Happy Friday. Hope those taxes are done. 'Yeah, There Was Another Democratic Debate.' (Stifles Yawn) 
Thought bubble: "What's with her?" Thursday night's Democratic debate in Brooklyn basically amounted to Bernie Sanders's repeating all of his familiar attacks against Hillary and her insisting they're baseless; and her charging that he doesn't know what he's talking about, at which point he would counter-charge, "THE GREED AND THE RECKLESSNESS AND ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR OF WALL STREET BROUGHT THIS COUNTRY INTO THE WORST ECONOMIC DOWNTURN" -- sorry for the all caps, it's the only way to accurately capture the volume of Sanders' high dudgeon voice -- "SINCE THE GREAT RECESSSION OF THE THIRTIES, WHEN MILLIONS OF PEOPLE LOST THEIR JOBS AND THEIR HOMES AND THEIR LIFE SAVINGS, YOU'VE GOT A BUNCH OF FRAUDULENT OPERATORS AND THEY'VE GOT TO BE BROKEN UP!" Below are a couple of highlights, to the extent there were any: Clinton, last night, defending her judgment: "President Obama trusted my judgment enough to ask me to be secretary of State for the United States." Yeah, that line may work really well in a Democratic primary, but you can apply the same "hey, if Obama picked me, I must know what I'm doing" argument to former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, VA secretary Eric Shinseki, short-lived Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, all of those wealthy donor ambassadors who knew nothing about the countries where they would represent the U.S . . . Hillary Clinton: "It may be inconvenient, but it's always important to get the facts straight. I stood up against the behaviors of the banks when I was a senator. I called them out on their mortgage behavior. I also was very willing to speak out against some of the special privileges they had under the tax code." Bernie Sanders: "Secretary Clinton called them out. Oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this. And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements? So they must have been very, very upset by what you did." The New York Times reports: The most uncomfortable moment for Mrs. Clinton came when the debate turned to the 1994 crime bill, which put 100,000 more police officers on the streets, built new prisons and banned certain types of assault weapons. The bill, which Mr. Sanders voted for and Mrs. Clinton supported as first lady, has been widely criticized as contributing to the mass incarceration of African-Americans and to tensions between police officers and black communities. Mr. Sanders minced no words about Mrs. Clinton's use of the term "superpredators" to describe urban gang members in a 1996 speech. And he explained why he had criticized former President Bill Clinton this week for standing up for Mrs. Clinton on the issue. "It was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term," he said, setting off rousing cheers from the crowd. Mrs. Clinton has said she regrets using the term, and on Thursday night, she had no problem putting the blame for the crime bill on her husband. "He was the president who actually signed it," she said. Mr. President! Look out for that bus! Trump Continues to Insist Coloradans Never Voted in Caucuses March 1 The New York Post editorial board endorses Donald Trump for the Republican nomination: Here's how we see it. Should he win the nomination, we expect Trump to pivot -- not just on the issues, but in his manner. The post-pivot Trump needs to be more presidential: better informed on policy, more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned. I'm genuinely curious: what makes them think he's capable of being more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned? Trump is 69 years old. Meanwhile, Trump has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal insisting a victory in Colorado was stolen from him: No one forced anyone to cancel the vote in Colorado. Political insiders made a choice to cancel it. And it was the wrong choice. Responsible leaders should be shocked by the idea that party officials can simply cancel elections in America if they don't like what the voters may decide. It's rare we get to see history being erased: 
ADDENDA: On this week's pop-culture podcast, Mickey and I disagree about whether the red-hot phenomenon of coloring books for adults represents the collapse of Western Civilization; a new movie in Harry Potter's world and the real reason of why Harry was a bad role model; whether Gwyneth Paltrow is starting to enjoy being the most insufferably preachy and out-of-touch celebrity in American life, and the explosion of "National Days" that you've never heard of before. Ooof. I just realized that this year's first Sunday of NFL regular season games . . . is the 15-year anniversary of 9/11.  | 
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