gov. Christie, will you be my date on Saturday? You see, I'm going to be in Erie Park in Montclair on Saturday at 4 p.m., walking with Garden State Equality. We're going to be walking to raise money to override your veto, and I just thought that maybe you should be there. You know, without you, none of this would be happening. We're going to have a really wonderful afternoon, with New Jerseyans from all across the state joining together. Really, we kind of owe this to you. If we had one of those governors who just believe in equality for all, I'd probably be home on my couch watching Game of Thrones this weekend. Thank goodness you had the courage to stand up and veto our civil rights! Now, there's this term called "accountability." That's that thing where you recognize when you've done something untoward and you step forward to take responsibility for it. "Responsibility" is that thing you did with Hurricane Sandy, then abandoned again. And I'd like to take accountability (see above if you've forgotten the term) for the things I've said about you in the past. I've used words like "coward" and "bully" and "selfish" and "hypocritical." And I recognize now that those words came from an angry place inside me. This is a time when we should be coming together as New Jerseyans, not tearing each other down. So allow me to apologize, Gov. Christie. Though it's particularly challenging in this instance, I need to be the bigger man here. I am sorry for calling you names. I am sorry if my words or actions caused you or your family any pain. I'm an Italian New Jerseyan, so these apologies don't come easily. Am I right, Chris? To make up for it, I'd like to invite you on a date. Now, I want to be very clear here: This is a platonic date. No funny business, sir! In fact, I would love for you to be a member of my team. Not that team, Governor. My Equality Walk team! Our team is titled "On the Right Side of History." My team captain is Nicole Signorelli, and she's great. I think you'll really like her. She's funny, like you, and she likes really great music. We'll be walking with her boyfriend Steve, her sister Tina, and Tina's husband Russ. My brother Brian, a recent New York college graduate, has just moved to New Jersey to start his post-college career, and he'll be walking with us as well. OK, the next walker on our team is going to take some explaining. Bear with me; shout out suggestions if you can. He's my husband. Well, OK, he's not technically my husband in New Jersey. He's my... civil union spouse? No, wait. He's my civil partner? Jeez, what is the term? My civil union roommate? My in-house man-friend? That doesn't seem appropriate. You know, I've called you "shortsighted" in the past, but I know that you're a really smart man. Maybe you can help me figure out a term this weekend. Give me something that I can use to explain to everyone else in New Jersey something that's just as easily understood as the word "marriage." I've tried really hard to find a word that carries with it the full weight, history, and respect as the word "marriage" and just can't seem to come up with anything. Your beautiful wife of almost 30 years, Mary Pat, is lucky to have lots of titles. But if you didn't have the legal right to call her your wife, what would you call her? Your lady? Your baby mama? See, it's difficult, and I'll only have had my [insert "husband" replacement title here] for 257 days come Saturday. I can't imagine what you'd do! OK, I guess I digressed there for a moment. It's like that time when you were elected governor and promised to move the state forward, and then you had that series of years when you didn't, but now you're focused again. We'll look past that $12-million Lautenberg special election for the sake of the conversation. I want to truly commend you on your leadership during Hurricane Sandy. I can look back and remember those days when I was proud to call you my governor, when I knew that our leader had the best interests of all New Jerseyans in his heart and mind. It was a time when you set aside what might be politically expedient and advantageous for you down the road and simply focused on doing what was right. That's the man I appeal to now. The Garden State Equality Walk is on Saturday, June 22, in Montclair's Erie Park at 4 p.m. It's a great opportunity to get some exercise and connect with amazing people (ahem, voters) from all over the state. Look, I know you're a big man. You can admit when you got it wrong. I don't need to harp on this thing. Just come out and talk to me, meet my team, and meet the people whose lives were impacted by your choice to veto marriage equality. Don't be the suit; be the man in the suit. I think my team will be getting there around 3 p.m., if that helps with your planning. You can email me at 30.anthonyromeo@gmail.com or reach me on Twitter. I'm @AnthonyRomeo1 on there. Whatever works best for you. I can save you a spot at the start line, Governor. Respectfully yours, Anthony Romeo Married husband and New Jersey Devils fan Old Bridge, N.J. P.S. For more information on my participation in the Garden State Equality Walk, click here.

History seems to close up behind us as we move forward in our particular bubble of the present and immediate past.  The Memorial Day celebrations I attended this year started me thinking about how few World War II veterans are still with us.  Reading Senator Frank Lautenberg’s obituary a week after Memorial Day gave me a chance to see his long journey from serving in the Army Signal Corps during WWII to serving three terms as Senator before he retired. Except he didn’t really retire.  He ran again and was re-elected. He was still serving at the time of his death. You don’t have to look far to see other examples of veterans in public service.  Senators Max Cleland and John McCain, both Vietnam veterans, come instantly to mind.  And that’s just the political scene.  What about business, science, medicine, the arts? Our nation has a vast pool of talent in its veterans. In 1946 when Lautenberg got out of the Army and used the GI Bill to go to college, no one could have foreseen the kind of contributions he’d make to society.  The same can be said of Cleland and McCain and the countless other veterans who make this country work in a myriad of ways. Knowing this, doesn’t it make sense to treat that pool of talent like the resource we know it is?  We’ve seen how the Greatest Generation went to college on the GI Bill and bought their family homes using the VA’s Home Loan Program. They’re proof that investing in veterans is a good bet. But I wonder how much of their talent we squandered because we didn’t understand the physical and psychological effects of the horrors of war.  So many WWII vets suffered alone, in silence.  We still get calls on our crisis hotline from them.  That’s over 65 years ago.  In a sense, we failed them and many vets from the wars in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. It’s true that we offer the same benefits to today’s vets that we did to those from WWII. But knowing what we now understand about PTSD, TBI and other invisible traumas, we should take the steps necessary to make sure veterans get the treatment they need. We need to make up for what we missed in our WWII vets. It seems peculiarly shortsighted not to make the full investment in these men and women who are our future.   Whatever they need -- medical care, counseling, training, jobs, education -- it just makes sense to provide what they need to develop themselves, to heal.  Community-based veterans organizations and non-profits like the National Veterans Foundation can play a large part.  But the real power is in the hands of citizens like you.  Consider the future.  Contact your government representatives. Urge them to demand that we safeguard the human capital that resides in our veterans by providing the kind of care and support they need to fully heal.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly True | Jeb Bush says immigrants are 'more fertile' The aging of America draws a lot of attention as the country tries to control the rising cost of health care and sustain critical programs such as Social Security. Jeb Bush, former Republican governor of Florida and potential 2016 presidential candidate, has a partial solution -- promote immigration. Bush, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, made a pitch for immigration reform, saying America needs more new workers to help pay for retirees -- "to rebuild the demographic pyramid" as he put it. "Immigrants are more fertile," Bush said. "And they love families and ... >> More

Jack White, The Root(The Root) -- I wish that when President Bill Clinton started spouting off the other day about the need for President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria's horrific civil war or risk looking like "a total fool," Obama had followed the example set by his wife when she was recently confronted by a heckler. I wish that Obama had leaped from his bully pulpit, got in Clinton's face and silenced him with a withering put-down. But of course, that didn't happen. Instead of resisting the intensifying pressure from political enemies like Republican Sen. John McCain of...

Some of my regular readers might remember a previous blog entitled "School Reform or Tuition Vouchers," in which I predicted that if Americans continued to see their public schools as failing their children, they would advocate for government-financed vouchers to pay for tuition at private schools chosen by parents. Well, that time is quickly approaching. And, if we thought the debate regarding the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, was acrimonious, we haven't seen anything yet! The upcoming battleground is the larger issue of education--what role should the federal government play versus the states. Historically, education has been a local matter; however, the federal government has found a persuasive way to become involved, namely, by offering large amounts of money to those states and school districts which implement federal initiatives. As always, money is a great motivator. The fed's role increased markedly beginning in the late 1980s as business and political leaders became concerned regarding the United States' economy falling behind that of other nations; at that time it was Japan. The role of the federal government increased even more in the 1990s as the debate focused upon accountability through standardized student testing--should there be national tests or state tests? That question was resolved in favor of individual state testing, then. The Bush-era 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law propelled the debate back into center stage. Both political parties joined in passing NCLB requiring yearly testing in mathematics and language arts in grades three through eight, setting the year 2014 as the target for all students having reached proficiency in these two subject areas, and creating stiff penalties for those schools that fail to do so. Ten years later, as the debate regarding larger or smaller federal government involvement pervaded national elections--the economy, health care, Medicaid, among others--became the defining issue between Republicans and Democrats, important constituencies of both parties began to question whether the federal government had become too involved in education. Federal involvement in education has increased geometrically under President Obama as his Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan used 2009 anti-recession Congressionally-approved stimulus money to fund state and local school district grant programs that were focused upon student accountability through standardized testing and teacher evaluation based upon those student test results. These strongly-pushed initiatives resulted in major push-backs by teacher unions who opposed having teacher evaluations based upon student test scores, and parents and educators who asserted that standardized testing had resulted in the narrowing of curriculum and too much time being spent on test preparation. The most recent rallying cry for those opposed to federal involvement in education has been the Common Core standards for mathematics and language arts. Though not developed by the federal government, but adopted by 45 states, these common curricula objectives are seen as leading to a national curriculum. Some states are now reconsidering their participation. Teacher unions, parents, small government advocates are critical constituencies for both Democrats and Republicans. How could Congress do anything but consider limiting the federal role in education? Earlier this month, both parties in the Senate and the House Republicans released their bills which would reauthorize funding for elementary and secondary education by modifying the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. The political winds point to moving decision-making to the individual states regarding how much testing should occur, what should be included in the tests, should the newly-developed Common Core standard be implemented nationally, how teachers should be evaluated, and what are the consequences for those schools with large numbers of failing students. However acrimonious the debates become regarding these reauthorization questions, nothing will compare to the ensuing debate regarding the federal government providing money to be used by parents to choose their own public school or to enroll their children in private schools, programs commonly entitled "school vouchers," a provision in the Republican bill. School vouchers, though rare 10 years ago, are now law in 17 states, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school vouchers are constitutional since public money would be going to parents and not to private or religious elementary and secondary schools under the so-called "child benefit theory." There are many arguments against school vouchers, especially that de facto segregation occurs when parents choose to attend nonpublic schools with children like their own. However, it's extremely difficult to tell parents whose children are attending failing schools that their kids must remain there and continue to fail. The school voucher movement never had a better opportunity to become federal law.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reportedly received threats from a man who said he would kidnap, murder and burn the tea partier and his father. The Harris County District Attorney's Office said 37-year-old Nick Gates demanded $3 million from Cruz and his father, according to the Houston Chronicle. Gates now faces a felony charge for making a terroristic threat and is being held at the Harris County Jail in Houston under a $10,000 bail. The Houston Chronicle reports: An intern at Cruz's Austin office told investigators that a man called the office on June 5, saying that Cruz "owed him money or a bomb would explode," according to an arrest warrant filed in the case. The man, who identified himself as Abolfazi Akbori, called again the same day after the office had closed and left a threatening message on the office's voicemail system. Another phone message was left at Cruz's San Antonio office containing threats that the caller "would kidnap, murder, and burn Ted Cruz and his father," the arrest warrant states. The message states, "Ted has a choice. Give me three million dollars or lose the sun." The caller said that "due to government misconduct the sun would blow up and said he might be able to prevent the sun from blowing up if he receives three million dollars," according to the arrest warrant. KPRC reports workers in Cruz's Texas and Washington, D.C. offices were given a photograph of Gates and made aware of his history, which includes a previous felony conviction for attempted retaliation after threatening a police officer that arrested him for drunk driving. Cruz is one of several political figures to receive death threats in recent days. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, received a death threat from a man who said he wanted to "personally blow" his "head off." President Barack Obama has received several death threats throughout his time in office, most recently in March when a man allegedly posted tweets that claimed he was "coming to kill" Obama and his family. Click here for more from the Houston Chronicle.

In an op-ed in Politico today, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has taken a firm stand against Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. And that's great. It's about time that someone took on Bobby Jindal for doing all the stuff Bobby Jindal's been doing lately that Bobby Jindal is just sick to death of. Might as well be Bobby Jindal! See, today, Bobby Jindal is letting the world know that he is tired of the way the Republican Party keeps on with this relentless, post-2012 election self-critique. "We've had enough," writes Jindal, adding, "Enough, already." In Bobby Jindal's estimation, "excessive navel gazing leads to paralysis" and "at present it looks as if the entire Republican party needs to go to counseling." The overall level of panic and apology from the operative class in our party is absurd and unmerited. It’s time to stop the bedwetting. Yeah, well, you'll have to forgive me if I point out that when I test all the dampened sheets for DNA, I get several matches for Bobby Jindal. I mean, it took all of two weeks before Jindal was publicly castigating his party's 2012 standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, who contended that he lost the election because President Barack Obama successfully promised "gifts" to young voters and minorities. "That is absolutely wrong," Jindal said back in November, adding, "I absolutely reject that notion." From there, Jindal basically fashioned himself the would-be king of the GOP "rebranding effort." At January's winter meeting of the RNC, Jindal demanded that those in attendance undertake a deep, navel-based pondering, telling his colleagues that they needed to stop being "the stupid party." "I'm here to say, we've had enough of that," said Jindal, who just constantly has had "enough" of stuff. "The Republican Party does not need to change our principles -- but we might need to change just about everything else we do," he told those in attendance, seeming to imply that a lengthy period of self-examination was necessary. And as recently as a month ago, Jindal was still at it. At a Republican Senate Majority Committee fundraiser in Manchester, N.H., Jindal provided a keynote speech entirely centered around GOP self-reflection and self-critique, saying that the party needed "to make some changes." "I think we need to think seriously about where we go from here," said Jindal, suggesting that he was eager to do a lot of serious thinking about where the party should go from there. Of course, a funny thing happened while Jindal was staking out turf as his party's most serious critic. First, his attempt at "innovating" -- his proposal to eliminate Louisiana's state income tax and replace it with a regressive increase in state sales taxes -- was met with stiff resistance "from the left, the center and the right." His popularity and clout diminished from there. And so, the man who would rebrand his party has abruptly decided to rebrand himself. And with that comes a new plan for the GOP, which he helpfully laid out in Politico today: At some point, the American public is going to revolt against the nanny state and the leftward march of this president. I don't know when the tipping point will come, but I believe it will come soon. Why? Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don't have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don't matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too. "Eventually," Jindal says, "Americans will rise up against this new era of big government and this new reign of politically correct terror." What to do until then? "Put on your big boy pants," says Jindal, helpfully and substantively. The short version of Jindal's new plan for GOP renewal, then, is basically 1) attack a bunch of straw men; 2) sit back and chill and enjoy a well-fitting pair of trousers; and 3) profit. This is a far cry from the Bobby Jindal who suggested "we might need to change just about everything else we do," but I guess Bobby Jindal has had enough of that guy. READ THE WHOLE THING: GOP needs action, not navel-gazing [Politico] [Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

Wesley Pruden, Washington Times

Greg Sargent, Washington PostThe House Speaker, in a private meeting with House conservatives this morning, made a big show of talking tough on immigration reform, claiming he has "no intention" of allowing a House vote on anything that doesn't have the support of a majority of Republicans:

Reid Cherlin, GQ"I'm going up to Jersey tomorrow, to try to escape." John O. Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor and his soon-to-be new CIA director, leans back in his chair. Brennan is a proud son of Hudson County, a baseball player at his Catholic high school, a commuter student at Fordham. It's a common-touch backstory that, a tad predictably, Brennan's fans bring up all the time, and that he himself seems to cling to. He points to a photograph on the wall behind my head, a black and white shot of George H.W. Bush, surrounded by aides."The guy walking...

Sen. Elbert GuilloryHello, my name is Elbert Lee Guillory, and I’m the senator for the twenty-fourth district right here in beautiful Louisiana. Recently I made what many are referring to as a ‘bold decision’ to switch my party affiliation to the Republican Party. I wanted to take a moment to explain why I became a Republican, and also to explain why I don’t think it was a bold decision at all. It is the right decision — not only for me — but for all my brothers and sisters in the black community.You see, in recent history the Democrat Party has created...

Matt Lewis, The Daily CallerRegarding Syria, Sarah Palin recently advised, “Let Allah sort it out.” This is a great, if controversial, line. It also happens to have the benefit of being wise. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently told me, “[T]he question is: ‘Who’s going to replace [Assad]?’ Is it going to be a radical Islamist? And how do we know?”

Kate Walsh wants to bust up the teacher preparation market. That's why on Tuesday her group, the National Center for Teaching Quality, is releasing its first ranking of teacher preparation programs on the U.S. News & World Report website. The nearly across-the-board extremely low scores pull back the curtain on "an industry of mediocrity," according to a report released in conjunction with the rankings. "The field of teacher preparation has rejected any notion that its role is to train the next generation of teachers," the authors write. "Any training regimen in classroom management or reading instruction runs the risk, the field worries, of new teachers pulling from a fixed bag of tricks rather than considering each class as something new and unique." NCTQ's uses a four-star rating system based on training programs' curricula, syllabi and admissions standards. Less than 10 percent of the programs rated earn three stars or more. Only four programs, Liscomb, Vanderbilt, Furman University and Ohio State University, earned four stars. NCTQ, a Washington-based think tank that receives money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and advocates for tougher teacher evaluations, has spent eight years studying 1,130 institutions that prepare teachers for the classroom. (The U.S. News report includes rankings for 608 schools; an additional 522 will be available on NCTQ's web site). The rankings were inspired by a 1910 evaluation of the nation's medical schools which "led to consolidations and upgrades that transformed the system of training doctors into the world's best," the report's authors wrote. The ratings come after years of public sniping among policymakers, teachers unions and educators about the fate of the teaching profession. A group known as "education reformers" have argued that because teacher quality is the biggest in-school variable when it comes to helping students learn, teachers must be sorted in accordance with their abilities and their students' test scores. Making the profession more "serious," the argue, will draw better candidates to classrooms. Part of that drive is reforming the schools that produce teachers. Teachers unions and politicians alike have recognized education schools as possible sites of improvement, with the Obama administration and the American Federation of Teachers recently releasing reports on the topic. States are getting in on the action, too: Earlier this month, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) signed legislation that would make it harder to become a teacher. "A key part of raising the education profession is related to who we attract the best candidates into teacher preparation programs in the first place," Markell said in an interview. "We look to Singapore and Korea, and 100 percent of their teachers come from the top third of their college graduates. The equivalent figure in the U.S. is 23 percent." Last week, a panel organized by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation approved a new set of teacher preparation school accreditation standards, which calls for teachers to be measured, in part, by their students' test scores. But NCTQ's Walsh thinks these efforts don't go far enough. "Accreditation reform is very much needed, but there is a certain amount of herding cats involved, so I'm not optimistic," she said. NCTQ found only one-quarter of teacher training programs require applicants to come from the top half of their classes. It also found that few programs are preparing prospective teachers for the Common Core State Standards, and that 75 percent of programs aren't teaching teachers specific methods of instruction "that could substantially lower the number of children who never become proficient readers." Instead, they're expecting trainees to develop their own teaching philosophies. "As if a 21-year-old could have their own philosophy about reading," Walsh said. "In any other field, this would be malpractice. If you don't acknowledge that there are core skills, anything goes." NCTQ faced severe resistance in its quest to gather materials about the institutions included in the report; in a few states, the organization even had to sue to gain access to schools' syllabi. Even in advance of the report's release, representatives of those institutions pushed back. Already, education groups are criticizing the report for its consumer-alert approach and methodology. Weingarten, the president of the AFT, which represents some education school faculty members, called the ranking system a "gimmick" that shirks "professionally-accepted standards." She said the report's questions overlap with the AFT's focus on improving the sector, but the union "would prefer to collaborate ... instead of talking about a punitive approach to shame and blame institutions." In advance of the report, New York University released its own training materials for public viewing. “We don’t agree with NCTQ’s approach because we believe that teacher education is a dynamic and developmental process that can’t be judged simply based on syllabi and textbooks,” said Dean Mary Brabeck, in a statement. But the rankings garnered early, if tepid, support from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "NCTQ deserves praise for working to give consumers -- both teacher candidates and districts -- better information to use in selecting the most effective teacher preparation programs," Duncan said in a statement provided to HuffPost. "As the classroom effectiveness of the teachers trained in these programs is better understood, I’m confident that NCTQ will continue working to validate and improve these ratings." Michelle Rhee, the former Washington schools chief who implemented tougher teacher evaluations there, provided more enthusiastic praise. “NCTQ's report on teacher preparation programs, with its groundbreaking scope and approach, provides exactly the kind of information that teachers, districts, and policymakers need to guide better decision-making," she said. "Creating high quality traditional prep programs are key to consistently putting effective teachers in front of kids.” Some think the report uses too little hard data. Bill McDiarmid, the dean of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill's education school, says the report should have used information associated with the test scores of students of teacher training program graduates to evaluate the programs themselves. (NCTQ's representatives said it was hard to find statistically significant test results tied to specific institutions in North Carolina.) "What's going to help us is seeing what our students do once they're in a classroom, how much their students are learning, and how much the graduates of our programs are contributing to learning," McDiarmid said. "I don't want to be defensive -- I'm concerned about what's the data that will help us do a better job, but reports like this don't really help."

The Truth-o-Meter says: Pants on Fire! | Saxby Chambliss says U.S. has "never stood by and seen innocent people slaughtered" as in Syria Last week, the United States announced that it was convinced that the Syrian regime led by Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons, thus crossing a line set by President Barack Obama that would trigger U.S. involvement in the three-year-long rebellion and resulting civil war. On CNN’s The Situation Room, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., made the case for U.S. involvement in Syria. Chambliss serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The United States has never stood by and seen innocent people slaughtered to the extent that's happening in Syria," Chambliss said. ... >> More

Brit Hume, FOX NewsBRIT HUME: President Obama's handling of the deteriorating situation in Syria follows a pattern traceable through much of his political career. When the issues are difficult and the options unappetizing, he tends simply to go away. Recall his history of voting present in the Illinois legislature. But when you're president you can't simply vote present.

Dennis Prager, TownhallLast week, in Nice, France, I was privileged to participate, along with 30 scholars, mostly scientists and mathematicians, in a conference on the question of whether the universe was designed, or at least fine-tuned, to make life, especially intelligent life. Participants -- from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley and Columbia among other American and European universities -- included believers in God, agonistics and atheists.But it was clear that the scientific consensus was that, at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that...

WASHINGTON -- Working to maintain gun policy reform's place in the political conversation, Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday will urge Congress to act on the White House slate of proposals. It's unclear whether Biden will explicitly call for a vote on expanded background checks, the centerpiece of those proposals. But a senior administration official told reporters that Biden "will make that push" when it came to arguing for the president's policy prescriptions, which were filibustered in the Senate in April. Biden also will announce on Tuesday that the administration has done well on the scorecard of executive actions to reduce gun violence. President Barack Obama outlined 23 administrative actions he could take without Congress during a speech on Jan. 16. On 21 of them, the administration has "completely or made significant progress," Biden will say, pointing to new money for gun violence and mental health research, greater data sharing between federal and state agencies, and updated emergency management plans. In anticipation of Biden's speech, the White House released a fact sheet detailing the accomplishments on the executive actions. That fact sheet is embedded below. Biden Actionsvar docstoc_docid="159519436";var docstoc_title="Biden Actions";var docstoc_urltitle="Biden Actions"; That the administration is marking actions it has taken without congressional approval shows how the gun policy debate has played out this year. On one hand, it shows that the White House isn't ducking the debate, to the delight of many reform advocates. "I think what the administration thinks -- what can be accomplished through executive action -- is real and necessary, but not sufficient," said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. "If all that comes out of this once-in-a-generation debate is teaching kids how to duck and cover during a mass shooting, some members of Congress are going to have a lot to explain when it happens. And it will happen." The administration's statements also underscore the limits of the president's powers of persuasion when it comes to the legislative branch and gun policy reform. One executive action the administration lists as unaccomplished is getting Todd Jones confirmed as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Senate approval is required for that. And while the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, the broader chamber hasn't done much more. But that isn't stopping the White House from plowing forward. One administration official quibbled when The Huffington Post asked what prompted the renewed focus on guns. "I reject the premise," the official said. Another senior administration official, who like the others would only speak about legislative plans on condition of anonymity, said that the White House remains "engaged with members of Congress on this issue" and has been buoyed by the political backlash to the Senate's rejection of background checks legislation. "This is something that continues to be at the top of the agenda of both the president and vice president," the official added. The official declined to name members of Congress who have participated in those conversations.

For defense contractors, the government officials who write them mega checks, and the hawks in the media who cheer them on, the name of the game is threat inflation. And no one has been better at it than the folks at Booz Allen Hamilton, the inventors of the new boondoggle called cyber warfare. That's the company, under contract with the National Security Agency, that employed whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the information security engineer whose revelation of Booz Allen's enormously profitable and pervasive spying on Americans now threatens the firm's profitability and that of its parent hedge fund, the Carlyle Group. Booz Allen, whose top personnel served in key positions at the NSA and vice versa after the inconvenient collapse of the Cold War, has been attempting to substitute terrorist for communist as the enemy of choice. A difficult switch indeed for the military-industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower, the general-turned-president, had so eloquently warned us. But just when the good times for war profiteers seemed to be forever in the past, there came 9/11 and the terrorist enemy, the gift that keeps on giving, for acts of terror always will occur in a less than perfect world, serving as an ideal excuse for squandering resources, as well as our freedoms. Just ask New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Bill Keller. Rising to the defense of NSA snooping on a scale never before imagined in human history, they warn us that if there was a second 9/11-type attack, we would lose all of our civil liberties, so we should be grateful for this trade-off. "I believe that if there is one more 9/11 -- or worse, an attack involving nuclear material -- it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it," Friedman wrote in his June 11 column. No nation in history has ever possessed such an imbalance of military superiority and the ability to ward off foreign threats without sacrificing its core values. Never has this country been as vulnerable to foreign attacks as when the founders approved our Constitution with its Fourth Amendment and other protections of individual sovereignty against an intrusive government. They did so out of the conviction that individual freedom makes us stronger rather than weaker as a nation. In short, they trusted in the essential wisdom of the people as opposed to the pundits who deride it. Defending Friedman's column, Keller wrote Sunday: "Tom's important point was that the gravest threat to our civil liberties is not the NSA but another 9/11-scale catastrophe that could leave a panicky public willing to ratchet up the security state, even beyond the war-on-terror excesses that followed the last big attack." So it's the panicky public's fault and not the ill-informed work of establishment journalists like Friedman, who led the charge to war with Iraq based on phony claims about terrorism. Once again, Friedman has a misplaced faith in the work of the intelligence community. The NSA snooping was quite extensive before 9/11 and certainly in full force prior to the Boston Marathon attack, but did not prevent either event. Indeed, our much-vaunted spy agencies still have not come up with an explanation of how 19 hijackers, 15 from our ally Saudi Arabia, managed to legally enter this country and learn flying skills while under our government's watch. Nor have those intelligence agencies explained why the only three countries that recognized the Taliban government sponsors of al-Qaida were that same Saudi Arabia as well as our other friends in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. For information on the UAE connection, the NSA might check with its buddies at Booz Allen Hamilton. As The New York Times reported Saturday: "When the United Arab Emirates wanted to create its own version of the National Security Agency, it turned to Booz Allen Hamilton to replicate the world's largest and most powerful spy agency in the sands of Abu Dhabi. It was a natural choice: The chief architect of Booz Allen's cyber strategy is Mike McConnell, who once led the NSA and pushed the United States into a new era of big data espionage. It was Mr. McConnell who won the blessing of the American intelligence agencies to bolster the Persian Gulf sheikdom, which helps track the Iranians." Tracking the Iranians, you say? But they're not the enemies who attacked us on 9/11, and indeed they are Shiites, who were implacably hostile to the Sunni fanatics of al-Qaida. The reasoning makes sense only if you follow the money that the UAE can pay. "They are teaching everything," one Arab official told The New York Times about Booz Allen's staffers. "Data mining, web surveillance, all sorts of digital intelligence collection." How great. Now, it's not just the government we elect but also those everywhere, even in desert emirates, that can mine our data. "The NSA data mining," Keller assures us, "is part of something much larger. On many fronts, we are adjusting to life in a surveillance state, relinquishing bits of privacy in exchange for the promise of other rewards." Behold McConnell. While director of national intelligence from 2007-09, he did much to inflate the threat of cyberterrorism; he then returned to the private sector and was rewarded with $4.1 million his first year back at Booz Allen, solving the problem he had hyped while heading the NSA. There's a guy who knows how to play the game.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly slammed the Obama administration for its handling of the National Security Administration scandal -- but not because he thinks the government was overextending its reach. The city's top cop argued that the public would have been more amenable to the idea of the NSA spying on their electronic communications if it hadn't been kept a secret. “I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it's going to be recorded and goes to the government,” Kelly said at an event Monday, according to the New York Daily News. "I think the public can understand that." Though Kelly suggested that the content of Americans' phone calls is being recorded, the Guardian reported earlier this month that the government has been collecting call metadata, which includes the numbers a particular phone has dialled and the time, location and duration of calls, but not the content of conversations. Obama's mistake, Kelly argued, was not being more forthcoming about what information the NSA is gathering, and which internal mechanisms draw the limit. “I think we can raise people’s comfort level if in fact information comes out as to that we have these controls and these protections inside the NSA,” he said, according to the New York Post. Kelly came under fire in 2012 after revelations about the NYPD's surveillance of Muslim communities. At the time, he defended the police's spying. “Not everybody is going to be happy, but our primary mission, our primary goal is to keep this city safe and save lives,” Kelly said, according to CBS New York.

Cal Thomas, Washington Examiner

Byron York, Examiner

What kind of society abandons its own young? What kind of society allows the generations in power to favor themselves over those who follow them, and then lets them claim they're doing it out of selflessness? Look around you. This weekend we reviewed nine ways an extreme-right right social agenda has harmed the Millennial Generation.  But there's a cure for that, a formula that's rational, sane, wise, and fair. It involves time-tested techniques for jobs, growth, and education - a New Deal for Millennials. And a New Deal starts with new values. Value Proposition Our weakening values can be found in the "above the fray" stance of Presidents and pundits who treat Republicans' ruthless Randianism as if it were a moderate and reasonable point of view, rather than a morally bankrupt corporate-funded bid for economic totalitarianism. Those frayed values can be found in that hollow streetcorner strut where GOP politicians holler out to deep-pocketed strangers, Pick me. No, me! I'll make your selfish agenda sing with the voters. Free market? "Yes!" Competition? "Oh, yes!" Contempt for the majority? "Yes, oh yes, God yes!" But hollow values are also present in Wall Street Democrats who invert the GOP's What's the Matter with Kansas? formula by luring liberals with progressive stands on issues like gay marriage while eagerly pushing Wall Street's economic agenda. The Clinton, Cuomo, Booker crowd is doing exactly what the right did - using social issues to draw people into voting against their own economic interests. Social justice and economic justice aren't "either/or." They're "and/and." Those empty values were present at last week's Clinton Global Initiative, where corporate-sponsored pitches about "public/private partnerships" pushed the oligarchy-friendly premise that the Federal government can't and won't help its citizens any longer. Conveniently, that would leave us at the mercy of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and former President Clinton's other prominent corporate funders. Those hollow values are present in the countless editorials at political organs like the Washington Post which falsely argue that we can't afford to preserve and expand Social Security and Medicare, or pose false choices between help at the dawn of life or fair play at its sunset. They're present in the argument that we can't help Millennials with student debt, even as we toss them into a jobless economy. Or help them find jobs, as their lifelong earnings erode with every passing year. Run, Millennials, Run The Millennial Generation doesn't need us, but here's a little unsolicited advice:  Run! Run from the radical-right Republicans and demand sanity instead of madness. Run from anyone who tells you corporatist Democrats are the best you can hope for politically. Run from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and the other overpaid sales shills who claims that the way to "preserve entitlements for you" is to make sure they're eviscerated before you need them. Run for the education "reformers" who claim there's no money to educate kids unless someone can make a profit. Run from the people who tell you it's your fault jobs are so hard to find. Run for your lives. This isn't generous advice. It's actually very selfish. Truth is, we need you.  We need your intelligence. We need your strength. We need your numbers. The corporatists and extremists don't realize it, but our offer to help you is also a plea - one that's is based on sound economic principle as well as sound moral reasoning. Morally and economically, the answer is the same: When you win, we all win. Who Owes Who? A New Deal for Millennials would relieve the inhumane and unconscionable burden of debt we've imposed on college graduates. Ellen Brown wrote an excellent review of Elizabeth Warren's proposal to allow students to refinance through the Federal Reserve at the ultra-low rates offered to banks and other financial institutions. There may be ways to modify the Warren proposal to make it even stronger. But one objection that doesn't hold up is to say "That's not what the Federal Reserve does; it helps banks." The Fed wasn't supposed to help GE Capital or Goldman Sachs either. They weren't banks. But Tim Geithner and others rewrote the rules to bail them out. Then GE Capital's CEO was named head of Obama's "Jobs Council." And Goldman's COO just shared the stage with Bill Clinton at the Global Initiative. Are you telling us you'll bend the rules for them, but not for our young people? Well, yeah, come to think of it you are. That's not acceptable. As Brown points out, the government makes 36 cents on the dollar for student loans. It shouldn't make a nickel. It won't have to pay a nickel, either. Brown offers New Deal of programs which succeeded without costing the Federal government a dime. And some of these loans shouldn't be paid back at all. They were issued for worthless or highly overpriced degrees at "paper mills" like the University of Phoenix. The government should've protected consumers from these scams, and it has a moral obligation to right that wrong now. Student Loan forgiveness would release a trillion dollars of debt obligation back into the general economy. Millennials would have more to spend on some of the first purchases of adult life. That's a stimulus that's built to last. And if any tax revenue is needed, here's a suggestion: Start with GE Capital and Goldman Sachs. A Generation at Work Jobs come next.  Studies show that unemployment at the start of a career lowers lifetime earnings. We need to end our youth unemployment crisis now with a Millennial WPA that jumpstarts their careers, and our economy, the way the Works Progress Administration did under Franklin D. Roosevelt. We also need a major initiative in primary and secondary education. Millennials are having children now, and those children need schooling. What's more, Millennials represent a large part of the workforce that can provide teachers for them.  That means committing to a renewed emphasis on public education. Lastly, let's end all this talk about cutting Social Security and expand it instead, which can be done through lifting the payroll tax cap and other strategies. The Millennial Generation has already had its Social Security benefits cut, above and beyond the gradual rise in the eligibility age already underway. Benefits are calculated based on lifetime earnings, and those have already been eroded by youth unemployment.   Further cuts in benefits, like President Obama's proposed "chained CPI," will only add to the injustice created by youth unemployment, while the erosion of the other elements of American retirement - corporate pensions and other assets - will leave Millennials in a painfully vulnerable position in their senior years. Run For Your Lives Economically, Millennials should run from Randian Republicanism and its Selfishness Lite Democratic version. Culturally, they should run from their elders' ideas about home ownership and consumerism - ideas which left them in thrall to corporations and banks. What should they run to? To politicians like Warren who speak for them and to them, rather than against them and down to them. To the people who tell them the truth.  To the streets, parks, and public squares - anywhere demonstrations are being held against the corporate agenda and in favor of an economy for all. And they should run for office. The oldest Millennials will soon be qualified to run for President. They can already hold every other office. I'm not a big believer in identity politics - look where it got us last time - but Millennials need candidates who speak to their needs and are equally invested in their future. We need them too, because their New Deal will be everyone's. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking! - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Jonathan Bernstein, Wash Post