Coast trip

Oregon Coast:

What you will see on the Oregon coast can be simply amazing. Like most coastal areas, there are a wide range of topography and installations. The northern end of Oregon is no different, but the dynamics can be quite exaggerated. Recently I spent a few days at this transitional area, the confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean and the northern corner of Oregon and the southern corner of Washington.

Peter Iredale wreck  at Fort Strevens

Beach at Fort Stevens

I drove over to the coast from Portland and made a quick stop in Astoria to grab a few supplies. Fort Stevens is west of town and right on the coast at the mouth of the Columbia River. The river entrance is one of the most challenging entrances there is and there are many shipwrecks to prove it. The Fort was build for protection during the Civil War, then built up during WW I and WWII.

Sunset at Astoria

Peter Iredale wreck 

The drive from Astoria was only about ten minutes and once in the park it becomes clear how big it is. I found my camp site which was a mile from the beach and only a quarter mile from a lake. After dropping my stuff, I walked out to the beach to see the ocean. After the drive I wanted to move and the walk was perfect.

I was met with the sight of the wreck of the Peter Iredale, a sailing ship that ran aground in 1906 while attempting to enter the Columbia River. No one was lost in the wreck, the ship ran into a sand bar then was driven on shore by waves and wind. It became impossible to save the ship so it was sold as scrap and dismantled. What remains is still on the beach for visitors to walk around and see. It is very interesting and is popular with visitors. The beach itself is very nice, some dunes and wide sand to walk on.


After the first evening, the next day I went to Astoria and looked around a bit, then drove over the long bridge and entered Washington State. The southern part of the state is very interesting with lots of bays and rugged coast. There are a couple of touristy towns but there are fun things to do.

Ships at anchor

One thing that is available is horse back riding on the beach. It is quite reasonable in cost and fun to do. The area is also a big oyster and crab fishing port and the local stores have crab all year round. The oysters are great as well and are fairly cheep.

Since fishing and shipping are big industries, there are a lot of water oriented sights and activities. The water can be cold in the summer and winter it is very cold. But fishing is a big business all year and there is a lot of salmon to be had as well.

Gun turret mount at the fort, a lot bigger than it looks

Back at the fort, there are still many installations around to walk on and view. The old gun batteries and attractions to see and since the park is flat and there are many trails and roads, biking from location to location is easy.

Lake by the camp site

On the last day, I went back into Astoria and stopped at the farmers market in the center of town. Like most farmers markets, there is a mix of food and crafted items. Everything from jewelry to guitars to clothes to food of course.

At this time of year, berries are ripe so lots of those were available. But I didn't get anything to eat, instead I went to a Armenian restaurant and had their specialty, stuff cabbage. It was very good and reminded me of my time in Turkey, there are similarities.

After lunch it was back int he car for the drive home. It was a very nice and enjoyable weekend for sure. I will make another trip to this area again and do more exploring. Take a look online and plan a trip if you are spending some time on the north Oregon coast.

Pitchforks...

O’Malley: Big money men put nation on brink of ‘pitchforks’

Democratic presidential candidate delivers populist message in rural Carroll County

By DOUGLAS BURNS

Martin O’Malley can’t spot any orioles these days in Baltimore, the city he served as mayor for eight years. Climate change chased the birds away, he said.

On an acreage 1½ miles southeast of Roselle, O’Malley, a Democratic presidential candidate, searched the trees Sunday afternoon for his beloved bird. He thought he spotted at least one oriole, near a top pine branch.

But the former two-term Maryland governor wasn’t in Iowa looking for birds. He wants caucus votes in what right now looks like the long shot of all long shots: a challenge to the seeming (and poll-backed) inevitability of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. The Real Clear Politics average of major polls from April 25 to June 22 shows Clinton leading in the Iowa Democratic Caucuses with 56 percent support. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont running as a Democrat, is at 16.4 percent. O’Malley polled at 2.2 percent. Vice President Joe Biden, who is not a declared candidate, posts 9.3 percent in the collected composite.

Before speaking at the home of Carroll County Democratic Party Co-Chairman Tim Tracy, O’Malley chatted up most of the 50 party activists and political junkies who braved a blazing sun for the outdoor rally.

“I’m part Irish and part German, which means I like to give orders, but I don’t like to take them,” O’Malley joked with some Iowans who complimented him on his Irish descent.

In his remarks, O’Malley earned some of the most-sustained applause in his appearance in calling for comprehensive immigration reform, a key element of which, he said, is pulling an estimated 11 million undocumented people from an underground economy.

“Unless we are Native Americans, we were all once strangers in a strange land,” O’Malley said. “The genius of our nation is that in every generation we make it possible for new Americans to join this movement forward of a rising middle class, and that, too, is good for wages.”

O’Malley, born in Washington, D.C., and raised in the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital, trained much of his Southern-accented rhetorical fire on income inequality, saying the system is stacked against the middle and working classes in favor of large-monied interests.

“The big money and the big power have become so intertwined, and so concentrated, that we’ve reached the point in our country’s history where that concentration of wealth and power is sucking opportunity out of the homes and the neighborhoods of the many,” O’Malley said. “And when you reach a point like that, there’s only two paths — one is a sensible rebalancing for the common good we share, and the other is pitchforks, more of ’em, in the hands of more and more angry people.”

O’Malley supports publicly financed campaigns, and says the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, which allows for unlimited expenditures for interest groups, has turned American politics into a highest-bidder auction.

“Citizens United should be called ‘Citizens Don’t Matter,’” O’Malley said.

O’Malley, who described himself as “fearless” with his progressive values, calls for more than doubling the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour, tying college student loan repayments to graduates’ incomes and paid family leave.

He opposes the imminent Trans-Pacific Partnership, what the New York Times described as a legacy-defining accord for President Barack Obama linking 40 percent of the world’s economy — from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia — in a web of rules governing Pacific commerce. O’Malley said the trade deal will cost American jobs and did not emerge from open debate.

“I’m opposed to any secret trade deal,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley’s big idea: an aggressive push for more renewable-energy development. He said clean energy should fully power the United States by 2050. He would create a Clean Energy Job Corps and direct the Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our economy is not money, it is people, all of our people,” O’Malley said.

Barry Bruner, a former Democratic Carroll County Attorney, said he is “impressed as can be” with O’Malley.

“I think he has a place in this campaign,” Bruner said after O’Malley’s speech. “He connected with me, and I’m excited to see someone like this in the race. It’s going to make all of the candidates stronger. Maybe he will be a part of a ticket, if it comes down to that, if Hillary is too strong to beat.”

Carroll County Supervisor Gene Meiners, a Democrat, said O’Malley’s message can resonate in rural Iowa.

“He talks with a lot of common sense, I thought, kind of at our level,” Meiners said.

Andy Lange, 25, of Carroll, sees O’Malley as being a progressive with a background that could make him more electable than Sanders.

“I came into this almost certain that I would be caucusing for Bernie Sanders,” Lange said. “But I will say that I was quite impressed.”

Lange said O’Malley’s executive background separates him from Sanders.

“I think that O’Malley would do very well in a general election,” Lange said. “I think that’s where Bernie Sanders might not be as strong is in the general election. I think putting O’Malley on a stage next to almost any Republican I can think of, I can’t imagine that the governor would not do extremely well.”

Fix Dark Money

Obama Could Fix Dark Money, But Would Rather Just Yell at Republicans About It

By Jon Schwarz

President Obama has been denouncing “dark money” since 2010, when he declared it “a threat to our democracy.” And he’s right to be concerned: Dark money — in the form of donations to politically active nonprofit organizations that do not have to disclose their donors — now amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars each election.

If he actually wanted to do something about it, he could — without any involvement by Congress. He could issue an executive order requiring corporations that do business with the federal government to disclose their dark money contributions and those by their top executives.

But last week, as 104 congresspeople and 26 senators urged him to do that, he used his spokesperson Eric Schultz to wave them off. “We believe Republicans should be taking steps to fix the campaign finance system, not trying to protect their ability to accept dark money,” Schultz said.

It’s hard to disagree with that. But it would be just as hard to disagree if a Republican spokesperson said, “We believe the Democratic president should be taking steps to fix the campaign finance system, not trying to protect his party’s ability to accept dark money.”

The federal government buys about $500 billion in goods and services every year, and most of the biggest U.S. corporations get chunks of that money and would hate to give it up. Obama used this leverage twice in 2014, first requiring federal contractors to pay their workers at least $10.10 per hour, and then forbidding contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

A new executive order on disclosure of political contributions would make a significant difference. According to a study by Public Citizen, 11 of the top 15 recipients of federal cash (including number one, Lockheed Martin) don’t fully disclose possible dark money contributions.

This past March, 50 organizations, including AFSCME, MoveOn, the NAACP and the Sierra Club, asked Obama to issue an executive order. Then in April the signatures of 550,000 people with the same request were delivered to the White House.

There’s no question that the GOP is scared of this. House Republicans tucked a provision that would protect corporations from disclosure into a spending bill — in fact, that’s what prompted Schultz’s comment.

And corporate America despises the idea. When the Obama administration floated issuing a dark money executive order in 2011, the top Chamber of Commerce lobbyist said: “We will fight it through all available means … all options are on the table.”

At that point Obama courageously gave up, and has continued giving up until today. But Republicans do still face the very real danger that his spokesperson will say mildly disapproving things about them.

Proof of citizenship

Supreme Court denies states’ request for proof of voter citizenship 

By Jesse Byrnes

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case allowing states to require proof of citizenship for those applying to vote in federal elections, effectively upholding a lower court ruling against Kansas and Arizona.

Those states wanted the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to change its registration requirements to include proof of citizenship for those applying to vote in federal elections, as the states require for those using their state forms.

By not taking the case, the Supreme Court leaves in place a November 2014 ruling from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the states cannot require the documentation for applicants using the so-called “federal form.”
Voting rights advocates hailed the court's decision to not take up the case, Kobach v. United States Election Assistance Commission. Currently, the federal agency's form only requires applicants swear eligibility under penalty of perjury.

“This is a very big deal,” Rick Hasen, a University of California Irvine law professor, wrote on his election law blog. “Kobach had the potential to shift more power away from the federal government in administering elections toward the states.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona could not require those using the federal form to provide proof of citizenship.

“Arizona citizens can continue to participate in voter registration drives without worrying about not having proof of citizenship documents,” said Shirley Sandelands of the League of Women Voters, one of the voting rights groups that urged the court to not hear the appeal.

The Brennan Center for Justice and several law firms that represented the group praised the Supreme Court in a joint statement for “securing a critical victory to strengthen the right to vote in federal elections in Arizona and Kansas and reaffirming the important role Congress plays in preserving a fair voter registration process across the country.”

“The Supreme Court decision not to review was not particularly surprising given the fact that there was no circuit split yet,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who filed the joint appeal to the federal appellate court decision with Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan, said in an interview with Roll Call.

Typically, Kobach told the newspaper, “the Supreme Court favors reviewing decisions where one circuit has gone one way and another circuit has gone another way. It appears that the Supreme Court is waiting for another circuit to weigh in.”

Kobach expects the 11th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over the two states, to eventually weigh in, according to Roll Call.

Supreme Court Win

At the Supreme Court, a Win for Direct Democracy

By RICHARD H. PILDES

In 2000, voters in Arizona adopted a state constitutional amendment that created an independent commission to draw congressional districts. But the commission immediately faced a legal challenge: the United States Constitution gives the power to state legislatures (and to Congress) to regulate national elections — not to the voters. Can the word “legislature” in the Constitution mean voters themselves?

That question eventually came before the Supreme Court, which on Monday ruled, in a 5-to-4 decision, that the Constitution permits states to let their voters use “direct democracy” — popular votes on ballot measures, known as voter initiatives — to regulate the rules for national elections.

Ten states give commissions a role in congressional districting, though aside from Arizona, only California has a fully autonomous independent commission. But the stakes go beyond the design of election districts. In 21 states, voters can initiate legislation; in 18 states, they can initiate constitutional amendments.

In recent years, for example, voters in Washington and California have used this power to adopt a new form of primary election, known as the “top two” primary, designed to give voters more choices. If the Constitution permits only state legislatures to enact such laws (or to refuse to enact them), these kinds of voter-initiated measures would be unconstitutional.

That’s because the Constitution expressly gives power over elections to the legislatures. And in some parts of the Constitution, at least, the framers certainly meant “legislatures” to exclude direct popular decision making: The Constitution originally assigned the selection of senators to the state “legislatures,” for the purpose of rejecting popular elections. It took the 17th Amendment to make direct election of senators possible.

So to uphold direct democracy as a constitutionally permissible tool for regulating elections, the court had to conclude that, when the Constitution uses the term “legislature,” it does not (in its original formulation) permit the popular election of senators but does permit popular regulation of the election process. There is no easy answer, and that conundrum is what produced a legitimate 5-to-4 divide.

How did we arrive at a point at which, at least until the court’s decision, it was unclear whether the Constitution required that the power to shape the election process be left with the most politically self-interested actors — state legislatures? The answer lies in the very success of the American Constitution.

Unlike most modern constitutions, such as those created after 1945, the American one does not create any specific, relatively unpoliticized institutions to oversee election ground rules. As the world gained more experience with constitutional democracy, societies recognized the need to take out of the hands of existing officeholders the power to control the rules under which they and their rivals compete for political power. But at the time the American Constitution was written, there was no discussion, or even any recognition, of the possibility of creating these kinds of institutions.

Constitutional law, however, cannot police all the risks of political self-entrenchment. The main, and best, justification for direct democracy is precisely the need for this kind of check, just as the voters in Arizona exercised, on the self-interested temptations of power when legislators regulate the political process itself.

Direct democracy is hardly a panacea or a pure expression of “the popular will,” whatever that means; voters must be organized and informed, which takes resources and organizational skill. Still, direct democracy remains an important means of policing the inevitable temptations those in power have to entrench themselves more securely in power.

On Monday the court rightly recognized that, when the Constitution assigned the elections clause power to the “legislatures,” the framers were not making a judgment about whether states could create direct democratic processes as another way to regulate the national election process. Unlike their rejection of popular Senate elections, the framers did not reject popular regulation of elections: They just never considered the idea. To reject it in their name, the court wisely concluded, would have been perverse.

The Supreme Court often surprises critics who see it in simplistically ideological terms. As this term and this decision confirm, the current court remains a pragmatically minded institution that interprets legal language with an eye toward the problems that language was created to address. As a result, direct democracy will remain available to constrain partisan gerrymandering and other ways legislatures seek to manipulate democratic purposes for self-serving reasons.

Gave Little

Jeb Bush Made Millions But Gave Little to Charity

By Tim Murphy

Jeb Bush released 33 years of tax returns on Tuesday evening. So how much did he give to charity over the years?

Not that much. Between 2003 and 2013, Bush gave 1.5 percent of his income to charity, according to the lists of charitable deductions in the tax returns. That's about half the national average of 3 percent, according to Charity Navigator.

In a letter posted on his website, Bush says he has given $739,000 to charity between 2007 and 2014, which indicates that he increased his annual rate of giving substantially last year. (His 2014 tax return will be released in the fall, according to his campaign.) "Since I left the governor's office I have tried to give back—and even though all of us strive to do more—I'm proud of what Columba and I have contributed," he wrote.

Bush's charitable donations as a percentage of his income is substantially less than the 13.8 percent given by Mitt Romney in the year before he launched his last presidential campaign (most went to the Mormon Church as required). Bill and Hillary Clinton gave away about $10 million in the years leading up to the 2008 election, with much of that money going to the family's foundation. That was about 10 percent of their income. The Obamas gave 15 percent of their income to charity in 2014. (The Bidens' charitable giving was far lower: 2 percent.)

Fix Hunger

Here's How Africa Can Fix Hunger Without "Help" From Monsanto

By Tom Philpott

Imagine if Monsanto announced the debut of a genetically engineered superfood—a vegetable rich in protein and essential vitamins and minerals, perfectly adapted to Africa's soils and changing climate.

There'd be howls of protest, no doubt, from anti-GMO activists. But also great adulation—possibly a World Food Prize—along with stern lectures about how anti-science romanticism must not impede heroic corporate efforts to "feed the world."

Thing is, such superfoods exist in Africa. They exist thanks not to the genius and beneficence of a foreign company, but rather through millennia of interactions between Africa's farmers and its landscape. And while their popularity waned in recent decades as urbanization has swept through the continent, they're gaining renewed interest from food-security experts and urban dwellers alike, reports a new article by Rachel Cernansky in Nature.

Cernansky focuses on the work of Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, a horticulturalist at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya, who has since the 1990s been a kind of Johnny Appleseed for reviving appetites for indigenous vegetables in Africa. Here's Cernansky:

Most of the indigenous vegetables being studied in East Africa are leafy greens, almost all deep green in colour and often fairly bitter. Kenyans especially love African nightshade and amaranth leaves (Amaranthus sp.). Spider plant (Cleome gynandra), one of Abukutsa's favourites for its sour taste, grows wild in East Africa as well as South Asia. Jute mallow has a texture that people love or hate. It turns slimy when cooked — much like okra. … [M]oringa (Moringa oleifera) is not only one of the most healthful of the indigenous vegetables — both nutritionally and medicinally — but it is also common in many countries around the world.

In a 2010 paper, Abukutsa-Onyango demonstrated the nutritional punch packed by these foodstuffs. This chart, pulled from the paper, shows how African vegetables like the leaves of amaranth, pumpkin, and cowpea (black-eyed pea) plants outshine rival western greens that have been introduced into African agriculture over the past century.

Then there's the leaves of the moringa tree, native to Africa and parts of Asia, which, according to the anti-hunger nonprofit Trees for Life International, deliver three times more vitamin A than carrots, seven times more vitamin C than oranges, and twice the protein of cow's milk, per 100 grams.

Unlike "exotic" (i.e., non-native to Africa) vegetables like kale and cabbage, these crops are adapted to Africa's soils and growing conditions. "Most of the traditional varieties are ready for harvest much faster than non-native crops, so they could be promising options if the rainy seasons become more erratic—one of the predicted outcomes of global warming," Cernansky writes.

As a result of these advantages, indigenous vegetables are gaining traction throughout East Africa. Traditional markets, supermarkets, and restaurant menus in Nairobi feature them heavily, Cernansky reports. As a result, "Kenyan farmers increased the area planted with such greens by 25 percent between 2011 and 2013." They're also gaining ground in Western Africa.

Of course, spiderplant and cowpea leaves are a long way from solving Africa's nutritional problems. As of 2013, indigenous vegetables accounted for just 6 percent of Kenya's total vegetable market, reports SciDevNet. Despite growing demand, SciDevNet found, production is constrained by the same factors that haunt African food security broadly: poor infrastructure (roads, rail, etc.) for bringing fresh food from farm to market, along with a dearth of investment in research and development.

There are no simple answers, no silver bullets, to the problem of ensuring a robust food supply on a warming planet with a growing population. But it's important to remember that the best, cheapest solutions aren't necessarily the ones that emerge from patent-seeking laboratories.

Still Conservative

Sorry, Liberals, But the Roberts Court Is Still Conservative

This Supreme Court term has been called the most liberal in decades. A closer looks reveals otherwise.

By Pema Levy

There's no denying it: Last week was a great one for liberals. On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected challenges that would have gutted two of the most important progressive laws of the past half-century, the Fair Housing Act and the Affordable Care Act. The next day, the court made history by legalizing same-sex marriage in every state, a triumphant end to a decades-long movement for marriage equality.

And it wasn't just last week that had liberals celebrating. The court's majority sided with its liberal wing in a number of key opinions in the past year, upholding a judicial campaign finance law and rejecting employment discrimination based on pregnancy and religion. "Defying the view that it's entirely hostile to civil rights, the Court ruled time and again for the protection of equality," David Gans, a lawyer at the liberal-leaning Constitution Accountability Center, a research and litigation group, wrote in The New Republic over the weekend.

It's a trend that has caught some observers by surprise: Though the Supreme Court has been reliably conservative since Chief Justice John Roberts took over in 2005, this term it moved decidedly leftward. Using a widely accepted measure for categorizing the outcome of a case as liberal or conservative, the New York Times found that the 2014 term that ended on Monday was the court's most liberal since 1969. The "recent numbers do seem suggestive of a shift," concluded the Times story, which also featured a chart showing that the number of liberal opinions has ticked up modestly over the last three years. That's a remarkable reversal, given the trend just a few years earlier: The court's most conservative term in decades was in 2008, Roberts' fourth year as chief justice.

But has the court really turned suddenly liberal? Zoom out for a broader view of its actions this past term, and the picture changes. Rather than liberal triumph, this court term may be better described as one of conservative overreach.

Take the two signature cases decided last Thursday. In the Affordable Care Act case, a 6-3 majority upheld the law's subsidies in the 34 states with federally run health care exchanges—reaffirming the dominant view among legal scholars and the members of Congress who passed the law. Usually, the Supreme Court hears a case in order to resolve uncertainty among the lower courts. In this case, the Fourth Circuit had already upheld the subsidies. The DC Circuit was also set to rule on the subsidies, and many observers expected the same ruling, but the Supreme Court took up the case before the DC Circuit had a chance to conclude it. Though the Supreme Court's ultimate ruling came down on the liberal side, the fact that the court agreed to hear this case at all was a departure from the usual routine of deference to lower courts and a sign that some of the justices were eager to relitigate what many experts considered to be an already settled matter.

The other case that came down on Thursday fits the same description: a major victory for liberals but a case that a less conservative court would have never taken in the first place. The question before the court in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project was whether policies that unintentionally harm minorities—that is, have a "disparate impact"—are illegal under the 1968 Fair Housing Act. For decades, disparate impact has been an important tool in fighting entrenched residential segregation. Every court of appeals to take up the issue since the law's passage has agreed that the FHA allows disparate impact claims. Congress implicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of disparate impact under the FHA in 1988 when it amended the law to include exceptions to disparate impact claims. And the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a rule in 2013 making official its long-held policy of recognizing disparate impact claims brought under the law. In the end, Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with the liberals in the case, handing down an opinion that emphasized the importance of disparate impact in combating segregation. But a more liberal court would never have heard the case to begin with.

"Some of what we've seen this term is a reflection of case selection," says Gans of the Constitution Accountability Center. "These are very far-reaching claims that conservatives are making in the cases they are bringing to the court," he added, citing the fair housing and Obamacare cases. Although the court didn't dismantle either law, the most conservative justices wanted to. In the housing case, the vote was just 5-4.

That much of the court's caseload would become a conservative wish list—even if not all wishes come true—was predictable. In a 2009 paper, four political scientists laid out a simple theory that is being borne out this term. When the court leans conservative, as it does now, conservative interests sense that the court is more sympathetic to their views and choose to appeal more cases up from lower courts. Meanwhile, liberal interests try to stay away from the Supreme Court when possible, knowing the odds are stacked against them. So the cases coming to the Supreme Court invite conservative rulings, and the right-leaning court is more eager to make them.

But there's a catch, says Kevin McGuire, a co-author of the study and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "The rub is that, when all those conservative interests bring their cases to the court, they will sometimes overestimate the court's conservatism," he says. "The result is that the court ends up upholding those liberal lower court decisions."

The housing case is a perfect example of this phenomenon. This was the third case in three years that the Supreme Court agreed to hear on the issue of disparate impact under the FHA. Clearly, conservative justices wanted to take up the issue, and conservative interests wanted to give them the opportunity. Ultimately, they overestimated how far Kennedy was willing to go and lost by one vote.

Likewise, the Obamacare case "is a nice example of what we meant by overreach," says Georg Vanberg, another co-author of the study and a political scientist at Duke University. “They overestimated how conservative, in fact, especially Kennedy is on this issue.”

Vanberg also cautions that sometimes a liberal outcome is actually further to the right than people realize. One example is the first Obamacare case that the Supreme Court heard, in 2012, over the law's requirement that people buy health insurance. Liberals prevailed and the law survived. But Roberts' majority opinion, which upheld the individual mandate as a tax, narrowed Congress' power to regulate commerce and made participation in the expansion of Medicaid, one of Obamacare's most critical provisions, optional. Millions of people lack health insurance as a result. Even Kennedy's opinion legalizing gay marriage falls into this camp, Vanberg says. Kennedy could have stipulated that laws discriminating against LGBT individuals must be weighed against a high legal standard, giving gay rights advocates a powerful tool to fight other forms of discrimination beyond marriage. But he opted not to.

The conservatives groups who bring these cases have reason to be optimistic that they will often prevail before the Roberts Court. After all, this is the court of Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited independent election spending, and McCutcheon v. FEC, which removed the caps on the amount of money wealthy donors can give to parties and campaigns. It's the court that struck down widely accepted school desegregation plans and gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, two cases that likewise lacked a lower court disagreement for the Supreme Court to resolve. It's also the court that last year turned corporations into people with religious feelings in the Hobby Lobby case about access to birth control.

Like conservative interest groups, the conservative justices likely overestimate their own colleagues' willingness to move case law to the right. It takes four justices to vote to hear a case but five to win the case. Sometimes the court's conservatives—Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts—lose Kennedy's swing vote and fall short. In 2012, the court took up a challenge to the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions at the University of Texas-Austin, yet another case without a lower court split that was seemingly taken up in order to overturn precedent. According to reporting by Supreme Court chronicler Joan Biskupic, the conservative justices were poised to strike down the Texas plan when Justice Sonia Sotomayor circulated a blistering dissent that caused Kennedy to waver. Ultimately, Kennedy authored a narrow ruling that left precedent on affirmative action intact.

But perhaps not for long. After the justices sent Fisher v. University of Texas back to the 5th Circuit for a rehearing in 2013, the plaintiffs returned to the Supreme Court for another review, and in a surprise move, the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the case. At least four justices still have their sights set on affirmative action.

The Fisher case isn't the only one next term that demonstrates the Roberts Court's willingness to revisit established precedent, and potentially to strike it down. On Tuesday, the court agreed to hear a case that could severely weaken public-sector unions—a case crafted by a conservative legal group and seemingly brought in order to reach the Supreme Court. Liberals may win these cases, or they may not. Either way, the fact that the court is taking the cases at all reveals as much as its actual rulings about its conservative leanings.

Coordination?

Did Jeb Bush's Campaign and Super-PAC Cross the Line on Coordination?

A Bush strategist's recent remarks fuel allegations that the candidate broke campaign finance rules.

By Russ Choma

Jeb Bush officially declared that he was seeking the presidency two weeks ago, yet political observers have assumed he made the decision long ago and may have remained a shadow candidate for strategic purposes. Official candidates are not permitted under campaign finance law to coordinate with super-PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts of money. As a supposedly undecided candidate Bush could work closely with Right to Rise, the multimillion-dollar super-PAC supporting his candidacy. But recent statements by one of Bush's top political allies suggest Bush may have coordinated with Right to Rise even after he technically qualified as an official candidate.

Election law states that once a candidate has started organizing a campaign—and, more specifically, raising funds for the campaign that go beyond what they might need to simply "explore"—he or she should file with the Federal Election Commission and accept only donations that are strictly limited in size. And, the law says, a candidate cannot coordinate his or her efforts with a super-PAC. Bush had what appeared to be a well-oiled and functioning campaign organization long before he declared his candidacy on June 15, but there was never any filing or official acknowledgement of his status. Campaign watchdog groups believe Bush was putting off announcing his presidential run as long as possible in order to fundraise for and plot strategy with Right to Rise. The Campaign Legal Center and other outfits filed complaints with the FEC and the Justice Department earlier this spring, alleging that Bush was technically a candidate even if he had yet to declare himself one, and thus was violating campaign finance rules by coordinating with the super-PAC. Last week, GOP strategist Mike Murphy, who's heading Right to Rise, lent some weight to their allegations during a conference call with New York City-area donors, unaware that a Buzzfeed reporter was listening in.

During that call, Murphy made it clear that he had, until Bush's official announcement, been party to Bush's deliberations over how to run his future campaign. He told the donors that he "can't coordinate anymore" with the Bush campaign but was "well informed as of a week ago," according to Buzzfeed. Then Murphy delved into a discussion of the strategy that the campaign would follow and the complementary strategy the super-PAC would employ.

Murphy indicated that Bush and Right to Rise officials had intensive conversations about how the super-PAC would support the official campaign following Bush's announcement. He noted the Right to Rise had already shot video footage of Bush to use in videos and political ads. "We're going to be the first super-PAC to really be able to do just positive advertising, to tell his story, which is the missing ingredient right now," Murphy told the donors. After Bush declared his candidacy, the super-PAC released its first digital ad on YouTube, featuring chirpy music and snappy animated text, lauding Bush's success and describing itself as an "independent, transparent organization…Our goal is to show you Jeb's heart."

Several campaign finance experts say Bush's close interactions with the super-PAC—even though he maintained publicly that he had yet to decide on a presidential run—may have violated the law. Paul Ryan, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, says that when Bush and Right to Rise first started raising more money than was necessary for Bush to merely explore the idea of running—that is, when they raised money with the intention of using it to get Bush elected president—Bush, under the law, became an official candidate, whether he acknowledged it or not. If the super-PAC was shooting footage for campaign ads before Bush's official announcement with his participation, that cuts against Bush's position that he was merely exploring a presidential run. Ryan describes Bush's involvement with the super-PAC video shoot as "classic textbook coordination," adding, "Their whole fig leaf argument is going to be, 'But, he wasn't a candidate, ha! Ha!.' But we're going to say he is." Ryan's group has filed complaints against Bush and the super-PAC with the FEC and the Justice Department, citing Bush's slipups in which he referenced his campaign and his campaign-like activities throughout the spring, including trips to Iowa and New Hampshire and the recruitment of fundraisers and campaign advisers. Ryan maintains the conference call adds to the evidence that Bush's campaign and the super-PAC coordinated.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and a law professor at the University of California-Irvine, also says Bush's dealings with the super-PAC raise legal questions. "The position appears to be that this was perfectly acceptable behavior until the moment he filed his official papers, and I think that's problematic. I think he's been a candidate and he has been flaunting the rules," Hasen says. Like Ryan, Hasen considers the coordination between Bush and the super-PAC to be a serious issue. "He seems to have put his super-PAC on autopilot and just given it instructions to go do what it does," Hasen says.

Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, denies that Bush has coordinated with Right to Rise.

"Governor Bush has no control over the Right to Rise super-PAC's activities.  It is an independent group," she says. "We have and will continue to comply with all applicable campaign finance laws."

Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the Right to Rise super-PAC, downplays the importance of Murphy's comments and says they were only referring to Bush's publicly documented thoughts on campaigning.

"The comments were in reference to Gov. Bush's historical preference for positive advertising, which was consistent in his previous elections and is no secret," Lindsay says.

Neither Hasen nor Ryan are optimistic that the FEC will take any action on Bush's alleged coordination before the 2016 election. But Hasen says this doesn't mean nothing will come of that matter. In 2004, he notes, there were questions raised about liberal billionaire George Soros' donations to political groups, and it took several years for the FEC to adjudicate the matter, but by 2008 the case had resulted in new rules. The groups were ultimately fined $775,000 in 2007.

"This may be important, not for this election, but for future elections," Hasen says.

Methane Detected

New Horizons Update: Methane Detected; New Images of Pluto and Charon; Sunrise/Sunset Observations

Yes, there is methane on Pluto, and, no, it doesn’t come from cows. The infrared spectrometer on NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has detected frozen methane on Pluto’s surface; Earth-based astronomers first observed the chemical compound on Pluto in 1976.

“We already knew there was methane on Pluto, but these are our first detections,” said Will Grundy, the New Horizons Surface Composition team leader with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “Soon we will know if there are differences in the presence of methane ice from one part of Pluto to another.”

Methane (chemical formula CH4) is an odorless, colorless gas that is present underground and in the atmosphere on Earth. On Pluto, methane may be primordial, inherited from the solar nebula from which the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago. Methane was originally detected on Pluto’s surface by a team of ground-based astronomers led by New Horizons team member Dale Cruikshank, of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California.

Images from New Horizons show the view from aboard the spacecraft closes in on the Pluto system for a July 14 flyby.

The New Horizons spacecraft has made a critical observation in preparation for its upcoming observations of Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. Just hours after its flyby of Pluto on July 14, the spacecraft will observe sunlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere, to help scientists determine the atmosphere’s composition. “It will be as if Pluto were illuminated from behind by a trillion-watt light bulb,” said Randy Gladstone, a New Horizons scientist from Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio. On June 16, New Horizons’ Alice ultraviolet imaging spectrograph successfully performed a test observation of the sun from 3.1 billion miles away (5 billion kilometers), which will be used to interpret the July 14 observations.

New Horizons is now less than 11 million miles (18 million kilometers) from the Pluto system. The spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.