BREAKING -- From Nick Merrill, spokesman for Hillary Clinton: “Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen. During the ceremony, she felt overheated so departed to go to her daughter's apartment, and is feeling much better.”
ELIZA COLLINS of USA Today, the pool reporter today, said the campaign kept her in the dark about Clinton’s whereabouts.
--@danmericaCNN: "Clinton's van and secret service detail is currently outside Chelsea Clinton's Manhattan apartment building." http://bit.ly/2cnJbgh
It’s been 15 years since 9/11. Honor the fallen. Here is some great journalism about 9/11 to help you remember. David Maraniss, on A1 of the Washington Post on Sept. 16, reconstructing the day. http://wapo.st/2c2adLp. Read John Bussey’s legendary Page One story on 9/12 http://on.wsj.com/2cmtC8G. Johnny Apple wrote a prescient front-page piece on 9/12, called “Awaiting the Aftershocks.” The lead: “Today’s devastating and astonishingly well-coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and on the Pentagon outside of Washington plunged the nation into a warlike struggle against an enemy that will be hard to identify with certainty and hard to punish with precision.” http://nyti.ms/2c0AC79 George W. Bush speaking to the nation on 9/11 http://bit.ly/2cmvwGr.
-- 115 front pages from 9/12 http://bit.ly/2c1yk85
--@HallieJackson at 8:23 a.m.: “Trump, Clinton now at 9/11 memorial in Manhattan. Clinton was with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Trump was with Rudy Giuliani”
-- CLINTON, TRUMP IN LINE JUST 11 PEOPLE APART FROM EACH OTHER: @jacobkornbluh: “.@BilldeBlasio standing tall surrounded by Giuliani, Trump, Christie to his left and Bloomberg, Cuomo to his right” http://bit.ly/2cjmM2J
--OBAMA’S DAY, per pooler, TPM’s Tierney Sneed: “After a 10 minute ride by the monuments and Arlington Cemetery, motorcade arrived at the Pentagon at 9:19 a.m. Per the White House, earlier this morning POTUS observed a moment of silence from the Oval Office … POTUS participated in a wreath ceremony outside of the Pentagon. He was joined by Secretary Carter and his wife Stephanie, and General Dunford and his wife Ellen. A trumpet played as POTUS stood solemnly in front of the wreath with his hand over his heart. They then moved to the stage. The audience was told to lend its attention to a flag hanging outside the Pentagon as the US Army Brass Quintet played the National Anthem. A prayer was then said by Chaplain (Rear [Admiral]) Margaret Kibben. A moment of silence was observed at 9:32 in remembrance those who perished in the Pentagon attack …
“POTUS began his remarks at 9:41. He began with a scripture verse. To the survivors and the victims’ families, he said ‘Your steadfast love and faithfulness has been an inspiration to me’ and the country. He praised ‘patriots’ both civilian and in the military for ‘defending not only our country, but our ideals.’ His remarks referenced the recent attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando. ‘We know that our diversity, our patchwork heritage is not a weakness, it still and always will be one of our greatest strengths’ POTUS said. He recounted individual anecdotes from victims’ families, first responders and service members. ‘As Americans we do not give into fear,’ he said.”
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REMEMBERING THE FALLEN -- “Seeking the Final Faces for a 9/11 Tapestry of Grief, Loss, Life and Joy,” by NYT’s David Dunlap and Susan Beachy: “Albert Ogletree, a food handler with Forte Food Service, was working in the cafeteria at Cantor Fitzgerald in the north tower of the World Trade Center when a hijacked jetliner careered into the skyscraper. He is one of the 2,983 people killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Feb. 26, 1993, when the trade center was bombed.
“He is also one of only 10 victims whose portraits are not in the vast gallery at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, on the trade center site in Lower Manhattan. Museum officials have tried for years, without luck, to find someone who can furnish a picture of Mr. Ogletree — on vacation, perhaps; under a mortar board at graduation; beaming with happiness at his wedding; or hunched over a sketch pad drawing cars, something he loved to do … Three families have told museum officials they do not want their relatives’ portraits shown publicly. That leaves seven to find.” http://nyti.ms/2cguB7p
--NPR: “On Sept. 11, He Checked Hijackers Onto Flight 77. It’s Haunted Him Ever Since” http://n.pr/2c1K1M4
DEEP DIVE -- “An Anniversary of Shame: Fifteen years after 9/11, we're still entangled in the bad decisions America made following the disaster. But some in the CIA say the whole thing could have been over in six months,” by Michael Hirsh in POLITICO Magazine: “What makes the observance of this 9/11 anniversary so enervating and even shameful is an acute sense of what might have been. According to some experts, the main conflict against al Qaeda could have effectively ended in as little six months, by mid-to-late 2002, had the right decisions been made by our elected officials. No one knows this better than Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the operation at Tora Bora, who with the Afghan forces he commanded had managed to trap the chief perpetrator of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, and his fellow terrorists in their mountain redoubt in mid-December of 2001, only two months after 9/11.
“With a Delta Force officer standing by his side, Berntsen drafted a message to his superiors back in Washington that he told me ended with this line: ‘Let’s kill this baby in the crib.’ Berntsen wanted to send in troops -- fewer than 1,000 Army Rangers -- who could have closed the noose (his position was backed by Marine Gen. James Mattis, who wanted to send in his own troops), but George W. Bush, on the advice of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, turned him down, believing that Pakistani forces would trap bin Laden as the Afghans forced him southward into Pakistan. (In fact, the Pakistanis were likely helping bin Laden to escape.) Other opportunities presented themselves in the months that followed, in places like Shahikot. But Instead of sending troops into Afghanistan to finally eliminate al Qaeda, the Bush administration began to massively shift men and resources to Iraq, where al Qaeda didn’t then exist.” http://politi.co/2cmaSCT
--RUDY GIULIANI on ABC’s This Week -- George Stephanopoulos: “[O]ne of the things that Donald Trump also said on Thursday night, again, is that we should’ve taken the oil of Iraq. Even if you could do that practically, and most experts say you couldn’t, wouldn’t that just be theft?” GIULIANI: “Well, no. I -- he -- he said take it so that the Islamic State then would not have had it available” -- STEPHANOPOULOS: “But he said leave a force back there and take it, though.” GIULIANI: “Leave a force back there and take it and make sure it’s distributed in a proper way. And” --STEPHANOPOULOS: “That’s not legal, is it?” GIULIANI: “Of course it’s legal. It’s a war.”... “Until the war is over, anything’s legal.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: “Finally, before we go, I just want to ask you about a front page story in The New York Times yesterday. They quoted several of your former advisors saying they’re worried about your legacy. Because of your support for Donald Trump. What’s your response?”
GIULIANI: “So, you know what I tell them? I’m going to see them all tonight; I get together with all the people that almost died with me on September 11. We were in a building together, we were missing for 20 minutes, and Governor Pataki was really shocked when I called him. He said we thought you were missing … I’m sure some of them will be there who anonymously leaked the story, as you remember anonymous leaks from your days back in the White House. They always happen. And I’ll just say to them worry about my legacy after I’m dead. Right now I’m fighting for my point of view and what I believe. And everybody has the right to that.
“I’m fighting for my country. I believe there’d be a major difference between the two of them in terms of our economy and most importantly, how we deal with terrorism. I don’t like the way this administration has dealt with terrorism. I think they’ve put us too much on defense and there have been too many terrorist attacks in the last year. San Bernardino happened less than a year ago. You just start counting them from San Bernardino on in December of last year, and we’re talking about a major escalation in terrorist attacks, and a major proliferation in terrorist attacks, that this administration I believe has encouraged by going on defense.”
--JEH JOHNSON on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: CHUCK TODD: “You know, you said in a recent interview, you said that we have to be concerned about all ranges of attacks. ‘I never categorize anything as a low priority, but we have to look at what’s high risk and what's less high risk and spend our time accordingly.’ So what does that mean? Is there just some holes that are always going to be there in our security system?”
JOHNSON: “No, I wouldn’t put it that way at all. We’ve got people devoted to all manner of threats out there. Invariably, the high probability, higher probability type of threat, another San Bernardino, another Orlando, is uppermost on our minds. It is the thing that keeps me up at night the most. But we’ve got threats from, you know, cyber security. We’ve got a mission devoted to the potential for bio threats, a dirty bomb. We’ve got to keep our eye on all of it. But obviously, there are things that are higher probability, there are things that are lower probability, but higher impact. And we’ve got to keep our eye on all of it.”
POLLS, POLLS, POLLS -- The “CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll” found a tightening race in Florida, with Clinton now up by just two points, 44-42. She was up five points in August. Clinton leads Trump 46 to 39 in Ohio. Clinton leads by one point in the composite of 13 battleground states. She led by two last week.
--Morning Consult: Hillary Clinton 41, Donald Trump 39 http://bit.ly/2cnoHnM. (Morning Consult is an online poll of “1,961 registered voters and 1,710 likely voters from Sept. 6 through Sept. 8 for a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.”Their likely voter screen http://bit.ly/2cuWQnj).
--Washington Post/ABC: Hillary Clinton 46, Donald Trump 41 (likely voters). Hillary Clinton 45, Donald Trump 35 (registered voters). http://bit.ly/2clYvqr. The write up from Scott Clement and Dan Balz http://wapo.st/2cgv5dz.
--NBC News/Wall Street Journal (likely voters. Click the full story for registered voter polls): ARIZONA: Hillary Clinton 42, Donald Trump 41. GEORGIA: Donald Trump 46, Hillary Clinton 43. NEVADA: Hillary Clinton 45, Donald Trump 44. NEW HAMPSHIRE: Hillary Clinton 42, Donald Trump 41. http://nbcnews.to/2cAQLTA
NOTE FROM PLAYBOOK: Donald Trump really needs Georgia and Arizona to have a chance of winning.
--GOP UP IN FOUR SENATE RACES, per NBC/WSJ: ARIZONA: John McCain 57, Ann Kirkpatrick 38. GEORGIA: Johnny Isakson 53, Jim Barksdale 38. NEVADA: Joe Heck 47, Catherine Cortez Masto 45. NEW HAMPSHIRE: Kelly Ayotte 52, Maggie Hassan 44. http://nbcnews.to/2cAQLTA
STORY OF THE WEEKEND -- “How Donald Trump retooled his charity to spend other people’s money,” by David Fahrenthold on A1 of the Washington Post: “Donald Trump was in a tuxedo, standing next to his award: a statue of a palm tree, as tall as a toddler. It was 2010, and Trump was being honored by a charity — the Palm Beach Police Foundation — for his ‘selfless support’ of its cause. His support did not include any of his own money. Instead, Trump had found a way to give away somebody else’s money and claim the credit for himself.
“Trump had earlier gone to a charity in New Jersey -- the Charles Evans Foundation, named for a deceased businessman -- and asked for a donation. Trump said he was raising money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation. The Evans Foundation said yes. In 2009 and 2010, it gave a total of $150,000 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a small charity that the Republican presidential nominee founded in 1987. Then, Trump’s foundation turned around and made donations to the police group in South Florida. In those years, the Trump Foundation’s gifts totaled $150,000. Trump had effectively turned the Evans Foundation’s gifts into his own gifts, without adding any money of his own.” http://wapo.st/2cvgPma
HOT AUDIO -- BILL MAHER, performing stand-up last night at DAR Constitution Hall, made a joke about Trump getting assassinated: “I’m nervous. And I saw the headline today – race tightening. Trump ahead in Ohio and Florida. If this race is even the week before the election, somebody is going to have to go out there [pause, nervous laughter]. [Why] do you think they let Hinckley out?” There was laughter and applause among the liberal-leaning crowd and Maher then made a joke about “the Second Amendment people.” Listen to the 46-second audio http://bit.ly/2cvC0D2
WHAT TRUMP TOWER IS READING -- “Why Clinton isn’t sweating ‘deplorables’: A public debate about the true size of Donald Trump’s ‘alt-right’ base doesn’t bother Team Hillary one bit,” by Annie Karni: “‘Words have consequences,; Hillary Clinton likes to caution while campaigning against the loose-lipped, insult-hurling Donald Trump. ‘Words can be misinterpreted.’ But it was the Democratic nominee, generally so careful with her language, whose own inelegant prose seemed to level invective at some 20 percent of the American electorate Friday night, when she plopped them all into a big ‘basket of deplorables’ while addressing supporters at an LGBT fundraiser in New York City ...
“Perhaps the greatest effect of ‘deplorables will be on the psychology of Clinton’s campaign. Coming days after NBC’s Matt Lauer seemed to give Trump a fact-check-free pass during a live presidential forum -- after grilling Clinton aggressively on her email use -- it uncorked a huge amount of pent-up frustration at the Democratic nominee’s Brooklyn headquarters. There, many Clinton operatives saw the Republican outrage and media attention devoted to Clinton’s words as the latest example of an absurd double standard at work.” http://politi.co/2cvi5FV
CASH DASH -- “Clinton not letting up on fundraising despite cash advantage,” by AP’s Julie Bykowicz: “Hillary Clinton could spend $2.2 million every day until the Nov. 8 election without running out. And every month she widens her cash advantage over Donald Trump. As of Sept. 1, it was a $55 million gulf. Yet the Democratic nominee is not letting up on gas when it comes to fundraising ... Her allies say the continued fundraising helps other Democrats because the party can keep building up voter turnout operations. It also serves as protection in a rollicking race against a man who claims to be worth $10 billion and once said he was willing to spend up to $1 billion to get elected. So far, he's put about $60 million of his own money in his campaign.” http://apne.ws/2cvw1hE
-- “How a congressional race in Santa Barbara became one of the most expensive in the country,” by LA Times’ Javier Panzar: “Only five Congressional races in the country so far this election cycle have seen more money from outside groups, according to rankings by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics that tracks spending in federal races … The names voters will see on the ballot this fall belong to the two people who benefited the most from outside spending: [Justin] Fareed, a former Capitol Hill staffer, and Democratic Santa Barbara County Supervisor Salud Carbajal. Most of the outside money, about $828,000, was spent by two well-known Democratic groups -- the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the House Majority PAC -- on Carbajal’s behalf.” http://lat.ms/2cvAnoY
--“Dismayed ‘Values’ Voters, Fearful of Clinton, Learn to Live With Trump: The Supreme Court has become a powerful unifying force for a nominee many Christian conservatives distrust,” by Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur: “Social conservatives meeting for the Values Voter Summit expressed dismay and anxiety about having Donald Trump, a thrice-married New York real estate mogul, as their standard-bearer. But they seemed willing to hold their nose and pull the lever for him out of fears about the Democratic nominee and a vacant Supreme Court seat.” http://bloom.bg/2c3arSs
AMERICA TODAY -- part of the Boston Globe’s “America on Edge” series --“Being white, and a minority, in Georgia,” by Annie Linskey in Norcross, Georgia: “A generation ago, this Atlanta suburb was 95 percent white and rural with one little African-American neighborhood that was known as ‘colored town.’ But after a tidal wave of Hispanic and Asian immigrants who were attracted to Norcross by cheap housing and proximity to a booming job market, white people now make up less than 20 percent of the population in Norcross and surrounding neighborhoods. It’s a shift so rapid that many of the longtime residents feel utterly disconnected from the place where they raised their children. ‘It’s not that much anger, but you don’t feel comfortable knowing that all this is around you,’ said Billy Weathers, 79, who has lived in the area for his whole life and doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish.” http://bit.ly/2c7yFJD
STATE OF THE ART -- SASHA ISSENBERG’S NEW PROJECT! -- “Real-Time Election Day Projections May Upend News Tradition,” by NYT’s Nick Corasaniti in Palo Alto, California: “For decades, news organizations have refrained from releasing early results in presidential battleground states on Election Day, adhering to a strict, time-honored embargo until a majority of polls there have closed. Now, a group of data scientists, journalists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is seeking to upend that reporting tradition, providing detailed projections of who is winning at any given time on Election Day in key swing states, and updating the information in real time from dawn to dusk. ... The company spearheading the effort, VoteCastr, plans real-time projections of presidential and Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It plans to publish a map and tables of its projected results on Slate, the online newsmagazine. ...
“Providing real-time updates will be a drastic departure from standard election reporting that television networks, national newspapers and The Associated Press have rigidly adhered to for decades. Many news organizations refrain from publishing exit poll data about the likely winners in a state until a majority of polls there have closed. ... ‘Exit polls are crude, inefficient and a bad way of predicting these outcomes,’ said Sasha Issenberg, a journalist and an author of the book ‘The Victory Lab,’ who is a member of the VoteCastr team. ‘They have always been designed to tell us why certain types of people voted the way they did, not to predict the outcome.’” http://nyti.ms/2cb5w37
SASHA ISSENBERG in Slate, “Election Day Shouldn’t Be a News-Free Zone”: “This Nov. 8, Slate will publish real-time projections based on voter turnout, so citizens will finally know as much as the campaigns do about who is winning and why.” http://slate.me/2cEjfLh
WHAT THE FREEDOM CAUCUS IS READING -- GEORGE WILL: “Congress should impeach the IRS commissioner — or risk becoming obsolete”: Republican congressional leaders ardently want conservative members of the House to not force a vote on impeaching the IRS commissioner. The public does not care about John Koskinen’s many misdeeds. And impeachment will distract attention from issues that interest the public. And because Democrats are not ingrates, the required two-thirds of the Senate will never vote to convict Koskinen, whose behavior continues the pattern of doing what Democrats desire with the most intrusive and potentially punitive government agency.
“These Republican leaders’ reasons are cumulatively unpersuasive. Resuscitating the impeachment power would contribute to revitalizing Congress’s Article I powers. Impeachments are rare — no appointed official of the executive branch has been impeached in 140 years. But what James Madison called the ‘indispensable’ power to impeach should not be allowed to atrophy, as has Congress’s power to declare war.” http://wapo.st/2cbdbOY
SENATE WATCH -- “David Duke’s Senate Run in Louisiana Draws Attention but Not Support,” by NYT’s Campbell Robertson in Mandeville, Louisiana: “It has so far been a mostly humdrum race for Louisiana’s open United States Senate seat, likely to end in a victory for some veteran officeholder: the Republican state treasurer, one of the congressmen, maybe even, in a surprise, a Democratic public service commissioner. But there have been gritted teeth across the state that the one candidate who has drawn by far the most attention, nationally and even internationally, is the one whom pollsters give virtually no chance, whose own party has publicly dismissed as a ‘hate-filled fraud’ and whose unfavorability ratings approach those of North Korea’s. That candidate is a previous nine-time political contender, and eight-time also-ran, David Duke.” http://nyti.ms/2cffRFU
MEDIAWATCH -- “Bill O’Reilly may now be the media’s designated tough Trump interviewer,” by The Fix’s Callum Borchers: “Go ahead. Laugh if you want. Then think about it, and you might agree: Bill O'Reilly is now the media’s designated tough Trump interviewer. Yes, O’Reilly is the biggest name at conservatives’ most trusted news source, a cable channel that until seven weeks ago was run by a guy who is reportedly advising the Republican presidential nominee.
“But consider this: Donald Trump has scaled way back on the number of interviews he grants to anyone other than Fox News. He has now appeared as many times on Russia Today (once) as he has on CNN in the past three months. Based on the tweet Trump sent Friday morning, we shouldn’t expect him to submit to grilling by Alisyn Camerota or Jake Tapper anytime soon … Trump is ever-willing to be interviewed by Sean Hannity or the ‘Fox & Friends’ crew, but they can’t be counted on to challenge him. Thus we are left with O’Reilly, the one media figure who is a) able to secure Trump interviews on a regular basis and b) willing to press, counter and fact-check the blustery billionaire.” http://wapo.st/2cEraYR
THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW: Tom Ridge
Tom Ridge, the first Homeland Security secretary, continues to work on safety and security in the private sector more than a decade after leaving public service. Most recently, he has taken up the cause of “Americans for Securing All Packages.” The group, which has come under a barrage of questions about its funding, is focused on “potential abuse” of foreign postal services that are not required to provide electronic data when shipping through the United Postal Service, Ridge said. (UPS, the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, the Coalition of Services Industries, LegitScript, Shatterproof, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, and SurfWatch Labs fund the coalition, according to a spokeswoman for the group.)
While the longtime Pennsylvania Republican remains active in politics, Ridge said he won’t be voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. “I’ve already concluded for a variety of reasons I am taking my vote elsewhere … My bias is either toward current or former Republican governors, let’s just say that.”
America can’t live in fear: “Let’s remind ourselves that we’re a pretty resilient country and we’ve done a pretty good job since 9-11, but let’s put it in the context of other challenges that Americans have. Orlando was horrible, Fort Hood was unconscionable, the list goes on — San Bernardino, but put that in the context of the number of people that are going to die in automobile accidents this year — 30 or 40,000 —the number of people who have died because of opioid use.”
Every day the U.S. becomes safer: “I think we continue to add and do everything we can to make our country safer and more secure, but let’s face it the challenges are greater. The number of actors are greater. The threat stream is greater. The profile of terrorists has changed. And, so, yes, every day this country works hard to become safer and more secure, but every day the enemy, the jihadists, their profile has changed, their tactics have changed and their reach has changed.”
Data is king: “I think there are maybe 47 different databases within the government that they can run this electronic security data around to see whether it is a package to be pulled aside, a package to be opened … We didn’t have that kind of data surveillance in 2001 … There is no doubt in my mind that our relationship with our allies and to a certain extent countries we’re not friendly with … those lines of communication and information sharing continue to grow.”
He is ready to serve next president: “Whoever prevails, if they think I can help them once they’ve won election because I respect the office I would certainly be available. Whatever insight or support I can give them in a meaningful way, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman:
--“The Book of Bruce Springsteen,” by David Kamp on the cover of October’s Vanity Fair: “For 50 years, the rock icon has turned his struggle into songs, his unrest into performance. Today, as he wraps up a top-selling tour and publishes a 500-page memoir [“Born to Run”, out Sept. 26], he is coming to terms with life out on the wire.” http://bit.ly/2bYn0JL ... Pre-order -- $19.50 on Amazon http://amzn.to/2ck62JK
--“His Excellency, The Macker,” by Andy Kroll in Washingtonian: “Terry McAuliffe Wants to Prove He’s Not a Crony. But First He Has to Get Hillary Elected.” http://bit.ly/2cLSfO4
--“Whale Hunters of the Warming Arctic” (online headline: “The New Harpoon”), by Tom Kizzia in The New Yorker: “Few Americans are as affected by climate change as Alaska’s Inupiat, or as dependent on the fossil-fuel economy.” http://bit.ly/2bQEKNk
--“The American Pickup,” by Daniel Gilbert in n+1 magazine: “As far as most consumers and producers are concerned, a pickup isn’t a pickup unless it’s big.” http://bit.ly/2cAjlU0
--“The Burning Desire for Hot Chicken,” by Danny Chau in The Ringer: “Three days, three Nashville restaurants, and three revelations about why we love what hurts.” http://bit.ly/2crzvSy
--“The house is on fire! On the hidden horrors of Soviet life,” by Gary Saul Morson in The New Criterion: “[C]onservative estimates of executions under Lenin and Stalin—say, twenty million from 1917 to 1953—yield an average of over ten thousand per week. That’s a tsarist century every few days.” http://bit.ly/2cLDcD6 (h/t ALDaily.com)
--“The Sandy Hook Hoax,” by Reeves Wiedeman in N.Y. Mag: “Lenny Pozner used to believe in conspiracy theories. Until his son’s death became one.” http://nym.ag/2cLBZvo (h/t Longform.org)
--“Thunder From the East,” by Gideon Rachman in Open magazine: “The idea that India might one day be at the fulcrum of global economic development underlines the point that the story of Easternisation is about much more than China.” http://bit.ly/2cfM8Pg
--“The FBI Accused Him of Terrorism. He Couldn’t Tie His Shoes,” by Jessica Pishko in Esquire: -- per Longreads.com’s description: “A disabled 18-year-old named Peyton Pruitt, who functions at the level of an 8-year-old child, is accused of becoming an ISIS recruit.” http://bit.ly/2bYncJ8
--“An Italian rapper, a ‘hangman/s noose’ and a $250m lawsuit: the chaotic race to build Elon Musk’s hyperloop,” by Oliver Franklin-Wallis: “WIRED’s exclusive four-month investigation into Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the two companies aiming to reinvent travel.” http://bit.ly/2cAl6kc
--“The many lives of John le Carré, in his own words” – The Guardian: “An exclusive extract from his new memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel.” http://bit.ly/2cq0Fdw
--“Evidence Rebuts Chomsky’s Theory of Language Learning,” by Paul Ibbotson and Michael Tomasello in Scientific American: “Much of Noam Chomsky’s revolution in linguistics—including its account of the way we learn languages—is being overturned.” http://bit.ly/2c4fzUI (h/t TheBrowser.com)
BONUS GREAT WEEKEND LISTENS, curated by Jake Sherman:
--Grateful Dead, today in 1987 right here in Landover, Maryland. http://bit.ly/2cQg1Yg
--Dave Matthews Band, today in 1999 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The show was sold as “Listener Supported,” one of the band’s most popular live releases. http://bit.ly/2cQeYYi
SPOTTED: Greta Van Susteren on Nantucket … Sean Hannity yesterday at the rascal Flatts concert in Bristow, Virginia ... Scott Walker yesterday in Terminal A at DCA, waiting for his Southwest flight ... Tom Brokaw (wearing an NBC Rio Olympic hat), his wife Meredith, and Chef Carla Hall in the first class car on the Acela from New York to D.C. … Erik Smith and Edith Gregson at brunch at B Too yesterday
PLAYBOOK ONE YEAR AGO -- MSNBC hired Jacob Soboroff.
OUT AND ABOUT -- SPOTTED at Juleanna Glover’s house last night hearing Evan McMullin pitch his conservative ideas and candidacy: Bill Kristol (who introduced Evan), Phil Rucker, Robert Draper, Margaret Carlson, Kristen Powers, Benny Johnson, Nick Tell, Eli Lake, Elaina Plott, Jay Newton-Small, Polson Kanneth, Jamie Weinstein, Michelle Fields, Jamie Kirchick, Josh Rogin, Allie Weinberger, Dave Weigel, Paul Singer, Rick Wilson, Michael Cromartie, Annie Linskey, Ryan Coyne, Robbie Myers, Doug Besharov.
– Marcus Brauchli and Maggie Farley hosted a book party at their house in Bethesda last night for journos and foreign policy pros to celebrate WSJ reporter Jay Solomon’s new book “The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East”. Guests munched on hors d’oeuvres of crab cakes, prosciutto and cheese wrapped asparagus and a smaller group of partygoers ended up staying and ordering Chinese. $21.49 on Amazon http://amzn.to/2cm0CdT
SPOTTED: Suzanne Kianpour, Jake Cusack, Molly Weaver, Lauren Culbertson, Adam Peters, Muna Shikaki, Clint Reach, Brad and Anna Klapper, Michael Maher, Andrew Tabler, Vali Nasr, Indira Lakshmanan, Ali Rezaian, Amb Richard and Anne Solomon (Jay’s dad and stepmom), Vali Nasr, Ali Rezaian, Steve Weisman and Elisabeth Bumiller, Lt Col Joey Rayburn and Clare Lockhart, Doug Jehl, Liaquat Ahamad, Mark Dubowitz, Mike Gonzalez, Gail Ross.
WEEKEND WEDDINGS -- Pool report from Ben Milakofsky: “Nahal Hamidi andJonathan Adler were married Saturday on Martha’s Vineyard. The two former Interior Department officials that met during Secretary Ken Salazar's tenure first started dating in Chilmark. The festivities included vows in both English and Farsi, a few renditions of the ‘Bug Juice’ theme song, which the groom starred in as a child, and a silent disco party with 150 pairs of headsets to keep the party going. Attendees included other former ‘Bug Juice’ stars, best man Andy White and Ev Boyle, which sparked a request that Disney or Netflix pick up season three -- a ‘where are they now.’” Pics http://bit.ly/2cNAGZX … http://bit.ly/2chAPoM
SPOTTED: Obama Administration officials Janou Gordon, Taara Rangarajan, Becca Wexler, Francis Iacobucci and Benjamin Milakofsky.
--Stacey Johnson, who served as press secretary to former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, wed Benji Hutchison Saturday night in Front Royal with a reception at Rappahannock Cellars in Huntley, Virginia. Stacey now works at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Benji is senior director at the NEC Corporation of America in DC. They met at a cookout in D.C. Pic of the couple with McDonnell http://bit.ly/2cm2ymu
BIRTHDAYS: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who is at the National 9-11 Memorial at Ground Zero today, is 59 (hat tips: Todd Breasseale and Luiza) … WashPost’s Ben Terris, a 2008 Brandeis grad ... Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of Daily Kos and co-founder of Vox Media, is 45 … Nels Ericson (h/ts Cathie, Anders, Tate, Gus) ... Ted Olson is 76 ... Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo is 49 ... Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is 51 ... WashPost fashion critic Robin Givhan … Jon Downs, a founding partner of FP1 Strategies and political ad maker extraordinaire … former Sen. Daniel Akaka (“Aye!”) is 92 … Politico’s Joe Schatz and Gloria Pazmino ... Pete Breen, senior producer at NBC’s Today Show, is 41 … Jon Meyersohn, co-executive producer of the NatGeo climate change documentary series “Years of Living Dangerously,” is 6-0 (h/t son Nathaniel, currently interning for BuzzFeed politics on Kaczynski’s K-File team) ... Gordon Bronson, director of strategic comms at Sewald Hanfling Public Affairs ... Ian Solomon, Obama Senate and Treasury alum now founder and CEO of SolomonGlobal ... Gaylord Lanham ... Marit P. Babin Stout … Lee Verstandig … Liz Kennedy ... Maura Hogan, alum of Cowan, State and Kerry, now an MBA candidate at Boston College … Colleen Kearns, an account supervisor at Weber Shandwick focusing on healthcare policy research and analysis (h/t colleague Jon Yu) ... Arianne Price, scheduler for Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (h/t Matt Prusak) …
... Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) is 64 ... Claude Marx ... former Sen. Robert Packwood (R-Ore.) is 84 ... BIO’s Kara Nelson ... Sammy Yaish, account manager at Bloomberg Government ... Paige Kerr, deputy scheduler for Sen. John Cornyn ... Carter Barrett, arts desk intern at Indiana University’s WFIU (h/ts Colby Bermel) ... Steve Rose (h/t Jon Haber) ... Cecily Cutbill, the campaign manager who led Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) to his 2000 victory over then Sen. Bill Roth (h/t Chris Thorne) ... Cyrus Artz, LD for Rep. Virginia Foxx … Sharon Gallagher, partner/co-founder at Sage Communications ... Walter Alarkon ... Paul “P Flo” Florence is 4-0 ... Tom Boyd, co-chairman of DLA Piper’s Government Affairs Group … Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.) is 58 ... Emy Lesofski of Senate Approps ... Robert Favela ... Julie Goon, SVP of public affairs at Anthem ... Amanda Hughes ... Diane Tomb, strategic advisor at The Herald Group ... Sarah Weeldreyer, business manager at the Washington Monthly ... Elizabeth Feldman ... Rob Lalka ... Maya Spanderashvili ... Kyle Gerron, gov’t affairs manager at Altria ... Nielsen alum Karen E. Watson ... NBC alum Brooke Hart, now corporate director of comms at Sierra Nevada Corporation … Dianna Plantan ... Bruce Koeppl ... Leticia Reyes ... Wendy Kloiber (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)