We begin today's roundup with
The Des Moines Register's take on the military equipment use by American police forces:
Documents obtained by CNN in April found the Missouri National Guard referred to Ferguson protestors as "enemy forces" during demonstrations last summer. Many Americans don't trust an officer with a department-issued handgun, let alone a grenade launcher. Yet grenade launchers are among the equipment given to local law enforcement by the Department of Defense over the last few decades. Iowa agencies have seven of them.
In this state, 144 agencies have acquired military gear from the federal government valued at about $11.5 million. Items include mine-resistant armored vehicles, automatic handguns, sniper scopes and night-vision goggles. Last year the Register's editorial board reported that the Iowa State University campus police were among the agencies that sought and received M-16 rifles.
Does any of this make Iowans feel any safer?
Probably not.
The Boston Globe:
The Defense Department’s 1033 program is a prime example of a well-intentioned initiative that, in the absence of clear strategy and oversight, has lost some measure of sense. Created in the 1990s, and resurgent after 9/11, the program has funneled billions of dollars’ worth of surplus military equipment to police departments around the country, including many in Massachusetts. Some of the equipment that departments have received — such as rifles, helmets, trucks and night-vision glasses — might on rare occasions prove tactically useful. Others seem patently out of place: Police in the town of Rehoboth, population 11,000, got a mine-resistant tank valued at $658,000.
The Obama administration’s order, sensibly, doesn’t end the 1033 program outright. It bans the transfer of certain items, such as armored vehicles that run on tracks, grenade launchers, and some types of camouflage uniforms. To receive other items, police departments now must offer a plan and justification. That’s a process worth going through before any acquisition. Indeed, police departments around the country have, in recent months, tried to return some expensive military equipment — most notably, those mine-resistant vehicles — after finding that it was costly to maintain and unnecessarily divisive.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Max Ehrenfreund at The Washington Post digs deeper in the president's action:
Agencies will still be able to get items on a longer list, including helicopters, planes, drones, riot gear and armored vehicles, but with strings attached. They'll have to show that they have the approval of their city council or county commission. They'll have to train their officers in maintaining trust in the community and in civilians' constitutional rights. Armored vehicles shouldn't be used at demonstrations or as a show of force, the report from the White House suggests -- possibly an acknowledgment that when those vehicles were on the street at protests in Ferguson, their presence may have deepened the public's distrust of the police. Some of that equipment was purchased with federal funds.
That longer list also includes flash bangs and battering rams, commonly used when officers are forcing their way into a building. Critics of these raids say that when officera don't knock first, misunderstandings can result, and innocent people are sometimes injured or killed.
Brent Staples at The New York Times agrees that the rules fall short:
The good thing about president’s order: It will force police departments to think more carefully about the equipment they seek. The not-so-good thing is that the order leaves open a channel through which departments can still acquire military equipment and much more firepower than they actually need. As Pete Kraska, a justice studies expert at Eastern Kentucky University, told The Los Angeles Times this week: “They wanted to change the ethos from a warrior mentality to a public servant mentality. But allowing the discards of war to still be transferred, albeit with some new restrictions, to our local police sends them the message that they’re engaged in this warlike endeavor where they need warlike machinery.”
Switching topics,
Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution takes a deep look at the Republican economic legacy:
Sometimes you hear people say that America can no longer afford X, Y or Z because we’re broke. We just don’t have the money.
We are not broke. We are not anywhere near broke. But we may in fact be broken.
Our political system is broken, our national will is broken, our sense of ourselves as a people is broken, our commitment to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is broken. Our willingness to invest in each other and in our future is broken.
And I know of no better illustration than the debate over the federal gasoline tax.
Besty Woodruff analyzes Jeb Bush's stance on gay adoption:
Bush’s stance on gay adoption gets less popular by the day. Talking Points Memo reported earlier this week that, per UCLA demographer Gary Gates, gay adoption has even stronger public support than gay marriage.
It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that Bush has softened his rhetoric on the issue. Earlier this week, the governor alluded to the gay adoption issue in an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network. [...] “Previously, I opposed gay adoption, but it has since become the law in our state, and I respect that decision,” he told Politifact in January.
For families like the Odells, that’s good news. Still, as the emails from his time as governor show, Bush’s messaging is certain to be handled carefully on LGBT issues as he struggles to court both social conservative die-hards, and a broader electorate that’s much more pro-equality than when he last ran for office.
And, on a final note, The Week's
Jeff Spross takes conservatives to task over the minimum wage:
Here are two premises that I think can rightly be characterized as "conservative," but that large majorities of Americans probably sympathize with: First, everyone who is able has an obligation to get a job. Second, that an income from a job is morally superior to aid from the government, and that some measure of shame should accompany any reliance on the latter.
But if you combine those two premises with a third premise — that we should not have any government-enforced norms for minimum pay — what emerges is a truly pernicious and feudalistic vision: Everyone should be ashamed if they don't work, everyone should be ashamed if they get any income from the safety net, and employers should be free to pay their workers as cheaply as they feel like. This is as clear a recipe for wage slavery and worker exploitation as one could possibly imagine.