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1.) Meet Canada’s greatest hero — With so few heroes in this world, we at TheDC Morning feel we should shine a spotlight on as many of them as we can. Here’s a story of a hero who resides in a nation called “Canada.” (Full disclosure: TheDC Morning has never heard of this “Canada.”) Richard Thompson reports for TheDC:
“Detroit may have filed for bankruptcy, but that’s still not keeping people out of the once-thriving Michigan city. After swimming from Canada to Detroit on Monday, a Windsor man is being charged with public intoxication and could face up to $25,000 in additional fines for swimming in a shipping channel. John Morillo, 47, hopped into the Detroit River after throwing back eight beers and paddled from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Mich. Authorities apprehended the channel-crossing Canuck when he returned to Windsor. … ‘I was drinking, but I wasn’t really drunk,’ Morillo said in a Tuesday interview with the Windsor Star. ‘The thing is, I’ve been telling people I’m going to swim across the river for years and they’re like, ‘Yah, yah, blah, blah, you can’t make it.’ So, I don’t know, last night I just decided it was the time to go.'”
While too many of us sit on our hands, John Morillo is a man action. Mr. Morillo, we salute you.
2.) What scandals? — In an interminable speech, President Obama dismissed the notion that his administration was facing real scandals. TheDC’s Patrick Howley reports:
“President Barack Obama said Wednesday that Republicans are trying to distract America from its economic problems by pushing ‘phony scandals,’ echoing a line repeatedly used this week by White House press secretary Jay Carney. ‘With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball,’ Obama said, according to prepared remarks released by the White House prior to his economic speech Wednesday at Knox College in Illinois. ‘And I am here to say this needs to stop. Short-term thinking and stale debates are not what this moment requires.’ Obama’s statement echoes a line repeatedly used by Carney to describe the IRS targeting scandal and other Obama administration headaches, including the National Security Agency surveillance and the Benghazi terrorist attack.”
3.) Challenge from the right — Mitch McConnell has a primary fight on his hands. While it will likely be easy work for the Senate minority leader, anything is possible. In the right political environment, he could find himself in some trouble. TheDC’s Alex Pappas reports:
“The Kentucky businessman who launched a Republican primary challenge against Mitch McConnell on Wednesday told The Daily Caller he’s running because conservatives have a ‘tremendous level of dissatisfaction’ with the Senate minority leader. ‘There’s a tremendous level of dissatisfaction with the fact that for 30 years, he’s been just a big government guy,’ Matt Bevin said of McConnell. ‘He votes for every bailout, he votes for every piece of pork, he is a huge fan of earmarking — it has been temporarily banned, as you know — but folks like Mitch McConnell have made a career of greasing the wheels for themselves and for others.’ During a phone interview an hour before he formally announced his campaign at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfurt, Bevin also laid the groundwork for the argument that McConnell is more concerned with his leadership role in Washington than in representing Kentucky.”
4.) The NSA wins the day — The National Security Agency slept easy last night. TheDC’s Josh Peterson reports:
“For now, the National Security Agency will continue to collect the metadata of millions of Americans. Following a spirited debate on the House floor Wednesday evening, House members rejected by a narrow margin a bill to limit the NSA’s sweeping collection of electronic records. The bill, sponsored by Michigan Republican Representative Justin Amash, would have defunded the NSA’s bulk collection of records on millions of Americans and limited the collection to the records of people under investigation for international terrorism or foreign intelligence.”
5.) Tweet of Yesterday — KimJongNumberUn: As long as Anthony Weiner is out there, the people of North Korea should be grateful I turned off their Internet.
6.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: “Floral Baskets to Kim Jong Un”
VIDEO: Fireworks erupt between Joe Scarborough, Jay Carney as the two clash over IRS scandal