By Artur Davis, on Thu May 3, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  Washington is a city that loves to see itself on the television screen. Unlike New York or Los Angeles, neither of which is parochial or insecure enough to revel in the attention, the capital loves any affirmation of its glamour; it still takes quiet offense at the barb that it is Hollywood for powerful people who are simultaneously ugly and dull. So, it is no surprise that ABC’s late season series “Scandal”, which tries hard to inject some wit and sexiness into the conventional account of political tawdriness and cover-up, is buzz-worthy in certain sectors of the District. It helps that the show breaks genuine historic ground at the same time.
Most descriptions of “Scandal” have rightly accentuated the ground-breaking part: the casting of an African American woman (Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope) in the starring role in a drama is a development that has not happened either since Diahann Carroll appeared in “Julia”, or, perhaps, since Regina Taylor shared the lead role in the underrated and elegant “I’ll Fly Away”. (At this rate, a ten year old black girl will have her moment by the time I turn 65). It’s a weird—make it maddening, inexcusable thing—that there is still history to be made in the choice to cast a black woman in the lead, but it is unmistakable boldness on ABC’s part. Only three times in the life of our culture has a “big 4” television network trusted a black woman in an up-front role without a laugh track, and ABC to its credit ups the ante by rendering a narrative that has next to nothing to do with race or reimagining the culture of discrimination: no small thing in an industry that still makes movies about maids.
 Olivia Pope is no sacrificing, modest victim of limitations. She is a stylish, equally lionized and feared practitioner of crisis management, which in the mythology of “Scandal”, is the business of burying the secrets of the high and mighty. (as to the impressionable among you, be advised that the real-life version of the profession has more to do with debunking corporate whistleblowers, spinning CEO demotions, and messaging sudden stock deflation). If you are the kind of viewer who catches the stray details in dialogue, it seems that Pope is a Republican—albeit, the moderate, feminist, non Tea Party loving kind. She was an instrumental member of the campaign team that elected the incumbent president, with whom she also shared a bed in between strategy sessions (a disclosure that was only slyly alluded to in the series trailer and which in a more intricate plot might have been late season cliff-hanger material, but which was offered up much too promptly within the opening hour).
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: ABC’s “Scandal”: The Bland & The Beautiful
By Jimmy Dahroug, on Thu May 3, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  Despite the recent GOP filibuster to block passage of the Buffett Rule in the Senate, the Whitehouse and the Democratic Party have vowed to continue the debate. While the proposal’s popularity does benefit President Obama in his bid for reelection, the Buffett Rule has merit because it is about fundamental fairness for taxpayers.
The Buffett Rule originated from Warren Buffett’s example of how the second richest man in the United States pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Warren Buffett does not pay the bulk of his annual income in actual income taxes. Buffett only pays an effective income tax rate of about 15 percent because he is compensated in stocks from his company. Under the current system, an estimated 55,000 millionaires use this loophole in the United States to pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class workers.
 The proposed legislation stipulates that a taxpayer who earns at least one million dollars pay at least a 30 percent tax rate. Under the current system at least a quarter of all millionaires pay a lower tax rate than millions of middle class workers.
It is important to point out that the legislation does not raise the capital gains tax rate itself. The Buffett rule targets the loophole where individuals essentially make their annual income from capital gains, and in turn benefit from the lower rate of 15 percent. They include individuals who purposely choose to take compensation as stocks rather than salaried income, so that they will pay a lower tax rate than the rest of the people in their income tax bracket.
Read the rest of…
Jimmy Dahroug: The Case for the Buffet Rule
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Wed May 2, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
iPad + 2 Year Old + Amazon 1-Click Ordering = [picture]
Your weekly dose of animals being cute. [picture]
Just two raccoon in a canoe. [picture]
Nope. Let the mailman deal with it. [picture]
Fridge customization [picture]
How much did I drink last night? [picture]
Chris Bosh [gif]
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed May 2, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET  We’ve been together now for just over 30 years.
I remember our first weekend together. I was just 17 and it was late. And I found you and it’s been a love affair ever since.
Oh sure…there’s been disappointments….periods of boredom and wishing your were different.
Yet you would always finds way to surprise me. To keep it fresh. We grew and changed in our own individual ways — and still stayed together.
That first late night 30 years ago I knew you were special. That you were somehow made with me in mind.
And we’re still together –and I hope that never changes.
Thank you, Taco Bell.
By Jeff Smith, on Wed May 2, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  As a former state senator who served prison time for lying about a campaign finance violation of approximately $10K, I unfortunately have a unique perspective on the John Edwards imbroglio – and also on the broader issues of campaign finance law, selective prosecution, and budget priorities in a time of scarcity.
If John Edwards goes to prison, then many other politicians should join him, according to the Department of Justice’s logic.
A candidate who innocuously accepts a second-hand sportcoat from a supporter who laments the candidate’s ill-fitting blazer, or accepts a free haircut from a friendly barber who understands the importance of candidate’s presentation – but doesn’t report them on quarterly contribution reporting form – has broken the law just as John Edwards did, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.
 (FEC rules state that any gift to a federal candidate that is meant to influence an election and which has not been given routinely prior to the benefactor’s candidacy must be reported.)
But if the DOJ has anything to say about it, there will be a precedent set for candidates, even political neophytes who know little about the intricacies of federal campaign finance law.
Any failure to report such gifts would merit a felony charge and, potentially, prison time.
Read the rest of…
Jeff Smith: Is John Edwards a Criminal Or Just a Jerk?
By Artur Davis, on Wed May 2, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET I have a suspicion that the loathing toward John Edwards in Democratic circles is a kind of remorse toward a path that was almost taken. Another two days of campaigning in Iowa in 2004 and he might well have won there instead of coming in a close second; Iowa was in his reach again four years later and could have fallen his way had the late Obama surge been just a little weaker, or if the Jeremiah Wright tapes had more timely surfaced. Politics is made of those hair-length turns of fate; but there was more to it than some near misses with Edwards. For tantalizing moments in his career, he seemed unstoppable—a preternaturally smooth orator, but also a walking narrative of middle class aspiration who breathed passion into the old liberal idea that the powerful are lording over the powerless. The man who collapsed in a sex scandal came quite close to seducing a party to make him its savior.
Many Democrats know just how close, and in a complex way, they hate Edwards for it. The anger is compounded by the fact that part of his lie involved a marriage to a woman who died valiantly; and then there is the pathological depth of the lies, and the determined way he repeated them.
 But the most legitimate disdain and righteous anger is not a calculus that should drive prosecutorial discretion. If it were, the investment banks who jiggered their books to disguise their leveraged, insecure portfolios, and who helped wreck an economy, would have long faced their day in the criminal dock. The lending institutions who subsidized loans with no documentation, and whose underlings fudged signatures, would have surely faced fraud charges. The executives who told Congress that Fannie and Freddie steered clear of subprime, the senior Goldman management team whose testimony about their securitization of risk has been so undercut by the facts, would all have been hauled off on perjury charges. The fact that the sordid trail just described has not generated one prosecution is defended, and excused, on the ground that the power of indictment is not for morally clear but gray legal areas.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: The Troubling Choice to Try John Edwards
By Kristen Hamilton, RP Staff, on Tue May 1, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
Thank me later: your easy spring-cleaning guide. [Racked]
Did you know? Neon nail polish is illegal in the U.S. [SheFinds]
Beauty is pain and sometimes…nasty: snail slime may be the next big thing in beauty. [Refinery29]
Latest Ray-Ban’s ad features gay couple. [Huffington Post]
Sad news: Betsey Johnson’s “Betsyville” has become “Bankruptcyville.” [The Cut]
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue May 1, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET Great moments in family conversations.
My wife, my son (a high school senior) and I went out for dinner last night.
As is often is the case, my son and wife were having a conversation and I felt like a 6th man on the bench who may get playing time if either began to tire.
My son was excitedly—yet matter-of-factly—explaining that he was learning in school about anthropology and that polygamy was superior to monogamy as a societal partnering arrangement.
My wife, Rebecca, excitedly—yet matter-of-factly (and a little defensively)—was willing to argue for monogamy. I sat entranced though pretending to be more interested in picking through my salad.
When my son couldn’t think of the word for women having multiple husbands, I chimed in from the bench, “polyandry.”
Although neither side was tiring, I was about to get some playing time. “So, John, what do you think?” my beloved wife, Rebecca, queried with that tone that simultaneously reminded me both of the first time I heard the term “united front” and the first time I slept on the couch.
I glanced at my son who I’ve played enough basketball with to develop head signals. Although we never had a head signal for an alley-oop dunk (since neither of us can dunk), the look he gave me would have been it.
He was saying to me, “C’mon dad, I got your back. Let’s have some fun with mom.” It was a touching father-son moment but it was time for me to choose a side.
Of course, I believe in monogamy. Always have and always will. But that wasn’t the decision I was faced with.
The decision was, At what point do you make peace with the fact—even if it’s just for fun—that you will never, ever make an alley-oop dunk in life?
Yesterday was that day for me.
By RP Staff, on Tue May 1, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET Delaware Online has the scoop on contributing RP Greg Harris:
 An Ohio former elected official is coming to work in Delaware because he was “awarded a major contract with a nonprofit group in Delaware that seeks to improve public education in that state,” according to an Ohio newspaper article.
Greg Harris, a Democrat, dropped out of running for commissioner in an Ohio county after his firm was awarded the contract, according to City Beat. The story does not name where he’s headed to in Delaware.
I was checking out his Twitter account this evening. He posts a lot about education, including Delaware news. I’m not sure where he leans in the ed reform debate, but he get a retweet from Diane Ravitch on April 2. On the other hand, he’s also tweeted links to theRodel Foundation blog.
By RP Nation, on Tue May 1, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  Walking through the metal detector at the Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration, I thought to myself, “Funny how just a few years ago, we never would have experienced this.” My children, 5, 7, and 9 years old, see security all the time. All our synagogue doors and Jewish agency doors are locked. You need to buzz and state your name to the camera, before you are allowed entrance. This is the only world my children will ever know.
I remember when synagogue was a safe place. I never worried about anyone bringing in a gun or explosives. I never heard the words “terrorist attack,” unless of course, it pertained to Israel. But, not in this country. Not in my home. Not in my synagogue, my school, nowhere within the community I knew. All my children will ever know, is that we need a police presence to “make sure everything is ok and that everyone is safe.”
At least, that is what I tell them. I don’t tell them about the ignorant people who hate us simply because we are Jewish. I don’t tell them about those who distort their own religious beliefs in an effort to destroy others who aren’t like them. I don’t tell them about the evil that persists in the world. I only tell them that “we are safe.” Of course, safety is relative.
They have asked me, “Why is our country at war?” “Who was Osama bin Laden?” “Why do they hate us?” I do not lie to them. I answer in age-appropriate ways, sharing just enough to satisfy their need to know. What can I really say other than, “There is no need to worry.” And, yet, I do tell them to be cautious of strangers and not to leave their brothers alone when they visit a public restroom or run with their friends in the neighborhood. I walk that fine line, trying to prepare them for the realities of life without terrifying them. But, we can’t be prepared for everything.
I know we all experience tragedy. For me, it was losing my mother to cancer way before her time. And then following her death, my father was so terrified of being alone that he made unwise, disturbing choices that separated him from his family, resulting in my losing him, too. A father I was once very close to. It is difficult learning to mourn a father who is still living.
I know that everyone’s life experiences are different. They challenge us, they strengthen us. They shape who we are and who we will become. For my children, it will be no different. Nor do I want to protect them from that journey. I have hope and faith that my husband and I are building a healthy foundation upon which they will make their choices and live their lives. And, yet, I can’t help but worry about the tragedies they will face and hope that it will not tarnish them, nor spoil them to the beauty in the world.
I think about my children’s future. Their children’s future. And, I’m scared. I worry. What will their world look like? Will it be safer than yesterday, or worse than today? I fear for the state of the world, and I’m concerned for my children’s personal well-being.
Only one thing is certain. All my children will ever know is that I love them. They are my priority. In a world with such uncertainty, this one thing is certain. It is everlasting. I tell them that my number one job, my privilege, is to take care of them and keep them safe. God willing, I will succeed. God willing, we will all succeed in making tomorrow better, and safer than today.
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Olivia Pope is no sacrificing, modest victim of limitations. She is a stylish, equally lionized and feared practitioner of crisis management, which in the mythology of “Scandal”, is the business of burying the secrets of the high and mighty. (as to the impressionable among you, be advised that the real-life version of the profession has more to do with debunking corporate whistleblowers, spinning CEO demotions, and messaging sudden stock deflation). If you are the kind of viewer who catches the stray details in dialogue, it seems that Pope is a Republican—albeit, the moderate, feminist, non Tea Party loving kind. She was an instrumental member of the campaign team that elected the incumbent president, with whom she also shared a bed in between strategy sessions (a disclosure that was only slyly alluded to in the series trailer and which in a more intricate plot might have been late season cliff-hanger material, but which was offered up much too promptly within the opening hour). 
