A Plain Blog About Politics - impeachment off the table?

Balloon Juice - the IRS has never picked on liberal groups! And ... Benghazi!

Booman Tribune - turns out people with guns kill people;

Instaputz - or maybe not with the impeachment thing;

Legal Schnauzer - no one could have predicted that a big bank would abuse the debt collection process.

blogenfreude blogs at stinque.com and wishes this had landed closer to his office yesterday. Send tips to MBRU [AT] crooksandliars [DOT] com.

Music Therapy for pediatric cancer patients gets Nashville involved, and it turns out some kids who happen to have cancer can write songs like nobody's business. h/t Susie Madrak.

Open Thread below...

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Some news you can use!

Gianna Chien is somewhat different from all the other researchers reporting on their work today to more than 8,000 doctors at the Heart Rhythm Society meeting.

Chien's study found that Apple Inc.’s iPad2 can, in some cases, interfere with life-saving heart devices because of the magnets inside.

Chien is 14, and her study -- which found that Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad2 can, in some cases, interfere with life-saving heart devices because of the magnets inside -- is based on a science-fair project that didn’t even win her first place.

The research offers a valuable warning for people with implanted defibrillators, which deliver an electric shock to restart a stopped heart, said John Day, head of heart-rhythm services at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, and chairman of the panel that reviews scientific papers to be presented at the Denver meeting.

If a person falls asleep with the iPad2 on the chest, the magnets in the cover can “accidentally turn off” the heart device, said Chien, a high school freshman in Stockton, California, whose father is a doctor. “I definitely think people should be aware. That’s why I’m presenting the study.”

Defibrillators, as a safety precaution, are designed to be turned off by magnets. The iPad2 uses 30 magnets to hold the iPad2’s cover in place, Chien said. While the iPad2 magnets aren’t powerful enough to cause problems when a person is holding the tablet out in front of the chest, it can be risky to rest it against the body, she found.

Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment on the study in an e-mail, referring questions about the iPad2’s safety to its online product guide. The guide cautions users about radio frequency interference, suggests that patients with pacemakers keep the iPad at least six inches away and says they should be turned off in health-care facilities when instructed by staff or posted signs.

I still have no idea what BENGHAZI! is about, but I guess this summary is as good as any. Sure, it's nonsensical (Obama never "lied") and makes no sense (the White House and the State Department coordinated the messaging after the attack, not the other way around).

But really, when it comes down to it, it's a scandal because, because they said so, that's why. Also, Americans died!*

*Unlike on 9/11, in Iraq, during Hurricane Katrina, or any of those embassy attacks that occurred under Bush.

• Dr. Joyce Brothers, dead at 85.

• Dr. Kermit Gosnell found guilty on three counts of homicide.

• Jamelle Bouie wonders: Is impeachment just a matter of time?

• Minnesota becomes the 12th state to legalize marriage equality.

• Voters trust Hillary Clinton over GOP on Benghazi.

• Rand Paul assures evangelicals he doesn't support drug legalization.

Okay, I know I don’t need to tell you this and Public Policy Polling probably wasted money on a poll we can liken to, “What would you rather do: Have a root canal or spend a day at the beach?”

But, poll they did and discovered —

… the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is. 10% think it’s in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.

Personally, I think the 4% not willing to venture a guess are the smartest of the crew.Much to the chagrin of Republicans, PPP also found some other obvious numbers.

PPP’s newest national poll finds that Republicans aren’t getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton’s +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans remain very unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.

Yeah, she’s smiling.

She is the scandal whisperer.

Juanita Jean blogs at The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon.

The attempted changes by the Tea Party in North Carolina (the less crazy Carolina) have inspired a growing outbreak of civil disobedience meant to draw attention to the insanity. Unfortunately, we're not seeing much about this in the corporate media. Via Addicting Info:

Four months ago, Tea Party candidates took over the state government–both chambers of the General Assembly, as well as the governorship. Together, the newly elected office holders have been hellbent on eviscerating every social program they can get their hands on in the name of doing “the people’s business.” Among the proposals that have been introduced are a $200 million cut to state universities, shortening early voting, totally eliminating both Sunday voting and same-day voters’ registration, easing environmental restrictions on fracking, cutting benefits to the unemployed (already signed into law), refusing federal dollars for Medicaid expansion for the poor, and–oh, yeah–establishing an official state religion.

Some of the “people” take exception to the idea that these actions are a proper expression of the people’s will. Those are the ones showing up with their signs to be arrested at the state capital. They are the ones who intend to continue showing up at the state legislature on “Moral Mondays,” an effort that has already brought about 50 arrests. According to News Observer, the protesters don’t think that the legislators are going to suddenly listen to them. Instead, they “hope to persuade others to rise up with them and raise their voices to a future that might bring a political shift in 2014.”

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The problem with the entrenchment of the status quo is that there are few incentives to come up with innovative solutions that bring in others to the fold. But that doesn't negate that there is a clear digital divide that could solve many economic issues both here and abroad. Inspired by the "Startup Bus" at SXSW, British Airways has partnered with some Silicon Valley businesses in a program dubbed "UnGrounded":

On June 12th, a BA 747 will leave San Francisco International Airport with 100 techies onboard. Their mission: Arrive in London 12 hours later with a plan to help fix the global digital divide, then present it to a panel of world leaders.

"An innovation lab 30,000 feet up in the air is a great way to bring people together," said Leor Stern, head of business development at Google's Niantic Labs subsidiary, who's an adviser to the project.

Others participating in the effort, dubbed UnGrounded, include officials from the United Nations, Stanford University, venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz, and Innovation Endeavors, an investment firm launched by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.

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Obama doesn't seem to understand that he's only fanning the flames when he entertains even the possibility of these rightwing paranoid fantasies being true. Oy.

I used to work at a lobby shop. Let me tell you, 501(c)3s and (c)4s have really strict reporting requirements and the people who work for them understand (or should understand) there's a line you can't cross. That said, the groups on our side of the fence tend to be a little more casual about that sort of thing. And our side doesn't have a vast pool of corporate money the way the other side does --particularly the way the Kochs and Co. have sent a tsunami of cash into the Tea Party movement. If the IRS didn't target them, they wouldn't be doing their job.

President Obama on Monday morning called the Internal Revenue Service’s admitted targeting of conservative groups “outrageous” and said he “will not tolerate it.”

“This is pretty straightforward,” Obama said at a news conference. “If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous, and there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable, because the IRS as an independent agency requires absolute integrity.”

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As soon as I saw the headlines 'IRS apologizes for targeting conservative groups' I knew we were going to be in GOP outrage mode once again, with the calls of tyranny and claims of chilling of free speech and intimidation. The horror of targeting groups simply because they have 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their names! At long last, President Obama, have you no decency?

But...

The truth is that there was really no need for the IRS to apologize for investigating these groups. In fact, as even young Ezra admits, the IRS should be investigating even more of these groups who claim to be non-profit (though he carefully couches it through the outrage meme of the moment):

If it discriminated against tea party groups that attempted to register as 501(c)4 social welfare organizations, then that’s a grave offense, and it needs to be investigated thoroughly and dealt with severely.

But the particular bias people are angry about is the opposite of the bias they should be angry about. The problem wasn’t that the IRS was skeptical of tea party groups registering as 501(c)4s. It’s that it hasn’t been skeptical of Organizing for America, Crossroads GPS, Priorities USA and Heritage Action Fund registering as 501(c)4s. The IRS should be treating all these groups equally and appropriately — which would mean much more harshly.

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