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1.) BREAKING: Europe longs to be America — We all know that deep down, no matter how much they protest it, Europeans really want to be like Americans. TheDC’s Alex Pappas reveals yet another example of this:
“Believe it or not, but in the age of tea party disgust with Washington politicians, Congress is actually still quite popular. Except not in America. Gallup on Friday revealed that only 10 percent of Americans approved of Congress, the lowest number ever recorded. But take a trip across the Atlantic, and you’ll find something different. Here at the seat of the European Parliament, on France’s border with Germany, politicians and officials with the European parliamentary system openly admit that they would like to emulate America’s political and legislative system.”
2.)Cheney chop — Dick Cheney doesn’t much like Edward Snowden. TheDC’s Katie McHugh reports:
“Former Vice President Dick Cheney declared National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden ‘a traitor’ and questioned whether Snowden acted alone or coordinated with the Chinese government as a spy on ‘Fox News Sunday’ this weekend. … ‘I’m deeply suspicious obviously because he went to China,’ Cheney told host Chris Wallace. ‘That’s not a place where you ordinarily want to go if you’re interested in freedom and liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.'”
No matter where you stand on the issue, it does seem to be getting harder to support Snowden. He has gone from revealing information that supposedly concerned him about the NSA potentially spying on Americans domestically to revealing info on the NSA spying on Russian leaders, which is what the NSA is supposed to do. And he is doing all of this from Hong Kong, which is a Special Administration Region of China. You may have heard that China is not among the most open and freest place in the world.
3.) Blabber slayer? — Alan Grayson has a challenger. TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein reports:
“If Jorge Bonilla has his way, the most colorful Democrat in the House of Representatives will no longer have anyone to represent come 2015. Earlier this month, Bonilla, a court interpreter and military veteran, announced he was entering the race to challenge Alan Grayson, the loud-mouth Florida congressman who infamously declared on the House floor during his first stint in Congress that the Republican health care plan was for sick people to ‘die quickly.’ That comment was just one of Grayson’s many ‘hits.’ ‘I think the incumbent poses a very interesting contrast,’ Bonilla told The Daily Caller at the Tortilla Coast restaurant on Capitol Hill last week while he was in town ‘reaching out’ and introducing himself to members of the Florida congressional delegation. ‘Here’s a guy — smart guy — who went to Harvard Law, who went to [Harvard’s] Kennedy [School of Government], who’s a trained economist, who has worked in telecom, in a government highly regulated industry, who has acquitted himself well, and who also then comes into politics, enters the political arena, and goes into all this bombast and all this blabber,’ Bonilla said of Grayson.”
You might say Alan Grayson is a less-than-pleasant figure. In fact, he’s the type of guy that if you were given a choice between having a nice dinner with him or stabbing yourself in the eye, the eye stab would sound mighty appealing.
4.) McConnell’s thorn — David Adams is the reason politics is so entertaining. TheDC’s Alexis Levinson reports:
“A Kentucky Republican operative named David Adams is doing everything he can to drive the re-election campaign for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell crazy. … [Adams says] ‘I aspire to be the kind of person that they lock in a cage in a basement and throw raw meat at me … three times a day and let me out to fight for freedom and liberty, on occasion. That’s the kind of person that I want to be. So if anybody wants to try to nip at my heels to prevent me from doing that, have at it.'”
Look, Adams seems like he’s probably an annoying gadfly. According to sources in the article, he also sounds essentially incompetent. But my heavens is he a colorful figure.
5.) Tweet of Yesterday — Sohrab Ahmari: “With malice toward none. OK, except for the Jews. Syrians. Sunnis. Americans, especially Ben Affleck.” #rouhani inaugural #iranelection
6.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: “Appeal to All Koreans Issued”