Over on the homepage, I have an interview with Mark Sanford, getting his sense of the race in South Carolina’s first congressional district, and what’s at stake in the special election:

GERAGHTY: We’ll get the official spending numbers in the near future, but what’s your sense of how badly you’re being outspent? I’ve heard some people say anecdotally they’re seeing four or five ads for Colbert Busch for every one ad for you.

SANFORD: That’s correct; it’s been a four- or five-to-one ratio — which is not what you want in the world of politics.

People are scratching their heads and saying, “Wait a minute, if the Democratic party is willing to put this kind of money into this race, why do they want this seat so badly?” . . . What’s going on here is much larger than the first congressional district. This is the first congressional election since Obama was reelected president of the United States. He has said that he wants to take the Congress in 2014 to ensure his legacy. The reason they’re pouring so much money into this race is that they believe that if they can win here, they can argue to the political-investor community that they can win the other 15 seats that they need to take back the House. There is much more in play than actually meets the eye.

GERAGHTY: The supporters of your runoff-primary rival, Curtis Bostic, are a group of several thousand Republicans who have had the chance to vote for you twice in recent months and who have chosen someone else twice. These are voters who presumably would prefer a conservative candidate to a liberal candidate but who may have some disagreements with you. What’s your approach to winning over these voters?

SANFORD: I’d say my approach is to win them over one by one. I spend a lot of time going out and doing traditional retail politics. We just came out of Hubee D’s, a chicken-finger place west of Ashley. I talk to folks literally from all walks of life. I don’t think there’s any magic formula for reaching those folks, but we’re certainly beginning that process.

Keep in mind, though, Colbert Busch herself said at the debate that she was pro-choice. I don’t think that fits in in any way with those Bostic supporters’ beliefs, either on choice or on a whole range of other issues. Colbert Busch has been largely undefined: She was unwilling to debate for the entire month of the general election, and this is the first change in that. If you’re not certain where someone is, folks will sometimes give you the benefit of the doubt, but that life-focused community of Bostic supporters, I think, were probably paying attention to what she said in the debate. It will travel out anecdotally.

Today’s Morning Jolt looks at Penny Pritzker — I remember when it was standard to just give ambassadorships to your top donors — some embarrassing stories about Terry McAuliffe, and then this ominous news in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation:

What Was In the Water of That Dorm Room?

These Kazakh roommates aren’t quite as bad as the Boston bombers. But they’re bad:

Kadyrbayev, 19, texted Tsarnaev that evening around 8:40 to ask [why he resembled the bombers in the released FBI videos].

“Tsarnaev’s return texts contained ‘lol’ and other things KADYRBAYEV interpreted as jokes,” according to a federal criminal complaint released today, “such as ‘you better not text me’ and ‘come to my room and take whatever you want.’” That turned out to be a fateful series of texts.

According to the complaint, earlier that day, Kadyrbayev and their mutual friend Azamat Tazhayakov entered Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth . . . between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. They watched an unspecified movie with Tsarnaev’s roommate while Tazhayakov noticed that Dzhokhar’s backpack contained “fireworks.” Allegedly, Kadyrbayev put two and two together when he saw the empty fireworks containers — it’s unclear if that happened before he texted Tsarnaev — and figured their friend was the bomber. News reports on the room TV showing the fateful footage of Tsarnaev, followed by his texts, confirmed it.

Then they decided to help their bro.

According to the complaint, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov gathered up the backpack, [along with] Tsarnaev’s laptop — apparently to avoid making the roommate think they were stealing Tsarnaev’s stuff — and placed it into a trash bag. During that crucial evening, Tsarnaev allegedly texted his friends, “I’m about to leave if you need something in my room take it.” The next morning, Kadyrbayev allegedly placed the bag into a dumpster near Tsarnaev’s Carriage Place apartment.

I wouldn’t even keep my side of the room clean for my college roommate, but these guys were willing to dispose of evidence? How twisted do you have to be to suddenly realize that someone you know, a friend, is actually a terrorist who killed three people and injured and maimed hundreds more, and your first thought is how to help them get away with it?

What, does UMass-Dartmouth have some sort of special jihadist student exchange program? Do they cluster them together as roommates?

And yes, there is an immigration angle to this story:

A federal law enforcement official says one of the students from Kazakhstan arrested Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombings was allowed to return to the United States this year despite not having a valid student visa. Authorities say that after the explosions he helped remove a laptop and backpack from the bombing suspect’s dormitory room before the FBI searched it.

Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested three college friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a bombing suspect, including Azamat Tazhayakov, a friend and classmate of Tsarnaev’s at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Tazhayakov left the U.S. in December and returned Jan. 20. But in early January, his student-visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university, the official told the AP.

Hey, if he’s academically dismissed, just what is he doing in this country, if he’s no longer going to school? How’s he paying his expenses?

Very few people believe the promises of the Gang of Eight, because the government does such a lousy job of enforcing the laws on the books already.

Ryan Nobles of NBC’s Richmond, Va., affiliate is definitely a reporter to keep an eye on in this governor’s race. First he and his colleagues did a fantastic, fair, tough report on GreenTech Automotive and the plant that it built in Mississippi, and now he has a ten-minute on-camera interview with Terry McAuliffe about his car company.

The interview begins with some top-shelf “word salad” in response to a direct question:

Nobles: If you had to pin down one reason why the company ended up moving to Mississippi instead of starting a manufacturing plant in Virginia, what would you pin as the primary reason for that happening?

McAuliffe: Uh, listen, we tried to put it in Virginia, we had several meetings here. It is what it is. It didn’t work out here. Businesses have to make a decision based upon their own business plans, what they want to do. Every business is unique. We tried, we looked at it, but businesses have got to make decisions what they think their own best interest [sic].

Notice that nothing in that answer says why the company settled in Mississippi. McAuliffe goes on to say, “I never blamed Virginia at all” for the decision to base their operations in Mississippi, but back in December, McAuliffe said, “We wanted to, it was their decision, VEDP, they decided they didn’t want to bid on it.”

Back in December, addressing Virginia reporters, McAuliffe appears to say “we have a thousand employees.” (About 40 seconds into this video; perhaps he means he would like to have a thousand employees.) Earlier this month, Marianne McInerney, a GreenTech vice president, told the Washington Post “the company employs about 10 employees in McLean and 78 in Mississippi.”

You’ll also hear McAuliffe say, “I want a governor who has tried many different things in the field of business.” Funny how that sort of expectation didn’t seem to come into play in the presidency, considering McAuliffe’s strong support for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, none of whom “tried many different things in the field of business.”

Finally, McAuliffe says he owns a car that is currently parked at GreenTech headquarters. Apparently he once claimed he drove it from his home in McLean to GreenTech’s headquarters in Tyson’s Corner. Presuming McAuliffe takes Route 123, his MyCar’s top speed is in fact the speed limit, 35 miles per hour.

New Jersey Democrats still have a month to find a warm body not named “Barbara Buono” to run against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie this year. (Okay, Troy Webster, an aide to the mayor of East Orange, is running in the Democratic primary, too.)

Christie unveiled his debut television ad today. At this early point, this race is looking like a rout; besides the lopsided early polling results, Buono has raised $696,000 and qualified for additional $890,449 in state matching funds.

That $1.7 million or so looks good… until you see Christie has raised more than $5 million so far. (Updated numbers will be released in mid-May.) Because of the ad rates in the New York and Philadelphia television markets, New Jersey is a particularly expensive state for campaigns.

Spending isn’t everything, of course; Jon Corzine spent $31 million in 2009, while Christie spent only $17 million.

Perhaps Chris Christie’s greatest trick has been to persuade New Jersey Democrats that there’s no point in making a serious effort against him this cycle.

Yesterday’s Morning Jolt was discussed extensively on yesterday’s Rush Limbaugh program. As if you really needed one more reason to subscribe…

Every once in a while, I continue to get complaints that the Morning Jolt e-mail newsletter isn’t arriving to some subscribers. If you have checked your spam folders and are certain it is not arriving, direct your questions, complaints, and other problems to Representedlists@newsmax.com. You’ll need to tell them what email address you are currently using for your subscription so they can check the list and see what the issue is.

(For those of you wondering, Newsmax is now handling the e-mail distribution and some marketing matters for the Jolt and other NR newsletters; they have no role in the content of the e-mails.)

Over on the homepage, Bob Costa breaks the news that Ted Cruz is thinking about running for president in 2016. A few weeks back, Elaina Johnson shined a spotlight on the Cruz “birthers.“

Some Birthers sound like they’ve never really read the law that they’re allegedly citing.

The whole reason anyone would care about the location of Obama’s birth is because his parents’ citizenship status did not automatically qualify him for U.S. citizenship:

When one parent was a US citizen and the other a foreign national, the US citizen parent must have resided in the US for a total of 10 years prior to the birth of the child, with five of the years after the age of 14.  An exception for people serving in the military was created by considering time spent outside the US on military duty as time spent in the US.

Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan citizen. The president’s mother, Ann Dunham, was a U.S. citizen but not yet a citizen  for the purposes of determining U.S. citizenship of offspring born overseas.

For a child to become a U.S. citizen, one parent must have resided in the United States for five years after the age of 14. Dunham was 18 when she gave birth to the president. Had Barack Obama Jr. been born in Kenya, he would not be a citizen; because he was born in Hawaii, he automatically became a U.S. citizen. This is what the whole current “birthright citizenship” debate is about – under current law and the law in effect in 1961, if you’re born here, you’re a citizen, no questions asked.

(I know, I know, the Honolulu Advertiser birth notice was an elaborate cover, and the birth certificate is faked, and there’s a vast conspiracy out there…)

These rules were in effect for those born between December 23, 1952 and November 13, 1986 – covering both Barack Obama and Ted Cruz.

Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was in her mid-thirties when she gave birth to the senator, so she had spent well more than five years residing in the United States.

The midweek edition of the Morning Jolt features grim statistics on attitudes in the Muslim world, thoughts on Marvel’s superhero film franchises, and then these notes from the president’s press conference:

‘Hello,’ the President Lied

Three quick points on Obama’s press conference from Tuesday…

First, Obama demonstrates that the term “Game Change” is now the most useless buzzword since “value-added”:

THE PRESIDENT:  If I can establish in a way that not only the United States but also the international community feel confident is the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, then that is a game-changer because what that portends is potentially even more devastating attacks on civilians, and it raises the strong possibility that those chemical weapons can fall into the wrong hands and get disseminated in ways that would threaten U.S. security or the security of our allies.

Q    By game-changer you mean U.S. military action?

THE PRESIDENT:  By game-changer I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us.

Watch your rear, Assad, or we might have to rethink the range of options.

In Syria and all of the world’s trouble spots, the American people are going to resist intervening internationally until they’re confronted with something more horrible than the loss of blood and treasure spent in the war in Iraq. Right now, Americans aren’t convinced that anything can happen overseas that is so bad, so consequential and horrific, they’ll wish they had sent their sons and daughters and neighbors to go fight and die for something. For now, they’re right; they will probably be wrong someday.

Secondly, examine Obama’s reaction to Jessica Yellin’s question:

YELLIN: Lindsey Graham, who is a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, has said that Benghazi and Boston are both examples of the U.S. going backwards on national security.  Is he right?  And did our intelligence miss something?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, Mr. Graham is not right on this issue, although I’m sure generated some headlines.

I think that what we saw in Boston was state, local, federal officials, every agency rallying around a city that had been attacked — identifying the perpetrators just hours after the scene had been examined.  We now have one individual deceased, one in custody.  Charges have been brought.

I think that all our law enforcement officials performed in an exemplary fashion after the bombing had taken place.  And we should be very proud of their work, as obviously we’re proud of the people of Boston and all the first responders and the medical personnel that helped save lives.

Notice the sneer that Graham merely wants to “generate headlines” with his statement, as if it’s outlandish to argue that a terrorist murdering our ambassador or a terrorist bombing on the streets of Boston constitute “going backwards on national security.”

Then notice that Yellin asks about the intelligence before the bombing, and Obama responds by citing the work of law enforcement after the bombing.

Thirdly, Obama declared about his signature health care reform, “ A huge chunk of it has already been implemented.  And for the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they’re already experiencing most of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act even if they don’t know it.  Their insurance is more secure.”

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times responded, “Obama’s claim that folks who have insurance now have already gone through the ACA implementation is just not right. Lots of issues left.”

The tax penalty for not having insurance isn’t in effect yet. Businesses may still decide to drop coverage and pay the fines  (for some companies, it may actually be cheaper to pay the fines). We’re seeing companies try to shift as many employees as possible to less than 30 hours a week.  As Inc. put it:

The law’s new mandates–such as requiring insurers to cover preventive care at 100 percent–could drive rates higher. And small employers that buy insurance through the newly created Small Business Health Options Programs, or SHOP exchanges, may find higher costs once they are lumped in with a general-population risk pool.

And as for that claim that your health insurance is “stronger,” perhaps the president meant, “more expensive”: “Premiums could increase by an average of 30 percent for higher-income people in California who are now insured and do not qualify for federal insurance subsidies, the study said.”

As if the Obamacare polling result below isn’t jaw-dropping enough, now there’s this indicator of how ill-informed the public is: “Although 63 percent said that they had a favorable opinion of Planned Parenthood, including 38 percent of those who identified themselves as pro-life, 55 percent of those polled did not know that Planned Parenthood performs abortions.”

I suppose we should be thankful that the public can still differentiate between Kermit Gosnell and Kermit the Frog.

Do we need to hold a seminar on “Basic Facts in Public Debates”? Maybe have everyone carry some 3×5 index cards saying, “Planned Parenthood is the pro-abortion group”?

It is entirely possible that we have a public so spectacularly ill-informed, we are no longer capable of governing themselves. Here’s an April tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation: “Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is still the law of the land, including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.”

With the public so vague on whether or not Obamacare is actually law, we should take all poll results with a grain of salt. But the law is even less popular than when it passed:

“Overall, the public remains as divided as ever when it comes to their overall evaluations of the health law. This month, 35 percent report a favorable view, 40 percent an unfavorable view, and a full 24 percent report they have  no opinion on the law, continuing a recent trend of particularly high shares not offering an opinion. Partisans remain quite divided, with a majority of Democrats in favor (57 percent) and most Republicans opposed (67 percent).”

In terms oft he law’s political future, just over half of Americans (53 percent) continue to say that they approve of efforts by opponentsto change orstop the law “so it has less impact on taxpayers, employers, and health care providers”, a view which theoretically encompasses a range of positions from hard‐core repeal supporters to those who believe the law only needs minor tweaks.One in three (including more than half of Democrats) believe that the law’s opponents should accept that it is the law of the land and stop trying to block its implementation, down somewhat from January (33 percent now compared to 40 percent at the start of the year).”

How do we know the media is downplaying the problems in implementing Obamacare? When 40 percent of Americans are unaware that the law is in place.

Last night’s debate between Elizabeth Colbert Busch and Mark Sanford aired on C-SPAN. (The video is not embeddable but can be seen here.)

The lead of the Post and Courier’s coverage of the Mark Sanford-Elizabeth Colbert Busch debate includes a revealing word:

The race for Tim Scott’s former congressional seat finally turned to issues Monday, as Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch met for the first — and probably only — time.

Naturally, this morning the Democrats’ House Majority PAC announces they’ll be running new ads hitting Sanford on the affair.

There are no economic problems. There is no debt. There is no tough decision to be made on how to deal with illegal immigrants, and there is no controversy about gun control. The implementation of Obamacare is going fine. There are no problems beyond our shores, in places like North Korea or Syria, that any voter should spend a moment thinking about. There is only the affair. The affair knows all, the affair sees all, the affair is the answer to all voters’ questions. When the voters in South Carolina’s First Congressional District go to the polls on May 7, they will not see two names on the ballot. They will see only, “Do you like the affair that occurred back in 2009?”

For what it’s worth, Red Racing Horses is conducting a poll in the district, and recently Tweeted, “VERY early unweighted results from the first half-day looking surprisingly good for @MarkSanford. Weighting will change the results dramatically. But back of the envelope calculations and the entire first day results suggest that.poll Thursday will probably show a close race between Mark Sanford and Colbert Busch.”

From today’s Morning Jolt…

Forget the Rest of the World; President Personally Calls Some Athlete You Never Heard Of Before

Hey, remember North Korea? They’re detaining a U.S. citizen.

Unless the Syrian rebels figured out some way to fake the presence of Sarin in the bloodstream of some volunteers, the Syrian regime used chemical weapons and crossed the red line… and no one can come up with a way to demonstrate the consequences of crossing that line.

Oh, and the guys we may soon intervene to help, the Syrian rebels, may have just tried to shoot down a Russian airliner.

Remember Boston?

But U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) told ABC News yesterday that the FBI is also looking into “persons of interest” in the U.S. possibly linked to the Boston bombings.

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said he’s spoken with the FBI about the probe into possible trainers the brothers had.

“Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?” he said. “In my conversations with the FBI, that’s the big question. They’ve casted a wide net both overseas and in the United States to find out where this person is. But I think the experts all agree that there is someone who did train these two individuals.”

Remember Boston, again?

State lawmakers have launched an investigation into whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings improperly received public benefits.

Sources who have seen the 500 pages of documents sent to the House Committee on Post Audit and Oversight told News Center 5’s Janet Wu that the Tsarnaev family — including the parents of the two bombing suspects, the two suspects themselves, their sisters, the widow of the suspect killed and their child — received “every conceivable public benefit available out there.”

Remember the economy?

We’re still stuck in the muck.

That’s the conclusion to draw from the new report on gross domestic product. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, which was an improvement from the weak 0.4 percent of the final months of 2012… We’re muddling along at basically the same pace we’ve been at for nearly four straight years of this dismal recovery, with growth too slow to make up the lost economic ground from the 2008-2009 recession.”

National debt? $ 16,756,644,393,707.05,as of Friday. (That’s $16.7 trillion.)

Remember Obamacare?

In total, it appears that there will be 30 million to 40 million people damaged in some fashion by the Affordable Care Act—more than one in 10 Americans. When that reality becomes clearer, the law is going to start losing its friends in the media, who are inclined to support the president and his initiatives. We’ll hear about innocent victims who saw their premiums skyrocket, who were barred from seeing their usual doctor, who had their hours cut or lost their insurance entirely—all thanks to the faceless bureaucracy administering a federal law.

With all of this going on, guess what the top story was on Memeorandum, measuring what bloggers and news sites are writing about?

An NBA player coming out of the closet as gay. Wait, there’s more:

A groundbreaking pronouncement from NBA veteran Jason Collins — “I’m gay” — reverberated Monday through Washington, generating accolades from lawmakers on Twitter and a supportive phone call from President Barack Obama.

Hours after Collins disclosed his sexuality in an online article, Obama reached out by phone, expressing his support and telling Collins he was impressed by his courage, the White House said.

Collins, 34, becomes the first active player in one of four major U.S. professional sports leagues to come out as gay. He has played for six teams in 12 seasons, including this past season with the Washington Wizards, and is now a free agent.

This president can’t get squat done about North Korea or Syria, and so he doesn’t want us to focus on those far-off lands. His policies have done diddlysquat for most of the long-term unemployed. He’s not interested in throwing people off public assistance, even when they don’t deserve it, and he wants to insist that every terror attack is a one-time occurrence, instead of connected bits of an international ideological movement dedicated to killing Americans. Obamacare’s a mess, and he’s hoping you don’t notice. The debt continues to increase, even with the alleged horrors of sequestration.

“God, gays and guns.” That’s what he’s got left. And that’s what he hopes stays on your mind, for as many days between now and November 2014 as possible.

Organizing for Action sends out another e-mail on the topic of gun control — even though the legislation is kaput for the foreseeable future.

An interesting line: “In politics, there are two kinds of people: Those who say they’re going to do something, and those who actually do it.” Kind of like a president who makes big promises about a gun-control bill, and then fails to persuade a quartet of his own party’s red-state Democrats, I suppose.

The letter promises a petition to Congress demanding action . . . a short time after the Senate considered action and rejected it. Most likely, the petition is a data-gathering tool, helping Organize for Action refine their list and figure out which members are most passionate on the gun-control issue.

You’ll notice the letter asks for money . . . suggesting that some of these passionate gun-control supporters are just looking for a place to send money in order to “send a message.”

J –

I wrote you last week after 45 senators sided with the gun lobby and voted against expanding background checks for gun sales.

I said we weren’t going to forget — and that we weren’t going to stop fighting until we get the job done.

I’m writing today to follow through on that.

Next week, we’ll deliver an OFA petition to Congress demanding that they take common-sense action to reduce gun violence.

But it’ll only be as powerful as the number of supporters behind it.

Please take a minute and add your name to this petition right now.

In politics, there are two kinds of people: Those who say they’re going to do something, and those who actually do it.

I have no doubt about which of those groups OFA supporters are in.

But if we want Congress to get serious about reducing gun violence, and if we don’t want to see the fire behind this issue slip away, we are the ones who have to keep it going.

We choose who represents us in Congress — and what the constituents want is something that no politician can afford to ignore.

That’s why your voice is such an important part of this fight. People like me can talk all we want, but your representatives want to hear from you.

This letter will go to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on behalf of OFA next week.

Make sure your name is on it:

http://my.barackobama.com/Sign-the-Petition

Thanks,

Jon

Jon Carson
Executive Director
Organizing for Action
@JonCarsonOFA

—————-
A movement of millions elected President Obama. Let’s keep fighting for change. Chip in $5 or more to support Organizing for Actiontoday.

A quick roundup of some of the news around the country in races for the U.S. House of Representatives:

ILLINOIS: Representative Aaron Schock, a third-year Illinois Republican and one of the youngest members of Congress, announced he will not be running for governor in 2014 and will instead run for reelection.

The GOP field for governor in the Land of Lincoln may include state treasurer Dan Rutherford, state senator Kirk Dillard, and wealthy businessman and investor Bruce Rauner.

WEST VIRGINIA: When Representative Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) announced plans to run for U.S. Senate, she set the stage for tough primary fights in both parties for the opportunity to replace her in the U.S. House. On the Democratic side, former Democratic-party chairman Nick Casey, state senator Herb Snyder, and Delegate Doug Skaff Jr. are considering bids. The Republican names mentioned most frequently are house minority leader Tim Armstead, former state senator Steve Harrison, Delegate Patrick Lane, and Delegate Eric Nelson. Former delegate Larry Faircloth and former state senator Steve Harrison have made their interest clear.

MASSACHUSETTS: Bay State Democrats will choose a senatorial nominee on Tuesday, and odds are likely that a House seat will open up. Democrats will nominate either Representative Ed Markey or Representative Stephen Lynch. Gabriel E. Gomez, former U.S. Attorney Michael J. “Mike” Sullivan, and state representative Dan Winslow are running on the GOP side.

State senator Karen Spilka said on Thursday she is “seriously considering” running for Congress if Markey wins the Senate seat. Markey’s district is a particularly tough one for Republicans, scoring D+16 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

CALIFORNIA: The Golden State’s 31st congressional district is going to see one crowded Democratic primary. Lawyer Eloise Gomez Reyes announced Saturday that she will be running against the incumbent, Republican representative Gary Miller. The primary field includes former representative Joe Baca, Redlands mayor Pete Aguilar, and San Bernardino school-board member Danny Tillman. This is one of the few swing districts in California, scoring D+2 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

FLORIDA: Bill Posey, the Republican who represents Brevard County on Florida’s Space Coast, has a new challenger, Democrat Corry Westbrook. (You can tell this is a heavily Republican district because the word ‘Democrat’ does not appear on Westbrook’s web site.) She is a former legislative director for the National Wildlife Federation.

Top story in today’s Washington Post:

A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Face­book and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort. Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.

According to the article, the FBI has the authority to pursue a contempt citation for a court order, but rarely chooses to do so.

Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A company that does not comply with an order within a certain period would face an automatic judicial inquiry, which could lead to fines. After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily.

This debate may well echo the recent gun debate — first, asking whether government officials are effectively using and enforcing the existing laws and mechanisms, or whether this new proposal is driven by the desire to “do something” in the aftermath of a horrific event. Second, if the government has failed to use its existing powers and authorities effectively, why should it be given new authorities?

Was this the same FBI that didn’t keep an eye on Big Brother Bomber despite “at least four contacts with Russian spy services about Mr. Tsarnaev in the year before he took a six-month trip to Russia in 2012”? If they’re not effectively using the data they already have access to, why should they have greater authority to collect even more data?

Doesn’t this sound like filibuster fodder for Rand Paul?

The first Morning Jolt of the week offers a look at complaints about the White House Correspondents Dinner, some truly jaw-dropping statistics about the increasing rate of gun sales in this country, and then these thoughts on what I learned, and shared, at last week’s conference in Orlando:

Spreading Our Ideas in the Era of Drug-Dealer Journalism

Things I learned at the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank and the Franklin Center’s Future of Media discussions this past week in Orlando:

• According to Anton Vuljaj, political advertising strategist from Google, YouTube’s search engine is the second-most used search engine on the web, after Google.
• Direct mail brings in $36 million per year for the Heritage Foundation.
• One of the big problems with modern groups that promise get-out-the-vote efforts is that they blur the line between voter contact and voter interaction — i.e., a robocall, a door hanger, an e-mail all count as voter contact, but the voter may or may not even look at them. The best get-out-the-vote groups aim for actual interaction with the voter, via phone or best of all, in-person by knocking on doors.
• No Obama campaign offices in Ohio shut down completely between 2008 and 2012. Are any of the Romney offices still open?

Here’s an abbreviated version of the talk I gave on the panel, “Leading Voices in Conservative Journalism (Who Were Available)”:

Andrew Malcolm just observed that we’re no longer in the “Pharmacist Era of Journalism” — where an authority figure stands above you and gives you what experts have decided you need to know. Perhaps we’re in the “Drug-Dealer Era of Journalism” — where you may not completely know or entirely trust the source who’s giving you what you want to know, but it gives you a rush, and you’ll probably be coming back for more later.

Most of us in the world of conservative journalism are now aiming to reach that chunk of web users that go onto Facebook and never come off. Predicting which pieces, visuals, and ideas go viral remains a crapshoot. My graphic on foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority being spared by the sequester was viewed 334,000 times. I’ve had other ones that I thought were just as good get 1,000 views or so.

A good chunk of the Facebook-only audience is relatively apolitical, which is a way of saying we’re trying to offer political news and arguments and ideas to people who fundamentally aren’t that interested in policy and politics. We’re facing the challenge of trying to reach a new audience while continuing to serve a very good, loyal audience that is interested in what we do.

My favorite example of handling the loyal audience/new audience divide badly is when NBC decided they wanted to get more women to watch the Olympics, and thus large swaths of their prime-time Olympics coverage were devoted to documentary-style features about the hardships that the athletes had overcome — a seemingly endless cavalcade of relatives with cancer, or car accidents, or brutal injuries, or their dogs getting sick, or the Starbucks barista getting their drink order wrong — suddenly, every athlete’s life was like a country-western song. And the usual audience for the Olympics asked, with greater levels of irritation, “Hey, weren’t we supposed to be watching some actual athletic competitions? Wasn’t some skier supposed to be falling down a mountain by now?”

So while we need to be embracing social media and providing our news stories and arguments and ideas in ways that are more bite-sized, I have this nagging fear that we might lose, or perhaps slightly devalue, some of what we’re here to do. There is no such thing as investigative tweeting. A Facebook graphic is two sentences at most, a picture, and perhaps a hashtag. Theoretically, you can use Tweets and Facebook graphics as bait, designed to bring people to the long-form, meatier pieces, but I wonder how many people retweet a headline without actually clicking through to the story.

I’m a writer. I like long-form journalism. I like a good Fisking, where you dismantle a lousy argument by going through it line by line and exposing every falsehood or illogical conclusion. And I hope we can figure out a good balance that does all of the important work, the hard work, the work that takes time and resources — with the work that is fun and funny and quick and spreads quickly but that ultimately doesn’t stick with you.

Also in today’s Morning Jolt:

Another Anti-Voucher Democrat, Sending His Children to the Best Private School

Surprise, surprise, the Virginia chapter of the NEA teachers’ union endorsed Terry McAuliffe for governor. Their endorsement is strangely quiet on the issue of vouchers. McAuliffe is pretty quiet on the issue of vouchers; here are his policy views on K-12 education, in their entirety, from his campaign web site:

Education is the single most important thing our kids need to build successful lives. Whether they’re going to invent a product, start a business, or get the job of their dreams, it all starts with the basic skills and confidence that only a good education can provide, and right now we’re not doing enough.

Total funding per student is down even as we’ve got more and more students entering our system. Only 87% of our kids are graduating high school on time.

As Governor, I will support our kids and our schools. We’re going to take the best ideas from around the country and give teachers and administrators the resources and freedom they need to make Virginia a global leader in education.

If this were any shorter, it would be a haiku.

He makes Elizabeth Colbert Busch’s policy-related sentence fragments look like Mandate for Leadership.

At least when he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe listed “vouchers” as part of the policies that made Republicans so terrible.

From the 2009 race:

It was a bit of creative omission, reminiscent of his answer when someone at the Richmond town meeting asked where his kids — aged 17, 16, 14, 9, and 6 — go to school. He said one attends Gonzaga, a Catholic high school in Washington, and four go to the Potomac School in McLean. He didn’t mention that Potomac is a private school.

Current tuition rates for the Potomac School:

Kindergarten – Grade 3: $29,055
Grades 4-6: $31,185
Grades 7-8: $33,440*
Grades 9-12: $33,345

So Terry McAuliffe, who has had four kids going to a roughly $30,000-per-student tuition private school (perhaps there’s a sibling discount), opposes the use of vouchers to send poorer kids to private schools.

From the final Morning Jolt of the week:

Republican House Member Demonstrates Sebelius Doesn’t Know How IPAB Law Works

Rep. Andy Harris is a Republican from Maryland and a physician. He’s on the Appropriations Committee, and on Thursday he had the chance to ask some questions of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the Independent Payment Advisory Board, also known as IPAB, which hopeless demagogues like you and me call “the death panel,” because it will ultimately decide which medical treatments are insufficiently cost-effective to be covered by the government.

Harris asked Sebelius if she would have the authority of the IPAB board if its members don’t get appointed. Obama has yet to nominate anyone to serve on the IPAB board. (Earlier this month, the administration testified that the nominations are coming; the Senate would confirm the members, and yes, they could (and probably will) face a filibuster.) She said if the appointments aren’t made, it doesn’t go into effect.

You’re probably sighing a great sigh of relief, but you shouldn’t. The problem is that no, that’s not what the law says.

If appointments aren’t made to the board, then she would have the authority to find the savings, and determine which treatments are not cost-effective. Video of her testimony here.

Here’s the U.S. Code for IPAB:

(5) Contingent secretarial development of proposal

If, with respect to a proposal year, the Board is required, but fails, to submit a proposal to Congress and the President by the deadline applicable under paragraph (3)(A)(i), the Secretary shall develop a detailed and specific proposal that satisfies the requirements of subparagraphs (A) and (C) (and, to the extent feasible, subparagraph (B)) of paragraph (2) and contains the information required paragraph (3)(B)). By not later than January 25 of the year, the Secretary shall transmit—

(A) such proposal to the President; and

(B) a copy of such proposal to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission for its review.

But hey, why should we expect Kathleen Sebelius to be familiar with the fine print of Obamacare?

Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor of Virginia will begin running its first television ad statewide starting Monday, April 29th. The Republican nominee has low name recognition even though he’s been state attorney general, so Cuccinelli’s wife introduces him to the commonwealth’s voters:

From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Ultimately, the Obama Presidency Isn’t Really About Governing.

Obamacare’s implementation is a “train wreck,” in the words of retiring Montana Democratic senator Max Baucus.

The president’s gun-control proposals are rejected, because he can’t persuade red-state senators in either party that they would really be of any use in preventing gun violence.

The great news is that the Boston bombers were killed and apprehended quickly, but Boston’s ordeal left serious questions about the government’s ability to keep an eye on those deemed dangerous, and how carefully it scrutinizes those who seek to become American citizens.

Time magazine’s Joe Klein gave conservatives an “Alleluia” moment a few weeks ago. The Obama administration announced that the “exchanges” designed to help small businesses buy health insurance for their employees won’t be ready by the promised deadline. Instead of having multiple health-insurance plans, with differing prices, to offer to their employees, small businesses will be able to pick . . . one plan. Pointing to this and the inability the of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to come up with a unified electronic health-care-records system, Klein lamented, “we are now seeing weekly examples of this administration’s inability to govern.”

Klein’s dark assessment is probably driven by all of the other promises about Obamacare that have been left in the dust.

“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” . . . except for the 7 million people who will lose their coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“Your premiums will go down . . .” except that premiums have gone up in the past years, with more hikes projected.

And let’s not forget one of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s promises, that Obamacare would “create 400,000 jobs almost immediately” and eventually 4 million jobs.

Klein writes, “as a Democrat — as someone who believes in activist government — [Obama] has a vested interest in seeing that federal programs actually work efficiently. I don’t see much evidence that this is anywhere near the top of his priorities.”

At moments like this, conservatives feel an enormous temptation to snicker, “Welcome to the party, pal!” But brutally honest assessments like this one from Klein ought to be applauded on the right. One of the reasons the era of Big Government never really ended is because many of its usual fans on the left avert their eyes when it fails so badly. You can’t address a problem if you refuse to see a problem.

Unfortunately, there’s not much indication that Obama sees the problems and even less indication he wants to see them. The bold promise and the awful delivery have become the signature of this administration, extending well beyond the implementation of health care.

Elsewhere in his column, Klein writes, “faced a terrible economic crisis — and he has done well to limit the damage.”

The damage is limited . . . except for the fact that more Americans are living in poverty than when Obama took office. And our workforce participation rate is now the lowest since 1979. And the number of Americans on food stamps is at an all-time high. And the nearly 5 million long-term unemployed have defined life since autumn 2008 as an era of barely scraping by, month after month, year after year..

Of course, the “shovel-ready jobs” of the stimulus didn’t really live up to the promises, as Obama himself admitted.

And the web site meant to detail how every dime of stimulus spending ended up full of bad data and nonexistent congressional districts.

And as of June 2012, three and a half years after the stimulus passed, nearly $8 billion was still waiting to be awarded or sitting in agency accounts.

And the entire green-jobs initiative clearly hasn’t quite lived up to the hype, including the president’s infamous pledge that “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” Now another one of the administration’s high-profile loan recipients, Fisker Automotive, is contemplating bankruptcy; the company hasn’t built a car since July.

Tuesday we learned, “Taxpayer-backed funds kept flowing to electric carmaker Fisker Automotive months after the company failed to meet key production benchmarks, lawmakers said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday.”

All of these problems in the stimulus and the administration’s overall economic policies fit in a pattern, don’t they? Klein’s creeping sense that making sure “federal programs actually work efficiently” isn’t really an administration priority?

Time and again, we hear anecdotes of the president angered, befuddled, and frustrated that the policies implemented in the beginning of his presidency, with a compliant Congress, haven’t generated the results he promised. But very little seems to change, other than a bit of fuming at aides behind closed doors.

President Obama was surprised to learn, in discussions with economic adviser Christina Romer, that large-scale investment in infrastructure and clean-energy projects wouldn’t create enormous numbers of new jobs.

In a December 2010 meeting with economic advisers, he “boiled over” with frustration that his housing policies hadn’t helped struggling homeowners like he promised.

When federal program after federal program fails to generate the desired result, it’s not crazy talk to become at least a little skeptical of the latest pledges and promises and idealistic visions.

But Democrats often speak as if the Right’s skepticism of the government’s problem-solving ability is driven by some sort of abstract ideological theory. It’s not. It’s usually built upon hard experiences. Human behavior isn’t predictable, particularly their interactions with the government. Unintended consequences pile up like a car crash. The pattern is depressingly predictable: Someone in government comes up with some laudable goal, and announces some new program. After the press conference, when the cameras and microphones are away, implementing the idea proves more complicated than the press-conference announcement made it seem. Deadlines get missed. Costs turn out much higher than expected. Bureaucratic inertia begins to exert the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Perhaps it is the nature of the modern presidency for the occupant of the Oval Office to glide from photo-op to photo-op, and never spend too much time getting entangled in the messy work of actually making his policies live up to his promises. Certainly that’s the pattern for this president; even in this non-campaign year, the schedule is heavy with a campaign-style rally on gun-control initiatives here, a DCCC fundraiser there, then off to a tour of a national laboratory. He flits from issue to issue; to judge from his remarks and his schedule, the health-care issue is resolved and our health-care system’s problems are fixed. Maybe White House press secretary Jay Carney will get a question about the health-care exchanges or electronic health-care-records system, which he’ll defuse with another defensive, meandering word salad.

Implementing Obamacare? Hey, that’s for somebody else to worry about.

In over his head?

Today I’m off to Orlando, for the Future of Media Summit and Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank. Campaign Spot posting will be light in the coming days.

The lead item in today’s Morning Jolt:

They Always Blame America First.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick had it right.

In Tuesday’s New York Times, Marcelo Suarez Orozco and Carola Suarez-Orozco, dean and a professor, respectively, at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, wrote an op-ed entitled, “Immigrant Kids, Adrift.” It began:

THE alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.

Really? Really? These guys blow up a marathon and shoot a cop in the back of the head, and we have to look at ourselves to see where we failed? Where we’re not adequate?

(By the way, after this piece appeared, the Boston Globe is reporting Little Brother Bomber* confessed, so we can drop the “alleged.”)

You’ll be seeing this theme of the brothers as troubled immigrants, struggling to build a better life, and failing to find acceptance in a cold-hearted, xenophobic America society a lot in the coming days. As one of my Twitter followers said, this is what happens when you’re absolutely determined to avert your eyes from a politically or culturally inconvenient conclusion — i.e., young Muslim men can be easy pickings for a radical imam who offers them a vision of themselves as noble warriors, earning vast celestial harems in the afterlife for struggling to defeat the evil infidel oppressor, offering them a channel for their anger that he assures them is morally just. After a while, you begin speculating about the bombing being prompted by boxing-related concussions, which, of course, would help explain why so many retired NFL players go on to become members of al-Qaeda.

(Oh, look, Time’s doing it, too.)

The initial biographical sketch of the bomber in the New York Times featured the headline, “Far From War-Torn Homeland, Trying to Fit In.” The only thing these guys were trying to fit in that week was more nails inside the pressure cooker. (After considerable ridicule, the headline and top photo were changed.)

William Jacobson assembles more examples over at Legal Insurrection, including a Slate writer calling for “an emotionally fraught conversation, a careful reckoning of the particular variety of welcome we offer to children from abroad” and the usual suspects on MSNBC going on about “demonizing the other.”

Hey, doesn’t blowing up a marathon crowd count as demonizing the other? Could you spare some time to point out that the bombers’ refusal to grant us the right to walk the streets without being shredded to a pulp by incendiary-propelled shrapnel is pretty darn intolerant, too?

Now, let’s return to the argument put forth by the dean and the professor.

Do they realize that by drawing a connection between the Boston bombers and “immigrants who arrive in the United States as children and teenagers,” they’re suggesting that every one of those kids is a potential terrorist, if they have a life experience like the bomber brothers? Even the most vehement opponent of the DREAM Act wouldn’t make that claim.

The inanity of it all prompted me to throw a bit of a fit on Twitter Tuesday afternoon.

The quasi-sympathetic “bomber brothers struggled with new identities in America” feature pieces are doing no favors for immigration reform. The notion that these two are somehow representative of some universal immigrant struggle to adapt to American life is weapons-grade horse[puckey]. Millions upon millions of immigrants made new lives for themselves in this country without feeling the need to bomb the Boston Marathon. If you think adaptation to American culture might cause you sufficient stress to commit mass murder, please leave immediately.

By the way, this society was pretty damn kind to these two. The terror financing blog “MoneyJihad” assembles what we know of the brothers’ finances — and it includes a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge in 2011 and public assistance for the family.

Peggy Noonan points out that either they weren’t struggling . . . or somebody out there was sending them money:

The past few days I’ve looked through news reports searching in vain for one item: how did the brothers get their money? Did they ever have jobs? Who or what supported them? They had cellphones, computers, stylish clothes, sunglasses, gym equipment and gym membership, enough money to go out to dinner and have parties. They had an arsenal of guns and money to make bombs. The elder brother, Tamerlan, 26, had no discernible record of employment and yet was able to visit Russia for six months in 2012. The FBI investigated him. How did they think he was paying for it? The younger brother, Dzhokhar, was a college student, but no word on how he came up with spending money. The father doesn’t seem to have had anything — he is said to have sometimes fixed cars on the street when he lived in Cambridge, for $10 an hour cash. The mother gave facials at home. Anyway, the money lines. Where did it come from?

Acknowledging that young Muslim men could be particularly vulnerable to the demonic cajoling and propaganda of a radical imam would force too many people in too many high places to rethink their entire worldview. So we’ll be hearing a lot about concussions and the mean, nasty, xenophobic culture of . . . Cambridge, Massachusetts can turn an otherwise happy immigrant success story into a child murderer.