memeorandum: Patriot Act author: Obama's intel czar should be prosecuted (Brendan Sasso/The Hill)

3:50 PM ET, December 6, 2013

Top Items:

Lucy McCalmont / Politico:

Rick Santorum ties Obamacare, Nelson Mandela — As condolences and reflections followed the passing of Nelson Mandela, Rick Santorum linked the injustices the former South African president fought and Obamacare. — “He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument …

Discussion: CNN, The Moderate Voice, The Dish, The Hinterland Gazette, Outside the Beltway, p m carpenter's commentary, The Reaction, Connecting.the.Dots, ABC News and The Democratic Daily

Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:

7 Nelson Mandela Quotes You Probably Won't See In The U.S. Media — The former South African president, who died Thursday, was a revolutionary and a deep skeptic of American power. — Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters — “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

Discussion: Liberaland, ThinkProgress, The Daily Caller and Washington's Blog

Leslie Larson / NY Daily News:

Sen. Ted Cruz's praise for Nelson Mandela met with criticism by supporters — The Texas senator posted a message on his Facebook page saying that Mandela would ‘live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty,’ but some of the comments posted called the former South African leader a 'terrorist …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Hinterland Gazette, Daily Kos, BOR, p m carpenter's commentary, Liberaland and Joe. My. God.

The Atlantic Online:

Apartheid's Useful Idiots — Nelson Mandela died yesterday, and all around the world, much-deserved hosannas are coming in, praising the life of one of the most important figures in modern Western history. That last bit reflects my own bias. What's become clear in all my studies …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, msnbc.com, ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES and Balloon Juice

Nick Wing / The Huffington Post:

Dick Cheney Didn't Regret His Vote Against Freeing Nelson Mandela, Maintained He Was A ‘Terrorist’ — In 1986, Nelson Mandela — the former president of South Africa who died Thursday at the age of 95 — was serving the 23rd year of what would ultimately be a 27-year prison sentence.

Discussion: Liberaland, The New Republic, US Department of State, Hullabaloo, Gawker, Brains and Eggs, Mediaite, ThinkProgress, Daily Kos, Londonderry Patch News, ≠ Inequality Matters, National Review and New York Times

The Daily Beast:

Don't Sanitize Nelson Mandela: He's Honored Now, But Was Hated Then — By Peter BeinartDecember 5th 20137:40 PM — If we turn the late South African leader into a nonthreatening moral icon, we'll forget a key lesson from his life: America isn't always a force for freedom.

Discussion: Gawker, The Mahablog, CANNONFIRE, The Dish, Politico and No More Mister Nice Blog

Adam Peck / ThinkProgress:

Rick Santorum Compares Obamacare To Apartheid — Rick Santorum, the erstwhile Republican presidential candidate with a penchant for controversy, appeared on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor on Thursday night and memorialized the passing of South African leader and global visionary Nelson Mandela by equating Obamacare with apartheid.

Discussion: Austin Chronicle, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Week, Mediaite, Shakesville and Washington Monthly

Max Boot / Commentary Magazine:
The Character of Nelson Mandela

Discussion: News Desk, The Daily Caller, Slate, The Monkey Cage, The Dish, TIME, Betsy's Page, Spectator, The New Republic, National Review and BREITBART.COM

Deroy Murdock / National Review: Nelson Mandela, R.I.P

ThinkProgress:
The Right Wing's Campaign To Discredit And Undermine Mandela, In One Timeline

Discussion: Right Wing Watch and Informed Comment

Dylan Scott / Talking Points Memo:
Santorum: Fight Against Obamacare Like Fight Against Apartheid

Discussion: Liberaland, Jezebel and Gawker

Hunter Walker / Talking Points Memo:
Richard Branson: Mandela Tried To Stop The Iraq War

Discussion: CNN and Liberaland

Peter Schweizer / Politico:

When Barry Met Kathy — Almost never, it turns out. — Journalists and pundits have begun offering lengthy postmortems to explain the causes of the ruinous Obamacare rollout. The debacle's scale has surprised even progressives who supported the Affordable Care Act.

Discussion: PostPartisan, Hot Air, National Republican … and Government Accountability …

Laura Barron-Lopez / The Hill:
Eagle-killing rule almost done

Discussion: americanthinker.com and Prairie Weather

Byron York / Washington Examiner: No talk of affordable health care in Obamacare PR push

Art Swift / Gallup:

Majority of Americans Want Major Changes to Health Law — Fifty-two percent want Congress to repeal or scale back the law — WASHINGTON, D.C. — After two months of glitches with the new federal healthcare website and attempts to fix it, the percentage of Americans who prefer that Congress scale …

Discussion: Firedoglake, The Daily Caller, Hot Air, The Plum Line, Business Insider, Weasel Zippers, Reuters, Weekly Standard and JustOneMinute

Brendan Sasso / The Hill:

Patriot Act author: Obama's intel czar should be prosecuted — Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress. — “Lying to Congress is a federal offense …

Discussion: Politico, Firedoglake, Talking Points Memo, Hot Air, The Daily Caller, Hit & Run, The Switch, SiliconBeat, CNN and The Gateway Pundit

Tal Kopan / Politico:

Scott Brown: Where am I? — Scott Brown on Thursday night broke a cardinal rule of touring, whether it's in politics or rock 'n roll: Get the name of where you are right. — Speaking with reporters while in New Hampshire for a dinner at a local Republican group meeting …

Discussion: CNN, Londonderry Patch News and The Democratic Daily

First Read / NBCNews:
First Thoughts: Universal, bipartisan praise for Mandela — when that wasn't always the case

Discussion: The Fix and Taegan Goddard's …

Marc Fortier / Londonderry Patch News:
Scott Brown in ‘No Hurry’ to Decide on NH Senate Run

Discussion: Talking Points Memo

Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:

Exclusive: The Obamacare Error Rate Has Fallen Dramatically — Some perspective on the latest ACA freak-out — These days it seems like everybody following Obamacare is talking about the 834s. Those are the personal data files that healthcare.gov sends insurance companies, in order to notify them of new enrollees.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and Hot Air

Politico:
State exchanges hitting data snags, too

Discussion: Hit & Run and Los Angeles Times

Jonathan Martin / New York Times:

Challenged by Tea Party, Veteran Mississippi Senator Decides to Run for Seventh Term — WASHINGTON — Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who was first elected to the Senate in 1978, set up a generational and ideological clash in the state's Republican primary when he announced Friday that he would seek a seventh term in 2014.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, USA Today and Althouse

Emily Schultheis / Politico:
Thad Cochran to run for reelection

Discussion: CNN

Clarion-Ledger:
Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran said Friday he will run for re-election next year.

Discussion: Business Insider and NPR

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

Obama Gets Real — Much of the media commentary on President Obama's big inequality speech was cynical. You know the drill: it's yet another “reboot” that will go nowhere; none of it will have any effect on policy, and so on. But before we talk about the speech's possible political impact …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Weasel Zippers, Washington Center …, Talking Points Memo, Via Meadia, nextnewdeal.net, msnbc.com, Balloon Juice and White House.gov Blog

Charlie Cook / NationalJournal.com:

Can Democrats Recover From the Obamacare Catastrophe? — If Republicans don't flub the coming fiscal debates like they did in the fall, voters will focus squarely on the health care rollout. — Most graphs of polling data show shifts that are very gradual.

Discussion: First Read and Roll Call

Michael O'Brien / NBCNews:
Obama: GOP should be ‘embarrassed’ by low productivity on Hill

Discussion: Washington Wire and Independent Journal Review

Brian Beutler / Salon:

GOP hits pathetic new low: “47 percent” thinking creeps even deeper — Ideology, not civility, is the problem — Of the three certainties in life (death, taxes and horrifying Republican expressions of the conservative worldview) the key question to ask is whether all of them can be deferred until after the next election.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice and Roll Call

Katie Little / NBCNews:

McDonald's gives workers advice on tipping au pairs, trainers, dog-walkers — Fast-food giant McDonald's has committed another employee advice blunder, listing pricey suggestions for tipping au pairs, personal fitness trainers and pool cleaners on its worker resource website.

Discussion: Daily Kos, USA Today, Grub Street New York, Gawker, Liberaland and The Raw Story