memeorandum: Eric Holder breaks silence on GOP obstruction of Lynch vote (Trymaine Lee/msnbc.com)

7:25 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, The New Civil Rights Movement, Raw Story, 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: Politico, US News, 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

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

Amanda Terkel / The Huffington Post:

Obama On Loretta Lynch: 'You Don't Hold Attorney General Nominees Hostage' — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama chastised Senate Republicans on Friday for refusing to confirm his attorney general nominee, saying it's inexcusable to hold Loretta Lynch “hostage” as a bargaining chip for separate legislation.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Raw Story, Mediaite and US News

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

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and Mediaite

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

Stephen Dinan / Washington Times:

Benghazi committee officially requests Clinton surrender her email server … The committee investigating Benghazi formally requested Friday that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn her email server over to an independent third party so it can be scrutinized to determine whether she and the Obama administration complied with open-records laws.

Discussion: CNN, FOX News Radio and The Daily Caller

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Feds argue they had no duty under FOIA to search Hillary Clinton's emails

Discussion: Business Insider

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

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

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

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, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, 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

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

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

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: No More Mister Nice Blog, Washington Monthly, Booman Tribune, The Cook Political Report, National Review, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion and The Reaction

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Mistler / Portland Press Herald Contributors:

Stephen King: LePage ‘full of the stuff that makes the grass grow green’ — Author Stephen King turned Gov. Paul LePage's effort to kill Maine's income tax into a horror show for the governor Thursday. — In a weekly radio address LePage's office released on Wednesday …

Discussion: Maine Progressives Warehouse, Talking Points Memo, BostonGlobe.com, Mediaite and Raw Story

Liz Sly / Washington Post:

Petraeus: The Islamic State isn't our biggest problem in Iraq — Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq during the 2007-2008 surge, was back in that country last week for the first time in more than three years. He was attending the annual Sulaimani Forum …

Discussion: Politico and Lawfare

Chris Mooney / Washington Post:

Scientists say Arctic sea ice just set a disturbing new record — Two weeks ago, we noted here that the Arctic was on the verge of a scary new record — an unprecedented “lowest winter maximum” for sea ice extent. What that would mean is that during the season of the year …

Discussion: Guardian, Tech Times, Common Dreams, Mashable and Scientific American Content