The Nation May-05-14

Run, Bernie, Run? Thank you, John Nichols, for “Bernie Sanders Is Thinking of Running for President” [April 7], illuminating the senator for us. I’d vote for him in a second. As a progressive, I feel that Sanders understands what is right and, more important, what is wrong with our great country. I hope more people wake up and fight for a change, because “We the People” no longer have a say in what happens to us. Dan Robertson Warren, Mich. _________________________ We need Bernie Sanders in the White House. He has a common-sense approach to democracy and leadership. The Democratic Party doesn’t know which way to turn. I’m fearful that we are looking at a rerun of 2010. According to the news, the GOP (Greedy Oppressive Plutocrats) is leading in…

@KatrinaNation
Once again, 
Limbaugh exposes how delusional he
is: Colbert hire is
declaration of “War
on the heartland
of America.” @chrislhayes
Is it crazy to wonder
if the NSA some-
how engineered Heartbleed to
begin with? @marksorkin
David Brooks is the best: we can’t defeat market-rigging with regulation, he says. We can only counteract greed with the love of knowledge. @DanaGoldstein
Most revelatory stat from my research:
95% of school
suspensions are for nonviolent offenses: talking back, disrupting, profanity, clothing. @NicholsUprising
Scott Walker prepares an April 15 tour to announce he’s running for president—
no, strike that,
for governor.
 @stevenjhsieh
Albuquerque police shot 20 people between 2009 and 2012. DoJ finds
that most were
unconstitutional.…

In an effort to win Republican support for reforming a cruel and dysfunctional immigration system, President Obama has adopted enforcement policies that have produced almost 2 million deportations in five years, including a record 410,000 in fiscal year 2012. Between 2010 and 2012, 200,000 parents of US-born children were deported. As a result, approximately 5,000 children of deportees are in foster care today. If the trend continues, that number is expected to reach 15,000 by January 2017. 
 Obama’s policy is a moral failure, but it has also hurt him politically. Despite the draconian measures, Republicans still accuse him of being too lenient, while the policy has angered some of his staunchest supporters. In response, in 2011 the president announced that deportations would be limited to serious criminals, and in…

The woman who could be the future of progressive politics in America is sitting at the back table of an Indian restaurant in Portland, Maine. It’s early evening, she’s got a list of names, and she’s wearing out her cellphone. US Senate candidate Shenna Bellows doesn’t do downtime. While she waits for a meeting, the upstart Democrat makes the calls she says will upset an entrenched Republican incumbent. These aren’t the kinds of calls most candidates make: to big donors in distant cities with agendas even more distant from the concerns of the people she hopes to represent. Bellows is calling the people: nurses and teachers, lobster-boat captains and farmers, students and union activists. And she’s asking them to counter not just big money but a broken politics that values…

Errol Morris is the legendary documentary filmmaker who won an Oscar for The Fog of War, featuring Robert McNamara and his regrets about the war in Vietnam.
 His new film, The Unknown Known, is based on thirty-three hours of interviews with Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense under George W. Bush. This interview has been edited and condensed.—Jon Wiener
 Jon Wiener: Donald Rumsfeld grins a lot in this movie. The most memorable thing about this film is his grin. What do you make of it? 
 Errol Morris: Supreme self-satisfaction. Cluelessness. Inability to deal with the reality of what he’s done.
 JW: When you asked him about the lessons of Vietnam, he says the lesson is “Some things work out; some things don’t. That didn’t.” What do you make of that?
…

Missouri is one of ten states that still ban people with felony drug convictions—most of them women—from ever receiving food stamps. 
 According to the criminal justice advocacy group the Sentencing 
Project, an esti-
mated 180,100 women and their children, primarily families of color, are affected by this holdover from Clinton-era “welfare reform” in the states that enforce it. Now, for the first time, Missouri’s legislature is looking at loosening if not lifting the lifetime ban. Even with bipartisan support, however, it’s unclear whether the bill will make it through. 
 Most of the other states still clinging to this punitive policy, a relic of the “war on drugs,” are located in the South. 
 —Carla Murphy
 Colorlines.com…