Thursday Reads: Bernie Blows Up

Good Afternoon!!

Desperation has set in at Camp Bernie. Let’s count the ways.

First there was his disastrous interview with The New York Daily News, in which he demonstrated that he has no idea how to enact the policies he has been campaigning on for the past year, like breaking up the banks, prosecuting Wall Street criminals, continuing the drone war, and dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Then there was his insane response to Hillary Clinton’s criticism of the lack of preparation he demonstrated in that interview. In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Clinton said that Sanders’ poor performance showed a lack of preparation. Clinton:

“I think the interview raised a lot of really serious questions,” she said. “He’s been talking for more than a year about doing things he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood.”

“I think what he has been saying about the core issue of his whole campaign doesn’t seem to be rooted in an understanding of either the law or the practical ways you get something done,” she added. “The core of his campaign has been breaking up the banks, and it didn’t seem in reading his answers that he would understand exactly how that would work under Dodd-Frank.”

“You can’t really help people if you don’t know how to do what you are campaigning (for) and saying you want to do,” she added. “I think he hasn’t done his homework.”

Note that Clinton did not say that Sanders is unqualified to be president, as the WaPo fact-checker wrote today. She simply noted that obvious–that he didn’t come to the interview prepared to answer questions about his own policies. But at a rally in Philadelphia yesterday, Sanders claimed that she had said he was unqualified; and he went on to baldly state that Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State who has been working to advance the goals of the Democratic Party for 40 years, is not “qualified” for the job is she running to win. MSNBC’s Danny Freeman:

Less than 24 hours after Sanders’ big win in Wisconsin, the senator from Vermont hammered Clinton for not being “qualified” to be president.

“Now the other day, I think, Secretary Clinton appeared to be getting a little bit nervous,” began Sanders in front of thousands at Philadelphia’s Temple University Wednesday night.

“And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote not qualified to be president,” he said as the raucous crowd booed.

“Well let me just say in response, to Secretary Clinton, I don’t’ believe that she is qualified if she is…through her Super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds,” Sanders declared.

He went on to list a number of traits disqualifying someone from being president all directed squarely at Clinton — with the crowd cheering enthusiastically after each bullet point:

“I don’t think that you are qualified if you get 15 million dollars from Wall Street through your Super PAC,” said Sanders. “I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you’ve supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent paying jobs.”

He even blamed Clinton for the “Panama Papers.”

“I don’t think that you are qualified if you supported the Panama Free Trade Agreement! Something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries,” Sanders concluded.

In the immediate aftermath of his remarks, it remained unclear exactly when he believes Clinton called him “not qualified” to be president.

On Twitter, a number of Clinton staffers and supporters called on Sanders to withdraw his vicious and false attack. Instead, he doubled down, sending out an email in which he expanded on his claims.

Here’s the problem: how can Sanders ever endorse Clinton now that he has said she is “unqualified?” Why would Clinton want him to campaign for her now? It’s also difficult to see how Sanders thinks this attack on Clinton will help him in the New York primary. Frankly, it looks like Bernie is just an angry guy who can’t control his emotions very well. Many voters would see that as disqualifying in a candidate for the presidency.

Bernie’s campaign manager Jeff Weaver was also busy attacking Hillary yesterday. Rebecca Traister has an excellent piece about it: The Sanders Campaign’s Sexist New Argument: Hillary Tries Too Hard.

On Tuesday night, following Bernie Sanders’s big win in the Wisconsin primary, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, understandably jazzed in the midst of a victory lap, said a really stupid sexist thing about Hillary Clinton.

When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about the increasingly aggressive rhetoric between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Weaver averred that his campaign was prepared to play hardball. He then sounded a warning to the former secretary of State and her supporters, suggesting that they not get too critical of Sanders or his supporters. “Don’t destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary’s ambitions to become president of the United States,” Weaver said.

It was a small comment, in every sense. A throwaway bit of nastiness coming from a campaign manager in the late stages of a long and hotly contested primary battle. But the line, which overtly cast Clinton’s political ambition as a destructive force and framed her famous drive and tenacity as unappealing, malevolent traits, played on long-standing assumptions about how ambition — a quality that is required for powerful men and admired in them — looks far less attractive on their female counterparts, and especially on their female competitors.

Weaver’s language made explicit a message that has, in more inchoate form, been churning through the Sanders campaign’s messaging in recent weeks. As Sanders’s staffers spin the story of how they got to this point in the race — with a candidate whose success has been unexpected and thrilling, especially with young Democrats and independents, but who has failed to win over voters of color and older voters, and remains badly behind his tough opponent by nearly every metric — they seem to have been working on a new framing of Hillary, one that relies on old biases about how we prefer women to conduct themselves and how little we like those who flout those preferences.

Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager.

As if Hillary is the one who is trying to blow up the Democratic Party when Sanders has never even been a Democrat and refuses to support other Democrats running for office this year. Please go read the whole thing. There’s much more about the sexist attacks on Hillary from the men who work for Bernie.

This morning Bernie was still at it, once again “doubling down” on his attacks on Hillary. Politico:

Bernie Sanders went after the media for “political gossip” Thursday before he doubled down on his sharp comments Wednesday night in which he questioned whether Hillary Clinton was qualified for the presidency.

“Any questions on the needs of the middle class of America before we get to political gossip?” Sanders asked following a brief news conference on trade in Philadelphia. “All right, now where’s your political gossip? OK, what do you got?”

The following question focused on the Vermont senator’s forceful rhetoric against Clinton at a rally on Wednesday. Sanders explained that he took issue with a Washington Post report on Clinton with a headline that said “Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president.”

I guess he didn’t read the article under the headline, which nowhere quotes Hillary as saying that. Maybe Bernie thinks she wrote the headline?

“If Secretary Clinton thinks that just because I’m from a small state in Vermont and we’re gonna come here to New York and go to Pennsylvania and they’re gonna beat us up and they’re gonna go after us in some kind of really uncalled for way, that we’re not gonna fight back, well we got another — you know, they can guess again because that’s not the case,” Sanders said. “This campaign will fight back.”

Sanders again called into question whether Clinton has the pedigree to win the White House on Thursday, invoking her vote for the Iraq War, support of trade deals and campaign donations from Wall Street and special interests.

Um . . . Bernie? Hillary never said you were unqualified. This guy is really losing it.

Now I want to touch on another issue that is going to hurt Sanders badly in New York and other Eastern states that have primaries coming up. In a little noted part of his Daily News interview, Sanders showed a stunning  lack of compassion and lack of empathy for the relatives of the children and teachers who were murdered at Sandy Hook. From the Interview:

Daily News: There’s a case currently waiting to be ruled on in Connecticut. The victims of the Sandy Hook massacre are looking to have the right to sue for damages the manufacturers of the weapons. Do you think that that is something that should be expanded?

Sanders: Do I think the victims of a crime with a gun should be able to sue the manufacturer, is that your question?

Daily News: Correct.

Sanders: No, I don’t.

Daily News: Let me ask you. I know we’re short on time. Two quick questions. Your website talks about…

Sanders: No, let me just…I’m sorry. In the same sense that if you’re a gun dealer and you sell me a gun and I go out and I kill him [gestures to someone in room]…. Do I think that that gun dealer should be sued for selling me a legal product that he misused? [Shakes head no.] But I do believe that gun manufacturers and gun dealers should be able to be sued when they should know that guns are going into the hands of wrong people. So if somebody walks in and says, “I’d like 10,000 rounds of ammunition,” you know, well, you might be suspicious about that. So I think there are grounds for those suits, but not if you sell me a legal product.

Bushmaster AR-15, the gun used in the Sandy Hook Massacre.

It wasn’t just Hillary attacking Bernie for this yesterday.

The Week: Daughter of murdered Sandy Hook principal slams Bernie Sanders over gun policy.

On Tuesday evening, Erica Smegielski, the daughter of Sandy Hook’s principal who was killed in the shooting, tweeted the Daily News link, writing, “Shame on you @BernieSanders try living one hour in our lives.” Smegielski added in a second tweet, “I hope @BernieSanders really #feelsthebern of this one. His judgment is despicable.”

And from prominent Connecticut Democrats:

Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy said the public doesn’t need “apologists for the NRA.”

“He is just wrong,” Malloy, criticizing Sanders, told The News. “He is dead wrong on guns. He had an opportunity to educate the people of Vermont about guns. Vermont is small enough that he could have gone house to house to educate people about guns.”

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy took to Twitter to shoot down Sanders’ gun stance, saying the presidential candidate is out of line.

“For Sanders to say that the Sandy Hook families should be barred from court, even if the weapon was negligently made, is wrong,” Murphy tweeted.

“Bernie is a friend, but this is really bad. Dems can’t nominate a candidate who supports gun manufacturer immunity.

From Katherine Speller at Bustle: Bernie Sanders ‘NYDN’ Interview Just Reminded Everyone Why He May Not Be That Progressive. The article has a good summary of the Sandy Hook case background.

According to court documents obtained by Bustle, the Sandy Hook case argues that the AR-15 — the weapon used in the Sandy Hook shooting that killed 26 people (20 of them small children) — is a military assault weapon capable of delivering 30 rounds in 10 seconds and penetrating body armor, designed to “deliver maximum carnage with extreme efficiency.” The complaint argues that Bushmaster and its parent company, Remington, were perfectly aware that “as a consequence of selling AR-15s to the civilian market, individuals unfit to operate these weapons gain access to them.” The complaint also argues that the companies’ marketing toward “military wannabes” and partnerships with games like Call of Duty show a disregard for the very real dangers of these weapons being commercially available.

Plaintiffs Mark and Jackie Barden — whose seven-year-old son Daniel was killed at Sandy Hook — criticized Sanders’ stance on their lawsuit earlier this year in an op-ed for The Washington Post. The Bardens said that Sanders understanding of the litigation was “simplistic and wrong,” and called for a more thoughtful approach from the senator to this particular breed of corporate responsibility:

… History has shown us, time and again, that it is innocent civilians in malls and movie theaters, and children in their classrooms, who have been made to bow down to the singular power of a gunman wielding an AR-15.

This is not a theoretical dispute. The last thing our sweet little Daniel would have seen in his short, beautiful life was the long barrel of a ferocious rifle designed to kill the enemy in war. The last thing Daniel’s tender little body would have felt were bullets expelled from that AR-15 traveling at greater than 3,000 feet per second — a speed designed to pierce body armor in the war zones of Fallujah.

Sanders has spent decades tirelessly advocating for greater corporate responsibility, which is why we cannot fathom his support of companies that recklessly market and profit from the sale of combat weapons to civilians and then shrug their shoulders when the next tragedy occurs, leaving ordinary families and communities to pick up the pieces.

If the Sandy Hook parents are able to see this case in court, it would be a major moment for critics of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCCA), which made it pretty much impossible to go after gun manufacturers and distributors for negligence. Sanders helped to pass this law, and yet he has since pledged to help repeal it. However, separately condemning assault weapons while refusing to support the victims of those weapons in their fight for injunctive action leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Arguing that increasing accountability for manufacturers will somehow end the gun industry only adds to that concern.

When Hillary suggested he should apologize to the Sandy Hook relatives, Bernie said she should apologize to the victims of the Iraq war! Isn’t it funny how he seldom criticizes the Bush administration about the war they started and prosecuted?

I have more to say about disastrous effects of of Bernie Sanders’ gun policies, and I will write about it in my Saturday post.

What stories are you following today?

Live Blog: Western Tuesday and the Returns of the Day

Good Evening!

We’ve got primaries and caucuses to discuss this evening!   The election has gone West big time as states up and down the nation’s Rocky Mountains take to the voting booth.   Dynamics here may be different than the nation’s east coast and the south.  These states have populations of Native Americans and Hispanics as well as many white people.   Additionally, they’re home to many of the Nation’s National Parks and natural resources.  What’s in store for tonight?

On March 22, three states and one territory will hold nominating contests in the 2016 presidential election.

Arizona will hold a primary for both Republicans and Democrats, Idaho will hold Democratic caucuses, Utah will hold both Republican and Democratic caucuses and American Samoa will hold Republican caucuses.

Both Trump and Clinton are expected to boost their leads from the previous primaries.  This particular primaries may not provide windfalls for any one, but should continue the trend.

Eager to move beyond a divisive primary season, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seek to pad their delegate lead over their underdog rivals as the 2016 race for the White House moves West on Tuesday.

Arizona and Utah feature contests for both parties, while Idaho Democrats also hold presidential caucuses. Trump and Clinton hope to strengthen their leads in delegates that decide the nominations, as Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich struggle to reverse the sense of inevitability taking hold around both party front-runners.

“I have more votes than anybody,” Trump charged on the eve of the elections as he courted skeptical Republican officials in Washington. “The people who go against me should embrace me.”

A firm delegate lead in hand, Clinton looked past Sanders ahead of Tuesday’s contests and instead sharpened her general election attacks on Trump. “We need steady hands,” she said, “not a president who says he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything’s negotiable.”

Despite the tough talk, both Trump and Clinton face challenges on Tuesday.

Trump’s brash tone has turned off some Republican voters in Utah, where preference polls suggest Cruz has a chance to claim more than 50 percent of the caucus vote and with it, all of Utah’s 40 delegates. Trump could earn some delegates should Cruz fail to exceed 50 percent, in which case the delegates would be awarded proportionally based on each candidate’s vote total.

Kasich hopes to play spoiler in Utah, a state that prizes civility and religion. A week ago, the Ohio governor claimed a victory in his home state his first and only win of the primary season. Yet Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, is telling his fellow Utah voters in a recorded phone message that Cruz “is the only Republican candidate who can defeat Donald Trump.”

Here are some of the latest poll results from RCP:

Monday, March 21

Race/Topic	Poll	Results	Spread
2016 Republican Presidential Nomination	CNN/ORC	Trump 47, Cruz 31, Kasich 17	Trump +16
2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination	CNN/ORC	Clinton 51, Sanders 44	Clinton +7
2016 Republican Presidential Nomination	CBS News/NY Times	Trump 46, Cruz 26, Kasich 20	Trump +20
2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination	CBS News/NY Times	Clinton 50, Sanders 45	Clinton +5
Arizona Republican Presidential Primary	FOX 10/Opinion Savvy	Trump 46, Cruz 33, Kasich 17	Trump +13
Utah Republican Presidential Caucus	Deseret News/KSL	Cruz 42, Kasich 13, Trump 21, Rubio 17	Cruz +21
Utah Democratic Presidential Caucus	Deseret News/KSL	Sanders 52, Clinton 44	Sanders +8

There are quite a few things to look for tonight.

Mr. Sanders may face a daunting delegate deficit after his defeats on March 15, but he may be on the verge of a wave of successes.

Tuesday begins a series of contests in friendly territory for him. He is a strong favorite in both Utah and Idaho, where he could win by a two-to-one margin or better. A win in Arizona would show his resilience after a weak performance last week. Even if he fails to sweep the three states, he could follow up with strong performances in Hawaii, Washington, Alaska and Wisconsin over the next few weeks.

Of course, Mr. Sanders needs a lot more than a sweep of Western caucuses to erode Mrs. Clinton’s big lead in pledged delegates. But a string of sizable victories could blunt the pressure on him to withdraw from the race and could keep his fund-raising efforts strong as he heads into bigger and more competitive contests in April.

All the results will come in late because, well, it’s the West!!!

Results will be coming in late — very late, in some cases. Arizona is holding primaries, with polls closing at 7 pm local time. Utah is holding caucuses in person and, for Republicans, online; online voting doesn’t end until 11 pm local time.

Here’s what’s expected from the few polls available on those races.

Arizona and Utah, as well as Democrats in Idaho and Republicans in American Samoa, vote Tuesday. Arizona is the biggest prize of the day, with 85 delegates to be awarded in the winner-take-all Republican primary and 85 delegates to be divided proportionally among Democrats. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are leading their respective parties in the limited Arizona polling. According to HuffPost Pollster’s average, Trump is ahead by a 17 percentage point margin with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 20 percent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 16 percent. But there have only been three polls in the last month, and only one in the last week.  On the Democratic side, Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by 26 points, 58 percent to 24 percent, according to the one poll conducted in the past month.

Utah appears to be Cruz territory –  Polls are scarce in Utah, but Cruz is widely expected to win the caucus. The most recent poll, conducted by Republican firm Y2 Analytics, shows Cruz leading with 53 percent. Kasich is in second place with 29 percent and Trump trails with  11 percent. Utah’s 40 delegates for Republicans will be distributed proportionally among the candidates unless one reaches 50 percent, in which case all the delegates will go to the winner.

Sanders is running a close race in Utah and Idaho – A Dan Jones/Deseret News/KSL poll released Monday shows Sanders leading Clinton with 52 to 44 percent in Utah, while a month-old survey from the same pollster shows the two candidates in a close race in Idaho. The 37 delegates up for grabs in Utah and the 27 delegates in Idaho will be distributed proportionally.

So, it’s time to grab your popcorn and curl up for our live blog!  I know we have a few voters out there!  Let us know what you hear from your state and what your voting day was like!

Live Blog: Super Saturday Primaries and Caucuses

John F. Kennedy’s siblings watching election returns in November 1960.

Good Evening Politics Junkies!

Today’s another busy day for the candidates on both sides of the aisle. There probably won’t be many surprises, although no one seems to have any idea what will happen in Nebraska on the Republican side.

Ted Cruz has already won Kansas, which has large population of evangelical Christians. Cruz is addressing his supporters right now. I’m going to give that one a miss.

As we all know already, Bernie Sanders will likely take Kansas and Nebraska and gain some delegates, but Hillary Clinton is expected to win Louisiana overwhelmingly and that will wipe out the gains Sanders makes today and then some. Right now Clinton is 199 pledged delegates ahead of Sanders and she will add to that total tonight. We’ll have to wait awhile though, because Louisiana’s polls don’t close until 9PM ET.

Here’s some background information on today’s contests at Vox: Elections 2016: Today’s poll closing times and results.

Washington Post: Ted Cruz wins Kansas caucuses as 3 other ‘Super Saturday’ states vote in GOP contest.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who has sought to present himself as the chief alternative to GOP front-runner Donald Trump, secured a strong victory in the Kansas presidential caucuses Saturday, according to a projection by the Associated Press, as voting and ballot counting continued in three other GOP contests.

With 53 percent of the vote counted, the Associated Press called the victory for Cruz (R-Tex). He led Trump with 49 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Trump, according to the AP.

he 2016 election pressed forward Saturday as five states held presidential nominating contests across the country. Dubbed “Super Saturday,” Republicans are also voting in Louisiana and are caucusing in Maine and Kentucky. Democrats are voting in Louisiana and are caucusing in Kansas and Nebraska.

The presidential race entered a new stage Tuesday after real estate mogul Donald Trump (R) and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton (D) secured victories in a majority of the 11 partisan primaries and caucuses held that day, when hundreds of delegates were at stake. Clinton — the Democratic establishment favorite — has pulled sharply ahead of rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, while Trump’s wave of populist support showed little sign of waning even as he has endured scathing attacks from GOP leaders.

The fallout from Saturday’s contests will again pitch the election forward, as Clinton and Trump’s rivals seek to keep them at bay by maximizing their delegate counts. The two front-runners, meanwhile, are looking to protect their leads and to sustain their momentum ahead of a series of high-stakes, high-delegate races in mid-March.

The Obamas watching election returns in 2008.

I’m going to turn the floor over to you while I look around to see what’s going on. I’ll add some links in the comment thread, and hope you will too.

Live Blog #2 Super Tuesday

This is a great night for Hillary Clinton. In a couple of weeks, she will have a clear path to the Democratic nomination for President. She has already made history though; she is the first woman ever to get this far.

We are still waiting on results from Massachusetts, Colorado, and Minnesota; so here’s a fresh thread to continue the discussion.

WaPo: Super Tuesday Democratic Primaries: Clinton Projected to Win in 6 States, Sanders in 2.

LA Times: Trump wins five primaries, Cruz takes Texas and Oklahoma; Rubio’s best is 2nd place in Virginia.

ABC News: Exit Polls: Clinton Expands Base; Trump Sells Outsider Image.

Exit Poll: Clinton Expands Base, Trump Sells Outsider Image

Super Tuesday Reads

Good Morning!!

This should be an exciting day. I’m looking forward to voting for Hillary. I’ll probably wait until after the noon hour. I don’t know what the turnout is expected to be, but I don’t really want to wait in line.

Other than going to vote and picking up some groceries, I plan to be home today following Super Tuesday events. I’m so excited! We will add new threads if we need them.

There are new Donald Trump controversies today–violence and racism at his rallies and a leak about something he told The New York Times about immigration. First, the leak:

Ben Smith at Buzzfeed: Donald Trump Secretly Told The New York Times What He Really Thinks About Immigration.

The New York Times is sitting on an audio recording that some of its staff believes could deal a serious blow to Donald Trump, who, in an off-the-record meeting with the newspaper, called into question whether he would stand by his own immigration views.

Trump visited the paper’s Manhattan headquarters on Tuesday, Jan. 5, as part of a round of editorial board meetings that — as is traditional — the Democratic candidates for president and some of the Republicans attended. The meetings, conducted partly on the record and partly off the record in a 13th-floor conference room, give candidates a chance to make their pitch for the paper’s endorsement.

People who were at the meeting, including columnist Gail Collins have suggested that Trump’s sees his positions on political issues as endlessly changeable and negotiable.

So what exactly did Trump say about immigration, about deportations, about the wall? Did he abandon a core promise of his campaign in a private conversation with liberal power brokers in New York?

I wasn’t able to obtain the recording, or the transcript, and don’t know exactly what Trump said. Neither Baquet, Collins, nor various editorial board members I reached would comment on an off-the-record conversation, which the Times essentially said it cannot release without approval from Trump, given the nature of the off-the-record agreement.

Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal told me he would not comment “on what was off the record at our meeting with him.”

“If [Trump] wants to call up and ask us to release this transcript, he’s free to do that and then we can decide what we would do,” Rosenthal said.

Release the transcripts!

David Wiegel at The Washington Post reports than Sean Hannity asked Trump about the leaks last night.

Hannity prodded Trump to explain himself.

“The New York Times is claiming today that they had an off-the-record conversation with you in January,” he said on his Fox News show. “Off the record, by the way. Now they’re leaking it.”

“Yeah, of course they’re leaking it,” said Trump. “The most dishonest media group. And it’s also failing. I call it the failing New York Times. It’s doing so badly, it’s dying. But I did. We had a board meeting. It was off the record. All of a sudden, they leak it. It’s all over the place.”

“They said you said it’s negotiable on the wall,” said Hannity.

Trump did not miss a step. “It’s negotiable,” he said. “Things are negotiable. I’ll be honest with you — I’ll make the wall two feet shorter, or something. I mean, everything’s negotiable.”

“It’s not negotiable to build it?” asked Hannity.

“No!” said Trump. “Building it? Not negotiable.”

“Would it be negotiable about the 11 million?” asked Hannity, referring to the frequently cited estimate of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. “Maybe let some people stay if they register in a period of time?”

“I would say this,” said Trump. “I’ve always said, look, we have some great people over here. And they’re going to go out, but we’re going to work out a system that’s fair.”

Whatever. Trump is a disgrace. Let’s make sure he never has a chance to set foot in the White House!

On the incidents at Trump rallies:

Valdosta students after Trump order them removed from rally.

Raw Story: Black college students kicked out of Trump rally in Georgia for no reason.

A group of 30 black Valdosta State University students was removed from a rally by Republican front-runner Donald Trump on Monday before the event even began, the Des Moines Register reported.

“We didn’t plan to do anything,” said one of the students, 19-year-old Tahjila Davis. “They said, ‘This is Trump’s property; it’s a private event.’ But I paid my tuition to be here.”

Davis and the other students were reportedly asked to leave the event by a Secret Service agent, hours after footage circulating online showed another agent attacking a photojournalist at a separate Trump event in Radford, Virginia.

That’s right. Chris Morris, a 63-year-old Time photojournalist, was grabbed by the throat and slammed to the floor by one of Trumps Secret Service agents. Time responds:

Chris Morris, a veteran White House photographer working on the campaign for TIME, stepped out of the press pen to photograph a Black Lives Matter protest that interrupted the speech. A video shows that Morris swore at a Secret Service agent who tried to move Morris back into the pen. A separate video of the event shows that the agent then grabbed Morris’ neck with both hands and threw him into a table and onto the ground.

Video also shows that once on the ground, Morris kicked at the agent who was trying to restrain him. Later, Morris briefly put his hand on the agent’s neck. After the exchange, Morris said that he did so in order to demonstrate the choke hold he had just experienced.

Video also shows that once on the ground, Morris kicked at the agent who was trying to restrain him. Later, Morris briefly put his hand on the agent’s neck. After the exchange, Morris said that he did so in order to demonstrate the choke hold he had just experienced.

Journalist Christopher Morris is arrested by police during a rally of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, at Radford University in Radford, Va., Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Why is the U.S. Secret Service getting involved in removing black people from Trump rallies and enforcing ridiculous efforts to prevent the press from covering his events?

TIME has contacted the U.S. Secret Service to express concerns about the level and nature of the agent’s response. Morris has also expressed remorse for his part in escalating the confrontation. A TIME spokesperson said, “We are relieved that Chris is feeling OK, and we expect him to be back at work soon.”

Unlike other presidential campaigns, which generally allow reporters and photographers to move around at events, Trump has a strict policy requiring reporters and cameramen to stay inside a gated area, which the candidate often singles out for ridicule during his speeches. The entrance to the penned area is generally monitored by the Secret Service detail, which also screens attendees at his events and personally protects the candidate.

“I’ve worked for nine years at the White House and have never had an altercation with the Secret Service,” Morris says in a statement. “What happened today was very unfortunate and unexpected. The rules at Trump events are significantly stricter than other campaigns and make it very difficult to work as a photographer, as many others have pointed out before me. I regret my role in the confrontation, but the agent’s response was disproportionate and unnecessarily violent. I hope this incident helps call attention to the challenges of press access.”

Read more at the link. Frankly, I don’t understand why the media has been putting up with this sh%t. If this happened at one of Hillary Clinton’s events–or if she even tried to enforce such draconian rules for the media–the outcry would be endless. Apparently reporters and editors are afraid to stand up to Republicans.

As for the many primaries and caucuses today, Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight has all the information you need to follow Super Tuesday results. Here are his posts on the Democratic and Republican contests:

Super Guide to Super Tuesday (Democrats)

Super Guide to Super Tuesday (Republicans)

More news, links only:

CNN: National poll: Clinton, Sanders both top Trump.

CNN: After GOP establishment ‘froze’ on Trump, Democrats ready battle plans.

Politico: Is the Trump show ready for prime time?

Huffington Post: Obama Showed Us How To Take Down Donald Trump 5 Years Ago, And The Video Is Just As Brutal Today.

The Daily Beast: When Bernie Sanders Thought Castro and the Sandinistas Could Teach America a Lesson.

Miami Herald: Bernie Sanders traveled to communist Cuba and urges a ‘political revolution.’ Will exile Miami take him seriously?

A disturbing story from Fort Wayne, IN. The police says it’s not a hate crime, but the Darfur diaspora community believes it is:

The Washington Post: The mysterious ‘execution-style’ killings of young men in Indiana.

The New York Times: The Model Whose Lips Spurred Racist Comments Speaks Out.

I haven’t included any Hillary news; I’m going to leave it up to you guys to post anything you’re hearing and reading in your local areas. It looks to me as if she will win in Massachusetts and of course the South. Bernie will likely win Vermont and perhaps Colorado and Minnesota. We’ll find out later on today.

Have a great Super Tuesday!