WELL, YES: GOP senator: Lynch-Clinton meeting ‘raises questions about interference.’

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Sunday that Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s meeting with former President Bill Clinton raises questions about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server while she was secretary of State.

“I think the events in the last week, though, do call into question Attorney General Lynch’s judgment … in taking a private meeting with Bill Clinton, who is not only the spouse of a target of a FBI investigation but may himself be a target of a FBI investigation into the activities of the Clinton Foundation,” Cotton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Lynch created a political firestorm last week when it was revealed she and Clinton met for 30 minutes on an airport tarmac in Phoenix. The meeting, which was described as an unplanned social visit, has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans in light of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server.

Lynch has since said she will accept the FBI’s recommendation on whether to press charges but has not fully recused herself from the case.

No, she hasn’t.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE GOP’S PROBLEMS:

Authority, in any political system, rests on the consent of the governed; democracy just provides the most effective means for the political class to determine whether the governed continue to consent. So long as the GOP’s voters lack confidence that the party is responsive to their interests, attempts to insulate the political class from direct accountability will only inspire greater ructions and revolts. Inasmuch as its donor class is indifferent or actively hostile to any such effort — and plenty of evidence points to the fact that this is the case — we should expect those disturbances, and their chaotic impact on America’s political system, to continue for some time to come.

Apparently, the GOP values donations more than votes.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKING OUT FOR YOU?

Shot: Pillars of Black Media, Once Vibrant, Now Fighting for Survival.

Chaser: NBC Falls To Fifth Place — Behind Univision — During February Sweeps.

Yes that second link is from 2013, but it illustrates a rapidly changing America. As Kevin Williamson noted earlier this year, “There is a certain irony to our historical moment:”

At the very moment when a black American family has reached the apex of American social life — the presidency, and a cute movie about their first date! — African Americans are as a group experiencing a stressful disorientation: The racial dynamic in the United States was, for many years, effectively binary. Not any more. In an increasingly multiracial society whose most prestigious institutions are truly global, African Americans are no longer the moral yardstick by which the American commitment to our liberal founding ideals is measured. In 30 years, it very well may be the case that African Americans are no more of a significant interest group than Vietnamese Americans or Norwegian Americans, and the social and economic success of Nigerian American immigrant families, among others, complicates the meaning of “African American” as a concept, in that these communities are likely to maintain a certain distinctiveness that renders “black” devoid of clear meaning.

That is a big, attractive lever for the Al Sharptons of the world to let go of, which is why we’ll see more #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite rather than less, even as the question becomes less significant nationally.

As Glenn noted yesterday in regards to Charlie Rangel’s seat, “As In Chicago, Hispanics Are Replacing Blacks As The Urban Power…If the GOP were smart (ha, ha, yeah, I know) there would be big opportunities here.”

BLUE ON BLUE: Black Lives Matter protest scores victory after putting Pride parade on pause.

Obligatory:

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Rising Death Rates for Middle-Aged White Americans Are Forcing a Policy Rethink.

Top economists are warning that the alarming uptick in mortality for middle-aged white Americans will force policymakers to rethink the U.S. social safety net.

A report released by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project is the latest paper to highlight how opioids, suicide and chronic liver disease are becoming a greater cause of death among whites age 45 to 54. While middle-age blacks and Latinos have seen steady declines in their mortality in recent years, whites in the same age group saw their mortality increase about 10% between 1999 and 2014.

These white Americans have been hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the fact that their lifespans are suffering correlates with ample research showing that earning less is tied to dying earlier. Now economists are warning that what may seem like a traditional public health problem is a much thornier puzzle that calls for rethinking everything from early childhood education to how the federal government divides up Social Security checks.

“This is a world in which people are dying that shouldn’t be dying,” Angus Deaton, a 2015 Nobel Prize winner and an economist at Princeton University, told an audience at Brookings on Wednesday.

And the elites wonder why people are revolting?

THIS IS NO SURPRISE, GIVEN THAT HER ELECTION-YEAR MOVIE 9 TO 5 WAS HEAVY-HANDED DEM AGITPROP: Dolly Parton: ‘I’ll certainly be behind’ a President Hillary Clinton.

Just as Oprah picked race over her fanbase in 2008, Dolly has picked sex over her fanbase in 2016.