Read more on what John Fund says the upcoming movie and miniseries will miss in Hollywood’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton. 

New York congressman Charlie Rangel won’t go so far as to call for Anthony Weiner to drop out of the mayoral race, but he is confident that Weiner’s not going to win.

“He’s a nice guy, he’s got problems — have your fun — but he’s not going to be the mayor of my great city,” Rangel said on CNN over the weekend. “I know it, and most all New Yorkers know that.”

He explained that while New York is “a forgiving community” that “doesn’t mean we’re not sophisticated” enough to see that Weiner is not the best choice for mayor.

When asked about New York’s NAACP president calling on Weiner to step down, Rangel replied, “I’m a member of the NAACP, and I don’t ever remember going to them for political advice.”

MSNBC host Chris Hayes took aim at his 8 p.m. rival Bill O’Reilly on Friday by likening him to the neo-Nazi protagonist in American History X.

Hayes’s comparison was predicated on the fact that, on his show earlier in the week, O’Reilly cited statistics on crime and out-of-wedlock births to limn the issues facing the black community, suggesting ways to better the situation (Hayes described the segment as a “super-racist rant“ on his show the next day).

In a scene in the 1998 movie, Edward Norton’s character, Derek Vinyard, rattled off statistics about black Americans — to justify racial superiority, not to examine the root of the problems in search of solutions, as O’Reilly did. After playing the clip, Hayes called O’Reilly’s and Vinyard’s points “old arguments”; California Democrat Barbara Lee, who was on the show, agreed with Hayes’s comparison and labeled the arguments “recycled.”

Below is the O’Reilly segment for comparison:

Papal plane rides have been known to get people talking. Infamously, there was Pope Benedict’s 2009 plane ride to Africa, when a remark about condoms was woefully misunderstood (and the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, the man who would later be pope, was one of the explainers/B16 defenders, as it happens).

And here we are again! After spending time with each reporter on the plane ride over, but expressing his reluctance to do interviews, the pope talked openly with reporters on the trip back to Rome, even thanking them for their questions about sensitive issues.

What’s making news is an announcement that he has broken away from Pope Benedict on the issue of homosexuality and the priesthood. Reading John Allen’s notes from the conversation, that doesn’t quite seem to be the story.

“There’s a lot of talk about the gay lobby, but I’ve never seen it on the Vatican ID card!”

“When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem . . . they’re our brothers.”

If the chronology of Allen’s report reflects the conversation, Pope Francis had just finished talking about redemption, the fact that Peter himself denied Christ and would later become pope. He warned against a culture in which sins of the past are dug up on people. Should a sin – we’re talking a sin, not a crime – destroy a man, decades later? That doesn’t seem Christian, it seems clear, was the pope’s point.

In context, it is important to bear in mind how Pope Francis talks about fatherhood, and as it pertains to priests, who are called to be spiritual, pastoral fathers in a very real and essential way.

Since becoming pope, he has been incessantly talking about divine mercy. And he has been indicting all Catholics – and in no small way people who work at the Vatican (though know there are saints there, too) – with his morning homilies and his words in Rio this weekend, calling us out for holding back from God, for our lack of authenticity, for our inconsistency with God.

Israeli leaders have a long history of making lopsided trades with their Arab enemies. These include:

1985: 1,150 prisoners for three captured Israelis

2000: 450 Arab prisoners for three Israeli bodies and a kidnapped Israeli;

2008: Five Arab prisoners (including the psychopath Samir al-Kuntar) and 199 Arab bodies for two Israeli bodies;

2011: 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Schalit;

I strenuously opposed these unbalanced exchanges (e.g., the Schalit one), even as I acknowledged the honorable Israeli intent not to abandon soldiers.

But there is nothing redeeming whatsoever in the exchange that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed Friday and the cabinet approved yesterday, releasing 104 murderers as a good-will gesture to encourage the Palestinian Authority to negotiate. Netanyahu justified this decision on the basis that “sometimes prime ministers are forced to make decisions that go against public opinion — when the issue is important for the country.”

This is a specious argument. Much more persuasively, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon argues that this gesture “is a prize for the Palestinians, just for their willingness to sit with us at the negotiating table. This defines future standards of far-reaching concessions by Israel, vis-à-vis ridiculous demands by the other side.” Danon rightly calls the release of dozens of terrorists who have the blood of hundreds of Israelis on their hands “lunacy.”

Lunacy, but also immorality. The exchange betrays the families of victims and it betrays Israel’s allies. It is a repugnant action.

To those who would excuse Netanyahu on the grounds that he feels pressure from the U.S. government, I reply: This is a lame excuse, for Israelis can and often have stood up to misguided American leaders; further, it appears to be inaccurate, for Netanyahu has recently suggested that, under the spell of the Ben-Gurion complex, he has himself become convinced of the need for a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

One consolation is that views of the Israeli body politic: Whereas it approved the 2008 swap by a nearly 2–1 ratio, polling shows a 9-to-1 disapproval of the release of the 104 to the Palestinian Authority. 

Believe it or not, Washington, D.C., seems to be the least honest place in America.

Earlier this month, the New York–based company Honest Tea placed unmanned kiosks in 61 locations across the U.S., asking that patrons pay $1 if they helped themselves to a beverage. The company released its results last week, ranking all 50 states and our nation’s capital.

The District came in last place in the honesty test, with only 80 percent of people paying for their drinks. (And as if stealing tea wasn’t enough, Honest Tea co-founder Seth Goldman had his bicycle stolen while the company was running its experiment in D.C.)

Only Alabama and Hawaii received perfect scores, with 100 percent of participants abiding by the honor system. The national average, according to the study, was 92 percent, which Goldman called “reassuring.”

The company also evaluated honesty trends based on sex and other characteristics: Women, blonds, long-haired people, and people in groups were found to be the most honest types.

Robert Costa sat in on the Daily Rundown’s Gaggle to discuss John McCain’s new deal-making role in the Senate. “At the end of the day, the center of gravity within the Senate Republican conference is not John McCain: it’s Mitch McConnell cutting a deal with Vice President Biden, it’s Ted Cruz shaping the debate from the right flank,” he explained.

Later in the show, Costa also offered his insights on the ongoing back-and-forth between Chris Christie and Rand Paul: “It may be early, but the 2016 Republican civil war is already on.”

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs argued that Virginia governor Bob McDonnell should seriously consider stepping down amid controversy over thousands of dollars in undisclosed gifts from a wealthy donor. With the state’s gubernatorial election coming up in November, he suggested replacing McDonnell until then.

“At some point, I think you begin to really and truly ask to the question that, ‘is it time for Governor McDonnell to step aside, honestly?’” Gibbs said.

“We have an election coming up, and maybe it’s time for a caretaker governor until we get to that election,” he added, meaning lieutenant governor Bill Bolling would take over until the November election.

On Friday afternoon, a group of National Review reporters met with Senator McConnell at his Capitol office. He previewed his debt-limit strategy and gave us an update on immigration. He also shared a joke.

When I mention that Senator John McCain might be able to cut a deal with the White House on the upcoming debt limit, due to his warming relations with the president, McConnell demurs. He says McCain is a “national figure with strong opinions,” as well as an influential force within the Republican conference, but he doesn’t think the Arizonan will necessarily be responsible for solving an impasse.

“We don’t have any rules that you don’t talk to any Democrats,” McConnell says, shrugging off McCain’s ballyhooed huddles with Obama officials. “That’s McCain being McCain.” He then cracks a slight smile. “You know, I was kidding [New York Democrat Chuck Schumer] and McCain the other day, and asked, ‘When are you all getting married? It’s getting almost embarrassing.’”

The full report is on the home page.

CNN anchor Don Lemon, who has been outspoken on the issues confronting black Americans, particularly since the verdict of the Zimmerman trial, surprised some viewers this weekend by endorsing Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly’s recent commentary on black culture — and saying the commentary “doesn’t go far enough.”

On Saturday, Lemon said it was time for some “tough love on the subject,” building off of O’Reilly’s statistical breakdown of the issues facing blacks in the U.S. The host laid out five recommendations for African Americans, and others, to better themselves and their community: Pull up your pants; don’t use the n-word; respect one’s environment by not littering; finish high school; and don’t have children out of wedlock.

Later in the hour, Michael Skolnik, editor-in-chief of the pop-culture website Global Grind, didn’t take too kindly to Lemon’s previous segment. “Your comments sound like a conservative preacher on a Sunday,” Skolnik said. “Certainly Bill O’Reilly should welcome you on his show.”

Skolnik went on to argue the War on Drugs had “destroyed the black community,” while conservative radio host Larry Elder took Lemon’s side and argued that Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty was the real source of the black community’s issues.

Lemon got plenty of backlash from liberals for his comments — MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor labeled him a “turncoat mofo.” On Sunday, Lemon discussed the reaction to his comments with ESPN’s LZ Granderson and Republican Ana Navarro, who largely agreed with him.

Via Mediaite.

Five-time third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader pulled no punches this morning, blasting both President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Nader characterized President Obama as a “corporatist under a liberal sheen” and criticized his coziness with Wall Street and big corporations. Of the former secretary of state, he asked, “What’s the difference between Generalissima Hillary and McCain?”

The former Green Party candidate didn’t have kind words for Republicans, either, arguing that today’s conservatives have entered a “crazed dimension” far afield from those who backed Reagan, Eisenhower, and Taft.

But Nader sees much in common between the two parties. “Generally speaking, the White House and the Congress are not that different,” he concluded.

Today, NR’s editors forcefully defend Mitch Daniels for objecting to the use of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in public-school curricula. Daniels calls Zinn’s work “anti-American” and “crap.” Harvard’s Oscar Handlin styles Zinn’s work a “deranged” “fairy tale.” The NR editors decry the book’s socialist bias. Alright, that’s how the president of Purdue, a Harvard historian, and our esteemed editors see the matter, but what about the president of the United States?

A brief passage from James T. Kloppenberg’s book Reading Obama sheds some light. Kloppenberg interviewed Mike Kruglik, an old organizing mentor and friend of Obama (whose current working relationship with the president I discuss here).  Here’s what Kloppenberg found:

Obama filled out his education in American history as well as politics while he was working in Chicago. Mike Kruglik had been a doctoral candidate in American history at Northwestern before he became and organizer, and when he and Obama talked, they discussed the reasons why a nation supposedly dedicated to freedom and equality provided so little of either. They talked about the differences between the populists and the progressives and the reasons why ordinary people never seemed to get anywhere in modern America. Kruglik recalls that Obama had a special interest in the work of the radical historian Howard Zinn.

Perhaps a book forum in debate format featuring Daniels and Obama would be in order.

When Pope Francis met with Argentinean youth in Rio Thursday, he announced some of his expectations for the World Youth Day events that would unfold in the subsequent hours and days:   

I would like us to make noise, I would like those inside the dioceses to go out into the open; I want the Church to be in the streets; I want us to defend ourselves against all that is worldliness, comfort, being closed and turned within – parishes, colleges, and institutions must get out otherwise they risk becoming NGOs, and the Church is not a non-governmental organization.

This NGO theme has been a recurring one since the start of his papacy. Depending on your role in or view of the Church, it may be an indictment, a wake-up call, a rallying cry, or a compelling reframing narrative that opens doors to those who have left the Church, considered it irrelevant, or never gave it a second thought.

On MSNBC and elsewhere, Pope Francis has been referred to in recent days as a “rock star.” Others have referred to him as the Tom Jones of the papacy, as people threw t-shirts at his open-air popemobile – which I am pretty sure is a papal first. But to think that World Youth Day or the Catholic Church today is about the person of Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, who just returned to the continent of his birth for the first time since leaving for the papal conclave after Pope Benedict’s shocking resignation news just before Lent, is to misunderstand what we have witnessed and what is going on — in Rio, Rome, and the universal Church. World Youth Day in Rio was a snapshot in countercultural renewal. Young people want something better than false freedom and something less than true love, as Pope Francis put it at various points during the weekend. The more than three million who gathered Sunday are rebels and theirs was quite a yell — a Heavenly opus, binding the evil agenda of Hell.

The pope was in Rio for the better part of a week, visiting men and women recovering from addiction, the poor in the slums of Rio, anyone along his routes who could get near him, his brother bishops, and, of course, the young, among others, on the first international apostolic journey of his pontificate. Some of the most emotional and telling moments were in prayer – particularly at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, where he lead his fellow Latin American bishops in compiling a real document (not all episcopal-conference documents are the product of real prayerful contemplation and pastoral sweat work, but this one was) seeking to confront the challenges facing the Church and the world on the continent.

In his homily at Aparecida, Pope Francis implored believers to an openness to being surprised by God:

God always surprises us, like the new wine in the Gospel we have just heard. God always saves the best for us. But he asks us to let ourselves be surprised by his love, to accept his surprises. Let us trust God! Cut off from him, the wine of joy, the wine of hope, runs out. If we draw near to him, if we stay with him, what seems to be cold water, difficulty, sin, is changed into the new wine of friendship with him. 

His own apostolic journey and World Youth Day schedule was an exercise in openness to surprise. Pope Francis was able to actually break into mainstream TV news early in the week because of the security concerns raised after his window-rolled-down Fiat made a wrong turn, attracting swarms of people on the streets of Rio hoping to touch the successor of Peter, get a picture of him, or have their baby blessed — and kissed – by the pontiff.

And there was an unmistakable lesson in the surprises, and his peace with them. (If it involved more people having access to him, he clearly welcomed the changes to plans, having referred to being caged at least once publicly during the week.) Rain plagued most of the week and lead to location changes. During Saturday night’s prayer vigil, he made the venue change a teaching opportunity: “I think that we can learn something from what has taken place in these days, of how we had to cancel, due to bad weather, this Vigil in the Campus Fidei, at Guaratiba,” he told the three million young people gathered on the Copacabana beach, dubbed Popacabana by some World Youth Day participants and watchers. He continued:

Is the Lord not telling us, perhaps, that we ourselves are the true field of faith, the true Campus Fidei, and not some geographical location?  Yes, it is true – each one of us, each one of you, me, everyone!  To be missionary disciples means to know that we are the Field of Faith of God! Starting with the name of the place where we are, Campus Fidei, the field of faith, I have thought of three images that can help us understand better what it means to be a disciple and a missionary.  First, a field is a place for sowing seeds; second, a field is a training ground; and third, a field is a construction site.

It was an exhausting, emotional, frank, invigorating week. The theme was one of evangelical Catholicism, as George Weigel has referred to the missionary work of the Church at the present moment, in an increasingly secular world where even Christians have fallen into secular habits and routines that have rendered all too many of us practical atheists (a John Paul II phrase) rather than disciples who have freely surrendered to a belief in God’s countercultural mission for each individual life.

Francis was at his most forceful when he talked about not allowing ourselves or anyone to be robbed of hope. And on Friday night, when preaching after the Stations of the Cross, he pointed to the message of the recent encyclical, The Light of Faith, almost entirely written by Pope Benedict XVI: That it is in Christ the believer can have confidence. He is the fulfillment of our hearts desire, who loves us more than we could have ever asked for. As Pope Francis put it:

The Cross of Christ contains all the love of God; there we find his immeasurable mercy.  This is a love in which we can place all our trust, in which we can believe.  Dear young people, let us entrust ourselves to Jesus, let us give ourselves over to him (cf. Lumen Fidei, 16), because he never disappoints anyone!  Only in Christ crucified and risen can we find salvation and redemption.  With him, evil, suffering, and death do not have the last word, because he gives us hope and life: he has transformed the Cross from being an instrument of hate, defeat and death to being a sign of love, victory, triumph and life.

And he challenged the World Youth Day pilgrims in the most intimate of ways: 

the Cross of Christ invites us also to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, teaching us always to look upon others with mercy and tenderness, especially those who suffer, who are in need of help, who need a word or a concrete action; the Cross invites us to step outside ourselves to meet them and to extend a hand to them.  How many times have we seen them in the Way of the Cross, how many times have they accompanied Jesus on the way to Calvary: Pilate, Simon of Cyrene, Mary, the women…  Today I ask you: which of them do you want to be? Do you want to be like Pilate, who did not have the courage to go against the tide to save Jesus’ life, and instead washed his hands?  Tell me: are you one of those who wash their hands, who feign ignorance and look the other way? Or are you like Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus to carry that heavy wood, or like Mary and the other women, who were not afraid to accompany Jesus all the way to the end, with love and tenderness. And you, who do you want to be?  Like Pilate?  Like Simon?  Like Mary?  Jesus is looking at you now and is asking you: do you want to help me carry the Cross?  Brothers and sisters, with all the strength of your youth, how will you respond to him? 

The heart of this year’s papal World Youth Day program was centered on prayer and sacrament: The message clearly being: You can’t give what you don’t have. As a priest friend preached on Sunday:

The greatest prayer of all we’re called to make to the Father for others and for ourselves, the most important door on which we’re called to knock continuously, is to enter into Jesus’ prayer from the Last Supper, from the Cross, and on Easter Sunday, which is the prayer of the Holy Mass. The prayer of the Mass is called to work a moral miracle of spiritual transformation in us.  At the beginning of Mass, we confess our sins and failings, the way we haven’t lived in loving communion with God and brought others to know and share that love. But through the encouragement of the Word of God, through our prayers, and most importantly through receiving Jesus Christ within us by the power of the Holy Spirit, we’re changed, renewed, and made capable of going forth to carry out together with Jesus his mission of the salvation of the world. The end of Mass is highly significant. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit blesses us, and proclaims to us once more our Christian mission: “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” And we respond, “Thanks be to God!,” because we know that this mission entrusted to us by God, is one of the greatest gifts God has ever given us. We also say “Thanks be to God!” because [we] know that as we carry out that mission God is continually blessing us and through us blessing those to whom we announce the Gospel. 

And for those who watched this, the 28th World Youth Day, wondering if it might just be the kind of experience a young person in your life might benefit from, the next one is in Cracow in 2016. It will be the first World Youth Day after the canonization of John Paul II, the father of concept. The prospective combination of Pope Francis and Saint John Paul II, with the prayers of Benedict XVI from a convent in Rome or from the wedding feast beyond, promises to be spiritually explosive.

At the closing Mass, Pope Francis said:

Sharing the experience of faith, bearing witness to the faith, proclaiming the Gospel: this is a command that the Lord entrusts to the whole Church, and that includes you; but it is a command that is born not from a desire for domination or power but from the force of love, from the fact that Jesus first came into our midst and gave us, not a part of himself, but the whole of himself, he gave his life in order to save us and to show us the love and mercy of God. Jesus does not treat us as slaves, but as free men, as friends, as brothers and sisters; and he not only sends us, he accompanies us, he is always beside us in our mission of love. 

So much of the conventional view of the Church lately has been one of a Church of no, irrelevant to the times. But this is a time for a revolutionary spirit to uplift men and women, from poverty, material and spiritual.

As he was headed to the airport Sunday evening, and back to Rome, the pope said to World Youth Day volunteers:

God calls you to make definitive choices, and he has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move toward personal fulfillment. God calls each of us to be holy, to live his life, but he has a particular path for each one of us. Some are called to holiness through family life in the sacrament of Marriage. Today, there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion; in a culture of relativism and the ephemeral, many preach the importance of “enjoying” the moment. They say that it is not worth making a life-long commitment, making a definitive decision, “for ever”, because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes that you are incapable of responsibility, that you are incapable of true love. I have confidence in you and I pray for you. Have the courage “to swim against the tide”. Have the courage to be happy.

Those are rallying words. And that’s what World Youth Day was: A pilgrimage, an announcement, a rally, a snapshot of and an act in revolutionary renewal.

What to make of World Youth Day? What happens the morning after? That depends on the daily decisions of pilgrims and anyone within the sound of its call – the Gospel call – to go and make disciples, to be not afraid to deprivatize religious faith but instead to be all-encompassing witnesses to Christianity at work, at home, at play. And if you listened in, you heard that this is not a threat to anyone except to my lazy heart. The missionary call is to propose the answers the faith provides by being a living witness to it with joy, in full knowledge of the pain in the world, courageously bearing every cross, knowing you’re not alone. It’s an exercise of true freedom, to say yes — a fiat – to an eternal call.

(I tweeted highlights at @kathrynlopez, losing followers for doing so along the way! Some good photos here. Videos, with translations, here. Texts here. My friend Austen Ivereigh has a good series of dispatches here. It’s in Spanish, but I couldn’t help but notice that ACI Prensa was doing some mad-fast updating throughout the pope’s near-week in Rome.)

Doug Stafford, the chief political adviser for Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, is firing back at Representative Peter King of New York, who told CNN on Sunday that Paul’s national-security positions are “madness.”

“This is an isolationist streak that’s in our party, it goes totally against the party of Eisenhower, Reagan, and Bush,” King said, citing Paul as the prime example. “We are a party of national defense. We are a party that did so much to protect the country over the last 12 years.”

Here’s Stafford’s email to NR:

King wants to say Senator Paul is not strong enough on defense. The opposite is true. Senator Paul is stronger and here is why: Senator Paul’s budget restored the sequester because it cut enough from other governments programs.

Senator Paul offered an amendment to pay for emergency spending by cutting foreign aid. Peter King rejected this idea.  If he had been on board with that we would have been able to redirect tens of billions of dollars home.

Senator Paul wants to come home from nation building sooner so we have more money for the actual defense of our country. Peter King wants to build bridges in Afghanistan instead of at home. He wants us endlessly patrolling the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan instead of ours at home.

Both Paul and King are considering 2016 presidential bids.

The New York Times has an editorial in which it calls for Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act to be amended so that it applies not just when there has been a showing of intentional discrimination, but also whenever a jurisdiction has adopted a practice with a disproportionate racial “effect.” This approach has also been endorsed, the Times says, by the Congressional Black Caucus.

But an “effects” test will ensure two results, both bad. First, it will cause racially gerrymandered and segregated voting districts; we know this because that is the principal use to which the effects test in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act has been put. Second, it will be used to challenge many perfectly legitimate antifraud measures; we know this because many liberals hate, for example, voter-ID requirements. 

When voting practices and procedures are neutral on their terms, in their intent, and in their application, they are not “discriminatory” by any reasonable definition of the word, even if they do have a disproportionate effect on this or that group. For example, a law aimed at ensuring that noncitizens are not voting may have a disproportionate effect on Latinos in some jurisdictions, but that doesn’t make the law discriminatory.

In sum, there is nothing wrong with requiring a plaintiff to prove actual discrimination under the federal civil-rights laws before he is awarded relief. No new legislation is needed.

There will shortly be discovered a corpse in the U.S. Senate cloakroom. Investigators will puzzle over its identity which looks different from different angles. Its status will also be unclear because sometimes it seems to be the murderer and sometimes the victim. At times one might almost imagine that there are two corpses, both victims, one perhaps also the murderer.

The first corpse (and unchallengeable victim)—unless the police are in time to save him—is that of Ambassador Victor Ashe, former mayor of Knoxville, former U.S. Ambassador to Poland, and until his forthcoming murder, a Member of the Board of Broadcasting Governors, the body that oversees U.S. International Broadcasting—i.e., VOA, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, etc., etc.—henceforth USIB.

Mr. Ashe’s credentials as a victim are flawless ones in Washington: he is dedicated, successful, popular, and bi-partisan. He has formed a working coalition with two Democratic BBG governors, Michael Meehan and Susan McCue, to ensure that the BBG spends more of its budget on helping USIB to get its messages over and around the various electronic firewalls set up by authoritarian regimes to keep their people uninformed. He took the lead in halting and reversing a reorganization of Radio Liberty that had led to the sacking of about forty journalists in its Moscow bureau—and led also to massive protests by the entire human rights community in Moscow from Gorbachev to Bukovsky. He has been consistently skeptical about the Washington bureaucracy’s favorite schemes of reorganization—call it “BBC Envy”—asking the broadcasters themselves their opinions (and protecting them in the process.) He, Meehan, and McCue were together responsible for the shrewd appointment as president of Kevin Klose as president of RFERL. (Klose is universally acknowledged to have done a fine job of restoring Radio Liberty to successful programming with the minimum of fuss and fume.) As a result Ashe has been given votes of thanks by the broadcasting unions (not a universal experience for Republicans) and recently got a telegram of support from the journalists in the Moscow bureau here.

Naturally, Ashe had to go. The first assassination attempt took place earlier this year. But it was bungled. The vehicle for this attack was a report by the Inspector General on the failings of the BBG. Some of its general criticisms of the BBG were valid, but what was highly unusual and suspect was  it fingered out Ashe for particular attack. As I wrote at the time:

“This open attack on a board member was both unprecedented and against the convention of anonymity. It was also a transparent hit job. The passages attacking Ashe read as if they had been dictated by senior board bureaucrats who found Ashe a constant thorn in their side (by contrast Ashe is a hero to the rank-and-file broadcasters and their unions). It was plainly designed to force his resignation or at best to prevent his re-nomination to the board.

Still more extraordinary than this, however, was the kind of arguments used in the report to indict Ashe and the other governors. They were accused of such mortal sins as not following the five-year plan for USIB devised by the bureaucrats; exchanging harsh words in board discussions on policy; refusing to be bound by former majority decisions when they believed conditions had changed; demanding information (including about spending) which the bureaucrats thought should be above their station; and in general acting like political appointees who thought their job was to run a government agency sensibly and in the light of the latest information. In other words, as well as a hit job on Ashe, the report was also an attempt by the bureaucrats to extend their own power and influence over the board.

Representative Peter King (R., NY.) told Candy Crowley on CNN this morning that threats to shut down the government aren’t just wrongheaded — they’re wrong. King, a potential 2016 presidential contender, didn’t name names, but his criticism was as blunt as can be: Shutting down the government to stop the Affordable Care Act would be unacceptable.

Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) has spearheaded an effort to block a continuing resolution that would fund Obamacare, and a number of other Republicans are on board, including Senators Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.). King, however, is not.

“We should not be closing down the government under any circumstances,” he said. “That doesn’t work, it’s wrong, and, you know, Obamacare passed. We have to try to defund it, we have to try to find ways to repeal it. But the fact is, we shouldn’t be using it as a threat to shut down the government.”

King isn’t the only vocal Republican critic of Lee’s efforts. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina said it was the “dumbest idea” he’d ever heard of.

Here’s King’s take:

In the panel discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Will took a jab at media coverage of Democrats’ sex scandals.

“I will not dwell on the fact, although it is a fact, that if these two men, Filner in San Diego and Wiener here, were Republicans, this would be part of a lot of somber sociology in the media about the Republican War on Women,” he said. “I will skip that.”

It wasn’t a great week for either of those two; San Diego mayor Bob Filner announced he’s going into intensive therapy for two weeks (seven women have accused him of sexual harassment). And Weiner, of course, admitted that his sexting continued after he resigned from Congress.

“What explains this man, Peggy, is an animal neediness for public gratification,” Will said, addressing Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. “There are people like this: He got out of college, went to work on the congressional staff, became the youngest member ever of the New York City Countil, ran for the House — he can’t live without this.”

Then Will discussed how New York was “the incubator of the heroic period of American liberalism.” But now — this? Here’s Will’s take:

Chris Christie’s comments about defunding the NSA program, which attacked what some consider the libertarian strain in the Republican party led by Kentucky senator Rand Paul, may have set the stage for 2016, according to some experts.

Commenting on Christie vs. Paul on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume remarked that the “strong and deep disagreement” between “internationalists” and “isolationists” “has been going on for a long time.” Whether Christie’s comments were the best way to approach it is up for debate, says Hume, but “the party’s going to have to have this out.”

According  to fellow panelist Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, polls show that the Tea Party is overwhelmingly on Paul’s side of the clash.

Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) is coming under fire from both sides for his effort to defund Obamacare for the coming year on the logic that, since the Obama administration has decided the law is not ready to implement, it should not receive funding from Congress. The administration’s decision to “selectively implement” the law by delaying the employer mandate while retaining the individual mandate is an “unfair” decision, said Lee on Fox News Sunday, that penalizes individuals while exempting “big business.”

Some Republican leaders contend that Lee’s action, which threatens to shut down the government in September, could be politically disastrous for Republicans.

“I understand that there are some in the Washington establishment . . . who aren’t happy with me over this. And, in this instance, I’m going to take that as a compliment, as an indication that I’m doing something right.”

“Maybe we can’t repeal [Obamacare] right now, but we can delay its funding. And if we can delay it, we can stop its consequences, at least for now.” The case for doing that has never been stronger, says Lee, because of the president’s enforcement decision. “That’s not fair, it’s not right, and we shouldn’t fund that effort.”