memeorandum: Ex-Chicago State Admin: I Was Pressured to File False Harassment Claim Against Faculty Critic (FIRE)

6:55 PM ET, March 20, 2015

Top Items:

Barney Frank Says Aaron Schock Should Be ‘Exposed’ If He's Gay … Power Players — It took former Rep. Barney Frank 32 years to come out as gay. — But now, as rumors swirl alleging that retiring-Rep. Aaron Schock is gay, Frank said the Illinois Republican should be “exposed” …

Discussion: Out Magazine, Yahoo! News, Raw Story, The New Civil Rights Movement, Politico and The Daily Beast

CNN:

First on CNN: FBI, federal prosecutors investigating Aaron Schock — Washington (CNN)The FBI and the federal prosecutors in Illinois are investigating whether Rep. Aaron Schock broke the law in accounting for campaign expenses, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discussion: Washington Post, Business Insider, Towleroad News #gay, Mediaite and Joe. My. God.

Steven Petrow / Washington Post:

Civilities: Please stop pink-baiting Aaron Schock — On Tuesday, when former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of the first openly gay congressmen, heard from a Business Insider reporter that Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) was resigning, he made an immediate assumption. “He was outed or what?”

Discussion: US News, Politico, The Huffington Post, Washington Blade, The Daily Beast and Towleroad News #gay

Associated Press:
Source: Resigning Rep. Schock under investigation by Justice

Discussion: PoliticusUSA, The PJ Tatler and National Review

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:

Boehner's Epic Burn — You may have seen that Israeli officials announced this evening that US House Speaker John Boehner will leave at the end of March for a 10 day victory tour through Israel. The trip, purportedly, was planned during Netanyahu's visit to Washington earlier this month …

Discussion: CNN, Haaretz, Washington Post and Washington Monthly

John Podhoretz / Commentary Magazine:

The Crisis Has Exploded — Today, the president of the United States told the prime minister of Israel he was reassessing America's “options” with regard to Israel in light of remarks Benjamin Netanyahu made about potential Palestinian statehood and an election-day Facebook post urging Israeli right-wingers …

Discussion: The Federalist and Washington Free Beacon

Jason Horowitz / New York Times:
Israel Election Result Complicates Life for Clinton

Discussion: Hot Air and Haaretz

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Feds argue they had no duty under FOIA to search Hillary Clinton's emails — The federal government had no duty under the Freedom of Information Act to produce emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent or received on a privately maintained account, Justice Department lawyers suggested …

Discussion: Business Insider

Stephen Dinan / Washington Times:
Benghazi committee officially requests Clinton surrender her email server

Discussion: CNN, FOX News Radio and The Daily Caller

Lauren French / Politico:
Trey Gowdy to Hillary Clinton lawyer: Turn over server to third party

Discussion: Fox News and The Gateway Pundit

Christopher / Sacramento Bee:

California proposal to legalize killing gays hard to stop — › — ‹ — For less than the cost of an Apple iPad, Matt McLaughlin started a statewide legal conversation. — An attorney from Huntington Beach, McLaughlin in late February spent $200 to propose a ballot measure …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Hit & Run, Raw Story, blog.sfgate.com and Bloomberg Business

Marc Ambinder / The Week:

How I unfairly maligned two Secret Service agents in POLITICO Magazine — It seemed like a refrain: News reports surfaced on March 11 about an incident at the White House involving drunken Secret Service agents. The first accounts suggested that the agents' conduct was egregious and even cartoonish.

Discussion: Washington Post, Poynter, The Huffington Post, The Daily Caller, Mediaite, US News, FishbowlDC and Politico, more at Mediagazer »

Hadas Gold / Politico:
Marc Ambinder apologizes for POLITICO piece

Discussion: The PJ Tatler and New York Times

BuzzFeed:

Steve King: I Don't Understand How American Jews Can Be Democrats — “But anti-Semitism is a component of this and just plain liberalism is another component. I mean the president wants the world to be, he thinks somehow he can force the world can be the world he myopically believes it is.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and Mediaite

Paul Waldman / American Prospect:

Why Haven't Republicans Caught On to Marco Rubio? — When you try to assess candidates from the other party, even the most unsentimental among us can have a hard time separating our emotional reactions from our level-headed assessment of who's a strong contender and who isn't.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Booman Tribune, National Review and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

Amy Walter / The Cook Political Report:
Marco's Moment? — For the last couple of weeks there's …

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog, SaintPetersBlog, The Reaction and Bloomberg View

Louise Radnofsky / Wall Street Journal:

Paul Ryan Urges State Lawmakers Not to Set Up Health-Insurance Exchanges — Ways and means chairman says GOP is moving ahead on alternative to health law — WASHINGTON—Rep. Paul Ryan urged state lawmakers to resist setting up state insurance exchanges if the Supreme Court rules that key parts …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Hullabaloo and Daily Kos

Trymaine Lee / msnbc.com:

Eric Holder breaks silence on GOP obstruction of Lynch vote — For Attorney General Eric Holder, the GOP's obstruction of Loretta Lynch's nomination to replace him is both a slap in the face to the political process and demeaning to Lynch, an unblemished nominee who has been widely praised on both sides of the aisle.

Discussion: Politico and Mediaite

The Huffington Post:
Rudy Giuliani Tells His Party To Stop Blocking Loretta Lynch's Nomination

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and Mediaite

FIRE:

Ex-Chicago State Admin: I Was Pressured to File False Harassment Claim Against Faculty Critic — A former high-level administrator at Chicago State University alleged in a statement filed yesterday in federal court that Chicago State President Wayne Watson pressured her to file …

Discussion: Hit & Run and The Daily Caller

Jim Wyatt / Tennessean.com:

Tommy Smith retiring as Titans CEO — Tommy Smith is retiring as president and CEO of the Tennessee Titans he told The Tennessean.. — Long-time team executive Steve Underwood will work on an interim basis to oversee operations and search for a new president, Smith said.

Discussion: ABC News and abc30.com

BBC:

Yemen crisis: More than 100 die in attacks on Sanaa mosques — Suicide bombers have attacked two mosques in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, killing at least 126 people and wounding many others, reports say. — Worshippers were attending noon prayers at the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques when at least four attackers struck.

Discussion: CNN, Fox News, Center for Security Policy, NPR, New York Magazine and The Week

Mohammed Ghobari / Reuters:
Suicide bombers hit two mosques in Yemen, killing 50

Discussion: Common Dreams, Guardian, The Long War Journal and The Week

Katie Pavlich / Townhall.com:

BREAKING: After Scrapping AR-15 Ammo Ban, ATF Director B. Todd Jones Resigning — UPDATE: ATF has officially confirmed Jones' departure without stating a specific reason for his resignation. — “ATF employees are hard-working, dedicated individuals who serve the public to make our nation safer every day,” said Jones.

Discussion: Washington Post and Hot Air

ABC News:
ATF Director B. Todd Jones Stepping Down After Nearly 4 Years on Job

Discussion: Yahoo! News and The Daily Caller

Moshe Z. Marvit / The Nation:

These Republicans Want to Take Away Your Weekend — In Wisconsin, a new bill is threatening to kill workers' one day of rest. … As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed the so-called “right to work” bill on March 9, making Wisconsin the twenty-fifth right-to-work state in the country …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Raw Story, ThinkProgress and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Derek Hunter / Townhall.com:

The Circular Firing Squad — Breitbart's Matthew Boyle had himself a scoop - Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker hired someone to run his social media campaign who disagrees with him on some issues. — Yeah, that's really about it. — But the headline tells a different story.

David Weigel / Bloomberg Business:

Rand Paul: I Signed Cotton Letter to Help Obama ‘Negotiate from a Position of Strength’ — Rand Paul tries to convince realists that he didn't bail on them. — MANCHESTER, N.H. -During a town hall meeting with employees of a cloud computing company, Kentucky Senator and potential 2016 …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos

Gallup:

SOCIAL ISSUES … PRINCETON, N.J. — The San Francisco metropolitan area has the highest percentage of the adult population who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) of any of the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas, followed by Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas.

Discussion: New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, CBS San Francisco and Towleroad News #gay