Wiretap: No legislative detour for local control of fracking

 
Eli Stokols reports that John Hickenlooper will announce today that he has given up on his bid to call a special session of the state legislature. The session would have addressed local-control issues as they pertain to fracking. If there’s no special session, the issue — with financial support from Jared Polis — will almost certainly go to the ballot in November, and a nasty, expensive battle would ensue. Why couldn’t Hickenlooper get a deal? Although he was able to gain support from some in the business community and even from a few in the oil and gas industry, he wasn’t able to get any Republicans in the state Senate to go along. It’s a matter of politics, of course. The GOP thinking is that the ballot issues would hurt Hickenlooper and Mark Udall in November. There are polls, however, that suggest just the opposite. The one thing that’s clear is that it’s a big gamble for most of the parties involved. Via Fox31 Denver. Update 10:35 Wednesday.

Beware John Cornyn’s “humane” immigration act, meant to resolve the crisis on the border. It’s anything but humane. Via the New York Times.

David Frum writes in the Atlantic that the humanitarian catastrophe on the border is not what we think it is. And that longstanding American policies are to blame.

Former CIA spy writes that Germany’s very public outrage over U.S. spying is just for show. Via Time.

Conservatives won most of the big battles on Obamacare, even if they can’t bring themselves to admit it. It’s easy to see why. So much has been invested in the failure of Obamacare that its critics can’t afford to admit any success. Via Vox.

When it came to the high-stakes question of No Child Left Behind, how a school came up with a terribly wrong answer. A long read via the New Yorker.

Was Derek Jeter’s big moment at the All-Star Game a gift from opposing pitcher Adam Wainwright — or was it all a joke? Via Yahoo.

[Photo by Erie Rising via Flickr]

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