National

Kudos to Jack Markell. This is exactly the kind of crumb Markell is a master of tossing out to starving liberals. Nice work Gov! Now get back to the real work of governing and privatize public education, reduce the minimum wage, or figure out how to exempt millionaires from paying taxes.

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) has declared Feb. 12 as "Charles Darwin Day" in the state. Praising Darwin's theory of evolution as "the foundation of modern biology, an essential tool in understanding the development of life on earth," Markell's proclamation says Feb. 12 -- Darwin's birthday -- "is a time to reflect and celebrate the importance of his scientific achievements."

Whenever I see a news story that references a state-run news agency in a foreign country, like Russia, for example, or North Korea, the adjective "state-run" is always a pejorative, indicating to the reader that the news or quote you are about to read is not to be trusted, because it is coming directly from the suspect government in question, a government that is so distrustful of an independent media and the freedom of press and speech that it has set up its own propaganda arm. Keep that in mind when you read that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, of course a Republican, is setting up his own state-run news agency. The agency will be called “Just IN” will provide pre-written stories for small Indiana news outlets on breaking news as well as “personality driven profiles.” Stories will be written by the Pence administration’s communications team. Yes, this is a valuable use of taxpayer money. I wonder which child's education was cut to pay for the Republican propaganda?

This is cool, and I am going to waste hours playing with this. Becky Ferreira reports that a blizzard was not the only thing we missed out on yesterday.

[A]n enormous space rock missed Earth by a narrow margin of 745,000 miles, or about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. With a diameter of 550 meters and a velocity of about 35,000 miles per hour, the asteroid, known as 2004 BL86, will be so bright in the evening sky that it will be visible through binoculars. Scientists don’t expect another object of this size to pass so closely to Earth until August 7, 2027.

But what if this asteroid had hit the Earth? Well, now you can play with Purdue University's Impact Earth tool I linked to above.

We saw this very thing in the Steubenville rape case - the victim consoled their attacker, said that they didn't believe their attacker had done anything wrong. Little did they know.

It was after Vandenburg and three other football players were charged with her rape that she would see graphic videos of the alleged attack, she testified. Prosecutors played videos of the alleged attack for jurors that they said were shot from Vandenburg's cellphone. A Nashville detective testified that police were able to recover the videos from a laptop. [...] Earlier this week, McKenzie testified that Vandenberg was "amped" and coaching players to violate the woman. McKenzie said he did not touch her but took pictures. He also testified that Banks and Batey violated the woman.

There's also testimony that Vandenberg handed out condoms and covered a security camera. Those acts seem pretty deliberate for a guy saying he was too drunk to instigate rape.

Wall Street Journal: “Potential presidential candidates — top-tier contenders and long-shots alike — have already spent years quietly laying groundwork, building email lists, recruiting staff, and generally doing the scut work of building an organization on which to call if they flip the switch and launch a 2016 campaign. Mr. Biden, who said this week that he is still weighing a presidential run, is one of the few potential candidates with no political organization, nonprofit, foundation, or campaign staff-in-waiting.” That is because Biden is not running for President, and, according to the Politico article linked inside, is only saying he is considering it in order to be some kind of Plan B in case Clinton dies, implodes, or something else truly horrible happens.

Ed Kilgore:

In conservative-land, you see, Obama's first election was a fluke and his second a calamitous accident, both canceled by the ensuring midterms and both destined to be remembered as incidental interruptions of the Long March of Movement Conservatism towards total power. The idea that 2008 and 2012 are just as significant as 2010 and 2014 (maybe a bit more significant insofar as far more Americans participated) is outrageous to the Right, and so Obama mentioning them was the defiant act of a political nonentity. Beyond that, the basic framing of Obama's remarks on the economy left Republicans even deeper in the trap they've been in ever since conditions began improving. The main criticism available to them for the performance of the economy is the one Democrats (and Obama himself) have been articulated: sluggish wage growth and growing inequality. But Republicans have little or no agenda to deal with that beyond the usual engorge-the-job-creators stuff dressed up with attacks on the few corporate welfare accounts they've agreed to oppose, and then the Keystone XL Pipeline. On this last point, Obama was very clever in dismissing Keystone as one controversial infrastructure project we're spending too much time fighting over as hundreds of others languish. It made Joni Ernst's plodding Official Response sound all the more foolish for spending so much time on that one project.

Ezra Klein says that if Mitt Romney was President right now, and we had all of this good economic news, the applause would never have ended on Tuesday night, and Brian Beutler says Republicans would have "draped him in Reagan’s cloak, and the public would have warmed once again to the kinds of policies that George W. Bush’s presidency briefly discredited."

The evidence points to - yes. The Cape Gazette Reports that at his latest January constituent coffee meeting,Rep. Smyk expressed concerns that the State Police and Delaware National Guard are not up to the task of ensuring order in the event of some "major occurrence." And that these agencies are in need of reinforcement from a whackjob militia composed of local whackjobs.

The National Journal quotes a Republican Congressman, Rep. Charlie Dent, on how horribly the first weeks of the new Congressional session are going for the GOP:

"I prefer that we avoid these very contentious social issues," said moderate Rep. Charlie Dent, reprising comments he gave in the closed-door conference meeting. "Week one, we had a speaker election that did not go as well as a lot of us would have liked. Week two, we got into a big fight over deporting children, something that a lot of us didn't want to have a discussion about. Week three, we are now talking about rape and incest and reportable rapes and incest for minors. … I just can't wait for week four."

In week 4, you got owned by the President on national television.

Governor Markell previewed his State of the State speech that he will deliver this afternoon to WDEL's Amy Cherry. Governor Markell said his top priorities will remain centered around economic development, education and effective governance.

"Certainly, the job growth over the last year has been really good, fourth fastest in the country, 24 straight months, where it's been strong relative to the rest of the country," he said. Markell said he'll continue to build on that progress along with progress made on education and environmental issues. Without getting specific, the governor said he'll revisit themes you heard in last year's State of the State.

I'd like to know what progress he thinks was made on education. More inside...