What kind of society sends its young people from higher education into adulthood this way? I’m aware I’m only talking about those lucky enough to go to college, when roughly one-third of high school graduates don’t – but if this is the way we treat our relatively lucky kids, the rest of them don’t have a prayer. For many, the school to prison pipeline functions much more efficiently than the school to college one; California is one of at least 10 states that now spends more on prison than higher education. According to the Federal Reserve Bank, two-thirds of college graduates leave with some debt, and 37 million Americans are repaying a student loan right now.

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On Wednesday prosecution witness Rachel Jeantel, who was on her cellphone with Martin while he was being pursued by Zimmerman, actually testified that Martin told her he was being followed by “a creepy ass cracker." But it wasn’t until Thursday that it blew up the right wing of the Internet – when Jeantel offered the badgering defense attorney Don West her opinion that the term isn’t racist.

From Glenn Beck’s the Blaze to the Breitbots to smaller right-wing shriekers to Twitter trolls everywhere, white grievance-mongers seemed less bothered by the fact that Martin allegedly used the term, than by Jeantel saying it wasn’t a slur.

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I certainly think that voting rights and women’s rights activism ought to converge in Texas to make sure Davis keeps her seat, if she wants it. But Wednesday night I began to dream there might be an even better test for those two movements: Backing Davis in a run against Texas’s forgetful, pandering far-right Gov. Rick Perry.

Personally I thought Perry shamed himself with his slapdash run for president, but lots of people think it made him stronger at least on the right. Whatever. It certainly made national Democrats more aware of what Texans are living with. Wendy Davis’ filibuster made us more aware of the state’s progressive promise.

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In a better world, the discussion of sonograms would not be at all germane to proposed new antiabortion legislation, because the two issues would have nothing to do with one another. But since Texas, like many other states, recently passed a requirement that women get a sonogram before obtaining an abortion, it made perfect sense that state Sen. Wendy Davis would talk about the way SB 5, the state’s proposed new abortion restrictions, might relate to the earlier sonogram law.

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Ironically, as anyone paying attention knows, that turnout surge was driven by anger over a wave of GOP efforts to suppress black votes in those and other states – and it was helped along by Section 5, which requires states with a history of voting rights suppression to pre-clear any voting changes with the Justice Department (Justice struck down 21 such proposals since 2006). Still, despite new voter identification laws, restrictions on early voting and Sunday voting and other barriers, African-Americans voted at unprecedented rates in 2012 – and that helped give Roberts an excuse to strike down a section key to enforcing the law.

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Citing his AEI colleague Stan Veuger’s research finding that the Tea Party generated 3 to 6 million additional GOP votes in House races in the 2010 midterms, Pethokoukis suggests that it might have added an additional 5 to 8 million GOP votes in the 2012 election, “if the groups had continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010.” Which they didn’t, Veuger claims,  due to the extra IRS scrutiny to the movement’s claiming tax-exempt status for its “social welfare” activities.

Since that would have overcome the 5 million vote margin won by President Obama, Pethokoukis writes, “right around now, Mitt Romney would be pushing hard his tax reform plan, and #44 would be launching the Obama Global Initiative.”

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Blackburn would seem to be an odd choice to help Republicans improve their popularity with women. On “Meet the Press” just two weeks ago she made headlines by insisting women “don’t want” equal pay laws (she of course voted against the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act.) Now she’s insisting that the House GOP’s anti-abortion bill is meant to help women, too. While it now includes an exception for victims of rape and incest, it will only apply to women who have reported those crimes to police, when a majority of survivors do not.

On MSNBC Tuesday morning, Blackburn tried to explain to an incredulous Craig Melvin that the measure is designed to help women, because it will “rid our society of these perpetrators who carry out these crimes, many times repeatedly.”

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You’ll recall that Cummings had previously charged Issa with misrepresenting the Committee’s findings when he charged that the investigation was uncovering evidence that pointed to “Washington” involvement. Cummings demanded that Issa keep an earlier pledge to release all of the transcripts of committee interviews to date. Issa refused, calling Cummings “reckless” and “irresponsible” for sharing a partial transcript of the Republican screening manager's interview, and insisting any further disclosure of interviews would “undermine the integrity of the Committee’s investigation.”

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Luckily or not, Rubio’s wimpy reply was overshadowed by reaction to a deeply reported New Yorker piece by Ryan Lizza that placed the Florida Republican at the center of the "Gang of Eight" negotiations. It featured a choice quote dissing American workers from an anonymous Rubio aide, explaining why his boss backed the Chamber of Commerce over the AFL-CIO when it came to a guest worker agreement (they eventually compromised): “There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly.”

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I stopped paying much attention to Palin around the time she self-destructed by trying to make herself the victim after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the shooting of 18 other people in Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011. After that, not only my attention but others’ seemed to drift away. She declared that she wouldn’t run for president, surprising no one, her spots on Fox News became less frequent (to her loud complaints) and, ultimately, the right-wing network didn’t renew her contract (though it was stated as her choice; she was going on to better things). I thought maybe Palin didn’t matter anymore.

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But if Walker goes ahead, as promised, and signs a bill mandating an ultrasound before a woman can have an abortion, he can kiss his 2016 hopes goodbye. It will be impossible for Gov. Ultrasound to “modulate himself” once he’s associated with the most notorious piece of legislation to brand his party as anti-women in 2012. (Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a slightly softened version of it into law last March.)

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Issa writes:

Your decision to make that declaration in a very public way was irresponsible and emblematic of your general aversion to conducting meaningful oversight of the Administration. In fact, any time the Committee endeavors to engage in such an effort, your participation is generally limited to obstructing or criticizing the process, if you decide to participate at all. I urge you to adopt a more responsible approach.

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Her cheeky Twitter debut told me two almost contradictory things: Hillary Clinton is having an enormously good time with this phase in her life, and she’s planning on running for president.

Obviously a winning campaign will be way harder than launching her Twitter presence, but let’s give her credit for a bold first step. Still, I was thrilled by Clinton’s sure-footed Twitter move – and then I was kind of horrified by how thrilled I was, particularly as I saw a comparable giddiness among liberals and the media (and no, they’re not the same thing.)

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Now, on Fox News Sunday, he pompously declared “I am the conduit” for “compromise” on immigration reform, suggesting his ties to the far right in the House as well as mainstream Republicans in the Senate make him the man to broker a deal. Except Paul opposes any kind of specific pathway to citizenship for folks who are here illegally, which is a far-right staple that will make a deal impossible (h/t Crooks and Liars).

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Just hours after the vice chair of the House Oversight Committee threatened Chairman Darrell Issa with releasing House Oversight Committee interview transcripts that clear the White House of wrongdoing in the IRS mess on CNN, AP already has the story: “a self-described ‘conservative Republican’ has told investigators that no one at the White House directed the Internal Revenue Service to target tea party groups.”

The Maryland Democrat released a transcript Sunday of the committee investigators' interview with a manager of the IRS' Cincinnati office. The unidentified man told investigators that workers in that office instigated the reviews on their own, that he was unaware of a political motivation behind the extra scrutiny to conservative groups' applying for tax-exempt status, and that there was no evidence of any White House involvement.

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It’s true, we’ve learned a lot about aspects of the vast post-9/11 surveillance state in the last 10 years, and it’s hard to keep track of who knew what when, and what mattered most about each revelation (including these latest). It’s true that George W. Bush took both the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and pushed them beyond the boundaries of legality – and then Congress acted, not to rebuke Bush or rein him in, but to make those abuses legal.

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I thought at the time that Rice deserved an apology from Republicans who savaged her, once the truth about the talking points came out, but of course one never came. (Sen. Lindsey Graham countered by saying she "deserved to be subpoenaed" instead.) Now she’s gotten the next best thing: a promotion to National Security Adviser, once Tom Donilon leaves the job in July. The position needs no confirmation by the Senate, so Rice’s GOP critics have nothing to say about her new role.

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But today, a Democratic president doing his job and making appointments he’s entitled to make – whether to the courts, agencies or Cabinet posts – is treated like a Constitution-busting usurper.  A visibly angry Obama explained that it’s taking the Senate three times as long to confirm his nominees as George W. Bush’s, and as a result, 10 percent of all seats on the federal bench are vacant. “These are no slouches. These are no hacks,” said Obama. “These are incredibly accomplished lawyers by all accounts.”

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Democrats love to hate the silly, camera-chasing Issa, who came to power in 2011 promising to put the White House under generalized investigation. But now even some Republicans are happy to criticize Issa too. It’s easy for them to denounce his calling Jay Carney a “paid liar,” as well as his evidence-free claim that the IRS mess was directed from Washington, D.C., while they continue to participate in smearing the White House with non-scandals themselves, nonetheless.

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“If you redefine marriage for immigration purposes [by the Leahy amendment], the bill would fall apart because the coalition would fall apart,” Sen. Lindsey Graham declared. “It would be a bridge too far.” That led Democrats to withdraw their support for Leahy’s proposal. “I think this sounds like the fairest approach,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said of Leahy’s amendments, “but here’s the problem … we know this is going to blow the agreement apart. I don’t want to blow this bill apart.” Let’s recall Feinstein is from San Francisco; if Leahy couldn’t win her over, his crusade clearly was doomed.

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