President Obama's fast-track trade bill is poised to clear a procedural hurdle Tuesday in the Senate, all but ensuring it will win final passage this week and be sent to the White House for his signature.

    Despite deep reservations from many in the president's party, enough Democratic senators appear ready to join most Republicans to finish the legislation, which has sputtered in Congress but is a top White House priority.

More:

   McConnell (R-Ky.) can afford to lose only three of the 14 pro-trade Democrats who last month backed a package granting Obama "fast-track" trade authority and a companion measure to help workers who lose their jobs to free trade. But the Senate on Tuesday is voting only on so-called Trade Promotion Authority, not the workers aid, which is known as Trade Adjustment Assistance. That has some Democrats nervous about whether a separate effort to approve worker assistance will succeed, given that Republicans strongly oppose the program.

    Organized by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who is threatening to vote no, a group of pro-trade Democrats huddled for a strategy session in the Capitol on Monday evening. Most emerged tight-lipped, but several Democrats said that the vote is likely to succeed on Tuesday morning.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would "probably not" vote for fast-track authority for the trade deal that President Obama is seeking, but she acknowledged that she once said positive things about "the potential" for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

Mrs. Clinton made the comments in an interview with Jon Ralston, a Nevada journalist, after spending Thursday in the state, which holds early caucuses.

Mrs. Clinton, who has not taken a yes-or-no position on the trade deal, which is strongly opposed by labor groups, is in a bind over an agreement she once praised as a potential "gold standard" for trade deals when she was secretary of state.

"I said positive things about the process and the potential," said Mrs. Clinton, who occasionally called Mr. Ralston "Joe" during the interview.

"Some people don't like any trade agreement, and some people are willing to take any trade agreement," she said. Asked whether she would vote in favor of fast-track authority if she were still in the Senate, Mrs. Clinton replied, "Probably not, because that's a process vote, and I don't want to say that's the same as T.P.P."

So...does this mean "no" on process and maybe/possibly/perhaps on TPP, or what?  Oh, wait - maybe she doesn't know what's in the TPP, since it's under lock-and-key and only available to members of Congress and select others.

Win came at a high cost, Megan Rapinoe & Lauren Holiday are out against China...that hurts.  And Abby Wambach is looking a little long in the tooth.  I think the team would be better served with her coming off the bench as a late offensive spark, and Sydney Leroux getting the starting nod opposite Alex Morgan instead.

Today's fare was Greta and company dumping on the African American District Attorney in Baltimore, and they all agreed it was not murder in Baltimore, but an accident.

Uncle Chip: "In the meantime the Mosby and her ME should gag themselves."

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley ordered the four Confederate flags on the state Capitol grounds in Montgomery to be taken down Wednesday morning, NBC News has learned.

Bentley told AL.com that his decision came, in part, as a response to the Charleston massacre as well as to avoid drawn-out political fights over the flag.

This made me laugh:

"This is the right thing to do. We are facing some major issues in this state regarding the budget and other matters that we need to deal with," Bentley said. "This had the potential to become a major distraction as we go forward. I have taxes to raise, we have work to do. And it was my decision that the flag needed to come down."

You know it's a problem when a republican governor would rather deal with raising taxes than a flag.

LINK

Another LINK:

A South Carolina lawmaker says the governor should take the Confederate flag down for "repairs" while a black senator slain in the Charleston church attack lies in state at the Capitol on Wednesday.

"I hope that the governor would look up at the flag, as I did yesterday, and notice that it looks a little wind-torn," he said.

The Charleston Post and Courier has asked each member of the State House and Senate in South Carolina how they will vote on the Confederate flag removal.

The answers are the news. The pressure comes in the form of a live updating page showing where each member stands. So far there is a collection of: Yes, No, Undecided, Hasn't Responded, Refused to Answer in the House. The Senate has no No's as of yet.

Current tally:
House:
Yes 39%
No 7%

Senate:
Yes 42%
No 0%

Then, in a breathtaking display, the leader of the Mississippi state house announced that it was time to rid that state flag of it's incorporated confederate symbol AND, now, Virginia's governor M has announced that the state would no longer produce CSA-insignia license plates.  Oh ... and the very commercial Walmart's new policy is that it will no longer sell certain CSA-logo items.  Again, the incentives probably span the range.  It is happening ... after such long time, but it is happening.  

With impending SCT decisions this week of potentially great meaning, I find myself thinking about both the societal and accompanying legal arc of LGBT rights.  A friend of mine remarked a few years back on her impression that what seemed to be permanently long and wrong had shifted into high gear toward a just resolution as to rights.  Vaguely, I remember echoes of such statements about struggles--that what was achingly protracted gained traction, almost without notice, and then sped into the future.

CHICAGO (AP) -- Medical marijuana has not been proven to work for many illnesses that state laws have approved it for, according to the first comprehensive analysis of research on its potential benefits.

The strongest evidence is for chronic pain and for muscle stiffness in multiple sclerosis, according to the review, which evaluated 79 studies involving more than 6,000 patients. Evidence was weak for many other conditions, including anxiety, sleep disorders, and Tourette's syndrome and the authors recommend more research.

Roof had been arrested in late February at a Columbia shopping mall and charged with possessing Suboxone, a controlled substance commonly used to treat heroin addiction. He was indicted by a Lexington County grand jury on a state drug charge, a case that is currently pending.

Federal law prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who is "under indictment for" a felony, but the drug charge Roof faces is a misdemeanor under South Carolina law. For that reason, according to several current and former law enforcement officials, the pending charge did not disqualify Roof from buying a gun.

A separate provision of federal law prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who is "an unlawful user" of any controlled substance. A provision of the Code of Federal Regulations, which defines that term in the gun law, says habitual use can be inferred from evidence of recent use, examples of which, it says, include "a conviction for use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year," or "multiple arrests for such offenses within the past 5 years."

Current and former ATF officials say a single misdemeanor arrest for possession of a controlled substance would not be disqualifying. The federal courts, these officials say, have tended to be strict in interpreting "unlawful user," and as a consequence, this provision is not often enforced.

'Everyone, please look at me, pay attention to me, damn it !!'

It was one of those stories that first unfolded and then played out like an overwrought and over-the-top Lifetime Movie Network production. Only it was all too real, and ultimately had profound and adverse consequences for not only the accuser and those she had accused, but also the immediate families of those who were involved -- one of which was one of the most prominent in American high society -- as well as the greater community and even the U.S. Navy.

The point here is that such dark and seedy tales are very definitely the exceptions and not the general rule. While they may capture our attention and hold our inner drama queens as willing hostages, the media coverage and resultant public overemphasis of them are grossly out of proportion when compared to the actual number of overall occurrences of sexual assault.

And that's really to our overall public detriment as a society, because the breathless manner in which some people tend to discuss these false accusations -- as though they're somehow representative of an epidemic -- serves only to diminish and insult those real victims whose claims otherwise deserve our fullest attention.

Yet these victims are all too often dismissed as cranks or worse for sometimes the most appallingly trivial and grotesque of reasons, and it's no small wonder why the majority of sexual assaults end up going unreported to the authorities. Because quite honestly, for every Duke Lacrosse saga or "Massie Affair," there are true stories of very real crimes which are many times the number of false accusations. And that's the real tragedy here.

Supposedly Gray was loaded into the van on his stomach and then got to his feet and was thrown or fell when the van was suddenly slowing or turning.

the problem is, for the prosecution, if the driver is known to be of good character and to have asked the others to strap him in, he did not have a depraved heart, and there might have been other reasons for slowing down and turning.

Why yes, yes you did. And yesterday this quote on the need to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol in SC from South Carolina state Sen. Paul Thurmond (R) (Son of Strom):

"It is time to acknowledge our past, atone for our sins, and work for a better future. That future cannot be built on symbols of war, hate, and divisiveness... I am aware of my heritage. I am not proud of this heritage. These practices were inhumane and wrong, wrong, wrong."

Here is the Daily Mail article saying that the ME claimed that the fatal injury occurred when FG's head hit the bolt on the back door. That would have been sudden acceleration -- not sudden deceleration -- and facing the back not the front:

Medical examiner 'found Freddie Gray's catastrophic head injury was consistent with bolt in the back door of the police van'

Now according to the BSun leaked autopsy, we are told that the ME believes the fatal injury occurred at the front of the van by sudden deceleration as he was facing forward.

So which was it -- facing forward or backward?

What happened to the bolt on the backdoor as the cause of death?

Which leaked autopsy is the ME standing by?

I guess we'll have to wait til Friday to find out.

I felt I was watching something original.

It also felt very contemporary - expressing a kind of feeling that is very 2015 - after all we have been through since 2001 with Bush - and then the Obama years.

I wonder how many times JK Simmons listened to those tapes of Buddy Rich yelling at his band in preparation for his role?

To me, ultimately that film is about the transcendent power of art, specifically music.