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April 2015

The drama surrounding the official prisoner swap in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has left a lot of Americans wondering just what happened in the days leading up to Bergdahl's going AWOL and eventual capture by the Taliban back in 2009. Sgt. Bergdahl is now on trial on counts for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy; if convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. His attorneys, however, aren't prepared to go down without a fight. Defense counsel is planning to argue that Bergdahl couldn't be a deserter because it was never his intention to desert. Instead, they say Bergdahl simply wanted to leave and go to the closest forward operating base to lodge a complaint against his unit. Bergdahl's platoon mates' response? One man says its "asinine." Watch:

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson may have called for changes to his state's recently-passed religious freedom legislation, but he certainly isn't giving activists and the press a free pass to paint Arkansas' RFRA with the wrong brush. "This is a bill that in ordinary times would not be controversial, but these are not ordinary times," he said during a press briefing earlier today. Hutchinson didn't concede to arguments made by progressives and LGBT activists that the bill is a tool businesses can use to facilitate discrimination against gay people, but he did publicly ask the legislature to clarify language in the bill. From the AP:
"What is important from an Arkansas standpoint is one, we get the right balance and secondly, we make sure that we communicate we're not going to be a state that fails to recognize the diversity of our workplace, our economy and our future," Hutchinson said at a news conference at the state Capitol. Hutchinson initially supported the bill and on Tuesday his office had said he planned to sign it into law.

I just booked my plane tickets to visit Israel in May. Maybe I'll call it an Apology Tour. I'll let Israelis know that the current administration, with its childish chickens**t taunting treatment of Israel, does not represent the American people, who overwhelmingly support Israel. (Will this violate the Logan Act?) Fortunately, I have the speech already written for me:
In recent years we've allowed our Alliance to drift. I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there's something more that has crept into our relationship. In America, there's a failure to appreciate [Israeli's] leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic [nation] and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

Martin O'Malley has made it pretty clear that he expects to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for President in 2016. While most of the media is frothing over the Indiana/RFRA issue, O'Malley is quietly going around, giving interviews and meeting with people (and likely donors). O'Malley represents a challenge from the left for Hillary that doesn't come with the polarization that accompanies Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Hillary email scandal is not going away as more information drips out every day that contradicts the claims she made in that now famous press conference at the UN. On Tuesday O'Malley was asked about the email scandal and essentially said if she has nothing to hide than she shouldn't have an issue talking about it: https://youtu.be/E89s8ElHry0?t=1m59s

Each day brings a new reason to be happy about Harry Reid's impending retirement. The newest one is his outright admission that he used his position as senate leader to dishonestly smear Mitt Romney in the run-up to the 2012 election. Even the reliably liberal Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post is disgusted:
Harry Reid’s appalling defense of his attack on Mitt Romney’s tax record One of the more outlandish moments of the 2012 campaign came when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went to the floor of the world's greatest deliberative body and accused GOP nominee Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes at all for the past 10 years. Reid's evidence? Someone had told him. (That "someone" is alleged to be Jon Huntsman, father of the former Utah governor. Huntsman denies involvement.)... And yet, the clip above shows Reid, in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, not only refusing to apologize for the claim but defending it — in a very weird way.