Celia Cohen wrote about the WDEL Lt. Gov debate. I read it, and now I’m less smart

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According to Celia, two noteworthy things happened during the debate and one note worthy thing happened just after it. Loudell asked a good question: Is this office useless? Ciro Poppiti spoke of himself in the third person during the debate and Bethany Hall-Long had an egregious double-typo in her post debate email "Deomcratic Exeuctive." I learned nothing else about anything, everything else was fluffy and filler. If you doubt that, read it yourself.
Rep. Harold “Jack” Peterman (R) has died.

Rep. Harold “Jack” Peterman (R) has died.

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According to the Governor's office, Representative Jack Peterman has died. He was retiring from office this year, not running for reelection after having missed much of the last two years of the session due to illness. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year. Our best wishes and deepest sympathies extend to his family, friends and colleagues. We will have more information as the story develops.

Wednesday Open Thread [8.10.16]

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Ed Kilgore says Trump's assassination "joke" was thinly veiled sedition:
Donald Trump managed to descend to new depths today by repeating a tedious gun-lobby argument that Hillary Clinton wants to “essentially abolish the Second Amendment” and then turning it into a “joking” suggestion that “Second-Amendment people” might hold the only way to deal with that threat. Nothing like a little assassination humor to liven things up on the campaign trail, eh? But even as they condemn the shocking utterance, a lot of observers seem to be missing the fact that Trump is adapting a dangerously common right-wing claim. It’s that the most important purpose of the Second Amendment is not to allow people to defend themselves from robbers and muggers and would-be murderers and rapists if the police cannot get the job done, but rather to create a heavily armed populace prepared to undertake revolutionary violence if the government tries to impose “tyranny.” Let’s be clear about this doctrine: It lets the gun-wielders decide for themselves whether high taxes or government surveillance or Obamacare is a sufficient threat to liberty to justify getting out the shooting irons and killing the police officers and armed-services members assigned the responsibility of enforcing the “tyrannical” laws in question. And conservative politicians have often made it clear they understand and are okay with that incredible risk, as when Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle referred cheerfully to “Second-Amendment remedies” for the liberal policies supported by her opponent, Harry Reid. Angle was hardly alone: During the Republican presidential primaries this cycle, Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz both endorsed the idea of gun rights being a safeguard against too much Big Government liberalism.