memeorandum: What's Next for Conservatives (Senator Mike Lee/RedState)

7:55 AM ET, November 13, 2013

Top Items:

Richard Cohen Defends Column: ‘Word Racist Is Truly Hurtful’ — Richard Cohen says that his latest piece was not intended to be and shouldn't be read as racist. — “The word racist is truly hurtful,” he told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “It's not who I am. It's not who I ever was.

Discussion: ThinkProgress, The Moderate Voice, Daily Kos, Mediaite, Talking Points Memo, This Week in Blackness, Shakesville and TheBlaze.com, more at Mediagazer »

Tom Kludt / Talking Points Memo:

WaPo Publisher Calls Cohen Column ‘Brilliant’ — Before Richard Cohen's latest column sparked widespread outrage, the publisher of the Washington Post praised the piece. — Katharine Weymouth tweeted a link to Cohen's column on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) relationship with the tea party, which she hailed as “brilliant.”

Discussion: Mediaite, Feministing, Taylor Marsh and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Alan Taylor / The Atlantic Online:
Richard Cohen on Black-White Marriage

Discussion: Making Light, The Wrap, p m carpenter's commentary, Business Insider, Daily Kos and Booman Tribune

Richard Cohen / Washington Post:
Christie's tea-party problem

Discussion: addictinginfo.org, Booman Tribune, Liberal Values, Wonkblog, PostPartisan, Daily Kos, The Lonely Conservative, Weasel Zippers, Little Green Footballs, Politico, Business Insider, Talking Points Memo, The Hinterland Gazette, Washington Monthly, Hullabaloo, Balloon Juice and The Dish

Hamilton Nolan / Gawker:
Richard Cohen Has Written Something Insane About Interracial Marriage

Discussion: Twitchy, The Other McCain, Joe. My. God., Daily Kos and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Matthew Yglesias / Slate:
Racist Op-Ed Columns Are a Strange Business Strategy

Discussion: Liberaland, The Daily Beast, Connecting.the.Dots, ThinkProgress, The Week, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Raw Story, Lawyers, Guns & Money and Talking Points Memo

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Obama's critic-in-chief strikes again — President Bill Clinton — the man President Barack Obama once dubbed his “Secretary of Explaining Stuff” — once again has some explaining of his own to do with the Obama White House. — In an interview released Tuesday, Clinton called for a fix …

Discussion: Mediaite, The Moderate Voice and BizzyBlog

Jonathan Easley / The Hill:

Obama is boxed in by Bill Clinton — President Obama scrambled to find a coherent response Tuesday after former President Clinton jammed the administration by saying it should keep its promise that people could keep their health insurance plans if they liked them.

Discussion: Instapundit

Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:
Bill Clinton Is Wrong. This Is How Obamacare Works.

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Politico, CNN, Weekly Standard, Yahoo! News, Mediaite, Talking Points Memo and Post Politics

President Bill Clinton / Ozymandias:
Assessing the Healthcare Rollout

John McCormack / Weekly Standard:

Why It's Not Too Late for the ‘Keep Your Health Plan’ Act — With millions of Americans losing their health insurance because of Obamacare, bills have been introduced in Congress to let people keep their plans. — But health industry consultant Bob Laszewski says it's too late for these measures …

Discussion: Hot Air

Justin Sink / The Hill:

Dem. Rep: Obama ‘misleading’ on ACA — Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) accused President Obama of being “grossly misleading to the American public” with his pledge that people could keep their health insurance under ObamaCare, which is seen as further evidence that the president's comments …

Discussion: The Week, Real Clear Politics and The Daily Caller

Alleigh Marre / National Republican Congressional …:
Kurt Schrader's “grossly misleading” ObamaCare hypocrisy

Discussion: Power Line, Oregonian, Yahoo! News and National Review

Brian Beutler / Salon:
GOP about to hurt itself again!: New ploy to kill Obamacare will blow up

Discussion: The Mahablog, Daily Kos and A plain blog about politics

Matt Higgins / CBS Sacramento:

Calif. Insurance Commissioner: More Than 1M Californians Having Insurance Cancelled Due To ACA — SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS Sacramento/AP) — Health insurer Anthem Blue Cross of California has agreed to a two-month extension of about 104,000 individual policies after failing to give the required 90 …

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and The Gateway Pundit

Abby D. Phillip / ABC News:

Exclusive: Obamacare's Mystery Woman Says She Fell Victim to Cyberbullies … The smiling woman who was once the face of the Affordable Care Act's website has come out of the shadows to stand up to the “cyberbullying” she says she suffered after the law's flawed kickoff.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo

Jay Bookman / Ajc Blogs:

Cobb GOP chairman concerned about (those) people coming to Braves' games — I just got back from Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed's press conference on the Braves' move to a transportation-challenged site in Cobb County, and will have a lot more to say on that later. But I can't let this pass without notice:

Discussion: Washington Monthly and Esquire

Josh Lederman / Associated Press:

Obama Lunches With US Service Members at Irish Pub — President Barack Obama made an unannounced trip out for lunch with members of the military. — The president and Vice President Joe Biden dined with active duty service members from each of the five military branches at Capitol Hill restaurant Molly Malone's on Tuesday.

ABC News:
Biden to Push Immigration at Naturalization Event

Discussion: Politico and Weasel Zippers

Pete Williams / U.S. News:

Supreme Court justices rebuff chance to hear second Oklahoma abortion case — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down another opportunity to take up a state restriction on abortion that was ruled unconstitutional by a lower court. — The top court rejected a request from officials …

Discussion: Off the Kuff and Juanita Jean's

Patrick Marley / JSOnline:
Wisconsin Supreme Court considers stay in Act 10 case

Discussion: National Review and Althouse

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Republicans Again Reject Obama Pick for Judiciary — WASHINGTON — President Obama's latest choice to fill one of the vacancies on a powerful appeals court went down in a filibuster on Tuesday as Senate Republicans blocked another White House nominee — the third in two weeks …

Discussion: Washington Post and Master Feed

CNN:

White House technology chief to testify at hearing — (CNN) - The top White House technology officer will appear before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, despite the Obama administration's insistence that he was too busy helping to repair the flawed Obamacare website

Discussion: Politico

Amy Davidson / Close Read:

“60 Minutes” and the Benghazi Scandal Trap — “I didn't even have to go into the room to see who it was,” a man calling himself Morgan Jones told Lara Logan, of “60 Minutes,” on October 27th, remembering how he had glimpsed a body through the glass in a door.

Discussion: Roger Ailes, Hullabaloo and Outside the Beltway, more at Mediagazer »

Elizabeth Titus / Politico:

Virginia AG race: Democrat widens lead — Democrat Mark Herring climbed to an unofficial lead of 163 votes over Republican Mark Obenshain in the 2.2 million-vote race for Virginia attorney general on Tuesday. — Herring gained 160 votes when Fairfax County tallied its provisional ballots Tuesday night …

Discussion: Washington Post, The BRAD BLOG, Outside the Beltway and Election Law Blog

IEA:

Report sees large disparities in regional energy prices affecting industrial competitiveness — Technology and high prices are opening up new oil resources, but this does not mean the world is on the verge of an era of oil abundance, according to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) …

Discussion: Politico, EcoWatch and Guardian

Igor Bobic / Talking Points Memo:

Sarah Palin ‘Surprised’ By Pope Francis' ‘Liberal’ Sounding Statements — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) said Tuesday that some of the pope's statements “sounded kind of liberal,” but assured CNN's Jake Tapper that she wouldn't necessarily trust her ears nor the “lamestream media” until she did her “own homework” on the matter.

Discussion: Liberaland