Black Caucus chair asks for lenient sentence for Jesse Jackson Jr.  BY LYNN SWEET Eight of the letters argued for a break. The most prominent advocate for Jesse Jackson was Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Fudge wrote that even though she and some congressional colleagues in hindsight saw signs of his bipolar illness “during the last 4 to 5 years,” nevertheless, he was a “tireless advocate for the poor and underserved.” He was also the charming “highlight of our karaoke nights.” “As you weigh the fate of Congressman Jackson, please consider the many fine characteristics he possesses, and his dedicated and passionate service for the people he represented in the United States Congress for nearly 18 years."

Virginia Republicans Have a Vagina Problem By Kate SheppardOn Saturday, Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain clinched his party's nomination for attorney general in the November election. And much like the rest of the GOP ticket, he's got some baggage. Think Progress swiftly unearthed a bill he authored in 2009 that would subject women to legal penalties if they fail to report a miscarriage to the police.

Intelligence And Politics Have a Complex Relationship By Scott A. McGreal, MSc. The issue of how intelligence is related to political orientation naturally provokes controversy. Although some have claimed that liberals tend to be more intelligent than conservatives, the actual relationship appears to be quite complex and to vary according to social context. Both conservatives and liberals may have intellectually sophisticated reasons for their views.

Hillary's 'Scapegoat' Speaks Out by Josh RoginRaymond Maxwell, the only official at the State Department's bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to lose his job after the attacks, tells Josh Rogin that he’s been scapegoated by Hillary Clinton’s team. Since the leave is not considered a formal disciplinary action, Maxwell has no means to appeal the status, as he would if he had been outright fired. To this day, he says, nobody from the State Department has ever told him why he was singled out for discipline. He has never had access to the classified portion of the ARB report, where all of the details regarding personnel failures leading up to Benghazi are confined. He also says he has never been shown any evidence or witness testimony linking him to the Benghazi incident.

Iran policy reaches day of reckoning By Jennifer RubinIn the “not happening” department, even the administration no longer insists diplomatic progress is being made to end the Iranian weapons program. Nor do informed observers think the Iranian presidential elections in June are meaningful. Not only are the latter irrelevant since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei runs the nuclear show, but also the faux “moderate” in the race, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani “presided over some of the worst acts of terror ever committed by the Islamic Republic,” as former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams puts it. The Iranians will use both diplomacy and the upcoming elections to buy time, all the while racing forward with their nuclear weapons program. Israel’s government, now a broad-based coalition, and its citizens are united on this issue: Iran can’t get the bomb, and Israel will act if need be. Congress plainly recognizes the moment of truth is upon us. 

A heavy-handed White House Eugene Robinson The administration mistakes reporting for espionage.In my reading, the First Amendment prohibition against “abridging the freedom . . . of the press” should rule out secretly obtaining two months’ worth of the personal and professional phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, including calls to and from the main AP phone number at the House press gallery in the Capitol. Yet this is what the Justice Department did.

Why America Has the Worst Tornados on Earth Alexis C. Madrigal Why do tornadoes strike Tornado Alley so frequently? The simple answer is that warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico gets sandwiched between war, dry continental air and cold, dry air from drifting down from the Rockies. The combination creates the perfect conditions for thunderstorms to form. A more detailed explanation of the regional air movements is available here. As these air masses collide, they can generate a type of particularly dangerous thunderstorm called a "supercell." They are characterized by their very strong, rotating updrafts accompanied by strong downdrafts. Tornadoes tend to occur at the interface between these two air movements.

Dems bet heavily on GOP overreach Greg Sargent The party has a two-pronged approach for recent scandals.Republicans intend to tie the IRS story to Obamacare as part of a larger effort to use IRS revelations to weave a narrative about Obama and Dems being overly addicted to big, intrusive government. But it remains to be seen whether voters — particularly independents and moderates — will see the IRS story as anything more than an inside-the-Beltway tempest, let alone whether they will connect it to broader questions about the Obama/Dem governing vision in ways that damage Dem candidates.

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories   By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER Psychologists are beginning to unravel the mystery behind this brand of American political paranoia. “The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England. Psychologists say that’s because a conspiracy theory isn’t so much a response to a single event as it is an expression of an overarching worldview. 

How Hope and Change Gave Way to Spying on the Press by Kirsten Powers Much of the Fourth Estate shrugged when the Obama administration attacked Fox News, writes Kirsten Powers. But now it’s coming for them, too. These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.