Sen.
Marco Rubio addresses a campaign rally at Palm Beach Atlantic
University in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)
President
Barack Obama smiles after announcing Judge Merrick Garland as his
nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16, 2016. (Photo: Kevin
LaMarque/Reuters)Judge
Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington D.C.
Circuit will most likely not become Justice Merrick Garland of the
Supreme Court, at least not while President Barack Obama remains in
office. He seems unlikely to get even a hearing before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, or a vote either by that panel or the whole Senate.And
it may be partly because it’s hard to imagine an Obama nominee more
likely to win confirmation, if the Republicans allowed a vote.Republican
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated on Wednesday what he
said just hours after the late justice Antonin Scalia died in
mid-February: There will be no Judiciary Committee hearings, and no
votes on confirmation while Obama resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.The
Senate will appropriately revisit the matter when it considers the
qualifications of the person the next president nominates,” McConnell
said, apparently extinguishing even the dim prospects of a vote in the
lame-duck session after the November elections.Still,
the pitched political battle over Garland’s fate could turn in
unexpected ways, and will shape – and be shaped by – the 2016 race: Not
just Donald Trump’s unprecedented presidential race but the fight to
control the Senate, in which a platoon of Senate Republicans are facing
stiff challenges.Garland, 63, is a judicial moderate who earned the support of a majority of Republicans for his 
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) leaves the Senate chamber after
vowing that the body will not hold hearings on whether to confirm
Garland. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)Republicans
know that the main prize in play is the ideological shape of the
Supreme Court. The late justice Antonin Scalia wasn’t just “a”
conservative jurist. He was arguably the most influential conservative
jurist of his era. Republicans know they’re highly unlikely to get
another Scalia, but would settle for putting another conservative in the
seat that the acerbic Italian-American held for decades, continuing
their run of 5-4 rulings on many contentious issues. The problem for
Republicans is not that Garland may turn out to be liberal, it’s that
he’s sure to be a lot more liberal than Scalia, tipping the overall
balance of the court to the left. To avoid that, the GOP has to gamble
that they will recapture the White House come November.
The
crowd at the UIC Pavilion on Chicago’s West side erupts in celebration
on March 11, 2016, after it is announced that Donald Trump will postpone
his rally here. (Photo: Caitlin Dickson/Yahoo News)While
many individuals who were removed from the venue had at least been
vocal before being engaged by security, the two young men were escorted
out before apparently engaging in any disruptive behavior. The
security guard who removed the two said it wasn’t up to him who got
kicked out, but that maintaining the safety of all in attendance was his
primary concern at the event. “Last
time I worked here it was for an Isley Brothers concert, as far as I’m
concerned I’m doing the same job,” the unnamed guard told Yahoo News.
“This is more interesting.“ Outside,
Chicago police officers on horseback corralled protesters behind
barricades. Several cars drove by waving huge Mexican flags as the
neighborhood was energized by both protesters and supporters, who were
separated by a large law enforcement presence. Undeterred
by the evening’s setback, Trump conducted several phone interviews with
TV news outlets after the postponement, crediting public frustration
with the U.S. economic conditions for the open defiance in Chicago – not
any reflection of his campaign positions, rhetoric or the ongoing
complaints of how protesters have been handled at his events."Our
businesses are being taken away from us, our businesses are being moved
out of the country,” Trump told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “This is a
demonstration against economic conditions on both sides.”Liberal
activist organization MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Democratic
candidate Bernie Sanders, claimed some responsibility for organizing
“student leaders who organized nonviolent protest against Trump’s
violence & hate.”The
behavior of those in the crowd suggests the protest was carefully
planned. Despite the effort of security to weed out potential unrest in
advance – Yahoo News witnessed a man in a grey suit wearing a Trump pin
approach a band of young and apparently Middle Eastern men and ask them
if they’d like Trump signs in an effort to establish their allegiance –
when the announcement of postponement was made, the arena largely went
nuts. 
National Security:
The Washington Post, of all places, found that not only did Hillary
Clinton send and receive classified material on her unsecured email
server as Secretary of State, she wrote dozens of classified emails
herself.
To understand the implications of this revelation, let’s rewind the
clock to almost exactly one year ago, when Clinton first addressed her
private email controversy at a press conference held in the United
Nations building.
A reporter asked Clinton
whether she was “ever specifically briefed on the security implications
of using your own email server and using your personal address to email
with the president?”
Her answer was emphatic: “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”
Then she went on: “I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”
The first claim had been proved false long ago, once the State
Department started releasing what would end up being 2,093 of Clinton’s
emails that it said contained classified material.
Once those emails started emerging, Clinton changed her story to say
that she never “knowingly” sent or received classified information,
because none of the messages were so marked. That excuse fell by the
wayside when emails turned up containing information deemed “classified
at birth.” Then several showed up that couldn’t be released at all
because their classification rating was so high.
The Post’s latest revelations,
however, are particularly damning. It found that three-quarters of the
classified emails she sent were written by Clinton herself.
Saying she didn’t know the information was classified because it
wasn’t marked makes no sense, since she was the one who would have been
responsible for marking it in the first place.
And, since she claims that she was “well aware of the classification
requirements,” she can’t now claim that she was ignorant of the nature
of the information she was sending.
As this story has unfolded over the past year, Clinton has tried to
brush it aside as a partisan witch hunt. When that didn’t wash, she
tried to blame the State Department for “over classifying” information,
or charged that it was just the result of interagency squabbles.
Clinton also tried to smear the inspectors general for State and the intelligence community, both of whom were appointed by President Obama.
But what she has never done is admit the truth. Namely, that she set
up her private email account as a way to shield her communications from
public scrutiny — a tactic that worked for a time — and that in doing so
she gave little thought to the national security implications.
Her cavalier attitude apparently set the tone for the department. The
Post notes that top aid John Sullivan “was the most frequent author of
classified emails,” and other top officials, Cheryl Mills and Huma
Abedin, “authored dozens of such notes.”
Under the law, gross negligence in handling classified material is
all that’s required for a government official to face criminal charges.
At this point, is there anyone who can honestly say that Clinton wasn’t
being grossly negligent?
PALM
BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump took a major step toward the Republican
nomination Tuesday night, winning presidential primary races in Florida,
Illinois and North Carolina (with Missouri declared too close to call
after vote-counting was suspended late into the night). Trump’s
landslide victory in winner-take-all Florida represented a stunning
defeat for home-state Sen. Marco Rubio, who suspended his campaign for
the White House.
But
Ohio Gov. John Kasich eked out a win in his home-state primary, denying
Trump a much hoped for victory in the other crucial winner-take-all
state of the night and increasing the likelihood of a contested GOP
convention this summer.
While
Trump nearly ran the table Tuesday, Illinois, North Carolina and
Missouri (where he held a slim lead over Cruz) were not winner-take-all
primaries, meaning that he will have to share the delegates awarded,
once again prolonging the race for the GOP nomination.
And
though Trump’s wins Tuesday looked to put him at least halfway to the
1,237 delegates he needs to claim the nomination, neither Kasich nor
Cruz signaled any plans to leave the race. “Do you want a candidate who
shares your values? Or a candidate who has spent decades opposing your
values?” Cruz told his supporters at an election night rally in Houston.
For
his part, Rubio did not immediately give up his delegates, delivering a
concession speech that was more confrontational toward Trump than
conciliatory. “The easiest thing to have done in this campaign [would
have been] … to make people angrier, make people more frustrated,” Rubio
said in a clear reference to Trump. “But I chose a different route, and
I’m proud of that.
“In
a year like this, that would have been the easiest way to win, but that
is not what’s best for America,” Rubio added. “The politics of
resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured
party, but they will leave a fractured nation … where people literally
hate each other because they have different political opinions.”
Rubio’s
slow decline over the last three months became precipitous after a
series of crude attacks on Trump in late February failed spectacularly
in the minds of many voters. Rubio’s broadsides against Trump during the
Feb. 25 GOP debate in Houston spiraled down in the following days on
the campaign trail into jokes about Trump wetting his pants and even a
reference to the size of Trump’s penis, which the businessman later
defended during a raucous debate in Detroit on March 3.
Sen. Marco Rubio, onstage with his family, tells
supporters at a primary night rally in Miami that he is suspending his
campaign for the Republican nomination. (Photo: Angel Valentin/Getty
Images)Slideshow: March 15 presidential primaries >>>As
he left his election night event Tuesday, Rubio pleaded with the
electorate, “I ask the American people, do not give in to the fear. Do
not give in to the frustration,” as supporters in the crowd wept.
“America needs a vibrant conservative movement, but one that’s built on
principles and ideas, not on fear, not on anger, not on preying on
people’s frustrations.”Trump,
speaking to supporters at his Mar-a-Lago Club here, was surprisingly
cordial toward his former rival, whom he had repeatedly ridiculed as
“Little Marco” in campaign speeches as recently as Monday. But Trump,
clearly trying to appear more presidential as he gains in his bid to be
the party nominee, congratulated Rubio for running a tough campaign.
“He’s got a bright future,” Trump said.
If you’ve not seen the GIF, you’ve probably not spent a lot of time on the web.The AftermathIt
is years later; “I don’t know her” has become perhaps the most iconic
words to come out of Mariah Carey’s mouth since “all I want for
Christmas is you.” It was Andy Cohen, in 2014, who was the first to ask
J.Lo directly about the shade of it all.“I
know from back in the day, I’ve read things that she’s said about me
that were not the greatest, but we have never met,” Lopez, who is no
amateur at delivering a verbal knockout, said. “Like, we don’t know each
other. I think it’s kind of from word of mouth of things that have
happened in the past that I’m not really aware of.”Then, last year, Carey was doing an interview with 
Blocking
the Donald from winning the Republican nomination isn’t impossible. But
it will likely require one of his rivals to remain in the race until
the GOP convention in July — and to pull off an upset of historic
proportions.To
understand how strong Trump’s position is — but also why it’s too early
to declare him the winner — you have to understand the byzantine
delegate math that Republicans will be relying on to select this year’s
nominee. The
rules are remarkably convoluted. They’re different in almost every
state. But in a nominating contest unlike any we’ve seen before, they
will be critical going forward.Barring
some sort of cataclysmic event that torpedoes the previously unsinkable
Trump — a murder charge, perhaps — it appears that the Republican race
can end only one of two ways at this point. Either (a) Trump wins the nomination or (b) one of his opponents snatches it away from him in Cleveland.Let’s consider the likelier scenario first: a Trump victory.To be the nominee, a Republican needs to win a majority of delegates; this year’s magic number is 1,237. A scoreboard reads “2016” and “76” for the number of delegates the
state of Georgia has as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
speaks at a rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga., Monday.
(Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)You
may have heard that all the delegates at stake before March 15 will be
awarded proportionally and that many of the delegates at stake after
March 15 will be awarded to the candidate who wins each state.
On
the Republican side, the vote comes amid a chaotic descent into what in
any other year would have been described as madness, with the leading
candidates trading crude schoolyard insults; mugging, chortling and
shouting over each other in debates, and one (you know who) blaming a
faulty earpiece for his inability to renounce the support of a former
Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. One can imagine the GOP’s power
brokers, regardless of their actual preferences, secretly hoping all the
candidates will lose, enabling the party to start over with someone new
— or give Jeb Bush, who dropped out in February, a second chance. But
the rules are that someone has to win. In polling, generally, Trump
holds leads ranging from moderate to overwhelming in most states, with
the notable exception of Cruz’s home state of Texas. To stay in the
race, Cruz has to win there, at least, and Marco Rubio, who has made the
most of any candidate in history out of second- and third-place
finishes, has to show he can win somewhere. Trump just has to avoid any
embarrassing losses; Kasich is mostly just trying to hang on until the
electoral map becomes friendlier. His home state, Ohio — a must-win for
him — votes on March 15, the same day as Florida, Rubio’s base, where
Trump has held a big lead in polls. Ben Carson is now considered a
nonfactor in the race after a string of distant finishes.
