You wrote ...

"Back in the early aughts it was a big, big thing for Dems talking about hacking Diebold voter machines. And there were lots of scary stories about how easily this could be done. There was also no evidence that it actually had been done. To be clear, I'm not saying it wasn't a good idea to make these machines more secure, only that evidence trumps paranoia. Always."

I am astounded at your ignorance regarding the electronic voting machines and the fraud involved in the use of them.

Your comment about "Dems" concerned about hacking Diebold machines shows you have not followed the problems caused by the machines. The Democrats, with the exception of Kucinich, did not support all the election integrity activists and this is why the US is still using those hackable machines. Many of the activists have no party affiliation and are trying to save your democracy. Read up on the 2000 election and the 2004 (Ohio) John Conyers even wrote a book about the hackable machines in the 2004 election. Look up Mike Connell and how he happened to die in his plane a few days before having to testify about the actions he performed on the hackable machines. The machine between your voting station and the final count.

I can't believe someone I had respect for, and have read your site for over eight years, is now calling all the hard work, election integrity activists have done, paranoid.

I am a Canadian who could not believe you elected Bush again in 2004. I researched and found out he was never elected, in 2000 or 2004. All mainly due to manipulation of electronic voting machines. I have read and followed blogs concerned about the electronic voting for years and I know without a doubt that they are and have been hacked. Your government does not seem to care. Now you don't either so I will no longer be reading your blog (Not that it matters to you I am sure as I don't have the money for your "prime" site anyway.

I will be contacting all election integrity sites I have followed since 2004 to inform them of your ignorance.

You owe them an apology!

The spoiler version is that out in California, where the state government and advocacy groups are actually interested in doing Obamacare right, things are looking pretty good. They're standing up their exchanges and it turns out premiums for basic bronze and more comprehensive silver health plans will actually come in lower than anticipated.

This is almost unambiguously good news for Obamacare.

You can tell it's good news because it's obviously good news, but also because the brigade of conservative writers who comb the news for every last Obamacare glitch in less cooperative states have been pretty quiet about it.

But in addition to auguring well for the law and suggesting its detractors have been blowing implementation problems out of proportion, I think this news underscores the strategic importance, from the administration's point of view, of getting the ACA right in California in particular.

For those following ACA news closely, I'd almost say forget everything you hear about the law outside of California.

California is huge, geographically and population-wise. Yet it's better positioned than almost any state in the US to implement Obamacare smoothly -- Democratic leadership, big activist networks, etc. If they can make this work, then a). the law will have a huge head start toward meeting it's national coverage goals and b). it will serve as a model for every other state in the country for how to make it work.

More to the point, all the states trying to make the law fail will look very stupid and terribly craven if California pulls this off. Their predictable claims that Obamacare is all screwed up won't be very persuasive if a giant, historically mismanaged state like California can make it work well.

If it fails in California, though, that's a disaster.

Thus, my hunch is that both the administration and California officials are unusually invested in getting it right there, more so than in any other state in the union. The other side of that coin, of course, is that conservatives will be heavily invested in finding ways to undermine it. Perhaps that's why they've recently tried recently, and appropriately, to make issue of California's attempt to conceal its exchange's contractor spending from the public.

But if you're looking for an Obamacare bellwether, keep your eyes on California.

Photo of Skagit River Bridge Collapse- @dustystarling twitter.com/NewsBreaker/st...

North end of I-5 bridge over #Skagit River collapsed twitter.com/Gina_SVH/statu...

— Gina Cole (@Gina_SVH) May 24, 2013

More updates here.

More ...

Here's the twitter feed of a local reporter covering the story.

10:34 PM: Here's an image of what is identified by Bridgehunter.com as I-5 Skagit River Bridge. I want to stress. I've linked to this image based on what appears to be the correct bridge based on available news reports. Keep that caveat in mind. (On the link above, note the less than desirable inspection ratings for the bridge.)

10:41 PM: Here's an image of the actual collapse. Appears to be same bridge as above.

One of the big threads of the 2012 national election was the big efforts by Republican legislatures, governors and secretaries of state to push voter suppression efforts - whether it was voter ID or curtailing early voting or whatever else. Even if you're on the other side of this argument - though it's hard to consider it much of an argument - Republicans were in control in a lot of critical swing states and went for the rafters in their fight against 'vote fraud'. And at the center of that was Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.

Well, back in January Husted directed all County Boards of Elections to investigate all claims of vote fraud. And here's what they found. I'm going to quote at length from Robert Higgs column in the Plain Dealer because it really puts it all pretty clearly ...

In January, Husted directed the 88 county boards of election to investigate all claims of voter fraud. The county boards and Husted's staff found 625 cases of irregularity.

Of those cases, names of 115 people were referred by the county boards of elections to their local prosecutors.

Husted's staff referred another 20 cases to the Ohio attorney general for possible prosecution. They involve people who appear to have voted in two states during the presidential election.

"No amount of fraud is acceptable. And if you cheat, you will be caught and you will be held accountable," Husted said.

Husted directed that the county boards investigate claims of election misconduct as a result of political hyperbole about voter suppression and voter fraud before the election.

"In the aftermath of an election, time after time, things calm down. These things go away and no one revisits them until the next major election. What I wanted to do was get the facts," he said.

"Frankly, it concerns me with some of the hyperbole surrounding these issues that some of those unsubstantiated claims, left unchecked, would become conventional wisdom."

A few things to note. Even one of the GOP's point men on the vote fraud front is now trying to push back against the 'hyperbole' tied to the subject. And even with an especial emphasis on finding every instance of potential fraud, they appear to have come up with 135 - and most of those were apparently caught by the simple non-voter ID methods all good canvassers use. So guilt notwithstanding, those instances had no actual effect on the race in question.

As Husted put it, "Voter fraud does exist, but it is not an epidemic. To put this into context, ... that's 135 referrals out of more than 5.6 million votes cast."

The numbers speak for themselves. If anything I would say Husted still somewhat exaggerates the scale of the problem. But the guy deserves credit for putting this all out there.

Two points I'd make.

The first is that what really turns elections is organized vote fraud and organized voting fraud almost always requires the involvement of election administrators. This is why voter ID is itself such a fraud in my mind because it provides zero protection against the kinds of fraud that are real dangers to elections.

Second, there are clearly people who will vote in two states or try to vote absentee and then vote on election day. No sane person has ever denied this. But there are very, very, very few of them. The issue with election policy is always balancing the costs with the benefits. There's no free lunch.

You can take your voting list and purge everyone on the list who you can't verify is living at exactly the same address as listed or everyone who has the same name as someone who once committed a felony. And you may upend two or three people who were going to vote in the name of some dead person. But you'll probably knock tens of thousands of legitimate voters off the rolls. This is a documented fact. And conveniently, the great majority of those people will be poorer and minority voters who just happen to be Democrats.

Back in the early aughts it was a big, big thing for Dems talking about hacking Diebold voter machines. And there were lots of scary stories about how easily this could be done. There was also no evidence that it actually had been done. To be clear, I'm not saying it wasn't a good idea to make these machines more secure, only that evidence trumps paranoia. Always.

If we wanted to we could have a national voter ID system, with some equivalent of a Social Security number that would make it totally clear when you moved from one state to another, would reconcile when someone died and should be removed from the voting rolls, which could ensure that everyone was issued a free voter ID card, etc. But the truth is that there is zero will to spend either the money to make this possible or to federalize the process of voting. The whole idea of a national ID would kill the approach in its tracks.

All of which brings you back to one central point: if you care about the integrity of elections and people actually being able to vote, the supposed cures for vote fraud are vastly more destructive than the problem. All evidence suggests that vote fraud is a minuscule, minuscule problem. Voter ID and most of the other nostrums are solutions looking for a problem. The people who support these policies are either ignorant of the facts or actually want to cull a certain subsection of the population from democratic participation. There are simply no two ways about it.

Photographers pushed through the crush of the crowd in an effort to get their desired shots. At one point, thanks to shoving from one of the lensman, this reporter spilled some water we were carrying onto a woman who was sitting in front of Weiner.

"You should send the bill to the Talking Points Memo," he said as the woman and her companion laughed.

When a seat opened up next to the women, Weiner sat down and joined them.

"Every morning the four of us and six still cameras, five video cameras, and nine notepads we're all going to get on the two train together," said Weiner. "And part of the way through, we're going to have the guy from Talking Points Memo pour water on one of us, and then, we're going to come back the next day."

Full story here.

Here's how I see the IRS scandal at present. The biggest problem is that no one really knows the facts. Russell George is a nice and honest guy, but any IG who would let a supervisor sit in all the interviews w/her subordinates isn't really ready for prime time. He also probably didn't do a world class job on email review etc.

Second biggest problem is Lois Lerner, who really has to go and has to go this weekend. You simply can't run that division and have the confidence of the public and not be a distraction to your boss if you take the 5th. If she stays in the job having taken the 5th, everyone else will do the same. Just isn't tenable for her to stay in the role and be effective. Issa may not be able to compel her testimony soon but he can put everyone else in a terrible spot if Lerner stays around on the active payroll after having stiffed congress while saying yes to all the other reviews and having planted a question and answered it at the ABA. And Cummings can't break w/Issa on a basic issue like this. I also think Dems should pivot from the "good idea, bad execution" approach where they try to use this scandal to take out 501(c)(4)s. What the President needs is to change the channel, not switch to a slightly different plot line of the same show. He can come back at the 501(c)(4) issue, but later after the facts are out, the bad or incompetent people fired and forgotten, and competency in general is restored. Trying to keep the 501(c)(4) issue live now forces the Republicans to double down on the "bad execution" narrative, instead of everyone moving to talk to something else like tax reform, or health care or....remind me again what was the second term agenda supposed to be about? My point is simply that when you've got a bad hand in a very long game, you fold and move on to the next, you don't double down. I think the right play is to have the new IRS guy reassign all of the major players, turn over a bunch of documents before the end of the long weekend, assign someone to manage this for him and try like heck to turn the dialogue to something really different. My fellow scandal lawyers generally feel the same way.

I am a huge TPM fan and I also serve on one of the BSA's national committees (yes, there are real liberals in the Scouts and we abhor the current policy and, frankly, it is embarrassing at times to be associated with them). I am currently in Grapevine (near Dallas) for the BSA's National Annual Meeting. As you know, the big vote is set for Thursday. I am one of those that has continued to work from the inside to effectuate change, although I am by no means an activist on the issue. I just continue to make the case why change must come and is inevitable every chance I get.

Going into the meeting I was extremely pessimistic about the likelihood of the current resolution to allow gay youth Scouts passing. I based that opinion on many conversations with Scouters (the term for adult volunteers) across the nation. However today (Wednesday) at the "informational meeting" I found cause for optimism and I now expect the resolution to pass, and pass handily. I do believe this resolution falls short of what is necessary, but I also know that this is progress and I think once this resolution passes, that it is only a matter of time before the entire discrimination policy falls (how do you tell 18 year old Eagle Scouts they are no longer welcome?)

The difference today is the actual electorate that will be voting. Over the past several months many of the delegates went from low-information voters who did not care if they discriminated against gay people to high information voters that understand their long-term fiduciary duty to the movement and the youth involved. I heard multiple people discuss the future of BSA corporate sponsorship. I also think a lot of the credit, if the resolution passes, falls on National Commissioner Tico Perez, one of the two top volunteer positions. Tico has genuine conservative bona fides and lives in Orlando, Florida. I know that he is determined to "save" the program and stop the exclusionary policy. He is the right person to lead the charge for change (and he still has the goal of completely reversing the discriminatory policy.

So, don't be surprised if the Scouts finally make the first incremental step forward tomorrow. Too many voters now know that it is clearly in the best interest of the program to pass this resolution.

They then stayed there shouting political slogans (largely about British soldiers killing Muslims) at passersby until police finally showed up and shot both of them and took them into custody. (Both are in the hospital; one in serious condition.) This report suggests that one woman, Ingrid Loyau-Kennett - who got off a bus and then talked to the men until police showed up - may have prevented the incident from escalating or more being killed. At least a couple people videotaped what was happening. Here's the basic AP rundown with more details.

This new report says that both men had been investigated in previous security service probes for links to terror groups.

Here's some of the video I mentioned above.

It's worth stating what's probably obvious here which is that whatever happened here probably happened really fast and unexpectedly. So it's not surprising that the initial reports might be fragmentary or incorrect. But again, we have a very weird set of circumstances. I was at the dentist for the better part of the afternoon. So I'm only piecing together the details now. From the conflicting accounts, it seems that multiple law enforcement agents - at least one FBI agent and two Massachusetts police officers - were questioning this man in his home. So this wasn't in a police station or in an interrogation room. It seems that they were on the deceased man's turf.

Most reports suggest that the suspect had hinted at some involvement in the triple murder and then attacked the FBI agent with a knife once he was pressed for more details.

An account from ABC says this ...

The man shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando, Florida early today was "about to sign a statement" admitting to a role, along with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in an unsolved triple murder in Massachusetts in 2011, two people with direct knowledge of the case told ABC News.

I would have to imagine that when you've got three law enforcement officers and one suspect, things have to spiral out of control really quickly before the suspect gets shot at point blank range. It also seems at least a little surprising to me that the officers wouldn't have secured the area they were questioning the man in or made sure he didn't have immediate access to a weapon, especially once (if the reports are correct) he admitted to a role in the killings. But I don't know what the procedures are or just how the events transpired. Presumably we'll have a clearer account of what happened soon.

Late Update: You learn something new every day. While I was checking some information about Rumsfeld I stumbled across the fact that Rumsfeld was one of the lead sponsors of the original Freedom of Information Act. Would not have expected that.

Full-size version.