Morning Reads: Police Kill More Than Twice as Many as Reported

Good morning! On this date in 1946, Winston Churchill made his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Missouri, using the phrase to describe the divide between Western Europe and the Soviet bloc. The metaphor was in fact centuries old — and had been used specifically to describe the Soviet Union since 1918, when Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov wrote, “With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian History.”

Stat of the day: 50 — for the first time in 30 years, unemployment fell in all 50 states last year, according to the WSJ.

The big story…

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell — the case that could kill health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans.

Lyle Denniston runs down the highlights at SCOTUSBlog.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick reports that “the sense in and around the court building is that this time, the case is both sillier and more consequential than it was” when the justices considered the constitutionality of the mandate in 2012.
Like many observers, CAP’s Ian Millhiser thinks Justice Kennedy, who has voted against the law in the past, is likely to vote to uphold it this time — he predicts a 6-3 decision in the government’s favor.
Scott Lemieux doesn’t share his optimism. He writes at Gawker that while the plaintiff’s legal case is ridiculous, one should never underestimate the political activism of the court’s conservative majority.
Stock traders seem to lean toward Millhiser’s view. Bloomberg’s Zachary Tracer reports hospital stocks “surged” after Kennedy’s pointed questions to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
At ProPublica, Nina Martin points out the role of the Federalist Society in pushing the court to the right over the past 30 years — and links that movement to the current challenge.

Deadlier than the data suggest –> Tom McCarthy reports for The Guardian that “an average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in the country’s most authoritative crime statistics every year for almost a decade.” The FBI statistics for officer-involved killings captured less than half of the total, according to a new study by the government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The people’s work –> Daniel Malloy and Greg Bluestein report for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Republican lawmakers in Georgia passed a “religious liberty” — AKA “right-to-discriminate-against-gays-and-lesbians” — bill through committee after a Democratic member asked for a bathroom break. “Alerted by a staffer in the audience,” write Malloy and Bluestein, “Senate Democrats rushed to the scene, but were too late.”

Fallout –> A day after the Justice Department issued its scathing report about racial discrimination in the Ferguson police department, one police official was fired and two others were placed on administrative leave for exchanging racist emails cited in the findings. Eliana Dockterman has the details at TIME Magazine.

Drowning in money –> Matea Gold’s WaPo headline says it all: “Awash in cash, Bush asks donors not to give more than $1 million – for now.” AND: MoJo’s Tim Murphy writes that “the fastest-growing demographic in the Republican Party is pro-life, telegenic, homeschooled, and mostly under the age of 27—you know, the Duggars. As in the stars of the TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting.” Murphy reports that the TV clan has become a political force on the right, and then considers who in the crowded GOP field is best positioned to win the “Duggar primary.”

Win –> Apple headed off a major labor protest this week when it announced that it was severing its relationship with a private security company that had come under fire for union-busting and retaliating against workers trying to organize. Julia Carrie Wong reports for Salon that the Silicon Valley giant will hire the guards directly and offer them decent pay and benefits.

“Uninhabitable” –> That’s how a riot last month over horrible conditions — “from overcrowding to overuse of solitary confinement to overflowing toilets” — left a privately run Texas prison used primarily to house immigration detainees. Maurice Chammah reports for The Marshall Project that “neither the private company or the federal prison bureau have announced any substantial policy changes in response to the riot, and it appears their relationship remains unshaken.”

Emailgate –> Danny Vinick writes at TNR that the revelation that Hillary Clinton used a private email account for official State Department business is “just the latest in a string of negative stories that have put Clinton on the defensive — and should make Democrats extremely concerned about her uncontested path to the nomination.” BUT: At the NYT’s Upshot blog, Brendan Nyhan argues that the only people who will care are those who would never support her candidacy in the first place. AND: The Clinton story was followed by reports that other prominent figures had also used private accounts to conduct official business, including GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — which under his state’s law may be a far more serious offense — and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Out of sight, out of mind –> Last week, we highlighted reports that the Chicago PD is maintaining a “black site” where prisoners are reportedly held and aggressively interrogated without access to counsel. CJR’s Jackie Spinner reports that the story made waves around the world, but “the one place it didn’t get much traction: Chicago media.” Protests against the facility have garnered some coverage, but “more than a week after the initial story, local enterprise reporting remains scant.”

A really old man –> Researchers in Ethiopia claim to have found a piece of a jaw-bone belonging to a hominid 400,000 years older than any previously discovered human ancestors. Ian Sample reports for The Guardian that “the discovery sheds light on a profoundly important but poorly understood period in human evolution that played out between two and three million years ago.”

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