SCOTUS Analyst: Loretta Lynch 'Most Likely Candidate' to Replace Scalia
A leading Supreme Court analyst thinks Attorney General Loretta Lynch is the "most likely candidate" to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

Tom Goldstein, who runs the influential SCOTUSblog, had earlier predicted Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford would make the top of President Obama's shortlist. But in a revised blog post, Goldstein said he now believes Lynch is the leading contender.

Lynch is a "very serious possibility," Goldstein wrote. "The fact that Lynch was vetted so recently for attorney general also makes it practical for the president to nominate her in relatively short order."

Democrats Are In Serious Trouble After Iowa and New Hampshire
One of the Democratic candidate’s supporters are energized over an as of yet unknown kind of “political revolution.” Apparently the revolutions’ plan entails changing Koch and tea party Republicans’ hearts and minds to embrace what they have always labeled tax and spend socialism. According to the narrative, after their champion sweeps to victory as a Democrat, the entire Congress will embrace the revolution and “pass this massively transformative package of legislation without delay.” It is an exciting prospect and has energized a large number of Democrats.

The other Democratic campaign, although pledging to continue the progress set by Barack Obama, is populated by “enthusiastic and energized” supporters who are certain that Americans, particularly Americans who are women, will flock to the polls to support and elect “the first woman president.” Seriously, that is the thinking among some Democrats. Never mind that America is a patriarchal society, or that a fair percentage of half the population are the worst kind of misogynists; religious Republican women who vote in droves. It may be 2016, but among Republican ranks being a woman is a negative no matter the level of “enthusiasm,” the candidate’s supporters have to know that their champion’s strengths and qualifications are not dependent on gender.

The point is that no matter how passionate one’s supporters are, how much “energy” is being generated, how many individual donations one garners, or which group endorses which candidate, Democrats are still in serious trouble…again. That has been the consensus since the 2014 midterms when “failing” Republican incumbents across the board were handily re-elected to continue their failing ways because Republicans turn out and vote; even for failures.
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Progressive are not going to drive this election for Democrats, but they can be the impetus to put a Republican in the White House. It is noteworthy that among one candidate’s supporters, 20 percent said if their hero is not the nominee, they will sit out the general election. With Republican voters already outpacing Democrats, and one faction willing to repeat the 2010 disaster that let the Koch brothers put the tea party in control of Congress, Republicans now have two very easy paths to the White House. It is something that Democrats and Republicans alike are aware of and if the left were not so arrogant and dysfunctional they just might know it too.

When it comes to politics, you’re not as rational as you think
“People think that they think like scientists,” said Professor Peter Ditto, who studies human judgment and decision making at UC Irvine. “But really they think like lawyers.”

“Scientists don't care what the answer is: they look at the data and draw a conclusion,” said Ditto. “Lawyers know the conclusion they want to reach, then they harness a bunch of facts to support that conclusion.”

And this, said Ditto, is how we construct our political facts, whether we realize we’re doing it or not.

How America Was Lost
Once upon a time, the death of a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t have brought America to the edge of constitutional crisis. But that was a different country, with a very different Republican Party. In today’s America, with today’s G.O.P., the passing of Antonin Scalia has opened the doors to chaos.

In principle, losing a justice should cause at most a mild disturbance in the national scene. After all, the court is supposed to be above politics. So when a vacancy appears, the president should simply nominate, and the Senate approve, someone highly qualified and respected by all.

In reality, of course, things were never that pure. Justices have always had known political leanings, and the process of nomination and approval has often been contentious. Still, there was nothing like the situation we face now, in which Republicans have more or less unanimously declared that President Obama has no right even to nominate a replacement for Mr. Scalia — and no, the fact that Mr. Obama will leave soon doesn’t make it O.K. (Justice Kennedy was appointed during Ronald Reagan’s last year in office.)

Nor were the consequences of a court vacancy as troubling in the past as they are now. As everyone is pointing out, without Mr. Scalia the justices are evenly divided between Republican and Democratic appointees — which probably means a hung court on many issues.

Unpublished Black History
Revealing moments in black history, with unpublished photos from The New York Times’s archives.


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Mayor John Lindsay and Mahalia Jackson

Earlier this week, we asked readers if they knew what was happening in the photo above, and why it mattered.

More than a thousand of you replied as of Thursday afternoon. Roughly half — more than 500 people — guessed correctly that the man on the left was John V. Lindsay, the mayor of New York City from 1966 to 1973.

A much smaller number of readers correctly identified the black woman on the right: Mahalia Jackson, the Queen of Gospel, who sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.

Did Leonard Nimoy Have Antonin Scalia Killed to Give Obama Enough Supreme Court Votes to Cancel the 2016 Election?
The news wires are heating up with the very polished press release about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s tragically untimely death. The man, considered one of the greatest heroes of Constitutional law in both the 20th and 21st centuries, could not have left America at a more crucial moment. Yet there are already rumors that this passing is a bit too convenient for the Obama White House just as Hillary Clinton’s campaign is stumbling.

One major issue for Clinton is that her email scandal threatens to completely derail her candidacy. According to numerous insiders, the Republicans are holding back the most damning information until she is actually chosen as the Democratic nominee. At that point, they will release reams of documents implicating her in a host of federal crimes. In such a scenario, the FBI would be forced to indict the former Secretary of State. These complications would assuredly give the Republican presidential candidate the inside track on taking back the Oval Office.
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Nimoy’s Hand in the Assassination
The wild card in this equation is likely Leonard Nimoy, who various leaked reports have identified as the newest leader of the Illuminati. While there is much debate about that secretive group’s ultimate motives, many citizen journalists suspect that they are expanding their control through both European-style socialism and Bilderberg-group branded international cooperation schemes. The recent Climate Change summit is the perfect example of this, as it gives foreign authorities the power to override both Congressional and Constitutional protections. As many know, the presence of the United Nations on American soil will lead to gun seizures and restrictions on Christian freedom of speech.

Illuminati supporters such as gun control activists, marijuana propagandists and the recruiters of sodomy are likely to immediately benefit from the Justice’s death. They will now have more room to promote their disturbing agendas on a national legal front.

The Great Gerrymander of 2012
HAVING the first modern democracy comes with bugs. Normally we would expect more seats in Congress to go to the political party that receives more votes, but the last election confounded expectations. Democrats received 1.4 million more votes for the House of Representatives, yet Republicans won control of the House by a 234 to 201 margin. This is only the second such reversal since World War II.

Using statistical tools that are common in fields like my own, neuroscience, I have found strong evidence that this historic aberration arises from partisan disenfranchisement. Although gerrymandering is usually thought of as a bipartisan offense, the rather asymmetrical results may surprise you.

Through artful drawing of district boundaries, it is possible to put large groups of voters on the losing side of every election. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington-based political group dedicated to electing state officeholders, recently issued a progress report on Redmap, its multiyear plan to influence redistricting. The $30 million strategy consists of two steps for tilting the playing field: take over state legislatures before the decennial Census, then redraw state and Congressional districts to lock in partisan advantages. The plan was highly successful.

http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/new-hampshire
28 of 32 awarded.

B. Sanders 60.1% 145,702 13 delegates

H. Clinton 38.2% 92,531 15 delegates