A panel from “March,” a series of graphic novels that follow a young John Lewis from his childhood to becoming a leader in the civil rights movement.Credit topshelfcomix
Representative John Lewis spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, worked alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and serves as senior chief deputy whip in Congress. On Thursday, he got on Facebook to talk
about a new passion: comic books.
“March,” a series of graphic novels, follows a young John Lewis from his childhood in Alabama to becoming a leader in the movement to use nonviolence to stir social change. He isn’t the
first civil rights leader to receive such treatment. The comic book “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” was published in 1957 and 1958.
“The book was 14 pages,” Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, said during a chat at Facebook headquarters. “This book had a tremendous influence on me and hundreds of thousands of other young
people,” he said. “We used this book as a guide during the city movement. It taught us the way of peace, love and nonviolence.”
“March” is now required reading for freshmen at Georgia State University and Michigan State University. It has also been incorporated into the curriculum at schools in more than 30 states. Book
2 is expected to be issued in January.
“This book,” Mr. Lewis said, “tells us, all of us, the very young, that we have an obligation, a mission and a mandate to do what we can to leave this planet a little more peaceful, a little
greener, a little more respectful and a little more human.”
Senator John Cornyn, at the Texas Tribune’s annual festival in Austin, complained about being outspent by Democrats and 'super PACs'.Credit Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated Press
Nearly every election year, often about this time, top officials in one of the two political parties fret publicly about being at a financial disadvantage.
“I’m optimistic,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said in an interview this weekend. “But when the Democrats are spending a lot more money than Republican
candidates – I know the Republicans are supposed to be the party with all the bucks – the truth is the Democrats and the ‘super PACs’ and the Democratic campaign committees are
outspending us.”
Mr. Cornyn, who appeared at The Texas Tribune’s annual politicalpalooza in Austin, added that he thought the election was still looking favorable for Republicans, but couldn’t help returning to
that nagging money issue.
“If they can characterize races and our candidates in a way we can’t respond to, that’s a problem,” he said.
Such anxiety is rooted in both genuine concern and more than a little calculation. There is no doubt that Mr. Cornyn looks at the money Democratic candidates and outside groups are spending and becomes worried
about whether Republicans may fall short of gaining the majority. But his comments also amount to a warning message to his party’s donors to step it up.
Mr. Cornyn’s fellow Texan, Karl Rove, did much the same in his weekly Wall Street Journal column on Thursday, writing that Republican donors needed to “open their wallets to candidates whom they
may have never met” if they want an end to Democratic rule in the Senate.
Todd Lockwood, a supporter who owned a music studio, made the suggestion, and Mr. Sanders — like a rapper saluting the generation before him, the old school — chose five songs that Pete Seeger
fans would have recognized in the early 1960s.
As it turned out, speechmaking may have been Mr. Sanders’s calling, because singing definitely was not. So Mr. Lockwood gathered dozens of local singers and players for a latter-day hootenanny-cum-political
rally. The music lands somewhere between the 1960s group-sing of the New Christy Minstrels, an upbeat pop-gospel choir, and the heartland righteousness of Bruce Springsteen.
As the band strummed and the chorus chimed in, Mr. Sanders declaimed some of the verses — more schoolteacher than rapper — and preached about civil rights, war and economics.
Along with “We Shall Overcome,” the album includes Mr. Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” the spiritual
“Oh Freedom” and another song from the Seeger repertory, “The Banks Are Made of Marble,” written in the late 1940s by a disgruntled farmer, Les Rice. Well before Occupy Wall Street, the song is a blast at income inequality, seconded by Mr. Sanders’s oratory: “Throughout most of
human history, society has been divided between the few who have enormous wealth and enormous power and the many who struggle each day just to survive.”
Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope and Tony Goldwyn as Fitzgerald Grant III, President of the United States in a scene from "Scandal."Credit Eric McCandless/ABC
The characters on Shonda Rhimes’s “Scandal” have fixed presidential elections, murdered Supreme Court justices and had affairs in the White House. But the writer’s room, she said,
is even wilder.
“It’s an intense place full of really dark and twisted people,” Ms. Rhimes said to a wave of laughter on Friday, when she was a guest lecturer for a question-and-answer session put on by
the Smithsonian Associates. It was held at the Museum of Natural History, just steps away from the Justice Department, where many of Ms. Rhimes’s characters have done dark and twisted things.
She’s one of Hollywood’s most powerful show runners, responsible for hits like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice” and, of course, “Scandal,” the
political soap opera that often takes over Twitter timelines on Thursday nights. On Thursday, a new show that she’s producing, “How to Get Away With Murder,” will have its premiere on
ABC, potentially helping to solidify her as the network’s most valuable player — its prime-time golden child. But even with a string of wins, her goals remain lofty.
“I now actually understand the power of television,” she said, noting the story arc from the first season about the rigged election, and asserting that it helped some of her viewers better understand
the electoral process. “Right now women are earning seventy cents on the dollar to men. We say that on the show, and people start to understand that it’s actually true. There are little things
you can do that actually change the way people think about the world and educate them in ways they didn’t know before.”
Supporters of Hillary Clinton in Iowa posed with cardboard cutouts in early September. Credit Jim Young/Reuters
Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that she’ll likely announce a decision about running for president sometime next year. But from the sound of things, she might be trying out a campaign slogan already.
In a Monday e-mail titled “A Choice & A Chance,” Mrs. Clinton dove right into the political fray, urging Democrats to make a donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“This November, we have a clear choice — and a chance,” Mrs. Clinton wrote. “It’s a chance to elect Democrats to Congress who will fight for us every day.”
The phrasing echoes remarks Mrs. Clinton has made in other appearances recently, including at a steak fry in Iowa last week, where she proclaimed that “in just 50 days Iowans have a choice to make —
a choice and a chance — a choice between the guardians of gridlock and the champions of shared opportunity and shared prosperity.”
A few days later, at a women’s forum in Washington, she used the same line, reminding voters of the “choice and chance” to steer issues such as equal pay, health and education.
While Mrs. Clinton has not tipped her hand, she certainly has not closed any doors either.
Whenever Washington dysfunction reaches fever pitch, it can be comforting to find perspective in times when the union was really broken — like during the Civil War.
On this day in 1862, less than a week after Antietam, the bloodiest day of battle in American history, a very broken nation came a step closer to healing.
The Union’s win at Antietam paved the way for President Abraham Lincoln to announce that he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in rebel states would be freed on Jan. 1, 1863.
The freeing of slaves replenished the Union’s armed forces, as more than 200,000 of them went on to join the Army and Navy. It also made the Civil War more explicitly about ending slavery, tarnishing
the Confederacy’s alliances with antislavery countries such as France and Britain.
The New York Times published Mr. Lincoln’s full statement on the left column of the front page under the headline “Highly Important.”
All slaves of those “engaged in rebellion” against the government “shall be forever free of prior servitude and not again held as slaves,” Mr. Lincoln said.
A little more than three months later, he signed the proclamation.
A member of the Secret Service Uniformed Division at the White House on Monday.Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press
After the latest incursion at the White House, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has scheduled a hearing on Secret Service operations for next Tuesday.
Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the national security subcommittee, said Monday afternoon that he had been organizing the hearing and that the director of the Secret Service,
Julia A. Pierson, had been invited to testify.
“And I expect her to show up,” Mr. Chaffetz said. “I think the public deserves to know how someone can jump the fence unimpeded all the way to the White House.”
The “kissing congressman” is hoping family forgiveness translates to forgiveness among the Louisiana electorate.
Representative Vance McAllister, the Louisiana Republican whose political career nearly ended when a surveillance video surfaced this year showing him smooching a staff member, has released a new ad featuring
his wife, Kelly, titled “Blessed.”
“Life is filled with ups and downs,” Mr. McAllister says, acknowledging the scandal but not making any direct references to it as pictures of his family appear.
“I’m blessed to have a husband who owns up to his mistakes, never gives up, always fighting for the good people of Louisiana,” Ms. McAllister adds, stealing glances with her husband in between
speaking to the camera.
The kissing episode had at one time seemed to doom Mr. McAllister’s career. After the video was posted in April, he announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election before reversing course a few weeks later and saying that he would indeed run,
after receiving the “strong support” of his wife.
President Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House in March. Their visits are often characterized by a lack of warmth.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
The White House said Monday that President Obama would meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Oct. 1 in Washington.
Mr. Obama will also hold a series of bilateral meetings during the United Nations General Assembly this week, including on Wednesday with the new Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. On Thursday Mr. Obama
is scheduled to meet separately with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia.
Omar GonzalezCredit Jerry Murphy, via Associated Press
The man who scaled the White House fence on Friday and ran into the front door of the presidential residence had been arrested by Virginia State Police in July with a cache of automatic weapons, a sniper rifle
and “a map of Washington, D.C., with writing and a line drawn to the White House,” law enforcement officials said.
Omar Gonzalez of Texas was arrested driving a 1996 Ford Bronco after leading Virginia troopers on a high-speed pursuit on Interstate 81 in southwest Virginia.
Inside the car, officials found a trove of weapons, including a .45-caliber automatic with two loaded magazines; a Smith & Wesson .380-caliber automatic with two loaded magazines; and a 12-gauge shotgun,
according to an inventory released by the state police.
Officials said Mr. Gonzalez was charged with reckless driving, one felony count of eluding police and possession of a sawed-off shotgun.
A reminder that all you need to form a “super PAC” is a bank account and a stamp: Three Pennsylvania law students have formed Americans for Better Brewing,
a new super PAC presumably devoted to, well, higher quality beer. The committee, also known as Six-PAC, is based in Newville, Pa., not far from Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law in Carlisle, where
the PAC’s “officers” are students, according to postings on various social networks. No word on whether student beer money will be used to provide funding.
Judge Michael BoggsCredit John Disney/The Daily Report
As First Draft reported this morning, Michael Boggs’s prospects of being confirmed to the federal bench in Georgia are not looking good.
But despite opposition from Democrats, President Obama is standing by his nominee.
Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said that “the president believes that Judge Boggs has the qualifications to serve in this role,” and that he would not ask him to withdraw.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, who leads the Judiciary Committee, told First Draft that it had become clear after talking to his colleagues that Judge Boggs, under fire from Democrats for his conservative positions,
could not win committee support.
If Judge Boggs is not confirmed before his nomination expires at the end of the year, Mr. Obama will be placed in the awkward position of deciding whether to renominate him.
When President Obama addresses the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday, he won’t be announcing a breakthrough on environmental policy. Opposition in Congress to carbon taxes remains high, and expectations
for progress around the world are low, as rich and poor countries continue to clash over long-simmering environmental disputes.
But White House officials on Sunday night did say that Mr. Obama would point to the progress the United States has made during his administration as part of a three-part speech outlining future action. The first
part will focus on his own Climate Action Plan, including proposed regulations to reduce emissions from coal plants. The second part will seek to prod his counterparts in other countries to work toward a
global emissions framework in the coming year. And in the third part, the president will announce a series of measures aimed at harnessing American technical and scientific knowledge to help developing countries
combat climate challenges.
The speech will take place against a backdrop of heightened public interest and diminished political focus. Over the weekend, demonstrators in New York and in cities around the globe called for action to confront
the planet’s warming. But the prospect of meaningful action appears diminished, with key world leaders — including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Xi Jinping of China and Prime
Minister Narendra Modi of India, who will be in New York for the United Nations General Assembly — skipping the climate meeting entirely.
On Friday, the Secret Service evacuated the White House, where security changes may include bag checks for tourists.Credit Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Updated, 2:34 p.m. |
The White House may not be changing the locks, but it now plans to use them more often.
After an intruder scaled the fence, scrambled across the lawn and burst through the front door of the North Portico, the White House said on Monday that it now plans to lock that entrance when no one is using
it.
“On a regular basis, there are thousands of people that go in and out of that door,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said at his daily briefing. “There are staffers here at
the White House who are responsible for doing work, either in the East Wing or in the residence. They will occasionally use that door as well. But I can tell you that after Friday night’s incident,
that when the door is not in use, that that will be secure.”
Mr. Earnest said that the episode did not go unnoticed by President Obama even though he had left beforehand for Camp David. Mr. Obama was “obviously concerned” and the Secret Service was conducting
a security review of the White House complex, Mr. Earnest said.
“Providing security at the White House is a complicated business,” Mr. Earnest said, noting that it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Washington and is also a hub of government
operations.
The Secret Service is reconsidering its staffing levels and looking at how best to deploy its resources inside and outside the White House, Mr. Earnest said, declining to offer a timeline for any changes.
The Times’s Michael S. Schmidt reported on Sunday that the Secret Service is considering screening tourists
and other visitors at checkpoints before they enter the public areas in front of the White House.
Follow the rest of the White House briefing live here:
Gabrielle Giffords is about to find out just what sort of leeway being the nation’s most recognizable — and well liked — gunshot victim gives you when it comes to political attack ads.
Ms. Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in the head at a 2011 campaign event, has worked tirelessly to advance stricter gun laws. But now, some are saying her gun control “super
PAC,” Americans for Responsible Solutions, may have gone too far.
The group is running ads to help 2014 candidates who support stricter gun laws, including Representative Ron Barber, an Arizona Democrat who worked for Ms. Giffords and was also injured in the shooting before
replacing her in Congress. In perhaps the most emotional ad, a mother named Vicki, puffy-eyed and tearful, recounts how her daughter and her husband became victims of gun violence.
“My daughter was just 19 when she told her boyfriend their relationship was over,” said Vicki, choking up. “And he got a gun and shot her and my husband.”
Vicki then turns her attention to Mr. Barber’s Republican opponent, Martha McSally, a fierce proponent of gun rights. “Martha McSally opposes making it harder for stalkers to get a gun,”
she says.
On Tuesday, Politico weighed in with an article headlined “Gabby Giffords Gets Mean,” chronicling
Ms. Giffords’s emergence as a “ruthless attack dog.”
When the Supreme Court finally takes up the issue of same-sex marriage, it will no doubt make history. And the battle for the history books is a fierce one for America’s legal luminaries.
As The Times’s Adam Liptak reports, some of the nation’s
best lawyers are jockeying for position to make the pitch that their case is the best one to establish a national right for same-sex couples to wed.
Battling for a place in the ages, some of the best lawyers in the nation have spent many pages arguing that their case was the right one in which to establish a nationwide right to same-sex marriage.
First Draft context: If the Republicans were to win control of the Senate in November, Senator Mitch McConnell would most likely become Senate majority leader, not speaker of the House.
However, there is no explicit rule that the speaker be a member of the House. As Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution states: “The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and
other Officers.”
Nearly half of Americans say houses of worship should express their views on social and political questions.Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times
The Pew Research Center reported Monday that 72 percent of Americans believe religion is losing its influence on American
life, a striking development in a nation where religious arguments, religious leaders and religious voting blocs have long played an important role.
While the declining influence of religion is, perhaps, a natural side effect of the declining religiosity of Americans, more surprising is that as religion fades in American culture,
many Americans regret its receding role in politics.
Nearly half of Americans — 49 percent, to be precise — say houses of worship should express their views on social and political questions, up 6 points since the 2010 midterm elections.
And 32 percent — a rising minority — say houses of worship should endorse candidates, which is currently illegal.
Photo
Credit
Other key findings of the poll: Support for allowing gay men and lesbians to marry has dropped to 49 percent, down from 54 percent in February, and 50 percent say it is a sin to engage in homosexual behavior,
up from 45 percent last year. Only 30 percent of Americans now see the Obama administration as friendly toward religion, down 9 points since 2012.
The Pew poll, conducted by telephone from Sept. 2 to 9, included 2,002 adults; it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Speaker John A. Boehner presiding over another largely unproductive session of Congress.Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
Speaker John A. Boehner opens virtually every news conference with, “Mr. President, where are the jobs?” a dig at an Obama economy that he says is still not working. But last week, he appeared
to undermine his own message when he suggested that the unemployed were not victims of failing economic policies, but of sloth.
In comments at the conservative American Enterprise Institute that are only now getting much notice, he told a questioner that a “record number of Americans” are “stuck.”
“And I think it’s our obligation to help provide the tools for them to use to bring them into the mainstream of American society. I think this idea that’s been borne out the last —
maybe out of the economy the last couple of years that, ‘You know, I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this, I think I’d just rather sit around.’
This is a very sick idea for our country.”
For the man presiding over a Congress that appears to be heading for the title of “least productive in history,” Mr. Boehner offered up a rich target with his observations. And remember, if the
113th Congress sets the standard for doing nothing, it will have beaten out the 112th — also Mr. Boehner’s.
“If anyone knows more about sitting around and doing nothing, it’s Speaker John Boehner,” said Drew Hammill, spokesman for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader.
“Just last week, Speaker Boehner’s part-time Congress made the earliest departure from Congress to the campaign trail in 54 years.”
Michael Steel, spokesman for the speaker, said Mr. Boehner’s comments referred to workers who have dropped out of the workforce after being discouraged by the inability to find work. “One of the
sad realities of the Obama economy is that – month after month – more Americans drop out of the workforce entirely than find work,” he said. “That struggle is one of the big reasons
House Republicans have acted on dozens of jobs bills that are being blocked by President Obama and Washington Democrats.”
As a four-decade veteran of the Senate and now the White House, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been in the middle of plenty of political scuffles and has seen Washington at its worst up close.
But he thinks there is a different element in the dysfunction that plagues the nation’s capital.
“Politics has become too personal,” Mr. Biden said in an interview in the White House complex. He noted that he came up in the Senate under the late Senator Mike Mansfield, who offered some lasting
advice. “He said it is always appropriate to question a man or woman’s judgment, never their motive.”
This video is the first in a series about fixing Washington that will be on First Draft.
Have a question about what seems to be an exaggerated claim in a campaign advertisement? Or the accuracy of a statement made on the trail?
Are you curious about a trend in politics, why a poll has swung a certain way or why the various Senate models are changing moment to moment?
We on First Draft are here for you. We’re reprising our real-time fact-checking effort from the 2012 presidential election, but putting a First Draft spin on it. Rather than being available only during
a debate, this political help line will be a 24/7 operation.
Simply ask a question either through Twitter, with the hashtag #askFD, or by using the form below, and we will do our best to get back to you in a reasonable time. And, if your question warrants new reporting
or fact-checking not yet done, we will respond with a post here on First Draft.
If you have specific feedback on First Draft itself, please email us.
The White House door that a knife-carrying fence jumper waltzed through on Friday night, prompting a review of procedures
by the Secret Service, is not just the entrance to one of the nation’s most supposedly secure facilities. It is also one of the most famous entryways anywhere, where world leaders are greeted and
departing presidents meet their successors.
The red carpet was rolled out from the North Portico doors when President Felipe Calderón of Mexico and his wife, Margarita Zavala, arrived in 2010. Nearly a half-century earlier, President John F. Kennedy
greeted the king of Laos, Sisavang Vatthana, at the same spot.
In March 2008, President George W. Bush did a little dance for reporters in front of the North Portico doors while he waited for the late arrival of Senator John McCain of Arizona, who had just clinched the
Republican presidential nomination. Less than a year later, Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, escorted President Obama and his wife, Michelle, through those same doors on Inauguration Day.
Officials said the famous door, with white columns on either side of it and intricate carvings of flowers in the arch above it, was left unlocked because of the frequency with which it is used and the robust
security presence around it. That policy will no doubt be part of the review.
The new poll shows that six in 10 respondents disapprove of his handling of the issue, a nearly 20-point drop from early 2013, when a comprehensive overhaul was widely seen as a political imperative for both
parties. Now, the poll indicates that the centerpiece of that effort — a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — is a losing campaign proposition, with 39 percent saying they would
be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported such an approach, compared with 30 percent who called it a positive factor.
The issue has clearly tarnished Mr. Obama in the eyes of his own party. A little more than a week after the president said he was delaying executive action on immigration until after the midterm elections, more
than one-third of Democrats joined 87 percent of Republicans and 62 percent of independents in the poll in saying they disapproved of his performance on the issue. The president fared worse on the topic
among Democrats than on any other asked about in the survey.
“Because the alternative was staying home and talking to Diana about feelings” — Michael R. Bloomberg, explaining why he returned recently to the company he founded. He was referring to Diana Taylor, his girlfriend.
Scenes from the Clinton Global Citizen Awards: Hillary Rodham Clinton riffed with Seth Meyers; Leonardo DiCaprio received the Leadership in Philanthropy award; a pregnant Chelsea Clinton spoke; and Hayat Sindi, a Saudi medical scientist, received the Leadership in Civil Society award.Credit Ray Stubblebine/European Pressphoto Agency
What do you get when you put Hollywood starlets, a couple of Nobel Peace Prize winners, chief executives of several multinational corporations, the king of Jordan and a current, a former and a potentially future
United States president together in the lobby of a middling Times Square hotel?
That’s right, it can only be the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual gathering hosted by former President Bill Clinton and his family’s charitable foundation that matches up worthy causes with
wealthy donors and private corporations, all against the backdrop of a Davos-like bacchanal of parties and panel discussions.
In addition to the billions in charitable commitments, the gathering also serves as a prime networking and people-watching arena, even more so now that Hillary Rodham Clinton is contemplating another run for
president. The event this year is likely to be the last before Mrs. Clinton makes her intentions known, leaving political observers even more attuned to the former secretary of state’s every action.
The comedian Seth Meyers kicked things off at an awards ceremony Sunday night that honored Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, and featured “The Roots and appearances by Madeleine Albright, Eva Longoria
and Randy Jackson.” Conference participants include President Obama, Mrs. Clinton, the former Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., Cindy McCain, Tony and Cherie Blair and Melinda Gates. Mr. Obama
will deliver remarks on Tuesday to close a panel discussion titled Cities as Labs of Innovation.
The theme of this year’s gathering is “Reimagining for Impact.” Not to be confused with last year’s theme, “Mobilizing for Impact,” or 2012’s theme, “Designing
for Impact.”
Senator Mark Begich of Alaska was one of just five Democratic senators who voted against a bipartisan gun control bill last year, helping to ensure its failure.
But that hasn’t prevented Dan Sullivan, Mr. Begich’s Republican opponent in the Alaska Senate race, from questioning his commitment to gun owners’ rights.
A new Sullivan campaign ad — released Monday and set to hit Alaska airwaves later this week — features a firearms instructor from the National Rifle Association, clad in a camouflage jacket, speaking
directly to the camera about her concerns with Mr. Begich.
“As a certified firearm instructor and hunter, I’m very, very frustrated with Mark Begich,” says the gun instructor, Elaina Spraker, who is from Soldotna, Alaska. “He does not represent
Alaskans or our values. How do you vote for Barack Obama’s anti-gun judges and still say you support the Second Amendment?”
The judges in question? The president’s two Supreme Court appointees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both of whom Mr. Begich supported.
Credit Left, Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; right, Christopher
Gregory/The New York Times
Good Monday morning and welcome to the inaugural edition of First Draft, your morning briefing for politics. Today, the White House is reviewing the locks on its doors, 91-year-old Bob Dole hits the campaign trail, and the Clintons mix with scientists and starlets at their annual conference.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, caused a commotion this month when she revealed in a memoir how her male colleagues felt free to comment rather vividly on her weight. The senator
came under pressure to reveal the names of the perpetrators, but declined, setting off a guessing game in Washington.
Probably the most egregious incident was when a senior senator squeezed her waist and told her: “Don’t lose too much weight now. I like my girls chubby!”
It turns out the senator was the late Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, the decorated veteran and civil rights hero, according to people with knowledge of the incident.
With his deep baritone and courtly manner, Mr. Inouye was revered by his colleagues and was a powerhouse in both Hawaii and the Senate, where he was a reliable supporter of women’s rights.
But in an all but forgotten chapter of his career, the senator had been accused of sexual misconduct: In 1992, his hairdresser said that Mr. Inouye had forced her to have sex with him.
Her accusations exploded into a campaign issue that year, and one Hawaii state senator announced that she had heard from nine other women who said they had been sexually harassed by Mr. Inouye. But the women
did not want to go forward with their claims.
A spokesman for Ms. Gillibrand would neither confirm nor deny that Mr. Inouye was the unnamed senator in the incident. Ms. Gillibrand in her book described the senator only as “one of my favorite older
members of the Senate.”
Another First Draft Exclusive: A Presidential Nomination Is Dead
The quest by President Obama to put Michael P. Boggs – who supported the Confederate flag and opposed abortion – on the federal bench in Georgia is over.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, who leads the Judiciary Committee, told us it had become clear after talking to his colleagues that Mr. Boggs, under fire from Democrats for his conservative positions,
could not win committee support.
Mr. Leahy signaled that Mr. Boggs should withdraw: “He doesn’t have the votes.”
Mr. Boggs earns the unusual distinction as the first Obama judicial nominee this term to fail because of Democratic opposition.
Nominated as part of a deal between the White House and Georgia’s Republican senators to fill a half-dozen court vacancies, Mr. Boggs was opposed by civil rights and progressive groups. He was grilled
by Democrats at a May confirmation hearing and pressed to answer additional questions in writing.
The situation was uncomfortable for Democrats, who did not want to defy the president but worried about alienating black voters they need this fall.
– Carl Hulse
Christie: Gaining Friends and Losing Weight
Behind closed doors at David Koch’s Upper East Side apartment Friday night, Gov. Chris Christie told conservative donors that he has shed 85 pounds since
undergoing weight loss surgery last year. The governor’s appearance – inside Mr. Koch’s sprawling 18-room duplex – was strictly off limits to the press, but a
guest told us that Mr. Christie was pressed by donors about his health. He did not reveal his current weight, although he said he understood he had to slim down if he wanted to move beyond Trenton. And he
brought the house down with a joke: “A doctor once told me you have to have the right relationship with the food you eat. And believe me, for many years, I had a great relationship with the
foods I ate.”
As he eyes a 2016 presidential bid, Mr. Christie has been assiduously courting Mr. Koch, founder of the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, the beneficiary of the event. And while Mr. Koch has become one
of the best known supporters of conservative causes, the apartment building at 740 Park Avenue, once called the world’s richest address, has a different political lineage: It was the childhood home
of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
– Nicholas Confessore
On Our Radar
It’s a big week for President Obama in New York, but little is expected to be accomplished on the climate front when he arrives at the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday. Opposition
in Congress to carbon taxes remains high and with global environmental disputes simmering, expectations for progress are low around the world.
The Clinton Global Initiative conference kicks off Monday and Hillary Rodham Clinton will participate in many of the festivities. While the focus remains on tackling the world’s problems,
the buzz will surely be about Mrs. Clinton’s presidential aspirations and the future of the foundation if the Clintons return to the White House.
Can Bob Dole save Senator Pat Roberts? He will give it his best on Monday when he travels to Dodge City, Kan., to help the Republican fend off a surprising challenge from an
independent candidate, Greg Orman.
Hide Your BlackBerrys and Try to Look Cool
Washington’s social set got a Silicon Valley infusion on Saturday night at a reception for Megan Smith, the just-arrived White House chief technology officer and former Google executive,
at the home of the communications consultant Hillary Rosen. Al Hunt of Bloomberg News and his wife, Judy Woodruff of PBS, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Victoria Reggie Kennedy all mingled
with techies, including the journalist Kara Swisher and Fred Humphries, Microsoft’s D.C. lobbyist. Ms. Smith, 49, an M.I.T.-trained engineer who led some of Google’s most spectacular innovations,
like its drone delivery project in the Australian outback, is still adjusting to life in less-than-cutting-edge Washington. She took her fourth grader to see her new government office and he was stunned
by her “new” desktop computer. “He’d never seen a computer that big,” she cracked.
– Carl Hulse
Our Favorite Reads From Elsewhere
The editorial board at The Wichita Eagle, watching national reporters descend on Kansas to cover the unusual turns in the Senate race there, has decided it’s had enough. “The novelty of seeing Kansas at the center of the fight over U.S. Senate control is wearing off,” the paper said Sunday in an editorial.
“Gabby Giffords gets mean,” Politico says, pointing to a series of commercials
her “super PAC” has aired against candidates who oppose certain gun restrictions.
Michael Barone, in The New York Post, says Republicans are crippled by the “hostility or incomprehension of old-line
media.”
Newt Gingrich used to love labeling President Obama as a “Saul Alinsky radical.” But new letters unearthed by The Washington Free Beacon reveal that Hillary Rodham Clinton had strong ties to the Chicago activist during her college and law school years.
And “Madam Secretary” made its long-awaited debut on CBS Sunday night. The Hollywood Reporter’s reviewer felt that some kinks still need working out but that the star, Téa Leoni, could hold the D.C. drama together while it finds its way.
Monday marks the debut of First Draft, a new fast-paced digital source for all things politics and policy from The New York Times.
First Draft will begin each day with a morning newsletter that sets the agenda for the political world in Washington and beyond. It then becomes a continuously updated
news feed, available at NYTimes.com/FirstDraft, that will marshal the resources of the Washington Bureau and the Times political
reporting staff to capture what is happening from the capital to the campaign trail.
Readers can come to First Draft throughout the day for breaking political news, campaign color, expert analysis and lighter takes on Washington personalities. The goal is to inform
and entertain with sharp writing, video, graphics and photography, and provide a digital window into the nation’s political tumult. We will even take readers behind the story
and allow them to directly interact with the Times political team.
Journalism has long been known as the first draft of history. This is our First Draft of that first draft.
