Good morning! It’s Groundhog Day — and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Six more weeks of overhyped winter weather coverage! It’s also World Wetlands Day.
Civil war –> Dozens were killed over the weekend during fierce fighting in Ukraine. The BBC reports that “pro-Russian separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko has announced plans to recruit 100,000 men” to join the fight. MEANWHILE: Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt that senior officials in the Obama administration are leaning toward sending arms to bolster Ukrainian government forces.
Progress –> TNR’s Rebecca Leber writes that during last night’s Superbowl, the TV ads “were less sexist than usual overall. Advertisers mostly shied away from objectifying women, and instead let women be funny and play sports.”
Hands up, don’t shoot –> Four Fairfax County police officers say that John B. Geer had his hands up and posed no threat when another officer shot and killed him from 17 feet away. WaPo’s reports that Officer Adam Torres told “investigators he saw Geer move his hands to his waist and thought he might be reaching for a weapon,” but the others, including “a lieutenant watching from a distance, said they saw no such thing.” ALSO: New York City will pay $3.9 million to settle a civil suit in the 2012 shooting death of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham. Lynette Holloway has details at The Root. (For further background on the Graham shooting, see this 2012 Guardian report by Ryan Devereaux.)
Jeb Bush’s Schooldays –> The Boston Globe’s Michael Kranish spoke with a number of Jeb Bush’s classmates at the prestigious Phillips Academy for a profile of the candidate as a young man, and revelations that Bush, who opposes medical marijuana, was a frequent user — and was known as a bully — made headlines over the weekend. AND: Likely presidential rival Rand Paul jumped on the story, telling The Hill, “I think that’s the real hypocrisy… people on our side, which include a lot of people who made mistakes growing up, admit their mistakes but now still want to put people in jail for that.” Paul addded: “Had he been caught at Andover, he’d have never been governor, [and] he’d probably never have a chance to run for the presidency.” ALSO: Politico’s Michael Kruse takes a look back at Bush’s role in the Terri Schiavo affair, and writes that “[l]ongtime watchers of John Ellis Bush” think it was “the Jebbest thing Jeb’s ever done.”
Invisible primary –> Vox’s Andrew Prokop writes that Mitt Romney’s withdrawal from the 2016 race reinforces political scientists’ view that party elites play a much larger role in shaping primary fields than most people realize.
Good Obama –> Obama’s 2016 budget proposal includes a “a one-time, 14 percent tax on an estimated $2.1 trillion in profits piled up abroad over the years by multinationals such as General Electric, Microsoft, Pfizer Inc and Apple Inc.,” according to Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh at Reuters. The money would then be used for infrastructure improvements.
Bad Obama –> WaPo’s “Factchecker,” Glenn Kessler, awards the Obama administration four Pinocchios for claiming that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would support 650,000 new jobs. The real number, according to experts interviewed by Kessler, is zero.
“He’s bloodthirsty like all the American troops” –> Mediaite’s Matt Wilstein looks at how audiences in Iraq reacted to the controversial film, American Sniper, during its brief run before the movie was pulled for fear that it might incite violence.
Heads-up –> Tara Culp-Ressler reports for ThinkProgress on the anti-abortion movement’s newly emerging strategy to dishonestly frame the most common — and safest — method of mid-trimester abortion as a process of “dismembering unborn children.” She says that several states are considering legislation based on the emotionally evocative but clinically misleading description, and argues that it is reminiscent of the debate over “partial birth abortion.”
Miracle or zombie? –> A Tampa TV station reports that a Florida cat named “Bart” was struck by a car, declared dead by veterinarians and buried by his grieving family, but somehow recovered, crawled his way out of the grave and showed up on a neighbor’s doorstep. Bart is being called both a “miracle cat” and a “zombie cat,” which is probably a Rorschach test of sorts.
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