Wb News

• GM files for bankruptcy. Washington will give the company an additional $30 billion to play with, and will take a 60 percent stake in return. The U.S. isn't the only government taking ownership: Another 12 percent goes to Canada.

• The Nevada legislature overrides a veto and legalizes domestic partnerships.

• Someone who hasn't parsed the phrase "pro-life" very carefully has killed an abortionist.

• The emergency powers behind the Fed's Wall Street bailouts.

• Irony alert: A report making the case for stronger intellectual property rights was partly plagiarized.

Nate Silver has an exhaustive and exhausting post on how Republicans could win the White House while losing further slices of the Latino vote. It's doable, but extremely hard. They have to hope for a double-dip recession and a divisive appeal to white voters. That's the kind of short-term idea that leads to long-term defeat (i.e. Karl Rove might love it). I didn't realize this:

In 2008, the Latino vote made the difference in

the outcome of three states: New Mexico, where about 2 in 5 voters

identify as Hispanic, as well as -- somewhat surprisingly -- Indiana

and North Carolina -- where Obama lost nonhispanic voters by a tiny

margin and was put over the top by Hispanic votes. It probably also

made the difference, believe it or not, in the 2nd Congressional

District of Nebraska -- Omaha actually has a decent-sized Hispanic

minority -- although the exit polls aren't detailed enough to let us

know for sure.

Nate's bottom line:

This is the sort of electoral future the GOP might

have to contemplate if they start losing the Hispanic vote by margins

of 3:1, 4:1 or more. Giving up on New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado is a

feasible, and perhaps even wise, strategy. But if they don't thread the

needle just perfectly, and they make it difficult for themselves to win

back Florida, while putting Arizona and perhaps even Texas increasingly

into play, their task will become nearly impossible.

McClatchy's story helps explain the fuller context:

In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was

a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents. On the rear of

his car was a Christian fish symbol with the word "Jesus" inside...

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas

City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic

and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert

Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she

said. "Then he (Roeder) said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his

back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he

gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I

just love what you're doing.'"

And this:

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County

sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate.

In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse

cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one

connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.

"There

wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time,

``but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely

enough there to kill somebody.''

The fusion of religion with politics is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

Here are the top five most popular articles that ran at Reason.com from May 24-31. Read 'em once again or for the first time.

Sonia Sotomayor on Gun Rights and Racial Preferences: Why libertarians-and everyone who believes in limited government-should worry about Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Damon W. Root (5/26)

California's Silent Big Spenders: Political class refuses to explain why the state requires hysterical spending growth Matt Welch (5/28)

Is the Abortion Debate Changing?: Understanding the latest opinion poll results David Harsanyi (5/27)

Nostalgianomics: Liberal economists pine for days no liberal should want to revisit. Brink Lindsey (5/26)

What Norm Coleman & Al Franken Have Taught America: The Senate is carrying more dead weight than an Uruguayan rugby team Nick Gillespie (5/29)

Howard Kurtz previews a two-part prime-time series -- Inside the Obama White House -- airing on NBC tomorrow and Wednesday "that so far has produced 150 hours of tape.

Said host Brian Williams: "There's stuff we've never seen of how the White House operates. We were pretty stunned at how much we were able to record and how natural events seemed to be."

"If anyone has an urge to kill someone at an abortion clinic, they should shoot me. ... It's madness. It discredits the right-to-life movement. Murder is murder. It's madness. You cannot prevent killing by killing." - John Cardinal O'Connor.