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The city may get rid of the police department |
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 The Justice Department’s Ferguson report has found a pattern of racial bias. We now have our first GOP presidential candidate. And flying jets… with your mind. Here are the top stories The Justice Department has found a pattern of racial bias in policing in Ferguson. The months-long investigation into the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot by a white police officer, is expected to be released as soon as today. The coming report finds that police conduct in Ferguson routinely violated the constitutional rights of the Missouri city’s black citizens. This means that depending on the cost of fighting the DOJ allegations or adopting the reforms required, the city of Ferguson may get rid of the police department and hand the city’s law enforcement to another agency, the Huffington Post reports. Ben Carson becomes the first GOP presidential candidate. The retired neurosurgeon has formally launched an exploratory committee to decide whether he’ll run for president next year. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have created political action committees for roughly the same purpose. (The only Democrat to launch an exploratory committee so far is former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia.) 
Ben Carson at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, last week. Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo“Long before Ben Carson was a champion to social conservatives and an anathema to liberals, he was a legendary neurosurgeon and an icon of black triumph,” BuzzFeed News’ Joel Anderson writes. In this profile from last week, Anderson takes a look at whether Carson’s run for president could destroy his legacy.
When we hear that someone is "considering a run" — should we care? MILLER: In politics, “considering a run” could basically mean anything. Generally, the word signals a politician is “maybe” to “probably” running. Sometimes, it's really just delaying the inevitable announcement, allowing the politician to game the rules a little bit — getting press without the daily grind of campaigning, and raising money without the stricter finance rules around official, declared candidates. Other times it's more of a test: Presidential and (some) senatorial campaigns require tremendous financial and human resources. Can this candidate raise enough money to compete? Are donors intrigued or even pledging to support him? Will the party's best operatives be available to her? Prospective candidates basically send a flare up to see what the interest is like. And then occasionally, when politicians say they're “considering,” it's a gambit for other reasons: advancing a particular policy agenda, promoting their personal interests, and so on. So what's the standard process? What's an "exploratory committee" and is the formation of these committees customary or strategic? MILLER: The standard process has sort of been upended a little bit. For instance, everyone pretty much knows Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and others are running for president — and have known this for months. But none of these people has set up an exploratory committee, which would allow them to “test the water” (a real term in the federal regulations). The establishment of an exploratory committee generally signals, more formally, a candidate intends to run. But even that isn't the same as truly announcing a bid for president, and with the advent of a more formalized outside spending system (super PACs, leadership PACs, etc.), it's much easier for potential candidates to raise money, pay staff, conduct polls, and so forth. The next month will likely involve a number of candidates announcing their exploratory committees as kind of the big, clear suggestion they're running — or just outright announcing their bids for president. We're keeping an eye on The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case today that threatens to unravel Obamacare. If you’re thinking, “Wait, didn’t they already rule on this?” you’re not wrong. But today’s case centers on a different part of the law. In 2012, the justices upheld Obamacare by ruling that the law’s mandate that people buy health insurance is constitutional. That’s one key component of the law. The other two are insurers’ inability to reject people for pre-existing conditions and tax subsidies provided for people who can’t afford insurance. Today’s hearing focuses on the tax subsidies. The law says that tax subsidies will be available on insurance marketplaces “established by the state.” But not all states have agreed to set up their own marketplaces, so the federal government stepped in and did it for them. The law’s challengers argue those tax subsidies in those 34 states shouldn’t exist — because the marketplaces were not established by the state. What’s next? If the Supreme Court strikes down this part of the law, Obamacare would effectively be crippled. Without those tax subsidies, “millions of healthy people would lose their policies, and the shrinking of the healthy consumer pool would lead insurance companies to escalate premium prices — spiraling into the death of the ACA,” writes SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston. Did you hear about this? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress. In Tuesday’s speech, Netanyahu warned against the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, saying the current deal all but guarantees Iran will get nuclear weapons. The deadline for negotiations is at the end of the month. We found this piece useful, from The New York Times, which looks at what’s at stake for each of the key players in the nuclear deal and what an agreement might look like. The Department of Homeland Security will be funded. The House passed a bill funding the department until the end of September without restrictions on President Obama’s immigration plans, USA Today reports. GOP lawmakers have been using the extension of DHS funding as leverage in the battle with congressional Democrats to overturn Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which would shield about 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. David Petraeus to plead guilty for leaking classified information. The former CIA director was accused of unlawfully disclosing confidential information in 2011 to his biographer, Paula Broadwell. He will avoid a trial but may face up to a year in prison. Remember what Katherine told us up there? Well, our editor-in-chief Ben Smith pressed a likely campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton and got him to say, “when I am in charge of the campaign I will return your calls.” So there you go, Clinton is running for president — not if, but when.
Another sexual assault allegation against Bill Cosby. The assault took place in 1978 at Cosby’s family home in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, according to an exclusive report by BuzzFeed News’ Katie Baker. More than 30 women have now publicly accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them. How Reddit is changing suicide intervention. Traditional suicide hotlines depend on the depressed seeking out a lone sympathetic ear. Digital communities like Reddit work the opposite way: “You’ve already found people who seem to understand you,” Slate’s Amanda Hess writes. The friendships you make with strangers over the internet are real. “Intimacy now develops in both digital and physical realms,” Kyle Chayka writes in The New Republic. And it shifts freely between the two spaces. Happy Wednesday A quadriplegic woman flew an F-35 fighter jet simulator with nothing but her thoughts, Defense Tech reports. Jan Scheuermann, a patient for an experimental Pentagon robotics program, had electrodes implanted in her brain to control a robotic arm. Welcome to the DANGER ZONE.
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